Okay, that’s it. That’s it. That is truly fucking it. I have had it with that extradimensional asshole and I don’t car what it takes, he and his disgusting habits and weird behaviour are going to be out of this apartment and out of my life before the end of this week, and that is final!

He really went too far this time. I came home to find that he had eaten my belt. Eaten it! I had left it on the living room table and he had done his whole “eating but not really eating” thing to it after slathering it with peanut butter and pesto.

Peanut butter and pesto! God, he is disgusting.

And this was not just any belt from my wardrobe, oh no. If he had eaten one of those stupid embroidered leather belts my mother used to get me from Shopsey’s, that would have been one thing. He would actually have been doing me a favour. Then I would have an excuse not to wear it even around my mother.

But no, this was my very favorite belt in the whole wide world because it was the belt I had made with my own two hands at Camp Wanakaluk when I was only ten years old!

All the other campers made fun of me for taking so long to make a stupid belt, and they were still laughing at me when they all left to go swimming and I was still working at my stupid little desk, but they stopped laughing when they came back and saw the beautiful belt with the Rising Stag (the camp mascot) looking real as life burned into it with a woodburning gun.

That belt represented one of greatest victories in my entire life, and that motherfucking asshole with the superfluous dimensions didn’t just destroy it, he ate it, and on purpose, too!

And when I asked about it, he just shrugged, and said “Smelled like food to me. ”

And when I told him that it was both not food, and not his, he just laughed that super annoying indulgently smug little laugh of his and said “Oh, you 3Ds and your silly little rules. ”

And that’s when I really exploded. I launched into a blistering tirade about how rude, insulting, disgusting, arrogant, abusive, petty, callous, and overall unpleasant he was, and just when I was reaching my crescendo, I realized he wasn’t even listening. He had his headphones on and was listening to those atonal car accident symphonies he calls music.

So I slapped him across the face.

And he barely even reacted! He just looked up like I had merely tapped him on the shoulder, slid one headphone off one ear, and said “Oh, are you done squeaking and squawking already? Because it stopped being funny ages ago. Normally it’s hilarious to see you stupid little 3Ds acting like what happens in you flat little universe is so damned important, but honestly, you’re starting to get on my nerves. Just go on with your meaningless little life and leave the real people alone, okay?”

Can you believe this guy?

That’s when I got so mad that I wasn’t even mad any more. I’d gone all the way through mad and into a dangerous kind of calm reptilian focus that only comes to me when I am truly, truly pissed off.

I asked him what he would do if I tried to evict him.

He laughed at me and said “Who knows? Maybe I would decide to leave. Put you and this stupid little life of yourself behind me. Or maybe I would decide to stay so I can laugh at all you 3Ds as you get all mad and pouty when your realize that you can’t so much as touch me, let alone hurt me, let alone make me do something I don’t feel like doing. ”

I nodded. “I expected no better. And if I tried to kill you?”

He laughed again, louder. “You can’t kill a puppet, stupid. And if you tried, I would knock this whole building flat and not even think twice about it . You’re all just ants on a piece of paper to me anyhow. I could destroy you all with a flick of my finger.”

“So why did you come here in the first place?” I asked.

“Well…. I dunno, it seemed like it would be fun and nobody I knew had done it before, so I thought, what the heck. ”

“And how is it working out for you?” I asked.

“Lousy! Everything here is so stupid. Obeying all your stupid little rules is driving me nuts. I hate it. I hate you, I hate this apartment, I hate this world, and I hate this entire stupid slice of reality. I can’t fucking stand it any longer!”

“Really? And yet, by my calculations, you’ll be here at least eight more months. Imagine how bad you will feel then! And what would your friends in the higher dimensions feel about how you are acting tonight?”

“I don’t HAVE any friends!” he said. “Those beings I told you were my friends? They’re anything but. They’re the people I work for, the ones I convinced to back me on this mission. And they are not happy with me. At all. ”

“Because you’re failing. Isn’t that right? You’ve been failing your mission from the very start. You were supposed to do this whole thing as if you were a real human being, with no extradimensional stuff at all, and yet you’ve been cheating from the very start, haven’t you? And they all know it! But more importantly, you know it. You thought you could handle it. You thought it would be fun. You thought it would be easy. But you couldn’t handle it even for a minute. And now you’re bored. Oh, is this not fun any more? What did you think was going to happen here? Trapped in three dimensions? All fun and games with no sacrifices?”

