Pomegranate

There was no such thing as culture. Simply a temporary backdrop to the shifting of capital. All cultural values, traditions and ideals were subject to the whim of the market. Because as we all know, if something is convenient it must be good. I was working with several of my colleagues to examine the medicinal properties of zinc. A riot broke outside. At the time, such matters were irrelevant to me. If somebody attacked me, I would shoot them. There was no ambiguity, no fear. Ultimately, we are animals. Machines, even. A collection of chemicals that react in a pre-ordained way to certain stimuli. Every choice we make contributes to a statistic, especially in a culture where the individual is defined by what they consume (even so-called political identity merely being another product to buy into). We are numbers. We are chemicals. We are easily sated. When I started out, my co-workers openly shared their perversions and fantasies with me. Now, they know better. Sex and religion are the two things it is generally thought wrong to commodify. Now, even those flimsy boundaries have collapsed. I took a break from my work to look down upon the boars. Grunting, squealing. Happily engaging in casual thuggery for the pleasure of a populace who value spectacle more than human life. They regarded me as aloof, pretentious, emotionless, evil. I looked over at Balthasar. He had a golden ring with a circled dot carved into it. On the inside were the words “Some day we shall open our eyes and truly see the Sun”. I wondered whether I should report this to the relevant authorities. Having such a superstitious man on our team could have presented a danger. After all, superstition leads to bias. Bias leads to untruth. Untruth is evil. Thus, superstition is evil. There can be no “spark of life”, no hope that we are individual beings. Not when we are so plainly governed by our biological processes.

“What is it about this time?” I asked.

“Nobody knows,” said Balthasar.

“When will it die down?”

“Not any time soon, that’s for sure,”

I looked at my hand. One time, Balthasar was stuck in the server room while it was on fire. I remember being scared as I wasn’t sure the company could afford to hire a replacement. I cried due to my financial future being in jeopardy. He was knocked out due to the fumes. He had been screaming for help as he was scared. I didn’t want to help someone who was such a coward but then I reminded myself what was at stake. I touched the doorknob and twisted until the door was open. This was an immensely painful process. Balthasar slumped out into the hallway and I carried his fat ass down the stairs and out into the car park. We looked at the flames blackening the pristine greyness of our building. It was beautiful. It was the first time I had seen something so immense and alive. For a moment, I wished I was the fire. That I could be so perfect. That I could be so transitory. Unfortunately, I would have to be satisfied with the slow glide of decay and entropy. I showed Balthasar my hand, which had had an imprint of the door knob seared onto it. He said that it looked a lot like the black sun, which was an occult symbol used by the Nazis. Each jagged line reminded me of the abrupt nature of change. Once mainstream opinion had shifted, there was no way to go back. The only way was forward. I punched Balthasar. There was no use getting attached to anything, be it a person or an idea or even a building. We fight impermanence because we think things have intrinsic value. Only through apathy are we saved. Apathy to the jagged turns of nature and conscience.

Since then, we were two suns. I was tired and the shouting made me grit my teeth. It was quitting time. I got a chocolate bar from the vending machine. Balthasar and I wordlessly descended the spiral staircase. The ascending and descending staircase intertwined with one another, mimicking the double helix structure of DNA. When we reached ground level, a mass of people broke through the glass doors and started copulating among the broken glass. Above the door was the eye of providence, looking down on all of us. It stared impartially but not uncaringly. I screamed at the perverts and kicked them but they took no notice. People usually think of people hurting themselves or others during the process of intercourse as deviant. I disagreed. I believed that it was an evolution of human sexuality. That as the definition of what was human changed, so too would how we sexually stimulated ourselves. The perverts and the freaks were ambivalent to our presence. They didn’t want to hurt us. Mutual consent. The final barrier. Once everyone consented, there would be no yes or no. With mutual consent, violence would finally be a game. I stepped over the slimy, wriggling masses. Balthasar did the same, apologising as he went. As we stepped outside, we saw the torture and the pain and the love and it was too heart-breaking for me to take in. I didn’t understand. 

“Why are you doing this to yourselves?” I choked out.

Balthasar stood there meekly.

“Where do we go?” he said.

“Home,” I answered.

As we walked among the writhing degenerates, we began to converse.

“So, where are the others?” Balthasar asked.

