Ragnarok

Ada once asked me what Ragnarok means. I said, Twilight of the Gods. No, she said. It’s a computer game. That was years ago. A while back while looking for books to donate, I found “Labyrinths” by Borges. I remembered having a conversation where I interrupted someone because he said “Labyrinth by Borges” when it should be “Labyrinths.” Borges has multitudes of labyrinthine stories. But I digress. One of the parables in the book is “Ragnarok.” Borges had a dream where he met an old friend years ago and then someone shouted, “The Gods! The Gods!” First, the people applaused their arrival as they entered the main lecture hall. Until someone realized that just maybe the gods can not talk. The people realized that these gods no longer were godly but degenerate.
“Suddenly we sensed that they were playing their last card, that they were cunning, ignorant and cruel like old beasts of prey and that, if we let ourselves be overcome by fear or pity, they would finally destroy us,” Borges wrote.
“We took our heavy revolvers (all of a sudden there were revolvers in the dream) and joyfully killed the Gods,” he ended the story.
I hope the makers of Ragnarok was thinking of Borges when they named their game after this parable. Because by then, the shooting would have a philosophical basis.