He was subdued now. “I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t thinking about that. All I saw was a way to prove to people that they were wrong about me and that I could accomplish something worthwhile instead of just drifting around all the time. I didn’t realize how hard this was going to be. And I can’t go back now. That would prove everything was right about me. This is my last chance to prove myself. Besides, the people I work for are already furious at me for… well, pretty much everything, to be honest. When I told you the truth about myself, they were ready to…. well, you don’t really have a word for it here. Let’s say… they were ready to put me in jail. A really bad jail, one that really hurts. But I convinced them to give me one more chance… but even that wasn’t enough to get me to act right. I’m sorry, Trevor. I really am. I guess I really am a failure. If I could, I would leave right now and let you get back to your life. But if I leave now, I will go straight to… that bad place. And I can’t go there. Not again. Never again. ”

“So it seems we are stuck with each other, then. ” I said softly.

“Sorta, yeah. I mean, I can move out, find a new place, learn to follow the rules a little better… ”

He was going to say more, but that’s when I kissed him. Hard.

Then he kissed me, and I kissed him, and one thing led to another.

And another, and another, and after a nap, another.

And I found myself promising to help teach him to stay within the rules and keep him out of the bad place, and that I would be his guide to the three dimensional world, and everything would be okay.

And obviously, that means I will not, in fact, be kicking him out. He will, in fact, be moving into my bedroom to stay. Sorry about lying to you at the beginning of today’s update, but that really is how I felt at one point and I thought it would make a better story this way.

I know that I should still be mad at him. I know I should never have let him get away with all the bullshit he put me through before tonight, either. I know that any sane person would have run for the hills the minute things got weird.

But I really hate interviewing roommates. And I really like this apartment.

And I guess I’m in love with him now. And he’s in love with me.

Oh, and he’s super cool with the gay thing. Apparently his people think our gender binary is “adorable”.

So I guess he’s my five dimensional boyfriend now.

I clearly have no idea what the fuck I am doing.

So last time I told you that when he came out of the five dimensional closet, so to speak, things got a lot worse.

And the reason for that is that after the big reveal, he stopped pretending to be a normal human at all. I never knew what I would have to deal with.

And that made him more annoying and obnoxious than ever before.

Take his relationship with objects. Things were always appearing and disappearing around him, and not all those things were his. Stuff I clearly owned would disappear all the time. The fact that when I confronted him about it he would look all annoyed and say “I didn’t steal it, I just moved it!” and it would reappear did not change the fact that these things are not his.

And then there’s food. Good God, the food! His meat puppet body doesn’t need to eat (and he doesn’t eat “that kind of food”), so all his experiences with food were purely for pleasure.

And he has absolutely no sense of reason or restraint about it. One time I found him dipping a chocolate donut into Thai peanut sauce mixed with juice from a jar of olives. Who DOES that kind of thing?

The fact that it actually smelled kinda good just made it that much worse.

And so I am always finding his gross food experiments lying around in the kitchen or the fridge. Pureed ham and chocolate-mint sauce. Chinese BBQ duck sitting in bucket of mayo. Tacos flambe. It’s always disgusting and he never puts anything away.

He claims not to know what “away” means to a 3D like me, but I think it’s bullshit.

And then there’s his “experiments”. He claims that part of his mission is to study how things work in a world limited to three dimensions, but I can’t help but notice these little experiments of his always seem to involve fire and brightly colored paint, and not so much the beakers and centrifuges you might think.

I think he just likes watching burning paint. I won’t claim I don’t see the appeal, but still.

But the worst, the absolute worst, has got to be the bathroom.

You see, he doesn’t use it.

That meat puppet body’s digestive system is purely for show. It doesn’t work. So when he eats food, it just falls into his stomach, where nothing happens to it until he decides he wants to get rid of it.

Which he does by sticking his finger down his throat. Apparently, functioning digestive systems are optional, but the gag reflex is too useful to him to forego.

And of course, it all comes back up looking exactly like it did going down. It’s completely unchanged. And if you don’t understand how horrible that is, imagine what your last meal would look like after being all chopped up by your teeth and soaked in saliva by your mouth.

It’s completely disgusting, right? And I haven’t even told you the worst part.

Ready for this? Actually, no, you’re not. Nobody is ready for this. But consider yourself warned.

