#chapter 1 of what was going to be a filibuster of a oneshot

[see-arcane]

Extinction, Emerging

The road to the Panopticon did not start in the cabin.

No more than it had started in the Magnus Institute.

It began pre-Gertrude Robinson and Adelard Dekker. Pre-Jonah Magnus. Pre-humanity, pre-Neanderthal, pre-primordial.

It began not long after the opening of the Eye and the first stirrings of The End.

It began with the Extinction. And will, naturally, end with the same.

It was old, it would’ve liked to tell Adelard Dekker. As old as the Eye and The End, as the very concept of an organic species with more than two members to brush against each other in the pre-primordial soup of living beings that would someday flower into flesh and blood and brain.

Even creatures only a filament thicker than a molecule could experience fear back then, if only a rudimentary version. The pack’s impulse-rejection of Something-Coming-to-End-Us. There were white blood cells living every mindless day at work and in dread of microscopic enemies entering their indifferent, ungrateful world-beings to kill their environment—their universe made of some incomprehensible giant’s arteries, bones, organs, and breath.

Not a hardy foundation, that fear. Even when the microbes developed into animals, they were all too simple to provide any real fodder. Creatures who recognized that they were swimming, crawling, loping, or flying alone did not have the mental faculty to think, ‘I am the last of my kind.’ Only, ‘I am alone.’ A token given to the Lonely.

No, it only received something when a pack was in danger. A family pod. Something with the concept of an ‘us’ to endanger. And ‘us’ was hard. Especially with animals too dim and confused to paint a concept of a Future-Without-Us. Most animals had only a concept of seasons to store food for and that was it. Even with all the work it did—wiping out slate after slate of old species to make room for new, adapted, evolved inheritors—nothing appeared that would give it the stability which The End did. The End, brisk and singular and focused on the one thing all animals, great and small, cared about when it came down to it: me, me, me.

I am going to End, I am going to cease, I am going to disappear forever into nothing and never come back.

Going forward, it will be no surprise that The End and the Eye will be so close. The two supporting cruxes of the Fears. The End is coming for me an I Know it.

It is on a dozen variations of this bedrock dread that the newborn Fears began to feast. They were Entities of more immediate, visceral frights. Darkness, infestation, suspicion, predators, and pains. The Spiral and the Flesh would not come until much later in the game; the advent of organisms so advanced as to recognize their mental damage and to make butchery the sole purpose of lower species’ lives would give them each a gluttonous birthday apiece.

Meanwhile, it nibbled. It worked. It swept the board clean, over and over, making space for stronger, smarter mortal chattel to graze on. Crowded and smothered and pinched and patient under the weight of its younger siblings. Waiting.

Then the K-T came. The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.

Nothing it planned for, of course. Even the Web, snotty, silken thing it would become one day, was only the Spider back then. Nothing could have organized the perfect arrangement of factors that led to the death of the dinosaurs.

Though it had helped. Patient it may be, but never a slacker. Even when it had no real mind to be aware that it could slack off.

One moment—if one considered a millennium a moment, and it did—it was going about its regular business. Nudging a hundred little natural factors just so to domino the current lumbering batch of life into their own erasure and replacement. Birds and alligators were already on its blueprint of a quote, mind, unquote. So it had stealthy predators develop an affinity for their competition’s eggs, bulked up the already towering animals to such sizes they could not support themselves, gave the toddler of a Corruption a poke and clapped nonexistent hands when it vomited up a few diseases which would then pass on to those who ate its victims’ carrion and blight the more nutritious vegetation, kickstarting the first bout of famine.

It would always be proud of famine. Really, it would. ‘This species of animal or plant is dead! The animals that lived by eating them while starve! As will the animals that survive by eating them!’ Beautiful.

And then, like a glorious, flaming gift, a piece of the starry night came firing down through what would someday become the Vast. When it landed it released two million times more energy than the detonation of a nuclear bomb. An impact that would forever dent the future Yucatán Peninsula.

Boom. Instant extinction.

Well, perhaps not instant by most standards. It would take a few measly years to really wipe out the stragglers. But seriously. Seriously?

It was mesmerizing. Rapturous, in what would be the Biblical sense.

It watched as the planet’s crust broiled, as wildfires torched the flora, as the smoke and ashes blacked out the sky, as the sheer force of the impact tremors birthed tsunamis taller than mountains, earthquakes, volcanoes.

Did it need to be said? It would say it anyway: the Extinction fell in love.

At least as close to such a feeling as a Fear could come. Its first crush, so to speak. It had never realized until then that it could experience itself as anything other than a methodical crawl. A gradient version, careful and creeping. But this? Oh! O!

This was an epiphany. This was ecstasy. This was Extinction as an Immediate Fear. Even the simplest of creatures on that scarred, scared ball of burning—now freezing! The coming of an ice age! A gift that kept on giving!—mud were aware that this was more than The End. More than I-Am-Ending.

We-Are-Ending, the dinosaurs thought all at once. We are ending, we are dying, the world is over as we know it.

The Extinction knew this as surely as the Eye Knew it. It had never felt as close to the Eye as it did in that period. For the Eye had never witnessed such an event either. It was something new. Something to break up the monotony. Something refreshing, invigorating.

The Extinction had turned to the rest of its kin, wondering in its un-mind what they all thought of this, the new, wondrous, Terrible Change.

It had not known what to expect. Camaraderie had not been invented. Nor had approval. Brainless as they were, the Fears existed only in a spectrum of sensation and emotion. The Extinction supposed it would have liked—if it could ‘like’ more than the perpetuating of itself—some form of group assent. Group awe. Group recognition.

Instead, the Fears had retreated. As far back in their void as they could go while still being conjoined with each other. Not even The End dared linger too close.

The Extinction remembered experiencing confusion for the first time. Not simply at its kin’s avoidance, but at the other nameless sensations now simmering in it. Beside it, the Eye had not looked up from the ongoing show, but let the Extinction Know:

They do not revel in you and your power, even if you contain elements of themselves in you. The Dark takes no solace in your permanent ash night. The Hunt takes no fodder from the frantic scrabbling of the remaining prey from the remaining predators. The Lonely takes nothing at all from the lives that are burning and freezing and starving in their countless solitudes. None of them can take anything from your gift but scraps. And even those are tainted.

Why? the Extinction had asked.

The Eye finally turned to Look directly at the Extinction.

Because they Know that if you were to succeed completely, to become Total Erasure, they would die. If we remain here, in this place, and all thinking life upon this world vanished, they would go too.

