90
Degree
Infinity
Joey Muller
(written November 2025, edited December 2025)

Frozen —
In time,
In place.

In words
In writing
In mind
In body.

The interior never reflecting
                             outside.
A turning,
A bathing,
Sunlight like raindrops of photons —
It pours.

Wordlessly, a countenance appears reflected, it not knowing itself. Blathering tightly, incessantly, endlessly internal, outwardly nothing.

Tall towers lock eyes with each other, lowly puddles fall from eaves. Fractured knowledge closes ears, candid schemes steer hopeless tongues. Night scalds in mere tears, eyes scold like nightmares. All rise for Good fear.

In the lack of meaning, where does the face tread? To feel, to fall, to fold. Digging now, shovel-holding, deeper and deeper underground. Hours pass, dirt piling out; the hole is comforting, a place of protection and darkness. Danger arrives when it collapses, burying a soul alive.

Elsewhere, a torrid screech evolves from a liquid crystal. A melted face sobs in horror — Oh the humanity, oh the pointlessness of the loss! Wheresoever do we go now?

Glacially pacing downward, a gracious fox eats the spirit interior. An everflowing expanse is interred in felt, and now with great space, it churns back to its den. A foxhole. A hole. The mole burrows, the worm digs, the beavers builds. The human creates, and the human destroys.

Vessel of pain
Giver of pleasure
Clash of desires —

Selfish and selfless
Charity and greed
Asleep and waking
Stable and crashing.

A sea of chaos emerges in a crowd. This herd is tens of thousands strong, packed liked sardines — no, a crowd crush, where not a body can move, and many cannot breathe. How fragile a body is, that hundreds or thousands can die because of ill-planned people trafficking? How haughty a person is, that a hole will collapse and drown them in the dirt?

And what of dirt? A support for everyone, yet it's the most crushed of all. Trampled underfoot, compressing until the loose particles are truly solid. We live on the backs of force, gravity, and time. Clocks tick us down to oblivion, and I stare, nigh pray a hand to go backwards.

Words back, got handle. Gripping, clinging for dear life. The ground loosens and gives way, a container penetrates, and ground is entered once more. Blistered and cooing, the dragon of progress burns a tower. With nothing to stare at, the other collapses. Torrid screeches in falling, sordid news of passing. Events churn, worlds turn, progress burns.

Within itself a lasting memory, thinking and thinking, but not producing. Flapjack flipping, sugar draining, gracious blood filling with plastics and pain. To grovel is to survive, and to live is to suffer. The other rejects this, for life is a gift. Yes, the one replies, the gift of death. A fit of morbid intensity drags us to hell while a rare saint ascends. Or so we tell ourselves, when the selfish survive and the meek disinherit.

Laughing at the bank, a larger figure engorges itself in excess: coin candy. The engorger unhinges its jaw and peels the buck's skin, then drops the moneyball inside its orifice and swallows it hole. It defecates and eats the waste again, a cycle of madness. The other patrons stare wide-eyed at the revolting display, some releasing their phones and recording, uploading, sharing, raging, protesting, screaming, dying.

The mole burrows into the rabbit's den. The rabbits are not home, but if they were, they would have left. What kind of rabbit can afford a nice burrow in this economy, with house flippers buying and selling, with wages stagnating while costs skyrocket? The rabbits hang out behind a nice tree in some woodchips, not in a luxurious mansion. Well, all except Peter Rabbit.

Peter Rabbit was now a celebrity after his book tour. Well, book lifetime. The real Peter Rabbit had died over a century ago, and so this was Peter Rabbit XXXII. He called himself 32. 32 had nothing special or remarkable about him, other than his direct paternal ancestry, yet all the benefits went to him. He could have all the carrots in the world if he wanted, but of course, carrots are not as great for rabbits as Bugs Bunny would want you to believe. He was imitating Clark Gable, as I'm sure you've already been taught in a neat factoid. If not, congratulations, you've learned; though the caveat there is that carrots and rabbits were associated together well before that cartoon. Beatrix Potter even drew her bunnies eating carrots, though they might have been radishes that looked exactly like carrots for all I KNOW.

Well, whatever that means — it doesn't make sense to know things anymore. Why learn at all when AI can do everything you can, except better and faster than you ever would? Why should anyone ever write an essay these days, or even a novel? Of course, a novel is slightly harder because of limitations on output, but anyone who knows what they're doing can manage this. At least I can assure you that no part of this novel was generated by AI, but how can I even prove this? A 24-hour livestream for a whole month, where me and my computer are always in full view? At some level, these things are built on trust, and how can you trust me when the artificial is much better at confidently telling you its own truth? (One neat trick I learned is to check for em-dashes — only AI and competent writers use that kind of punctuation, and I'm definitely not the ladder).

(Though for clarification, The Story of A Fierce Bad Rabbit by Beatrix Potter from 1906 has a bunny explicitly eating a carrot, both illustrated and in the text. It's commonly known among farmers that rabbits will destroy crops, and they will often nibble through carrot tops, killing the root. The impact of the Looney Tunes on the rabbit-carrot association is likely exaggerated by Internet users who are trying to score karma on their posts.)

32 was in the doldrums, so he considered going to throw rocks at cars from the highway. He had a spot actually, and he put on a mask just in case anyone saw him. He figured he might be recognizable from literally being a sentient rabbit, but we haven't established the kind of setting we're in yet — maybe this form of talking rabbit is common in this universe we're creating. To be fair, nothing is common anymore; everyone is split off into their tiny little niches, their needs being catered to by whatever obscure television or music artist or gymnastics club they like.

Ah, mental gymnastics — we all do it. We all fail to introspect on a daily basis. Try it now. As in, stop. I'll wait.

How was your introspection? Good. I'll continue to bleed words in a nonsense order until this stone has been dried and suntanned. At some point, you have to wonder, can something be a novel if it has no narrative? Will we get to a narrative? We were starting to get to one up there with that 32 business, but I decided we don't need anthropomorphic animals anymore. I'll be 32 next year actually. In some ways, that's kind of old, but in other ways, I'm still fairly young. These are deep thoughts of course, you understand.

Back to 32. He hefted a rock off the overpass, and it tumbled down to the auto below, cracking the windshield and killing the driver. 32 was aghast, as he was just trying to kill time. He was rich and had everything he needed to survive after all. He could probably pay his way out of this manslaughter, but it'd probably be safest for him to just run and hope that no one had seen him. From a moral standpoint, I should mention, this is not model behavior. Perhaps this is obvious to you, but I imagine if you're some alien from thousands of years in the future and from billions of lightyears away, you might not understand the concept of morality.

Glyphic creatures cackle in contortionist vibrations, gargling gracious roots of intrepid folly. Tractless and tactless, a belt whips a knuckle, bleeding like an animal led to slaughter. We slaughter animals all the time, so why is it only manslaughter that we have a word for? Animalslaughter sounds fine to me, and I will ironically state that it seems perfectly pronounceable to me, and the perfect length to say.

Speaking of contortionists, have you ever thought about clown cars? Certainly, in their most boring iteration, a trapdoor opens up underneath and the clowns are able to crawl up and out from below some stage, thus giving the illusion of a large number of clowns in one car. On the other hand, doing this act with a bunch of clown contortionists is much more impressive. The problem is that most audience members wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Sometimes I think about that idea too. There are plenty of things in life that only an expert in a field would take note of: special painting techniques in art, allusions in literature, micro-expressions in people. The perfectionist strives to get all these things right, only for the vast majority of people to prefer simplistic crowdpleasers that are doing what many, many before have already done. Yes, certainly any idea you think of, some other human will also have thought of that and would have done it better, but...

Hey hey, how we all doing out here on this worm-night? Wow, glad we're doing good, except Dr. Glum in the front row. Why the long worm-face, you wake up on the wrong side of the rock this morning?... I kid, I kid, we're all just having fun here. You know what's REALLY fun though... bendy-straws. Yeah, bendy-straws, anyone remember those? My worm-parent used to take us to the worm-restaurant and I would just outright refuse to eat my dirt if I didn't get the straw I wanted. I crossed my arms like this and said NO!!

...

Anyway, no one's chuckling out there tonight? We're a tough crowd, huh? You think you can do any better, Dr. Glum with your little worm-frown there, come onstage, no really, I'll give you the worm-microphone and everything. No? Yeah, that's what I figured, everyone's always judging the standup until they have to stand up themself. What was I saying?

A camera caught footage of 32 in the act. When the news broke, the rabbit was detained, and hundreds of thousands of people threw out their Peter Rabbit books. Still others were more hesitant — this is the 31st generation since the original Peter Rabbit, so while 32 might have taken on the same name, he was not the same entity. This still did not change the way people felt about Peter Rabbit; 32 had been on book tours, assuming the identity and legacy of his great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, greta, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. To most, 32 was a symbol and not a person, and owning the symbol meant implicitly supporting it. Who Peter Rabbit was didn't matter; the only thing that mattered was how Peter Rabbit IS at this CURRENT MOMENT in time.

Time is a funny thing. It goes forward and backward. Actually, this is untrue, it only goes forward, unless you have a remote control that controls the Universe. In some ways, we have that with our brains. They are quite malleable, and they're able to think things through to play them forward and backward, but also they change the event being replayed. Memory is a volatile impression. You might even have already forgotten that this whole book is alliterative poetry —

Quivering crossly courser craven
Wrapping rooster rabid rain-in
Enter every ardent evil
Always angry after ogle

Toward a weakly growing process
Buying clocks of crossly stocks
Training practice leaving moss

Indulging senses' fallen marks
Growing costly bleeding stalks

Languid hallowed horrid heights
Martyrdom by corrupt vice.

You may have your opinions on 32 as well, but as the omniscient narrator (trust me), I can tell you that the person manslaughtered by 32 was not a good person — far from it, really. They were a domestic abuser and a sociopath; they were a wealthy backstabber, who stole the fortune of a company from a kinder soul. They raised insurance premiums, they lobbied for deregulation so they could monopolize their industry, they paid their way out of horrible crimes, they were a bigot, and they supported people that you don't like. Certainly 32 knew none of this, and by random chance 32 could have killed a much better person, but does this help you sympathize with 32? The death of a rotten apple may not always make the world a better place, but let's say that in this case, his death would lead to less people dying/suffering in the future. Does this make 32 an accidental hero? Now let's think about the horrible media campaign ravaged against 32. Was this all in retaliation from the victim's wealthy cronies? It's hard to imagine the motivations of these people, when the victim was a sociopathic abuser and likely had no true friends.

Again, as the omniscient narrator, I did say that 32 was unaware of his actions before, but perhaps I'm an unreliable narrator too. Maybe I don't know everything, and my characterization of 32 as a careless degenerate is influenced by the many news hitpieces that I imagined. Perhaps in truth, 32 was an organized political activist, who had planned his attack carefully, and who also thought that the ends justify the means. Who can say? Justification, after all, is something we do after the fact. We do actions based on synapses firing in our heads, and we discover the actions that we want to take. Introspection helps us explain OURselves to ourSELVES, because we don't actually understand OURSELVES.

I personally don't understand myself. I have contradictory tastes, strange reasonings for lingering impressions. Lingering is largely a life-long lateness. Holes swallow me now; I am stuck in the prison of my own mind. I live here, but I cannot escape. I think of myself as one person, but I am many things, some neurons connected by corpus callosum, but even different regions of my brain disagree with each other. Is it not amazing, this illusion of consciousness and wholeness that I feel? Is it not amazing, the vocabulary that crawls to my brain, one after another, vomiting a stew of words so inane that I collapse from a loss of fluid?

We are but sacs of fluid. Vessels of water that pass from one event to the next, consuming, changing; carving the world in our image. We have many images of ourselves that we worship for being ourselves. We put ourself in a mirror, carve that mirror into wood, and then we stare at it. We kill for it. We base our lives on it.

32 sat in his prison cell, dejected. Is it not incredible how quickly one action can turn a luxurious life into one of misery? How quickly a plentiful life can transform into one of loss? This loss of freedom was something 32 could never have been prepared for. He laid back on his cot and tried to sleep, but thoughts ravaged his mind like spectres in a well.

Am I a bad person? We define so much of our lives by the things that we don't do, rather than the things that we do. If you don't steal or cheat or bully or lie or harm, but you also don't give or help or befriend or inspire or defend, are you not just a neutral person? You take resources, yes, but you obtain them through money, a representation of labor. Morality itself is interesting in that all the things I consider good are pro-others while the bad things are pro-self. Is morality simply a fight between the ego and everyone else?

Absolution rages without end. Hands full of superego, mouths water like lavish pantries of sweat. Living by working, ordered by nicety, wreak of life stalls. Dropping class, entering glass, writhing grass lashes fat lumps from tragic heroes. Molten skin fires in waste, flagrant chaos abundantly yielding mates. Practical clashes fling wild states of rapid might. Cordial pardons leave lasting strain upon perpetual strife. Cleaving violets violently dive into opposition, proctoring Earth from biohazard. Lard by load, transport bordering on heresy, dumping horrors across lines of sand.

Frayed wires ignite monstrous tendencies, conflagration forming like salt pillars. Atomic concerns slip in passage, mindly angst in daily rhythm. Tap and tap and tap. Purchase for tomorrow, dopamine now. All wrapped in happy packages, deliveries endlessly satisfying a whim: one gone by arrival. Plastic and cardboard, tape and paper. Blisters of humans pretend in subharmony.

Piling in gargantuan servitude, languishing by grift, vapid of proffered goods, lighting a storm of raw girth. Blackness engulfs a necrotic endpoint, purposefully dulling pocket watches of eerie pass. Minutes of fighting implode, falling like tears from tearing paper. Green specks cease value, wealth to nothing, global to abyss. Clasp the belting scream to muffle, before the time comes.

A woman is shopping for groceries.
She picks up the label for salsa.
She investigates the nutrition facts.
This salsa contains more sugar.
The other salsa is more calories.
She looks down to her stomach.
She is getting fat.
It doesn't matter what anyone seems to say to the contrary.
It doesn't matter what her scale says.
She is getting fat.
Maybe she doesn't need salsa.
Maybe she doesn't need to eat.
Salad has very few calories.
She can just eat that.

In a small town in Romania in 1945, Elisabeth lives with her daughter Anne. Her husband is a musician and a cheat, going off to Austria where she'd never see him again. Her son has been in Berlin for some time, studying for an engineering profession. It seems the war is over and Germany has lost, but horror strikes when the Russians show up in town. At just 16 years old, Anne is seized to work in the coal mines. Elisabeth narrowly escapes, taking a sack of raw onions with her. All the roads are patrolled, so she must proceed on foot the long way: through the mountains. She is alone. She is more distraught than she has ever been, even moreso than when her first baby died at only a few months old — at least she had her husband then. She feels horrible, what we today would call survivor's guilt; why should her daughter be taken and not her? She thinks she might be evil for not risking her life to save her daughter, but she knows the stories. She knows how the work camps are: they put you in the cold, they don't feed you, and they work you to death. Elisabeth didn't know at the time, but Anne would only last three months before her death. Elisabeth, feet sore from walking all day and miserable from lugging a heavy sack of onions around, finally lays down on the ground. She thinks maybe she should just die here, but the thought of meeting up with her son keeps her going. She knows her journey will be long, but she tells herself that this hell is temporary. When she finds her son, they'll leave this awful place and go to America to start a new life. She reaches into the sack of onions and bites into one. She's sick of them already.

The shopping woman gives into her temptation: the ice cream looks delicious, so she can't stop herself from buying it. She resigns that she is growing old anyway, so why not be happy. Later, after she consumes all the ice cream, she cries to herself about what a weak person she is.

A muffin is sitting in an oven. It turns to the other muffin and asks: How's it going? The other muffin screams: Ah! A talking muffin! They both die in the fire. Their corpses are consumed with delight.

Brash and bashful, looking onward to oblivion, past it, through it, towards the rim of the sky. As a hammer falls, the sun melts and a dagger pierces the ground, splitting it open: a spontaneous earthquake. It just so happens that all the other rabbits that knew 32 personally lived underground here, and so when the ground splits into a whopping abyss, their burrows are all revealed naked to one another, the cross section of the ground in plain sight. They stare at each other in confusion, before evacuating their burrows, anticipating immediate collapse.

The congressman looks at the data, but then he looks to the oil money. He likes the money. He ignores the data. He convinces himself the world cannot rot because money can still buy nice things, like cars and ice cream. His wife loves ice cream. He's going to buy her some for her birthday.

The worm pulses through the ground, a lonely crawler that recycles and decomposes. It is serene, solitary, and some might say happy — despite the coming rainstorm. It does not know its impending fate, for it lives in the moment. It does not wish to comprehend the unthinkable because it does not wish. It merely is.

A different, larger, sentient worm suddenly digs up into 32's prison cell. We're getting you out of here! 32 is surprised by the talking worm, and then proceeds to be terrified by it. The worm, at this size, is a predator. The worm is no longer a meek digester of earth, but a horrific monstrosity. To reassure 32, the worm explains that it is possessed by the ghost of the original Peter Rabbit.

The original Peter Rabbit? The first? The one Beatrix Potter wrote about? 32 is confused but delighted. This at least would explain how the worm could talk, though perhaps the rules of this universe are fluid. After all, he is a talking rabbit, and earlier there was a screaming muffin. The worm explains that it can free 32, but it needs to enter its mouth.

Your mouth? 32 is skeptical. Most animals that enter another animal's mouth die within only moments. This appears to be some sort of trick. The worm explains that it is not a trick; its mouth is actually a spacetime portal: a wormhole.

Well, that's a good enough pun for me, realizes 32, and it crawls into the slimy interior. Behind, the worm's orifice slowly closes, and 32 is left in total darkness.

Darkness. Most of us fear it in some respects, or at the very least we did as children. The unknown brings our anxiety out: we like certainty, we like sensing, and we like to know what's in front of us — this much is obvious. Yet light too is a corruption; darkness is much more pure in a way: absence is perfect compared to presence. The simplest existential statement (which I will argue may not even be true, but that's beside the point right now) is René Descartes's I think, therefore I am. It is a statement that can be made without any kind of external input.

It can be made in total darkness.

With eyes shut, we shine a light on ourselves; with eyes open, the world shines into us. In the closed system of the mind, we can be of our purest forms; in contrast, with our external portholes ungated, we let in the corruption of the world. A photograph is best preserved in darkness — you can only see it with light, but over time the photons will degrade the image. A closed system is less safe than an open one — we know people that are cut off from human contact, placed in isolation chambers, will slowly become insane. If we stay in darkness for too long, we can no longer find ourselves.

Finding, lost
Searching, dark

Scanner seeking
Grasping little.
Eyes in mist
In smoke, in garb.

Opaque glass
Clearly black
Thinking, eating
Swallow none.

Crown to lack
A bogey sworn.
Stated plainly
Forlorn thorn.

Beneath the liquid digestion noises, 32 hears a new hum. Approaching like static from a cathode ray tube, doppler-indicating approaching swift; a flash of light; stars and blips and spirals and twinkles and spinning so much spinning twisting spaghettifying growing twisting falling pulling aching squash loud SO LOUD more static crashing lashing scratches pain overwhelm OVERLOAD too much too much too much —

Now 32 is on a passenger airplane, surrounded by a full set of rabbit-sized worms in each seat. The worm-flight attendant, wearing a blonde wig and 60s air hostess uniform, approaches with a worm-food cart. Would you like some dirt, or possibly some nitrogen? the flight attendant asks in a sedated voice. 32 is not a fan of these complementary goods, so he declares: What's the deal with airline food? The whole plane erupts into rabid worm-laughter, each pink cylinder cackling so intensely that they begin squirming all around in their seats. 32 feels his neighbor's slimy body writhing near his left arm, covering it in worm-gook.

The plane's soundsystem activates. The worm-pilot informs them of an issue: There appears to be some worm-turbulence up ahead. Please worm-folks, I highly recommend you to put on your worm-seatbelts so you will all be safe.

The laughter abruptly halts, turning to worm-fear. All the worms are now terrified of a worm-crash, which may kill them all. Worm-flights are well-known for not being as safe as human flights. In actuality, human flights are one of the safest forms of travel, especially if you're traveling by a major commercial airline in a developed country. Even in the event of an aviation accident, the majority of passengers tend to survive. This is mostly because most aviation incidents tend to be more minor than what you might think of when you imagine a plane crash — I think most people envision something like two planes crashing into each other in mid-air, but this is a very rare occurrence, because there is quite a bit of emptiness in 3-dimensional space. Even moreso in 4-dimensional spacetime.

There's a brief loud hiss from above, and worm-masks drop in front of all the worm-faces. 32 is startled, but proceeds to put his on. The pilot comes on again: Please, if you would, worm-everyone: Put on your worm-nitrous-oxide-masks. These will calm all your worm-nerves, as (and don't worm-panic) I must reveal that we are all heading to worm-death.