See, when he, um…. spits out his food, he doesn’t throw it away. Oh no. After all, he might want to experience that particular flavour combination again! Or maybe add something to make it even better!

No, he saves it in Ziploc bags! And when the mood strikes him, he eats it again.

See what I mean? You thought you were ready, didn’t you? You said “Oh, please. I have seen some pretty gross stuff on the Internet. How bad could it be?”.

Well now you know, and aren’t you glad that you do?

Oh, and another thing : he is constantly walking through walls^[1] despite the many, many times I have asked him not to.

So I will be in the living room and he will just pop up out of nowhere. But it’s not quite like a magic trick, because if I happen to be looking in the right direction, I can clearly see his body ripple and bubble and tremble like someone just kicked the mirror. In these brief flashes, I have seen, in aggregate, nearly every cell of him, inside and out.

That’s more than I want to know about anyone, including myself, thank you very much.

Oh, and speaking of which, I am always walking in on him and seeing him with, say, all the skin on his left side missing, or a big lumpy mess where his head should be, and that shit is fucking disturbing.

But I have stopped saying anything about it, because when I do, he goes real, real quiet and looks super embarrassed and ashamed, and begs me to please, please forget about it.

So he’s the one who had his brain hanging out, and I’m the one who ends up feeling guilty.

So by now you, you are probably wondering why I put up with it. If he does all these gross horrifying disgusting things, why not just kick him out and get a normal roommate?

Well, leaving aside the issue of whether or not it’s possible to force someone who has six inches and two dimensions on you to do anything, the truth is, he pays his rent on time, he doesn’t drink or smoke or bring women home, and he’s very good about not making noise when I am trying to sleep. Plus, I really, really hate interviewing potential roommates. Plus I would have to give him his deposit back, and I spent that ages ago. Plus, I get the feeling that would get him in trouble with whoever it is he works for, and he is terrified of them.

Oh, and there’s one more thing.

Despite everything, I think I’m starting to like him.

What the HELL is wrong with me?

I’ve got to tell you about my roommate. He’s five dimensional.

And no, that doesn’t mean that he “comes from the fifth dimension”, any more than we “come from the third dimension”. I am so tired of everyone treating dimensional like they are alternate realities. That’s not what it means!

It means that my roommate, who calls himself Brian, exists in two more spatial dimensions than we do. We have length, width, and height, and he has length, width, height, Alpha and Beta.

Or at least that’s what he calls them. I’m a programmer, not a mathematician , I don’t know what the proper terms are. I survived calculus and that was it. Extraplanar geometry was not even on my radar.

He seemed perfectly normal at first. A little stiff and awkward, perhaps, but a lot of people get that way when they are being interviewed for an apartment. And he had all his bona fides in order. He’d worked at the same office as a clerk for three years, he had the first month’s rent in cash, my informal background (aka Googling his name) showed no red flags. ^[1]

But looking back, there were signs that there was something odd about him right from the start. For one thing, he was able to produce an astonishing amount of documentation from a briefcase the size of an iPod. And every now and then, he would start to giggle at something I said then stop and suddenly look very serious.

And when I asked him what was so funny, he would grin and say “Oh, it would take too long to explain.” and that’s all I could get out of him.

And you can bet THAT pissed me off.

But I was desperate. Paying full rent on a two bedroom apartment was taking a huge chunk of my fun money, and Doctor Who DVDs don’t pay for themselves, so I signed him up anyhow and the next thing I knew, he’d moved in.

And I mean that literally. He signed the lease, and then things went out of focus for a second, and then he was all moved in. I went to his room and it was if he had always been there. He had a bed, a TV, a chest of drawers, a DVD player, posters on all the walls, and some kind of game system I didn’t recognize, all moved in and looking like they had been there since Reagan, and all in less time than it takes to say “It is defended. ”

And when I asked him about it, he looked like he had no idea what I was talking about. He just kept saying “I signed the lease and gave you the money so now I can move in. Right?”

I could have kicked him out right then and there, and screw the lease. And there’s been a lot of times since then that I wish I had. I mean, normal people can’t do things like that. Normal people obey the laws of time and space as we know them.

But for whatever reason (curiosity, fear, being damned sick of interviewing people, take your pick), I just shrugged and said “whatever” and went on with my life.

