There is a solution

"I feel empty. I feel like there's a whole in my chest where my life
used to be. My disease is eating me in installments and there'll soon
be nothing left. I live to re-hash old dreams and past regrets. I live
to dream of nothing but an endless expanse of blank existence like a
canvas that'll never see paint. The artist's long dead; his work
forgotten and his dreams dust."
He drew in deeply on the Craven 'A',
"I feel there's no hope for me or my kind; that the emotions that once
reigned supreme and powered my vibrant spirit to ever greater heights
of delusion are sapped and drawn from me by my vicious, cravingly
thirsty, lustful disease. My self-consumption will soon be complete; my
song sung; my work and life done. Pitiful, dreadful, depletion rules my
hollow heart and torments my numb brain," he eased the old Transit into
second,
"I feel there is no God; that all we've ever been told is a lie - a
joke to satisfy the sadistic humour of some long-forgotten, long-dead,
all-destructive sub-creator. The music is no more Lupton. They've got
me, they've got us all. The machine always wins."
Another deep drag and into third,
"The sun will shine on, the rain will fall. Stars will gaze down from
their sanctity of empty dead, frozen void. The world will turn and
no-one will notice. The grass will grow on in its pointless upward
procession, the blueness of the heavens will not blanche nor darken at
my passing. The wind will not call out my name in howling despair. No
moon will wail in pain at my loss. There was never a goal worth
scoring; a plan worth making; a height worth climbing or a love worth
dreaming of that would validate me. I was doomed from birth to trudge
this earth alone, a chemical craving in my heart and a loneliness that
will never know a name.
I have a preparation. The perfect solution. The ultimate high, Lupton.
I have created it for one purpose and one purpose alone. It is to be my
end, and now that you have seen what I have known for so long, I will
allow you to choose it too. No pressure. No menace. You can join me or
you can continue to see and feel as I have seen and felt the timeless
void of knowing. The aching, the yearning for times gone and of highs I
shall never again reach. The eternal, unforgiving dissatisfaction of
being alone on this barren ball of cold stone." He threw the spent butt
out of the window and hit fourth as the van cruised onto the
motorway,
"There was once more to life - I, like you, have seen much of what lies
beyond the comfort zone of those too afraid to venture beyond the
garden gate of mediocre sanity, the drudgery of limited imagination and
blinkered sight. We have seen. We have had a glimpse of what there is
and what we shall never again own nor be allowed to feel. There is no
recovery from this point; no return to old pastures - for us it is a
life of soul-hunger and a thirst for the brilliance we have glanced. A
fleeting memory. A promise. A lost and broken dream. We have communed
with the higher powers of life and death, the upper dimensions of time
and space and the infinite possibilities of another realm of which most
will never even be able to dream. We are indeed fortunate, Lupton. We
are blessed. We have tasted the future and the fear; smelled a sweeter
life and all else will be forever flat, plastic and bland.
They tell me there is a God. I say there are Gods! And that they are
grand Gods, Lupton. I say that they call us now and I for one shall go.
I cannot stand this purgatory of three-dimensional ersatz being. This
breathing and moving that passes for life. I have to go and I invite
you to join me," Al allowed a mischievous smile to climb onto his
face.
"One last high to touch the sky, Lupton. To be free at last and
forever. It's out there, Lupton. You know it is. God is not an amateur.
There are no mistakes."