“It’s time,” I said.
The second head turned to me, and the floodgates opened. It started crying and crying, like it would never stop. Finally, it asked, almost as if it didn’t dare hope, “Is it really?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Did I do good?” it asked.
I didn’t answer.
“So many centuries,” it pled. “So much misery, so many tears, so many years of suffering. You couldn’t imagine it, nobody could imagine it, but I did what God wanted, I did my duty, but you have to tell me, please, at the end of everything, did I do good?”
I thought about everything I had witnessed. I thought back to Malia Ngo, the scariest person I had ever met, scarier in her way than the Comet King even. I thought of her last revelation, that even though she was the daughter of Thamiel, everything she had done, she had done for the love of good. I thought of Dylan Alvarez, who I had known only as a bogeyman on the news shows. He too had only wanted to do what was right. And I thought of the Other King, the crimson-robed monster who had killed the Cometspawn with barely a second thought, and how everything he did he had done out of love. I thought of all the villains I had feared, revealed to be unsung heroes all along. And with a jolt, I realized that it was all true, the tzimtzum, the shattering of the vessels, the withdrawal of divinity to hide God from himself. I started to laugh. The dark facet of God, call it evil, call it hatred, call it Thamiel, was hollow, more brittle than glass, lighter than a feather. I started laughing that Ana had wasted her question on the existence of evil, when evil was thinner than a hair, tinier than a dust speck, so tiny it barely even existed at all. Evil was the world’s dumbest joke, the flimsiest illusion, a piece of wool God pulled over His own eyes with no expectation that it could possibly fool anybody.
I didn’t say anything to Thamiel.
He sobbed, then handed me the bident. I took it from its far end, the two points in my two hands, the single-pointed end facing the Devil. A unident. He kept sobbing. I held the unident undaunted. Finally, I thrust it at him, and he disappeared, a puff of smoke, a thread too weak to hold.
[Are you ready?] I asked myself.
[Let’s go] I answered.
I thought again of all I had seen, all I had hoped. Everything that could have been different and everything that couldn’t have been other than it was. I thought of God’s garden of universes, growing out there somewhere, staggering the imagination. I thought of God, and Adam Kadmon, and Thamiel, and the divine plan. My thoughts unfolded into dreams and blueprints and calculations, and I held all of them in my mind at once, a vision like a perfect crystal, a seed transformed into something new and wonderful. I felt a fearsome joy, like nothing I had ever experienced before. I felt the heart of Adam Kadmon beating within me, freed of its constraints at last, a fervent wish to reshape and redeem itself.
My voice only wavering a little, I spoke the Explicit Name of God.
* * *
Thank you for reading Unsong.
I have a few extra things I need to take care of. I promised some people a tosafot, and I’m thinking of a couple other very small projects as well. I also have Vague Long-Term Plans to publish this in some more serious way. If you want to be kept up-to-date, please subscribe to the mailing list using the box at the top right of the page.
I have gotten some very vague expressions of interest from some people who claim to represent publishers, and I’ll be gradually looking into those in a way that might take a long time to bear any fruit. In the meantime I will not be authorizing an official print copy. If other people want to make an ebook version, or small-scale non-public print copies in ways that don’t seem like obvious defections against future publishers, I’m okay with that. If you want updates on this kind of thing, subscribe as mentioned above.
There’s a video of me reading the final chapter up here (thanks Sophia!) and a video of me reading the Epilogue here (thanks Ben!)
Thanks also to everyone who attended the wrap party, thanks to the person who gave me some prints from William Blake’s illustrations of the Book of Job, thanks to the person who gave me a full-size functional bronze copy of the sword Sigh, and thanks (I think) to the person who hid six (possibly seven, if we still haven’t found one?) purple Beanie Baby dragons in the house where we had the afterparty. It is not my house and the people who live there are very confused.
