An End That Fits

“Welcome to the afterlife. You’re the latest in a long line. How do you feel?”

“Honestly? Terrible. Who’s going to take care of my family? Will anyone even remember me? What was the point of it all?”

“Wow, a lot of questions right out of the gate.”

“Are you God?”

“Some call me that. I go by Ted—‘God’ just carries too much baggage.”

“So… what now? Am I going to heaven?”

“Heaven? Heavens no! Heaven’s just a fairy tale humans tell themselves to cope with the fear of death. Don’t worry, there’s no hell either.”

“Then what was the point? What happens to me now? Will I be remembered?”

“You’re stuck on that. Let me reassure you: you will be remembered. In ways you can’t imagine. Tell me—how do you feel about spiders?”

“Uh, they’re fine, I guess.”

“When you killed one, did you feel bad?”

“No, of course not. It’s just a spider.”

“Funny, isn’t it? You took its life without a second thought. Those spiders had lives, untroubled—until you came along. People forget the spiders. But the spiders never forget.”

“So what? Everyone’s killed a few spiders.”

“A few? Look again. This house here—it’s yours now. Inside, every spider you ever killed is waiting for you. They remember. They’re ready to make sure you never forget them again.”

“That sounds like hell.”

“I prefer to call it: the gnashing of teeth.”

Offline

People are strange. I'm a person. Something I don't understand about us is why we add people as friends on social media and gaming platforms and then always show ourselves as offline. It's weird, isn't it? Do we just not want to be bothered? Or is it so that if someone messages us and we don't want to deal with them, we can just say we never got it?

I think it comes down to this: some people are connectors, and some are floaters. The floaters are terrified to try to connect people together, to make new friend groups, to be friends in general. These are the people who ignore a message even though they’re actually online, hoping to avoid that little ping of connection.

They’re afraid—afraid of one of two things: either the fear of speaking to you and being rejected, or the fear of making you mad by saying that they really don’t want to be your friend.

I remember hovering over the green “online” dot so many times, my finger twitching but never clicking it. Back when I was younger, I was a connector. I wanted everyone to feel like they belonged. But now, I’m a floater. I’m terrified that I’m bothering people just by saying “hey.”

Why do I think that? What am I so scared of? If they don’t want to talk, they won’t. And yet, every missed message feels like a missed connection—a chance to be a part of someone’s life that I let slip away because I was too afraid of that one little dot.

Depression

People used to make jokes back in the 90s about how all these soccer moms were on Prozac because their purposeless existence made them feel depressed. That was 30 years ago. We seem so far from that now.

I hate to say this, but if you're a rational person and you're not depressed right now, you're not rational.

Just viewing society and late stage capitalism as we are seeing it in conjunction with the ballooning of the police state, how could you possibly not be depressed?

People used to have hope for the future. Nobody has any hope anymore.

The future is now just a black screen on the TV at a crime scene, and the victim on the floor isn't getting up.

Don't feel like there's something wrong with you if you’re depressed. There's something wrong with you if you're not.

An Additional Experiment

“You’d see a bunch of lazy bums taking everything!”

Yeah. You would. Mansions. Yachts. The penthouse suite in the sky.
But look closer—who’s doing the taking?

If I could be king for a year, I’d run a little experiment. I’d scrap money entirely. Poof. Gone. But I’d ask people to keep doing their jobs. Stock the shelves. Drive the buses. Perform the surgeries. Do what you normally do. Then go to the store, grab what you need. Go to the concert, the restaurant, the park. No payment. No bill. Just life.

Sure, some folks would walk away from the grind. Take what they need, finally breathe. They’d be called freeloaders, of course.

But here’s the twist: I think the ones who used to be the richest? They’d keep reaching for the biggest, most exclusive stuff. Private islands. Imported champagne. Armies of servants. All without doing a damn thing.
Just like now.

Because that's the real trick—there’s always been a parasite class. And it’s not your neighbor on food stamps. It’s the guy on TV boasting about record profits while doing nothing to earn them.

Some days I think people are waking up. Then I blink and we’re back to defending billionaires like they’re gods and shaming the poor like they’re thieves.

Money was never the reward. It was the leash.
And we’ve been trained not to bite the hand that chokes us.
When are the rabid dogs inside of us going to come alive?

An Awful Waste of Space

So here’s the plan:
make an infinite universe—
then drop life on one lonely planet.

Genius, right?

Let them stare into the void,
wonder if anything else is out there.
But we know better.

We’re out here.

But—where’s here?
When’s now?

This is...

🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌

Wait... what’s happening?

Oh... my... god...

It can’t be...

I think...

I might be God.

Now, seriously—
where’s the manual for this thing?

Did I remember to pay my subscription,
or am I locked out of God-mode?