Dear Sophie,

Pinocchio told me shortly after we met that there is no God here. At first, I couldn’t believe it. I met him in a church, after all, even if had been converted to a bar. How could there be a church if there was no God?

But looking around me I begin to see what he means.

Even in our world, there are those who deny God’s existence, or those who don’t really care much whether he exists or not. Up until now, I had always considered myself one of the latter.

I was raised in the Presbyterian Church, as you know. I was baptized as a baby, confirmed as a young teenager and, like most members of my childhood Sunday School classes, I stopped attending church except on Christmas and Easter by the time I graduated from high school. After I joined the Army, subconsciously I decided that God had no place in my life, whether he existed or not. America was my God, and you, my Sophie, were my idol.

But the US Army is a jealous god, and they have punished me for my idolatry. They took me away from you, and sent me here; my penance is to be a reluctant messiah to the people of the world they created.

But what kind of savior can I be to these people when there is nothing that I can give them? They expect me to lead them to the real world, our world, but that is a promise not even God could keep. And I am no god, no matter what else they may believe me to be.

I can’t even offer them the one thing they so desperately need, hope of a better life. No heaven, not even the imperfect world that exists outside this simulation, is open to them.

And I can’t help but wonder, is the hope people cling to in our world similarly false? I read once, in a children’s novel, that heaven is like our world, only more real, more perfect. If that is so, than can our imperfect souls ever be accepted there?

My mother believed we could. I never understood the peace she had, even though a part of me always longed for it. She said it was her faith, but I had no place in my life for faith, even if it did give peace. So instead I searched for peace in war, hoping that by fighting for the freedom of the world I would find myself freed in the process. All I got for my trouble was a different kind of prison.

I never understood, until I came here, how desperately people need hope. I saw hopelessness in Bosnia, but it never touched me like this because I always had you and because even in the despair of that broken land the people always had a fragment of hope in the life beyond.

I still have you in my heart, but here in Harsh Realm, the only hope these people have is one that I know to be false. And for the first time in my life, I can’t help but hope that Mom was right. Might God not indeed have mercy on the imperfect souls he created and give them a way into his perfect heaven? And if he can do that, then maybe he can have mercy on these unreal souls created by his creation, and give them a real world to attain to, not just hope for.

After all, if he can’t, then who chose me, and what have I been chosen for? I need to be chosen, as selfish and arrogant as it sounds. Because when the despair of this place starts to invade me, that one hope might keep me alive long enough to make it home to you, my beloved.

If I can return to you and our child having achieved this, my life will never lack meaning.

I pray God, if he’s there, makes me worthy of the hope these people have placed in me. I need it as much as they do.

Have faith in me, Sophie, and in my homecoming. Have faith for me.

Forever your,

Tom