Click Here for Part 1
Same content warnings as before; reader discretion is advised! Spoilers start immediately, so go read Part I if you haven't.
Thirty-seven Wanderlust employees committed suicide by jumping off of the halo and into the pit. The news coverage was massive, and countless conspiracies rode this wave into the mainstream. From then on, Wanderlust would face unrelenting public scrutiny, snowballing into a mild global panic. I hope you can see why my head was in a twist and why I was not the only one reeling from the shock of these events. By then, the pit wasn’t the only mega-project that Wanderlust was working on, and each one had its own horrifying history of shrouded mystery, deaths among leadership, and almost-super-natural events.
When the catholic church eventually cut all ties with Wanderlust, the impact was huge. They denounced our HQ as a demonic and perverse construction: an inverted tower of Babel that would bring God’s wrath down upon us. These words were taken literally by enough people to cause serious geopolitical problems.
Countries, which by this stage of global unity had become somewhat loose in their definitions, began to re-form their identities and express severe disapproval of Wanderlust. That’s when the next disaster took place: a severe meltdown of a nuclear power plant in Brazil killed hundreds. All Wanderlust employees, I should note. Some sources claimed that the meltdown destroyed a nearby facility conducting mysterious research. Others noted that many of the Wanderlust employees who died in the disaster were critical of the organization’s leadership. The narrative was clear. The people were asking: “Who will die in the next disaster? What are you hiding from us?” At the same time, stories poured in, like mine, of lost friends and family members. Then, there came stories about devils and creatures encountered in the darkness of the pit and across every region that Wanderlust had touched.
Employees had apparently started to see their dead peers in the dark corners of rooms, or in a section of the pit that escaped the halo’s sterile light. Patty told me that she saw Cindy. Her gaze was missing pupils and bloody tears streamed down her pale cheeks. Apparently, Cindy whispered to her. Something along the lines of, “You didn’t work hard enough. You aren’t strong enough,” and the one that devastated her, “It was your fault.” She felt an intense urge to get closer and make out the whispers, and to get a better look at her friend. Apparently, all of the apparitions would whisper things, though no one ever captured a recording. If you got close enough to the monsters, they could hurt you. They were prone to aggression and they had claws sufficient to tear flesh. Sometimes, they took their sweet time with their victims. On rare occasions, someone could be heard wailing in pain, whereupon swift intervention could save them. The prevailing advice among those who believed in these monsters was: “Stay away. They can’t leave whatever dark corner they’re in. Just don’t go into the dark.” Exposing them to light was apparently good enough to make them vanish, if only temporarily. The most insidious feature of these creatures, though, was that any exposure to their likeness (or their voice) would guarantee you future visits. Inevitably, the people who feared these… things… wouldn’t even rush to help someone given the chance to save them.
Some employees heard voices humming from the cores of major computer clusters, whispering their own sets of foreboding platitudes. “You’re next. It’s hopeless. I can see you.” I never met anyone from a supercomputer project, so I can’t relate their testimony directly. But, it is worth noting that every major incident along these lines involved multiple people who all claimed to hear the same thing. To boot, whenever it happened, some important server (always the one I needed access to) would go down at around the same time. That much, I can confirm. The public blamed this phenomenon as Wanderlust logistics began to tear at the seams, leaving large groups of people in newly-developed countries isolated from the rest of the world.
Here’s the worst one. One day, a major deep-space radio telescope received a noisy message which had been analyzed and verified by every major U.N. specialist. It said: “Stare into the abyss. Don’t blink.” This one actually got to me. For the first time in human history, there was apparently a chance that we were not alone in the darkness of space. It was terrifying, however, that this news came with such a mysterious message.
Around that time, it became clear that something dark was happening. Had Wanderlust opened us up to some great, cosmic evil? Had they unleashed some malevolent spirit from the pit? Were they working with it, or against it? Were any of the world-ending conspiracies true? Was Wanderlust ready to kill everyone on Earth? As we took it all in, we remembered those mysterious leadership meetings. We remembered the missing people and the suicides. Many of us started to leave Wanderlust and struggled to find any other jobs, just to come crawling back.
Conversations about the world-ending potential of almost every significant Wanderlust project became regular. Depression about the state of the world had never been worse. Why did Wanderlust need a nuclear arsenal? Who stole a sample of the mutant super-bacteria? Why were we letting global warming accelerate unchecked? Why did the church condemn Wanderlust, and why, oh why, did they insist that the end-times were nigh just as Wanderlust prepared to launch its myriad of satellite projects? The idea that the Sun might explode, that satellites might be pointing some sort of weapon down on us, all of it, seemed biblical in scale and in imagery.