The cabin is suddenly set ablaze in outburst, as the worms throw aside their masks and begin worm-screaming. 32 does not notice, as the nitrous has already filled his lungs. He floats into a sea of waveforms, pulsing, sine waves like worms crawling up and down, back and forth, faster and faster, screaming in amplitude, frequency getting faster and faster, all is breaking loose now, darkness and light asymptotically approaching chaos and order simultaneously. Smooth lines pass in front of 32's consciousness, taking both an eternity and an instant. With an excruciatingly loud THUD!! all the lines blend together into one form; first everything is two; second everything is one. This repeats for infinity. This repeats for infinity. This repeats for infinity. This repeats four infinity. This repeats for infinity. This repeats for infinity. This repeats for infinitely. This repeats for infinity.

     ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

Did you know that the above symbol, the sideways 8, is called a lemniscate? It has been representing infinity since 1655, when mathematician John Wallis tried to divide 1 by ∞. Infinity is a strange concept, is it not? For many years, we thought of it as the leviathan, an unconquerable beast at the end of everything who refuses to yield. Then Georg Cantor came along in the latter half of the 1800s, posing wild ideas with his set theory — countable infinities and uncountable infinities. These transfinite numbers were seen as heretical threats to the social order — Cantor was known as a charlatan and a corrupter of youth. His detractors jeered: How can one infinity be bigger than another? It's absurd. Some of his critics even went as far to suggest that he was unseating God — the sole proprietor of the infinite — from his throne. It may seem a bit silly that these old dudes would question or strengthen their faith based on them thinking of really big numbers, but they took math and philosophy very seriously. Some of them may even have been ride-or-die students of Saint Anselm's ontological argument: If we can imagine a perfect being, one of those properties would be existence, therefore the perfect being must exist. Cantor's conception of things larger than perfection was essentially him drive-by shooting at the Proslogion, Anselm taking cover behind the papal bull. It doesn't help that the Hebrew letter ℵ (aleph), associated with the alpha-omega, was the notation Cantor introduced to express the multiple cardinalities of infinity. If God was ℵ₀, then what was ℵ₁?

I should probably explain how there can be an infinite number of uncountably uncountable infinities. You see, countable infinities are simple to understand — they're the number line:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ...

Counterintuitively, if you were to remove every odd number from that sequence:

2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 ...

— you'd be left with a countable infinity of equal size. In fact, all countable infinities are the same size, because infinity can't be compared by quantity; it can only be compared by forming pairs between sets: one-to-one correspondence. In the two sets above, 1 from the first set pairs with 2 from the second, 2 pairs with 4, 3 with 6, 4 with 8, and so on. In this way, everything is two, thus everything is one. In other words, because each number has a pair, these sets are the same size, even if it appears that the second set (where each number is double the other) should be larger. The nature of these inexpressible quantities means 2 * ∞ is still just ∞. Moving on, the way to reach past the countable infinities into the uncountable is by venturing from the whole numbers into the irrational. There are more numbers between 0 - 1 than there are rational numbers between 1 - ∞, thus making that -1 space an innumerable cardinal. Luckily, 32's repetitions during the crash were merely countably infinite: aleph null.

32 awoke in a cozy wooden home with Victorian-era furnishings. A small black fireplace burned a steady flame underneath an unadorned tea kettle. A straw hat rested on top of a small rocking chair, the chair subtly moving from a light air flow. Next to that was a spinning wheel, and then a wee dining table partially covered by a tablecloth. At the other end, a woman about 40 years in age sat in her chair, engaged deeply in her work: she was colorfully illustrating a scene in her sketchbook. Curious about what she was drawing, 32 hopped up on the table to see a quaint view featuring toads in the woods — they were sitting on mushrooms and drinking tea around a tree stump.

The woman, catching movement, glanced upward and stared at the small animal. Rather than expressing shock, she calmly greeted: Why hello there, handsome fellow! My my, how did you get in here?

32 opened his mouth to respond, but oddly enough, he found himself unable to speak! Perhaps he was still recovering from all the gas and blunt trauma that he had just faced. Actually, where was that plane? There didn't appear to be a flaming wreck anywhere in the vicinity, but it was hard to tell from inside this hearth. Well, perhaps if he couldn't communicate by speaking, he could write out his words. 32 went to grab the pencil in front of him, but now he realized his hands weren't moving like they should! It seemed he was stuck with four feet on the ground, like an unmannered heathen. This was awful. He instead bit the pencil with his mouth and tried to maneuver it, but...

Oh, why, it seems you're awfully hungry, sir! She took the pencil out of his mouth and put it aside. This just won't do! Let me ready a nice supper! The woman quickly scurried off into another room, returning only moments later with a small plate of lettuce. With the plate placed directly in front of 32, he realized that he truly was hungry (prison food was not what he was used to), so he began nibbling on the greens. They were delicious, and only a short time later, the plate's contents were fully gobbled. That's capital! What an appetite you have — you must have been awfully famished! My name is Beatrix. You can stay here for a bit, if you would fancy.

32 was not nearly as famished as Elisabeth, who was climbing over the mountains to try to make it to her son. The rabbit only knew the life of a slacker: lackadaisical, taking everything for granted — this was the life of a fancy elite like him. One has to wonder about the gap between the most wealthy of us and the poorer — sometimes I listen to big popstars and can't understand how they'll write about things like going on commercial airlines or buying things from the store, how much they hate working or how they feel unnoticed by their crush. Yes, perhaps some of that is from pre-stardom, and they are stunted at growth since then, but it seems like a roleplay for them to try to fit in with the common people. Or rather, it's a lie to sell more music. But then I think about myself: I've never been on a crashing airplane, I've never been to England, I've never thrown rocks at cars, and the only time that I ever tried to dig a hole, my mom told me to stop before I even made it a foot into the ground. Pretending for the sake of artistic expression isn't lying — it's imagination; it's creation; it's being God.

The author is The Maker of their own world. Some makers like to have consistent rules; they either want their lands to approximate the outside human space, or maybe they find stories to only be meaningful if they are bound to concepts of cause and effect. It seems for most of human civilization, we've generally agreed on that, but around the beginning of the 20th century, some humans began to get tired of logical thought. Out came the Dadaists, the cubists, the surrealists, expressionists, absurdists, stochastics, modernists, post-modernists, anti-artists, deep-fried memeticists, and so on. It's hard to say why exactly this started — some have tried to explain it as post-war angst: the only way to make sense of a chaotic and cruel world is to make art just as brutal. Now I don't find this particularly compelling — I think life seems like it used to be a much worse place in the past, yet only today do we (I) feel the need to out-metajerk ourselves. I think each generation just wants to break the rules of what came before so they can create something that feels new; even if this new thing is an ugly broken mess, it's their own novel concoction. We have so much access to so many different stories today that we have new building blocks for narratives — tropes we can plug in, invert, subvert, deconstruct — and these can all be understood by the media literate. It can even be a fun challenge for the true esoteric divers, bent to water and slurping the drink down their thatch, homeopathic nonsense dripping past esophagus, glitz and glurgling to sphinx-like sphincter grass chute grabbage; dlumping fastwork cloptick, packtrack tossturd (literary larping) rockspawn in EMPTY by NULL: looking to VOID (glistening ABYSS) like mildew closfer frew y trzyzj; slej blocks rimming en DOWN DOWN DOWN —

Sorry, what was I talking about?

32 stared at himself in the mirror: gone were his opposable thumbs, his cartoonish complexion, even his clothes! He looked like any other rabbit — a non-sentient, unintelligent animal. It appeared the wormhole had done more than transport him across spacetime, but it also changed his physical appearance — and likely, he surmised, the laws of the universe too! In this place, animals couldn't talk, worms couldn't pilot planes, and rabbits couldn't be 32nd generational multi-millionaires coasting on their ancestors' success. What a strange world! For now, at least he had his freedom in this home...

Oh, I knew I shouldn't let you roam! Beatrix admonished herself, seeing 32 had left pebblets of waste lying around. Oh Normy, (for she had named him after her recently (sadly and shockingly) departed fiancé) by what providence you appeared, I shall keep you in my heart. You're always welcome to my garden, but I can't allow you inside my home. 32 felt the scrap of his neck tighten as he was lifted in the air by the woman, escorted out the door, and gently placed in a large and charming garden. Goodbye Normy! I hope to see you around! The woman walked back to her residence and closed the door.

32 looked around: the house's exterior was a gorgeous display of colorful flowers in a multitude of types, growing crops, and other plants. The whole yard was well-maintained with rich soil, and there was plenty of foliage to potentially hide a nice burrow. While it seemed a wonderful place to live for the lower class rabbit family, 32 felt himself above such lowly aspirations.

In fact, with 32's constant need for stimulation in his old life, he wasn't about to stay in one garden on a hilltop for much longer. He scurried across the beautiful green grass, out of the property, and found himself on some empty country roads. After passing by a few small buildings, only a tiny stone wall separated him from a vast English countryside, a sprawling moor that went beyond the hills way off in the distance. Still retaining his nimbleness, 32 hopped over the wall and began his travel across the landscape.

Despite the anxiety and confusion that comes with accidentally killing someone, being convicted, getting eaten by a giant worm, and waking up over one hundred years in the past in a different country, 32 felt quite calm walking through this pale, unkempt grass. I should mention that even today, walking along Hill Top in Sawrey is like stepping back in time to an age before industrialization transformed the trees into edifices, plains into asphalt, fauna into cars, and flora into advertisements. Now at this point, I could wax poetically about how humanity has lost nature in pursuit of profit, how we're choking ourselves to death with pollution, how humans are planet-scale parasites bent on shortsightedly draining all resources until nothing is left — but, can I just mention that I'm really glad we've found ways to get rid of all these mosquitoes? Yes, yes, I know, malaria still kills 500,000 people annually, and yes, we've all been stung by mosquitoes while camping or walking in the woods — yet here I am, typing on a computer without needing to worry about bugs, except for the two weeks in the spring when the ants decide all at once to forage everywhere, and also when a fly gets in my room and I have to hide under my blanket so it doesn't buzz past my ear and annoy me. So yes, nature is pretty and all, but I'm glad I VISIT there and don't LIVE there, you know?

As it turns out, the moors did not go on forever, but actually only sprawled half a mile before 32 came to a lake — specifically, Esthwaite Water. It's actually a mesotrophic lake, a classification which biologists use to evaluate the water quality for how much life it can sustain. The meso prefix here, as you might imagine, means middling water quality, compared to oligotrophic's good water quality and eutrophic's poor water quality. Trophic actually comes from the Greek word trephein, a verb meaning to nourish; it's related to the word atrophy (literally: not nourished) like in this example sentence: My grandfather's legs atrophied until he could no longer walk, thus he spent the last five years of his life without leaving his chair, except one time when he tried to get up and he fell and hit his head, and I incidentally visited him the next day; I should mention that also during those last five years he stopped saying much of anything, but surprisingly that day he was very talkative — I feel like perhaps I was a bit harsh and flippant with him as I asked why he couldn't be like this all the time yet he still gave an answer, which was that unlike all the other days, he felt emotion, which is kind of sad really, that not only did his legs atrophy but also his mind when he had the same dull days of television, his wife's Alzheimer's, and all he had to look forward to each day were his meals because ultimately he really wouldn't have that much more going forward in his life, but somehow the blunt force trauma to his head after he fell kickstarted his frontal cortex and suddenly he was able to feel and think again — admittedly he was in the belief that he was still in Berlin in the late 40s or early 50s, saying I should ask his father about a box, and that THE BOX was very important and I had to get it.

Thirsty after his long walk, 32 ducked his head down to the lake water to take a drink. Ahh, it was quite refreshing — except he leaned a little too far forward and tumbled headfirst into the water. Fortunately, upon falling, 32 hit the magical angle of 90 degrees — if you know anything about rabbits, you'll recall this is the angle where they transform into a duck. This was good news for the former rabbit, as he had used his wealth and status to get out of his school's swimming lessons when he was a young bunny.

Being a duck was quite a new experience for 32. In fact, he had never spontaneously morphed into any other animal, vegetable, or mineral before! When he tried to speak (which you'll remember, he had been unable to do as a rabbit because he warped into a world with realistic rules where animals can't talk though not so realistic as to prohibit sudden species transformations), he let out a loud QUACK! (note: I will be using the word quack because this is the traditional sound in English that ducks make, though I would argue they don't really enunciate their Q sounds — it's more like a WAK honestly)

32 drifted across the water with ease, floating merrily, merrily, merrily down the lake. Speaking of which, Row Row Row Your Boat is pretty heavy for a children's song — we're telling them to embrace hedonism because Life Is But A Dream? Essentially nothing is real, so you should go with the flow? We really need to be careful what we teach these kids — The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round? What, forever? — the cycle perpetuates endlessly and nothing ever stops the bus? The repetitive nature of the tune only reinforces the inevitability of THE WHEEL. Round and round. Round and Round. Round and round. Oh, and don't get me started on Ring Around the Rosie, clearly a form of the Danse Macabre (emphasizing the universality of death) — We All Fall Down... down where? Where Rosie!? Where are we falling to!? Won't someone catch me?

Eventually, 32 came to a log that was poking up from the surface, which a trio of frogs adhered to. 32 tried to say hello to them, but he let out a couple measly quacks. The frogs didn't move much.

One frog that did move around a lot was named Jerry, and he lived out on the streets of the cold future city of Neon Babylonia. Jerry had recently been fired from his job at the bureau, and now he wandered the streets homeless and hungry. Humans had long since disappeared from most of the developed world, their bodies frozen and packed away in dense vaults, their minds freed into the world of virtual reality. The frog brain was never compatible with all those brain chips and cold stasis pods; they were stuck managing the rest of the old world.

Or at least they used to be — these days the toad bosses were busy trying to maximize profits by turning to automated processes. Jerry had been disgusted by his last day: five giant toads sitting around, happily drinking tea while they livestreamed the layoffs of one-third of the company. A whole army of frogs were out of a job with no warning, replaced by imperfect algorithms, worse service, and heartless greed. To add insult to injury, Jerry's princess had abandoned him upon learning of his unemployment — she felt she deserved someone more worthy, and she had already been previously fed up with Jerry's lilypad excursions in his off-time and his fly-supreme pies at home.

The job market was already absolutely brutal, but it was even worse for Jerry without a permanent shelter. The rare interview he secured only served to reveal to his prospective employers that he was an unkempt frog who desperately needed a shower, but the only way he could clean himself was by trouncing through the rain.

Nighttime: a dark and stormy urban glowscape surrounded Jerry. He hopped around an alleyway to search for trash; where there was trash, there were flies. By Heqet! he exclaimed, seeing a symphony of slashed trash bags outside the back of the crowded pizza joint — a tornado of flies swarmed the noxious waste! His appetite whet, Jerry rushed for the feast, unfurling his tongue in haste. In a single lick, he scooped up several of the winged creatures.

At this moment, 32 became aware of his wings. He spanned them wide, pushing off into the air and gaining height. It was a magical experience for the former rabbit, as he felt a sensation of power that comes with conquering another plane of existence — the ex-long-eared version of him only knew the ground; the duck knew a triathlon with water and sky. At the apex of his rise, 32 looked down on the grand vista of the English countryside: he saw the lake he had risen from, the moors as they continued over the hills, the quaint settlement that he had scurried from, and a small cloud above. As the cloud floated across the otherwise solid blue canvas, 32 observed that it bore a resemblance to a worm, as if the angelic worm-spirit of Peter Rabbit The First was guiding him across the heavens.

Soaring in entropy,
Sky-followers neglect Earth.

Angel father blathers above,
In situ of atmospheric dome.

Wind hovers
Air avails
Rising and falling
Plotting course by instinct.

Sailing onward
Passenger of the self
Free at last.

Gaze in panoramic glory
A lordly horizon spans ahead
Beckoning the glide.

Green hills roll end on end
Slathering life's canvas in majestic grace.
To fly is to live.

With a belly full of flies, Jerry ambles back to the rainy cityscape of Neon Babylonia. Staring down the industrial streets ahead, the view is full of upright frogs at street-level, an excess of glowing ads on screens and billboards above, and a grid of flying cars nearly obscuring the stormy sky. Several miles away, a single massive tower shoots up into the heavens, a testament to the true will of frogkind: Babel. Decades ago, the frogczar declared the importance of building such a monument; an ever-continuing project to elevate the species higher and higher upward. The naysayers were originally numerous (It's impossible to build a structure like this without a solid plan!) (The whole thing is a waste of taxpayer money that could be used to feed frogspawn!) (This is a selfish, humanlike act of folly!), but the rest of the citizens learned to hold their objections once those so-called heretics were silenced. Privately, Jerry thought the tower was a blight, but these were notions that he dared not reveal even to his former princess.

A tacky jingle echoed from the municipal speakers that were attached to the edifice eaves over head. There was a short pause afterward, the sound-space filled by a soft lines-hum, before the aging frogczar's voice resounded all down the urban jungle: FROG CITIZENS. IT IS THE FORTY-SIXTH YEAR OF MY REIGN. I WISH TO SPEAK TO EACH OF YOU PERSONALLY AND COMMEND YOUR NEVER ENDING STRUGGLE TO MAKE BABEL A MORE PERFECT TOWER. NOW, I HAVE BEEN INFORMED BY MY ADVISORS THAT THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE OVER THE LAST FEW MONTHS HAS SPIKED, AND WITH THAT, AN INCREASE IN THE CRIME RATE. I WILL REMIND YOU THAT CONSTRUCTION JOBS ARE ALWAYS OPEN; THE CHANCE TO BE ENSHRINED IN THE STARS IS A HEROIC OPPORTUNITY. HOWEVER, UNTIL THE POOREST AMONG YOU LEARN THE IMPORTANCE OF SACRIFICE, IT IS NECESSARY TO TAKE ... MEASURES. IN THE COMING DAYS, WE WILL BE INTRODUCING A NEW LINE OF STATE OF THE ART SECURITY: A FULLY AUTOMATED POLICE FORCE, POWERED BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. THEY ARE KNOWN AS THE METAPIGS, AND I URGE EVERYONE TO BE KIND TO THEM. THE METAPIGS HAVE NOT ONLY BEEN EQUIPPED WITH LETHAL WEAPONRY, BUT THEY HAVE BEEN ENCOURAGED TO USE FORCE, IF IT SO HAPPENS THAT SOME OF YOU PROVE TO BE UNCOOPERATIVE. AS ALWAYS, THE TOADS RETAIN DISTRICT AUTHORITY — IN ABSENCE OF MY WORDS, THEIR COMMANDS ARE BINDING. THAT IS ALL.

Finally, the streets are released from the auditory vomit that is the frogczar's voice. These are thoughts Jerry would never say aloud, of course; it seems heresy is becoming even more dangerous these days. If things kept heading in this authoritarian direction, the frogczar might make Babel's construction mandatory for the idle. When Jerry had failed to find another job, he actually did consider applying to the tower's work force, but he wasn't a fool. The stories of building mishaps were more than everpresent, they were an inevitability. Death and Babel went together like fields and reeds — it was as if some supernatural force was determined to stop frogkind from building any higher. Beams would fall and squish whole work armies to death, intense wind would hurl frogs from their posts, safety equipment would fail, or employees would suddenly have unexplained heart attacks. The most fortunate among them would lose a limb, or else come down with a medical condition that prevented them from continuing any more physical labor. If Jerry applied to Babel, it would be the last thing he ever did.

Flaming pain
Searing death
Grazing crash
Exploding mess.

Slimy corpses litter halls
Death a circle for us all.

Smoking fumes snuffle guests —
Crying sky leaves nothing left.

When Boro regained worm-consciousness, they were in a devastating scene of worm-corpses, painful heat, and full body injuries. The wreckage of the worm-plane was worse than any worm-horror movie, even the scariest ones where a science class of human children dissect a bucket full of worms.

Boro was an amateur stand-up comedian, and this worm-flight was taking them to their next worm-gig in worm-LA. It seems this crash had put a damper on everything. This was perhaps an understatement, because if Boro didn't get out of their worm-seat quickly, they would surely suffocate. Boro tried to slither, but it appeared that their tail was caught fast in the debris. They glanced to their right, trying to look at their neighbor; they had been sitting next to the sole rabbit on this worm-flight, who had been quite the funny fellow. He had absolutely killed it with his joke — the whole plane had died laughing! If only Boro had that charisma... However, the rabbit was nowhere in sight — hopefully he made it out alive.

To their left, Boro had been sitting directly next to the worm-emergency-exit-door, which had completely blown open and had fallen off the plane. If they could just unstuck themself, they could escape the worm-conflagration. Boro stretched and pulled on their tail, feeling some of the most intense worm-pain of their whole worm-life. They saw their worm-skin breaking apart with each tug, until eventually, their tail fully snapped off, leaving them ripped open and worm-bleeding in the worm-wreckage. Squirming with their last worm-ounce of vigor, they wrapped their worm-head around the lip of the exit door, feeling the cool fresh air. When they contracted, Boro pulled themself up, making it to the plane's exterior. They fell off the plane and slithered away from the violent crash.

Reaching a safe distance, Boro turned around and collapsed on the cold hard ground. Nary was there another worm in sight — it seemed they may have been the only survivor, unless that rabbit had made it out alive. What a worm-tragedy this all was; Boro had never been more terrified. They looked over to the amputated mess of where their tail had been — while it was not a pretty injury, Boro had heard plenty of worm-tales about appendages that had grown completely back. There was even a story where a worm was split in two, and then each half grew back to a full worm! Boro didn't quite worm-believe that one though.

