Ron Barker's: The Artist
(Translated from German)
13/09/1910
Dear Reader:
As I have said to myself and to many others before, I am nothing more than a simple artist living in Vienna. But something of extreme cosmic importance has happened to me. Why "Lilith" would choose me of all the people in the world (or the worlds if her words are to be believed) to stop this grand cataclysm from happening… I know not.
I must think that you, whoever you are, would put this letter down in disgust, be confused, or think that I am raving mad by now. If not now, you soon will be; but I must write this down to put my mind at ease no matter how illogical the truth of this matter is.
God! How tired I am! It seems like I have lived through many days and many events in the space of this single one. But I have to write this narrative down before I sleep because I do not trust this account to mere human memory.
I am also afraid of whatever dreams I might see.
As you read please remember that I am not insane, though insanity might have been a more preferable state of mind, or under some hallucinogen, though I wish that I could say that I only was. Please do not shun this as this letter (which I will file away to be opened and read after my death, or when that humanity as a whole can benefit from the knowledge contained within) may be the only true prophecy or vision from God in this day and age…
This morning, which was an eternity ago for me, was a usual one as far as breakfast in the poor working man's house that I live in. Even though I could faintly smell onions and burnt metal and even though I could just dimly hear the soft sound of warbling chimes- mark the scent and sound, they are significant… I think.
I had dressed and reached for the doorknob thinking of what I could paint for the art lovers of the Vienna streets, I mainly do landscapes. However, when I opened the door, my priorities shifted and my mind emptied of everything except for a deep shock and a blind, coursing terror that flowed through my entire body.
My shock was at first due to a nearly literal flood of orange miasma that rushed into my house along with varied articles of clothing- the likes of which I had never before seen.
Then the scent and sound that I have above mentioned intensified a thousand-fold, making my eyes and nose water with its repugnancy and making my body thrum in a wholly unpleasant fashion. They felt like the olfactory and auditory equivalent of bloated and rotten corpses lying in the street. (I was dimly aware that my apartment had disappeared from around me during this time.)
I was driven to my knees by my overwhelmed senses and the liquid swiftly rose from my chest to over my head- ending the assault upon my ears and nose. At first I had choked on the liquid, trying to keep the air in my lungs; but a quiet feminine voice said "Breathe" and I did. Surprisingly, I did not drown and the liquid felt right to breath, not easy or normal- just right.
After realizing that I would not drown in the fluid, I surfaced and looked around for the source of the voice.
But first I saw the world around me.
It was a bleak and blasted landscape bathed in reddish light. Hills and mountains near and distant were made of jagged and deeply fissured rock that looked like savage knives and fierce needles. A beach that was close by was made of fine red sand that threw up clouds of scouring dust in the strong wind. No life or clue of life could be seen anywhere- no plants or animals, absolutely no human life either.
The focal point of this desolate vista was a giant, nude, female figure adorned with wings and colored with the purest white cradling a black globe with red grid lines. I did not see her full, entire height, but her knees ended at the horizon line. I fully believe that that she was large enough to use the North Pole as her pillow while her feet rested on the South one.
However, she could not use either Pole as her body was tearing apart into a dozen bloody pieces. The black globe burst and covered her upward-raised belly and breasts with a shower of blood-colored liquid.
Huge, white, human-shaped figures posed as if they were crucified surrounded the disintegrating figure. They were not as big as the figure, but they were as big as the biggest buildings in our modern era. They had originated from high in the atmosphere and had slowly descended, petrifying and ossifying into a black substance that looked like coal.
"Who are you?" the quiet, girl's voice that had told me to breathe suddenly asked.
I gave my name as I turned around to face the speaker, astonished by what I saw.
I had been wrong when I had thought that the area was only lifeless rock. An army of pale, naked, blue-haired girls were floating above the liquid with smiles that were filled with many razor-sharp teeth that promised a messy and brutal death.
I nearly swam away, gibbering with fear for two reasons; they seemed ready to pounce on me and to eat me in some cannibals' communion, and they all were more identical than twins! I would even go far as to claim that they were all copies of the same girl!
The only reason I stayed was because of the copy in front: she was clothed in green and white, her face was neutral of any emotion, and she was holding the other copies of her back with one arm held high and straight away from the front of her body.
"Leave," she commanded, and all the nude versions of her slipped away into some invisible ether. Then she lowered her arm and stared at me with red colored eyes.
"Who are you?" I asked.
She replied cryptically with, "I am me."
"No," I said, "I mean, what is your name?"
"The name of the guise that I inhabit? Or do you mean the given name of my true form?"
"Who are you?" I reiterated.
