We can work only with assumptions -- She wrote -- and faith. With the assumption that Josef has now left us and the faith that his words were true and his message remains alive. It is now our duty to work towards the better future for which he taught us to strive, and to prepare for the coming of 2010, the Year of the Traveler. Whatever disaster is coming in that prophetic year, we will be ready for it, and the truth of the Traveler’s words will, at last, be clear for all to see.With that, the FPCJ6 ended its presence on the web. Its site shut down. Its publications ended. Its local chapters closed. With the same sudden ferocity with which it had appeared, the congregation of Josef6 disappeared simultaneously from the virtual and the real. There were occasional rumors, among those who cared, of a compound in the Arizona desert, of weekly ritual invocations to the Traveler, of unexplained disappearances among the east coast faithful, sometimes in couples, sometimes in dozens, leaving all their material property behind and vanishing from the two worlds.
In my own way, I too disappeared. I made good on the realization that came to me as I gazed upon the thing that Horatio Bardolf had become: that sickly, viscous compound of carbon, flesh and circuitry. My name has been erased. My connections have been severed. My IP addresses, my site nicknames, my browsers and servers, the endless tentacles with which I reached out into the electronic architecture have all been destroyed. In a single, fiery act of virtual suicide I annihilated my virtual self. Through total destruction, I blocked all the avenues through which they could hope to make their fatal contact.
But I knew this was not enough. I moved to another city. I took another name. I found a different position at a different institution and dedicated myself once again to the Voynich Manuscript. Thus far, I have solved none of its mysteries. It remains a comforting, effortlessly existent enigma. I am content with this.
They may yet find me. Horatio Bardolf’s fate may yet be my own. They know, or they must have guessed, that he had contacted me by other means in order to convey his location. They do not know, they cannot know, that in that singular communication he told me nothing. They can only guess at what I know. Their fear of me must be terrible. Perhaps there are squadrons of them scouring the face of the earth in search of me. Teams of assassins dispatched at regular intervals from the sanctuary in the desert. Pouring over mailing lists, bank statements, rental invoices, the innumerable detritus of paper that a human being leaves behind as he moves through the non-electronic architecture. I can be ironically thankful that the virtual has now overwhelmed so much of that which once was real. To hide from the virtual is now to hide -- almost -- from the world entire. If they succeed in finding me, I will salute their skill and perseverance even as their assassins strike me down. On some days, when I am alone with my mystery and my dreams, I think that I would welcome such an end. I live now as a perpetual foreigner in this electronic age. There are indeed moments when I long for that indelible end. Or pray for the coming of 2010, and for the final proof that the Traveler was a truth or a lie. But I know that even this will not silence the faithful, nor dissuade them from their life’s work: the eternal protection of him and his mystery.
He is still with me too. His face as shadowy and concealed as it has always been. He and my unknown author of the Voynich Manuscript remain at my side in this new and alien existence I have built to preserve my life. On some nights I still dream them. Sitting side by side, one with his quill, the other with his keyboard. Sketching the outlines of their devices of torture. These things that would pain mankind for the rest of his existence on this earth. I watch them in my sleep, as they formulate their infinite unknowns. As they prepare their poison chalices for the faithful and the heretics. I can only do as they do. As all of us do who were captured by the ineffable enigma. As I and my enemies do. I wait, and I hope, for the Year of the Traveler.
