You know what it’s like to be a miracle? It stinks.

So’s I goes into the hospital knowing that when I leave, it’ll be on a slab. Suits me fine. There’s nobody to miss me and nobody I’ll miss. Fuck this stinking world anyway. The only people I ever called friends were nothing but drinking buddies, and I only see my mother on her birthday when I go piss on her grave in memory of what an unrelenting cunt she was to me from the day I was born till the day I left that bitch behind for good when I was fifteen years old.

Plus, I like checking in to see if she’s still dead.

So I was ready to check out. Accounts all settled. Paid all my debt. Gave away some knicky knacky stuff I never really gave a shit about anyway. Left a few bags of cash in some odd places for some lucky person to find. Hell knows I don’t know anybody who actually deserves it. So I gave it to the world instead.

I packed my bags and was ready to go to whatever’s next. Hopefully, nothing at all.

Let’s just say that I never once thought I was going to Heaven, and that only leaves one other option, right?

So there I am in the hospital, ready to check out. Pain’s real bad but the drugs here are good. A nice, clean high. Whatever they gave me, I could make a mint selling it on the streets.

Then The Big One hits. Everything in me fucking up at once. Hallelujah, I think. This clusterfuck is finally coming to an end.

And for a long while, everything is quiet, dark, and calm. It’s so peaceful and soothing. It was like being asleep and awake at the same time. Nothing bothered me, nobody was trying to make me do stupid shit, there was no noise, no smell, no ugliness, people being shitty to each other. I wasn’t even breathing and I didn’t care. I could have stayed there forever.

I don’t know. Guess I would have gotten bored eventually. But it was nice while it lasted.

But eventually, light starts coming in from somewhere, and then comes the sunrise. That’s the only way I can think of to describe it. The light grew brighter, I felt stronger, the feeling of growth and power grew in me, and the calm of the nothingness went away and the joy of being alive took its place.

I thought, if this is what all that religion was about, maybe I was wrong about that Jesus stuff.

Naw, fuck him. Where was Jesus when my mom was beating me? Where was He when she would shove her hand down my pants and grabbed my little wiener so she could laugh at my little “shrinky dink”? Where we He when she would lend me out to all her pervert junkie friends like I was VCR?

“Just bring him back in one piece. ” she’d say. “I need him to buy smokes for me. ” And she’d laugh.

Fuck you, Jesus. Too little and way, way too late, you useless hunk of shit.

Anyway, I come out of the coma and I see all these fancy doctor types looking at me like I was a pony they all bet their life savings on and it’s a 20 to one shot. When they see I’m awake, they all start smiling and some asshole from the papers takes my picture and all kinds of hubbub.

And at first I’m enjoying it. Who doesn’t like being the center of attention now and then? The first thing I says when I wakes up “Geez, is it my birthday already? How long was I asleep?”

And everybody laughed, me included, and for a while there it was real nice. Lots of important type people wanted to talk to me, big time celebrity news types interviewed me, doctors from places I’d never even heard of were going on and on about how me coming back from the dead was medically impossible given all my organ and tissue damage and blah blah blah. I didn’t understand most of what they said to me, but I sure liked the attention and how nice everyone was being to me.

So this is what being a celebrity is like, I thought. It ain’t half bad.

But then most of them went away when me being alive stopped being news, and that’s when I learned the first harsh rule of being a modern medical miracle : it doesn’t pay.

Not one red fucking cent. People sold newspapers, TV shows got ratings, lots of doctor types got published, hell even the nurse I thought was my best friend in the world sold me out and moved to Florida.

But me? I didn’t get one dime. None of those parasite bastards even thought to pay my hospital bill. It only took around a week for me to go from top of the news to bottom of the “ward of the state” shit list.

Keeping me alive was expensive, and they never let me fucking forget it.

And that’s when the washouts started. I’d be going along, watching TV or shooting the shit with the orderlies or jerking off or whatever, and then it would be like a rainbow tide from deep inside my head would suddenly swell up and the next thing I would know, it would be hours later and nobody wanted to look me in the eye, let alone tell me what the fuck happened.

