A blog-entry-that-could-have-been, written by someone who never got to post it or whose post somehow never ended up getting linked on the Reyvablog. Maybe she couldn't find free internet access in time to write it up, or maybe the server ate her post, or maybe she just didn't get noticed. In any case, somehow, against the odds, it was salvaged from a world that now exists outside time.
It seems a bit odd warning for "disturbing themes" when the Reyvablog itself had no warnings. Perhaps I should put a warning in the author's notes?
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My name is Merisa Csetla, and I have only a handful of days to live. Not because of Sublimation, but because I'm a Reyvateil living on the streets, and I can't afford Diquility. By my calendar, I'll expire in a little under two weeks.
Before that, if what happened to some of my friends is anything to go by, I can expect to spend my last day or two alive writhing and crying in agony, trying desperately to communicate to my few remaining friends my need for water, or warmth, or comfort, but having my words mangled beyond all recognition by the collapse of my rational mind. As I succumb to frightening hallucinations, curled up tightly on the filth-covered ground in an attempt to shut out the waking nightmares, my friends will be forced to try and interpret my mumblings as best they can, and mostly end up guessing at requests that only scare me more. Perhaps I was, even, asking for some of those things in the beginning, but then my vision warped and my mind broke down and the sight of moving liquid came to look like the distorted face of a demon. Eventually, my last thoughts being of darkness and pain, I'll probably fall into a coma from which I will never be roused. My friends will have to dispose of the body, which they'll probably do by dragging it behind a pile of trash. On the streets, even a worn, dirty blanket is a luxury; so are old clothes. They can't be spared for something so sentimental as a shroud.
After that, they'll sit around nervously and wait for it to happen to them-- as I'm doing now, having "buried" several who went before. Their hearts will be gripped, like mine is, by a deep and ugly terror that never quite abates. Like me, they'll remember that twisted, awful face, the greyish pallor, the bulging eyes, and they'll imagine that agony inside themselves, and they'll never quite sleep the same. And on the streets, sleeping is hard as it is.
And then... then it'll come to them, too, and one by one they'll go through it, until all that is left to show for their lives is a rotting huddle of corpses feeding the streets' abandoned dogs.
At least, that's how it would go, if not for Sublimation.
I know what you're thinking: so Sublimation will save some who might die horribly. But there are countless more people it hasn't saved, and many it still won't save. Don't I, who witnessed the death of my friends, understand that? Even if Sublimation saves you from that fate, is that any great thing, in the scheme of it all, compared to the billions who never lived to see these days? And does it justify changing an entire world?
As you can possibly tell by the fact that I have these arguments to hand already, I might have thought that too. In fact, at one point, I did think that. But then some pretty extraordinary news was leaked to me-- from that blog where one of the posters is apparently the girl who'll sing with Mir. (I believe her, personally. My friend who follows that blog says the accusations of her backdating her getting-shot posts are false; she saw those posts made well before the video of her came out, depicting the exact same injuries she described.) She said that, along with all the living people being saved, the dead are going to be raised, too. They're all in the Binary Field, intact, just sleeping, and they can know the world again if Mir calls all life to her side.
I've always been a bit of a Prime Directivist, really, if you'll excuse me twisting a term-- I'm still a specfic geek at heart, even if I sold my collector comics long ago. Sure, the Goddesses made the world or whatever, but I've never seen much of a reason to believe they've kept on having a hand in things. As far as I was concerned, they may as well have just made this world and walked off into the proverbial ethereal sunset, leaving us here to cope with what we have. Afterlife? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps this is the only life we'll ever have. I don't see what makes it particularly more likely there'd be one than not; the Goddesses don't seem to care much about our lives right now, after all.
But hearing someone personally involved with Sublimation say we go somewhere when we die, as a casual detail assumed as she made her greater point... that tipped the balance for me, I guess. Like I said, I'd had no reason to believe one way or the other with no evidence. Someone who's going to actually engage with all this telling me what it's like? Sure, I'll listen. Why lie? Mir clearly has a reason for doing this; if she intends evil, there's no reason not to scare us, and if she has a good reason, it'd have to be sufficiently good for her to even consider something like this. If she'd had to make things up, wouldn't that, perhaps, have hinted to her that this wasn't a good plan? Wouldn't she think her own reason was enough?
I, for one, think it's enough. Because it means that I won't die, and my friends won't die, and those of them who have already died and suffered aren't rotting on the streets, dumped behind the garbage, for nothing. The billions and billions of people who've already left this world didn't live for no reason. And when I go to that perfect world, never having known death, I'll see my dead friends again, and I'll see all those billions of people, too. People who died in the First and Second Eras, victims of the wars, people who knew and saw and did things I could never imagine. Everyone who ever lived. Ever.
And that's what makes Sublimation different from, better than, any other way this world could be saved. Social change? Wonderful-- but it won't bring back the lost. It won't make the continents unfall and all those people who died there start living again as if none of it had ever happened. It won't undo my cold, dead friends, whom the streets claimed for lack of care. People could stop hating overnight, war could end forever, and they'd still be cold and dead.
So next time you wonder if Sublimation's really a good thing for us, think about those billions of lives. And if you're wondering about billions yet to be born-- when did Mir say new life can't be made there? She seems to be all about life, right now.
Could there really be a better way for the world to end? I'm not sure I can think of one.
Letra - Eldharia ~Inori Saku Mori~
2 months ago
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