I wish I could tell you every detail, but I really don’t know everything that happened. One day, the catholic church leadership committed mass suicide. Even knowing what I know now, that’s pretty hard to explain. Many people followed in their footsteps, hoping to find salvation from the chaos of this world. Some nations soon cut ties with Wanderlust altogether. These countries weren’t self-reliant anymore, so they suffered the consequences. People went hungry, and people died… most often by their own hands.
Nothing up until that point was more horrific than the self-perpetuating chain of mass suicides that started in Italy and spread across the globe. With each loss, more losses came. It might be hard to understand why so many people chose to die, but put yourself in their shoes. What was there to look forward to? Death by plague? Death by hellfire? Starvation? Your best friend just killed themselves, and you’re haunted by their ghost. Maybe instead of your friend, it was your mother. Maybe it was your son. Your computer is telling you it’s your fault. The expanse of space, the universe itself, is taunting you. You want to know why this is happening, why you’re suffering so much, but the truth is apparently so horrific that everyone who learns about it chooses to die, like Marcus. Soon enough, you will be dead by one Wanderlust project or another. There is no room for dreams, hopes, or aspirations. Everything you love will die. I ask you: what was the point of going on? To eat someone else’s already-scarce food? To spread a disease? Every possible perspective confirmed that you were a burden. I, for one, understand why so many people chose to die.
At some point, Patty couldn’t handle it. I thought that, with the birth of our daughter, she would find some happiness in this world. My best guess is that postpartum depression had other plans. There’s also the fact that, if she really did see Cindy, or whatever was pretending to be Cindy that night, she probably didn’t want to risk me, or our daughter, encountering her too. Whatever the case, she didn’t warn me. She didn’t need to warn her parents; they had already made the same choice. I found her in a dark corner; I’d rather not describe the rest of the scene. She didn’t leave anything behind. At least, not anything special that I could find. At some point, she’d circled a poem in a Phillip Larkin collection which I think explained her motivation quite well: “Man hands on misery to man. / It deepens like a coastal shelf. / Get out as early as you can, / And don’t have any kids yourself.”
Oh, I considered it. Especially given my history. On the one hand, I promised Marcus I would persevere in the face of uncertainty. On the other hand, I lost Patty. On the one hand, Patty loved this world, and she’d want me to see its beauty. On the other hand, we would all die soon, and everyone (including myself) started to believe it. At the end of the day, there was my daughter. I held her in my hands and felt the need to make the most of whatever time we had left together.
I left that infernal pit behind, and brought her back to my hometown. When I disconnected from the misery of the world, the fear of impending doom almost vanished. That was, until they announced that Wanderlust HQ was complete. The pit had been filled with whatever was meant to fill it: a giant complex full of machinery spanning seven hundred square kilometers and running several kilometers deep. A date was set for its activation, which many assumed to be the last day for mankind. I had to do something; no good man could sit by and let whatever Wanderlust was planning just… happen.
News sources all around the world displayed a new message from the radio telescope array, from whatever forces were mocking us out in the darkness of space. Again, it read: “Don’t blink.” My eyes were wide open. I was no stranger to fear, suffering, or regret. I had to do something about this, if not for myself then for the people I had lost!
Unfortunately, my hero’s journey seemed to end just as fast as it began. What was I thinking? I had no way to get to Egypt, to get to HQ, or to do anything about the impending doomsday. As I thought about what I would do, I saw that increasingly many people couldn’t handle the countdown. People were leaving this world faster than anyone could count. I sat with my daughter one evening, in my otherwise empty childhood home, watching her precious face as she slept in her crib. The room was quiet and dark. Then, I heard a whisper from the corner.
“Hello, my old friend.”
As terrified as that night in the pit, I spun my head around and instinctively stood between the source of the sound and my daughter. Something was there. Someone was there. It wasn’t Marcus. For a moment I thought it was Patty, but it wasn’t. It was Destin. He was echoing back my shout from the pit, all those years ago.
“It was your fault,” he said as he stepped toward me. I grew terrified of his advance. The room was dark! The whole room was dark! If the stories were true, and he could hurt me, but only if I stepped into the darkness… well then I was fucked. The whole room was dark! I had to turn on the lights. That was the only way to get rid of him. As I made a motion toward the light switch, I realized it was on the wall behind me, on the other side of my daughter’s crib. If I ran for the lights, I would be putting her between myself and the creature. I would rather take my chances with the apparition, so I stood my ground.