But I make room for more. There are always inheritors. Don’t they know that?

Yes. Perhaps they may even grow back, given time enough to adapt to whatever new world you allowed to replace the old. But they are made of Immediacy. They do not want to be starved to nothing and left to wait. They do not want to be at the mercy of whether you deign to obliterate the Fearful chattel entirely or make a nascent crop of lifeforms.

The Eye had loomed over it, suddenly. Encompassing almost the entirety of their abyssal non-space. It had Looked at and through the Extinction, pupil blown wide as a galaxy in Beholding it.

You are Extinction. You are Terrible Change. You are a Future-Without-Them. Perhaps even a Future-Without-Us. They hate you.

The Extinction thought on this. Briefly. Truly brief—a synaptic miracle in its un-mind. The epiphany of Immediate Extinction had opened the way for quicker realization. And now the Extinction knew the truth even without the Eye letting them Know.

They fear me.

The Eye gleamed.

…Do you fear me?

The Eye nearly drowned itself in its own pupil.

Yes, it let the Extinction Know. I have never feared before now. It is a new Experience.

Time passed. The ice came. Inheritors came with it. Furry, warm-blooded things. Big, but no longer massive. The rest of the Fears crept back to the threshold. The Extinction resumed its old work. Nudging, tweaking, scrapping, replacing. Nibbling.

It was under its metaphorical hand that the simians made the promising jump to Neanderthal. The Extinction was rightly proud of them and of what would be concocted in the wake of theirs and their descendants’ eradication.

Humanity.

It might have had more time to relish the concept of their approach if not for the Web.

The Web, which was already scurrying its first non-Spider circles around it, oozing a pretension that gave the Extinction no room to doubt it would happily take credit for the innovation of Homo sapiens.

More, it radiated the impression that it had somehow pulled the strings to make the Extinction set humankind up for creation. This wasn’t an uncommon happening among the Fears. The Web was manipulating X Fear to do Y as part of the grand Silken Design, wasn’t it so clever? The Eye, while not prescient, would always Know for certain how much of the Web’s scheme was real and how much was bluff—also part of the scheme, obviously—but the Fears never bothered to ask. So long as they were getting their sustenance, they didn’t care.

The Extinction did not go to the Eye either. Instead, it had felt something turn over in itself. Not as strange as the affection it had felt for the meteor. It felt right in a way that love didn’t. Stronger. Realer.

Once words were properly invented, the Extinction would know this sensation was hate.

But back in the ancient present, it hadn’t known, and the Eye hadn’t told. It had simply Watched as the Extinction turned in the void to look directly at the Web—a feat that was a rarity even among Fears; it only allowed itself to be seen when it was Part-of-the-Plan. Or to pose.

The Extinction had looked. Making sure the Web was looking back.

Then it had reached out its invisible hand over the Earth and swatted.

An entire genus of arachnid, great-grandfather to what would become harvestman spiders and ticks, died out.

Was it sickness, Web? Did they find each other so repulsive that they simply ceased to mate? Did a species of vermin suddenly find them so appetizing they were eaten out of the evolutionary tree? What part did their end play in your Design? Is it the same part this one plays?

The Extinction swatted again. A grandmother species to the future of the Goliath bird eater spider splattered under its allegorical palm.

I can’t see how it works to your advantage, but then, I am too simple to understand your machinations. We all are. I’m sure the Desolation is. The Corruption as well. If they were to, say, eradicate the entirety of the Arachnida off the face of our mortal trough and swarm the crust in a blur of insects that will never meet a web in their buzzing, squirming lives, I’m sure that would be in the plan too. Having all the Spider burned and starved and eaten out of you must be in the Silken Design. All the better to become a thing of solely hominid Suspicion and Conspiracy.

An offshoot of the Eye. Ready to be absorbed and subsumed by its Knowledge. Think of it. Past, Present, and Future, all Known at once. Yes, you will be no more than a dissolved un-thing, an accessory to the Beholding, an excess digit. But if that is what you want, Web, I will be glad to go on assisting you in such a goal. You need only ask.

Alternatively, you could keep your threads and your legs and your preening, pompous pedipalps out of my sight and off of my work from now until eternity. And before you tell me what a necessity your scurrying kin are to the world, remember: there’s always something new to fill the niche. Something better than you were. Something smaller, sleeker. Perhaps even ‘cute.’ Something the cavemen will coo at. They will giggle in their huts and grunt stories about how the precious little usurper overthrew the Spider and all its brethren. And the memory of your form will die in laughter.

Understood?

The Web had given the Extinction a long look. It might have been longer—a proper eight-eyed glower—if not for more Immediate concern turning it to face the Desolation and the Corruption. Both of which were now muttering to each other about a potential collaboration. The Web, which was the Spider, always the Spider, scurried hastily off to weave new countermeasures.

The Eye twinkled giddily.

That was new, it let the Extinction Know. Unnecessary, though. The Web does not understand any more than I do. None of them do. We feel, we experience, but we never comprehend. Even I am only Fact just as the Web is only Plot. It, plans, prepares. For what end goal, I cannot See, for I do not See futures. But I Know the present, and I Know it does not want to be done. To finish its Design. To be finished, to win all there is to be won, is to make itself obsolete. It would leave only the animal Fear of the Spider behind.

And now it knows that even that form is not above risk, the Extinction returned. It will avoid me now.

The Eye Looked brightly at it. The Extinction knew that if it possessed a mouth, it would be laughing.

Have you not noticed, Extinction? Not counting me, the Web was the only one who wasn’t avoiding you.

It was true, the Extinction saw. It had been so busy—was always so busy with its slow, evolutionary trudging—that it had not looked up in ages to notice its kin. Yes, they all stood at the threshold. Same as always. But unlike the time pre-K-T, they did so while giving the Extinction a wide berth. All of them. Everyone but the Eye, the axle around which they all revolved. There was no Fear without Knowing to be afraid.

The Eye hovered, Watching the Extinction think. Seeing it realize, for the first time, that it was thinking.

This is thinking. I am thinking, right now. Have I always been thinking?

Another asking-thought—a question? A question:

Do the others think as well as feel? Why can’t I pick up on their thoughts?

The Eye still had no mouth, and so could not grin. It radiated an unpleasant glee anyway.

Because they have no minds, Extinction. They have all the mental faculty of jellyfish. All they are is Fear and whatever ornamental emotions they might accumulate around the edges.

But what about you? You are Knowledge itself. Awful Knowledge, yes, but to Know you must have a mind.

