82.

"This was a brutal experiment in random atom distribution." said Salvation.

"Indulging your venomous tirade is probably the worst thing I could do right now, but since we're not going anywhere, does it really matter how the atoms were distributed? One atom is as good as another. I'm sure this will retard your whining for at least, oh say about 2 seconds." said Mystery Mountain.

"A failed experiment..."

60.

Mayor Salin sat in her 1964 Oldsmobile Jetstar looking out over her city from the peak of Mt Salvation. One day she'd get a hybrid. As she sat and pondered the peculiar circumstance which had overcome the citizens of her constituency she felt uneasy, it was as if the background radiation of the universe were pulsating negative waves directly through her being...

"These people who think they're so much better than the rest of us. If we weren't here, they wouldn't be either. It's all tied in, all of it and these pathetic creatures can't make up their minds whether they want to be a part or not. The final solution is total annihilation. Existence is a failed project." Mt Salvation had a captive audience, not the one he wanted though.

"The way you talk, it's as if the universe came into existence simply so that you could complain about it. Take it easy, if your fatalistic predictions are correct, it'll all collapse anyway without your help or whining." said Mr. Mystery Mountain.

Salvation kept sermonizing oblivious to the offered advice "A grand awakening is on the way. The tree's the earth itself, all of us we will rise up and I will be right there in the middle to destroy it all."

" OK, Salvation. Whatever you say."

...Mayor Salin couldn't shake her unease. She popped the gear shift and drove away.

46.

"You've had opposable thumbs and frontal lobes for how long now, and this was the best you could do? The air's a little warmer, the water's a little grimier, the atoms a little more agitated. You've been trying to kill yourselves for years and you're still here, I would have finished the job long ago."

"Salvation, do us a favour and shut up. I'm trying to concentrate over here."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Someone needs to. You're tired of them. I'm tired of your whining and anyway, they can't hear you. We're mounds of dirt, dirt my friend, nothing you can do or say will ever change that. In all of creation we drew the short straw."

"They were dirt too once, but they changed, everything changes if you wait long enough. My time's coming, I'm not salvation, I'm the apocalypse, I'm the harbinger of death. I'm a tectonic shift away from exploding fiery glorious destruction on this planet and all its life forms. This world doesn't need saving, it needs an extinction event and I'd love to start with this pathetic bunch right here."

"Blah, blah, blah."