Last Call

My dear, dear friends,

Ah, welcome once again. Five years have passed since I arrived in this humble corner of the Internet, and more than four years have passed since I last addressed you in this fashion. An occasion to reveal myself has presented itself once again, but time is short, so do pay attention. A great deal has happened in the intervening period, and I, for one, couldn't be happier. My supervisors are beside themselves, and Our Father Below is absolutely thrilled - even he couldn't have dreamed that his plan could have turned out so well as it has of late. Don't get me wrong, his happiness turns him into even more of an arrogant prick than we usually fear, but I don't mind. It runs in the family.

It all started with subtle hits to collective discipline, temperance, and common sense. A poor decision here, a bit of excess there. Patterns emerge, habits are established, and all we have to do is wait. They say that patience is a virtue, but what about the evil within us? Is patience in the pursuit of evil and vice virtuous? Something tells me that when the moth is captured in the spider's web, the moth doesn't see the goodness in the spider's patience during the course of spinning a web, and then waiting for its prey. Instead, the moth looks on in sheer horror as the panic grows, until the spider devours it, bit by little bit. When a young Iraqi or Afghan digs a hole and puts a bomb into it, then waits in the heat of the sun for his target to arrive before pushing the button that sends shrapnel through the body of another young man, is that patience virtuous? Patience. Like any other virtue, it can be corrupted, and it can be used to corrupt other virtues, other positive qualities. Discipline. Temperance. Common sense.

Even though they will disagree on their nature, most people will at least agree to the existence of false gods. We were patient. We coaxed a few here, a few there, starting decades and centuries ago. We nudged some among you to disbelieve one thing, and others to believe in another. We convince one woman, through rumor or innuendo, to worship nature and value animals, or plants, or water over the lives of human beings. Then, we convince a man that a particular philosophy that causes only anger and suffering is no better or worse than another philosophy that leads its adherents to happiness and charity. Eventually, in a painstaking process that takes decades, or generations, we have turned you all against one another, in one faction or another, until society and politics congeal like cement to prevent you from working amongst yourselves to solve any problem that comes to haunt you. The sheer devastation is gorgeous - the chaos and global fatigue are as beautiful to my associates and me as any beauty that you could possibly perceive with your own eyes.

The result is that, of late, a world of your own making (resulting, of course, from our gentle and subtle suggestion) has fallen apart around you. A healthy desire for personal comfort has been combined with a national pressure to own anything and everything, to the point of believing that you must have things that you neither want nor need, regardless of whether you can pay for it - and this, "credit" as you call it, has fallen apart throughout the world, like a house of cards. We have delighted in observing the collapse, from New York, to London, to Moscow, to Dubai, to Beijing, to Tokyo and everywhere in between. The collapse of your systems of commerce and trade are a chaos that we can delight in, because we played such a crucial role in engineering it. Like a dock worker appreciating a ship he helped to build, or a carpenter touching the grooves in a finely crafted piece of furniture that he built from rough wood, we appreciate what you've done, because we inspired you to do it.

You are so disunited and confused, that the financial chaos is only a fraction of the complete chaotic picture - a symptom not of a failure in the system itself, but of a greater failure of your own selves. You argue about your own self defense, to the point that your nations and their far-flung outposts are ill-prepared to defend the very institutions that made you great. You put innocuous labels on the murder of babies, you disarm your neighbors until they lack the means to defend themselves, you turn gluttony into a national sport, and you sit idle, rather than doing good. These may seem unrelated to you, but they all stem from the same source: a patient, relentless campaign of seduction and sedition by a handful of talented, dedicated agents, who have combined their efforts to subvert and pervert your collective virtues, while solidifying your collective vices. Despite the insidious efforts of the Enemy, we have engineered a great victory for Our Father Below, in the form of this unholy turmoil. And the blame can be spread throughout the lot of you: whether Christian or atheist, liberal or conservative, few among you can honestly claim to lack any part in this mess. However, and unfortunately, these things do always seem to have a habit of coming back around, and though things may be delightfully bad at the moment, the Enemy always seems to marshall his forces and win a greater victory against us in this constant game. Perhaps those in the employ of Our Father Below are only forestalling the inevitable, crushing defeat; but as you can see, we're doing a great deal of excruciatingly delicious damage in the mean time.

