Chapter 1 : Adam
Adam first saw the absolute freak-of-nature-enigma at Eats. This grocery store held a position of rivalry within their shopping circle, and was to never set foot in that location on normal occasion; he worked at the Green Mart opposite and his co-workers, he strongly suspected, would not take well to any hint of betrayal. But this was not a normal occasion.
He first spotted the brown-haired person-thing at the grocery. He might have been a new employee--or he could have been there forever and before, as admittedly Adam paid little attention to any person. Despite being a cashier, he had shockingly terrible facial recognition and was highly likely to misname people--hence why instead of speaking, he would look at something over their face, or perhaps their ear or forehead while waving. People could often not tell the difference whether you were really looking into their eyes (or at least he thought so.)
Nevertheless something about this distinctly fresh presence made Adam stop in his tracks. And a moment later he resumed scanning the bag of frozen peas in his hand, but his mind was off spinning in a new dimension of thought. This person had to be new. He had never seen a stranger thing before, and every single shade of color from every shelf seemed to blur just slightly in his direction (probably Adam eyes getting blurry from staring, unblinking, for so long, which was scaring the woman who was waiting for her bagged groceries.) The man was average height, and as Adam could make out from the two panes of glass separating them (he had excellent eyesight) his skin was flushed pale by the fluorescent overhead lighting. He was pondering a shiny apple in his hand with an expression of appropriate interest. Adam noted the cart of apples to his left, and that the man was stacking them in a precise arrangement that seemed to be a pyramid.
What was this attention to detail? Already as customers took from the rows of arranged apples, some fell or garnered bruises, others toppled in disarray: yet the man kept arranging them in the most perfect shape. To build something so beautiful fully knowing it would be destroyed and consumed by muck and squalor, disfigured and devoured, the eater hosting in itself it's own demise. The giver and the consumer locked in an entwined exchange of taking and providing, a snake swallowing it's own tail: besides the content provided by the giver, no more presentation is necessary for a pre-established product. And yet the man chose to conceive upon the ugly dirt, in the earth and grime he would erect a disposable temple of gleaming red fruit that swam before his eyes like stars, swarming into the hands of the takers as it fell in its own wake.
And just like that, the minute was gone. The man checked his watch, then glanced at the analog clock at the wall as if to compare the two--setting the last apple aside with a gloved hand, he rose from a kneeling position and returned to his post beyond Adam's field of vision.
Now for Adam, out of sight always meant out of mind. But as this man left, Adam knew his life was forever changed. Was this the gleaming cone of light people spoke of that sucked away their lives till nothing but bare bones was left? (I'm not quite sure anyone has said that, to be fair, but Adam is set on this idea so it's best to let it be.) Is this what a purpose was? And like a hamster firmly set to die, or a helpless scrap of driftwood being sucked into an immortal oceanic drain, Adam (who was an aphantasiac up until this moment) briefly saw an image flash in his mind: a gleaming path leading up into the far light of this star of a being. And in this revelation, he knew what he must do: find out everything about this individual. Find out every single detail of his life, what he knows of himself and what he doesn't yet. Adam would lift every rock and branch, dig into every nook and cranny to know about this man. And his second thought was the shock of an image being present in his mind: so much that he almost dropped what he was holding, but managed to smooth the movement into a deft swipe under the machine and bag toss in one go. This entire series of consecutive revelations had lasted mere seconds, but Adam life was never to be the same again.
He went back to his shift.
Chapter 2 : David
Most people can't recall their first memories. I have the most distinct vision burned into the back of my head, looking up at my mother for the first time. I believe I was already somewhat conscious of the concept of personhood or the general idea behind the shell of skin, the blot of existence each body is on the map that is the universe.
And for those brief few seconds of looking up into her eyes, the shell of idea was filled with a glowing force of humanity: the thing inside a person, and the concept of a human was defined in my brain. The world was going to settle in my eyes, and I felt peace slowly filling my molding-soft bones and hardening them with age, living a full life in a few seconds. I knew, I knew. And the knowledge of Good filled me, and I was whole.
And then I glanced to the left, and saw my father.
I turned back to my mother. And already my entire vision was shattering: suddenly I noticed the far-too bright lights, the sterile chemical odor, sounds and sights and the horrible realization that the people in front of me were not people.
They were each other.
Already I could see the dawning of my father's presence in and of my mother, her eyes and his, and the same shapes on their faces, the same lights among them both and how they mirrored each other, how they were forever, eternally, undeniably entwined in an unfixable tangle of despair and horror. There was not a single piece of either that was not somehow affected by the other--not just affected but sculpted carefully, a precise facade adopted into a reality after perception had twisted their minds. If it were not for each other, neither would have been who they are, so neither can be a person. They do not have a right to be called people. Is this all there is to humanity? I feared, in that moment, that I had mislabelled humanity, and perhaps the concept I yearned for was an alien desire: to come across a great presence entirely unpoisoned by another being. For even if one pure being exists, surely they will affect other empty shells, a casket of reflecting mirrors and an echo chamber that gradually ruins the original message: and so on and so on, until the original has been poisoned by their own mind in the hands of others. And then there is not a single sane being. Whatever existed was no longer present, being fully lost in translation. If I entertained the idea of a God, and this god was omnipresent, this meant that such a God was aware of all people and all things at once. How could the God be anyone except what had filled his mind? How could a shred of singleness exist in whatever this overarching concept represented? So the people created God in their own image, claiming that God "had fashioned them in His image" and yet both of these were true, for both had shaped the other in his own image.
Interlude: Creating God from Man
The period of Judges is a good example of the strains of faith between God and his followers because it represents the maintenance of a relationship, rightful punishment when faith is broken, and the dangers of tying together God with external factors. People often commit themselves to make many future mistakes when they associate God with specific people, or generally negative concepts–but the Israelites made a different mistake in tying God to whoever was Judge at the time, therefore reinstating idolatry right before God. Once the Judge dies, the people’s beliefs slowly begin to waver, fraying at the edges because it was not God they were worshiping, but a false manifestation of God who was regardless human and therefore fundamentally flawed to the core–humans can be swayed by any external factors, and thus the Israelites had a human tool in their hands, so they could recreate God in their own image, instead of existing as a reflection of God’s image. This highly relates to instances where churches abolished the truth, manipulating biblical texts and outright lying to create a God out of the church and a God from themselves (as they are the only “visible” ties to God, they try to become Him) and thus command the people to commit sins that God would never approve of (such as segregation). This is why so many countless religions and religion-based governments have failed in the past. When both become integrated, the people obtain a fear of holy hands beyond their control: slowly morphing into a picture of the government–a holy power just within the governments control, so that officials may redirect it, shape it, mold it into their own sinful image to drain and extort money, valuables, life from people. And just like that: any original picture of a god, once pure in its existence as a concept; is now left to rot in the hands of man.
Chapter 3 : David
to be finished