6

From Jeremy, going as follows:

I’m watching her die as she stands over me. She catches fire and melts away into nothingness. I know she’s dead because she’s not inside of me any longer. 

I’m running. It’s impossible to navigate through this forest of televisions. The sky is static, the ground is shaking. I can feel pieces of it breaking apart and changing. The atmosphere isn’t crackling with energy any more- now it’s splintering. Everything’s on fire.

I keep running for two hours. My legs are numb but I’ve learned to ignore pain. Once I’m out of the forest, it’s nothing but horizon and hardwood in all directions.

Then, in the distance, I see a door. I run for it, and once I’m inside, I watch from the doorway. Everything is shifting, and it’s making me sick. The entire Domain is coming alive.

I run deep into the City, and I only stop when I see another person. My legs and back are bleeding, badly.

She’s a nice girl. I never think to ask her name, and we wander for a while until we see a camp, of sorts. It’s a massive neighborhood, full of houses.

Weeks pass. She and I are living together. I learn that her name is Heidi. We’re in love, and my wounds are almost healed.

An offer comes into our settlement. There are others, apparently. They want anyone with the ability to write down an account of what happened to them, or words of advice to those who will follow, or their thoughts on their life.

There’s not much to say, but I take up a pen and fulfill this little duty. There’s very little to do, nowadays.

We can’t outsit eternity, obviously. Some people believe that the City will be taken out in one fell swoop, but I’d say the decay is slower, and more natural.

What happened to the Domains is probably happening here- everything may be twisting out of shape right in front of our eyes. How would we know? I think it’s of far more importance for us to focus on what happened. The future is, especially now, an unknown quantity.

I know that there is a Fear which people say has the ability to wipe out other Fears, and pieces of existence. But I also understand that it can destroy these things retroactively, which raises the question of how people can remember. It also raises the question of what the Domains are doing.

I would not call this a great act destruction. It’s more of a metamorphosis. There’s something else, bigger than the Fears, which seems to be stirring.

I’m unaware of anything that would fit that description, but I certainly hope that you, dear reader, don’t share it.

And while I could continue to write and bore you with the stories of a doomed man, I think I’ll end this letter here.

5

Oh, wonder of wonders- haiku. Anonymously written, and by someone with a poor grasp of the form. They go as follows:

Whispering sundown

Cracking ice and timeless journeys

Love impermanence

The gods ruled the earth

All of it is dust today

Their skulls litter it

Long fallen from grace

Into a starlit meadow

Their Judgment Day came

How old is a world?

Is it measured in decades

Or is it lifetimes?

Blood runs the gutters

Death passes through the kingdom

It weighs on my heart

Vistas of beauty

We see worlds made of hatred

And terrible wonder

4

This one is from Michael. It goes as follows:

If you all are safe, and everything is nice, don’t let it turn into fighting. There must be a thousand people here, but we’re all scattered. There are factions, criminals, and a couple of Them still running around.

Mostly it’s servants. This place is getting too old and tired to bite. But I was on the run from one of them that still exists.

The name they gave it is stupid, and I’m not going to use it. But it’s been after me for a year. I had heard of Jack, and I’d been looking for him for months, and now I can finally talk to him.

And he’s useless. He’s changed his name, too, but it’s also stupid.

All of this is stupid. We have people who want to die in a frenzied orgy, ones who want to kill everyone, and ones who think that we could actually live here. Worse, we have people who want to bring Them BACK, and people who want to kill everyone.

Barely anyone cares that some of Them are still out there, and that some of us are still in danger. I’m still Running.

The world’s ended, everything’s dead, no one I know will ever be able to reach me and I’m STILL RUNNING. I’m writing this for all the people who are like me. Don’t ignore them, and don’t start killing each other.

I’m going insane over here. I’m going to hold onto this and write some more later.

Alright, it’s later. I don’t know if it’s nighttime or not because I’m in an underground section. It doesn’t matter. I can’t sleep any more, and neither can anyone else. Maybe someone else has written that down, but I bet they’ve hardly noticed. And they’re probably trying to sugar coat all of this so you don’t kill yourselves when it happens to you.

No one can sleep because some of Them are dead. I don’t know how it works, and I don’t want to.

I don’t think I’m going to live long enough to get this letter to another person. I just feel like it’s all over. The game’s played out. I know that it’s coming for me for the last time.

I can feel it on the surface, waiting for me. There are some stairs nearby that should bring me up there.

We all have to face death. Sooner or later.

[Note: This is Carol. This letter was left on my doorstep. None of us have seen its writer in days. We fear he didn’t make it.]

11

I’ve been flipping through these at a leisurely pace and I’ve just come across a rather thick one from Lucy. These notes are very extensive-she may even have been onto something- but I’m afraid I can’t share them with you. It wouldn’t do to clutter the market on these things. The agreements I’ve made don’t require me to show you everything- good news for myself and my employer- and so the parts I’ll let you see go as follows:

My name is Lucy Grant. I have been working for the past month on providing a stable existence for humanity. This task is doomed to failure, but hopefully it will be of use to you.

The Fears should be constant across universes if the universes are inhabited by the same basic population. Therefore, if you can read this, you may be the target of a similar predicament.

The cause of recent events is not my concern, but I have been working on cataloging the remaining Fears. If your universe has an Archive, please forward the attached information to them.

I have attached descriptions of all surviving Fears. Because it is clear that the Earth is tied somehow to the existence of Fears, I have also done work on creating Fears. Despite several setbacks, I am close to a complete process. However, it will not be finished before the City has been destroyed completely, let alone before this letter is called to be finished.

Hopefully you will be able to improve on my work.

3

This one’s written by Samuel, and goes as follows:

I used to be hunted by the Convocation. They tracked me, wherever I tried to hide. Even in the wintertime, they’d sit in the empty trees and wait for me to come out.

There are a lot of victims here. All of us are aware of the Fears, or whatever we’re calling them now. I know some of them saw it happening, but I wasn’t there to see the Birdemic disappear.

There are a lot of us here, and barely any of us are participating. I’m pretty sure a lot of people don’t even want to be mentioned here. I’m going to explain what happened, in case someone who understands better doesn’t write one of these things.

Most of the Fears are dead, and the rest are dying. The people who watched it happen all say different things, but it wasn’t the Quiet. I don’t know how, but it seems dead, too.

The whole universe seems a lot weaker, now. Some of us are trying to take advantage of that and see if we can get a message across.

You’d think that a world without Fears would be nice. But the world needs them to exist. Once they were gone, everything fell apart, immediately.

I’ll let Professor Maxwell share his theories with you. I know he’s already sent in his letter. From what I hear, there isn’t much time, so I hope this isn’t too late.

Closing thoughts: If this happens to you, you’ll want to run. Don’t. Just head for whatever you think is safe ground. I don’t know if you have the same Fears over there, but if there are any newer ones, ones which seem to be created, they should last longer.

And don’t try to enter any dead domains.