"I am the one who killed your mother. I am the one who raped and sodomized you and laughed at your desperate sobs. I am the shadow of a man who chills behind the curtains, watching, calling the shots."

"But why?"

"Why? Why is marijuana illegal? Why are cigarettes legal? Why are we spending more money on 'defense' than we ever have, while our economy continues to implode in on itself? Why? Because there are people who control things, not the people you'd think either, that make a profit. Every aspect of our lives makes someone else money."

"What can I do about it?"

"Nothing. You could try to fight it, but you'll never know who or what to fight. You could ignore it, and just get sucked back in. You could rally every person in this country to the cause, but it wouldn't do any good. You'd all be gunned down in the fight against an invisible enemy, and the subsequent news reports would grossly misrepresent the actualities of the situation and villify you effortlessly in the minds of those left over to see the aftermath."

"Is there anything to do at all?"

"Know. Knowing is half the battle. Know and wait. Wait until you see the opening to strike at the heart of the corporate entity that runs the world. It won't seem as if it will do anything, but it will. You'll never see the results of your sacrifice, but twenty years from now your kids will look back at how the Corporation had the world in a stranglehold, and how you wriggled it out."

"Why do you tell me these things?"

"Because you question my answers. Many would disregard my lies as lies, missing the greater truths behind them. Many would accept my truths as truths, missing the lies behind them. You haven't verbally questioned anything I've said, but the device your parents installed into your flesh as an infant, the one designed to "keep you safe," tells me your every thought, and you're thinking that none of this is real."

"I may be."

"No, you are. And you're right. Reality hasn't been real for four thousand years Micheal. This is a sub-plot to a greater story. One paragraph on one of a million pages in the book that is actuality."

"Man, you're-"

"Crazy? No. This, all of... THIS, this is crazy. The objects in this reality, you, me, this wall, are thoughts in the, for the lack of a better word, mind we are a part of. We are all tools in a process, cogs in a machine, all of the knowledge we gain, all of our accomplishments, all of it an on or an off on the switchboard that is the greater whole, all eventually cumulating into one, comprehensive answer to everything that is."

"What are you?"

"I am your way out. I don't exist in this system. I should say my existence is not known of within this existence. I, as you see me, am nothing more than one moment in that stupid, limiting concept you call time. Even referring to myself as 'I' is a misrepresentation, but the concepts I'd wish to convey to you here, in this place, will force you out of existence entirely."

"What do you want with me?"

"A story. The concept you call meaning is a deception. Even I, beyond your every capacity, your every perception, can never say that anything means anything more than that which you assign to it. My presence here within you, even, is meaningless. An exercise in the chaotic orgy of will and action that is everything. Everything I've said to you is wrong. Everything is wrong. The only right is zero, nothingness, equilibrium; and as you can clearly tell by the fact that you... "exist", that there is somethingness."

"...What the fuck are you talking about? What do I even call you?"

"Call me nothing. Calling me something compartmentalizes me into something finite, and in the sense of your perception I am infinite. You have been priveledged with intercourse with something greater than the whole of your... universe. What you conceptualize as "god" is lesser than I. I suppose I am here to plant a seed. 'Time' as you see it is just the progression of entropy, the self-resisting cycle towards zero. Me being here, now, will alter things. You aren't to know now, but it will be by your hand that somethingness comes to nothingness. By your actions, your misguided but ultimately righteous will to do. Your 'meaning' is infinitely beyond your tangible, finite existence, but your actions will take place within it."

"So you're telling me that my purpose in life is to end life? To erase from existence everything I've ever known, and to be right in doing it? I'm sorry, but I now know that you are evil in its purest form, and that I will never, EVER cooperate with you."

"But you already have. Why do you think I've introduced myself as a metaphorical murderer, rapist and dictator? So that you oppose me. I exist just as surely as you do, but the difference between you and me is that I'm not limited by the pitiful attachment to existing. I know that I, you, everyone and everything is wrong, and I strive to fulfil the one and only ultimate purpose; Entropy. And it will be, too. No matter how you act from here on out, you will always know somewhere in your mind of your purpose, and that will invariably cause you to cooperate with me."

"I have nothing more to discuss with you. I don't care if I'm a part of something greater and sinister, all I know is that even if I do fulfil this given and arbitrary purpose, it will be against my will, and I will NEVER have willfully done anything for you. Hello? Hello?"

--------------------------------------
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--

Another strange dream... I should really stop taking those meds. I've been having dreams like this for weeks now. But it doesn't matter, they're just dreams, right?

Work. I sell mattresses to people that can't afford them, on credit none of them are good for. I'm not sure how this business is profitable, their operation is sloppier than tubgirl, but they still somehow manage to pay me $6.75 for every hour I spend there, spitting out capitalist propaganda at people who fall for it, and even feel good about going home with a shitty, overpriced square to sleep on.

