Photography by Tomas Heligr-Pyke · Bokeh
Two private diaries follow the same long-distance relationship from the person being recruited and the Follower guiding him.
From the 4671 story library. Read the story below, or explore its original reader and connected world.
Evan’s Diary
First Entry
I have a girlfriend.
That still looks impossible when I write it down, but it is true. Her name is Sophia. She lives in New Hope City and I live in Nybell, so for now we are voices, messages and faces behind glass. I thought the distance would make it feel less real. It does not.
We have made a plan. In three years, we will finally be together.
Three years sounds enormous when I say it aloud. Sophia says it is nothing compared with forever.
I believe her.
The Distance
We are alike in ways I have never been alike with anyone.
Sophia knows what I mean before I finish saying it. When I cannot sleep, she is awake. When I feel stupid, she makes the feeling sound temporary. Sometimes we sit without speaking and listen to each other breathe through the call. I used to think silence meant there was nothing left to say. With her, silence feels like proof that neither of us has gone.
I love her. There is no cleverer way to write it.
I want to live with her. I want to wake beside her and know there is no screen between us. She wants that too.
She keeps saying forever.
I have started saying it back.
What She Believes
Sophia told me about her beliefs tonight.
She would not give me a name for them. She said names are what outsiders use when they want to put a wall around something. Her people believe there is more beyond us: something greater than one life, one body or one world.
At first it sounded like every religion I had ever heard of. I told her that. She laughed, but she did not get angry.
She said ordinary religions ask people to believe without showing them anything. Her people have proof.
I asked what the proof was.
She said I was not ready.
I thought that would annoy me. Instead, I wanted to be ready.
The Blackout
I could not reach Sophia.
The calls failed first. Then the lights went out, followed by every screen in the building. No one could agree how far the blackout reached. Each station that returned named somewhere different.
When the news feeds came back, they showed a city hanging above another country.
Some reports said Nussia. Others said Uchen or Atriad. The footage never looked the same twice. Towers stood upside down against the clouds. Roads ended in open sky. For a few seconds, the shape above them moved like a reflection after the thing being reflected had gone.
People online called it a hoax. Officials called it an atmospheric fault. Sophia called me when the network returned and asked what I thought I had seen.
I told her I did not know.
“Proof,” she said.
She would not explain further.
Purpose
Sophia has been teaching me slowly.
I understand why now. If she had told me everything at once, I would have heard the words without understanding them. A body believes it belongs to itself. A mind believes it is alone. Work, money, hunger, sleep: all of it keeps a person staring down at the floor when there is something above them, around them and waiting beyond them.
I used to wake, work and come home so tired that I could barely speak to the one person I loved. I called that a life because everyone else did.
I have found my purpose.
A life without purpose is not a life.
I do not need to go to work anymore. The Great One will provide what matters.
Sophia says I am close.
Offerings
I made my first offerings.
The animals were small. I bought them from people who asked no questions. Their lives would have ended eventually. Everything made of flesh ends. The only choice is whether the ending means something.
I thought I would feel shame. I felt fear, then stillness.
Sophia stayed with me through the call. She told me not to look away. She said an offering made in shame is an offering refused.
When it was done, she told me she was proud of me.
No one has said that in a long time.
The Followers help us see what the rest of the world refuses to see. Flesh is not sacred because it lasts. Flesh is sacred because it can be given.
The Cube will guide us to sanctuary.
One
We are all one.
And one is all.
Our lives are joined.
Our stories are shared.
What we surrender will remain.
What remains will change what follows.
We will worship.
We will follow.
The Great Ones are beyond us.
The Artefact is before us.
The Cube will open the way.
Last Entry
Sophia is here.
I collected her from the airport this morning. For one terrible second I thought we would not recognise each other without a screen between us. Then she smiled, and there was no distance left.
We came back to my apartment and prepared the room. The table stands in the centre. The chairs face away from it. We pressed our fingers until blood rose, then drew the Cube together across the tabletop. Her lines met mine at every corner.
Soon, each of us will open the other. Flesh and blood will join what distance kept apart. There will be pain, but pain is only the body begging to remain separate.
Sophia says we will be together forever.
I believed her when forever meant three years.
I believe her now.
This is the last thing I will write before we begin.
Sophia’s Diary
First Entry
I have a boyfriend.
His name is Evan. He lives in Nybell, far enough away that we cannot meet yet. That helps. The cause cannot be hurried. If I tell him what waits for us before he understands me, fear will answer before love can.
He is not a believer.
That will change.
When the time comes, we can complete the cause together. Neither of us will have to cross alone.
Patience
We have agreed to wait three years before we live together.
Evan thinks the wait is practical. He talks about money, work and all the ordinary arrangements people make when they believe a future is something they own.
I let him talk.
I listen to everything. That is how I learn which parts of him are empty and which words will fit inside them.
The emotional connection between us is real. I can feel the urge to love him.
He is amazing.
The Teaching
It is time to begin converting Evan.
I started with the idea of something higher. Nothing about the Followers. Nothing about the blood. Nothing about what a body must become before it can be left behind.
He called it religion. I laughed because he expected me to. Then I told him we have proof.
That was enough.
Curiosity opens more gently than fear. Once opened, it is difficult to close.
I teach him slowly. I do not want to lose my one and only other half.
First, I teach him that the body is temporary.
Then, that temporary things can still be used.
Then, that sacrifice is not destruction when something greater receives it.
Soon I will tell him about the Cube.
The Failed Opening
Another cell tried to force an artefact awake.
They believed they could feed it enough power to open a passage. Instead, the grid failed and two places occupied the same sky. The news called the other place a floating city because ordinary language has no words for one world showing through another.
The reports cannot agree whether it appeared over Nussia, Uchen or Atriad. Perhaps the overlap was larger than anyone understood. Perhaps frightened people gave the same impossible sight three different names.
The cell has not spoken since.
Evan saw enough to become curious. I told him it was proof and let the silence do the rest.
Failure can still open someone.
Conversion
He has stopped going to work.
He says the Great One will provide. He says it with the certainty of someone repeating his own thought, not mine. That is how I know the teaching has settled inside him.
He made his first offerings. I watched. He did not turn away.
Evan is now one of us.
I thought triumph would feel louder.
Instead, I listened to him breathing after the call and wished I could touch his face.
One
We are all one.
And one is all.
Our lives are joined.
Our stories are shared.
What we surrender will remain.
What remains will change what follows.
We will worship.
We will follow.
The Great Ones are beyond us.
The Artefact is before us.
The Cube will open the way.
Last Entry
Evan met me at the airport.
He looked exactly like himself and nothing like the person on the screen. When he held me, I felt the distance collapse all at once.
The room is ready. He remembered the table and the chairs. I did not have to correct him. We marked the tabletop together, his blood joining mine until the Cube was whole.
Soon we will open each other. Our flesh will end. What is joined beneath it will continue.
Evan believes we are doing this because we love each other.
I chose him for the cause before I knew him.
Now, when I try to separate what I feel from what we are about to do, I cannot find the line.
There is no distance left.