This war has been going on for months, or it could be years, I don’t remember anymore.  It started some time in the past over a dispute over oil as usual.  The country of Atlantis has been invading the land of Pangeia for years and finally war broke out.

A bomb falls from the sky and blows up a soldier next to you and as you start to loose consciousness, you start to reminisce.

I remember many years ago, I was searching for something but didn’t know what it was.  All I knew, was that something was not right about myself.  I felt incomplete; Like a child whose parents had left them.

Sixteen years earlier.

My name is Jonathan Franklin and I am no one of any consequence.  I have a set myself a mission to find that thing that is lacking in my life.  I have come to Atlantis to seek out the village sage and hope she will be able to help me.

I walk into the sage’s hut and sit down quietly and wait.  An old haggard lady walks up to me and tells me to sit down.

Lady:  You seek something important.  Apart of you is missing.  I will help you remember.

She pulls out a pack of cards and starts to shuffle them and then begins to turn them.

She turns the first card say, “You seek something personal and close to you”

She turns over the next card and says, “this thing is deep underground”

She turns over a third card and says, “Don’t be fooled by the riches that will try and take your mind off the task at hand, God is like that”

She turns over the final card and says, “You seek a cave near by but, it will have a special marking by it for you to tell it apart from any other cave.  It will have the hand of god imprinted in white paint outside of it; but know this; the task you undertake will bring with it many hardships.  You will have to look at the face of god and overcome it.”

I thanked the lady and paid my dues and was off.  I would need to get ready for this journey because, I did not know how far or how long it would take to find this cave.  I went round and collected together all the things I thought I would need to undertake this journey.  Once I had everything on the back of the sledge, I got the dogs moving and I was off. 

I left the village and made my way south to the wilderness and here met a strange old man that seemed more interested in some space in front of me.  He said that it was the entrance to another world.  I looked at him as you would do a dog staring into space or a mad man that forgotten to drink his medicine.

As I entered the area that he was looking at, something changed.  I can’t put my finger on it but something was different here compared to the space I occupied a few seconds previously.  Maybe the old man wasn’t as mad as I initially thought, I told myself.

Mountains appeared out of nowhere and in front of me was a pit that I had not spotted from the vantage point that the old man was staring from.  It must have been some form of camouflage, but why?  After many weeks of searching I found what looked like a deep pit with a hand outline made from paint and I knew I had found that which I seeked. 

Finding my soul

I reached the bottom of the long pit and navigated my way down a long tunnel.  At the end of the tunnel was gold; lots of gold, but this wasn’t what I was looking for.  I hadn’t come all this way just to become rich.  I was searching for something far more valuable.   I walked past the mountains of gold as if they were nothing more than mountains of dirt.

I walked past the ambrosia and made my way to a large room.  It was round and probably as large as a football stadium.   In the centre of the stadium, I could see what looked like a large glowing pool.  I cautiously walked to the pool and as I got near it, it started to move slowly on the surface and the violently.  Then what appeared to be a man started to form on the surface.  It grew until it was the same size as myself.  It walked out of the pool and walked up to me.  I didn’t recognise it at first.  Then it hit me.  I am looking at a translucent version of myself.  It walked up to me and caressed my cheek.  I then realised who I was looking at.  I was looking at the face of god; I was looking at my own face.  It then started to merge with myself and then it was gone.  A tear rolled down my cheek first the first time in my life.  I had finally found it.  I have found my soul.  Once the merge had completed, I started to remember all the things that god had hidden from me.  I was powerful; in fact, I was as powerful as a god.

I looked to the top of the cave and saw the Latin phrase, “know thy self” and I knew what I had to do. I walked out of the cave and took all the gold with me and ate the ambrosia.  I am no longer just a mere man; I am now a god!

I returned from the cave a rich man and now invulnerable to death and started to run a small business with the money I had acquired.  People from near and far would trade with me.  I single handedly turned this small village of Thiapente into a thriving city.  It was good and everyone got on and apart from the petty crime, nothing really bad happened.  I fell in love with a fair maiden and got married.  We had three children; two girls and one boy.  One day an army came into town, saying that they were the army of god and started to rape the women and kill the men.  They came to my house whilst I was out and raped my wife and my two girls, and slit the throat of my son.  When I returned to find what had happened, I was angry beyond belief and wanted revenge.

I found a young woman who was allowed to live for the purpose of telling others in the surrounding villages of what was to come and I asked her who did this to her and the village.  “They call themselves the army of god and they are cleansing the land for the coming of the son of god.”  I sat down and thought about what she had just told me and decided that if this is god, then the god I will create will be a god that people could love and that god would be me. 

I found the army and kept track of them and where they were going.  I would need to know this latter after I had an army of my own.  I went to the surrounding towns and villages and created an army of my own.  We would take back our land and make this so called god that they worship suffer for what it did to us.  After many months of marching we caught up with the army and started to fight them.  I caught one of them and forced him to tell me who this god was that he worshipped and where it could be found.  He pointed to the sky and said he lives up there.  I dropped him and started to fly up into the sky.  I past the clouds and started to fly into the darkness.  As I was reaching what looked like shiny things on a black cloth, I saw the face of god. 

God; “You have disturbed my plans boy.  I have to cleanse the world for my son to come into the world and start a new world order.”

John:  “What do you mean cleanse the world?  The world is doing fine without you, thank you very much”

God:  “The world is not how I wanted it to be and now I will destroy all those who oppose me; but I see a problem with you.  You are equal to me and I lack the power to destroy you.”  “But I can…”

Suddenly I was falling towards the battle and the next thing I knew was that I had just woken up not remembering anything.  I could have been here for months or it could be years, I can’t remember.  I looked at my hand and spotted paint on my right hand and as much as I tried to remove it, it would not come off.