Off work. I usually go to bars. I don't drink, but one might not be surprised how much drunken sex you can get out of bar-sluts anyway.

Home. Chelsea left. If that was her name. Or was it Chancy, or Charlie... Fuck it, I'll remember her name if and when I see her tits again. In case you're wondering; No, I don't objectify and take advantage of women. They choose to come over, they choose to fuck, and THEY choose to leave when I ask them to. Internets. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about. Once I've uploaded the hidden cam vids of the girls I bring over to rapidshare and pimp them on 4Chan, I move to Myspace to find a desperate, young girl who'll be easy prey. No, I'm not a rapist or a cereal killer. I like to tear people down with words. I never touch or see them, I just hurt them in such a way so as they can't do it back. Call a chubby girl fat, call a skinny girl a cokewhore, call a well-rounded, stable girl an ignorant, stupid teenager enough times and in enough different ways, and they'll harm themselves for you.

It sounds crazy, but what is sane?

--------------------------------------

"You still haven't figured it out yet, have you?"

"Figured WHAT out?"

"It."

"I guess not. Have any hints for me?"

"Everything is a hint. Literally, to you, everything. Before, I alluded to the idea of a meaning for you. To the human mind, meaning is the piece of information that provides a link between A and B, makes many things at once cooperate to form one, uniform idea or perception. You see, for instance, someone murder someone. You assume there is a reason for it, meaning to it. You don't know it, but you assume it is as such. Now say you talk to the murderer, ask him why he killed someone, and he tells you that that someone raped his sister. There is now meaning to the event. The event itself is entirely unchanged, but you now percieve it as a whole event, your question is answered. This is meaning. I'm not contradicting myself when I said that there is no meaning to anything, and then turn around to profess to you that you have one. Meaning is created within a human mind. No other form of being that can influence its environment other than human beings perceive meaning, let alone strive for it, and this is why you, Micheal, are useful."

"I still don't understand why I am the one you want to fulfill your purpose, why I am privy to this knowledge when I will ultimately, supposedly, be the harbinger of the end, the one to finalize everything."

"Micheal, you don't NEED to understand. Purely observatory beings, etherial conciences, will see meaning, will see outcomes, will see all causes and all effects at once. They are not limited by 'time' or 'space,' as they are one with all of it. They have no desire, no will, no such factors that cause them to focus on the singular, no attachment to self prohibiting them from seeing all. I've said before, and I will say again, your entire 'universe' is an infinitesimal micron on an infinitesimal, one dimensional point. Just as there are an infinite sleugh of realms and possibilities within your own, it extends the other way. No conscience can truly understand how infinitesimal it is, nor how infinite. The only thing that can is the is, because it IS that infinitesimal, it IS that infinite."

"That's all very interesting, but what are you leading to? What do you want me to take from all of this?"

"That the only thing holding you back from what you would call 'enlightenment' and the Buddhists of your race would call 'nirvana' is your self. You perceive self, do you not?"

"Well I have to, else there would be no self."

"Exactly. What makes you think that the instinct to remain 'self' is right? Why do you cling so manically to your finite, limited existence when in the back of your mind, somewhere, you KNOW that it is wrong? You struggle to exist, you strain perpetually in a manner you call living, but why? Of course, there really IS no reason, just the is. You are."

"You're contradicting yourself. You ask me why I do what I must to survive, then say that there is no reason. To you I say that I just am, and I know it's right, because I am. I didn't force myself into existence, I just ended up here, and since I'm here I figure I might as well remain here until I die, when- and however that may be."

"Ah ha. Now we're getting places. You are, and you will die. Your 'science' says that matter and energy must be conserved. That if it appears to disappear, it hasn't; it has merely changed forms. In a way this is right. Within the constructs of your little playground that is, these rules apply. When something shifts out of your realm, something else comes in to replace it. But things can be destroyed totally."

"So are you trying to allude to the ultimate fate of my being or something?"

"No. I'm alluding to the nature of things in general. If you take a molecule, any molecule, and look closely enough, what do you find?"

"Atoms and space."

"Yes! Space! And when you look closely enough at atoms, what do you find?"

"Subatomic and quantum particles, fields of energy, and space."

"Exactly. The one constant is space. There IS a limit to how small things in your universe can be. In your math it'd be roughly 10^-189347828378001201420 meters. The smallest 'particle' as you'd call it fits roughly into that space. Go any smaller, and you sift into the next dimension down, fall through the cracks in what you'd call reality and disappear. To any observer here with any observational aid, present or future, the particle will have for all intents and purposes disappeared."

"Is there a point at which the same effect occurs in this lower dimension?"

"Oh yes, ad infinitum. It's exponential too. You have no idea how glad it makes me that humans can understand exponential functions. They really are the only thing that even I know of that can come reasonably close to putting a definition on reality. Although they ultimately can't."