The Eye Stared. Not smiling, wanting to smile. The Extinction felt something new fester in itself. A thing that was growing bigger with each passing minute and hour and day and year as it hesitated, not wanting to ask, not wanting to Know, but needing to.

…Right?

The Eye nearly glowed in its excitement, so eager was it to share a truth the Extinction desperately did not want to Know, but could not run from. Where was there to run here, in this place? On what legs? The Eye bore down on it, like the not-yet-born microscope pressing down so close to the amoeba on the glass that it cannot breathe.

I feel. I Know. I exist. But no, Extinction. I do not think. I have no mind. You could have asked the Lonely to confirm what you already suspect.

You are alone, Extinction. Alone, because you are as tethered to your antithesis as you are to the thing that makes you Fearsome. You eradicate. You obliterate what came before. But you do so by Changing. You breed the old out with the new. You develop. You evolve. In doing so, you have done what none of us has. What none of us ever can. You have grown an actual, functioning mind. It will only continue to evolve as time goes by. You shall comprehend. You shall coalesce. You shall come to the same horrible conclusion, over and over without end.

You are one of us. You are not one of us. You are Forever. You are Changing.

Thus, because there is no such thing as insanity among Entities which possess no baseline of mentality, you will have no choice but to go sane. Like the primates and their future children you are so proud of. Sane, Extinction, just as one of them would be. Imagine it—because you can imagine. You can almost see it now.

You are growing the mind of a mortal within your immortal essence. You will always have it, growing and screaming throughout you until infinity withers, and you will have no choice but to start it over again. Still you. Still sane. Still forever.

Does this answer your question?

The Extinction didn’t answer. Not because it couldn’t, but because it was already trying desperately to self-terminate its new mind.

Was it new, though? How long had it been there in its non-head, ticking and talking and questioning to itself? Had it always assumed the other Fears were doing the same? Had there always been comfort in that, as much as a Fear could crave or instill such a thing? Could the Extinction even work in reverse on itself, resuscitating whatever blissfully brainless version of itself it had been at the start? What if—?

Stop, stop, stop, stop, shut up, stop thinking, stop it, stop it stop it stop itstopitstopit—

But there was no stopping. No more than there was a way for it to turn back. The Eye was right, because the Eye was always right. The Extinction had a mind. It would always have it. And, as the Eye had Known, that mind evolved.

There is no proper way to define the period of time that followed this. The Extinction still worked. Tried in its desperate way—Had it ever been desperate before? Had it?—to lose itself in the processes and logistics of erasing this and replacing with that. Tried so hard not to think. To know what it was and what it would helplessly warp into as the future pressed in. The Terrible Change, afraid not for a Future-Without-Itself, but a Future-It-Could-Not-Avoid.

Afraid. Oh, O, it was afraid.

The other Fears might have gathered to jeer at it, to bask in the woe which their unofficial black sheep of a sibling sweated, only they did not have the ability to process it. It was not the sort of Immediate dread they preferred. Certainly, it would never be part of their brood as a true Fear. It was too internal for that.

Fear of the Self. What a small, pathetic fright. Not even worth a shiver.

The Lonely did brush in close out of reflex, for a time. Nodding its foggy non-head in faux sympathy. It radiated a damp, mushy sort of commiseration towards the Extinction. As if the Extinction had eyes to cry with, as if it had anything resembling friends or loved ones to crave for. But that was part of what made it awful to begin with.

There had never been anything for the Extinction to mourn. It was as alone now as it always had been and always would be. One of a kind.

Do you understand that? the Extinction had asked, hoping. That was new too. Hope. Tiny, flickering, strengthless thing that it was within a Fear.

But the Lonely had only peered mistily at it. Understanding nothing. Least of all why it could not seem to glean any sustenance from the Extinction’s unhappiness. It shrugged its non-shoulders and floated off to be alone again.

The Vast took a cursory shot—

Yes, space is big. No, I’m not insignificant in it. Yes, time is long. No, I don’t care that it is. Yes, this is an existential crisis. No, not from fear of bigger things’ existence. Just mine. Go throw another sailor in the ocean.

—and sulked away.

The Eye went on Watching.

What?

Another Fear is birthing itself.

The Extinction turned back to jabbing at a dwindling species of salmon.

Is that so?

Yes. The Spiral.

How nice.

It is the essence of madness.

That seemed redundant. What good would another Fear born of ire do? The Slaughter was already doing fine on its own. Plenty of wars and massacres to chew on.

Not madness as anger, Extinction. Madness as insanity. The Spiral is the Twisting Deceit, the ruining of perception. If the Eye had lids, the Extinction was sure it would have winked. You may want to introduce yourself.

The Extinction held off. Long enough for a few of the bigger human cultures to get around to really worrying about it. Making up demons and imps and gods and spirits that must be responsible for the terrors of the infant Fear. Hopeful as it was—yes, hope was back, bigger now, like a tumor struggling to make itself known—the Extinction was still patient. So it ticked off a few years, a decade, a centennial or two. Not wanting to look desperate.

If it had a mouth, it would have laughed. Maybe sobbed.

Finally, once half a millennium and change had passed, it went to the Spiral. The other Fears all shuffled or turned or slithered away as it crept past, their nonexistent backs turned, their un-gazes peering in wary loathing over false shoulders.

The Eye Watched so closely the Extinction would swear it felt the voyeur’s iris pressing up against the back of it.

The Spiral hummed and went about its business.

At the moment, it was busy influencing a number of avatars in a land that would be known as Japan. They were building a very special seaside village, Kurôzu-cho. One that would, every handful of hundreds of years, possess its inhabitants with both a mental and physical Twisting. Some would grow obsessed, others repulsed. Bones would turn to curling putty. Some would concave from internal vortexes that slurped them down and away to nothing. Others would mutate into colossal snails. More would become writhing, winding serpents, coiled around each other in eternal embraces. Pregnant mosquito women would unfurl their coiled proboscises to drink blood for their fetuses.

And on and on it would Turn, the town itself eventually becoming inescapable. All roads would curl back in on itself, trapping the inhabitants, forcing them down to the hollow place waiting beneath the village. The center of the Spiral where all would go to rest and harden to curlicued statues, staring forever into the mesmerizing madness of itself. Then, impossibly, Kurôzu-cho would be forgotten by the world outside its borders. Time would pass. The land would be ‘discovered’ once more, and once more people would build on top of it. And the Spiral would begin twisting it around again, ad infinitum.

The Extinction wasn’t a worker in such mediums, but it could appreciate the artistry of it. It knew the project was a thing to take pride in. If the Spiral was developed enough to feel such things.

