The Holder of the Fragile

In any city, in any country, go to any hospital you can get yourself to. When you reach the front desk, ask to visit someone who calls himself "The Holder of the Fragile". Should you then experience searing pain throughout your body, and find yourself sprawled on the ground, unable to move, while the worker laughs maniacally, then it is already too late and your fate is sealed. You will not leave this hospital alive.

If you have passed this part of your trial, you will then be placed in a private room, trapped in a bed. You will find yourself unable to move, speak, or even blink. You will remain this way until the day your death arrives. You may try in vain to catch the eye of any nurse who enters the room, but you will continually find that where their face should be, there is but featureless flesh. After enduring this unending torture, year after year, you will find yourself visited by a little boy with a red balloon. This boy signals the beginning of the end.

If the little boy's balloon bursts while he is in the room, the Holder will soon arrive. If the balloon stays intact, and the boy leaves, the moment the door closes behind him your heart will cease to beat, but your brain will live for all time, trapped in the room. It will continue to function until the end, forever seeking peace, but receiving none.

Once the balloon has popped, and the boy has left, you will find that the gravity in the room begins to increase exponentially. I wish to tell you to not be afraid, but that would be a lie. You should be afraid, for the Holder is on his way. As you lie there with the pressure of the world pushing down on you, crushing you, smothering you, you might hear a little voice in your imagination sweetly say, "His lips are of the demons, his soul of the saved." If these words grace your ears, then you might have a chance to survive. If not, you are surely doomed.

Suddenly, the door will creak open, and in will walk a man. He seems to be a regular man, and he even wears the coat of a doctor, but on his face rests nothing but a mouth spread wide in a smile. Quickly, before he speaks, you must pull yourself from the bed, savagely fighting against the forces holding you down, and throw yourself at his feet, bowing before him. If you do not, his words will become chains that bind you, and you will do nothing but serve him for all eternity. Slowly, your face will melt away, and forever you will tend to the other souls who seek.

While on your knees before him, the moment to ask the question burning your brain has arrived. Gather up all the courage you can muster, and without fear ask him, "How can we stay strong?"

The doctor will place his hands upon your shoulders and suddenly you will see not only your own life flash before your eyes, but every life that ever was or will be. You live the life of every person that has or will exist. Every building, every plant, every thing, every Object, every Holder. You see them all. You are them all. You see them all decay. You see them all rot. You see them all end. Except one. And with your dying word you utter his name. "Legion." As you lie there, your life ebbing away, you watch as the Holder bends down with a peculiar box in his hand. Every square inch of this box seems familiar to you. Then it dawns on you. This box is made from all of the memories of the world, combined together in a single object. As these memories fill you, the Holder gently removes your soul from your body and places it in the box. As he lays your new home on the ground, and walks out of the room, he tells you then that you are destined to wait in this room until the fateful day when one of your descendants comes to collect the box.

This box is Object 331 of 2538. Will you have the courage to kill everyone you love? It is the only way to save them if the Objects come together.