Harbinger Of DOOM

I am slowly losing my mind... There's no escaping, it seems, that feeling of sinking deeper and deeper in a cesspool of dark and ugly thoughts now that we're collectively living through some surreal version of involuntary quarantine. Trapped inside the house and inside the mind; but the latter is sinking under a continuous assault of bad news, brought to us by our political, economical and intellectual leaders, the harbingers of DOOM.

It must be some strange form of paranoia; people can't follow me inside my house, but certain thoughts and emotions follow me wherever my mind goes. Wherever I look, I see reflected that constant message from our leaders; you don't matter, your life is nothing, you're worth nothing and the universe won't care if you leave. While their words say that our "essential workers" are heroes on the front-line of the real economy, their actions speak much louder and say that we're not essential at all; the harbingers of our DOOM saved Wall Street, the banks and the CEO's of large corporations, but not us. Millions lost their job, millions lost their health insurance, millions aren't able to pay the rent; those millions are expendable and have to jump through hoops if they want to get whatever crumbs are reserved for them.

To escape from this dreadful realization of being unneeded, unwanted even, and being trapped in this mandatory quarantine, I've picked up gaming again. You might have guessed already; I installed and played the 2016 version of DOOM. This is an excellent game, a reboot of sorts for the original DOOM I played for countless hours in the early 1990s, a game centered around constant, fluid and visceral action, a first person 3D shoot 'm up with little attention to the background story. But there was one, however thin; a portal to hell was created by some inter-dimensional experiment gone haywire, and you were "the DOOM guy", the sole surviving marine on Mars who got to shoot up the hordes of hellish monsters pouring through that inter-dimensional portal.

In DOOM 2016 the story is equally inconsequential; you essentially run around and slay demons in various creative ways. But for those who pay attention, DOOM 2016 picks up where DOOM left off in a brilliant manner. The original DOOM didn't end well. The player was successful in slaying all demons and closing the hell-portal, but the DOOM guy was teleported to the hell-dimension, never to be heard of again... Until 2016 that is; the DOOM guy wakes up from some sort of stasis as he is awakened by dr. Samuel Hayden, the current CEO of UAC, the firm conducting inter-dimensional experiments on Mars. History seems to repeat itself, as DOOM guy again has to slay hordes of hellish creatures in order to save mankind.

The hell-portal is opened again by one of UAC's employees, dr. Olivia Pierce, who's the lead-scientist as well as the leader of a semi-secret cult; her soul has been lost do the Dark Lord and she's planning on making a permanent connection between our world and that of the demons. She's made the proverbial pact with the Devil and is in league with him, or her, or it to expose the Earth to their hunger for fresh souls to consume. The reason why these inter-dimensional experiments took place initially, was because it opened up access to an infinite source of energy, called Argent energy, and solved Earth's many energy problems. But now that demons are invading our dimension, it's on the DOOM guy to close the portal once more, and his fight against the hell-spawn takes him from Mars to hell and back, and back to hell again, to a place called Argent D'Nur where the final battle against Olivia Pierce turned spider-demon takes place... I was enjoying the game, and I still am as I'm going for a second play-through on a higher difficulty level, but even in this game I was confronted with a reflection of our dark current reality. I'll just quote what Olivia Pierce had to say about her pact with hell; I believe you'll see the parallels with our surreal reality...

"Some of you in a previous life may have held childish notions of God and the kingdom of heaven. This ugly representation of a spiritual nirvana was designed to control you, to placate your natural feelings of hate and rage, to subdue your realization of your place in the universe. By embracing science, you took the first steps towards freedom from these intellectual chains. By dedicating yourself to the development of Argent energy, you cemented your place in the next age.

Now let us tell you about the real heaven.

The real kingdom of the Gods is a place that you will never reach, and you should never wish to. No human will ever visit the sacred ground of Argent D'Nur, unless they are made a God by the dark lords. Humanity's only purpose, and reward, is to serve the ascension of the Imperatrix and protect the Crucible. You will be destroyed by the demons, while I will be made a God. My immortality is assured, while you will writhe in perpetual agony at the bottom of the darkest hole in Hell. You will be forgotten. Your life, your loved ones, your achievements and failures are nothing. A blank space on the canvas of time.

Thank you for your service. May you rot in Hell.

Olivia Pierce"

Reading those words I can't help but think they could have easily come from someone who aspires to become a member of the 0.001 percent club. Like a Ben Shapiro who made a pact with the 0.001 percent club to function as one of their mouthpieces, reminding the rabble of their place in the universe, reminding them of how little they're really worth in the eyes of Shapiro's evil masters. He sees a bright side to the millions of recently unemployed and doesn't hide his disdain for those "essential" workers. He is but one of the right wing harbingers of DOOM who want the economy "open" again, because in our world it's the movers of the fake economy, measured in stock prices and GDP, who decide who's made a God and gets access to Argent D'Nur...

That being said, I'll be playing more of DOOM; the game is just that good :-) And I'll be playing the recently released sequel, DOOM Eternal, as well. DOOM's a blast and a perfect time-killer; highly recommended (even if I'm three years late ;-))!

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, keep safe, keep healthy!