A group of men came over to me in the middle of battle and asked me for instructions.  I asked them who they were.  They looked at my hand and one of them said, “I recognize that”, pointing to my hand.  “You’ve pissed god off haven’t you”  I didn’t understand what he was talking about but I decided I would go back to the old lady in that village and see if she could answer my questions.

After many days of riding, I found the women and she sat me down.  I told her that I had found my soul but this paint was on my hand and it appeared after I saw the face of god.

She sat me down and started to shuffle her packs of card and turned the first card.

Lady:  There is another

John: What do you mean another?

Lady: you are not complete.  Some time in the past something happened to you and you were split into three different entities.  You have yourself, your soul and the one that they call god.  When you find him, and are able to merge with him, you be complete and you will remember everything that you have tried to forget.

What had I forgotten?  How do I find this god and why would it have split from me?

The lady told me where to find him but he would not be found in this world.  I would have to be put into a deep sleep and only then would I find him.

She gave me a strange mixture to drink and she said that she would wake me if she thought I was in danger.  I fell asleep and woke up in a strange cave.  Technically I was still asleep.  I followed the cave around until I came to what appeared to be a stadium like cave.  I’m sure I’ve been here before.  I looked around and found the round pool I encountered previously.

A voice from behind me said, “So you’ve finally arrived then.”

I looked around and I saw myself.  He said, “How long are we going to be apart?”

I just looked at him and wondered why I had split myself into three parts. 

John:  What am I trying not to remember?

John2:  You don’t remember?

John:  If I knew what I was trying not to remember, I wouldn’t be asking you; I mean me, whatever.

John2:  You may not like what you will see though.

John:  I don’t care!  I must know.

John2:  Then merge with me and you will see for yourself.

We merged and I remembered everything.  I was at the front of gods army and I was killing people and raping the women.  Suddenly, I had come to a village that looked familiar to me now, but the person that I saw did not.  I watched as he killed what looked like my wife and walk away but as he did, a hooded my waved his hands up into the air and said something and he collapsed to the ground.  It seems that I killed my own wife and the hooded man can stopped me somehow.  Who was this man and how did he stop god?

As I watched, I learned that I was in fact the anti Christ.  The hooded mans job was to cleanse the earth of all sinners but being as I was equal to him, he erased my memory and hide them deep in my consciousness to prevent me becoming whole again and destroying the world and everyone on it.  This had worked but, the person that is me now is different to the person that was back then.  My other self explained to me that some of my memories I had were fake, and were made up to prevent the true personality from surfacing in the future.  Who am I then I asked.  You are who you want to be and now that you are complete you will learn to true meaning of god.

I saw an image of myself leaning down crying by my wife’s bedside; I was crying.  I never cry I thought.  I stood up and said, “If god doesn’t exist, then I will make one.” 

The trouble with being god is that it is rather tedious.  I have to listen to all these whining humans that all have problems that they think are important but, in the scheme of things, are nothing more than tiny little ants waiting to be squashed underfoot by something bigger.

I started to loose interest in these people and after a while made them sacrifice their children just to break up the boredom of hearing their whining everyday.

I decided that a war champagne might add a little spice to these peoples lives and we started to invade our nearest neighbours countries and at first, all we did was cause some disturbances.  That became boring and we started to take over these countries and we started to rape the women; I personally enjoyed that.  The look on her face as I took away her innocence and dominated her made me feel special.  We did this for quite a while until one day, one of my generals was speaking to me and he said that I was inhuman and that he wanted to leave.

I looked at him and told him, that the only way he will be allowed to leave was when he was dead.  I had come this far and it was probably too late to turn back now, it wasn’t as if I had anything that I cared about to go back to anyway.  I enjoy the hunt and savoured the kill, revelled in the rape and found the torture scintillating.

One day whilst invading another country, something appears out of the sky and was flying towards my army.  What I could not have expected was what happened next.  An explosion of fire filled the sky and wiped out all my men in an instance and when I awoke, all I saw was nothing.

I don’t know what happened or where I was, all I could hear was a voice.  It sounded like the voice of a women.  I recognise that voice I thought; that’s the sound of my wife.  As it got louder I could feel something pulling me forward towards what looked like a dot of light far, far, far away.

As I reached the light, I woke up and found myself in some strange place that I had never been before.  The woman hugged me and kissed me.  That was a nice sensation I thought and the man said to me.

Doctor:  Can you understand me John?

John:  Yes!

Doctor:  You have been in a coma for months.  You was hit by a car and you suffered brain damage.  We thought you were beyond help but, it seems you saved yourself.  I can’t quite work out how but, you should be dead.  I would like to keep you in for another week for tests and if all goes well, I will let you go home.

A week latter

I was allowed to go home with this woman that looked a lot like the wife I had in my dreams and she seemed to be happy to be with me and I happy to be with her too.

As the couple leave the hospital, the camera fade out and we see the hooded man back in the foreign land.  The hooded man is staring up into the sky.

Hooded man:  Has it worked this time father?

God:  Yes!  He seems to believe to illusion that you and I have created. 

Hooded man:  Will he break free of this dream world that we have sent his mind?

God:  I do not know at this time but, should he ever break free, we will just send him somewhere else and keep doing this for ever.  There is much for you to do and little time to do it in.  The time of the apocalypse is near and we will make this world perfect again but it might be a good idea to keep an eye on Jonathan  Franklin and make sure that he never becomes aware of the dream that he is in.  I will take him from this world and send him to a place that no man will find him and no spirit can touch.

He will be the devil and we will use him as a threat to all those who choose not to listen to us.  The humans will become fearful of what he will do, if he is ever released into the world again and that fear will keep most of them in line.  War doesn’t work anymore but the fear of the unknown will break even the strongest man in time.