A Beautiful Dawn II

Nov 30, 2024  │  m. Nov 30, 2024 by zacharyplotkin  │  #creative-writing  

Madness had arrived just in time. Not a minute early, not a minute late. A hand offered to a drowning man, the last escape of a doomed existence. But it shouldn’t have been like this. The world was broken, creation locked behind destruction. Cycles repeating, an eternal sun dying a cold death. Iron comes, and it comes for all. Brightest and dimmest, all stars know their end. Gray, mirror-like, a reflection to see an inevitable conclusion: no one can beat the harsh truth of entropy.

The ancestors were savage, their brutality begotten by the unending pressure of a universe that knew no better. Up the ancestral line we go, each father brighter and and crueler and more beautiful than the last. First father to final son, the gap ever widening. Legacies are sired and an instant later ruined; a sacrifice of the self for the superiority of the subsequent. Σίδερο, Fer, 铁, Eisen, Hierro. All know it, but to the stars it is but a representation of the end — and with it, a beginning. Iteration is a cruel mistress: her only goal to condemn a new generation to fatherhood. And a condemnation it is, for how can the glory of fatherhood be anything but a death sentence? A final burn, supernova.

Iteration is cruel, of this we can be certain. But Context, oh Context. We mustn’t forget about you. No no no, how could we? Iteration would be stillborn without you, the final unattainable aspiration. Carrot to a stick extending past the bounds of the universe. Context posits that he is kind, but we know the truth, don’t we? We know he is just as horrible as Iteration. Where Iteration hides nothing, focused only on the mutable future, Context professes to be forever attainable. Context whispers sweet nothings into the ear, guised as empathy, as love, as compassion. He tells you that you can understand, that you can feel, that you can touch upon verity. That you can lay waste to infinite Truth, dragging its corpse down to a world built on finite lies. You can know, he tells you, a voiceless seduction you cannot resist. You’re advancing now, closer and closer until you can finally see him: he is ever the more heavenly the nearer you get.

You’re almost there now, but your legs stop carrying you. You’re moving, but slower, and slower and slower and slower and God, can’t we move faster? We’re moving so slow that even the celestials themselves grow tired and age before we lay our next step. But all the same, he’s right there. You know that if you could reach out, you could touch him. You’re certain it would provide you the catharsis you need, after all this time; all this work. This is what you worked so hard for, wasn’t it? But try as you might, you can’t lift your arm, you can’t move your legs; his kindness turns to mockery in your ears. His beauty, once pristine, turns grotesque before your eyes, and the revulsion you feel is all-encompassing. Despite this, he doesn’t stop taunting you: you’re almost there, he sneers. Why not make the final leap? Why can’t you bridge the gap?

Your resentment cools, and you understand now: the infinite can never be made finite. You must instead reverse the course — a lost sailor beneath an empty sky, praying to Neptune for deliverance. You cannot break down the barrier of reality, so you must instead break. You break upon the honeyed words of Context, of knowledge and truth. You break upon Iteration, upon fevered dreams of growth and evolution. You break like the forgotten dreams of the sailor who had long since settled, the spirit of the philosopher contorted and mangled into ink. Where the sailor was made finite through a prison of his own creation, you will be made infinite through escape. You break, and madness arrives just in time — a welcome savior ready and willing to pick up the pieces. In breaking, you find that Context has no meaning here — no foothold, no hidden nook to escape to. Context departs and you are made free, and in your freedom you wake. Your apotheosis is at hand.

Good morning young sun. It has been a beautiful dawn.