‘Whatever you decide, Samuel, do what’s best for you. Do what’s best … for your soul.’

A wisp of thought, in the consciousness of existence.

Jacob?

Are you out there, son?

If you are there, I have no way of knowing.

The Abomination has blanketed my senses, shielding your thought energy from me. While I cannot hear you, I pray you might still hear me in the hopes that my experiences on Xibalba can protect you.

At one time we spoke of love. It’s important you understand the power of the emotion, and how its absence can taint the soul.

As Michael Gabriel, I had lived an existence devoid of happiness—a lonely childhood, followed by a bitter adolescence. I was life’s victim, my later years spent in isolation in a mental asylum. Even those precious few moments spent with your mother were fleeting, the pain of her loss filling me with an angst I cannot put in words or thoughts.

Was it mere coincidence that the Guardian arranged a shared existence with the Mars colonist, Bill Raby—himself filled with an emptiness as bad, if not worse than my own? No, I no longer believe in coincidences.

But it was not just Bill Raby who experienced this heaviness of heart, nearly every colonist marooned on Xibalba shared the same unspoken feeling. It was a feeling of shame, of survivor’s guilt, magnified beyond the scope of human despair.

Nine billion people on Earth had perished so that a chosen few could survive. Many of us had ‘conspired with the Devil,’ meaning we had been selected for Mars Colony based neither by lottery nor merit, but by political affiliation, by favoritism and ethnic background. We survived because of who we knew and how much money we had so that we could manipulate the selection process.

Now, marooned on Xibalba, the immorality of our affairs was tearing us apart inside.

Not all of us, I should say. Your cousin, Lilith, and her son, Devlin, along with their ‘coven’ of friends, seemed quite content with our bizarre predicament.

The rest of us, however, were left to wallow in our existence. ‘Live for those who died,’ became our creed. And so we faked our joy, pretending the whole affair back on Earth was just a test of survival.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily … life is but a dream.

Was Bill Raby’s existence but a dream?

Was Michael Gabriel’s? Can one truly exist without love?

Yes, but it is a self-imposed hell.

It was your love that saved me, Jacob, but in your unselfish quest to release me, I fear you have condemned your soul to the same purgatory, the same ultimate destiny.

You cannot simply be Hunahpu, you must retain your humanity. Step into the real light. Allow yourself to love again, or you will find yourself on the same path as your cousin, Lilith.