The Long Dark Night
What you need to know about your world but should be too scared to ask
We live in an Age of Information, of knowledge gained and shared at the speed of light, in a time when medical science borders on the very powers of God. We live in sprawling cities constructed with steel, ceramic, plastic, concrete, where electricity and water and gas are the blood in their veins, where traffic chokes their arteries and pollution wraps them in its smothering shroud. We build gleaming illuminated jewels that touch the sky, and set them all within a dull crown made of desolate urban decay and human misery. We employ high speed computers and miniaturized electronics to placate and barricade our mind, our heart, our spirit, and our soul.
Our world is completely media driven.
The entertainment systems tell us what to do; TV, radio, video. They are the new gods that the masses pray to, tithing diligently in order to deluge ourselves in any subject possibly desired at any time that we desire it. We live in a comfortable world, where misery can be removed with a simple press of a button, where illness can be cured with a pill, where money really can buy happiness, if only for a short time.
All of this illusion does not change the fact that there still exists a great deal of strange and undisclosed phenomenon in our world. Strange phenomenon that is always beyond reason, science, or even logic's ability to explain. Strange phenomenon that exists at the fringe of our perception, where we can bring it closer with a well placed question, or push it farther away with a indifferent shrug. People have been reduced to masses of sheep, blindly guided by the various media in what to think, what to believe, and how to act. Individual action and individual morals have all been removed except for scant traces found on the fringe of society, the free thinkers that are outlawed by those who hold the reigns of society. Morality changes almost on a daily basis. What is completely wrong today may be perfectly acceptable tomorrow, depending on which media player is caught, and what the stakes are in the gamble. The ends truly justify the means. Money can buy justice, which is often not only blind, but deaf and crippled as well. The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many. History is rewritten whenever it is convenient. And the sheep go blindly into the long, dark night, oblivious of their fate and their true destiny...
The strange phenomenon permeates every aspect of our culture with an aggressive invasiveness that is always, always shrouded in secrecy, always at the fringe, always in the shadows, waiting for the helpless or the unwary, the reckless or the abandoned, waiting to pounce. It feeds on those which society has forgotten, those who won't be missed. The uneducated, the homeless, the destitute, the mentally ill, the maligned. The average man or woman never sees the Truth because they frantically cling to any semblance of order that they can, to any tiny bit of happiness that comes their way. The average man and woman breaks their back and sells their soul all in order to blind themselves with their desires and their pleasures, to blind themselves to the real world and what goes on behind closed doors. Blinding themselves because the Truth is too painful, the knowledge too costly to endure, for the Truth is that there is a world of darkness out there, a world that exists just around the corner, in the dark alleys, in your next door neighbor's locked basement late at night, and even in the crowded smoke filled restaurant booth next to you and your precious family. It is a strange evil that knows not the bounds that we know, or are forced to abide by. It knows not time, or space, or compassion, or mercy or love or logic or morality. These are human concepts. It is driven by cold, inhuman parameters totally alien to our understanding, it touches everything, eventually, spoiling all it taints, and it takes what it will whenever it desires.
Your government is powerless to stop it, as are your churches and your leaders and your military. The dark deal was struck long ago, and those who signed your lives away were tricked by their own greed. Now even they, those who know the real story, are powerless to protect you. They are powerless to protect even themselves, and they know it. They are scared, terrified, of what you will do if you ever find out the Truth. The status quo must be preserved at all costs, even if that is the forfeiture of innocent human life for one more minute of power, one more day of perceived control, one more small amount of time, for the illusion that there might be hope, that there might be a chance that there will be a human tomorrow.
The world that you now perceive is nothing more than a sugar coated topping. There is another world, a much darker world, that lies waiting underneath. It is a strange world of evil, very much undeniably real and wholly tangible, dark and cold, to the barest touch. It is a world of secrets, dark desires, inhuman misery, forbidden knowledge, clandestine cover-ups, and lies so bold, they are presented in public for all the sheep to bear witness. It is a world where nothing is as it appears, where no one is a friend and enemies are your only companions. It is a world of shadows and dim light, of treachery that knows no bounds, of deceit in volume, of danger beyond expectation, and of dark desires made fruition at whim regardless of the cost and misery. It is a cold, barren place not of our making but built by design for our lonely, pitiful destiny.
It is there, if you only open your eyes to see it and are brave enough to stand before it in defiance. It is a world of cold alien evil, and in this world, there are dark, strange things that run wild. Do not go quietly into the long, dark night.