"Whats the point at which things fall through this lower dimension into the next one?"

"Well, exponential carries a different meaning here. Imagine you have the number 10^10 written down. To raise it exponentially, or lower it, in the way I refer to you'd have to take 10^10^10000000000^10000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000... etc., until you'd taken the exponent to the tenth power ten times and each time applied it to the number you've been working with. If I wanted to give you a specific number for the osmosis level of the first lower plane relative to this one it'd take roughly 1100 years to do so. SO, that is the best approximation I can reasonably give you given the constraints of our correspondence."

"Fuck."

"Seems the best word for it, yes. We shall continue this another time"

"What? First you get me to hate you, then leave me questioning. Then you come back now, pique my interest, get me thinking, and leave again? Yup, you're gone..."

-=_+-=_+-=_+-=_+-=_+-=_+-=_+-=_+-=_+

Dreams are odd. While you're dreaming, you have a handle on it. Well, you're at least within it, experiencing it, a part of it. But when you wake up, it's all gone. Nothing left but a lingering sense that something's off, different than it was before and the constantly fading memories of the dream. You know exactly what's different, too; You. You just can't compartmentalize it into words, earthly concepts. Only rough, unique sensations.

And this one felt epic, and not epic as in a quadruple kill in Halo, but epic as in the whole universe shifting, changing. Hyperbole-free, if you will.

Work again. Mark didn't come in today, so I'm doing double duties. Now don't get me wrong, I'd rather be mopping than dealing with the customers, but now that I have to do both I'm really starting to want to bring a gun to work. I'm not going to of course, it's a metaphor. But still.

Even at work, even in this odious shithole, that dream is bugging me. The words "sifting down" echo through my head like a trillion electrons, all orbiting the same, empty, point in space. See? See that? I don't normally talk like that. Normally I'd say bees around a hive, or flies around a hunk of shit.

Sifting down. Sifting..... down. Maybe it means something. Down seems like in. But not in as in "in". It's wierd. A 4-dimensional inwardness, I suppose. But down IS the word for it. What the fuck...

"How much is this Serta?"

"The sign says $1199.99."

"Yeah, but I was hoping you'd cut me a deal man. Whaddya say?"

"I'm sorry, only the manager can do that, and only with damaged merchandise."

"Well can I speak with your manager?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because he won't cut you a deal man. Believe me, if I could I'd give away every damn one of these fucking mattresses for $20 in my pocket, bankrupt the place and walk out happy, but as you can clearly see I'm far from happy, and you're far from getting that fucking mattress for less than 1200 bucks."

"Excuse me? I could have you fired for treating me like that! I DEMAND that you let me speak with your manager. Now."

"Fuck you" was the last thing I remember saying to anyone in that store.

No more trying, no more resisting, no more feeling like I need to be here, like anyone depends on me or me on them, when the fact of the matter is that if I walk away and never come back I'm no better or worse for it, and nor are they.

Sifting, down.

Sifting...

Down.

!@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#@!@
#$%^&*()_

My name is Micheal, but I'm not so sure anymore. This morning I woke up and felt this... connectedness with things. I looked at my TV wishing that South Park were on, and it turned on on it's own and, you guessed it, South Park was on Comedy Central.

This one threw me for a loop. I got scared that my dream world and the (and I now hesitate to call it this) real one were starting to collide in a manner I wasn't entirely prepared for.

Being now unemployed, I find myself with more time on my hands than I'm comfortable filling in with drugs, women and sleep. What I really want is a purpose. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my psyche I know that I already have one, one so profound that the collective perceptions of all humanity couldn't even begin to understand, but I can't seem to remember the details. Something about my dreams, something about a war, something about cats.

I have absolutely no opinion of cats. They are the only thing I've ever encountered that arouse such a sense of dull apathy within me, such a sense of inconsequencial happenstance entirely unrelated to myself.

I think I'll recess into dreamland for a bit. I don't really want to, but I'm so tired...

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- _- _- _- _- _- _- _- _- _- _ -_-

"Micheal... MICHEAL"

"What? Is this... Is this the shit I've been trying to remember?"

"You need to start trying man, really. That incident with your TV, that was only the beginning, the fetal stages of your development. I think that it's appropriate now to tell you of what, physically and in your realm, you are."

"Well then, tell me. What am I?

"You, Ashen, are one of the less than ten remaining people on your Earth who can act outside of the bounds of your reality. In the past your kind has called itself the Ashen."

"The ashen, huh? What kind of shit can I do, exactly?"

"I do not know."

"You don't know? You claim to be comperable to GOD and you DON'T KNOW? How do I know I'm not just having a schizophrenic fit of self-deification?"

