This is The Book of Joseph.
Only a couple thousand were made and given away to those who bought the Mondo edition of Far Cry 5.
I thought this would be a much easier way for his word to be spread so everyone can read it. It very much goes in depth...
"They quote prophets who were born slaves. They sing the praises of saviors born of the people. But in their arrogance, they will never understand that the messenger is not of their caste."
When the Voice spoke to me, it had been a long time since I'd heard anything comforting.
Father had just taken me and Jacob out of school to home-school us himself. He meant to pass on knowledge more faithful to his convictions, away from evil influences, as he proclaimed to anyone who would listen.
Which was no one.
I no longer had the stories our teachers innocently recounted of the adventures of pious, tightknit, loving families of pioneers who conquered the country by braving all sorts of dangers. If those pioneers had known what would become of their dreams, they most likely would have chosen not to brave anything at all and to slaughter their oxen and burn their covered wagons. But some home-schooling was quite common and perfectly legal in the state of Georgia as long as one of the parents could read and write. Father met both of these criteria. The fact that he was an alcoholic who beat us simply did not concern the authorities. As for the neighbours, they were too busy with their own problems to worry about the fate of Old Man Seed's boys.
It wasn't that they were heartless - on the contrary, they were good people. But despite their kind nature, they had been hardened by misery. In our town, everyone worked the same job - collecting unemployment.
We lived off a patchwork of welfare, food stamps, charity, and soup kitchens funded by rich liberals from wealthy suburbs paid for to buy themselves a conscience or so they could brag about it at the dinners they threw at hip Atlanta restaurants. In these parts, everyone had their own cross to bear. Some had more than one, and the worst off had enough to fill a cemetery. Thus, we were alone with our problems, just us, members of a family descended from pioneers who failed to conquer anything but vast nothingness and gained only the right to settle their misery in one place.
Amid this emptiness, my sole source of joy was running to the corner gas station at the very end of our street. Our mother would send us there to buy - often on credit - the hot dogs and frozen pizza that formed the bulk of our diet. And whiskey, of course, for our father.
The owner was a good man at heart who let me skim through the magazines next to the register, without a word. I would sit alone in a corner, enjoying the cool breeze of the noisy air conditioner and the sound of the radio playing over worn-out speakers. I read and the world disappeared. Sometimes he'd give me a soda, for no reason, without asking for anything in return, as if he weren't from around here.
Later, when I began founding my community and gathering believers, I decided to give him a visit and bring him the message I bore.
I wanted to save him the way he saved me.
That's when I learned he had been shot years earlier in a robbery committed by people who couldn't have been from the neighbourhood - everyone in town knew that the contents of his cash drawer weren't worth three .38 bullets.
May he rest in peace. At least he won't be around for the horror of the end times.
Why did the Voice choose to speak to me on that day in particular?
I believed it's because recently my brother Jacob had begun to clash with our father more and more.
We were separated by more than just age. He was also bolder. He was the first one to jump into the polluted reservoirs, the quickest to go adventuring in other neighbourhoods, despite the bands of kids who marked it as their exclusive territory. He was also the one who pinched candy whenever possible, at the risk of severe punishment, just so we could have a bit of sweetness and comfort in our lives. He was surely a thief, but I came to admire him as a modern day Robin Hood, with a forest of broken down houses, cracked roads, and overgrown gardens. We were accustomed to our father's mood swings, the stench of alcohol on his breath, his maniacal sermons. We were even used to his smacks and kicks, to the lashes of his belt.
But he had started beating our little brother, John. Jacob was strong and determined, and I was somehow able to retreat deep within myself during whippings. But John was young and so delicate.
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It tortured Jacob to see him cry and howl after being beaten. And the anger Jacob felt mutated into a fierce hate.
Our mother's lethargy only made things worse. She glided through the house, listlessly, always wearing the same nightgown. She had never been anything more than a ghost to us, of no help whatsoever, possibly doomed to derangement for all eternity, having been crushed by her marriage to a man who spoke like a saint but acted like a demon.
Violence seeped into the cracks between the father and his oldest son.
We certainly didn't lack examples. Violence filled our neighbourhood. Robberies, fights, drug deals, domestic violence - what kids from nice neighbourhoods saw on TV, we saw from the windows. The full range of misery, and its faithful companion, crime, was everywhere we looked. We had all the inspiration we needed. Violence had become so normal that when we went to bed, Jacob talked shamelessly with us about various strategies he had come up with for getting rid of our father. Maybe he was only plotting and dreaming out loud, like mistreated employees who think about revenge after a few drinks. Nonetheless, I understood that I needed to talk to Jacob and hold him back. We could lie and steal and be forgiven, but could not raise a hand against our father.
For behold, this is the greatest of all sins - the ultimate, unforgivable sin.
Why, then, did the Voice speak to me and not my brother?
I have often asked myself this question.
I have never truly understand, never received a response. I was no better or worse than any of the other children.
Maybe it was just that I was available, in the right place at the right time to hear the Voice.
In time, I stopped asking all these questions and accepted that I was the messenger as I had accepted the message. I spread the message, tirelessly exalting the souls, like the crackling speaker that warmed the heart of a child sitting under a flashing neon sign in a gas station in Rome, Georgia USA.
