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of the highest degree. Of course, they must also be correct, so complex systems of symbology were developed by the guild in order that they should be the prophets and also the judges of prophecies.
    •••
    No, no, the guild says , Rolandiran was not incorrect when he said the black albatross would descend upon the lion in the autumn of 2017, and lo, all would cry out in agony. The black albatross symbolized the British Prime Minister, the lion, the unfortunate MP so-and-so, 2017 was an allegory for 2021, and the agony was a highly piquant metaphor for the parties held all over Wales when the MP resigned. You see, he was right all along! 
    But what they see, what they truly see—these are great secrets. 
    This sort of thing has been going on more or less since prophecy was invented. Truthfully, no prophecy anywhere along the line can be wholly trusted. I am here to pull the curtain away, to reveal the trick, to tell you how the world ends.
    They said Ragnarok. They meant a particularly nasty tantrum thrown by an atomic blast. 
    They said Fenrir. They meant a genetically altered science fiction writer, pumped with steroids, chlorophyll, and Coke Zero. 
    They said Sleipnir, the Eight-Legged Steed. They meant a sentient Mattel-brand UniPegaKitten, Patent 674561A9, part of the RealPalz line, which once belonged to one Madison Suzanne Keller of Dayton, Ohio, Age 9.
    They said Odin, His Breastplate Gleaming, Wielding the Great Spear Ygg. They meant Wil Wheaton. In a clown sweater. But, in fairness, he did wield a spear.
    The world can’t end and keep its game face on at the same time. Things start to slip. The center cannot hold. Chaos isn’t the word, really. Chaos is a serious word. A prophetic word. It’s more like sense of any kind giving up and heading to its country house. I’m going to tell you how it happens. You won’t believe me, but you’ll have to pay my fee anyway—guild rules. And then we can talk about my foyer.
    You see, kids, there used to be this thing called television. It was an electrified box that received broadcast signals. People used it for many things, but mainly they were a kind of hearth, a light around which the family gathered. On the box stories were projected, and actors were people who pretended to be characters in those stories. They dressed in strange clothes, said strange words, and were beautiful—that was important, more important than you might think. People treated actors like angels, because they told all the stories that made life feel real and possible, and angels have to be beautiful. Sometimes the stories took place in the past, sometimes they took place in the future. 
    •••
    Wil Wheaton was in one of the stories that took place in the future when he was young. I remember it—but only barely, and only because I am very old. Anyway, Wil Wheaton was so beautiful and his stories so strange that after he and television both expired messily in the first skirmishes of the Mommy Wars, a portion of his cells were saved, in hopes that those electrified stories might one day be allowed under law once more. 
    All this, perhaps, you know. It is history. The rest is prophecy.
    A science fiction writer, known only as the Scalzi, will live to see the second great conflict of the age—though he will be a very old man when that war begins. Being old and decrepit, he will quickly lose all four limbs in the Battle of Silicon Valley, but will have them all replaced so that he may continue to fight the good fight against the Mainframe. Eventually, his head will be changed out in similar fashion, and his new body fueled with the fell substances I have already mentioned, along with methamphetamines and most especially the sickly brown chemical made illegal during the Mommy Wars. 
    •••
    Those horrid fluids will warp and pickle his visage, turning the Scalzi green, his ears long, his muscles enormous. And though he will be but a grotesque pea-soup colored shadow of a human, the