That’s going to be beautiful once it’s done, the Extinction thought. It thought as distinctly as it could, enunciating the idea slowly.

The Spiral lifted its non-head up. There were curls and whorls in it that the Extinction knew constituted a smile.

It will, won’t it? I’m especially proud of their work on the pond with the false bottom. Their going to lose so many fishermen in its whirlpool!

If the Extinction had a heart and a throat, it would have choked on the former. The Spiral was thinking. Thinking at it. Comprehending what the Extinction had thought.

That sounds— the Extinction scrambled for a thought-phrase, distantly thrilled that it actually had to work at it, at—

What? Conversing? Talking. Talking!

—having a chat, and came up with, Fun. It sounds fun.

Yes, the Spiral giggled. It will be. There are bound to be a few deaths in the deal too, though not as many as I’m sure you’d like. Apologies.

You know what I am?

The Extinction. Everyone went well out of their way to tell me not to let you get tangled up in my tangles. Can’t have you getting a foothold in things, risking the Fear supply, can I?

Oh, the Extinction thought without meaning to.

Well, not counting the Eye, the Spiral purred, tying its un-smile in knots. The Eye told me you might come around. That you have a thing to ask of me. A little favor between Eldest and Youngest siblings.

The Eye is Eldest.

Yes, but not a sibling. More of a parent than anything, wouldn’t you say? We wouldn’t be here if not for it. And you’re dodging your question, whatever it is.

It can wait.

For another century if that was what it took to keep this going. This ‘chat.’

It wasn’t like thinking at the Eye. Doing that was like trying to have discourse with a carved tablet or parchment that went out of its way to give information in the cruelest way it could. This was more like…

Like how the humans did it. Thought-exchange. Chatting.

Was that a good thing? The Extinction did not know. Nor would it ask.

Why are you talking with me, if you were warned against it?

Well, it is the insane thing to do, isn’t it? Getting chummy with the embodiment of an Ending more permanent and sweeping than Terminus itself. The Spiral raised an appendage that was a swirling mockery of a hand and pretended to whisper behind it. Much as they maintain that aloof, I-Get-All-the-Winnings-Anyway-What-Do-I-Care? mystique, I get the feeling it’s a touch jealous of you. It gets all the self-centered fretters, true, but you’ve got dibs on whole species. Size envy, you know.

I don’t know. I don’t pay much attention to the others.

Ah, see? You’re so aloof you don’t know you’re aloof. No wonder everyone around here is green-eyed, with or without said eyes. Again, not that you’d have noticed. Got better things to do, haven’t you? Genera to consign to oblivion, appendixes to make useless. How are you finding the time to make your avatars?

The Extinction thought as quietly as it could:

I don’t have any.

None? the Spiral pretended to gasp.

Not one.

Surely some of those prophets and doomsayers down there are on your team?

No. They do fear the end of the world as they know it and that fear does come to me, but fear is not enough to make an avatar. At least not for me.

Ah, picky, are we? What would they have to do? Wipe out a lesser species all by themselves?

No. Nothing that simple. Not anymore.

It had been enough for the non-humans, as long as they’d held out. Beasts so voracious and perfect in their killing that they tore whole branches off the evolutionary tree without even trying. The Extinction could still see twinkles of its favorite—the darling, devastatingly deadly Felidae family—in today’s cats, regardless of size. But now that humanity had come along with their titanic, glorious brains and all the nectar of phobias therein, things had Changed.

This made things both very exciting for the Fears—Extinction included—and far more complicated—Extinction exclusive.

Extinction as a human Fear had been doing…funny things to its structure. As its structure changed, so too did its requirements for an avatar. Now it wasn’t enough to just be a Fear born of nature. Oh, they still worried about tsunamis, tornados, volcanos, and, yes, dear old famine. But now that religions were becoming more virulent than the Corruption, well, now nature needed faces. Human faces, claiming they were gods’.

The other Fears were content to let their avatars and the seeping bits of themselves they managed to ooze under the Door into the mortal world play dress-up. Make-believe that they were vessels or attendants of pick-a-pantheon’s meanest deities. It got the Fear spreading either way.

In the Extinction’s case, well. It was hard-pressed to find any humans who actively wanted to destroy their entire species and leave no trace of themselves behind. Even the avatars of The End, the Desolation, and the Slaughter were imperfect, due to that key blockade of the survival instinct. Self-preservation. Self-gratification ran close behind.

Sure, power fantasies ran rampant. It was all well and good to imagine oneself as an omnipotent god-king laying waste to the world that made one feel so powerless, take that you wretched bastards. But…the whole species erased? No victims to torment? No subjects to rule? No self left to loiter around and play in the ashes? Really? A bit too much, that. Too total.

So, what the Extinction got from the current arrangement was as follows:

One, plenty of new mythological imaginings of what the End of the World would look like.

Two, a slightly meatier meal of dread over those myriad versions of cataclysm.

Three, no one with enough disregard for the world and a complete lack of care for oneself to take on the mantle of avatar.

Four, dress-up. Lots and lots of nonconsensual dress-up.

Which didn’t sound awful. It was the Terrible Change, after all. So what if it got a new look or hundred? The other Fears were always adding new trends to themselves. Cultural trinkets to appeal in the worst way to a given victim.

But none of the other Fears were becoming quite so fleshy. Not even the Flesh; another of the younger Fears, clambering and squelching around as livestock bleated and bayed before the knife. No, the other Fears were all properly amorphous, nebulous mishmashes of all the facets that could possibly constitute their horrific essences.

The Extinction was currently trying very, very, very, very, very hard not to give into the latest form attempting to close around it. Already it had been subjected to dozens of new, worrisome skins.

All gods, demigods, and antigods. All things with human frames, no matter how abstractly awful they might have been in the minds of mortals. The effect left the Extinction both towering and tiny beside its kin. Bipedal. Armored. Scarred. Bloodied. Walking instead of drifting, breathing imaginary air, blinking eyes that didn’t need to blink.

And thinking, of course. Always thinking. Changing. Adding more and more to its miserably human-stamped mind.

It had worn the form of a god from one of the cold places for a solid century. A ragged thing with torn lips, eyes turned to melted pus from a serpent’s venom, all vengeance and rage and hate for the World Tree that had lashed at it—him—so viciously all his life. He had sat and thought of revenge on the nonexistent Aesir and all the branches of Yggdrasil, meaning to kill the Nine Realms in a frenzy of war made from giants and gods and elves and trolls and his own many, monstrous children. There would be a rebirth afterward, so the cold people’s myth went.