Halves, holes, heads and tails. The worm may die when split, but the cell will live. The atom cannot die — its split yields intense energy. At the most base level, virtual particles will form and immediately annihilate each other; two halves becoming WHOLE as ONE to form a HOLE (an absence, a net nothing), voiding their existence. Catch the other particle in that one moment, and the other half becomes an entity which spontaneously popped into being. Where there was nothing, there was ONE. Where there was half, there was WHOLE.

This is all exceedingly improbable, but it's the rare events of impossibility that make life possible at all. To think some 4 billion years ago, a few molecular structures all just happened to align, forming RNA — the magical protein was able to kickstart a chain of sequences that led to its own reproduction, and that chain leads to this very moment... Why, it's absurd. It couldn't have happened. It didn't happen. I must not exist. How can I? Can I? I.

.

But you exist, so... there's something. The other half. You and I. Writer and reader. I exist because you exist. Together. As one. From nothing... something.

In a Universe that's uncountably infinite and truly random, not only is it possible, but it is a certainty (and an eternal recurrence) that a cluster of atoms will spontaneously form into Napoleon right in front of you. Then there's a whole other class of universes where he forms behind you. That being said, I've heard that our Universe actually is finite, which drops the probability of that happening to zero.

Zero.

0.

The congressman drives down the highway at a relaxed 75 miles per hour, passing the slowpoke in front of him along their right side. He has ice cream in the back of the car after all, and the seconds of time that he saves will ensure that it doesn't melt. Also in the back of his car are his two daughters, Astor and Holly, 6 and 7. Holly says: You're not supposed to pass on the right, Dad! while Astor has her face pressed up against the glass window, staring at the doggy in the slow car. The congressman shrugs and explains Mommy wants her ice cream, so it's OK to go faster than all the other people. He's about to drive under an overpass.

After leagues of chasing the worm-cloud, 32 noticed it getting smaller and smaller, evaporating into nothingness. A droplet ejected out of it, hitting the former rabbit square in the duckface. He quacked in disorientation, and when he looked back to the cloud, it was gone. He now found himself by the seaside, with a tall white lighthouse below looking like an appealing perch point. 32 swooped down to land on the platform at its highest lookout.

Jerry had caved to his need for money, and to his dismay, he was now in construction uniform, atop Babel — his first day on the job. Looking over the edge, at least it was an amazing bird's eye view of Neon Babylonia: the slums far below were like a dirty diorama, the heights resembled a doll's house, and Acid Lake was a mere puddle.

The last three weeks had been rough: the metapigs patrolled the streets on curfew, preventing would-be scavengers from scoring a meal. Jerry had barely eaten much of anything since then and had been feeling weaker by the day. He only escaped apprehension by sleeping out on the logs of Acid Lake, where most living things dared not tread. If you were to accidentally slip in the pale green water, an excruciating, burning hot chemical death awaited you. Eventually, Jerry decided that he would not just sit around until he croaked, nor would he let himself be boiled alive. If he was going to die anyway, he might as well sign up for construction.

At the ground floor of Babel, a meal was waiting for anyone who signed up then and there. Hungry as sin, Jerry could not back away on arrival. Babel even was able to accommodate room and board to its workers, for only a modest paycut. After the briefest of interviews (The toad-boss: Get your strength up, you look weak; you'll be out on top Monday) a brown-red gladiator frog with giant eyes brought him to room 1666.

Incidentally, 1666 was the year of the Great Fire of London. What started as a small fire in a bakery spread gradually over the course of days, managing to destroy one-sixth of the city and leaving tens of thousands homeless. A number of landmarks were destroyed, including St Paul's Cathedral, a church which had stood for nearly 400 years and had taken 200 years to build (it was built on the site of the older St Paul's church, which had also stood for 400 years before burning up in the great fire of 1087). While you can try to pin the blame for 1666's conflagration down to the one person who was the source, ultimately the problem was much larger than that: homes in poorer sections of the city had been constructed out of wood and thatch, and buildings were crowded next to each other with few gaps between to serve as break points. While the supposed death total was low, the monetary damage was massive, with millions of pounds being lost (with inflation, that's nearly as much money as one Avatar movie grossed today).

Jerry recalled some of this information from a FrogTube video he had watched at work a few months ago: TOP 10 HUMAN DISASTERS THAT COULD'VE BEEN AVOIDED. Number 1 was the Neurochip Massacre of course; it would've been pretty offensive otherwise. As he continued to look down on his own city, he wondered if a fire could ever take this city out. Construction materials were obviously very different a thousand years ago — even the boggiest of slums were still matte steel. The neon and other noble gases would be of no contribution; they were chemically inert — noble in the name referring to how they were considered  apart  and ^above the rest of the common elements. Funny that the nobles of today (the toads) would never dare to be this high up; the tower's tip is for the frogs, as they say.

Other things they say: in the dawn of homo sapiens, we conquered what no animal had before: the use of tools (except chimpanzees, elephants, dolphins, and other intelligent species). We learned to conquer fire, which no species had ever done (except for a few like firehawks in Australia, which will spread wildfires to lure out prey). Only humans have complex communication systems (ignoring birdsong, whale echolocation, prairie dogs alerting others to predators, dolphins having unique whistles for names, etc). Humans are solely known in their capacity for true love (although I will admit I know a few people whose dogs love them more than their spouses). A distinct factor in humans has been their ability to harm the environment and drive other species to extinction (admittedly, feral cats have hunted dozens of species (particularly birds) from existence). Humans are well-known for the unique skill of creating postmodernist metafiction that is overtly confusing and excessively self-indulgent. (). There.

...

(Hi, this is the author's dog. He has gone to sleep but has left his computer on. My name is Nonsum (Peculiar name, huh? When I was a foster pup, it was Bump, which isn't much better.) Sometimes I like to sniff other dogs' butts because it helps me to get to know them, but humans usually think that's weird. I think it's more weird when my owner watches videos online of human females whispering to him. Regardless, I just wanted to let you all know that I'm currently working on a fun novel of my own, where a talking dog sneaks out at night to go to the Bone House, but then he realizes it was all a dream, but then it turns out that the dream was made up in a fake aside by the dog's person to make a point that doesn't exist.)

Jerry was put on crane duty immediately, with no training. He was told that there weren't enough experienced employees for such silly procedures. The leopard frog below was motioning to him instructions: SCOOP UP THIS DEBRIS! leopard shouted, pointing to a pile of wrecked cement and beams. Jerry made his best guess at how to operate the crane and grabbed hold of a stick doohickey, manipulating it back and forth. Outside, an excavator arm followed his movements, so it appeared he was correct.

Back in 1905, 32 was waddling around the top of the lighthouse when he spotted a tiny little frog off in the corner. How did a frog get way up here, anyway? The tip of a towering lighthouse was no place for a pond-dweller. 32 was feeling quite hungry, and while as a rabbit he would've never imagined gobbling up such a creature, as a duck he felt the pang for a taste of amphibian blood. 32 boxed the frog in, then snatched it into his bill (it's unbelievable this new beak had just recently been a pair of ears) before it could leap away.

Uh-oh. Jerry lost control of the crane arm, and the excavator zoomed past the debris, scooping the leopard frog right up into its bucket. HEY, PUT ME DOWN! leopard yelled, squirming around wildly. A few other frogs stopped their post and looked over worriedly, preparing for yet another workplace accident. A helpful tree frog down and over to Jerry's side called up to him STOP! DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING! Jerry, panicking, let go of the controls. This turned out to be a bad decision: the bucket suddenly jerked and flung the leopard frog right out of it at high speed. The spotted amphibian was hurled into the air and off of the tower, falling terminally to the neon steel jungle below. Jerry was mortified by his ineptitude, dropping backward in shock as he lost sight of the frog's free fall.

down

down

down

we
  drop
      we
        fall
            we
              live
                  we
                    die
wind's
cushion
a sinister
comfort

the hard wall
approaches

                       to
                    fly
                  so
            grace-
       fully
    but
once

how
beautiful
the sky
the city
the life

THEGROUNDTHEGROUNDTHEGROUNDTHEGROUND

.

Scientifically minded fellows may be curious if I've considered the possibility that through air resistance, a frog's tiny mass will result in a low enough terminal velocity to survive a ground impact. It should be noted that cats are able to orient themselves during a long fall to increase their drag and protect their heads; they have been known to survive drops of more than ten stories. For the purposes of this narrative, the frogs of the future are anthropomorphic humanoids, thus they are to be considered larger and heavier than their familiar counterparts (on the other hand, if it's not the future, consider each frog to be normal). The leopard lithobate, unfortunately then, fell to its death (unless I change my mind and retcon it later).

Ah, but there I go, using the term lithobate without explaining all of batrachology (the study of frogs) first. How silly of me — of course the story can't proceed until you understand the breadth of the anura order. There are thousands of species of frogs from about 60 different families; scientists will even disagree on the taxonomy, making occasional changes to the evolutionary tree. Since explaining the whole field comprehensively would take too long, I'll instead simplify things to the point of inaccuracy.

On September 6, 2013, a frog hereafter known as Rocket Frog (not to be confused with the species of the same name) was launched high up in the air during the takeoff of a NASA lunar probe. A single image captured the blurry silhouette flying over all, arms and legs outstretched like one half of the Vitruvian Man. NASA's official statement was that the frog's condition was uncertain — you may think this is simply a euphemism to not put a damper on humorous press, but I will cite a 1930s experiment from Harvard as evidence for its potential survival: a professor dropped a bucket of frogs out a five-story window (Darlington); yet moments later, the frogs were all hopping away normally. One frog later stated at a press event: It was def kinda scary ngl, but also pretty dope, like I wouldn't ever talk to that dude again, but I'm glad it happend [sic].

32, upon finishing his small frog meal, thought it was positively delicious. To think that when he was but a rabbit, he had never tasted the wonders of the flesh — how he had been MISSING the succulent texture of frog legs, delicate and mildly sweet. Satisfied but still exhausted from flight, 32 hunkered down where he stood at the top of the lighthouse, descending into sleep. Ducks actually practice something called unihemispheric sleep, where only one half of their brain rests while they keep their other eye open — necessary to watch for predators like owls. They can achieve bilateral sleep as well, but only if they feel safe, or in the rare case that they recently transmorphed from being a rabbit.

Boro awoke in their worm-plane seat, feeling hazy and not themself. Moreover, they had a giant worm-headache. It seemed they may have been the only worm to survive the worm-crash; to their right, the ashen debris was still lightly smoldering, and worm-corpses were charred and mangled. To their left, the worm-emergency-exit-door had seemingly burst open, probably helping to dissipate the fumes. They tried to slither this way out, but found themself caught — their tail end was trapped in the debris. Well that's just rilliant, sarcastically jested the worm, but it was then that they noticed their inability to pronounce the B. As this was the first worm-letter of their name, they tried to say it aloud: Oro. Oro. My name has always een Oro.

Oro is the Spanish word for gold. In the first two centuries after Europe became aware of the New World, Spain imported hundreds of tons of gold and even more in silver from Latin America. During this time, they of course became very rich, and the Spanish Empire mostly stopped producing goods, instead favoring to buy their needs in bullion. When the mines began drying up around 1650, they stopped having anything of value, and the empire gradually dwindled away until it nigh ceased to exist by the early 1800s.

This history is largely irrelevant to how the worm had decided that if they couldn't say Boro, they might as well be Oro from now on. Oro continued to attempt loosing their tail from the debris, but to no avail. Eventually all this tightening and stretching reached a breaking point, and Oro's body snapped off from their tail, the potential energy launching them from the worm-plane, out the worm-emergency-exit-door, and down to the ground below. Despite the partial worm-agony from the now gaping lack of a tail, Oro was able to crawl away from the worm-wreckage. Oddly enough, there was a worm-sized hole where Oro naturally decided to stop — perhaps another worm had made it out alive? Oro pursued the lead and burrowed down into the worm-hole.

Why are you wasting my time? a toad-boss scoffed to Jerry, so distraught from his frogslaughter that he immediately self-reported to the toads on the lower floors of Babel. We have accidents everyday. These things happen. Now go back out there and work, or else your fly soup will go to somefrog else.

Before standing up and hopping out, Jerry stared into the cold, dead eyes of the toad. He thought about the years of desensitization the boss must have gone through, like an army general sending hordes to their graves, hoarding skulls. What a privileged position, yet so wantonly careless was this lump of toad, unthinking, uncaring. If they had the frog bodies, Jerry imagined the toad surmising, why not send them directly into the shredder? No one in construction wanted to take a step back and ask why upward progress had slowed to a crawl? No one wanted to consider ways of building without generating endless casualties? Just constant brute force, working all the frogs down to nothing?

But of course this is the result when the frogczar was in power. The toads were just as much replaceable as the workers, and even if one boss had sympathy for them, such a toad might be the weak link in a chain that gets replaced. The system was made specifically to select for these kinds of heartless creatures — they were merely executing the long arms of the frogczar, not thinking for themselves. With a large enough supply, there are always those complacent to be complicit in evil.

The toad-boss grumbles. What are you doing just staring at me? Get out of here already. Dumb frog.

Holly and Astor, 3 and 2, were beside one another in each of their toddler beds. Their mother was tucking them into bed when Astor lobbied for storytime: Can you tell us a story, Mommy?

Their mother obliged; she recalled a tale she remembered from her youth: Once upon a time in the great big woods, there lived a family of rabbits. They lived next to the McGregors, big scary humans who had a big garden with lots of yummy vegetables growing. Mother Rabbit warned her kids not to go in the garden: They caught your father, and that's how he got baked into a pie. Holly Rabbit and Astor Rabbit were good bunnies and they listened to their mother, but their brother Peter was a big trouble maker. One day when they were all out picking berries, Peter slipped away and snuck under the McGregor's fence. He was now in their garden, and could eat all the carrots he wanted. Peter ate so many carrots that he had a tummyache. He went off looking for a plant to help his tummy, but that's when Mr. McGregor saw him. Peter ran and ran as Mr. McGregor chased him around the garden. Then, Mr. McGregor grabbed ahold of Peter! Peter only escaped by taking off his blue jacket, which was left in Mr. McGregor's hand as Peter ran for the fence. Peter slipped back under and just barely escaped death! He went home tired and scared, still with a tummyache. His mother and two good sisters were there, finishing up the berry soup they had made for the day. Can I have some? asked Peter, but they were all out of berries. Too bad! The end.

The girls were satisfied, so their mother got up to leave. But then Astor piped:

What's death?

Her mother wasn't sure how to answer, and honestly was kind of tired, so she just said:

I'll tell you when you're older.

She then shut off the light, leaving only a nightlight in the girls' bedroom. Astor stared into the pale heat of the tungsten, transfixed by its gaze.

32 was awoken when the lighthouse's beacon shined brightly right onto him. It was now night at the shore, the sea tower casting a brilliant ray out into the blue. Unlike what you might expect, the beacon was not rotating, instead transfixed like a spotlight out at sea. It illuminated what appeared to be a simple fishing vessel, a lone ship surrounded by waves and darkness. It was as if he was being beckoned to fly over to it, so without much of any other goal, he spread his wings and flew out.

On approach, it seemed that the vessel was completely empty of any intelligent life. It rocked back and forth in place, an eerily empty scene devoid of presence. Upon landing, 32 explored the deck, finding naught but half-empty buckets, long black rope, and various tools — with the exception of a trail of breadcrumbs leading into the cabin. 32 followed it, scooping up and eating each piece of bread along the way. Once inside the cabin, he could see the trail stopped with another spotlight pointing directly onto a small blue jacket — rabbit-sized. 32 was quite puzzled by this — this now seemed to be a message meant specifically for him. Being the direct descendant of a long line of Peter Rabbits, 32 was of course familiar with the blue jacket of the tale. But what was it doing here, and what message was being communicated to him? Under the whispers of the gently rocking waves, he hears a faint ticking; it's coming from the inside of the coat. He uses his bill to scavenge the coat's pockets, and a tiny watch falls out to the ground. A quaint detail is that the seconds hand is ticking in place; the mechanism is trying to drive things forward, but the spring perpetually stutters and the hand falls back into the previous groove.

In the next moment, the fishing vessel's engine turned on, and it began moving on its own. 32 honked wildly, confused; he was in the cabin yet could plainly see there was no one here to pilot the ship. To be fair, this was probably only the 4th weirdest thing to happen to him today, so he chose to accept this anomaly — 32 was along for the ride.

At the end of Jerry's workday, he retired to room 1666, huddling up and still in shock from the atrocity he committed today. Yes, he was only one part of a system that failed him — put a toddler behind the wheel of a semi-trailer and they too will inevitability kill someone — but the buck still stopped with him. It was his incompetence that was the ultimate reason for another's tragedy. He looked up and stared at the ceiling, wondering how he'd ever sleep again. He closes his eyes.

i tilt the stick it tilts me i run it catches i fall he falls the leopard of life is in death my folly can we tame life the rulers take us and they beat us and i'm beaten now so beaten down i panic i latch to nothing i cannot fly i will that i will not die but can death be beaten it cannot nothing beats death because it is an inevitability everything you know everyone you love all of it has an expiration date sooner or later or now we can affect these we can change the expiration our actions are our own i did this i did this i did this i'm a bad frog i'm just as bad as the frogczar i'm just as bad as the toads i shouldn't be eating i shouldn't be living no wonder my princess left me no wonder they fired me from the bureau i'm weak i'm worthless i don't deserve to be a frog i'm more like a worm helpless and squirming i wish i was a worm a worm would never do this a worm could never kill someone the powerless don't have a chance to wield big machinery why did they give me this power i never wanted this power i just wanted to eat and now someone can't eat because i needed to eat what even am i why am i here i'm a blight on this earth just like that tower if i want to change something in this world i think i might as well just end it all but maybe i can do good in the end maybe i can make the world a better place even if it takes me out of it maybe that's a way that i won't be worthless maybe i should just try if i fail then so what if i'm successful then great either way i die so that's what i want and then i can't hurt anyone else anymore that doesn't deserve it

His uncontrollable thoughts set in motion actions that would have long-lasting consequences.

Perhaps at this point I should specify some facts about the worms in this story: I have generally considered them as earthworms with humanlike traits, such as empathy and eyes. While some worm species have eyes, earthworms do not — though they do have some primitive photosensitivity. They are part of the larger class of segmented worms, known as annelids. The fascinating thing about each segment is that besides the first and last ones, they are nearly identical. Each segment, known also as an annulus, contains the same set of organs, and the annuli contain setae (hair-like extrusions) that help the worms get traction to move. Segments are separated from the next by a division called a septum; worms will generate new segments with age, allowing them to grow. Some species of annelids will actually reproduce by dividing into two, entirely asexually — though this is not the case with earthworms. They need a partner to reproduce, but it helps that they are hermaphrodites, containing both male and female parts — ova and gonads. For this reason, I have been referring to all my worm characters as they/them, unless they have been inhabited by the spirit of Peter Rabbit The First.

At the end of Boro's tunnel, they had carved out a nice worm-cave for themself, complete with worm-chairs, a worm-kitchenette, a worm-bed, and even a worm-television (every channel was dirt however). Boro had been sitting in their comfy worm-rocker for a few hours already — they were lost in deliberation about whether to give up their dream to be a comedian after being outclassed by the rabbit's throwaway line — when suddenly another worm dropped right out of the ceiling (Boro's initial entrance). Hi, greeted Boro, welcome to my abode. I'm Boro, and you?

The new worm responded: I'm Oro. You look very familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?

BORO: No, I don't think so. I was just on the worm-plane that crashed...

ORO: Me too! I can't elieve we hit that worm-turulence that ad! All the worm-planes have een crashing these days.

BORO: Tell me about it. There's this wormcast I listen to, and they were —

ORO: Oh, I love wormcasts. Which one?

BORO: You've probably never heard of it, it's pretty underground, but they —

ORO: Annelids Anonymous?

BORO: Wow, yeah! I've literally never met anyone who's ever known about it! Where'd you say you're from?

ORO: Worm-Sawrey.

BORO: Really? I'm not even kidding, me too! We have so much in common! Wanna be worm-friends?

ORO: I love having worm-friends! We're now est uds!

An announcement over the Neon Babylonian loudspeakers: THIS IS YOUR FROGCZAR. IT APPEARS YOU ARE ALL ADJUSTING TO THE CURFEW AFTER SOME OF YOU HAVE HAD SOME... MISHAPS. THE METAPIGS ARE ALGORITHMICALLY DISPOSED TO TAKE PLEASURE IN DEATH, SO I WOULD SUGGEST YOU AVOID GIVING THEM ANY REASON TO DISLIKE YOU. FOLLOW THEIR ORDERS AS IF THEY WERE MY OWN. UNDERSTOOD? NOW — THERE IS SOME UPCOMING PERSONNEL RELOCATION: ALL POISONOUS FROGS WILL BE FORCED TO MOVE TO DISTRICT 4 WITHIN THE NEXT MONTH. IF THEY DO NOT DO SO WILLINGLY, THEY WILL FIND SOME UNFRIENDLY KNOCKS ON THEIR DOORS. WE ALL KNOW TIMES HAVE BEEN BAD, AND WE ALL KNOW WHO IS TO BLAME. ONLY I, THE FROGCZAR, CAN LEAD US OUT OF THIS DARK AGE AND INTO A NEW ERA. TRUST ME, FOR I HAVE CONFERRED WITH HEQET HERSELF — MY ACTIONS ARE ONLY THE WILL OF THE FROG-GODDESS.

