The Holder of the Flesh

In any city, in any country, go to any mental institution or halfway house in you can get yourself to. When you reach the front desk, look around carefully. Look for any workers eating a meal. Look for the one who appears to be full or at least almost done, for asking one who has not eaten may result in you being eaten for lunch. Ask that worker to see "The Holder of the Flesh". In a muffled voice full of food, the worker will point you to a dead cow in the middle of the room that wasn't there before. The cow will be belly up, with a large open gash from neck to crotch. The worker will gesture for you to go inside it.

As you crawl into the dead cow, you will slip inside a tight, fleshy tube, the muscular reflexes beyond the slimy film forcing you along the way. Try to stay in one position, as too much movement may cause you to be ejected from the tube rather violently into a large toothy maw, which will chew on your body until you are nothing but pulp. If you've exited the correct end, you will fall to the floor of an ornate cathedral of bone, flesh and organs. Eyes of many sizes peer at you from many spots. In the back, the floor arches a bit up and down, the wide rib cage holding back massive lungs and a large heart. Inserted into the back wall is a huge glass jar, suspending a gigantic, pulsating brain in fluids. Its long, thick nerves hang like spider webs all around, stretching to the walls beside it and to the ceiling far above.

Without warning, two very large and very long muscular, skinless arms with clawed fingertips emerge from the walls. Both arms will grab you whether you attempt to flee or not. You cannot escape their grasp. The brain will not respond to anything you say or do, except for one question. If you do not or cannot ask your question, you will be torn piece by piece, forced to stay alive and feel every moment of pain, while being reassembled into the fabric of the living cathedral. Never quite dead but never quite alive, unable to scream though you want to badly, you will live as one with the living cathedral for all time. The question you must ask before suffering this cruel fate is, "Why do they despise life?"

Without pause, the brain will then open your skull, painlessly. With but a tiny pinch of itself, it will insert a pinch of itself into yours. You will then realize, in the most thorough detail, every bit and piece of what makes life, life. All of mankind's knowledge, achievements and progress will be rendered completely and utterly useless compared to this. This has driven many quite mad and if you too cannot handle it, you shall share their fate, clawing apart your own brain and scattering your thoughts throughout the cosmos, never to reassemble again. But you must stay focused and calm, for this information is quite possibly the most tightly held secret in all of the known and unknown universes and should never be shared with anyone but a true god, lest you invoke man's early demise.

If you yet still hold resolve, the brain will let you go. Do not dally, as the brain is always tempted to add more flesh to his own. Escape through the way you came in, and as you slide along, you will stop at a dry dead end. You will find yourself under the covers of your own bed, backwards, with your feet on your pillows.

That piece of knowledge is Object 79 of 538. Life is what you make of it, so make it well.