JOURNAL ENTRY NUMBER 6478410
31 December 2999 10:00 PM

In two hours I will be in my second millennium. I hope it will be the last time that I do. This will also be my last journal entry. I am tired and I have come to accept that I have made the wrong choice 999 years ago. Tonight, at midnight, I am going to make the choice that I should have made almost a thousand years ago: I will choose to die.

Back in 1999, there was talk about the Second Coming. For hundreds of years, prophesies were made about the Son coming back to redeem the Earth, along with horrifying descriptions of how the world was going to end when it entered the second millennium, the year 2001. False religions and false prophets were abundant during that time; and many people were led into blind faith because of that.

Although the world back then talked a lot about the End of Days, it still took us by surprise when we awoke on the morning of the first of January, in the year 2001. Everything that was written in Revelation, the last book of the Bible, started coming true . Revelation said that what was written was going to happen, every little thing described in it, without omitting or adding anything to it. And it did.

I still remember the fire, the destruction, the darkness. It was the most terrifying time in the history of the world. It was the longest reign of terror for mankind. For the first time in my life, I heard the sound of complete terror; I heard Death, smelled it. It is true that in the darkness, in the absence of sight, our other senses become heightened. Even though it was nearly a thousand years ago, I can still remember how Death came to take over the World; how it wrapped its fingers with its sharp nails around the hearts of anyone it was able to reach; how it sucked Life out of the Earth.

But Death had been kind to the ten million of us. Or so we thought. We survived. On the morning of the sixteenth day of September, in the year 2001, we saw signs of Light. To this day, we still don't know why we were spared, or why the ten million of us were chosen to stand before Him and choose: To die and be with Him, or to live and be Immortal.

First we saw new buildings rise out of the ashes. They sparkled, almost blinded us. Only when we dared to come out of our hiding places to touch one of the buildings did we discover they were made of pure gold. Next rose the waters containing the most abundant of fish, enough to sustain all ten million of us for at least a thousand years. Then there came the greenery, mountains and mountains of it. It was as if a new Earth was born. It caused most of us to choose to live, to choose Immortality and enjoy all these.

Only 777 chose to die with Him. When they made the choice, we were standing before Him, and He was surrounded by the Light. I could not see His face but I felt His sadness at the small number of those who chose to be with Him. The rest of us, we lived and became Immortal. But I have come to realize the error of my choice a hundred years after I made it.

Although war and famine have become myths and something that belonged to the Old Order, and that all throughout we lived in peace with each other, it was Hell for most of us. In exchange for our Immortality, we were stripped of the ability to procreate. Communion in marriage was no longer necessary. We were given everything we needed that every one of us lived sufficiently and independently, never needing anything from the other. There was no more need for words, or human contact. It was as if for Immortality, we ceased to be human.

For almost one thousand years, this journal has been my sole companion. I do not know if I can still speak. I have not spoken, even to myself, for a very long time now. I cannot even remember the sound of my own voice. I think the words in my mind, and my journal records them for me.

At times when I look at myself in the mirror, I wish that I didn't have to look the way I looked a thousand years ago. I wish I had the gnarled and bony fingers my mother had or the wrinkles on my face that my father used to have. Back when I was faced with the option to live or die, I chose to live because I was scared of Death. How I wish now that I had been brave enough to face Death!

Now I am ready to die. I am ready to give up Immortality. One night, two hundred years ago, when I felt a haunting in my being, and I was restlessly prowling my abode, I accidentally found something between its walls. It was a book, very much like the Bible I used to carry with me. I read it and there I discovered hope. It brought back to me something I lost almost a thousand years ago: Faith.

In less than hour, there will be A Third Coming. And I have made my choice.

Sabina K. White


Story © 1999 Shery Ma Belle Arrieta. All rights reserved.