Everyone Should Eat His Own Turtle (A Greek Myth Novel) by H.C. Southwark (nonfiction book recommendations TXT) 📕

not speak, worried that if she did, she would just receive another puzzle to ponder over. Already all this disorientation had her head hurting.

“Know this,” said Apollon, “Your first lesson as a prophetess of logic and reason. The ultimate truth of existence is that all of reality carries no meaning or purpose. Every being alive will ultimately perish and be plowed under into the realm of Hades, where it will become nothing but an unintelligible echo—including the great Gaea herself. Therefore, every fleeting moment is only a small drop in a stream that dries up and is gone. All things—happiness, suffering, striving, people, ideas—are nothing.”

These words poured through Isme’s ears like cool water descending down all the way to her toes. She shivered. Objections rose like the dawning of the sun, the only thing to keep her warm. The stone was cool under her grip. She said, “That cannot be.”

“Know this: your second lesson as a prophetess of logic,” said Apollon, continuing as though her objection was hardly worth answering. “There are three aspects that define man’s existence. But the nature of reality is such that a man can only have two of those aspects and must forsake the other.”

Isme watched him hold up a hand with three fingers raised, his thumb sticking out. And he said, “The things are: happiness, knowledge, and self-awareness.”

He put down his second finger, “One can be happy if one has knowledge, for while one will understand that you will die in the world will end, one will not fully comprehend this because of a lack of self-awareness. Thus one goes along deluded about the meaning of one’s life, neglecting to realize that you are actually worth nothing, merely paying lip service to the reality while not truly applying it to yourself.”

He put down his pointer finger, “One can be happy if one has self-awareness, but not the knowledge that the world and yourself will end. One thus lives without the knowledge that would destroy one’s happiness, a delusion that one has continual meaning brought about by continual existence even past the realm of the dead.”

And he collapsed his thumb into a fist, “And one can have knowledge and self-awareness, which is to know that ultimately destruction will overtake oneself, that the world and all it contains is a meaningless exercise in suffering, and thus one forsakes happiness, for then the only people who have happiness are the ones who are truly mad.”

“That can’t be,” repeated Isme, turning the three aspects over in her mind. Some deep part of herself revolted against them, against the claim of meaninglessness, needing no reason she understood. She could not find a way to unravel the claim or the three aspects in and of themselves, but she could think to add something that would challenge them by changing the stated nature of the universe. “This world will end, all will perish, but there is always hope.”

“Hope,” said Apollon, “is a lie designed by people who have no self-awareness, as a way to deny themselves understanding of their truly impossible state.”

“No,” said Isme, “We can strive for more, be the best we are during our lives, enjoy our lives. And we can seek to find a way to live on in fame and glory. And earn a better afterlife—perhaps in the Elysian fields, among the heroes.”

“Fame is pointless,” said Apollon. “Glory is pointless. Every story is forgotten. The sun will dim and crack like an egg. The flash of joy that is rarely in your life will be a grain of sand against time spent as a shade below. There are no Elysian Fields—that is a bedtime story told by people deluded with hope. All fields below are asphodel, kings and heroes and gods and murderers and paupers alike.”

No Elysium—at these words Isme felt something sink within her, nearly let go of the rock ledge, would have been swept downward. Except she remembered just in time: she was falling up. And she knew that if what she was hearing was terrible now, how much worse it would be if she continued along the path Apollon had carved within her.

She said, “If there is no Elysian Fields, then there must be no Tartarus, either.” As she said this, something in her went cold again, thinking about how wonderful people of the stories like beloved Alcestis were now grouped with men like Tantalus—

“No,” said Apollon, “Tartarus exists. It is always possible that the shades of men can fall into worse states; it is simply impossible for them to rise to higher states. Not that it matters anyway—for they have forgotten their crimes like the rest of the dead.”

And Isme wondered then about herself:

I murdered those men, she thought, even if unintentionally. And here is the god, Apollon, saying that rising from the depths is impossible. Is there be no absolution? I thought the gods could do such things—my father said that he heard Paris of Troy, before stealing Helen, first came to Sparta to ask for absolution of blood guilt for killing a boy... and the gods granted that...

But maybe there is no way for my blood guilt to be absolved.

She said, half trying to distract herself from this horrifying possibility, “Well, maybe someday there will be something other than the fields of Asphodel.”

“You are describing something that would need to remake the universe from below the depths unto the height beyond the stars,” said Apollon. “Not even the gods can do that.”

“I—” Isme felt words constricting on the inside of her throat, said what she was truly thinking: “There must be something that gives life purpose.” Bowing her head to the rock, she felt the strain in her fingers, said, “Perhaps we will all vanish into the underworld, but for now we live and move and breathe—maybe that is enough.”

“I have just explained why that is operating under a delusion,” said Apollon. “That is to go through life in denial, lacking self-awareness or pretending that the knowledge of the universe’s lack