“Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.”

- David Foster Wallace, from “This is Water”

Dr. Effective kicking down my door makes me think about Agency, with a capital A— Volition. The more I’m willing to risk, the more I am able to do. The less I have to risk, the more I am able to do, but with compounded doability comes an implicit attainment of impermanent losable items, thereby increasing risk of loss, and exponentially increasing the level of risk that one would have formerly assumed. A person is not a business. It cannot grow like that. Something like the law of diminishing returns. For someone like me, this cycle renders calculated efforts not just flaccid, but ultimately counterproductive; the old two steps back as it were. This is due to the pathological impulse to dichotomize found in all humans, but diagnostically disproportionate in those such as myself who the Social Security Administration would consider legally disabled. So, whenever I try something— anything, that thing may well bend to my volition at first, but ultimately, snap right back into place, thusly striking me back with tenfold force.

As far as I’m concerned, this phenomenon, although pervasive in Bipolar patients and others more likely than your average joe to recognize and act in accordance with the patterns, is all but indicative of the existence of some form of metaphysical system of punishment. Karmic retribution and all that, but worse. The overall distribution of suffering being calculated in some inconceivable equation, whether by a literal or metaliteral master sadist, keeping the total screamage within some imperatively particular decibel range. Everyone whether they admit it or not, believes in this unthinkable system, but few recognize its grizzly operational truth: this is not a system based in morality or justice, but merely a mechanism of nature attempting to distribute pain so as to ensure a slow climbing net survival rate. Life itself is contingent not only on tit for tat, but even more so, if not RATHER the unspeakable, senseless torture of the innocent. Random, pointless suffering for every human and beast as necessary collateral for the satiation of our universe and her unbridled compulsion to expand. And this concept, whether you like it or not, happens to fit neatly into any belief system religious or otherwise. And this, I am convinced, is the empirical truth.

I switch on my bedside lamp. “What the hell are you doing in my house?”

“Jim, I figured it out.” Dr. Effective is out of breath. The dust from my felled door, still settling over my sprawl of rugs.

Calling the police is always on the bottom of my list of priorities. And it dawns on me later than I’d like, that the doctor is in fact trespassing in a very serious way, which grants me certain legal flexibility with regard to assault and battery. So I’m sitting up still half enclosed in a comforter in only my boxers, trying to pick out the heaviest and nearest object to incur maximum damage on the intruder’s head.

He starts walking towards my bed. Reminded of his stature — short and stocky. He’s more built than I remember.

“Jim, don’t worry. I just want to talk.”

“Okay. But you just kicked down my door? Also how the fuck did you get my address? And why?”

“You gave the office your address. Use your head.” He aggressively taps his index finger against his temple.

“I’m gonna call the police.” I whip out my phone and open the dial screen.

“Wait. Wait. Wait. This isn’t like that, Jim. Just give me one minutes and I’ll explain my pitch.”

“What? You wanna fuck me?”

“Jesus, no. What? No, just— agh! Just put the phone down and give me sixty seconds, that’s all I ask.”

I like his desperation. I want more.

“Okay. Go.” I start a one minute timer on my phone.

“Look, Jim, I know we got off on the wrong foot, okay? I know that now—”

“You already said that over the phone.”

“JUST LET ME TALK GODDAMNIT!”

“Right. Okay. Go.”

“And well, I saw something in you that I haven’t seen in anyone before or since that meeting. I— I still don’t know what it was… exactly. But it inspired a certain—” he, open-mouthed, scours the air for a good word.

“— Suspicion.”

I lean forward a little. Raise one eyebrow. Can’t help but smirk a little.

“Suspicion of an arrogance. A very special kind of arrogance—”

“Thirty eight seconds left, amigo.”

“A very special kind of arrogance that equips you with the tools you need to push through life and beat the odds— ubermensch arrogance.”

“Woah, dude.”

“A singular arrogance. So uncommon, it may as well not even exist. Jim, I believe you are the Usurper.”

“Who?”

“The usurper. The next Big J.”

“The what?”

“The One to come in the name of The Great I Am, to bring down the fucking hammer.”

“Oh, like the antichrist?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“What do you mean, ‘a manner of speaking’? Either it is or it isn’t.”

“JIM! You don’t get it. You don’t have to know what this means right now, and I know it’s probably a lot to process, but you are literally The Man. The one, to like, usher in the second coming—”

“And what, might I ask, gives you this impression, doc? The devilish charm? Just my robust aura or what?”