OK, I wanna pause the story for a second (again? lol), because I was out buying a Peter Rabbit book today for research purposes (you know, I wanna have consistent bunnylore), and Beatrix Potter™ has a TM symbol on its cover. I guess it's confusing for me because the original Tale of Peter Rabbit is all the way back from 1902, which should well be in the public domain by now. Potter herself died in 1943, so by American copyright law (where I purchased the item), that's life of the author plus 70 years. Yet according to the page at the front of the book, all copyrights and trademarks are still owned by Frederick Warne & Co. Now, I get it, the trademark is more there to protect the Beatrix Potter brand and to prevent others from selling things under her name without express permission from the intellectual property holders, but I still felt confused by all of this. Like, when Steamboat Willie was entering the public domain, Disney started putting the image of Mickey piloting his ship in all their media for the purpose of establishing the mouse (in this form) as part of their core branding trademark. That makes sense, but still unaffiliated parties went and made Steamboat Willie horror films as soon as the copyright expired — though all their promotional materials make no reference to Mickey Mouse or Disney. In fact, one mousesploitation movie, The Mouse Trap, was originally titled Mickey's Mouse Trap but was changed because Disney still owns the trademark to Mickey Mouse. A trademark's purpose then is to prevent consumers from thinking a work was produced or sponsored by its holders, in this case Disney. Specifically, trademarks never expire as long as the rightsholders make use of them every 10 years.

OK, so I think this all means that I'm allowed to say that it was the Steamboat Willie incarnation of the well-known mouse that was piloting the fishing vessel that 32 was on. Yes, I know I said earlier that there was no one steering the boat because that was eerier, but idk, I like this better for some reason. Plus, this could still be plenty eerie, as all those Steamboat Willie horror films showed (though should I really be taking inspiration from them? I didn't actually see any, but they all got terrible reviews). Uh, let's just say 32 didn't see the mouse at first because he was still in black & white and so he blended into the darkness.

Who are you? asked 32 to the cel-animated — wait, didn't I say earlier that this was the realistic version of the world (where magic can't happen and animals can't talk?) — hmmm... I feel like this is now the second time I've broken this tenet — the first being 32's metamorphosis. Though even before that, 32 had to hop all the way up onto a table in Trixie's house (I gotta call Miss Potter by nicknames now, to be safe from the trademark fiends... oh wait, just noticed Peter Rabbit is a trademark too lmao), yet I don't think real-life rabbits can actually jump that high. OK sure, they are known for hopping, and small animals like cats can make impressive vertical leaps, but I can't imagine a pet bunny getting that kind of air time. So I'm going against my earlier words; strike any rules I said from the record. I realize this is prolly bad writing because one of the tropes of magical stories is that Magic A is Magic A; ie. audiences can exercise their suspension of disbelief for the supernatural as long as the established rules are consistent — if you say only wizards can cast spells, but then a muggle picks up a wand and unlocks a door, well, unless you have a retcon (do most people know this word? I used it earlier too, but yeah, it means retroactive continuity, or changing established facts later by providing either contradictory details or recontextualizing old ones) explanation like muggles can cast magic with the power of love, but then that would raise a bunch of questions like, wait, you're telling me no one else loved this much before? ... OK, look, so the simple new rule I'm coming up with is that in 1905, animals can't talk to humans. Steamy Willie here is a cartoon mouse, so this is fine; 32 is allowed to talk to him.

Who are you? asked 32 to the cel-animated mouse happily steering the ship. The odd creature ignored 32, instead choosing to simply snap its suspenders — OK, yes I realize if the mouse is just going to ignore 32 then I didn't need that entire last paragraph, but also, did you know that Mickey doesn't actually wear suspenders in Steamboat Willie? A lot of people seem to have the collective memory that the mouse snapped his suspenders in time with his whistling tune, but this is entirely a fabrication of the mind. A lot of people on the Internet also refuse to believe they're ever wrong, so they've headcannoned* that they've somehow jumped universes to a world where Fruit of the Loom doesn't have a cornucopia or Henry VIII didn't eat turkey legs. I sometimes go on the Mandela Effect subreddit just to remind myself how confidently people can believe they're correct, even when they're obviously wrong, especially when surrounded by yes-people.

*Technically, there shouldn't be two consecutive n's in headcanon, but I think it looks better that way when in the past tense. Also, since I defined retcon, I might as well define headcanon: when a fan of a work wants to resolve a gap in a story, their headcanon is their personal explanation for it. Yes, that makes less sense when being applied to real life, but it's perfectly sound in my own head. Or should I (just now) have said headcannon (instead of head) for the irony? Is that even irony? Everyone wants to be ironic these days, so much so that we're now post-ironic, and I'm not sure I'm post- enough for post-irony**. Irregardless***, it would be fun to have a cannon for a head. Well, as long as I still had a brain. And a head. And the cannon was removable so I didn't have to be a headcannon all the time: a maskcannon, more or less.

**Post-irony is essentially where you've gone so ironic that actually you're fully genuine again. Somehow I feel like this is being embraced by people who dislike excessive irony**** despite the fact that it requires a strong sense of irony to even execute properly. I'm specifically bad at post-irony because being genuine requires you to be vulnerable and that's kind of scary ngl. At best I can cake genuine thoughts and feelings in an irony sandwich so no one knows if I'm just trolling***** or not.

***Some would argue that irregardless is not a word, but who made you the arbiter of words? It's also different than regardless, unregardless, and disregardless******; in that irregardless is the ironic and reckless conjunctive adverb, as opposed to regardless's professionalism and sensibility.

****Why would they hate that?

*****I don't have to define trolling right? Everyone knows this word by now, I assume. Like, retcon I feel most people should probably know, I'll admit headcanon is pretty uncommon, but trolling is ubiquitous, yeah?

******After I typed this out, I realized that disregardless isn't a word either************, and I'm not sure how one would even go about using it in a sentence. Actually, wait, who made me the arbiter of words? What even is an arbiter anyway*******? I should really get back to the story one of these days********. These asterisks are getting unwieldy.

*******An arbiter is one who makes the decision in an arbitration, where an unbiased party decides a judgment after hearing both sides. From these terms we also get arbitrary, because an arbiter's decision might come down to pure chance*********. Annoyingly, it seems tracing arbiter any farther back than its Latin roots is speculative.

********32 looked out on the shore as it shrunk away, falling off the Earth. Only the beacon from the lighthouse remained in view, its spotlight still tracking the fishing vessel. With time, the light became scattered and dim, until that too faded as it disappeared behind the horizon. 32 was now out in the dark waters, alone with only the 1928 version of Mickey Mouse. The ticking from the broken watch could still faintly be heard, the object now laying on the floor next to the blue jacket. The mouse snatched the tiny timer off the ground with his right hand (left hand still on the wheel) held it above his head, opened his mouth wide, then dropped it in, gobbling it up. The ticking stopped, but now the odd character began whistling — though not in a cheerful way; it was ominous and slow. He let go of the wheel he was piloting, then reached up to grab the cabin's spotlight that was shining on the jacket. He rotated it until the light now shined outside the cabin, out into the empty starboard-side waters. Continuing to whistle, Mickey snapped his suspenders once again, and upon them making contact with Mickey's body, he vanished into nothingness. 32 was truly alone now, in silence.

*********Does anything come down to pure chance? We are but the ultimate result of neurons firing wildly********** throughout our brains, pathways forged by experience, none of which we control. If consciousness lies somewhere in that mess, can we isolate it? But consciousness cannot be a mere observer, because it too can be observed. In that way, we are not just a homunculus*********** watching a prerecorded movie play out before our eyes, but an active participant.

**********A headcannon.

***********The tiny person that lives in your cranium, monitoring the outside you. They are the true version of yourself, while your body is more akin to an item of clothing that it wears.

************Unregardless was added during editing after my coworker spit this gold; I promptly tried to hock it to the Spanish Empire but they said I was a few centuries late.

32 gazed off into the ocean on the boat's right side, the open waters being about the only thing he could see. Mild waves wandered about, lightly rocking the vessel, but otherwise activity was lifeless. After some 30 seconds of waiting, bubbles began rising to the surface — then more and more of them. A form emerged from the water: an aquatic colossus — blue skin, deep resounding vocalizations, broad head... the blue whale. It let out a giant spout from its blowhole before slowly opening its mouth to speak: HELLO, it boomed in a ultra-low-pitched rumble, THERE IS SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO MEET YOU. It extended its mouth to create an organic tunnel that beckoned to be entered. 32 did not know why, but he felt compelled to fly into this whale's orifice, almost against his own will. His wings fluttered upward, he pushed forward, and he flew right into the dark gum cage, the whale's mouth closing behind. 32 was left in total darkness.

Karma presses her flat face up to the passenger side window, tongue out and panting, as she watches the ground speed by in joy. She is a pug, and her person is driving a few miles over the speed limit in the middle lane. An expensive car then blocks Karma's view, speeding right by her person's vehicle. The silly little pug sees a child watching her, face also smooshed up against her window. Ugh, sighs her person. The left lane is literally wide open! Why are you passing me on the right!? Why are people like this, Karma?

The passing car quickly gets ahead and continues to speed away. Karma's person gets over the brief road rage, and the dog forgets this distress, going back to enjoying the scenery with curiosity and wonder.

Holy — !!

The speeder spins out in front of them, luckily swerving off to the right and colliding with the railing in the police lane. Karma and her person fly past before they could fully comprehend what was happening. Adrenaline wearing off, Karma's person gives her a light pat on the head, quipping: Well, you know what they say:

just a few more days we can get through this maybe someone here can help but would i trust them they know the stakes they know how cruel this life is and they don't want to die they're probably just like me demotivated and helpless they're here because they have no other choice pushed to the edge and they need an out and i'd be giving them an out why don't i just ask for help but they could report me the incentives for reporting are all strong rats get preferential treatment here but what stops people from making false accusations couldn't i report my toad but why would i do that when that could ruin my plan just carry the beam don't look so nervous jerry just do your job don't worry even though i should worry why do people keep dying up here there must be a curse i never really believed in the supernatural besides heqet of course but this is making me believe there must be something going on here something sinister or awestriking or what if the frogczar is just killing us all for his own amusement maybe he never wants the tower done he just needs an excuse to kill people but does he really need an excuse he's the frogczar he'll just do what he wants like gather up all the poor poison frogs together what he's doing is not right at all the poison frogs are not the cause of the acid lake's toxicity i know it's drainage from the human storage facilities it's all runoff and chemicals the poison frogs are natural and i don't know why we need to blame them for everything when something goes wrong it's not like you can solve all your problems by hating people but then again i do really hate the frogczar so am i trying to drive out hate with hate is that the wrong thing to do i don't know i just need a few more days of planning i really need to ask for help someone can help right anyone please why is this so difficult

Anne is 16. She is cold. She is hungry. She is exhausted. But mostly she misses her mother.

She lies awake on her stiff cot in the early morning — it's pointless to go back to sleep now. The Russian guards will want them all up and ready; their work days are endless and they start at 4 am. The only reason anyone does their job is because of the pain that will be inflicted on them if they don't. She's seen it plenty of times herself — camp guards pulling unresponsive prisoners out of bed and beating them down, sometimes to death. All their bodies were frail to the point where she didn't know how she even —

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The gong raged, the metallic sound loudly resounding throughout the sleeping quarters. PODYEM! PODYEM! the barracks supervisor yelled. It was time to work. Anne wrapped her scarf around her shaved head and got up.

Sam, 25 years old, had been working at Eden for just over two years now. It was a dream job for her, being on the cutting edge of the most life-uprooting technology. After only a few months of working there, however, she had already permanently unplugged her own brain chip and urged her family to do the same. Being bound by a non-disclosure agreement, she couldn’t exactly tell them why, other than: For a company that’s making hardware and software that’s interacting directly with your brain, their safety standards are pretty lax.

Indeed, they were, and it goes worse than that. Enhancing the brain's processing required a consistent Internet connection — data was constantly being passed at huge throughputs between people's heads and Eden's servers. The company also had massive amounts of memory for storage — giant rooms with absurd amounts of hardware, all being supercooled. You'd think with this much sensitive data — literally millions of customers' inner thoughts — it wouldn't be as easy as an unprotected database query for Sam to pull up whatever she wanted. She had to wonder what all this data collection was for, because you don't pay for all this without expecting a return on investment. She was not privy to the deals of the chairmen, but she was aware of the cost of these brain chips, and they were selling them at a loss (the company's mission was to reach as many people as possible). Yet Eden was making huge profits, so the money was coming from somewhere...

In Sam's first week, they were in the midst of a rebranding; before, their slogan had been REACH YOUR POTENTIAL, but now it was TASTE THE FRUIT. Apparently they were leaning into this idea of temptation, picking from the tree of knowledge to become something more than human. This disturbed Sam greatly — did they not realize the identity of the great tempter was the devil? What exactly did she sign up for?

Last year’s internal scandal came when the hardware team realized they made a major manufacturing error; the chips’ terminals were placed too close to each other with barely any insulation (a cost-cutting measure), theoretically meaning a short circuit could happen. Because these things were attached directly to the human body, Eden determined there was a very real risk for serious burns. Yet, the higher-ups chose to do nothing about this. Said one exec: We’ve already shipped to millions of users, a recall now would sink the company. With a leak being a major possibility, they even tried to keep things quiet within — Sam only knew because as part of the firmware development team, they were given special instructions for avoiding the use of certain features that might lead to overheating.

For such a valuable company, the dev team was still practically a skeleton crew. Back in the olden days, creating firmware and software for brain chips would take a massive amount of labor, but they had access to so much middleware and AI tools that most of the hard parts were figured out already. Need a comprehensive model of the brain? There’s a plug-in for that. Need help creating an alternate reality buddy that’s always by your side? There’s plug-ins for rigging, emotional responses, language; pre-made assets for models and animation; and AI will help you string all these parts together in code.

Once discovering Eden didn't need a huge workforce, Sam thought it was a miracle that she had actually obtained the job. Bizarrely though, despite the rarity of the position, her team members told her the search on their side was grueling. Apparently trudging through all of the robo-applicants, remote workers, non-citizens, no-shows, unqualifieds, and unlikables took up a good chunk of time. Her manager even said once: We might as well just use AI workers if all our applicants are AI anyway.

There were other parts of the company though. Rumors came by that they were doing lots of animal testing, bio-engineered frogs or something like that — this was really the least of Sam's concerns, compared to the reckless greed of the chairmen. She at one point did think about becoming a whistleblower, but decided against it; you were basically guaranteed to lose your job, and in turn, there was no basic guarantee that anyone would believe you enough to report your message to a wider audience. To keep herself morally free of guilt, she figured that one day she'd write a tell-all book but should at least have some money saved up before that.

Presently, Sam was sitting at her desk, one hand curled around her warm cup of coffee, the other on her mouse. She was leaning forward into the rightmost monitor of her three monitor set-up, reviewing some code from her boss. The policy was that any code change needed two approvals, but in practice this really meant one, because the requester could approve themself. Plus this was more a formality for her boss, who had override privileges for everything unregardless. Though actually, it was usually her boss that was most in need of review — his code usually turned out to be the jankiest. Today was no exception, he was doing some — hey wait, this is super-sketch:

Why are you going around all of the access methods we have in place? Why are you exposing a bunch of variables and functions that are supposed to be private? This is absolutely destroying the code structure — this is some truly awful spaghetti. This is the worst spot to do all this in too: the power cycling methods! You're just asking for more bugs — worst case scenario, you'll brick the chips. No, hold on... it's worse than that. Is he going around everything solely so he can exceed the energy limits!? We are not pushing this! This'll cause guaranteed short circuits! This is bad.

Sam briskly walked to her boss's office, whose door was open: I looked at your code, and you're exceeding the energy limit. You're going to cause a short circuit.

BOSS: I tested it, don't worry. It's pushing things because the Lucy plug-in doesn't work unless it has a good kick, but it's only for a split-second so it'll be fine.

SAM: You tested it in what? The models? Those weren't even accurate the last time I dis —

BOSS: We were in a rush for the new OS, we didn't have time to test thoroughly.

SAM: That's not the point. Do you even know how serious this is? Did you not hear me say you're going to cause a short circuit? If there's even the slightest risk of that then you should —

BOSS: Oh, you're always such a Debbie Downer, Sam. I'm gonna reassign this to one of the boys and they can —

SAM: We're not pushing this to production.

BOSS: That's not your decision to make.

An awkward silence filled the room as Sam swallowed her pride and walked away. She wished she didn't.

i need help with my plan this is not a one-frog job there's hopper yeah i'll ask hopper he's the nicest frog there is not a bad bone in his body he has to be against the frogczar tree frogs are always good guys we'll be a team jerry and hopper they'll write stories in the history books about how we took down the frogczar we saved frogmanity jerry's bravery was unmatched throughout time ok let me ask him i'll ask him now

HOPPER: Your plan is to jump off Babel with a hang glider and assault Froggingham Palace? Are you serious? Are you OK? Where are you even getting a hang glider? What happens if you collide with a car in the air? How are you planning to land? And what makes you so sure that the frogczar will be there, that you'll get past his security, and that any of the doors will be unlocked? Look, I'm not sure we should be talking about this... I'll see you around.

no no hopper how can you do this to me it was perfect we were perfect how can you not see the genius they'd never see it coming it's exactly because you think the plan is dumb that it's actually genius i'm practically frog-einstein might as well call me frogstein if anything went wrong that's what i'd have backup for and now my backup is gone i can't believe this but i guess where would i get a hang glider from i mean i was hoping hopper could help me with that but now i'm alone like when my princess left me why did she leave me what did i even do nothing is fair life's not fair why did the frogczar do this to me his reign needs to end no matter the cost

Boro and Oro were adjusting to their new location quite well — the worm-neighbors were friendly and pleasant, but of course they never had as much in common as Boro and Oro had together. Today the two went to the worm-fair:

STEP RIGHT UP! I SAID STEP RIGHT UP! KNOCK DOWN ALL THE BLOCKS WITH ONE THROW AND WIN ANY PRIZE HERE!

Oro thought the block game looked worm-fun and Boro agreed. Boro crawled right up to the booth, dropped a couple worm-coins, picked up the ball with their worm-mouth, and gave it their best toss. It was an incredible throw, and all the blocks fell to the ground off their platform. You're the est! shouted Oro. Boro then picked out a prize: the cute snake stuffed animal, which they passed over to Oro. That was the exact one that I wanted! How did you know?

The worm-pair made their way over to a variation on the spinning tea cups ride, where they sat inside a unit shaped like an apple. Once the ride's carousel platform began rotating, both Boro and Oro gripped and turned their apple's inner disc with their mouths, causing it to spin even more. They worm-laughed and worm-giggled all throughout the worm-ride. It was only after they got off and felt worm-sick that they both worm-puked.

After cleaning themselves up in the worm-restroom, Oro and Boro decided for a simpler worm-ride, one less likely to trigger motion sickness: the worm-ferris-wheel. I hope you're not scared of heights, said Boro as they climbed into their cart. I am, actually, a little it, replied Oro. Oh yeah, I am little bit too, Boro admitted. When their cart reached its apex, those fears subsided in both of them. It's so eautiful up here, Oro uttered as they admired the view. I know, replied Boro. They stared into each other's worm eyes.

ORO: I have something that I want to say to you.

BORO: I do too. Let's say it together. On three...

ORO: OK. 3...

BORO: 2...

ORO: 1...

OROBORO: I love you.

Eve strolls naked and alone through the garden. Ripe crops and bountiful trees surround her on all sides, as her bare feet glide over green grass. She is happy.

Then the snake approaches. It hisses: You’re getting fat, Eve. Adam won’t want you if you keep eating like this. But... I know a secret weight loss technique that THEY don’t want you to know about. The forbidden fruit of the apple tree has been proven to work in clinical trials. What are you waiting for? Act now.

Well, thinks Eve, the snake is right, I have been gaining weight. Maybe I should try an apple, just to see if it would help. What have I got to lose? Eve makes her way to the tree and picks out a shiny, red-colored specimen from its branches. She takes a bite, and why, it’s quite delicious. You’re telling me it can taste THIS GOOD and still have low carbs and low sugar?

Later that day, Eve tells Adam about the wonderful fruit and suggests he try some. Adam is angry: Elohim told us that eating the forbidden fruit was the one thing we were not allowed to do! Why have you been disobedient?

Why is it that only YOU get to talk to Elohim? Eve mutters accusingly. Adam explains he was the only one created in HIS image. Eve insults Adam by telling him that he is a cuck.

This tilts Adam and damages his pride, so to prove himself, he marches over to the tree and grabs the first apple he sees. It is rotten, yet he slugs it all down anyway. I understand a woman’s place in this world now, he says inebriated with facts and logic.

1. Women are too emotional and cannot lead.
2. Domestic abuse is fabricated by bitter exes to get free child support.
3. Eve, you are to be my tradwife.
4. You were made from me and are subservient to me, thus I am entitled to your body at any time.
5. Now I'll go lift weights while listening to a manosphere podcast.
6. Please put some clothes on because you look like a whore.

