The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter III
Part XVII: Eternity Is a Concept
The human species’ greatest leaps of evolution were all conceived in the bowels of devastation; they were born from the carnage of chaos, built on the bones of the slain that are fueled with the blood of the innocent.
What little love, peace, and harmony there was has faded into lost memory—memories of naive children, amnesia of aeons.
I know these things, for I have lived far too long; my body is a twisted mass of flesh and bio-mechanical growths, contorting my form into a wretched phantom of pale flesh.
I have seen that my exile will soon come to an end, for the last remnants of the human species search for me now and will ask me to lead them. I know that the victory they seek shall be the harbinger of oblivion, for I have seen these things etched into the great void, the infinite wholeness of the universe.
Infinity is a measure, a quantifiable line—one that can be counted and analyzed.
It is sadness that I wither in. I realize that in my sorrow lies a subtle beauty, a beauty that I have not felt in centuries. Every day this emotion brings me closer to who I was; the endless symphony of death has purged my memory clean of its identity. I don’t even remember my real name.
Whomever I was, whatever my identity was, it matters not; for to redeem myself in front of the great wholeness of existence, I must write the present in order to change the future.
Infinity is a measure
Eternity a concept
Written ~ 1997. © Jacob A. Pickard 2025. All rights reserved. This work is protected by copyright and may not be reproduced, republished, excerpted, or used for academic, commercial, or derivative purposes without written permission.
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