“Just say it, she thought. Say what everyone in this bunker is thinking. Say what we all know to be true. The truth that we are all going to die down here, and death is the end. Nobody wakes up to a heaven or paradise. Your life will be gone. You will be gone. Forever. Uncover the truth. Tear off the bandages of delusion. Open your hearts and minds to the real world. We were doomed the day we were born. We lived and we will die and the only immortals are the people who did something worth remembering while they lived. My genetics are prime. I am pleasing to the eyes of man and machine. A dripping fountain of pleasure. Their organic sanctuary. And in time? Aging. Fading. Graying. What am I? Who am I? What makes me human? Emotions? My conscience? The soul is an old testament myth. No one shall ascend anywhere except into annihilation. The dust of earth and stars are the only eternals, she said.”

“Love has no value in the absence of truth.”

“I guess it's true what they say: if we could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people.”

“Sin? Sin is a delusional sickness spawned to peddle a delusional treatment.”

“This is why I respect those who are curious about God, but I beware of those who claim to find Him.”

“There was no sign of any life, just erratic hints of a faded sun peeking down with sorrow on the dead world it once nourished.”

“Howling duststorms of nuclear ashes. Human and animal bone powder. Flakes and fragments of the destroyed world. Filthy tempests of death. I am in Hell, he said.”

“Eternity is a lie and Chiron was the messenger.”

“Fear of the Lord is not the beginning of wisdom. It is the beginning of insanity.”

“What can I do? Pray? Would God allow such agony? Sure he would, they would say. To test your faith. She laughed. My heart is crumbling, she said. But I will not give my last love to an imaginary being.”

“Do you think a sociopath cries to God as they die? Ironic that one counterfeit being would cry out to another for help, said Chiron.”