"I am her," she said, pointing at the distant white figure, whose head was now falling into some distant orange sea, "I am Lilith…"
Lilith took me by the hand and we floated up out of that orange bay. We flew at an extraordinary height. The world changed under us- the desolate wasteland metamorphing into an impossible metropolis. Tall towers that scraped the sky and unfeasible minarets that tapered to the clouds at dizzying heights into forms that are not able to be built by today's advanced technology. Forests grew at rapid paces, surrounding the conurbation. Horseless carriages of types that I had never seen before screamed along arteries of paved road. I could easily imagine the carriage's occupants merely whistle contently at speeds that would make a modern man shriek with unbridled terror.
"This is the city that was called Tokyo-3," Lilith commented casually, as if musing about the weather, "You see it as it once was, when the world was whole and not driven into destruction during Third Impact."
"A third impact!" I cried, "What were the first two like?! And what with?"
I could hear the smirk and dripping sarcasm on Lilith's voice, "The first one is not important, it happened on this planet- as well as yours- many millennia ago."
"What do you mean?" I demanded.
She went on, heedless of my intrusion, "Only the last two are important… One you can stop the other you cannot. Let me show you the Second Impact."
Glaciers and snowdrifts scraped clean the city below us to create a valley of frozen splendor; icebergs rose out of the ocean and bobbed like the cubes in a rich man's glass.
I don't know how I knew, but I knew that Antarctica lay below me and the girl, Lilith, that carried me with her as she flew. There was one settlement of red huts that could only be comprised of scientists or explorers. There was a long strip of cleared ice that I knew had to be a landing strip for one of those flyers that those two American brothers (Wright, I presume) flew seven years ago. There also was a circle painted on top of one particularly level and sturdy patch of ice in green reflective paint- it had the English letter H in the center of it in reflective white. Even though the small huts were well beyond our technological grasp to make, they were partially demolished and looked like that they had been through an awfully hard battle complete with artillery rounds.
We landed on a ceiling beam of the largest building. We were looking down at various gadgets and technological marvels that seemed to be just like magic to me. A hot wind started to blow from behind us, melting the frost and making the metal of the building pop. Steam started to rise from the ice as the atmosphere's temperature started to shift.
A door-sized panel slid open with a pneumatic hiss, it revealed a bloody man in winter clothing (I do not need to say "of a type that I had never seen before" anymore, I am quite certain that I have seen the distant future- and thus everything is beyond my understanding) he was carrying what I had first thought were a bundle of rags, then I realized that it was a girl with jet-black hair that looked purple in the right light. Both were of mongoloid descent and I realized that he must be the father, for only a father would treat a girl with the gentility that he was showing to her.
A curved plate on top of a white cylinder that had rounded ends lifted and opened revealing a seat. The man laid his daughter in the seat and closed the hatch, and then he collapsed into death on top of the canister- spilling his life's blood onto it.
"I did not bring you here to see them," Lilith said, interrupting my observations, "I brought you to see the me of then and Adam. Now, come and see."
I turned and saw a man-dug hollow in the ice, in the center was a humanoid that was as large as the crucified creatures that I had seen earlier. This one was face down and only half-chiseled out of its icy confine.
A circle of ice started to glow red some ways away from the hollow, and it melted to reveal a similar sized being of white light! A black hole resided in the center of the body, and I had first thought that to be the creature's eye! But a closer inspection revealed that there were two eyes at where the "head" would have been- and they glowed like the coals of hell.
I think that it was Satan, called "ol' Adam splitfoot" by speakers of English. Lucifer was the angel of light once.
A horseless carriage, that seemed to have been manufactured only for the purpose of war, rolled forward to the glowing devil; in a long, forward-facing barrel a red, double-pronged instrument was loaded into it.
It was a self-propelled cannon, loaded with charge.
The charge fired in a vehement explosion of smoke, and the crimson shot hit "ol' Adam splitfoot" right in the black circle in the center.
The giant reeled backwards, as if taken with a sudden heart attack, and then regarded the lance sticking out of him with only a minor interest. It raised a hand to the cannon, and it exploded when a series of orange hexagons fashioned themselves in front of it.
The giant of light then walked to the being (who I think is Lilith) still encased in the ice. It reached out its hand to the caged being and touched it.
They detonated into a fiery and fearsome blast, the likes of which should not be created at any time. I screamed in fright and shielded my face with my arms in a futile attempt to protect myself. But I realized that there was no pain nor wind nor debris.
"That was the start of the decimation of this world," the smaller Lilith stated with a tinge of something, regret maybe? "The Katsuragi expedition contacted both Adam and me, and they all died for their sins, except for the blameless one."
"The girl," I stated, she did not appear to have been self-reliant yet.
"Yes," Lilith agreed, "and your world is the next one that this carnage will happen to."
END OF PAGE 1: TRANSLATED BY RON BARKER