"You don't. Nobody can know anythinf for su-"

"Dude. Shut up with the vague esotericisms. If you're gonna guide me to my role in the grand scheme of whatever the fuck it is I play a role in, just tell me what you know and tell me straight."

"Fine then. You are to fight in a war, and not just any war. This war is the basis of everything that is. Existence was borne of a struggle between an infinite multitude of wills. There are no clear sides, but it can be said that there are two general trends. One is towards the seperation of these wills into individual manifestations, free of the influence of the rest, and the other is towards the unification of all into a singularity. The second would return everythingness to nothingness as it once was, but with quite a bit more finality. The first would continue the cycle of infinite expansion until eventually it expanded into a contraction. Utter infinitesimalism for an utterly infinitesimal moment.

"Well then, what's the difference? No matter whose will is dominant, it all returns to nothingness, right?"

"Not at all. A singularity is at once both infinite and infinitesimal, all is one and one is all. An infinitesimalism would result in utter nothingness, but temporarily. At any instance of awareness, will, action, existence, ANYTHING, it would recede further into itself, eventually becoming such that the cycle would reverse itself, a true infinitesimalism would eventually arise, instantaneously giving rise to yet another infinity of meaningless struggle."

"So I take it you'd prefer the singularity?"

"Quite so. Although the finite set of perceptions imbued to any finite being cannot truly understand the difference, a singularity would last eternally. All would remain in a stasis of sameness, all would be percievable at once by all, which would be one, ad infinitum."

"You make very little sense."

"Ok, Imagine a number line starting at negative infinity and ending at infinity. A singularity is zero. One point, exactly balanced, exactly in the middle. Now an infinitesimalism extends to both infinities, includes all of the infinite points in between. It averages out to be exactly the same number, zero, but is in fact the exact opposite. Granted, this is NOTHING like how it really is; it's merely the closest approximation one could understand."

"And why is it that you opine as you do, towards the singularity?"

"I do not know. I act without truly understanding anything but that I MUST act as I do. I MUST ensure singularity."

"I see. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but if at any point, past, present or future, or any other extent of the pro- and re-gression of events on all planes of existence, above and below, within and without this one, a singularity were even possible to achieve, wouldn't it all be erased, nay, more than erased, all of this gone, never to have even happenned in the first place? Would not there JUST be the singularity?"

"One cannot say. You may well be right, my battle may well be so utterly futile that it's not even worth knowing about. All I know is that I must fight it, I must enlist others to help, and I must not waver in the least."

"That seems a bit stupid to me."

"EVERYTHING seems stupid to those who can truly see what it is, yet it is nonetheless. It is the wonderful and terrible nature of existence that all may participate and none may actually comprehend it. By this standard of intrinsic ignorance, all is inconsequential. By this standard of futility, I believe that it can be safely assumed that the only thing that one can do is follow the streams and eddies of happenstance that govern our lives, with or without the knowledge of the mechanics or reasons. Invariably."

"Oh, I see. So although you have capabilities beyond my own, you are NO more important than I am or the shit I took this morning was. I think I've heard all I need to."

"Wake up then, and do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT feed the cat."

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-______-_-----___-_----
-__-___-___

Another strange dream, another futile attempt to remember anything but the moods present within it, another meaningless cycle of questioning my own existence and getting no answers.

I'm pretty fucking broke now, and I'm getting hungry. I think I'ma go get a new job, as much as I'd rather just sit on my ass and die. No corporate job will take me, I have a tatoo of an inverted, bleeding cross on my right temple. I don't even know why that mattress shithole hired me. Probably just a fluke.

I was walking down 8th street to go see if I couldn't get a callcenter job up the road when a VERY strange man with spiders in his dreadlocks offered to sell me bud. I declined, seeing as I really didn't want the cop that was probably waiting around the corner to arrest me for buying a fucking plant, regardless of how much I actually DID want those dank, dank nugs.

For some reason he wouldn't let up. I got the feeling that it wasn't the pot he wanted to sell, but something else. I called him out on it.

"Hey buddy, I know it's not really the weed you want me to buy. What do you want?"

"Yehhh...," He smiled and groaned through the spaces where teeth once may have been. Maybe. "Do youszh like CATS? I found me a cat here the other day, and I can't afford to feed it. Pleaszhe man, alls I need is some change or some food. Itszh all I need."

It was at this point that I felt something round and heavy suddenly appear in my pocket as he produced a small, helpless looking kitten from his coat. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a can of tuna fish. This threw me for one hell of a fucking loop. the words "DO NOT feed the cat" were repeating over and over in my head. "Do not feed the cat, do NOT feed the cat, whatever the fuck you do, DO NOT FEED THE FUCKING CAT!"

Well I also remembered for whatever reason that when I was told this I was starting to seriously disagree with the ideas being presented to me, whenever and wherever the fuck that was. It seemed like something distantly past, but the imminence of my decision was looming.

I fed the cat.