Martyr of Theophany

“The fact is that you’re surrounded by God and you don’t see God, because you ‘know’ about God. The final barrier to the vision of God is your God concept. You miss God because you think you know”.

— Anthony de Mello

Contrary to the experience with Ignatius, connecting to the database didn’t bring me to a virtual reality. Instead, I entered a sort of augmented reality, where most of my body is asleep but my eyes are open. I see a basic UI overlapping the real world, showing me the structure of the database and of the memory drive. Along the UI, a green mist surrounds me and with it comes my last obstacle.

As the room around me fills with a green mist that chaotically flows and flows, I struggle to keep my mind my own. The mist passes through me, quickly bringing sensations, images and ideas directly to my mind. I struggle to keep focus on the task at hand as I start to feel my body, mind and emotions dissolving into the green mist. Then, I sense both an incredible kindness and anger filling me in equal measure. Those strong emotions bring me back to my senses and I realize where they come from. From the green hue of the mist materializes a giant version of Amaterasu’s body, measuring over 50 meters tall. As she moves the space of the room gets distorted to allow her to fit in. It is trying to grab me but Ignatius and countless people clothed in black materialized from the mist and stopped her by stabbing Amaterasu with long silver lances. As I process the image in front of me I realize that another entity came alongside them. It looks like branches and roots made out of dim fuchsia light that slowly but steadily grows. It is surrounding the floor, walls and any other object it reaches to; when doing so, it distorts its shapes into non-euclidean shapes. This scene in front of me overwhelms me completely until I hear Ignatius' voice saying “I’ll take care of them, you can focus on the rest”. His message brings me back to my senses and I execute the program.

To maintain my sanity and sense of self in this world that melts and distorts around me, I’m keeping my sight on the security card I left on the ground in front of me. I need something real that I can understand, that doesn’t distract me and that reminds me of why I’m doing all of this. With my brain working as the processor for the program formatting all the information of the day, I only need to use the little extra brain power I have left into this. The few moments that I’ve been distracted, the process has slowed down and weird stuff happened to me. For example, seeing my arms melting only to grow from the floor in pairs and doing prayer poses, all of which hasn't been reversed.

Initially I felt like my mind was dissolving into the millions of data flowing through me, but by now I’ve gotten more used to it and don’t have that much problem keeping my mind together. Still, I can feel how my personality is changing at a rapid pace, somewhat like gaining experience from aging but without living those experiences. I’m afraid I might lose myself, turning into something or someone else if the emotions created by these foreign memories take control of me.

I feel tired, incredibly so if I’m being honest. This level of effort won’t only affect my mind state but also my body, after all I couldn’t do any of this without it. By the way, I’m not sure what exactly is happening to my body but my field of view has been dismissed. Also, I can feel a warm sensation under my nose, turning colder as it descends to my chin. Some damage must have come to me, be it from the mental stress or me just falling to the ground from my sitting position.

Almost there, the amount of info left to process is less than one fifth of the total. Now the surprise I added to the formatting process should start taking effect. As I deleted data I was also editing the current mental state of all 3 GMs so they became dazed. I need them to not overreact once they notice me after finally having forgotten everything else. Worst case scenario, they freak out like at the start of all of this and fry my brain. Best case scenario, they leave me in a comma by prodding into my mind the three of them at the same time. In any case I would not be able to finish my mission and the likelihood of going back to the same problem remains high.

There we are, Amaterasu has finally stayed still while Ignatius and his army have all lowered their weapons and are looking into the horizon. Valentinus for his part has stopped expanding, although the distortions in the space that he caused haven’t been reversed. Not only do they not move, but their thoughts which I could sense from the beginning have finally subsided. Although, the fact that they have subsided and not disappeared worries me a little. From time to time they react to the emotions in my mind that were born from their memories. It’s like they yearn for those memories, like it's a part of them that feels a hole that cannot be hidden.

Now that I think about it It isn’t only them but also I who feels different whenever our thoughts intersect. I feel like how I perceive the world is now so defined by them that it would be unnatural and incomplete to go back as I was before. My mind has gotten used to seeing all perspectives of a situation at the same time, living as the perpetrator and victim of a crime or as the groom and the bride. In comparison it feels like I was in a small windowless white room before, and now getting it all is like coming to an infinite jungle filled with colors, shapes and sounds. It isn’t like it is necessarily better but rather that it is my new reality and that going back isn’t an option.

It is done, it is done… but we aren’t done.