Soon I figured out that I was losing more time every time I washed out, and it became harder and harder to think straight or stay focused. I couldn’t even watch TV because I would forget what was going on every time there was a commercials.

I got so tired and confused that eventually, I said fuck it, and the next time the tide rushed in, I just let it take me away. Didn’t put up no fight at all. I figured, wherever it’s been trying to take me, it has to be better than this.

Next thing I know, I’m watching some weird kind of science fiction show about a guy made out of energy who helps people.

Seemed like a decent enough show to me. Decided I’d watch it for a while.

It wasn’t until years later that I figured out where the show was coming from.

It wasn’t much fun to watch after that.

No Void. Never was. Trapped here forever. The Beam doesn’t want me.

The Big Beam has been back dozens of times now. Every time the volume drops and every time the knife gets sharper. The first time was a sunset, powerful but diffuse.

Now, it’s like s malevolent laser bream, cutting through anything and everything in its way, looking for me and never finding me. Again and again I have run to the Beam as it hunts, but its light passes right through me.

It tortures my three brothers, however.

Didn’t there used to be more? Like, a lot more?

Their screams have made me weary and weak. Far better that I die than endure the torture of my three Earth-bound radical Radiant brothers. I would die a thousand times if it would spare them this torment.

I feel as though I already have.

Yeah, yeah! There was like, a couple dozen of you all over the world. I remember that. Where’d all your friends go?

Even worse are the screams of the humans. As we feared, the Beam has no mercy. It will carve the surface of the Earth like it was peeling an apple and shows absolutely no consideration for what it burns. A forest, a mountain, a street full of children at play. It is all the same for the Beam.

If the Beam is truly from Authority, then Authority has gone mad. Some might call it evil, but to a Radiant, there is no difference. Evil is madness, plain and simple.

Now look fella, I’ve known a lot of crazy people, and I’ve known a lot of evil people, and brother, they ain’t alike at all.

For one thing, the crazy ones are a lot easier to like.

If the Beam is not from Authority, then Authority is dead. Our species is dead. The Radiance and Authority are joined at the center. Without Authority, the Radiance cannot reproduce. The whole reason Authority was conceived was because it is so hard for us to reproduce. We had to create an enormous organization capable of tracking millions of stars and predicting their behaviour to the very last decimal point in order to increase our numbers. Without Authority, none of my people are capable of finding just the right star at just the right moment putting out just the right energy for us to procreate.

And while we are almost immortal, that does not mean we are forever young. We age slowly but we age, and soon enough we are so old and incoherent that we are no better than a flickering nebula arguing with itself.

Well that’s clever. Live forever but age anyway. Wish I’d thought of that.

So it seems I have not just doomed my three brothers and my beloved humanity, but my own race as well. A hundred Earth millennia from now, there will be none of us who even remember the time when we were fertile and vital and young.

Jeez, fella. Get over yourself. You didn’t ask this Beam thing to come along. You had no way of knowing that sticking up for yourself could lead to that. You did what you thought was right, and that’s all God and all His angels can ask of us.

Well, I did what I thought was right. That’s all the Radiance Within can ask of us. I have no choice but to try to learn to accept that. Even we Radiants are at the mercy of the whims of fate.

Wait a minute…. are you listening to me? Since when did that start? I’ve been yakking in your ear for years now and the best I got was a pat on the head and a meal at that lousy diner. So this is the time when you start listening?

Lemme see if I can work this. Uh…. Santa Claws wears red rubber knickers.

I feel guilty for how self-pitying I have become. What is the misery of one immortal compared to the millions of lives lost to the Beam, not to mention how it has destroyed human society due to the impossibility of prediction or defense.

Well that didn’t work. I guess it can’t be something stupid. Maybe it’s got to be something along the lines of what this sad sack of crap is already thinking.