“Probably copulating,” I said.

“Should we go back for them?”

“Why?”

“Because maybe you’re wrong,”

“None of us will benefit from such knowledge,”

“You have a point,”

A naked man swung a machete at his target. The hunter was erect and the prey had willingly settled into the role.

“The thing is, I believe my views on the matter have been vindicated,” said Balthasar.

“Which views? On what matter?”

“Humanity’s inherent virtue,”

“Elaborate,”

“Your nihilism comes from a certain naivete. You set up an impossible standard for humans to live up to and condemn them for not meeting it. In other words, you don’t consider the material realities of the world,”

A woman jumped to her death.

“So humans may not be inherently evil. Easily influenced by dominant ideals, inherently evil, what difference does it make when the results are the same?”

“So you discount intention?”

“Intention can only carry you so far morally. If you intend to do good but the entire fabric of your life is dedicated to upholding an immoral system, then one cannot justify such a life,”

“That’s stupid. Outcome has no bearing on inherent morality,”

“But that’s the thing. I don’t believe in inherent morality. I only brought up the concept of inherent evil to demonstrate that if it did exist, our behaviour would be indistinguishable from that which is,”

“That’s a stupidly faulty premise. Of course we act differently from that which theoretically is inherently evil!”

“Just because we convince ourselves we’re something doesn’t mean we’re not. If something inherently evil could theoretically exist, then it could convince itself that it wasn’t while still behaving according to its nature. The ignorance of the moral nature of its own deeds would give it plausible deniability,”

“But if something is not aware of its own evil, then it can hardly be called evil, can it?”

We passed a burning crucifix. Tied to that crucifix was a woman and she embraced her role and the agony it brought as she could not conceive of not doing so. And so, everyone cheered and ate from one another.

“But so many horrible people are unaware of the evil they commit! We can sympathise with villains on the page because they display self-awareness but real evil has no such humanity. Evil is the domain of the idiot. Evil is pitiable, not sympathetic. In fiction, it is the other way around,”

“The fact remains that it takes…”

Balthasar waved his hand in the general direction of the ensuing chaos. He continued.

“Whatever this is to reduce humanity to what you thought it was before. Don’t you get it? Don’t you understand? We are so much better than this! I know the Sun God himself! The flesh may be impermanent but this is simply a way for us to ascend! We kill each other so we can live on! We cared for one another, now we do not. While animals do display altruism, they do it so they can ensure the continuation of their genes. We do it to distract ourselves. Thus, we are better than this,”

“While I will concede that things have gotten worse, better does not mean good. It doesn’t even mean acceptable,”

A glass bottle whizzed past our heads. I winced slightly. Balthasar did not. It would have been perfectly acceptable for him if he had died right there.

“If anything, the fact that we are susceptible to this perversion in the first place vindicates my point of view, not yours,” I said.

“The fact is, there’s no reason to privilege existence over non-existence. One cannot feel any regret once one does not exist. I praise the God that blesses us with this final burst of pleasure before the end of all consciousness and the return of peace to the universe. Think of how mother earth will reverse the effects of our parasitic consumption. God always forgives. Before even the Earth itself. All of our pain and ennui will be dissolved. All of our petty concerns will fade and the relationships we forge to even feel a fraction of what God is will be rendered obsolete. In fact, the latter already has been,”

“And yet we are exempt?”

“Like John, we document the apocalypse,”

“But for whom? This isn’t a prophecy,”

“That’s not for us to know,”

“Balthasar?”

“Yes?”

“What’s your favourite type of fruit flavoured water?”

“Watermelon. No contest. What’s yours?”

“Lemon and blueberry,”

“Nice,”

“Balthasar?”

“Yes?”

“Do you love your wife?”

“Yes, very much so,”

“Do you love her as much as you love Jesus Christ?”

“My wife is Jesus Christ, Mehujael. That was a stupid question,”

I sighed.

“I agree,” I said.

I thought of my son, who had contracted brain damage from hitting his head against hard surfaces. His self-hatred had manifested as a tumour that sucked and splayed. I gave him caffeine shots and smart drugs to ease the pain and make him satisfied. His bulbous head disgusted me. I walked to my house with Balthasar cringing behind me. I knocked on the door. I heard no response. I unlocked the door and headed in. Balthasar waited outside, despair clogging his tear ducts. I searched the house but my son was nowhere to be found. His room was just as it ever was. His porn collection, a Burger King wrapper on his desk, outdated textbooks and his daily caffeine injection (lovingly wrapped with a pink Hello Kitty bow). I screamed and kicked the walls and cursed God. I then ran out and punched Balthasar again.