It continued to speak, its voice echoing gently, “You put your problems on me. You taught me to suffer. You showed me that everything was meaningless.”
Through a dry throat, I barely squeezed out a response. “I’m sorry…”
“Now I will take what is meaningful to you.”
Just then, a beam of light streamed in through the window and swept across the room, instantly vaporizing the shadow of Destin. Then, the light turned off. The whole process didn’t make a single sound; he just vanished. I stood there, hyperventilating and wondering what had just happened. I paid no mind to where that light could have come from until my contemplation was interrupted by a knock on my front door. This scared me twice as much as the apparition. With no other choice, I turned on the light in my daughter’s room. She thankfully stayed sound asleep. I left her to carefully answer the visitor at my door. It was Destin’s mother.
“Hello, dear,” she said, in an old, raspy voice. “I hope I’m not interrupting your night.”
“Mrs. M!” I said, astonished to see her after so many years.
“Oh, I am, aren’t I?”
I looked out the door behind her to see the car she had arrived in. “The headlights,” I thought to myself, realizing what had happened. “Oh absolutely not, ma’am. Please, come in!”
“I don’t think that will be necessary, dear.”
“I insist.”
“I just wanted to check on you-”
“I appreciate it, Mrs. M-”
She must not have heard my response, since she interrupted me by continuing on her pre-programmed rant, by saying “-what with all the things going on these days. I’m reminded of my son. He was your good friend, do you remember?”
“I remember Destin, ma’am.” I didn’t dare to tell her that I had spoken to him just minutes earlier.
“So many people are ending up like my poor son. You don’t know how happy I am to see you alive and well, dear.”
“Alive and well, and better with your support.” I was actually only alive and well thanks to her headlights, but that’s beside the point.
“You were always there for Destin when he needed you most. He would always tell me how much your friendship meant to him.”
“He did?” This was news to me. How did I not remember this? Why did I believe that it was my fault Destin was ever miserable in the first place?
“He did. I wanted to thank you again for everything you did for him, hanging in there no matter how hard it was to smile around Destin sometimes. And to let you know that you always have me, if you need an old coot for whatever reason.”
“Oh, thank you!”
“Well, I just wanted to see you again. Hang in there. You were always good. You always looked out for people. Thank you. I’ll stop by to see you in a few weeks!”
Would she stop by to see me? The end was supposed to be in just over a week’s time. Clearly, she either didn’t know about the news or didn’t care. I recognized that same kernel of optimism in her voice from that phone call years ago. If she had hope after her son died, and she had hope now, she would probably never be hopeless.
“Wait, Mrs. M!”
She turned to look at me. She didn’t ask what I needed. She just looked at me as if to say, “Go ahead and ask, dear.”
“How do you know I’ll be here in a few weeks? How do you know you’ll be here in a few weeks?”
“I have faith, dear.”
“You know what’s coming.”
“We never know what’s coming.”
“The world is going to end. Why keep going?”
“Just because.”
So maybe I couldn’t make it to Egypt and blow up a giant world-ending device. My act of defiance would have to be in staying put, refusing to give up, and in bringing as many people as I could with me, through life, until the end. I would be there for everyone I could find. For Destin, Marcus, Patty, Destin’s mother, my daughter, myself, and for everyone else.
Unlike the night after Marcus died, I clearly remember the day I learned what Wanderlust’s plan was. The people who, like myself, were ready to wait it out, who would do anything for just another day of life and one more second with their daughter… they waited with anticipation and dread. But also, with hope. The Sun really was dimmer that day. The wheat fields in our farm-town wore a dark yellow. The mountains wore their usual blue outline against white clouds. The creek was black. The world was quiet because, after so much time awaiting the end, everyone who couldn’t handle the pressure had killed themselves. There were only hopeful people left behind, and among them were the employees of Wanderlust working away.
I was eating a bowl of raspberries, holding my daughter as the Sun began to set. Through the clear and warm, quiet and comforting, dry and desolate sunset sky, a piercing sound rang out. A trumpet… well, it was an air raid siren. A haunting air-raid siren. I held my daughter, I closed my eyes, and I waited. And I waited. As my daughter cried out in my hands, terrified by the noise which seemed to be as big as the world, my phone chirped. Five minutes into the end of the world, my cell-phone chirped again. Ten minutes in, it chirped again. Fifteen minutes in, the trumpet was silent. My phone chirped again. I relented, and picked it up. The statement that Wanderlust put out was brief:
“You stared into the abyss. When it stared back, you did not blink. Humanity has been raptured. Those who remain value life. Those who remain love life. Now, live life.”
