Beacons in the Dark Expanse

Choice is a voice best [[unsung]]. Cast off and fade away. No, choice is the [[needle]] and you are the atom. Sew or die.

> What is [[life]]? Fierce stars burning in the boundless [[night]] calling to you without a voice.

> What is humanity? A tapestry of [[hate|failed]] and [[violence|death]], frayed at the fringes by the haphazard gnawing of [[utopia|fiction]]

Life is [[death]] forestalled for just a moment, a little [[fiction]] flare in the darkness. You feel the weight more and more as gravity falls heavy and all sight and sound fades from blurred vision.

Stare into a black hole long enough and it begins to [[stare]] at you with the intensity of a thousand [[seething]] supergiants.

Before long it reaches out, light-years swift, oily tendrils arrayed every which way, reeling [[you]] in with claws sunk fast, abyssal scrying eye watching, hunting, waiting.

So then, feel your brittle bones splinter about, feel your [[soul]] burn charred and black, feel your [[body]] sink like a stone under time’s ocean. Spiral down into the deep with light and matter no more.

Biting but infernal and repulsive but enticing and enigmatic but inviting and distant but intimately familiar, it will [[hate|failed]] you, and love you, better than you do [[yourself|body]].

Finally you ask: //Is this me, or another me yet [[undiscovered|Choices of One]]?// Can’t you tell?

I [[failed]]. I wasn’t fast enough Not patient enough Not smart enough Not tough enough Not brave enough Not good enough Not true enough Not [[free]] enough Never enough Never enough Never enough Never...

You melt down until there is no one to hear you no one to save you no light to guide you. What happens next is left to you alone. > [[Change it?|Choices of One]]

Don't tether yourself to [[destiny|memory]]. Fling your fate down, watch it sizzle in the sun and never see its like again. The past is important but not that important. Don't forget, but don't let it pull you apart. don't hold yourself back, don't waste time //looking// back for something that wasn't there. [[Freedom|Choices of One]] is a funny thing.

> What is death? The beginning and the end, an escape from the [[cataclysm]] sure to follow.

I live not here but in worlds far away. Lands beyond counting, always within [[reach]]. The lush and impenetrable mingle eith wild splendor and magic made manifest. Fictions more real than the [[real]] itself. I don’t question the nature of [[reality]] but I wish I did.

There is a final sunrise, a momentum long deferred but never stopped, when pillars crumble into nothing and the [[ancient]] language of the land fades into the shimmering air of the desert. A last trill of music, a mirage of the imagination, passing from all [[memory]], slipping away into the dusk of dunes— an empire of sand.

The work of empire begins at the bottom rung, climbing ways and ways up until gilded fingertips brush the sky and stars slip from night into the outstretched hands of icons. Until grand works and monuments tower over the Earth, a [[kaleidoscope|reality]] of sound and culture. Alight with the cries of triumph and jubilation, one wonders: Is this, at long last, the [[end of history]]?

What remains is the shade and the blueprints to gamble with the gods of fate and fortune. > Make a different [[choice|Choices of One]]?

I begin with one small step, Then ten, then a hundred. I am [[unstoppable]], [[immovable]], [[unbendable]]. Can’t you see? The journey never ends if You roam forever. I was set on this path long ago. You [[can’t shake me|free]].

> What is existence? A [[kaleidoscope|ancient]] on one side, [[endless loops]] on the other.

No. It starts, always. It ends, always. This is not something new but something recycled: [[Again and again, over and over|endless loops]].

//Are you sure you want to do that?// [[Yes]] [[No|Choices of One]] [[???]]

...a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our [[existence]] somehow binds space and time into a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into a causal [[loop]] within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into a causal loop within reality, suggesting that our existence somehow binds space and time into...

//We’re sorry, this question cannot be reached. Please leave a message.// I don't know what you expected, but it probably wasn't this. > [[Go back|Choices of One]] > [[Stay awhile...]]

> What is the question? Always evolving. > What is the answer? I wish I knew. > Who are you? I don't understand. [[Drift deeper...]]

> What are dreams? Little fictions truer than I ever dared think. A miasma of confusion, stumbling through the haze of [[past|memory]] and [[future]]... but at least it's mine. At least I can control it. If only for a little while.

Then the trend stole the pen until the end. Until ends undone strike deep into the sky. The past and future unwon cast from hands to shatter and die. Forget peace and alms of victory for these violent beasts seek violent delights and spew words so often contradictory. One fist becomes many, legion on moonless nights. Stand firm and true before your very life is sought Or stand not at all and watch [[history]] itself be naught.

It starts, always. It ends, always. This is not something new but something recycled: [[Again and again, over and over|endless loops]].

[[Break away]] into a shiny new orbit but only if you think you can.

[[Fall away|Break away]] from the lines that divide you but only if you can erase them.

[[Rip away|Break away]] the tethering webs but only if you’re strong enough.

[[Go on|free]], do it. Do it, again and again.

[[Break|Break away]] the cycle on and on and on until time splinters and fractures and the tattered panes clatter to the ground and the wind grinds it all down into fine glittery dust. There is always a consequence, every action fueling reaction and further action fueling further reaction and on and on and on until the vast expanse of black spills out forever into omniscient inscrutable [[night|night]]. In that eternal moment, nothing is everything on the timeless sea.

A small hole in logic brought you here. What [[else|Choices of One]] will you uncover?

"I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the [[Loom of Time|memory]], and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads." -Herman Melville, *Moby-Dick*