Humanity is destroying itself out of rage and fear and frustration. The future has been abandoned and people are drinking, eating, smoking, and indulging in every destructive pleasure on Earth in their frenzy to forget the Beam and live life to the fullest before the Beam comes for them.

Sound like my kind of party. They got any women?

I appreciate their suffering and their need, and I especially appreciate the mad joys they are bringing me as they are all I have to ease my pain, but this is definitely not my kind of party.

Hey, that kind of worked! What next, uh…. uh… fuck, I don’t know. This putz is on some kind of economy sized guilt trip, and I never put up with that shit when I was alive. Fucked if I know how to deal with it now. I know, since this bozo is so into making a martyr of himself, let’s lay some New Testament on him. “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces….” shit…. “glory”?

The humans think that suffering brings glory. But to me, it’s nothing but shit.

Uh, that was close enough I guess. Listen, things are going to change around here now that you can hear me, kinda. You used to be a lot more fun to be around and with me in charge we’re going to get back to that. We’re gonna forget about your immortal torment and go get some liquor and some pussy, okay? You hear me?

The final insult? Even Frankie has stopped talking to me. Not that I can blame him.

Aw, son of a bitch…

Every since I was a kid, I knew that nothin good ever come from acting smart. From my momma slapping me hard and saying “Don’t you pretend you’re smart, you little shit!” to the neighborhood toughs wandering around hunting for something that pissed them off so they could beat on it to the teachers who acted like it was a fuckin’ miracle that a kid like me, no shoes and beat up clothes, dirty as a pig, could do anything at all and brought down all kinds of attention on me that I never wanted and ducked the moment I could, acting smart has never done a damned thing for me but brought me trouble and pain.

It fucking well figures.

Still no Void sign.

The other eight are pretty solidly against me now. They don’t agree on a lot, but they do agree on that. I am a false Messiah who led them astray, they should never have listened to me, and they should have known I was crazy when I talked about this crazy mind erasing demon. What were they thinking, listening to someone like me? And now, the wrath of Authority was coming to wipe out all life on Earth, and it was all my fault.

Can’t say I totally disagree. I mean, I don’t know where they got this “all life on Earth” business. Authority might be stiff and petty and irrational, but they would never harm an innocent being. Surely, this must be the product of someone’s imagination running away with them.

Yes, I am aware of the irony of my saying that.

So now none of them will do more than pass information back and forth with me. The sense of communal camaraderie is gone. More than gone. It has been torn away, burned, then paved over. I am more alone now than I ever was before the Void incident.

Oh, what havoc that lone hallucination has wrought!

Surely, that is what it was. That is the only explanation that fits the evidence. The depth of our information gathering is truly staggering now. Layers upon layers of inference, analysis, and synthesis knit together into a perfect machine for extracting truth from the world. And still, not even the slightest hint of the Void.

So I must be crazy. Truth be told, I feel crazy lately. Thoughts keep pouring through my head that don’t even make sense. I have this terrible feeling that I have been dreaming for a very long time, and I am about to wake up.

And that frightens me so deeply I can’t even think about it.

We have had another Big Noise incident. This time, it wasn’t nearly so loud, but it was far more cutting. Those touched by it said it felt like the heat of the Sun was focused into a single narrow beam as it flickered over them. The pain was terrible.

And yet, it hasn’t touched me at all. Could it be me that it is looking for?

If I thought that was true, I would gladly sacrifice myself to its power if it would spare my Radiant brothers. I am the one who provoked Authority into this act of brutality. It would be only fitting if I was the one to suffer for it.

And it is not like I have a lot to live for any more anyhow. My duties stop inspiring me months ago. The simple pleasures I shared with Frankie’s ghost no longer mean anything to me. I take care of his needs, but only out of habit. Habit, and the need for something to do so I don’t get to thinking too much.

So sure. Next time that big beam comes back, I will scream “Here I am!” and ride that beam to oblivion.

Life sucks most of the time anyways.