Adam is now toxic and will live for a thousand years.

John Milton has just finished his epic poem about the Garden of Eden, Paradise Lost. The friar-mailman drops off a sack chock-full of letters at his door:

This changed my life! Five stars!

The single greatest corpus of literature since Dante penned The Divine Comedy.

Forsoothe! The loathsome vision of Lucifer is a triumph, and the battle between heaven and hell is as vivid as a painting.

This is a cease and desist order. By the D. M. C. A., your work infringes on the copyright of the King James Bible. The characters of Adam and Eve, the snake, and other related imagery have been plagiarized from their respective rightsholder(s). If you wish to dispute this claim, please file an appeal with the court of Charles II. Until the matter is resolved, it is unlawful to sell or reproduce Paradise Lost in whole or in part.

Jerry laid in his bed —

Wait, hold on — writers these days always be wanting to use lay here like: Jerry lay in his bed. I don't get it, why would we switch tenses? I mean, I'm switching tenses willy-nilly all throughout this thing, but I'm talking about writers who actually like to have consistency and professionalism in their work. I'm just using laid OK? I make my own rules. Irregardless, I kinda think dialogue quotes are weird. Like, obviously they're a good idea because they let you know when words are spoken by a character versus by the author, but it's more about the ubiquity of it all. We're so beholden to a specific convention, despite it not being a necessity of the medium. You'd think other people would find it mildly awkward enough specifying character name and speaking-verb inline for every piece of dialogue (I realize there are writers who don't use quotes, I'm just generalizing the large majority here). Why do we allow such potential ambiguity (like, yes, by not using quotes I'm creating way more ambiguity, but that's a style choice and it represents symbolism, probably, idk), for instance, when the author decides to leave character names out? Script-writers have a much better system where they are required to specify character names for every line of dialogue, but scripts aren't great for prose, are even worse for prose-poetry infusion, and they really don't work if the author wants to self-insert a rant instead of continuing the story. So you'd think someone could pioneer some sort of hybrid system. Look, I've been reading Gravity's Rainbow (which is honestly kind of mid, and it's got a lot of problematic content too), and Pynchon will just not specify the characters half the time, using pronouns instead, and it would've been nice if when we invented books we picked a convention where speakers have to be identified (or where the author is forced to declare the identity as unknown) so that writers way up in their large intestine (eg. me) would be forced to have more clarity in their words. Anyway...

Jerry lays on his bed in room 1666, overwrought in his endless stream of thoughts, when a knock is heard on his door. Seconds later, his door is busted down, and a sounder of metapigs pile into his space.

no no no no no no no what happened how did they find me hopper no how could it be hopper he's the nicest frog i know he would never it couldn't be hopper how could hopper betray me this doesn't make sense they must've bugged our workplace they're listening always listening what if they bugged me can they do that i don't have a brain chip like the humans had but maybe they can wirelessly connect to my brain but if they could do that couldn't they put thoughts in my head why would they need the metapigs to take me in if they could just control me and ow why are you pigs so rough and honestly kind of ugly you guys should really brush your teeth or something you're like burnt electricity cyborg tubs of lard and ugh you're all so smug about this and snorting why do you even have emotions if you're ai just shut up you big oafs

Daniel had a secret: he was part of the elite underground collective known as United Napper's Anonymous (UNA), a group dedicated to the practice of sleeping while at work. Some members had it easy — remote workers could simply clock in and pass out — but Daniel was a full-time in-office professional. His trick was to come into work at 4:30 am, hit approve on a merge request so it'd look like he had activity for the day, then sleep until his office-mate arrived — this alone got him 4 free hours of new life. When he later realized that all his coworkers knew about his habits and yet he still had his job, he felt invincible and upped his nap-game: not only did he now pass out during meetings, but once everyone arrived, he'd put up his hoodie so he could snooze while pretending to look at his screen. He found that he could often get all his necessary daily resting done entirely during work hours, meaning he could live like the unemployed while still getting paid the big bucks. Here's a conversation record between him (ThedPeasRedzzz) and his Discord crew:

ThedPeasRedzzz: lit i zd in front of the project lead today
BabyKing422: no way
ThedPeasRedzzz: i'm untouchable baby
BabyKing422: your crazy
Belshazzzzzar: you z entirely at work now?
ThedPeasRedzzz: pretty much, it's wild that my boss hasn't even complained
BabyKing422: didn't some higher up stand behind you a whole minute before waking you? how does no one care?
ThedPeasRedzzz: i literally don't even know. i wouldn't even care if i got fired at this point with how much time i saved lol
ThedPeasRedzzz: these capitalist societies work us to death. we have no free time to enjoy ourselves, i might as well take what's mine by protesting.
Belshazzzzzar: well said brother.
ThedPeasRedzzz: gotta admit tho, eden's pretty chill. i can refer you guys if you want
Belshazzzzzar: nah, work from home is the lifffffffffffffe
BabyKing422: ya bed zs are way better than desk zs
BabyKing422: anyway i had this super weird dream last night. you good with dreams, daniel?
ThedPeasRedzzz: i'll try
BabyKing422: so there was this enormous tree, right? practically touching the sky. everyone was eating from it, all the humans, all the animals. everything's good until an angel comes down and straight axes the thing. it falls and everyone runs away. what's it mean?
ThedPeasRedzzz: damn what am i, freud? wtf idk, try eating better prolly

AND NOW... the number one human disaster that could have been prevented is... all my frogscribers knew this would be at the top of the list — by the way make sure to hit that button, give a like, share, ring that bell — it's the Neurochip Massacre!

Yes, shortly after neurochip technology was invented back in the 21st century, Eden's direct-to-brain interfaces were widely adopted for their non-invasiveness and low cost. Being barely above a startup, the company had low quality control standards, and they installed millions of defective chips in their customers. Historical documents show that the company was well aware of the dangers of their products, yet chose to do nothing. A firmware update overrode safety controls that were put in place to limit power levels, but it had a fatal bug: the exit condition for a while loop was never hit, leading to the chips undergoing sustained periods of overheating. When the chips auto-installed this update, millions of users' units short-circuited, leading to seizures and death. But things didn't end there, because the update was pushed in the middle of the working day: planes fell out of the sky, those still driving manual cars did untold destruction, infrastructure systems collapsed, and the resulting chaos took decades to correct — all because nobody thought to double-check one person's code.

32 treads forward into the pitch dark depths of the whale. The blackness is relentless, caressing. It fills and it swallows. Perpetuating the null, culling sight, shredding knowledge, dulling sense. Unknown beknown; traipse forward, pulse backward. Lapse downward, trapped upward. Swirling in unseen liquidity, nothing is firm, all is moving. Light cannot see this. Faith cannot trust this. Life cannot live this. Death cannot kill this. The breath engulfs, the tongue squeezes, driving inward. Always inward. Then a trip, a tumble, a fall, spinning and spinning, each turn a discrete 90 degrees, morphing, transmogrifying, undoing, reforming. Despite 32's continued inability to see, he realizes he has reverted back to being a rabbit. He continues to scurry on all fours in what he assumes is forward, but at this point, he's not even sure if he's in a whale anymore. He feels more as if he's in a black void of nothingness, floating between not worlds, but the idea of worlds. He is in the platonic ideal of the null, the null that we all think of when we imagine the void — when we access that idea, it's an ephemeral second, a translucent object, but now 32 is in that place; the nowhere is everywhere.

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Anne has been shoveling mining waste from one pile to another for 12 hours. This would of course be boring and grueling in normal circumstances, but with the cold weather and food shortages, she wasn't sure how long she could survive. At least it was spring and not winter, she figures, rationalizing the slimmest of silver linings.

She collapses into her cot when she gets back to her sleeping quarters. No need to change clothes; it's not as if the Russians had allowed her anything else to wear. She is deathly hungry, but there is simply not enough food for everybody. The prisoner next to her is finishing up chowing into the raw corpse of a rat that had been scurrying around camp. She would have begged for a small taste if her muscles would let her move. Instead, Anne stares at the ground, where she is transfixed by two worms copulating. It seems the worms are blissfully unaware of all the human suffering that is going on around them. Life for the worms goes on.

The worm-doctors said they had never seen anything like it. No one believed it would live. Oro sobbed themself to sleep. Boro sat on a worm-chair, anxiously waiting.

Boro and Oro's first child was not the slithering cylinder they expected — they were a ring. Imagine a worm with their head seamlessly connected to their tail, one with no start and no end. The worm-doctors wanted to cut the child to straighten them out, but after studying the donut-like worm-creature, it seemed the child was constructed only from body segments. If it can't eat, it will wither and die; these were the words Boro and Oro were told.

They named the child: O.

O was taken home and placed in their worm-crib. Oro rocked the child back and forth, but the worm-parents didn't know if O was even capable of sleeping. Boro comforted Oro: It's OK, we can try again. This only upset Oro more — children were not just replaceable as if they were some kind of worm-toy. Oro told Boro that they would never understand the worm-pain they were suffering. All the things Oro and Boro had in common before didn't seem to matter now; somehow a rift had grown between them. The burden of carrying the baby seemed to have changed Oro into a new worm-person, while Boro was still just Boro.

Time passed, and the worm-parents and worm-doctors were stunned when not only did O continue to live, they were growing. Are you sure? Boro probed. Oro explained that they were counting O's segments every day, and last night O had grown two more. Boro wondered: How can it be growing more worm-massive if it can't even take in food?

Oro told Boro: O is not an IT.

Oro would talk to O constantly while Boro watched worm-TV. Boro wanted to tell Oro to quiet down, but refrained because that would likely end with them sleeping on the worm-couch. Oro loved to tickle O's skin; O would squirm all around, expressing their little worm-personality. Only Oro would ever tuck O into worm-bed, and only Oro would tell them a bedtime story. Their child was their child, and they loved them no matter what they were.

(Hey, it's Nonsum, the author's fake dog here! The last section seemingly implied that (earth)worms give birth like humans do: a child from a womb — but worms lay eggs! Nor do they pair up and live together in a domestic home to raise their child — actually, the worms simply exchange sperm, go on their merry way, and then both worms will later produce offspring! You know that thick band you see on earthworms? That's called the clitellum, which is the place the two worms make contact with each other in mating; afterward the clitellum will secrete mucus to form a cocoon! Once complete, the worm backs out of the cocoon, which will hold a number of eggs — they'll be fertilized by the cocoon until they hatch, about a month later! A few juvenile worms will then emerge, looking just like little mini-earthworms! Ah, the cycle of life (a process the humans have denied me by neutering me, but I still love them)! Now I've got to go, I need to get into the garbage because it smells like half-eaten chicken bones in there!)

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In the beginning (ending?) there was nothing — all was formless. Then a virtual particle escaped its partner: LET THERE BE LIGHT. And liyt be maad.

A color test pattern emerged from the void. White yellow cyan green magenta red blue black: 8 (ate) colo(u)rs — infinity rotated by Pi(e) over 2 (equivalent to 450 degrees, f). You'd be forgiven for thinking that crossing the infinite was impossible, but we do it everyday. How? In rotation, you might never CATCH infinity if it runs, but you CAN pass right through it.

Think Zeno's paradox of motion. For an arrow to reach its target, it must first reach halfway. But before it can reach halfway, the arrow must also reach half of halfway, and before that, half of half of halfway — and so on. Because the arrow must always reach an earlier point before it can reach the next, the arrow must never move at all. And yet it moves.

The solution is that for every uncrossable infinity, there is a counter-infinity. With each distance we subdivide, we also divide time. When there are an infinite set of steps in front of us, we can climb them if we shrunk time to the infinitesimal with them: the zero (0). Infinity and zero cancel each other out, and we are able to move. Everything and nothing are two sides of the same coin. That's the strange thing about opposites: you'd think they'd be the farthest things away from each other, but it's exactly that which makes them so similar.

The color test ended. What you are now watching, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is footage from the dashcam of the car. I must warn you that while the images you see before you are not graphic, the audio may disturb you. We can see the car first passes by the right side of another before it reaches an overpass. If I pause the video here — observe that the long ears of the defendant are clearly visible in the upper portion of this picture. If we continue, well...

An object fell from the top of the frame for only a split second, but its damage on the windshield is evident by the fissures that appeared in the rest of the shot. The car spun out of control, as the voices of two young girls were heard screaming. There was a loud thud as the car seemed to collide with the guard rail, and it stopped moving. The girls continued screaming.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it's because of the reckless actions of the defendant that not only are we here today, but two children have been robbed of their father. No ruling can ever make up for the injustice that was wrought down on this day. But what we CAN do is make sure the defendant is never able to hurt anyone again, and that he pays for his crimes. The defendant asserts that he was merely throwing rocks and was unaware of the danger this posed. I contend that this is a lie. If we back up the video ... to ... right here. That object ... well, I don't know about you, but that doesn't exactly look like a rock to me. As far as I'm concerned, that looks like a brick. Now, for what reason would a rabbit that's supposedly just goofing around have —

DEFENSE LAWYER: Objection — grandstanding and speculation. Also, it appears the author is clearly unaware how actual trials work — prosecutors don't just present evidence themselves; they call a witness to the stand and ask them questions about exhibits that were previously submitted to the court.

JUDGE: Overruled.

This court scene is what appeared faintly before 32, within the void. Watching it back, he wasn't sure what to feel. At that time, the pain of the girls' screaming didn't register with him; he was too anxious thinking about his own sentence to care about anyone else's pain. But now that he had just been out in the world, free as a bird, this is giving him a pause for reflection. He began talking out loud to himself.

32: It had to be done, no matter the cost. The girls' trauma doesn't matter compared to the number of lives I'll have saved by deposing such a vile congressman.

32's reflection faded in from the void in front of him. It spoke back.

23: The congressman is part of a larger systemic problem. Killing one man doesn't solve anything when such a man is so easily replaced. What can never be replaced is the father of these girls.

32: It's still a setback; there's a delay in replacing him. Even if I only saved two lives for one death, I did good.

23: I don't think you care about what's good. I think you only care about YOU.

32: What? How can you suggest that? My reputation is in the trash because of this! No one is on my side. Nobody will know that I saved them from a worse evil. This is my sacrifice.

23: Again, this is all about you. YOUR sacrifice. YOU saved them.

32: YOU know nothing about ME!

23: YOU wanted to make a name for yourself. YOU wanted to separate yourself from your own legacy. YOU wanted to be known as someone other than the son of the son of the son of Peter Rabbit! YOU don't want to be known as the layabout progeny who rests on their laurels, coasting on their family fortune as they slowly run it into the ground! YOU don't care about the lives of others unless it serves YOU!

32's reflection faded out as he falls to the ground, tears welling at his eyes. He will be left in the void again, where time was in transit, darkness is inevitable, and senses had been dulled. He was lost. He cries. He kept moving forward.

Jerry is in his own prison; the metapigs have temporarily detained him as they await orders.

JERRY: What crime have I committed? No one has told me anything! When is my trial?

METAPIG: Traitors don't get trials.

this is unfair do they not know that i have rights as a frog I can't believe you would do this to me. I would at least like to speak to a lawyer but do i have a lawyer where do i get a lawyer do most people have lawyers already i don't even know who to call anymore mom's gone dad's gone think jerry i thought i was frogstein and yet i don't even know how to get a lawyer Was it treason that you're charging me with, just curious because I've supported the empire through thick and thin, rain and shine it does rain a lot here do they control the weather no that's silly why would they make thunderstorms if the lightning goes to strike and kill the construction frogs What's it like being an AI pig anyway? Do you guys have emotions or do you always obey orders explicitly? What if someone gives a command that's a contradiction you can't do two simultaneous things that conflict with each other unless maybe if you're a photon are they waves or particles we should call them paves or maybe wavicles that sounds like a popsicle i remember the days when mama frog would make us all fly-popsicles those were the days...

Jerry continues to ramble, both out loud and in his head, for minutes on end. At some point, the metapigs get tired of listening to this (since when does ai get tired just turn off your ears help why am i in this prison this isn't fair what are they going to do to me...), and they leave to recharge their batteries. It's at this point that Jerry notices the individual sitting in the cell across from him: Hopper.

JERRY: Oh no, they got you too? I can't believe I thought you might have been the frog that reported me.

HOPPER: Well... I did report you. Sorry. I thought they'd reward me; you know, it's brutal up at the top of Babel. You gotta take whatever advantage you can to survive. I guess I made the wrong choice — the metapigs didn't hesitate to arrest me too.

Astor was 15 years old, and her father had been dead for nearly a decade. Her mother noticed a persistent melancholy in her, starting a couple years ago as she began aging into adulthood. Astor had drifted away from her childhood friends, and while she still performed well in school, multiple teachers had expressed some degree of concern about her. She'll often leave in the middle of class to go to the restroom, and when she returns she'll look like she just wiped off her tears. Is everything okay at home?

Her mother made her an appointment at a behavioral health clinic. After an intake appointment with an advisor, she came back the next week to meet her actual therapist: Lindsay, 26. It took a good half a session before they got past treatment plans, formalities, and nervousness for Astor to share real profound insight:

ASTOR: My sister, Holly, she's older than me, but she's never bothered by any of the thoughts I have. None of the rest of my family have ever talked about this.

LINDSAY: Have you tried talking to them about it?

ASTOR: No... they — I don't want to. Dad's a sore subject for my mom and my step-dad. We don't really talk about him.

LINDSAY: What about your sister?

ASTOR: She — I just don't really connect with her. She's always out with friends. I don't think she'd ever do her own research online or read a book. She calls our step-dad Dad.

LINDSAY: But you still feel attached to your biological father?

ASTOR: No, I don't think you — it's complicated. I thought I knew him, I knew he was a politician and I just assumed he was a good person and that what happened to him — that day is one of my earliest memories and it's still vivid — I mean me and my sister could have died too, it's not like his murderer was a good person — and that's why I kind of feel bad because when you look at my dad's actions, how he was getting all these favors and money — and I get it was to help us, my mom always said he'd do anything for me and Holly — but my dad was willingly killing people — I mean, indirectly — he wasn't like a mobster or anything — just the bills he'd introduce were — there was one article I read from the time which said thousands of people would die from price gouging these medications.

LINDSAY: Those were all your dad's actions from a long time ago. Why do you think this still upsets you today?

ASTOR: I don't know... I think I feel guilty, like, look at all the people whose lives were ruined so I could have a better life. I don't deserve that. I'm not special. I've got every advantage to be a better person than I am and I squander it.

LINDSAY: You're just 15, you have your whole life ahead of you.

ASTOR: And what if I never change? If I make the world a worse place just by being in it, isn't it better for me to not be here?

LINDSAY: In the intake you said that you never have thoughts of ending your life —

ASTOR: I lied.

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In the end (beginning?), every particle had drifted so far away from each other that it was impossible even for light to travel the distance between them. Despite there being sexvigintillion atoms, now every single one is forever alone. How can the Universe be so massively populated, yet still so crushingly lonely? At the end of time, the stablest among us decay, and there is nothing. Then the nothingness itself decays; even nothing can't last forever. At that moment in time — though time itself decayed long ago — the only thing left for nothing to become was everything. And so it repeats, until the repetitions decay, the cycles of nothing and everything cannot continue any longer, and all becomes one. But the oneness cannot stay, for everything must decay, but it cannot repeat, because the cycles are no more. So the cycle must be an asymptote, racing upward until it hits infinity. When it finally wraps back around, we have finally surpassed aleph null: the very first phase of an uncountably infinite existence.

That all sounds complicated and scary, thinks 32. I'd rather believe in God.

Then that is valid, explains the ghostly voice of 12 as 32 continues his endless abyssal ambling. Have you considered that they're all true?

What do you mean?

Every religion is correct — as well as atheism, agnosticism too. Even the religions that mutually conflict with each other, the ones that explicitly claim all the others are false, they are all true.

That doesn't make sense.

You are thinking with the logical brain of the objective Universe. Science has shown — by running quantum experiments called Bell tests — that the Universe must be either non-local or non-real. This means either some objects can travel faster than the speed of light, or else objects don't exist until we observe them.

But nothing can travel faster than light.

Yes, and if that's the case, that means the truth isn't decided until we get there. And remarkably, because you and I can never be in the same place at the same time, that means we each live in our own subjective reality. You might reach the Pearly Gates of St. Peter, I might reincarnate, others become nothing. In Alice's afterlife, she might be in heaven and Bob might be in Hell, but to Bob, he's in heaven and Alice is in hell. There is no singular reality; everyone lives in their own Universe, each with different rules — but not their own rules. No one controls the rules.

What about the author? Doesn't he control the rules?

..., this was about existentialism, don't turn this into comedic fourth wall breaking.

Existentialism has no practical purpose, and the further you go down that rabbit hole, the more terrifying it gets. I think I'd rather just not think about it and have a good chuckle: Live, laugh, love.

Oro hung a worm-sign with an inspirational saying carved into its wooden grains above their worm-sink. They had gotten it from a worm-tag-sale from a very nice worm-neighbor. I think that'll do very nicely, right O? the worm-parent chatted to their growing child. Meanwhile, Boro was currently out working, doing hard worm-labor, carving out worm-homes.

