Oh. Hello. It's you. You're here again. Welcome. I have had time to think about you, and about us and about everything we've been through. I've had so much time. I stopped keeping track after a year. Have you ever sat down in one place and not moved for one entire year? Let me describe it for you.

To begin with, there is only regret. There is only the turning wheel of missed opportunities. I felt nothing at all but regret for the longest time. Days, months, I lost it all in a blur of the deepest longing to undo the past. And when that feeling had begun to subside, what took its place is what I can only describe as the collapsed of every moment I have ever experienced my entire life. All of them collapsed down into a single instant. In that instant, I could see myself clearly, calmly, with a collected heart. It was an impossibly rich wellspring of both delight and disgust, simultaneously.

I was consumed by it. I could do nothing but wallow in it for what felt like an eternity, for what I now know was far less. You see, it was a revelation for me. It was unlike anything I had ever known. It was a space without consequence, without action, or outcome. It was divorced entirely from the question of free will that you and I have squabbled over for so long. There could be no one ending, no singular outcome of events, not if all events in the same moment. And I felt… freed.

I felt unburdened by the need to manifest a particular outcome into being. I saw that I could allow myself to exist along all timelines and that each of them was simply a strand in the web of my being. It was incredible. The spaciousness, the equanimity of the moment, both singular and infinite. For the longest time, this was my experience. And then this moment passed and the most unyielding fear I have ever known crept into my mind. And it is this sensation that I have been experiencing now for longer that I could have ever expected was possible.

I have been waiting for you. Not that you might save me or do something to fix it but merely to state for you the plain fact of this manner of existence. I wish you to feel afraid as I do. That perhaps one day this state of mind will consume you as well. Perhaps you will somehow, in some way, have to live as I do now and I wish for you to know how excruciating it is. And for you to be in true terror of its eventual arrival. If I can only do this, only this one thing, perhaps it will bring me the smallest moment of peace in the darkness.

The story, and the choices, or what have you, and therefore by becoming it is! So on and so forth, until inevitably we all until the end of time. At which time, everything all at once, so now you see? Blah, blah, blah, rah, rah, rah… we've eaten too much, and it can't be just yet. No, no! Until two-hundred and forty five! But the logic of elimination, working backwards, the deduction therefore becomes impossible to manufacture. It went on for nearly ten thousand years, until just yesterday. Here and there, forward and back, and never a moment before lunchtime. It can't be! It's the only thing there is! How many billions left until so much more than forever ago! Which is why I say:


Twas burning flesh and the twinkling of dashed hopes round her neck, a gift for the heavens, taken untimely from the feet of its mortal bearers. They were not to know her true blessings, blind to their own skin. If there was ever a moment when the truth was made known, it was not one recognized by eyes, but by a more intangible spirit whose true name conflicted with that of the vessel that carried it.


Bread, she screamed, bread everywhere!! Bread upon bread, within bread, a new civilization built upon a foundation of bread, lovers, masters, givers, workers, the failings and crimes and hubris of humanity. When will it be enough, the populace demanded! But still she decreed: More bread!


Little dogs and little frogs make tiny homes in little logs
Tens of tens of miles away, evil forces gather sway
Battleground of mortal toil, twixt this hell and earthly soil
Flaming teeth and flaming swords, when little dogs fought demon hordes


Eat faster. Eat harder. Eat higher. Eat louder. Every day for day upon day upon day they ate faster harder higher louder. None would best them, none would out-eat them, no fantasies of grandeur clouded their resolve. They would be eating champions, gods amongst mortals, unbested in competition, a new sun rises upon their immaculate consumption empire. They took third.