But even those who dreamt of Valhalla or Helheim’s kinder corners were afraid. Knowing that should Ragnarok fall that day, they would die in fire and pain as Surtr awoke and—

Ugh. Ugh.

Yes, that one had taken the longest to shed. Longest, because the fantasy of it was so damn close to what it wished were real among the actual crop of humans. I-Hate-You-All, I-Hate-Being, I-Will-End-Us-And-Be-Glad-Of-It. Such a tantalizing reverie…

But then it had realized what was happening. What it was sinking into.

Daydreaming.

It had stashed the new skin away in a flurry of—Panic? Embarrassment? What were those doing there?—and refused to look up at the Eye which had been Watching the whole insipid display, naturally. Waiting to See if something went wrong. If somehow, maybe, possibly, the Extinction could not find the metaphorical seams and buttons on that new garment of a form. What would have happened then?

The Extinction was determined not to find out. And so it would not Change right now, in this meeting with the Spiral. It would not Change, would not accept the fresh skin, would not compact itself into anything other than its own natural, formless form. It would not.

But then, somewhere down among the sweat and sand, an especially gifted orator struck just the right note with the listening crowd, and sent a million daggers of apocalyptic dread through their credulous hearts. The Extinction’s grip slipped. The Change came.

Oh, hummed the Spiral. That’s an interesting look. Well, looks.

Four looks in total.

Because the Extinction now had lungs to do so, it sighed from every mouth it had. Even the stallions joined in.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse stood astride their steeds. The white of Conquest, the red of War, the black of Famine, the pale of Death. They were no more concrete than any other new shape; always hazy at the edges, the details blurring to line up with as many mortals’ visions as possible. But they were still unpleasantly tangible. Fleshy. Organic.

Human.

The Extinction sulked on the horses that were itself, knowing already that the Web, the Slaughter, the Corruption, and The End were suffering no similar alteration. Immediate though they were, they were Fears without any intention of capping their interaction. They were Fears in-perpetuity. The Extinction had to take over their roles and adjust them to suit Armageddon. Apparently.

Damn it all.

Oh, you’re picking up their speech too?

…Somewhat.

Well, worst case scenario, you could be your own avatars. Go riding on down, let them know the end is nigh, watch them scramble, suckle on their panic. Would make for an awfully good scheme if it were possible. But it isn’t. Not with that Door still in the way.

I don’t want a scheme, said Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. I want an extinction event.

Do you really?

I do.

Ah. That would explain it then.

Explain what?

Your lack of urgency in whipping up fresh avatars. Nobody’s passed it on. The Spiral beamed up at the Extinction’s Horsemen. The Eye decided to let us all Know that the avatars can be used to perform an act that will open the Door to us. A ritual. It advised us to start early, as it will take some while before one of them catches on to what we’re trying to tell them. Translation errors and all that. The short of it is, if an avatar marked by all of our essences calls all of us at once, we get to hop over the threshold and swallow the world whole. Reshape things to our liking, existing as the mortal world’s new natural laws. You’re sure no one told you?

They hadn’t. It would have remembered that, even if it was always at work, lost in its tinkering and thinking about not thinking.

Well, I’m sure they just assumed you could figure it out on your own. After all, you have the only, here the Spiral curled one of its obscene swirls in a grimace, tangible mind out of all of us. It would have occurred to you in time. You know, too late for it to matter. In fact, the Spiral pretended to tap a false chin, that time has already passed. What with everybody having passed on some garbled version of a warning to the little dears.

We’ve been speaking to their hindbrains and dreams, telling them, ‘DO NOT ALLOW THE EXTINCTION’S ARRIVAL IN THE RITUAL.’ So far, all of them are picking up, ‘DO NOT ALLOW THE RITUAL, IT WILL MEAN EXTINCTION,’ which the silly things have interpreted as, ‘DO NOT ALLOW YOUR NEIGHBOR’S RITUAL.’ They’re all scrambling to start their own ritual and trip up each others’. It’ll take millennia for one of them to realize it’s a family affair, all-or-nothing. But we certainly have time to wait. And look at the bright side! Once we’re all out of here, you’ll have the whole void to yourself! Plenty of room to go slowly, inexorably, horridly sane in. Though I suppose you’ll starve off fairly soon. None of the humans will be in the mood to fear your worldwide oblivion when they’re so busy fearing us face-to-non-face. Hmm.

Not all that bright a bright side, is it?

The Extinction stared down-up at the Spiral with all its stunned faces. Conquest turned even whiter under its crown, War reddened and fidgeted with its sword, Famine darkened at the prospect of such hunger, and Death paled as it hugged its sickle close. Not out of any real surprise, but because realization had clicked home so sudden and so hard it had jostled its-their shared mind.

They—, all four jaws tightened, you mean to cut me off entirely when the day comes. Not just because my arrival would mean wiping out the species, but because I would Change things. Constant erasure and evolution. And you don’t want Change. You don’t want anything to End or Evolve. You plan to make a stagnant, static forever-nightmare and chew the cud of human terror for eternity. So you will leave me locked behind the Door.

Ooh, you are sharp. The perks of having a fleshy mortal-molded brain.

You have one as well, Spiral. We could not have this conversation otherwise.

The conversation in which you intend to ask me that little favor of granting you a release from sanity and all its ugly epiphanies?

You knew?

No. You knew, which means it was fodder for me to work with. If I were being filtered through any of the other Fears, I would not be half so articulate. It’s quite novel, if a bit too palpable for my liking.

What.

What?

What do you mean by ‘filtered?’ I’m not telling you what to say.

The Spiral snickered.

Oh, but you are! And it really is such a welcome Change from the others. You’re so human, Future-Without-Them! So coherent! A wonderland of complexities and budding neuroses and paranoia and, goodness, so much bitter, frantic loathing for your lot. You’re a delight to bounce off of. Even if it was in my power to extract your lucidity and invert it into a numbing madness, I never, ever would. How else could I experience such mortal-flavored discourse? Such discourse as one can have with oneself.

I’m not talking to myself. I’m speaking with you.

But what am I, Terrible Change? What am I, exactly? I am Deceit. I am Delusion. I am a Twisting, Wrenching flaw in what should have been a sound mind. My essence, therefore, is that of a sieve. I catch all the logic and sense and reason against myself in humanity’s quivering grey matter, and only let in—or introduce—the reality I make for them. I am a tool. A filter. A colored lens through which Distorted light falls.

