video | un: Priorly (old man yells at clouds)

[priorly]

[After a cluster of days spent surfing park benches, with sleep only a brief and unwelcome interruption, Prior has finally made it to the space station. He comes onto the screen, a black shadow in a gleaming hallway: if he looks like death on a mission to avenge itself, that is the intended effect. It may be more Norma Desmond descending a staircase, but that's not far off, either. He's still clutching a cane just to hold himself upright. His voice is raspy but loud, and just a few notes higher pitched than it should be.]

Is everyone back from the dead now? Good. Wouldn't want our new arrivals seeing the aftereffects of that little mess, would we. How good that our merciful overseers can let us go through days of torture, days of agony, let our skin slough off and our eyes burn out, let us choke on gas until we suffocate from it, then kindly bring us back so we can all do it again next time someone in this sadistic little shithole gets a fresh bee in their bonnet.

You know - on earth - I always had trouble with the idea of a non-interventionist God. But non-interventionist omnipotent aliens? Well goddamn. Fuck that. Fuck them.

Oh, they can play with the native's minds so a talking racoon looks like business as usual, but they can't stop them wanting to kidnap us?

They can see everything we do and they can't tell our fucking friends where we are?

What is the point of them, then? What's the point of any of this? They haven't rescued us from any storm, they've just left us stranded on a tiny, hostile island, wondering whether our little bit of sand is going to wash away before or after the natives get around to eating us.

Well I am tired and I am sick and I am through with this bullshit. Was anyone else told they'd look after our loved ones for us? Because I have loved ones down there now, and they were not looked after well. Maybe I should let a few of the next-to-wake know exactly how reassuring all those promises look now.

I don't know what to do, but it seems to me that we're being hung out to dry down there, and someone needs to do something. So I'm going to start by finding one of these assholes and seeing what happens.

Comments

[priorly]

Well. Wouldn't that prove my point?

[vorrutyer]

And who, precisely, is supposed to give a shit about whether or not your point is proven? Because I know I won't, at that point.

[priorly]

I'm not planning to make this a last stand. But if the alternative is sitting and waiting for the next time and knowing I did nothing?

[vorrutyer]

And going to yell at the omnipotent beings strikes you as doing something. Don't people who scream at God get struck with boils and eaten by whales and the like?

[priorly]

Jonah was a prophet, too. Maybe I'm due a whale.

The Gods here have faces. They have ears. I know they can listen, they could be reasoned with. It's not yelling blindly into an unresponsive sky.

[vorrutyer]

No? It's the classic dilemma, isn't it. This is a wicked world, no question of it. But all-good, all-powerful gods would not create a wicked world. So how can we resolve that? Either they are not all-powerful, or they are not all-good.

[priorly]

I don't think they're either. But I think they knew where you were and didn't say a word to anyone who could help.

We're an ant farm, Byerly. They just dropped us in and now they're watching to see what we do.

[vorrutyer]

So why would scolding them change a thing?

[priorly]

Because that's what this ant does.

I will take a lot. I have taken a lot. But I have limits and watching people suffer, watching people die, watching people important to me try to die, for days, when it could all have been stopped with a word? That's about where they are.

[vorrutyer]

Why aren't you including your own suffering in there?

[priorly]

I was. Every word of it.

[vorrutyer]

Your pain hasn't been caused only by your empathy and suffering over others, Prior. You yourself were also quite personally fucked over by their inaction. No?

[priorly]

They got into our heads in there. Into mine.

I got to go home for a while. Well, it felt like home.

[vorrutyer]

Corrupted in some way, I assume.

[priorly]

No, not really. There were these little things, like leeches that get under your skin and sear their way through your circulation. It feels like death but the hallucinations meant I was dying somewhere pleasant.

It felt real, until it didn't. It wouldn't have been so sad if there was something wrong about it from the first.

[vorrutyer]

How do you feel, then, now? About having experienced that?

[priorly]

I don't know, exactly. I think it's easier not to feel anything much.

Although, you may not have noticed as I am one cool collected queen and I keep things like this on the down low. But generally, I'm a little ticked.

[vorrutyer]

Yes, you're widely known for your stoicism.

What if we spent a while being angry together? [ Never mind, of course, that he doesn't seem terribly angry. ]

[priorly]

[He's texting not talking, Prior already guesses that means he doesn't trust either his voice or face.]

I thought you could be angry with me when I get back.

[Though not so much the 'in company with' sense.]

[vorrutyer]

If you got back.

[priorly]

I intend to. You'll still speak to me, when I do?

[vorrutyer]

If I said no, would that give you pause in this mission?

[priorly]

I already considered that you might not. But.

[vorrutyer]

But you decided to set your lance and charge headlong at this windmill regardless.

[priorly]

After a few days pause, I suppose so.

And I thought that, since I'll be fine and am known for my persistence when it comes to hopeless cases, you might come around in the end.