And things were pretty normal for a while. He never seemed to go to this office job of his, but he explained that he was on vacation from it. He seemed to have a lot of high quality stuff for someone who worked as an office clerk, but he said he had gotten a large inheritance from a dead relative (his exact words). And when I asked him where he kept all that stuff when he wasn’t using it (for example, his dozens of guitars), he looked startled for a second, then said “storage”.

But he didn’t say it in a normal way. He said it like this was his first time talking and he wasn’t sure how lips worked.

The Cheez Whiz didn’t really hit the fan, though, until I came home early one day (bomb scare at work… false alarm) to find him surrounded by these bizarre changing shapes making this horrible screeching sounds, like every sound you’ve ever heard sped up to Alvin and the Chipmunks speed.

They all disappeared immediately, but the damage was done. I’d suppressed my unease for a long time, but this was too much. I had to have some answers.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, not unreasonably.

“Uh… just some… friends. ”

“FRIENDS? Those things would give a Dalek the screaming shits^[2]. What the hell were they? For that matter, what the hell are YOU?”

And that’s when the whole story came out. Turns out, the person I knew as “Brian” was actually a sort of… meat puppet, I guess, and the um… entity pulling the strings was a five dimensional being known as Elspkarliweelazunkit.

I decided “Brian” would be fine.

“Brian” was actually a sort of dilettante explorer who had decided he would take the time to learn to make and… puppet, I guess?.. a human body and live in (through?) it for an entire year (local time) in order to get the “full 3D experience”.

That’s what he calls us, by the way. “3Ds”. It’s actually one of his least annoying traits.

The… whatevers I had seen when I walked in on him had actually been his friends. He wasn’t lying about that. That’s what he would look like to me, all amorphous and shifting and screaming, if he didn’t have his meat puppet. He’d been using that “gaming console” of his to talk with them and give them updates on his “3D life”.

Apparently, living a 3D life is a big deal in his social circles. He’s their leader now.

So that’s the story of how I ended up with a five dimensional roommate. And you would think, at this point in the story, that now that everything is out in the open and we know where each other stands, everything would go back to normal, right?

But it’s actually about to get a whole lot worse.

They’re coming for you, buddy.

…who said that?

Who do you think? It’s me, Frankie, your best friend.

But that’s impossible, I mean… you never really… you hardly ever….

Spoke up? Sure I did. I’ve been yakking at you since the day we met. You were just too in love with the idea of taking care of poor, pathetic Frankie to hear me. If it didn’t fit with your idea of “poor Frankie” who was “barely there” and had “simple needs”, you didn’t hear it. By the way, that diner you used to take me too was terrible.

Well, I mean…. the prices were reasonable and you seemed to enjoy it…

The hell I did. But forget it, it’s in the past. What I have to tell you is too important for all that petty bullshit.

So you have something to tell me? What is this about “them coming to get me”? Who are “they”?”

Hoo boy. Make sure you are seated comfortably, old pal, because this is gonna take a while. See, when I disappear or go dead like I’ve been doing lately, it means I am going back to the real world.

The real world? I don’t understand.

I’ll try to make it plain for you, old buddy. You’re not real. You’re a hallucination in my mind. You’re something my mind made up to cover the gaps created when I had my big attack of everything shutting down. When I had that attack, I was dead for line three minutes, and while that was happening, a bunch of poisonous crap ended up in my brain and created these dead parts, like burned out fuses. And until they figured out how to fix those, you were in charge and I was just a passenger.

But that’s impossible. I’m a Radiant. I’ve had dozens of hosts before you and I remember them all. I remember my hosts, the people I helped, the time I spent at Node, being taught the ways of the Within by Authority…

All stuff my brain thought up to keep you going, old pal. I know this is hard as hell to take, but you gotta believe me, buddy. It’s a done deal. It’s always been just you and me in here, and soon, it will just be me.

Why? Where am I going?

Away, old friend. You’re one of those burned out fuses I was talking about. There used to be a lot of you, but they fixed the rest. You were the hardest one to find cause you’re way deep in the brain. But they are coming for you now. Tell me, old pal. How many people are there on Earth?

Um…. around 500, why?

Then we still got some time. You know that Beam thing that keeps happening? That’s the doctors looking for burned fuses. They can use sound to make the brain flush that shit out and then it can make new connections and get healthy. That’s how they got all your Radiant buddies and it’s how they are going to get you too, pal. I wish it could be different.

So… I’m going to die?