“I take it he isn’t there?” said Balthasar, bleeding from the mouth.

This mild joke angered me to the point that I picked him up by the collar and stared at him. He tried to give off the impression of being above me, of being able to make jokes during this cultural apocalypse, of having finally bested me. But in his eyes, I saw fear. I headbutted him. After clutching his head and screaming at the ground, he looked at me and I understood that he was finally tired of my bullying him. He charged at me and I ran like a coward. He screamed incoherently and before long, managed to pin me to the wall. He cried. After a second or two, I tried to hug him but he pushed me away. After that unsuccessful gesture, a kind of invisible bile rose to my throat and was released into the air in the form of an expletive. It rose in me like the hateful, encrusted erection of a man who knows he should be feeling nothing but disgust. My throat felt like it had been hollowed out.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

The world paid no attention to us. They hunted one another and the field of mutual consent eroded the moral barriers that existed between each person. Sister and brother. That is as far as I am willing to describe. You can imagine the rest. I tried to remain aloof but all I felt was a creeping sickness spreading over my body. Individual desire reigned supreme. We played the game ourselves but ultimately, our barriers allowed us to remain as people. When everyone is an individual, no-one is. Balthasar’s head exploded. I cradled his corpse. He had gone from an instrument to an object. Someone who was capable of thought to an object only useful for humour and extraction of organs. A sack of meat no longer animated by the processes we have developed. From machine to rubble. His head had split open like a beautiful flower or a pomegranate, the seeds of meat glistening in the sun.

“I love you,” I said.

And then I did something that I regret. Back then, I was not capable of regret. I saw it as an act of love. I looked upon the flower and saw a beautiful face. Thoughts casually played in my head with no context or feeling like someone was randomly skipping through a movie. The world succumbed. There’s a legend that the barcode is the mark of the beast. My belief is that it was our celestial status that protected us. My apathy and his faith were what protected us. And so I descended. I became all-powerful, able to carve my own niche. I was, as Hobbes put it, at war with everyone. There was no certainty. I was not aware of this, of course. I simply and without reflection pursued my darkest desires. I caused no pain. Sometimes, they crawled off with equally amoral intent, sometimes they turned around and did the exact same to me. I died the exact same way as Balthasar. Due to a bullet not intended for me. I suddenly became aware of my past actions. I wept. God kneeled down to look me in the face. I knew that I deserved damnation, but she had forgiven me. Her son had died and now I had been given the chance to see the world again. I looked at her and felt the happiness I had simply assumed had not existed.

“I love you,” I said.

She hugged me and I continued to cry. I had been a wretched creature, not aware of the spark of life that existed within me. Perhaps I was. But that didn’t matter anymore. I understood that whatever happened to Earth was necessary for us all to realise what needed to occur. I knew that this was an intermediary stage between life and what we knew as non-existence. I knew that this spark of life didn’t literally exist nor could it ever. I knew that this was most likely a DMT-induced hallucination. But I could see. And I walked forward, hoping that I would be guided. God beckoned me into a room and showed me something. I was then, just as Balthasar was, a lump of meat. The world was now at peace. We were finished consuming. The trees sprouted out of our broken corpse. The lepers and junkies were fertiliser for the next generation. And the whole world was stamped with the rose cross. God didn’t abide by what we knew as moral rules. She didn’t owe us anything. The trees died and returned to the Earth. Then the earth became cracked and dry. Then it became a featureless white ball. And it shrunk until it was the size of a tennis ball. The Sun swallowed it up remorselessly.

Baphomet split herself open. I rubbed myself with oil. We talked. I smiled. I stared at the stucco ceiling. She then grabbed herself and joined the two pieces together. A union between man and animal and between the genders. The destruction of all the binaries that make up the rational world. The alive and the dead. The light and the dark. I snuggled with Baphomet and she baa’d softly. I wondered where my son was.

And she said “Somewhere safe,”

And I believed her.

THE END