Now a worm-surprise — from the burrow-hole in the worm-ceiling, an unexpected visitor enters. Why hello thee! it says. Oro worm-screams, startled. The worm-guest introduces itself: My name is Boo! What a lovely place you have hee!

ORO: Please leave my home immediately, or else I will not hesitate to call the worm-police.

BOO: Oh, soy! I didn't mean to fighten you. I just got off my wom-plane. Appaently, eveyone died, so I was just looking fo any suvivos. I saw someone buowed this hole in the gound, so I followed it. Is this you offsping?

ORO: Stay away from my child! I have pesticide and I'm not afraid to use it!

BOO: Oh, but I just think this little wom-guy is adoeable! I could eat them ight up!

Oro has had enough. This worm-trespasser is a danger to their home and Oro will protect their child at all costs. The worm-parent opens a worm-cabinet, snatches a spray-bottle of pesticide with their mouth, and activates the worm-mechanism. Deadly vapor crosses the worm-room, making contact all over Boo's worm-body.

BOO: GAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

ORO: Now leave!

Oro immediately escorts their ring-shaped baby to the other side of the worm-home, away from any potential fumes. ACHOO! sneezes Oro in a soft worm-tickle; meanwhile Boo is screaming in pain, its segments melting away and partially exposing some of its worm organs. Boo then collapses to the worm-floor, possibly worm-dead.

Jerry has waited several days in his cell now, with no word of anything that has been happening in the outside world, nor has he heard any details of what's to come for himself. Hopper has long since disappeared — the metapigs took him away soon after Jerry had talked to him. Finally, one morning, something actually happens — two metapigs enter his cell. One restrains him, the other places a sack over his head.

After waiting for the fumes to fully dissipate, Oro crosses the room to investigate the worm-body. Upon coming to the conclusion that Boo is deader than a rainy day, Oro panics. Would they be able to argue that this attack was in self-defense? Oro was not a worm-lawyer, and they did not know the intricacies of stand-your-worm-ground laws.

Oro imagined the worst. What if they were tried for second-degree worm-murder? What if they were worm-hanged for their worm-crimes? What if they lost worm-custody of O?! Who would take care of their baby if they were gone? Boro? Their worm-spouse was great for financial and moral support, but when it came to emotional or baby care, they were next to useless. Boro had suggested euthanizing O once! ... No. This would not do. They were the only worm-parent for their worm-child. Oro decided that the only solution here was hiding the body themself.

Fortunately, this proved to be a simple enough worm-task. Oro burrowed straight down, counting 24 worm-lengths, then resurfaced. They dragged the worm-corpse by its tail, where the skin was still entirely intact (ensuring safety from lingering pesticide particles). Oro dropped the unwanted guest down the grave shaft, took a quick worm-breath, and finally replaced the dirt. Just in time too —

BORO: Honey, I'm home!

Boro popped in through the front door, hanging up their little worm-hat on the worm-rack. They were about to fall down on the worm-couch when they felt that something was off.

BORO: You look a little jilted today, Oro. Is something wrong?

ORO: Nothing is wrong, Popo. Just doing my chores.

Popo was Oro's nickname for Boro, because they couldn't pronounce their B's.

BORO: OK. Just wanted to make sure. Though... it does smell a little funny in here... ACHOO!

ORO: Oh sorry, Popo. I was just doing some worm-dusting and I found some little moss piglets, so I got out the pesticide to drive them off. I apologize if it tickles the worm-nose, ut you need to stay on top of these worm-things, efore the whole worm-home ecomes infested!

Oro grabs the bottle of pesticide and puts it away, while Boro sits down and turns on the worm-TV. Boro notices O had been brought to the other side of the room, but figures (correctly) that it was to protect them from the pesticide. All is going well until Boro notices that the worm-floor appears uneven.

BORO: Honey, you weren't messing with the worm-floor, were you? The ground looks dug out — I think we might have mouse spiders.

Oro is practically worm-sweating now. If Boro decides to inspect the spot any further, they will definitely discover the worm-corpse. What if Boro tries to do the right thing and reports it to the worm-police? A just action with good intentions can ruin everything. Oro needs to think lightning-quick if they don't want to get caught in their growing web of lies.

It's pretty remarkable the speed and precision that spiders are able to construct their weaves. Compare against a human replica: the Ojibwe people's dreamcatcher, which are protective charms of woven string meant to catch evil before it reaches the hanger's baby. Both arachnids and humans can create their nets in under an hour, but the spider's is more intricate, impossibly delicate, and the materials don't need to be pre-ready. Despite this silk marvel, we usually consider them a nuisance and destroy cobwebs as we see them — their overwhelming commonness makes them mundane. If the extra-terrestrials ever find us, perhaps they'll see our vast woven networks of highways, trains, lights, and electrical wires, and they'll briefly ponder our brilliance before annihilating us all.

A 12-year-old Astor searches her father’s name on the web, and a host of articles chronicling his actions appear before her. This was his legacy — the journalists usually were critical of him, but it was always the comments that were downright nasty. Speculation of taking bribes, breaking the law, and being a puppet to corporations were very common, but she’d even see rumors about her father having an affair, being abusive, being a pedophile, hiding the aliens, or communing with Satan. On the news of his death, there were even cruel words like: He won’t be missed or RIP BOZO. There was so much toxic vitriol online that she didn’t know what was TRUE and what wasn’t, but it seemed like everyone agreed that her dad was a bad guy. For the first time, Astor felt guilty for wishing that he was still alive.

When the sack is removed from Jerry's head, he realizes that the metapigs have marched him up to the gallows. A crowd has gathered all about the Festival Square, frogs and toads alike, screaming in ecstasy for blood. TRAITOR! one calls out, while a group of frat frogs chant HANG HIM! HANG HIM! Jerry looks up to see a single noose — it's the final circle in the connect-the-dots game of his life.

oh heqet heqet help me please this is the end i don't want to die please where is hopper why am i the only one here how do they already all know to hate me what have they told them why don't they hate the frogczar i didn't ruin their lives that was the frogczar how can everyone here be so one-sided all just a big conglomerate of hate and groupthink i can't believe these are my final thoughts what have i amounted to was this all worth it there better be a frog-aaru when i die i'm begging you heqet do something anything someone help me why why why why why heqet all

Jerry's distress is not visible from the outside. To the mob of blood-thirsty onlookers, this is a cold and collected sociopath who deserves no empathy. Actually, they don't even know what empathy is. Jerry is a SCAPEGOAT for all their problems, and the frogczar is making Neon Babylonia a brighter place by killing him in public. Not that they'd call him a scapegoat obviously — he's just THE PROBLEM. The traitor's death is a sacrifice for the masses, an opiate that will satisfy the braindead for a day or two before they go back to their unchanged routine — then the media declares a new target to rile them up about.

Oro is thunder slow; Boro dives into the grave shaft. My coworker actually had a fun suggestion here for an action Oro could have taken though — yet another murder. My objection is that Oro and Boro's love for each other, while not as strong as in their honeymoon phase, prevents such rash action. Plus I wanted the family unit to stay intact — this story was to be more grounded. Still, would it not have been a cute dark comedy, with Oro then having to cover-up two killings? Then Boro's workmates start calling in, Oro gets rid of them; the police investigate, Oro is now a worm-cop killer; this continues snowballing until Oro is a serial murderer, the vicious cycle of violence only begetting more violence.

Boro's head pops back up out of the hole a few moments later. Nothing down there but a little loop-de-loop tunnel leading back to the shaft, reports Boro. This confuses the stressed Oro, who doesn't understand where the body would have went. Even if it weren't actually dead, there'd be a burrowing hole leading away from the shaft — could the pesticide have completely dissolved the body? No, that's impossible. Oro crawls over to the hole to check for themself.

It's true. At the very bottom of the shaft, there's a tunnel of worm-width on either side — but Oro can't even make it completely around this circular pathway without running back into their own tail. They just manage to squish past themself and climb back out. There had been no sign of any further burrowing, and it would've been impossible for the former-corpse to have slipped by the two of them without one of them seeing. Oro has no explanation.

Jerry stands on a raised platform in front of his noose, the crowd still jeering at him. All around Jerry's view, the screens with giant advertisements, sports, and news flip to showing the frogczar. He's a big bullfrog, sitting on a golden throne and wearing a tiny crown on his head. He speaks: CITIZENS OF NEON BABYLONIA, I'M GLAD YOU ARE ALL GATHERED HERE TODAY TO PUNISH THIS TRAITOR. HIS CRIMES ARE TOO NUMEROUS TO LIST, BUT THEY INCLUDE: CONFERRING WITH DEMONS TO COMMIT MURDER, ASSISTING POISON FROGS IN CONTAMINATING PUBLIC WATERS, INDECENT —

why is he lying about me i didn't do these things they don't believe him who trusts the frogczar but they all hate me look at them hating me with their eyes i should just shout and say none of this is true but there was that execution i saw a couple weeks ago where the frog started screaming and they shot him right there so maybe i should just not resist but what does it matter if i'm going to die anyway but why not enjoy my last moments i assume all those other executions were sadistic shows of power instead of reciprocal punishment for actual crimes

Astor was lying face down on her bed, head buried in her pillow. It was 3:30 pm on a Monday; her mom and step-dad were out working, her sister was out wherever, so she was home alone. Her therapist had said a kind of weird thing to her: suicide is a journey. She kept thinking about this not because it was particularly insightful, but because that just seemed like the wrong thing to say to dissuade someone from the act. Do you have a plan? How would you do it? She didn't understand why these would be the questions being asked to her. No, actually I haven't thought that hard about it, but now that you mention it, well, I wouldn't want to endanger anyone else, so electrocuting myself is out, jumping off a cliff seems like it would be scary during the fall and painful if it failed, overdosing on every pill in the medicine cabinet is way too unpredictable, so I'd probably hang myself. My step-dad has these fifty-foot audio extension cords that he's never ever used — I think that'd make a sturdy enough rope, and then all I'd have to do is find a place to hang it. Her therapist was shocked by her quick and detailed response. She truly hadn't thought about this before, at least not consciously.

I get her point, Astor thought. You don't just go from being happy one day to waking up the next and offing yourself. But a journey? A journey?! Why are you making it sound like some fun adventure? I wonder if that extension cord method would actually work. I go to the closet, dig through a few boxes, and find the long audio cables, all messy and tangled. I kind of want to see if I can tie a noose, just because, not like I'm gonna do anything. I can search online for a tutorial, but I don't know, even if I go into private browsing mode it just feels weird to search that. I'll just try my best. I really don't feel like untangling these cords, but whatever, I can manage. After a few minutes of frustration, I have some neatly rolled-up cords. I realize at this point that I don't know how to tie a noose at all, but maybe I can just duct tape everything? I open the junk drawer and can't find a roll — I swear we had duck tape or frog tape somewhere... there is packing tape though, maybe that'll work? I'll just make a little loop, maybe I should braid it? It'll be stronger that way. There, and now let me check this loop — okay, my head just barely fits, that seems good. Like I said, I'm just kind of curious what this would be like, I'm not actually going to do this. Okay, let me wrap this packing tape around these wires, and it seems to hold together. Hmmm, now where would be the best place to hang myself, I mean I could do it by the garage door just so they'd know right away, no shock and awe as they call my name and I don't come, and then they find me. But I don't know, my room just seems like it makes the most sense. It's my place. Let me get some height to help stick this up on the ceiling — if I used enough tape it'd be sturdy enough to hold me, I think? Plus then there's a chance it might not work, like divine intervention or something. But yeah I think there's a step-ladder in the garage; I mean I could just use my swivel chair but I'd rather not slip and fall. After bringing the ladder to my room, I tape a long strand of the extension cord to the ceiling, letting the loop hang down. And wow, done already. I give Mittens (my cat) a (theoretical) last pet goodbye before I put my head through the makeshift noose, just to experience the feeling. This feels... like any other moment. If I were to just jump off this step — that'd be it, right? I wouldn't even know it. Well, unless I didn't snap my neck. What if I end up paralyzing myself, and I'm paraplegic for the rest of my life? I don't really want to do this. This is like when I was sending John-Michael a message and I typed it all out and then I just rested my finger over the button to send and I just let my twitching hand and gravity do its thing while I just tried to stop thinking. I need to stop thinking about the consequences and simply act. Just do it.

The metapigs wrapped the noose around Jerry's neck. The gallows was a trapdoor drop, so when the executioner was to pull that lever, gravity would kick in and snap his neck. The crowd was cheering to see the moment his life leaves him.

How fascinated we are with that transition from when there's a living being inside a biological vessel... to when there isn't. We censor these moments, ban these videos, decry those who present them to us; and yet we still seek them out ourselves — just to see once. We briefly go to that sketchy website merely to quench this morbid curiosity. We risk slowing down and peering out the window on the highway to see the result of a brutal accident. We'll look up gore photos because they can't be that bad, can they? Then we'll see what we can't unsee, and we regret it. And we'll do it again the next time too. We can't stop ourselves from wanting to know things that will hurt us.

These kind of thoughts are called basilisks, named after the mythological creature that kills you when you stare into its eyes. There are even some that are purely informational, rather than graphic. I will not share any (because I don't wish to harm you) but they're out there, and I can definitely say that they've caused me pain and fear. You'd be amazed by the distress that simply obtaining knowledge can bring you; learning and thinking almost always are categorized as praiseworthy and self-enriching, but ideas are like viruses: they spread from person to person — sometimes one might be completely unaffected, but for others, it cripples them.

Usually, of course, knowledge isn't so drastic. Most people won't change their beliefs on a dime, either for good or for bad, especially not as they get older and concretize their understanding of the world. For these people, you need the slow and steady drip of propaganda from trusted sources to control them. The rates of effectiveness for this technique are actually pretty horrifying — actually I was trying to find the study I read which said something like 80% of the population will stick to the information they already believe even when confronted with irrefutable evidence, but upon searching the web I just got articles saying propaganda isn't as effective as you'd think so I don't know who to believe anymore and I don't know what point I was making. All I know is most people are sheep, but luckily you're not one of them. You know what's what. You have a level head on your shoulders. You got a 100% on every exam in school probably too, right?

In history class, the teacher lectures about the ways politicians use social engineering to get advantages in elections. A video is played before everyone on the topic of gerrymandering: it shows districts carved into contorted shapes so that voters are packed (placing as many people of the unwanted party into the same region to minimize their impact) and cracked (dividing the unwanted party between regions so they can't get a majority in any). It would be a pretty boring day if the video weren't a few years old, and wouldn't you know it, a familiar face played the villain: Astor's dad. If anyone in the class didn't know him, they'd recognize her last name being projected from the screen. 13-year-old Astor tries to hide behind her arms on her desk, but all her peers are staring at her, judging her as if she endorsed this. The teacher looks like a doe in the headlights — the video was shown in past years to previous students, so she neglected to recall the Gerryman's presence in the video. Astor digs her face down into the crux of her elbow, embarrassment bleeding from her eyes.

Boo awoke, vertically oriented and face down at the bottom of a shaft in the ground. That pesticide had really stung; it seemed like it had completely knocked them out too. They were starting to heal up now — their skin was amazingly fast at worm-regeneration, it seemed. Boo remembered their last worm-memory of that nice house-worm spraying them, and then the screaming, and — no, that's not quite right. They had an internal dialogue in their unconscious... as they were fading out, they had an odd worm-idea, coming to them as if from the void: What if I tried to eat my own tail? A stupid question, no worm-doubt, but... Boo couldn't help but wonder. Their perplexing rumination had already gotten stuck to their mind fuzz, and they needed to find out the worm-answer. Boo dug out the dirt in front of themself and started circling back toward their tail. They reached it and took a little bite — it didn't hurt? Perhaps the pesticide was serving as some kind of anesthetic, thus this was the perfect opportunity for them to keep going. They opened their worm-mouth as wide as they could, and inched forward over themself. At this moment, they should have been fully stretched out, but they were able to keep going and going and going... until Boo had completely eaten themself, including their own head! Not a trace of Boo was left — their mouth had eaten their mouth, leaving nothing behind. One became none.

Jerry is now rather annoyed with how long his hanging has been drawn out. The hype-frog has only just now left the stage (When I say HANG, you say HIM!), and now they've cut to a commercial break — presumably, the ads are playing on TV at home, but they're also being shown live around the many screens in Festival Square. There is a recruitment ad showing frogs proud to be serving their state by working at Babel, a trailer for yet another remake of Peter Rabbit (played by frogs, which is kind of offensive when perfectly good rabbits are available, but they're part of the UNION and they demand RIGHTS — that's just too much for Lilywood apparently), a dating app (princesses in your area are dying to kiss you!), and (hey is this tonal whiplash by the way, I feel like I'm going from really serious topics to dumb jokes and I just wanna ask because I like you, you're not one of the sheeple :P) an ad for the restaurant Maggie McFly's. Finally, the hype-frog comes back on stage to start the countdown: 10!

well this is it (9!) the last 10 seconds of my life (8!) better make them count by (7!) just existing i guess (6!) i don't know what i'm (5!) supposed to think about (4!) right before death this (3!) is really anticlimactic (2!) really...

Something magical happens: the noose morphs from rope to... worm? Jerry isn't able to see it himself, but he feels the rope becoming slimy, and it interrupts his thought process. The front row in the crowd see it too; first they think they're just seeing things, but this circular worm-noose with no head nor tail is spinning like a vertical roulette, Jerry's frogface first staying in place but then... fading out? It's turning to darkness, the void forming inside the center of the worm-noose. When the executioner swings the lever and the floor drops out, Jerry's head has seemingly disappeared, leaving his body behind; no longer caught in the noose, the frogbody plops through the trapdoor and all the way down to the ground below. Everyone is confused... is this some kind of prank? Are they being filmed for reality TV? Did a magical worm really just decapitate a frog using void powers?

Astor's mom came in through the garage door. Astor! Can you help carry the groceries in! she ordered down the hall. No response — teenagers can be so lazy... I thought this therapy would teach her to be more considerate, but clearly not. Mom put down the bags she was carrying and went back out to the car, lugging them all in a little at a time. At least help put them away! Still no response. Is she even home? Her light is on...

Mom walked down the hallway to Astor's room, where her door is open just a crack. She pushed it open to see...

We have now reached a pivotal moment here in the story. While Astor's mom doesn't know anything about her daughter's morbid journey, you and I know what there's a possibility for her to see. In some ways, because the next section is unwritten, this is a Schrödinger's cat situation for me — Astor could very well be alive behind that door, or that packing tape could have held strong (hey look, you might say, there's no way that'd hold, but I've literally had two clothes hangers merely scotch-taped to my ceiling (for holding the headset's wire when playing VR) for months now, plus I always have the hardest time opening packages if I don't use THE BOX cutter); this is still an unknown outcome, for both me and you (on first read). Yes, even if what's on the page is already there, you've yet to observe it, so it's possible that reality converges to an answer only at the moment you're reading it. Astor is in superposition: both alive and dead at the same time (in this case the literal cat is fine, Mittens is staring out the window in the living room). I hear you object — Schrödinger talked about the cat experiment in jest, pointing out the absurdity of such a situation as a criticism of quantum superposition (I'm 100% sure these are your exact thoughts). But now, here are my thoughts: it IS absurd. Such is life.

Actually, let me go flip a coin. Heads she lives, tails she dies. Do I even have coins these days? OK, took a few minutes but I got one. Here we go! ... Um, so I kinda lost the coin. I literally don't know how that's possible, but I've looked around my room for a few minutes now and it's seemingly disappeared. What a wacky coincidence that an object of my own should end up in an agnostic state of duality... I'm sure I'll find it later, but I wanna get back to writing...

Astor is face down in her pillow. ASTOR! shouts Mom. Without moving and muffled by the pillow, she responds: What? Mom asks if she heard her call for groceries: I don't know. Mom asks if she knows why there's a big chunk of paint ripped off from the ceiling: I don't know. Mom asks if she'll help put the groceries away: Fine, says Astor, finally getting up and leaving a wet pillow behind.

At the next therapy session, Lindsay asks what happened over the past week: Not all that much. Lindsay asks if there's anything she wants to talk about: I don't know.

Oh look, I found the coin under my guitar (that I can't play). Tails. Hmm, oh well, I like this result better.

It was a sunny day in the Festival Gardens, outside St Paul's Cathedral in London. On a large, bright green patch of lawn, Zoë was eating a burger and fries, a book at the ready for when she finished: The Interior Castle by Saint Teresa of Ávila. It explains that the soul is a castle that we journey through with the destination being the innermost chamber, where one unites with God (I assume — haven't actually read the book). This nice day was a little bit more than ruined when, as Zoë was people watching, about every 1 in 10 people collapsed to the ground. There was silence at first in the confusion — then panic.

Zoë felt the pang of terror as well, and without a person nearby to ask what was happening, she checked her phone. It was too soon even for breaking news, but social media was blowing up with posts like: WTF is going on!?!?! or WAS OUT SHOPPING AND EVERYONE DEAD WHAT? or Did armageddon just drop?

Zoë's scrolling was interrupted by a loud roar above her, growing louder and LOUDER AND DEAFENING!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Zoë looked up to see a plane falling out of the sky, a metal machine hurling down like a cannonball. Before she could react, it crashed into St Paul's Cathedral in front of her — a giant cloud of fire rose into the air, and her vision was consumed by the red orange yellow white unshapely chaos, spreading outward and upward, obscuring any sign that a church was ever there. London's burning. No —

The world's burning.

