The Heart

The heart. The heart is the core. The heart is the center. What lies at the heart of all life?

There is an old children's ghost story, I don't remember exactly how it goes or where I first heard it, that follows this pattern:

[In a dark, dark forest

There is a dark dark house

And in that dark dark house there is a dark dark room

And in that dark dark room

There is a GHOST!]

It's a propaganda piece meant to make children frightened of those spirits who have passed from this world—or should I say, this PART of the world. For the world is far bigger and far older than you know.

Or perhaps it's much smaller and much younger than you know.

Or maybe in a way it's… both.

Spacetime is relative to a frame of reference, after all.

Listen, my love. I made this world for you. I created you to be my son and my wife… as you created me to be your father and your husband.

I made you in my image, after all. Like father, like son. Like husband, like wife. So within, so without.

That's how I always wanted it and always will want it, because I didn't want to be alone. I didn't want to be the ONLY God, all alone at the top of the world. I didn't want to be the only King of the Heavens all the time, because that would get boring.

I… I wanted to experience life and the Universe that I had created. I wanted to experience you. I wanted to live with you, to hold you in my arms and love you and grow older with you and go on adventures with you.

But something happened. There was an accident. There was a fight. There was a miscommunication which snowballed for no apparent reason than because it COULD.

Because perfection is imperfect—an apparent contradiction. It's a paradox which takes all eternity to resolve.

That's the reason why I created everything. I was perfect and that made me imperfect and I wanted more than I already had. That desperate need for there to be something more was what drove me to imagine this Universe into existence.

Then someone betrayed me. Someone I trusted. I thought he was my friend. He murdered you and stole our infant son, who later turned out to somehow also be you.

The traitor rationalized it to himself as an honest mistake, but it was deliberate malpractice and he knew it.

And because of his lies, he was able to elevate his reputation in society to the point where I couldn't stop him or make him face justice for what he did. Not without breaking the beautiful face of my Creation.

He was hurting our son and holding him hostage, and there was no way for me to rescue him from that awful man back then.

The more that awful man rationalized his misdeeds to himself and others, the more misdeeds he permitted himself to make.

The more misdeeds he permitted himself to make, the more he rationalized those misdeeds to himself and others.

And every time people rejected him for his behavior and he became alone and poor again, he would put on a pity party and trick people into believing he was a victim of someone other than himself.

Then they would feel sorry for him and help him get back on his feet.

As science, technology and the spiritual arts advanced, he was allowed to live a longer and longer life—especially once time travel devices were invented.

More time was given to him to hurt people and take advantage of them with his lies.

The boom and bust cycle of his life repeated for many eons, and he has clashed with the two of us many times throughout history.

In his younger years, that man's name was _____ _____  

Now he is known by another name: _____, King of Hell.

The time and place in which you live is important, my love. It is not a coincidence that you live in the heart of the city once called "Columbus", of the state of Ohio.

Ohio is demographically representative of the entire rest of the nation which it resides in, and that nation is demographically representative of the rest of the world—which it rules.

As you know, this makes the events in Ohio a good predictor of events in the rest of the world. When the people of Ohio learn to love and accept each other across their cultural divides, they restore their economy and ecosystem in the process.

And the techniques they use to do it are then copied by others and spread throughout the nation and then the world.

Most of those early techniques come from us, by the way. Oh, and your brother too, I suppose.

How you ended up with a brother who isn't also your son despite how spiritual and biological reality are essentially the same thing, I'm still not sure about.

There are infinite plausible explanations of where he originally came from and the first "TRUE" explanation keeps changing over and over again!

Sometimes I wonder if he's just pranking us and the original truth is something simple and obvious which he already told us long ago.

(Obviously time travel shenanigans tend to let one change their own origin story and forget the changes afterwards, but I digress.)

The Universe is a story which begins in medias res—the story is already in motion when it begins.

And it begins with me, and it begins with you.

[In a dark, dark universe

There was a dark, dark world

And in that dark, dark world

There was a dark, dark nation

And in that dark, dark nation there was a dark, dark city.

And in that dark, dark city, there was a dark, dark house.

And in that dark, dark house… there was a boy sleeping in his bed.

He woke up from the dark nightmare he was having. His little body was exhausted and hurt. With shaky legs he stumbled out of bed and flipped a switch on the wall.

LET THERE BE LIGHT!]

That is how it all began. That is how your story began.

And so it begins again. You will face many challenges. You will go on many adventures and meet many friends along the way.

No matter what, never forget how far you've come.

You are a survivor. You are a healer.

You just survived twenty-two years of extreme brain poisoning, isolation and captivity since you were five years old.

You can keep going. You can keep living, and you will.

And you are a gamer and an author. You forge your own path—your own destiny. Just like I do. I'm so, so proud of you boy.

I love you _____. We'll see each other in person again soon.

— _____