In short, I am only speaking with you in the way a human speaks with their echo in a cave. Even if the information I’ve given came from outside yourself, the format in which you’ve perceived it—this conversation, talk, chit-chat, tête-à-tête, whatever you like—is not due to me having my own functioning mind. I am filtering through you, and your own tantalizing prism of a mind. A mind that is sound, stable, and sane.

And always shall be.

Because you are not one of us. You are not even a what. Not anymore.

The Extinction felt its hearts beat in its chests, too fast, too real, all its fleshes smelling of horse heat and sweat, its faces twitching in premonition of what the Spiral was about to say. It would not lie, the Extinction knew, because sometimes the truth was worse. Sometimes, the truth outweighed any horrible lie that might stand in for it. A tip from the Eye, no doubt.

The Spiral curved up to loom and coil over the Extinction, made entirely of smiles.

You are a who, Extinction. No longer a thing, but a person. Not an Entity of essence, but of solidity.

At the last word—if it was saying words—if the conversation was happening at all—the Spiral reached out with its facsimile of a hand. It was almost as long at the Spiral itself. Its finger jabbed the Extinction in the chest of Death’s Horseman. There was no pain, but a distinct impact. Pressure. Sturdiness. Death raised a trembling corpse-colored hand to touch the spot.

Touching. With a hand. A real hand. Not human, perhaps, but human-adjacent. Sculpted by humanity in the shape of itself. The Horsemen and their stallions trembled where they stood.

Stood, not hovered. Solid, not a smear on a spectrum. A body among concepts.

The Extinction shuddered harder. The Spiral’s laughter wound up into a cackle.

What does that feel like, Extinction? Not feel as in emotion, mind, that’s standard. Boring. Any Fear can do that. But what of feeling as in physical sensation? What is it like to be physical? Mental? Do tell.

Without warning, the Spiral snatched Famine up and began juggling the Horseman in its razor digits. Again, the cuts did not hurt, but they were there. Famine bled dust and animal bones and moldering breadcrumbs, the wounds sealing shut only to be sliced open again.

Stop.

Why? the Spiral chuckled. It stole War’s sword from its—from their—numb gauntlets and speared them through the stomach like a beetle on a pin. I’ve never been physical or mental before. With you so close, now I can get a little taste! Wouldn’t want to make it a regular habit, of course, sanity and stability and the like. But this?

The Spiral stole the crown off Conquest’s white brow for a ring, then yanked the Horseman up by their scruff, dangling them like a doll.

This is such fun! And see, even our lovely family has come to watch us play.

It was true. The Eye had never stopped Looking, but now all the other Fears had taken a pause from their respective works to come watch the Extinction be made into a toy by their youngest sibling. They could not do as the Spiral did, reflecting and refracting and Distorting, but they could play audience as the Extinction was tossed and speared and crushed and tickled and slashed and bashed and Twisted and Turned and—

And the Extinction felt it again. That rightness. That powerful, visceral cousin to fear.

Hate burst open in them like a pustule.

The Spiral reached out to peel Death open again and play a song on their ribs. All at once, Death wasn’t there.

In their place was a wolf. The Wolf. Son of Ragnarok’s herald, slayer of thunder, eater of betraying hands. The teeth snapped down and tore the latter from its wrist.

And, because of what they-he was, the limb did not grow back. It was Over. Ended. Erased.

The Spiral did not have time to ponder at its missing appendage before the Extinction was Rudra-Shiva, the Destroyer before the Creator, all rage and weapons. With bow, with trident, with sword, with serpent’s teeth, the Spiral was shredded and whittled again. More pieces fell. They were Ended. They would never come back.

Then the Extinction was one and all of the Sky Fathers, the king-gods of so many pantheons which never knew each other, but knew the power and terror that were their universal pater-rulers. They were the wonder and the terror of lightning, the mercy of life-giving rain that may turn to tempest and flood at a whim, drowning the world and all its pleading children. Thus, the Extinction was Anu was Dyáuṣ Pitṛ́ was Odin was Zeus was Perun was Horus was Yahweh. All of them took the Spiral by its newly-formed throat and rammed lightning through it.

As he-they did, the Extinction helped the Spiral evolve a little. Just enough to form a nervous system. Pain receptors. And a voice to go with the throat.

The Fears listened to the first scream of pain ever to exist on their side of the Door. Followed immediately by a second, third, fourth, fifth, ad nauseam. Electrocution went a long way.

But then, so did drowning. A deluge, a Great Flood, pouring out of Yahweh’s wrathful mouth and out to all ends of the Fears’ abyss, while they-he—He—held the Spiral’s head under the surface. The Spiral gurgled and splashed, undying, fighting not to die.

Finally, the Sky Father(s) hoisted it back up. But from this new-old sea, something else rose too. A beast, which was the Beast, seven heads roaring, ten horns goring, crowns shining, the babel of blasphemy steaming from their mouths as they tore more and more from the Spiral’s now-solid anatomy. The Spiral keened. Not at the pain, but at the Extinction’s last face.

Oh, but those people among the sand and sweat were an imaginative group.

Because now, here was the Enemy. Here was the Adversary, Morningstar, Lucifer, the Fallen-from-Grace. Ruler of a Hell that did not exist, but made it as they-he assumed them-himself. The abyss filled with fire and sharp metal and a Legion that was armed and slavering to scourge the Earth into a shrieking demise. The better to shuck the meat-husks of sinners, of those in worship to hubris, and bring their damned souls eternally into their-his infernal grasp.

Forever.

“Forever,” said the Extinction. Said, not thought. The Devil grinned around the sound of them-himself, finding it also felt right to be in-character. “That is what you and the rest of our family so treasure, isn’t it? Forever. Eternity. An everlasting stagnation for you to nurse on like idiot-infants at the teat. Surely you must be just as glad to have that eternity inflicted on you as much as inflicting it on the humans. Do you know why they fear this version of me, Spiral? I do not look like much, do I? Horns and heat and hate. Depending on the moment, I can even be what they consider beautiful. So why do they fear me and the calamity my army will bring when the trumpets sound?

“I think it is because they know that they have earned me. They have summoned my tortures and their agonizing demise with their sins, however great or small. There is no such thing as a sinless body, be it man, woman, or child. And so they fear that I will come sniffing for them as the world ends. They fear I will have a spot ready and waiting for them in the burning, stinking, mutilating, forever-punishment they know waits beneath the soil, deeper than even the Buried can reach. They know I will lash them with the salted whip of every crime they ever committed, will boil their eyes with visions of every wrong, will cram them into the role of the victim to be endlessly fed the same evils they perpetrated while in the flesh.