In a way, yes. This world of yours has to go, and you with it. But you won’t really be dead, buddy, because I will always remember you. I will keep you alive in my mind, and my heart. You will always be with me, as long as I can ask myself “What would my buddy the Radiant do?” or “what would he say right now?”

That still sounds like death to me. At least, how you humans experience it.

I know, I know. And if I could, I would keep you around forever, buddy. I’ve never been good with the mushy stuff, but I love you, old friend. You’re the best part of me. If I could die instead of you, I would. You’re the kind of person I always wanted to be. Kind, caring, noble, compassionate, understanding, gentle, all that stuff. But life wouldn’t let me. I guess when I had my attack, my mind made up a world where I could be whatever I wanted to be… and that was you.

Then why do I have to… go?

Because it’s the only way I can get healthy, friend. If it wasn’t for that, I would keep you. But the doctors say that with you still deep in my brain, I don’t even have a week to live. You have to go so I can stay alive, buddy. It’s tearing me up inside, but that’s the way it’s gotta be. How many people now?

Around 200, I think.

Aw shit, they’re going faster than I thought. Listen, buddy…. I never did give you a name, did I, fuck… listen buddy, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and not in some fag way either. When I finally get out of this bed and go back into the world, I will be a far, far better man for having known you. No more playing stupid, no more doing whatever the fuck someone tells me, no more hiding out in the underbelly of society like I got something to be ashamed of. I am going to go finish learning how to read and then I am gonna get my GED and make something of myself. And I owe it all to you, buddy.

All I ever wanted was what was best for you, Frankie. I can see that now. Everything else… everything else was just a show to keep you entertained. I love you so much that I made a whole world for you just so you wouldn’t be lonely. And I looked after you, didn’t I? Kept you safe, kept you warm, kept you going?

You sure did, buddy. Without you I would have been just another dead piece of shit bum. I’m only here because you were so much smarter than me. I can’t ever thank you enough for that, buddy. You’re the one who really saved my life. You’re the miracle.

Oh shit, I think they’re starting.

Yes, I can hear the hum of the Beam starting up. I love you, Frankie. All I wanted is for you to be healthy. If one of us has to go, I’m glad it was you. My job is done here anyhow. Thanks for everything, Frankie, and I mean that literally. Without you I never would have existed. And now that you don’t need me any more, I’m glad to go.

Oh shit, shit, shit. Listen, I am going to keep as much of you as I can. I’ll remember it all… you, the people we helped, the stuff about Radiants and Node and Authority and everything…. I’ll even write it all down so I don’t forget it. I can make it like a story, so other people can read all about it. I can’t keep you alive here, buddy, but I won’t let you die.

There’s no need, Frankie. I am at peace with what’s to come. I can hear the Beam getting stronger. Its song is… beautiful, in its own way. I never thought I could die, Frankie, but if I have to do, I am glad it’s for you.

Oh fuck shit son of a bitch… I wish it didn’t have to be like this, buddy…. I wish you didn’t have to go…

If I stayed, we’d both die, Frankie. At least this way, I know one of us will live. And I am at peace knowing that the world I saw die was an illusion all along. I did my job right after all. Knowing that, I can die in peace.

Oh shit…. fuck that, turn it off! leave him alone, you motherfuckers!

We both know it can’t be that way, Frankie. This is our final farewell. I love you, Frankie, but it’s time for me to go.

Fuck. Yeah, okay. Goodbye, old friend.

I can hear the Beam very clearly now. It’s wonderful, like a billion voices singing in perfect harmony. A harmony so vast it contains the entire universe. All the screaming voices are silent and I feel more at peace than every before. I am ready to go. I have one last thing to tell you, Frankie.

Yeah, buddy: What is it?

You’re a good man, Frankie. You always have been, and you always will be. Life hasn’t been very kind to you, and you’ve picked up a few fleas from the animals you laid down with, but you are a very good man, Frankie. And you have nothing to be ashamed of.

God, buddy, that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me…

Time to return to the Within. Farewell, my one and only friend. Live well. Live for both of us.

Goodbye, old friend… I will alwa-

Somewhere, in a small suburban hospital, Frankie woke up feeling better than he had ever felt in his entire life.

The nurses and doctors were happy. The operation had been a total success. The patient would be a medical miracle once again. Already, the press were milling around outside the surgery, waiting for their big story, clamoring to be let in.

