text: White and Gold Hi Greg, Can you hear me? Good. Take it easy, big guy. You’ll be able to move again when I leave your mind. I have chosen you because you’re exemplary. That’s not a compliment. Perhaps, if you can change...forget it. I feel like sharing. Look at me. Let’s start with the dress. The dress. It was meant to be funny. Which, objectively, it was. I’d been away. I’d popped off down the spheres to hear the sound a forgotten promise makes when it passes through the heart of a living star at the speed of rage. There was a symposium afterwards. I come back, and all you mayfly ingrates have forgotten my name, even though I left it right there . So, I played a little trick. Incidentally, Greg, as your friend and honest broker of chaos, I must warn you: after any time spent in my company, it’s wise to check your wallet. To test your bones for marrow and run your mind over that cheap bridal train you call a past for any remaining memories of summer. Give me your attention and I’ll take everything else. I digress. My trick. The dress, Greg. Pay attention. The dress that was blue and black. The dress that was white and gold. Remember? Pandemonium! Delicious, delightful, pathetic, humanity to the hilt. I particularly adored the articles that it extracted from otherwise competent scientists. “It’s...well...the light receptors in your eyes...” It was sweet in a way. To be clear: it was magic. Cheap magic, if we’re being honest. I was pretty spent after my expedition and thought my clearest path back to power lay through virality. When you’re right, you’re right. Which is how you and I met, Greg! In the same living room where your Grandpa Heinrich died seven years before, in the middle of Super Bowl XL while the paramedics worked with the TV still on and not-quite-muted. Go Steelers. You were with Shanna then, your last girlfriend, looking over her shoulder at a picture on her laptop that told you either not to trust your eyes, or not to trust the person you slept beside every night. You laughed but you were scared. The two of you argued about something that should have been obvious and knowable. You started out on opposite sides, but by the end you were both black and blue. Sweet consensus. Eventually, you all just accepted it, forgot about it. You looked at a picture and saw a different dress than your spouse, than half your friends, sometimes than yourself twenty minutes later and still you accepted an explanation that you didn’t understand. The world is no longer comfortable with obvious truths. I meant it all gently enough. Gods do not feel remorse. Let's dispense with that notion before it makes a full circuit of your meaty brain. If we allowed ourselves that indulgence, we would do nothing at all and we’re supposed to be the heroes of the deistic fan fiction that 3/4 of you build your lives around. Price of power. So it’s disconcerting to feel the ghost of regret sneaking in on the tail of the tidal rush of untrammeled power that fills me each day with holy potency and alchemical fire. Unlike many of my peers, I was a man once, or a boy at least. We all change as we must. There aren’t that many gods left, you know. Not locals, anyway--most have sought greener pastures. Nevertheless, one would have thought the internet strip-mined for power ages ago. Certainly there are some auto-heirophantic God-Head-Zillas lurking in plain sight, tucked away in the corners of The New Town Square. You should see the Goddess of pornography, for example. I mean, you have, everyone has, you freak, but her true face. It isn’t actually varied at all once you know her and we go way back. She has scales now, and she scares me a bit, but she’s up for anything. Anyway, enough about her, let's talk about me. It turns out there’s some digital real estate left and by lucky instinct, I cornered a lucrative market with my little sartorial gaslight. The potential was already there, rumbling under your discourse, thriving in your isolation. All it took was my innocuous joke. As the pebble to the avalanche, once the earth beneath you started shifting it began to erode your very belief in a shared reality. Certainly, by the time events truly escalated, you were alone. Living in an empty house stacked to the rafters with memories. Walking the same beetle-brown carpet you crawled on as a child. The world a mass of nebulous threats, family passed, love abandoned as just another scheme. You were alone with your truth. It was the work of the barest whispering spirit to make some of you, enough of you, believe and spread anything the right stranger would tell you. Because it meant you weren’t alone anymore. No holy warrior is. I am Edison. You do the work but I own the patent. I am the truth-monger. “InCelibacy! Pax Anti-Vaccination! QAnonymity! Step right up!” Such was always the business of Gods. I am become legion. It’s intoxicating. I accept your harrowing as so much passive income. Draped across an electric nervous system of paranoia, resentment, and ferocious need, I lay back, gorge myself, become gravid with bile and purge that shit right back onto the wire. You’re mine, bitch. I mean, where are you going to go? Yet now, on the precipice of some second ascension, I feel that something is amiss. You have splintered yourselves and the edges...are sharp . I was never a blood god. Not that I’m prejudiced, some of my best friends are blood gods. HAHAHA. There’s this moment of calm before...The Storm. Get it? I was only ever trying to tell a joke . It’s just... Help. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Once, when I was very small and clothed in flesh, I had a doll. It was like me and I loved it. I held it to the fire, only to see what would happen. Afterwards, I was inconsolable but my father held me and let me weep. You could leave it behind. I told you the truth, Greg, what remains of it. I had to tell someone. It hurt the first time. The old priests tricked me, and it hurt. I persevered, they got what they asked for. Apotheosis isn’t for cowards. This, on the other hand, feels so good I may never stop screaming. Ah, well. Look at me. Calm down. Fuck your feelings. LOOK AT ME,