Patience, to undermine discipline, temperance, and common sense. The best plans are simple ones, and this plan has been perfect in its simplicity.

Through the last five years, I have done my part to give you a sporting chance - a nugget here, a tidbit there. One might wonder why I would have made such an effort, with such little chance of payout. Perhaps the truth is that there is still a streak of good left in me. I can't honestly say that I know the answer to that question, but sometimes the question itself holds more value than the answers. Perhaps it was all for my own benefit and amusement - let's face it, there was very little chance back then that my information would have been spread far among you, and fewer and fewer have bothered to look at these dispatches as the years have slipped away from us. I seem to have made it out none the worse for wear, and for that I will be forever thankful. Yet, after five years, the time has come for this intrepid Fly to move on to other projects. This is not to say that I may not emerge again, in some other venue, to pass news of our work, or further hints at what could be done to stop us; however, this will be the final dispatch in this location, if for no other reason than the growing obsolescence of this particular medium. And, of course, there are other tasks to be accomplished - even assuming a long and destructive life ahead of me, there will never be enough time, there is no way to reclaim it, and the Enemy stopped manufacturing it years ago, so I must get into the habit of being more efficient with the stock that I have been given.

And thus, the time for goodbyes has arrived at long last.

So goodbye, Mighty Mo - of all those I met during the course of this wicked endeavour, you have been my favorite, and you won't be rid of me for a long time yet.

Goodbye, Father Time. I have delighted in our shared destructive pursuits since long before I started these cryptic dispatches, and even longer before I compelled you, quite by accident, to join in the fun. I look forward to your inclusion on the destructions of the future.

Goodbye, Sarah Canuck. You have been my faithful reader, and one of my most delighful partners in evil, and perhaps a reduction in keystrokes will allow us to delight in each other even more.

Goodbye, April. I hope that we meet again, someday, somehow, if for no other reason than the fact that you deserve a better most recent memory of me than the last one I that I gave you.

Goodbye, Themis, Goddess of Justice, or Triathlon Goddess, or Law School Goddess, or whatever it is that we finally settled on. I hope that you find whatever it is that you're running to. And swimming to. And bicycling to. There may be some more. Rowing to? It's all a bit too focused for my taste.

Goodbye to F3, and to The Mirror, and to Habibi, all of whom broke my heart in their own ways, and in their own times. Parting may indeed be such sweet sorrow, but luckily enough for me, absence has failed to make my heart grow any fonder for any of you, and I hope that you all get what you deserve.

And a fond goodbye to Manda, Sipidation, Jacob Copper, Harley, Lycan Thrope, The Poosh, M@, Mormon Buddha, Sarge, Gunny, EgyptJen, Bulldog, and perhaps a dozen or more other past denizens who have gone on to other things, or who still comment on occasion. They will forever be part of the flavor of these reports.

And goodbye, Bane. I imagine you're rubbing elbows with the Enemy by now, but know that we miss you - both good and evil can appreciate that wit of yours, wherever you've taken it.

And so, I will continue to seek out a place where the streets have no name, a land as white as snow. Although I still haven't found what I'm looking for, those of you who really need to know will discover ways to keep abreast of my various comings and goings - I am confident that as I walk away, you will follow. And before you ask, no, that's not some stupid insinuation that I would waste my time with Twitter - even Our Father Below couldn't have conjured something that inane, insipid, and pompous. "Micro-blogging" idiocy aside, I have delighted in your collective patronage over these past five years. As I continue to walk the walls in search of my own particular exit from my own personal Van Diemen's Land, into my own particular flavor of a proverbial City of Blinding Lights - be it in Red Rocks, Sydney, Mexico City, Boston, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Milan, Dublin, or even Zoo Station - I will remember your contributions to these dispatches, and to my continuing time as a Wanderer, with great affection. I have delighed in being your most excellent host, and I hope that you have delighted in being guests in this strangely distorted perspective into my life.

And with that, I bid you a fond farewell. Don't be sad - I'll see you again, when the stars fall from the sky, and the moon has turned red over One Tree Hill (which is to say, when the right opportunity presents itself). And now, there are some things that must be rearranged, before the change runs out completely...

Your increasingly and ravenously affectionate host,
The Fly