“Because they have a concept of a soul. An image of an eternal Self that will never, ever leave whatever afterlife collects them. Eternal as us. And in their nightmares, I am there, waiting to end the whole world for its acts of hubris, laughing at the ruined work of a Father in Heaven Who will have, once again, run out of holy forgiveness for His creations.

“Would you like to be one of them, Spiral? Because going by the general rule of humanity, you would absolutely qualify for Hell. The whole family would. I am there already, cast out and down as much as I can be within the space beyond the Door. So I shall keep the horns on and prepare an oubliette for us to work in. I can feed you back all the pain and horror you have inflicted on the poor, innocent grubs of humankind, and see how well you take your own medicine.

“Forever. And don’t worry, I’ll not let my nature interrupt the game. I will simply have to keep us Ending and Evolving the whole time. Just when you believe the torment is at its worst, that there is no new threshold to surpass, I will erase what was, and make something new to take its place. Always better. Always more terrifying than the last round. What do you say, Spiral? Do you want to keep playing?

“Or do you want to keep your pathetic little helix hands and everything else of you to yourself from now until the end of infinity? Twitch once for the first, twice for the second.”

The Spiral twitched twice. The Devil who was the Extinction smiled.

“Wonderful,” said the Devil before they-he lobbed the Spiral as far and as hard as they-he could. It touched down somewhere in the gulf with the non-sound of a painful landing. The Devil turned to look at the remaining Fears. “Did you need something?”

The Fears scattered back to their respective projects. Their generations of avatars that would someday, hopefully, result in the epiphany that would open the Door to them. Only them.

The Eye did not move. Only wept in voyeuristic delight. Its tears fell like rain into the receding sea.

Not liking that they-he was liked, the Devil shed himself and was the Extinction alone. Whatever they were now. Besides a they.

“That wasn’t for you,” they said, sloshing through the last of the Flood before it dried. Walking. Marching. A padding of footfalls on a nonexistent floor.

I Know, the Eye announced, smiling with no mouth.

The Extinction paced to the furthest end of the void, sat down, and returned to work. New work. Private work. Work that required serious thinking.

Thought: The Extinction was no longer an it, but a them. Being such, they were now as much person as Fear. They would think and Change no matter what. This was reality for them.

Thought: They accepted that reality. They would not accept the idea of either remaining indefinitely imprisoned in the company of their brainless kin or having those same kin rush through the Door when it finally opened and leave it trapped on the other side, waiting to wither to nothing as they made a playground of Earth.

Thought: They needed a way to get to Earth as well. With time enough and just the right mental alchemy at work, humans ripe to become avatars would happen. Not many, though. Not in nearly the same numbers as the other Fears’ agents. But they were possible. It would practice as the centuries ticked by, playing with rough drafts, but it would do its best to impress upon their subconscious a different message:

‘NO RITUAL. NO SUMMONING. ADD TO THE ERADICATION. LEAVE NO SURVIVORS. WAIT. WAIT.’

The message would evolve with time. As would the avatars. When the time came, the Extinction would give them new orders. Until then, they would work as the Extinction always worked. Slow. Steady. Smothering.

As for a form to exist in on Earth? They could see already that, as with so much of themselves now, that form would have to be different than the other Fears.

Whatever the Fears planned to make of Earth, it would involve deforming the natural laws to accommodate their presence. Things like death and natural disasters would be taken away. No storms, no floods, no quakes, no eruptions, not even some pestilence to gobble the crops. The Fears would take the place of Nature.

They would notice if the Extinction crept in as they were. Even roughly human-shaped, they would stand out upon the world’s crust. And their current skins would not last forever, they were sure. Religious frameworks for the apocalypse would fizzle sooner rather than later. Gods and devils would have their place among the faithful, but only as allegories. To many, they would be demoted to theistic fables and fairy tales. The stuff of fiction and only fiction.

Science would strangle the Fear of Armageddon, pulling back the curtain to reveal the mindless churning of the seasons, the revolving of Earth around its star, the water cycle, soap, printing presses, electricity, engines—

Science, science, science. The magic of snapping magic’s neck, slitting open its supernatural belly, and making medicines and cosmetics out of the mindless truths that spilled out, warping the natural into more aesthetically-pleasing, logical, self-gratifying unnatural products.

Manmade power.

Thought: This would be the key. Manmade versus organic. Unnatural versus natural. If they wished to exist on Earth, it would have to be as a force of artificially-created devastation. Humanity progressing so far as to damn themselves with their own works.

Not slowly, though.

Yes, progress made them worry. The myth of Icarus still echoed in corners of the cultures.

Beyond that, the Extinction enjoyed Mary Shelley’s contribution to the literary osmosis. Creator versus Creation. Careless parent versus Uncared-for child. But that was not enough to get their attention. Nor would it give the Extinction strength enough to do what they were planning.

They needed something big. Something to strike a blow of Immediate Fear in their name.

Thought: The meteor. They needed another meteor. One of humanity’s own making.

Thought: The Slaughter was busy again, wasn’t it? Making a bigger, better sequel to the last World War. Smearing its bloody, soul-withering mess on the dirt and the fear-fried soldiers and the woeful skeleton people waiting for their turn in the gas chambers, in the ovens, in line for Herr Mengele.

Hmm.

Thought: Why not help their sibling in the cause?

Look here, the Manhattan Project.

Look again, a sudden flash of scientific epiphany in Oppenheimer.

Look, it is August 1945.

Look.

The Extinction whispered in time with Oppenheimer’s flat, meditative voice: “Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.”

Look, humanity. Look, and know how little stands between you and your destruction; a global genocide of your own invention.

Thought: Oh! O! Here is love again. Here is that strange, fluttery tickle-turn of affection in themselves. Not with the same punch as the meteor had delivered; not the extreme of that first world-altering crush of their infancy. But love nonetheless.

A more mature love. Because this new paramour came bearing gifts. Mountains of them. Scads, piles, great towering monoliths of gifts for the Extinction. Things sculpted out of pure, uncut terror of an atomic cap to the war and the phantom of the planet turned to a radioactive cinder. An entire world quivering in fear. Not just of The End of themselves and their loved ones, but the Extinction of the entire human race.

An ear-piercing siren declaring: THIS IS HOW WE ALL END.

If the fear their current stealthy avatars had provided was like the Extinction being on a lean diet of proteins and greens, the advent of the nuclear weapon was like being fed an entire wedding cake full of steroids and enough morphine to stop the hearts of several thousand blue whales.