Most of you probably know this, but I also write nonfiction and occasional short stories on my other blog, Slate Star Codex. There’s still the Unsong subreddit for anyone who wants to talk about the book more. And you might enjoy some of the other fiction on r/rational.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Book I: Genesis
Chapter 1: Dark Satanic Mills
Chapter 2: Arise To Spiritual Strife
Chapter 3: On A Cloud I Saw A Child
Chapter 4: Tools Were Made And Born Were Hands
Chapter 5: Never Seek To Tell Thy Love
Chapter 6: Till We Have Built Jerusalem
Chapter 7: The Perishing Vegetable Memory
Chapter 8: Laughing To Scorn Thy Laws And Terrors
Chapter 9: With Art Celestial
Chapter 10: Bring The Swift Arrows Of Light
Chapter 11: Drive The Just Man Into Barren Climes
Chapter 12: Borne On Angels’ Wings
Chapter 13: The Image Of Eternal Death
Chapter 14: Cruelty Has A Human Heart
Chapter 15: O Where Shall I Hide My Face?
Chapter 16: If Perchance With Iron Power He Might Avert His Own Despair
Book II: Exodus
Chapter 17: No Earthly Parents I Confess
Chapter 18: That The Children Of Jerusalem May Be Saved From Slavery (Passover Bonus Chapter)
Chapter 19: The Form Of The Angelic Land
Chapter 20: When The Stars Threw Down Their Spears
Chapter 21: Thou Also Dwellest In Eternity
Chapter 22: Whose Ears Have Heard The Holy Word
Chapter 23: Now Descendeth Out Of Heaven A City
Chapter 24: Why Dost Thou Come To Angels’ Eyes?
Chapter 25: Lie Down Before My Feet, O Dragon
Chapter 26: For Not One Sparrow Can Suffer And The Whole Universe Not Suffer Also
Chapter 27: The Starry Floor, The Watery Shore
Chapter 28: Hid As In An Ark
Chapter 29: He Who Respects The Infant’s Faith
Chapter 30: Over The Dark Deserts
Chapter 31: The Foundation Of Empire
Chapter 32: The Human Form Divine
Chapter 33: The Doors Of Perception
Chapter 34: Why Wilt Thou Rend Thyself Apart, Jerusalem?
Chapter 35: The Voices Of Children In His Tents
Chapter 36: My Father’s Business
Chapter 37: Love That Never Told Can Be
Chapter 38: I Will Not Cease From Mental Fight
Chapter 39: Fearful Symmetry
Chapter 40: In Terrible Majesty
Book III: Revelation
Chapter 41: Go Love Without The Help Of Any Thing On Earth
Chapter 42: Whose Whole Delight Is In Destroying
Chapter 43: Lest They Be Annihilated In Thy Annihilation
Chapter 44: A World Within Opening Its Gates
Chapter 45: In The Remotest Bottoms Of The Caves
Chapter 46: To Talk Of Patience To The Afflicted
Chapter 47: For He Beheld New Female Forms
Chapter 48: Bring Me My Chariot Of Fire
Chapter 49: Terrors Of The Sun And Moon
Chapter 50: Silent As Despairing Love
Chapter 51: He Wondered That He Felt Love
Chapter 52: The King Of Light Beheld Her Mourning
Chapter 53: Lover Of Wild Rebellion
Chapter 54: My Course Among the Stars
Chapter 55: None Can Visit His Regions
Chapter 56: Agony In The Garden
Chapter 57: Now Taking On Ahania’s Form…
&n
bsp; Chapter 58: …And Now The Form Of Enion
Chapter 59: Clothe Yourself In Golden Arms
Chapter 60: O Rose, Thou Art Sick
Chapter 61: And Ololon Said, Let Us Descend Also, And Let Us Give Ourselves To Death In Ulro Among The Transgressors
Chapter 62: That The Wide World Might Fly From Its Hinges
Chapter 63: My Wrath Burns To The Top Of Heaven
Chapter 64: Another Better World Shall Be
Chapter 65: The Fruit Of My Mysterious Tree
Chapter 66: In The Forests Of The Night
Chapter 67: The Night Of Enitharmon’s Joy
Chapter 68: …Puts All Heaven In A Rage
Book IV: Kings
Chapter 69: Love Seeketh Not Itself To Please
Chapter 70: Nor For Itself Hath Any Care
Chapter 71: But For Another Gives Its Ease
Chapter 72: And Builds A Heaven In Hell’s Despair
Epilogue
Unsong Page 74