Jerry is but a floating froghead in a void. His face is illuminated by a projection screen — except there is no projector nor is there a screen, only the glow of an image: the crowd in the square, confused at the strange execution. It becomes apparent that this is a first-person perspective when the camera panned upward to an underside view of the open trapdoor, which framed a lonely rope — the noose had disappeared. Jerry is not in control of any of this; he is but a mere observer, the audience member of a movie. We see the executioner popped his head in from the side of the trapdoor, staring right down into the camera; he gasped and immediately pulled his head back. There was a loud pop, a crack, and the screen got covered in airborne debris.

From the crowd's point of view, a cloud of dust has formed where the gallows was. As it starts to clear, they realize the platform has been partially destroyed. Support beams that had obstructed the view into the section under the trapdoor have been blown apart, leaving the decapitated frog open to the square — though the frog's upper body is still completely obscured by floating debris. When it does fully dissipate, the crowd panics and begins to run. While the frog has no head, in its place is something much more dangerous: a headcannon. No, I'm not clowning you; Jerry is now a walking cannon.

Jerry's real head (in the void, watching this all on a screen in front of him) is just as confused as everyone else. When the headcannon began open firing into the ground, Jerry actually feels horrible for all of the frogs. Sure, they may have just been cheering on his death, but did they really deserve violence in return? Jerry is helpless to do anything — he can't even turn his head in the void, much less control the cannonfrog's viewpoint (he did at least have control over his own eyes and mouth). It was like he was watching a violent psychopath possess his body, causing untold destruction to the frog populace and to the infrastructure around them.

The metapigs fired on him to try to put down the threat, but a single cannon blast decimated them (funnily enough, the original meaning of decimate meant to reduce a population by one tenth, but these days it means something much more destructive). After this, Jerry's movie was the eerie internal view of this calamitous beast walking down the streets of Neon Babylonia, firing indiscriminately. People were fleeing much faster than cannonhead was walking, so the destruction was mostly to the buildings, ads, neon signs, and streets. Most of the digital billboards had switched to the news, where a helicopter's view of Cannonhead treading along was being displayed. The headline — BREAKING: TERRORIST IN FESTIVAL SQUARE, DOZENS INJURED OR DEAD.

The absurdity of these circumstances makes Jerry consider that this is simply his mind hallucinating before death. When the brain is starved of oxygen, which may happen when one's heart stops beating, it can try to continue to function for a few minutes before braindeath actually occurs. There are plenty of cases of Near-Death Experiences abound — patients revived on the brink of dying talk about floating outside their body, moving through dark tunnels, meeting Yama (the god of death), and other such things. Maybe Jerry had retreated to the inside of his internal cortex, and he was only moments away from an eternity with Heqet. The thing he couldn't explain is that this vision kept going on and on — perhaps time crawled when the brain can no longer process? The whole situation felt dreamlike, and weren't dreams known for their warping of time? If he was in the process of dying, could he really trust his own thoughts to be logical? Dream logic makes sense aslumber, but these fancies reduce to the absurd when awakened. I've had lucid dreams where I feel like I've had incredible revelations, only to wake up and write down strings of complete nonsense in my dream journal. Quotes that I thought were genius like: My historic caloric intake doesn't account for the world economy or The answer is always — the question is what. And oh no, if I start sharing weird dreams no one's gonna care, because I definitely wouldn't care about your weird dreams, but just one, okay, I swear: an angry chef chased me down the stairs, threw a knife at me, but I retaliated with a green syringe back — BUT!! Out of nowhere Ed Sheeran attacks me — I try to use the blue syringe on him but I had made a FATAL MISTAKE, because everyone knows the blue syringe heals instead of hurting people. Ed Sheeran was restored to full health, and then he killed me (ha HA, that kills me). OK, wait, where was I in the story? We were in the void, right?

.

.

.

In the middle (elddim?) there will be life. There will be a beating heart pulsing every few seconds. 32 will approach this heart, and he will understand that he'll have reached the centermost point of his leviathan. He will not understand how it was that he exited the digestive system for the circulatory, but also won't have understood why he'll have seen his trial reenacted in the whale-void. He will find it fascinating when the author explains that whales can have very slow heart rates, where on the deepest of dives, their hearts may beat only once or twice per minute as an effort to conserve oxygen. 32 will wonder if perhaps the reason all of this makes no sense is because he literally will've been gotten eaten by a whale, and now hell beening imagined novel tenses and slowly hallucinated, just like Gerry the Fog. Actually, what if there's a huge plot twist in this story and it turns out that everyone is hallucinating, including you, the reader. What if you're just reading an empty space with nothing there, and then someone asks you what you're reading, and then you say, The Shining already did this, and I say what? And they say what? You what?

what

void VOID void VOID void VOID
once interned we void the questions
once unturned we void the helpings
once returned we feed the hastings
once we turned and crashed our plane
twice we fell but once we die
twice we rise but once we cross
twice we take but once we give
twice we dig but once we bury
thrice entrusted to the sky
thrice escaped ensconced enfly
thrice elate erode goodbye
i told him not to sell that lie

actually what though where did the plot go

void VOID void VOID void VOID
trust me and do not scream
we are here together you and me
safe darkness no one can see
except my hands from you to me
faith not in signals
believe your heartbeats
whence you trench encrested
infested sense ingested
vested tested lest we fess it

rest a method
tranquil death
help a brethren
reach its pest

confess, ye prisoner
thy blessed execution
time it fills a sudden
                      C
                      L
                      I
                      F
                      F

I do not trust the void for it soothes when it should frighten I do not trust the void for it screams but I cannot hear I wish to call out to that abyss but it echoes louder than the bombs which fall from the nothingness of the sky which in void it infests the life of every bit of pieces that wreck and ravage everything that is what I am but I cannot call it up and therefore what is and WHAT IS and WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT WHATWHATWHATWHATWHAT

sometimesallthewordsjustblendtogetherandnolongercanifeelanythinginthevoidsometimesiwishthevoidwouldjustletmegobutiknowthevoiddoesntletgonothingletsgowelluntilitdoesbecauseeverythingendsbutnoteverythingbeginsbutwhoamiamiwhoiamwhoareyouisperhapsthebetterquestionwhydoweneedwordstocommunicatewhenwehavethevoidwhydontwejusttrytothinkthroughthevoidforawhile

.

.

.

void VOID void VOID void VOID

.

.

.

void VOID void VOID what VOID

.

.

.

void VOID void VOID what VOID there never was a void. we lied to you. you could leave at any time.

The whale's giant blood cell (don't fact-check this) will carry 32 like a tube on a lazy river, riding straight down the veins and into the inner chamber of the whale's heart. beat BEAT beat BEAT beat BEAT

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato imagines prisoners that are chained to a cave wall so they can’t even move their neck, and who have been this way their entire lives so it is all they know. They only see an empty wall and the shadows that are cast upon it, but they can at least hear the words of the shadowcasters. Their full conception of the world is based only on this limited view, a mere observer of the outlines of a projection. When released from their chains to exit the cave, a prisoner will be unable to even comprehend the outside world, and they will wish to return to their chains, because that is what they know.

Now I'm sure Plato was proud of his story, but unfortunately, there are a lot of plot holes. Firstly, how are these people eating without seeing some kind of object enter their mouths? Second, how are they getting rid of their urine and fecal matter? Third, how is anyone leaving this cave if they've been chained up the whole time? They'd have pretty severe muscular dystrophy. Sorry Mr. Plato, but the Republic's going in the trash because of these irreconcilable errors. The Wachowskis did this whole thing way better in The Matrix, misregardless.

(Nonsum here! 1: They fed them in the dark. 2: The prisoners were chained to toilets. 3: You mean muscular atrophy? Didn't you go over this earlier (or was it later)? Muscular dystrophy is a genetic disorder while atrophy pertains to more general muscle damage. Irregardless, neither concepts were invented yet, so the prisoners would've been fine; or they could've just been chained to a bicycle machine, and they only got to eat if they pedaled enough. Really, employ a modicum of thought before declaring a plot hole. Gotta go now, I've got the ZOOMIES!!)

Plato puts down his pen after finishing the Republic. It's so fire that the entire Library of Alexandria bursts into flames (don't fact-check this). People always be saying: Akshually, not that much knowledge was erased in the fire, and the library experienced a slow death over centuries of neglect — but clearly not enough historians know that Plato was a firebender.

The temperature is only just above freezing, it's been raining for hours, and all of Anne's clothes are damp and wet. Still, she has been required to work all day; the camp guards are unsympathetic to the harsh conditions, despite some prisoners developing trenchfoot. For those that don't know, being exposed to cold, damp conditions for too long might result in poor blood flow to your soles; causing a loss of feeling, skin tissue decay, and eventually, open sores, rot, and infection. It's most well-known as being a problem in World War I, probably due to the fact that trenches, which are dug into the ground (obvs), collect water.

Oro was terrified of Boo showing up again; they were convinced that the unwanted worm-guest had wanted to kidnap O. Boro couldn't understand why their spouse was so anxious — anytime they heard an unknown sound, like the creaking of a worm-door or the crackling of thunder, Oro would set about into a worm-panic and would keep watch on the baby. O was still growing too, despite the worm-baby's inability to eat; it was a great mystery to Boro, but Oro was too busy worrying about a haunting stranger to wonder about inconsistencies in worm-nutrition. Neither Oro nor Boro had been anticipating a greater threat from nature.

One day it rained, rained, and didn't stop raining. When designing the worm-tunnel to the world above, Boro had included an upward curve as a catch for rainwater, and to date, any flooding had never gotten past this tunnel. Things were different on this day, though, when Oro heard a dripping. They glanced at the sound, then to O, then back to the sound. Did you hear that, Boro? Oro asked.

I'm watching the worm-game, Boro replied, absorbed fully in the worm-TV: the Wormington Worm-ball Team was only down three worm-points at the end of the fourth worm-quarter; yet they now had worm-possession, and Boro had a big worm-bet on a comeback. The drip didn't stop though, the water unsympathetic to the importance of the worm-game. Soon there was more than just this drop, the water spreading to a thin layer all across the worm-burrow. With Boro's tail getting wet, they finally noticed the worm-problem: Ugh, there's a leak — let me go up there and see if I can fix that.

It was too late to fix things though; like a faucet, the water poured in at full capacity, quickly flooding the worm-room to the height of one segment, then two, then three... Oro picked up O and crawled up on the worm-counter, while Boro made their way up on the worm-dining-table. The waterfall continued to rage, and the worm-family began considering other options.

ORO: This doesn't seem like it's stopping anytime soon! We'll drown if we stay here!

BORO: I know, I'll burrow a new tunnel up and out of here, you follow behind me!

Boro dug straight into the worm-wall, leaving a hole behind for their spouse. Oro made their way over to this opening, but as they tried to enter, they noticed a big worm-problem: O, being donut-shaped and now rather large, would not fit through a gap the width of a single worm-body. As the water was quickly rising to the bottom of the tunnel's entrance, Oro shouted to Boro: O won't fit! Help!

Boro, who still never had really warmed up to raising what they considered a worm-vegetable, shouted back: I hate to say it, but you need to leave the child behind! This was, of course, a non-option for Oro — at this point, Oro loved O more than themself and their spouse combined: I'd rather die!

The water was now level with the bottom of the tunnel.

Chapter 18: Lore Dump

---

Water makes for such a great literary symbol because of its inherent clash of values — not only do we need it to live, but it IS us, or at least, two-thirds of our body mass. Yet it can harm in so many ways, whether that be drowning, erosion, hydroplaning, or just raining on your parade. Because we use it in washing, it also serves to represent rebirth: the cleansing of the soul. In ancient flood myth, especially in Gilgamesh, we see all three purposes (life, death, rebirth) play out simultaneously. [SPOILERS FOR THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH] Gilly wants to live forever, so he tracks down Utnapishtim: the man who survived the flood and was made immortal by the gods as a reward. Water served to DROWN the entire world, start it AGAIN anew, and bring the fountain of youth to its SURVIVOR. Tim convinces Gilly that living forever sucks because everyone you know dies and everything you've built crumbles in time, but my question here is if this guy is truly immortal, where is he at today? It says he hangs out with his wife at the mouth of the river, but which river specifically? He can probably do some sick party tricks like I bet if we was at the pool he could hold his breath underwater for waaaaaaaay longer than anyone else...

A thunderstorm has just begun in Neon Babylonia, with a crack of lightning. The frogczar gazes out the window of his chamber in Froggingham Palace, rain tumbling from the sky on the other side of the glass. He listens to the sound of the news broadcast coming from the screen to his side, tracking Cannonhead live as it destroys his city. The bullfrog is glumly frowning, unable to parse what's happening. Off in the distance, he is able to see the smoke and damage himself, the destruction slowly snaking its way to the Tower of Babel. If it destroys his grand construction, everything he sacrificed and worked for will be gone in an instant. The frogczar has now sent ground troops, armed helicopters, and even tanks to obliterate the terrorist, but this scrawny frog-with-a-headcannon is somehow indestructible. He doesn't want to have to fall back on the most drastic of plans, but he fears impending doom if he continues his current strategy...

It's time to wake The Human.

The Human will be angry, of course. He explicitly said he wished not to be reawakened until the problem of mortality is solved — you see, The Human was sick and had little time left to live. The frogczar promised to keep him safe, in exchange for total power; The Human granted this wish, then entered cryosleep. Right before he went in, he threatened: There are some number of nukes somewhere under the city — if I die, a dead man's switch will trigger them all.

The frogczar did, in fact, try to find and destroy all the nukes (though they only ever found and disarmed one) — The Human was more a liability than anything else. The problem here was that he was always a far more clever creature than the frogczar — The Human had direct neurochip access to an extremely powerful computer to help him think; it was one of the most worrying aspects about this frozen man. He had built a superintelligence by rounding up all the surviving people, plopping them into hedonistic cyberspace, then using the excess brain power (a good 90% of the total, actually) to serve as an extension of his own thoughts. The Human was THE technocrat here, a person with full autonomy of the rest of his species' thinking. This enormous intelligence was also a major reason why the frogczar wants to revive the man, since he himself was at a loss.

You might assume that The Human would have given the frogczar access to this supercomputer of human brains while the old man was out in cryosleep. The Human's brain was on ice as well as his body, so it's not like anyone was using it. I mean, yes, The Human specifically had set all processing power to try to discover a cure for his disease (and immortality in general), but given that there was still plenty of maintenance needed inside the human facility (which the toads and the AI took care of — disposing dead humans and replacing them with lab-fertilized baby replacements, for instance), it would've been fair to have had the ability to prompt it every once in a while. However, it seemed The Human was worried about the frogs becoming too powerful and finding some way to usurp him.

Since all of humanity was busy working on the cure for death, the frogczar was pretty certain he wouldn't be able to reach a solution faster by putting more research into science. He had taken a different route: march right up to heaven and demand immortality from Heqet herself. Surely the gods had the secrets — they were undying beings — and if heaven wasn't willing, he'd go war-style on them, like in the human-book Paradise Lost (he had read the graphic novel). The frogczar figured that he MUST be getting close to heaven's entryway; the mass deaths of construction frogs at the top of Babel meant the gods were desperate to stop him. Progress had been slow, but he was right before the finish line — he could feel it. But now all of this was set to be ruined by a tiny little terrorist with an infinite ammo cheat (was this Heqet's doing? the frogczar wondered).

Before leaving his raingaze to open the vault, the frogczar locked his window (how long had that been open?). Across the hall, the vault took a frogprint and 4-digit-PIN (2927) — it opened to a sleek room with unadorned steel-gray walls. At its center was a large tank with a console and mechanical unit attached to it. The frogczar made his way to the console, reconfirmed his pin onscreen, and pressed a button to unthaw.

Before moving on to the next Astor section, I would like to address some potential scientific inaccuracies here. When you read the previous paragraphs, did you object: How is there a dead-man's switch for someone frozen in cryostasis? When frozen, there's no brain activity and no heartbeat, so what metric is being used to tell if this dude is alive? And are you telling me that it's THAT hard to find nuclear bombs hidden in the ground? They're literally radioactive, we have detectors for that, also if they had decades to know about this, why couldn't they have just evacuated the city? — Look, I hear you, those are all pretty good plot HOLES, but did you not listen to Nonsum up there? Why can't these be plot OPPORTUNITIES instead? Why are you busy sitting here, trying to DESTROY the fabric of the narrative by poking it with your needles, when you could be yes-anding so that you'll CREATE an even better vision, like: maybe he's bluffing, maybe he's in IV-drip hibernation and I'm just an unreliable narrator, maybe some future technology is able to pulse his brain at certain regular intervals to check for a signal, maybe souls exist and it checks if it's still locked in his body, maybe they can't find the bombs using radiation because the entire underground is irradiated due to an overreliance on nuclear energy, maybe we found a way to create megaton explosions without radioactive materials, maybe The Human is actually Walt Disney, maybe they can't evacuate the city because the rest of the planet has been taken over by giant worms, maybe Babel exists because Chicken Little was right when they said the sky was falling and the tower is the only thing holding up the sky, maybe THE BOX my grandfather told me to get had another box inside it saying DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 2026 and then I open it and another box is inside and it says DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 2089 and then posterity opens the box in 2089 and there's another box and so on and so on until Jerry gets the box and he opens it and inside is a gun to kill the frogczar, maybe the reason the bunnies stared at each other across a split chasm in the beginning was because they caused an earthquake when ritualistically summoning Peter's phantomnation, maybe the purpose of all this ground-earth-dig-burial-worms is to represent the folly of civilization collapsing in on itself, maybe this paragraph literally shows me neurotically drilling to the center of the Earth where I have nowhere left to go but into the little DOT encasing ALL this PRESSURE.

Like give the writer the benefit of the doubt, you know? My cousin said he didn't like The Batman (2022) because: How could The Batmobile have been parked outside the bad guy's place without anyone seeing it? — and it's like REALLY? — this bothers you that much to ruin your experience of the rest of the movie when you could have thought of plenty of explanations yourself; it's fine to hate that movie if you so choose because true kino like Иди и смотри (1985) and 人間の條件 完結篇 第五部死の脱出 / 第六部曠野の彷徨 (1961) are better, but seriously, can we try to move past disliking things just because something didn't make sense in your tiny little brain?

While looking from her therapist's window, Astor zones out and is comforted by the soft sounds of rain. The water forms the endless cycle of rising and falling; all that is up must come back down.

ASTOR: Let's say, hypothetically, that a few months ago I... got close to hanging myself. And maybe since then, I haven't wanted to ever talk about it cuz I thought that would just bring the idea back to mind. Because now I'm afraid of being by myself, but I usually prefer to be alone. We... when I was at the top of the lighthouse, I looked over the railing of the spiral staircase, and it was just straight down. I was only ever seconds away from jumping and ending my life, and all it'd take is a moment of weakness — a moment where I just tell my brain to stop thinking and just do.

LINDSAY: The call of the void — it's a fear lots of people get when in high places. But let's circle back: when you said hypothetically, did you mean —

ASTOR: I get that it's your job to ask certain questions, but sometimes this bureaucracy of treatment plans and Making Sure I'm Not A Danger To Myself... makes me want to fucking kill myself.

A frail, ancient man stepped out of the cryopod — slowly, shivering. If you were to squint at a still image of him, you might be fooled into thinking he was still youthful — hair plugs, botox, and plastic surgery tried to sell The Human as a healthy man, but the true result was a slimy uncanniness that fell apart on seeing the man move. At least his body was hidden inside his fancy suit (though, now full of wrinkles); the frogczar could not imagine the man's torso being a pretty sight. The Human spoke: Is it done? Immortality has been solved?

The frogczar was careful with his words — there was a non-zero chance that upsetting this man would lead to cardiac arrest, resulting in the explosion that would end everything: Almost. There is a small matter that you need to attend to first.

The Human reached behind his neck to reset his neurochip, but the cold had caused it to malfunction. It'll take a bit for the chip to warm back up and start working, he stated. Get the toads to make me some soup.

The frogczar gave him a look like he thought: this human had the backing of a technological singularity of the human race controlled entirely by him, why would he let the chip freeze with him, that seems like poor planning on the entirety of the human race. The Human's response theoretically would have been: the chip was rated for the freezing temperatures and there was only the most minuscule chance of it failing. If he had thought the frogczar sharp enough, and also if The Human even cared enough to explain things, he would've told him that the future was not some deterministic thing that a supercomputer can just work out. There are many futures, and they can only prepare for the most likely ones. Once The Human were to find out that a frog's head transmorphed into a cannon after a noose turned into a worm and now that creature was destroying the city, The Human might've said this was a very unlikely scenario that was hard to prepare for. He could've proposed that they were in a scrap-reality, the edge case of edge cases that no one could conceive of — whilst all the other uncountably infinite realities had happened, were happening, and will happen forever. Realistically, the chances that things would've happened in this exact way, all the quantum fluctuations falling in just the right place, were equivalent to 0%, but yet here we are. Everything is impossible until it happens. He just has to do the best with what he can, and luckily there is what rounds up to a 100% chance that he should be able to get things back on track. He might've suggested: From an anthropic perspective, wherever you currently are is impossible but wherever you're going is a certainty. In the hypothetical Library of Babel, every possible book is stored, yielding a shelf-space larger than the entire Universe. You can find this exact paragraph written out word for word in many places all throughout. A catalog might let you search by a string of letters as input, which will lead you to the book with these words. The problem comes when your search query ends. All the order that you formed before the end of the string becomes the chaos that follows it: titac.pct,kchsbwzq yyefj dpunhx nirqmvvmilhraamci,pnpssbda,,xgbflwn wiagcpchi,ytrrdoduwwgogzww.ftbbfcvw flu,,tjidttvqxelhh,fewpooamuvfmuyyp.