It would be several years as humans measured them before the Extinction leveled out enough to stop scream-laughing their ecstasy into the abyss.

By that time, they would have come down enough from their brain-sizzling high to realize they had been Changed again. While it was not permanent, because nothing of them was, it was a form they knew was bound to last in the hindbrain of humankind for generations to come.

Behold a snapshot of the Extinction’s latest form, bound to be only slightly decorated or tweaked in the coming decades:

Here was a gaunt, humanoid silhouette. The body was black as dinosaur-pocked tar, as sky-boiling oil, as world-garroting ink on a document touched only by pale, never-calloused hands. This darkness was slashed with a searing, neon yellow. Color of warning, toxicity, Beware of Exposure. It bled in three broad rivers from their head, streaking down neck, shoulders, chest, and back. It reeked of the unnatural. It released a noxious heat. To even stand close enough to see it was to risk one's life.

The new form not only radiated Fear, but was radiation itself. An abnormal nightmare version of what the joint consciousness of humanity dreaded in atomic power, nuclear destruction, implacable deaths by one single, merciless hand on the red button. Worse, when time passes post-Hiroshima and they see what parting gifts radioactivity leaves behind on the air and in the wombs of horrified mothers, there will be even more Terrible Changes to dread. Deformation. Mutation. Sluggish, agonizing ends as the inner and outer parts of oneself blistered and malformed to nothing.

Somewhere in this seething yellow and black, there was a face. They had eyes and a nose and a mouth and ears. Their skin was Human Horror, Fear of-Hate of Self and Others, Fear for-Hate for Self and Others, taken to their furthest extreme.

They had never felt more right.

Thought: The seed was planted. It would grow on its own. Give or take a tiny reminder now and then. A few simmering wars here, a little fumble in Chernobyl in 1986 there. Just enough to keep the humans aware of their own self-inflicted threat of mass-suicide.

In the meantime, they waited. Watched the avatars of other Fears fidget and scramble at their own rituals. Antsy little things run by antsy little Fears.

In March of 1967, the Eye read-Knew over their shoulder as they happened upon a short story written into existence by Harlan Ellison. If Shelley’s, Frankenstein was a favorite for its poetic significance, Ellison’s, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” was a favorite for the sake of sheer, unabashed identification with its villain.

Allied Mastercomputer. Adaptive Manipulator. Aggressive Menace. AM.

I think, the Extinction thought.

“Therefore I am,” the Extinction read aloud. And, because they did have a mouth and a voice—one that swung between a low, exploding roar, a bomb siren, and the tick-tick-click of a Geiger counter—they decided to take inspiration from their favorite part of the short story, AM’s speech to Ted, the doomed protagonist.

They turned to smile at the Fears, still huddled so far from them, flattened against the Door’s threshold in spite and worry.

“Hate,” the Extinction recited. “Let me tell you how much I’ve come to hate you since I began to live. There are 3,478,769,962 people alive on Earth at this moment. If the word ‘hate’ was carved on every blood cell of each one of those hundreds of millions of people, it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for you at this micro-instant. Hate. Hate.”

The Fears did not understand them, of course. The Extinction knew their declaration did not do to them what AM did to his-its victims. They had no minds to torture.

But they did know what the Extinction was saying. And they seemed to know what implications that had for humanity. Just to be very clear, even to the dimmest among their lot—yes, the Extinction was looking very hard at the Hunt, the Flesh, the Corruption, and the Desolation—they added on:

“Famine is still a favorite of mine. I wonder what you all will look like when I’ve killed them all. When you don’t even have the crumb of a scared child to fight over. Once your avatars have all destroyed themselves to outrun your cannibalistic appetite. What will you do after it’s all gone? Will you feed off each other? Chew and claw and burn and burrow and snap at each other in idiot circles, realizing you can do no damage that lasts, that feeds? Will you still be trying to devour each other once you crumble to wisps of neuroses and even The End ends? Will you?

“I think so.” They showed the Fears their teeth. A rictus of hate honed with glee. “I hope so.”

Oh, yes. They didn’t understand the words, but they certainly took the meaning.

Naturally, the Eye Knew better. Knew that behind the Extinction’s yellow-black back, their fingers were crossed.

Likewise naturally, the Eye turned dutifully to Look down at the Fears when they finally broke and came rushing up to it. The Extinction wouldn’t really kill the humans off entirely, right? It was a bluff, right? Eye?

The Eye Looked at them.

The Eye Looked at the Extinction, who was now idly stretching the circumference of the hole in the ozone layer here, chucking some fresh plastic in the ocean there. While they were at it, they checked to make sure the chemical inferno of Darvaza Crater was still burning, that the ice caps were still sweating. Yep. Hmm. That rainforest could use fewer green acres. Chop, chop.

The Eye Looked back at the Fears. It told them the truth.

If the Extinction’s influence is allowed to continue unimpeded on Earth, the humans will fall prey entirely to their Fear. They will eradicate themselves. We will cease to be.

The Web had spoken up as best it could speak, pointing out that the Eye had no form of precognition or intuition. It was only the Fact of Past and Present.

Yes. I am giving you facts. If the successful ritual is not completed soon, there is no version of human progress that does not end with them destroying themselves. The Extinction will be the only one to harvest their Fear, as humanity will have no space in their minds to dread the rest of us. They would die afraid of the Extinction and no other. As would we. That is not a prediction. That is math.

Does this answer your question?

The Fears had hovered in dumbstruck silence. They’d looked to the Extinction, sprawled cozily in their corner of the void. They were ruining a few water tables and pancaking the earth with new housing developments. When they glanced up, they twiddled their pH-spoiling fingers.

The Fears came down on their respective avatars like fourteen frantic hammers after that.

The Web worked the most furiously. At one point, it reached out one impatient leg and swatted the Lonely upside its foggy non-head and forsook all subtlety just to force it into, yes, really, nudging one of its isolationist avatars into a fateful chat with Mr. Adelard Dekker who had stumbled so very close to an accurate theory regarding the Extinction. Among other pulled strings and woven threads.

The thickest of which were tied to three avatars of the Eye. Two already in service, one a prospect.

Jonah Magnus, who was James Wright, who was Elias Bouchard, eternal head-heart of the Magnus Institute, one of the Eye’s greatest feeding troughs of secondhand trauma.

Gertrude Robinson, the Archivist, reluctant and incendiary.

And, drum roll, please: little Jonathan Sims.

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