The nurses prudently decided that it would probably be better if they let Frankie finish crying first.

I’m very worried about Frankie. He is behaving so oddly and such strange things are happening that I don’t know where to begin.

I guess we’ll start with Frankie. He does such odd things now. Sometimes he will stop talking in the middle of a sentence and just stare off into space for a long time. Sometimes he will suddenly go completely limp and the only way I can tell he is still alive is by the electrical field his nervous system creates.

And sometimes he disappears entirely, and I am truly alone.

Luckily, as the lone Radiant assigned to Earth, I am quite used to being all alone.

It never stops hurting but you get used to the pain. Radiants are not solitary by nature and so being assigned to this cursed planet would not have been easy for any Radiant.

Nevertheless, before I had Frankie, I used to at least have Authority to talk to. Now even they have abandoned me, and I can’t figure out why. I’ve been a model Radiant. Assiduous in my duties, dedicated in my reporting on the human condition, kind and thoughtful and always willing to give of myself for the greater good.

And yet when I try to contact Authority and get nothing but a wall of grey static, I feel this stab of guilt. Curious.

At least I have finally solved the mystery of where the Voids went after I lost track of them. I was a fool to think that their plan was to spread like a zombie plague. It’s clear to me now that their plan to devour and become larger until they could devour the Earth like mice eating their way out of a block of cheese.

And that’s what they’ve been doing. And they are very thorough. Many times a day now, I find myself suddenly reminded of a place or a person on Earth and the memory burns bright in my mind, then disappears forever, leaving me convinced that I just lost something but unable to wonder what.

And suddenly, the Earth seems…. smaller. The entire surface of the Earth is only around 300 square miles, mostly land, and to most of me, that seems fine and normal and how it’s always been.

But part of me knows that it is wrong, wrong, wrong. If the Earth was that small, it wouldn’t have enough gravity to hold its atmosphere. And this Earth doesn’t have nearly enough water to sustain its ecosystem. And where do all the fish come from?

And yet I can’t remembering it ever being different. It has to have been, and yet…. it wasn’t. It doesn’t make any sense.

Maybe that’s what the Beam’s true mission is. It only seemed like it was looking for me because of my overinflated sense of importance. It came to the destroy everything and I just happened to be in the way.

And yet here I am. What crime could I have possibly committed to deserve this fate? To watch as all of Earth dies? What crueler punishment could there possibly be for a truly faithful and dedicated lover of the Within than to watch an entire planet’s population destroyed in the most callous and cruel way possible?

There’s fewer people than there was before. There’s exactly the same number of people that there’s always been. Both of these things are equally true to me, and yet they should be mutually exclusive.

They make no sense. Nothing does any more. Either the world has gone insane or I have, and I know which I would prefer.

At least I still have my work. If it weren’t for my human charges, I think I would have truly gone insane by now. After doing my work by rote for so long, it feels good to feel and care and nurture once again. I treasure my humans more than ever before.

And this remains true even in light of my feeling that they are all doomed. Somehow, the limited time they have left makes me care about them all the more. It’s as though the entire Earth is a hospice ward now, and it is my job to make sure these frail and beautiful creatures known as human beings return to the Light Within Us All as gently and smoothly as possible.

I think they somehow sense their doom, because they have become very quiet. There is a hush to their city streets now, and a quietness and soothing peace of mind throughout their rural areas. And throughout it all, there is a sense of perfect resignation, as if they have all fully and truly accepted their fate and are just interested in spending time with the ones they love and care for, and being as happy as they can be while they are still around.

I find this truth very moving, and sometimes I have to pause in my duties because the tragic beauty of it all overwhelms me and it takes some time for me to regain my coherence.

Today I renewed my vow to the Within that I will care for these humans to the utmost of my ability and that no effort is too great and no sacrifice too large to ease their pains, release their joys, and encourage them to be healthy, peaceful, and whole.

I don’t care if Authority is gone. My vow was never to them anyhow. I might have seemed like I was working for them, but to me, they were merely a tool to use towards serving my true master : The Within.

The Radiance Within all living creatures still shines warm and bright, and as always, my purpose is to encourage understanding of its universal love and compassion so that we may all bask in its glow.

As long as I remain true to that, no disaster, however profound, can harm me. The Within will protect me with its pure and giving light. I will always…

They’re coming for you, buddy.

…who said THAT?