In a perverse way, I was privileged to see Marcus’ body that night in the pit. The memory which I had shut out of my mind for years finally came back to me just then. It was bloody and it was real. It was not supernatural. It was terrifying, but not incomprehensible or otherworldly. It was my clue to uncover the truth:
This was all a set-up. Wanderlust started the chain of events and the world just ran with it. The halo and the pit were ominous by construction. There was no virus. Blowing up the Sun is impossible. Devils and monsters only exist if you truly believe that they do. Cosmic horrors aren’t sending us ominous radio messages. It was just us, people, all along. Every so-called Wanderlust ‘disaster’ was suffered only by Wanderlust volunteers, at least until terror and existential dread set in and people started taking their own lives. It was scary. It seemed like everyone who learned what Wanderlust was truly up to just… up and killed themselves. That’s because they did. Marcus killed himself for their cause because he believed, with absolute conviction, in the goodness of the Wanderlust mission. It is what Wanderlust needed him to do. Their goal was as follows:
“The United Nation of Earth have made it our immediate and ultimate goal to eliminate human suffering, bring about peace, unity, and happiness.”
Now allow me to translate for you:
“The universe is cold and unfeeling. Our place in it is meaningless. We will despair over these facts and we will die. That is, unless we do something about it. Some people, when faced with inevitable death, meaninglessness, and doom, take the ‘easy way out’. There is nothing ‘easy’ about it. This human tendency for suffering and surrender must be weeded out once and for all. Every human who was willing to die has died. Everyone who is left, they say, is capable of facing absolute despair and moving forward with their head held high and with hope in their hearts. Everyone left behind is thankful to be alive. Everyone left behind has anything they could ever want; now they see that they are in paradise. Life is heaven.”
In my opinion, the ones we lost are the ones who were left behind; the people here on Earth are the ones who got raptured. So long as you are reading this, you are alive. And if you are alive, you are in heaven. This universe is beautiful and more beautiful with you in it. If you stare into the abyss, it might stare back. When faced with your indomitable spirit, the devil himself will flinch. You only need to live. Just live. If you live, you will see: there is always ‘good’ to be done and ‘beauty’ to be seen.
Today, in 2096, with an ‘enlightened populace’ and enough resources left behind for everyone on Earth (all eight billion of us who are left), the true ‘golden age of humanity’ can begin. Wanderlust committed no genocide. They eradicated a whole portion of humanity, but Wanderlust themselves did not have to kill a single person. Thinking back, there was no other way to do it. If they had asked everyone, “Do you want to live? Would you fight for your life in the face of despair,” well who wouldn’t say ‘yes’? They simultaneously found and erased everyone who, through their actions, answered ‘no’.
The employees in Wanderlust who gave their lives for this cause gave their lives freely. They simply started the chain of events. After that, everyone else who died also did so by choice. Wanderlust didn’t lie, except by omission of the truth. They didn’t clear up the conspiracies, they didn’t tell us the stories behind the disasters, behind the messages, behind the apocalypse. They didn’t stop nations from leaving them before devolving into chaos. They actually did very little that you could call ‘evil’ on the surface.
The Wanderlust project was the first and most important display of humanity’s dominance over the horrors of the universe that dwell within our minds. The great fear is not that we will find some incomprehensible horror deep in the ground or deep in the darkness of space. The true fear is that the real horror is actually quite comprehensible. Despair sits within us; we are alone, nothing matters, everything ends. Wanderlust sought to liberate us from this hell. They brought heaven to Earth by convincing the devil himself, the very suffering in mankind, to surrender. The perverse fact remains that Wanderlust delivered on their promised deliverance, cleansed man through fire, and washed away our iniquity; they slipped the surly bonds of despair and sculpted a face for God. Now, the universe was carved in the likeness of man.
So, how did they do it? Not by letting anyone die! No! Only by the silent, internal victories of every human who kept going, who stared into the abyss and didn’t blink, did we prevail!
Patty had circled a portion of Phillip Larkin’s This Be The Verse before she took her own life. Smart as she was, she didn’t realize that the poem was mocking her, rather than agreeing with her. Here is a poem that you might find more straightforward. As you explore the depths of the human psyche, driven by wanderlust, remember that the truth is not incomprehensible or Lovecraftian. It’s simple: Simple Raymond Carver A break in the clouds. The blue outline of the mountains. Dark yellow of the fields. Black river. What am I doing here, lonely and filled with remorse? I go on casually eating from the bowl of raspberries. If I were dead, I remind myself, I wouldn’t be eating them. It’s not so simple. It is that simple.