“The prophecy. Others believe it too.”

He leans closer to me. “Jim, I am here to help you become the man you’re mean to—”

“Time’s up.”

“Hang on. Wh—”

CRACK. A leg with enough muscle on it can, with adequate force, act as efficiently if not more powerfully, than a brick straight to the cranium. Dr. Effective soars back, eagle spread. Lands like a tower in the middle of my bedroom. Not the cranium, but close enough. I got him in the chin. The high kick leaves me with a nasty charlie horse. I grunt and fall out of my bed. Normally I would stretch before a stunt like that. But this is my first real hardcore kicking of another. Dr. Effective moans and holds his jaw.

“FUCK!” He yells. Blood quirts from his maw. Two or three teeth vertically jettison. Maybe I should stomp his ass? I would if my kicking leg wasn’t red hot cramped. And I can’t use the other leg, because then a stomp would become more of a fall, like when old people fall, and then can’t get up. Only, instead of atrophying muscle tissue as the cause for total debilitation, the barrier to my getting up would almost certainly be the product of Dr. Effective’s own Nike smashing into my temple, because he’s already getting back up as well.

I hop toward and then past Dr. Effective. There’s a wine bottle at the other end of my room on the floor. A nice thick, dark wine bottle to deliver the incapacitating blow. I hop with vigor to the far wall.

“JIM! WAIT! What if I told you there is money involved in this?”

I stop hopping, not so much because of the money, but mainly out of shock that my cramp all but vanished at the mention of financial gain. Is my body more of a businessman than my brain? Ah, fuck it. I grab the wine bottle anyway.

“HOW MUCH MONEY, PERV?” I raise the bottle above my head.

Bone chilling laughter from old doc. “Right now? We’re in early stages, prenatal investments as it were, from various interested parties, funneled in and out and filtered and changed… Some institutions, ones with more international leverage than you might expect, are backing our cause, if you catch my drift.”

“No, I don’t. What does any of that mean?”

“I’m talking six figures loosely allotted for your basic needs and to ensure your health and political intellect— a lot of stuff, but nothing crazy on your part. But that is right now. If all goes according to plan, which it will, that rate would increase exponentially until you are filthy, and I mean FILTHY fucking rich, my guy.”

“What institutions were you referring to?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. But I can vouch. You think I’d do this shit for free?” He rubs his jaw, red and purple swelling now apparent, blood dripping from his mouth.

“Who thinks I’m the chosen one? That’s what I’m asking. And why the hell should I believe any of this, man? You have any idea how fucking weird this is?”

“Here. I probably should’ve led with this. I just got excited.”

Dr. Effective pulls out his phone and shows me the a full brightness screen of the last thing I would expect to see in my lifetime.

“What the fuck?”

“You see?”

“Is that—”

“Yeah.”

“AI?”

“NO!”

“You sure? Seems like AI.”

“NO, DUDE! Look!”

He shows me another thing. A video. A thing, a clearer image, ghastly and haunting, unspeakable.

“Any more?” I ask. Just to be safe.

“I got way more.”

Footage from all over the earth from every kind of phone and camera, resolution of every quality. Shadows and light and blood and eyes and hundreds of millions of them. And 100 Million Horses. And 100 Million Shrimp. I am more awestruck than fascinated.

“All of this was wiped from social media. They’re running out of storage capacity to keep hiding all of it. And running out of agents to keep people quiet.”

“Holy shit, man.”

“Yes sir. Real HOLY shit.” He puts his pocket in his phone.

“This isn’t some nazi shit, is it?”

“What? Did that look like nazi shit to you?”

“I don’t know! I never read the fucking nazi book!”

“The nazi book?”

“Yeah, whatever. The nazi book. I don’t read that shit.”

“Jim, no. This has nothing to do with anything like that. This isn’t political.”

“Spiritual then, right?”

“Material. The age of the spirit is over.”

“I see what you mean.” I scratch my chin.

“Jim, this is a god thing. Don’t you see?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Seems sketchy.”

“Well we have other candidates, so if you’re not ready—” he reaches into his coat and reveals a small pistol. I drop the wine bottle. Blood pressure spikes.

“Okay! Fuck! Whatever, man! I’ll do it!”

He re-holsters the item. “Alright. Good boy.”

“Whatever it actually is…”

“Not much really. Mostly waiting. But you’re gonna need to come with me.”

I look around my room. It’s nice to feel like I do not have a choice. “Like, tonight?”

“Yeah. Like, pack your shit right now.”