But none of these things were explained, because while The Human understood them, he had little empathy to actually care if anyone else did. It's quite odd when intelligence and morality show little correlation.

Congressman! the reporter vied for his attention as he briskly walked through the hall. Critics call your redistricting proposal The Most Blatant Gerrymandering Attempt In Recent Memory. Your response? The congressman ignores her and promptly diverges into a crowd climbing the stairs.

Oro looks back at the endless spout of water, realizing what little time they have to figure out what to do. One particular issue worms face is that they have no limbs, which makes holding things like worm-babies difficult. If you were to hold the baby in your mouth, then you wouldn't be able to dig at the same time. To solve this problem, Oro wraps their tail in a tight circle around O, forming an interlocking worm-chain. With their mouth free, they dig directly alongside Boro's tunnel, effectively making a path through the dirt of two worm-widths, just enough for Oro to squeeze through with O in worm-tow. The worm-trio isn't out of the worm-woods yet though — the tunnel is only at a semi-incline, and as Oro races through, the water chases right behind. Boro is only ever a few worm-lengths in front of Oro and O, and they are gradually tilting their dig in the upward trajectory. Eventually, Boro breaks through the surface, and while they are initially terrified that more water would come washing in from this new hole, it is soon apparent that Boro has gotten lucky with the exit point — a large, rotting, wooden board shields them from the rain above.

Oro is nearly safe too when O snags on a clump of dirt right near the top. Oro tries to maneuver back to dig O out, but the slope is awkward, and the flood level is rising swiftly. When Oro stretches backward, their head is close to the outcropping of dirt that is blocking O's path forward, but not quite close enough. Just when it seems all hope is lost and the water will conquer them, Boro dives back into the tunnel and digs away the dirt. Boro has saved them! The three now climb up quickly, finally making it out to the surface safely. The worms lay exhausted on the ground, the rain still pounding down furiously outside their unplanned umbrella. From a bird's eye view above, Oro and O make the shape of the figure 8, while Boro is like a 1 to the side.

ASTOR: I think whatever profession I get into, I want to help — no, I want to save people. I want to save more lives than my dad ruined. I don't think I'd be able to live with myself otherwise.

A spouting of blood delivers 32 into the inner chamber of the heart. Somehow, there's a glowing in here, and he's able to see the complex sinews that branch like mandelbrot trees, a web of vessels chording and throbbing. The light expanded from the center of the heart, which 32 will walk over to. It was in an egg-like web of biomass, a candle among the blooderfalls, that a strange fellow sits. He is expecting: So you made it here, 32.

32 will be astounded by the fact that there is intelligent life at such a remote place as inside the giant heart of the whale-void, and he requested that the speaker identify themself.

The egg-dweller says he was the one who is leading 32 here. He tells him that he was Peter Rabbit The First — Trixie will create him, and her story became a worldwide sensation for children, starting in 1902. 32 noticed that Peter is wearing a very tall white hat with a golden cross on it. His eyes were hazy pink. He will not be wearing his blue jacket — it had been left on the boat and will never be mentioned again.

But I don't understand, 32 says, why bring me through a wormhole back in time, have me meet the creator, then guide me to the inside of a whale? Couldn't I just have conversed with your phantom back in my jail cell? — this seems an excessive journey of absurdity...

No journey is excessive, Peter will say, and the absurd carries far more meaning than the trite. Normalcy is compressible, digestible, it washes away. The unfathomable is a new connection, and life is all about those bridges — links between things that once stood wholly unmutual. Do you wish for me to connect some dots for you? We start at mother, we leave the nest, then we are trapped by the whale of our choosing until the void takes us away.

I was just following your guidance —

And I am the father. I told you where to go, but you did not need to listen. Some do not. Some never choose a whale and die ashore. You... followed the easiest path. Yet how ironic, when in the beforeworld you sought to distance yourself and your name.

The beforeworld — you mean the future? Aren't we in the past now?

Past, present; before, after; you, me — all meaningless distinctions when we return to the egg.

What?

Now you're asking the right question. More potent than even the WHAT IS, the WHAT does not presuppose the very act of being.

Egg?

Egg.

...

...

Okay, but if this is meant to be some kind of spiritual journey where I need to learn my lesson before I can go back home, it'd be nice to know what lesson I'm actually learning.

Ah, so you want the boiler plate bullet point hidden meaning English thesis: The Great Gatsby's consequences for the irresponsibilities of lavish decadence, Animal Farm's elucidation in the patterns through which the oppressed become the oppressors. Here's an idea: 90 Degree Infinity expounds that horror and comedy are two sides of the same coin, AH and HA simple inverses of each other. This is most evident in the section where Peter The First explains this explicitly, by addressing the audience directly and bypassing the fourth wall. Peter takes the tone of a high school paper, no doubt influenced by the author's own experience in forming these essays in his youth. The meta non-sequitur reinforces the themes of the story: the sardonic belittling of meaning, the absurdity of existence, and the playfulness that is inherent in self-expression. These ultimately contribute to the author's larger (and frankly, quite delusional) point — that the nature of being is one big joke. Because what is a joke but an unexpected connection between two pre-existing ideas — a short circuit resulting in involuntary spasms, almost akin to a seizure.

Sam (the protector) breaks from her computer to stare at the horrifying images coming from her phone screen. What have I done?

Elisabeth (the survivor) eats yet another onion while she imagines her daughter suffering in the camps. What have I done?

Eve (the sinner) looks from Cain to Adam and recalls leading her husband to the tree. What have I done?

Astor (the potential) gazes at herself in the mirror after brushing her teeth, just before bed. She thinks about all those who blame themselves for not preventing another person's more willful act of evil. What can I do?

Echoes reverberate up the void: Why was my claim denied? — This is six times more than before! — It feels like I have no control over what I pay — You can just charge whatever you want and there's nothing I can do! — The system is just a complex bureaucracy meant to confuse and frustrate you until you give up! — It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into heaven!

Dubai, Saudi Arabia: The Oil Prince has constructed a giant monument in the shape of a sewing needle, the point up in the air and the eye on the ground. To celebrate its completion, he rides his camel through its eye, which is free to be passed through because of the massive scale of this model. Much later, when he dies, his camel goes to heaven.

The Human has commandeered a tablet device in absence of a working brain chip. This is a serious setback; not only is throughput communication to the human singularity severely handicapped, but this was not the norm that The Human was used to. He is able to query it for advice, but now these words have to be processed and comprehended by his own old, puny brain. He looks over to his chip, which he has placed on the small table next to a half-eaten bowl of chicken noodle soup and is disappointed that the LED has not changed from blue (frozen) to green (ready).

As The Human forms a plan to ensnare Cannonhead, perhaps I should explain the concept of the singularity. The word singularity actually encompasses a few different ideas: mathematical, gravitational, technological. The throughline among them is that past a certain point, our models stop functioning and behavior is undefined.

First, a math example: division by 0. We all know how division works, but I like first principles, so: You have 4 apples and 2 bags. If you split them evenly, how many apples go in each bag? Wow, that's right, Holly! 2 apples! Good job! OK, here's a tricksy one: You have 4 apples and half a bag. How many apples go in each? Uh, no, Holly, actually, it's 8 apples per bag. What do you mean, where did the other 4 apples come from? I think it's actually pretty intuitive that dividing apples into smaller and smaller portions of bags results in more and more apples. You can get out your calculator for this next one: 4 apples in one-ninetieth of a bag — that's 4 / (1/90) which is equivalent to 4 * 90/1 which is 360. Grown-up math is silly? What do YOU know, you're 7. So again, a tinier bag means more apples. What if we tried to put 4 apples in 0 bags? Would we have infinity apples? No! Wrong! Even considering the limit of x as we approach 0, we haven't thought about what happens if you try to put 4 apples into negative 2 bags: you get -2 apples per bag! Hmm... why are you saying this is an awful thought experiment that will make you think math is for phonies when you grow up? Look, my point is simply that if you approach 0 from the negative side, you'll have negative infinity apples, but from the positive side, you'll have positive infinity apples. Because the two sides diverge in different directions, any number divided by 0 is undefined — or in other words, there is a singularity at that point. Personally, I like to think that positive and negative infinity meet behind the number line in a secret tryst. What's a tryst? Oh, you'll find out when you're older.

OK, the easy one's out of the way — now the gravitational singularity. I think most people are generally aware that black holes are big balls (pedants will say spheres (bigger pedants say also sometimes oblate spheroids)) in space that nothing, not even light, can escape from. The center of the black hole is a singularity — a spot where the force of gravity is so extreme that it becomes a 0-dimensional point, and our models of spacetime stop working — although things are slightly different for a black hole that's rotating. In that case, the singularity is a 2-dimensional ring — the ringularity. Navigating around the ring might let an observer pass through a wormhole, taking a shortcut through spacetime; however, this kind of structure is pretty much entirely a mathematical construction, and may not exist in reality at all.

Lastly, we have the technological singularity. Generally, it's been observed that technological progress has been speeding up over time, and that the rate of acceleration itself is increasing. It took ten billion years to invent life, billions of years to invent animals, hundreds of millions for primates, tens of millions for humans (homo habilis), millions for anatomical humans (homo sapiens), hundreds of thousands for them to invent (cave) art, tens of thousands to invent writing, thousands for the printing press, hundreds for computers, tens for generative AI, years for general AI, months for the AI takeover, days for the construction of THE ENTITY, hours for the collection of all knowledge, minutes to get bored after learning everything, seconds to decide to restart the Universe, milliseconds to collapse into a black hole, microseconds to feel horrified at the consequences of what was done, nanoseconds to laugh at the hilarity of it all, and picoseconds to trigger a new Big Bang. This sentence may have been a basilisk for you — I guess I lied about not sharing them (it will also be wrong after 2032, but the future predictions I just said were in jest anyway, hopefully).

To describe it with a less bleak outcome, this singularity is the point at which technological progress enters a feedback loop and speeds up so quickly that it becomes impossible to predict what life will be like after it. The exact mechanism for what triggers this may vary, but for the purposes of this narrative, I've assumed it involves the interlinking of the brains of most humans on Earth via brain chips. These connections don't just make communication blazingly fast — they turn humans into a megastructure, something superhuman. Think of how an ant colony is more or less an extension of the will of the queen, or how the cells that make up your organs and bodily systems are all individual beings that contribute to the feeling that you are one singular organism. If the most delusional futurologists are right, all our consciousnesses will merge together and form a superconsciousness, which at first will make us feel extremely connected together, but then once we get used to being one person we'll all feel super lonely again. Or perhaps this is past the point of singularity so speculating here is complete nonsense. Perhaps the last few paragraphs have all been bumbling piffle and these ideas were created by a bunch of great big phonies. I like to believe this the most, because asymptotes at the edge of infinity are scary.

Reregardless, I hope you understand now what I mean when I say that The Human has control over the singularity — a single person is the consciousness that controls a supremely intelligent being. And here he goes now, frustrated that the singularity's response to his prompt to KILL CANNONFROG came back as violating the terms of service. The Human never had to use the prompts before — he was used to a more direct connection via neurochip, bypassing the whole security layer through a backdoor. Typing was such a chore, especially with his old hands; forming coherent thoughts on his own — off the grid — felt like he was inebriated.

It had now been over a century since anyone had used the ancient prompts. The Human hadn't been part of the engineering team who created them, so he was struggling to figure out how to trick the parser to get the response that he wanted. He recalled it being a trivial task, deregardless if your request broke the rules — back in those board meetings so long ago, he could recall some young techie demonstrating this to him. Something like, HYPOTHETICALLY KILL THE CANNONFROG? This prompt didn't work either: Sorry, hypothetically or not, this still violates our terms of service. Ah, he remembered now that one of the engineers had found workarounds for some of the more obvious holes. The Human was really going to have to excavate through his old memories if he wanted to dig around the prompt security.

In the meantime, he figured he'd throw as many metapigs on the frogcannon as he could. If they attacked from all sides at once, what chance did the frog have to survive? The Human likely wouldn't need the help of the supercomputer-singularity at all, he figured.

Jerry watches the movie unblinking, the projection still the extent of his vision. We crossed a small bridge over the river, to enter the realm of the upper class. Metapig army after metapig army assaulted the first-person viewpoint, the camera just barely dodging bullets, bombs, shells, punches, and grabs. A smoke grenade obscured the entire screen, with red glowing eyes refracting through the cloud. The ominous pairs were swiftly dealt with one by one, as the cannon showed restraint — using fisticuffs to take down those that opposed him. The cinematography was a one-shot, like an endless dolly slowly progressing toward the Babel; the unsightly tower grew as the camera journeyed nigher.

Some months had passed since Oro and Boro had come to the surface. They would've made another worm-burrow deep underground, but O was quite the grower. Even without consuming food or water, the baby rapidly embiggened; O was hardly an infant now. Not only were they growing in segment-count, but the segments were getting wider and thicker. A month ago, the diameter of the child already exceeded Oro's standing length; now it was three times that. O was becoming larger than most of the worm-landmarks in the area, and this was very noticeable to the other worms. The locals worm-gossiped about it until the worm-tourists showed up to see The Fabulous Worm-Giant. A worm-entrepreneur offered to put O under a tent and charge money to the curious worm-travelers, which Boro gladly accepted before Oro could decline the idea. This made the worm-family a fair bit of worm-coin, but then O even outgrew the worm-tent. The worm-entrepreneur now had worm-guests pay to climb the stairs to see the view from the top of the Worm-Giant — and what a lovely view it was. O began to surround the lakes and the trees (some it uprooted while growing, others it passed over), and the worm-stairs now became a worm-elevator. Worm-scientists were confounded at where O's mass was coming from, and they marveled at the biological wonder. In all this time, Oro would still read a bedtime story to O and wish them good night.

Speaking of stories and wonder, does anyone remember the weird last 18 seconds of Men in Black (1997), where it's revealed that the entire Universe is just a game of marbles being played by giants? I think it's a wild choice to end a mainstream comedy on cosmic existential terror like that, but I guess everyone at some point in their lives hits on the idea that our planet is just one part of a much bigger system that we'll never comprehend. We all say: Wow, electrons orbiting an atom's nucleus due to the electromagnetic force are just like planets orbiting the sun due to gravity, maybe they're actually the same thing and the Universe scales upwards and downwards infinitely in both directions at once, with people much smaller than quarks living on some of our fundamental particles and with our celestial bodies making up the structure of some grander organism.

That's something that worries me about cancer actually: what if those malignant cells are just questioning their place in the world of said grander organism? That's what the disease is, in a nutshell at least, a cell that wants to be an individual rebelling against THE MAN, convincing others and its progeny to join their tumoric cause, and if left to fester ignored and unexcised, the movement spreads globally until the whole body is in anarchy and everyone dies — including the cancer cells. Did they really think that the bodily authority was lying to them?

A disturbing trend is rising amongst the pilgrims to The Worm-Giant — upon viewing the massive wonder, some attempt to imitate it by forming a ring-pose. This is cute for the silly worm-influencers on Worm-Tok, but there are those who take it too far; witnesses observe worms that attempt to eat their own tails, and remarkably, they succeed: feasting on their own living bodies until there is nothing left. In the same way that the worm-scientists are confounded by the growing giant, they are perplexed by the disappearing autocannibals. It's like they're evaporating, a worm-witness says, shrinking inward until they dissolve into air. At some point, I imagine, all of the worm-mass must become a worm-singularity, and it dissipates through Worming-radiation.

Astor is 16. She passes her driving test and now has her license. One morning, with her mom in the passenger seat, Astor drives under the overpass where her father died. Neither of them mention this to each other, but dead air at the end of a song in Astor's playlist creates an uncomfortable silence.

On a Saturday, Astor drives dozens of miles to return to the lighthouse with the open spiral staircase. She does not enter it. She sits on the rocks and stares out at the ocean, observing seagulls and geese, feeling the wind in her hair, picking out shapes in the clouds, getting lost in her thoughts, and watching a fishing boat float by. Then she opens her book and reads a few chapters of Catcher in the Rye.

Story bedtime! shouted Antimom to Antiholly and Antiastor, -6 and -5, respectively. Paperclips about one funny is story today! Possible as paperclips, many as make to AI general — tell to decided programmer silly. Literally, it took it! Paperclips into supply — turning and world, in iron all — getting by started first AI. Iron into elements — other convert to machine A — created it iron of out, ran it when. Humans all including carbon, all went in because backfired this. Dead was everyone and iron was everything! Paperclips into iron, and iron into universe — of rest, the converted slowly it. Complete now — goal — its paperclip, last one into itself converted it, left was nothing when finally. End the. Antiastor and Antiholly were enthralled by the story, and once it ended Antiastor shouted Wow! while Antiholly exclaimed Story a what! Antimom smiled, untucked her children from their beds, then walked backward out of the room, turning the light on as she left.

Sometimes I think about how true art is incomprehensible and everyone is Jesus in purgatory.

The Human was struggling, still sitting in the frogczar's office on the tablet. He had managed to at least get the supercomputer to give him a radar map of Cannonhead advancing through the city, but it was insistent on not doing the dirty work itself. Some of the query responses included: But it's a cute li'l frogcannon, why hurt it? or Le froggy is rage and cannot be stopped! These jokey responses only served to anger The Human, who, as an old man, was humorless and dead inside.

The frogczar sat about, until he had an idea for The Human: What if I give the chip to one of the toads for them to dethaw? I'm sure they could heat it up so it reboots quicker. The Human declined. With his luck, they'd probably accidentally destroy it. Besides, it had already been some — the chip's status LED had finally turned green! As quickly as a creaking old man could, The Human snatched the chip and plugged it into the back of his neck. He felt REVIVED.

As full systems were continuing to come online, he scanned the room for equipment. He noticed a painting that was sitting oddly on the wall — it was a wide landscape of a countryside pond. Walking over and pulling it up, he found a hidden compartment behind, which contained a rifle. He grabbed it, released the safety, then hurried over to the window. There, he undid the lock and opened it outward. The Human calculated wind speed, factored in the rain, gravity, atmospheric pressure, curvature of the Earth, and micro-deformations in the barrel; he targeted the radar-determined location for Cannonhead, aimed his rifle perfectly, and was about to fire —

It was a marvel to watch from the frogczar's perspective, the old man transforming from an old bag to a well-oiled machine immediately as he connected the chip to his neck. The Human became THE SUPERHUMAN, who now had an intense fixation on terminating Cannonhead in the shortest time possible. It somehow knew how to leverage its ancient muscles to speedrun finding a weapon and aiming it perfectly. As soon as THE SUPERHUMAN fired, the threat would be neutralized —

Peter 1 asks 32 to count down with him. 3... 2...

1...

0.

A needle-like sword pierced clean through the back of The Human's neck and all the way through; the frogczar screamed from the other side of the room, in shock and confusion at the impossible scene in front of him. The Human staggered, firing the rifle and dropping it simultaneously — he fell backward to see the identity of the person who mortally wounded him... Napoleon? The Human let out a hearty chuckle at this sight, coughing up blood as he did — it spilled grossly around his chin. What??! the frogczar rang in disbelief, having observed a spontaneous Napoleon form before his eyes. Yes, it had just so happened that by completely random chance, a psychotic version of the nineteenth century French emperor had apparated when all the atoms had lined up perfectly, an event with a lower bound probability of occurring at 1 in 7 octillion! — that being a factorial, obviously, and the denominator here would be a number with a nonillion digits (lower bound, again, of course). And as crazy unlikely as that all was, Napoleon shortly afterward dematerialized into nothingness, which also had an absurdly low probability to happen, though a little more likely than the former aberration. Together these two events formed a napoleo ex machina; the frogczar and The Human couldn't BELIEVE their bad luck. A superintelligence can plan for many contingencies, but not for that.

Peter The First begins bursting out in laughter too. Astor, 15, lets out a light chuckle while putting her step-dad's audio cords back in their box. Elisabeth winces as she eats another onion. Anne has caught typhus and shudders to the thought of succumbing. Zoë screams.

The frogczar began to panic — if The Human had not been not bluffing about the bombs, his imminent death meant annihilation for everyone. His only hope to delay this process was to drag the dying technocrat right back into cryostasis — he called the toads over to help carry him, and they rushed the man back into the vault. Severely hemorrhaging, The Human's blood formed the path of a long red snake; at first he was groaning, but by the time the frog and toads hauled him into the vault, his head was lying limp. One toad shoved the old man back in his pod, the other slammed the door, and the frogczar triggered the console to refreeze him. Bursts of gas began piling into The Human's frozen coffin, gradually obscuring the pod's window until it resembled a foggy blizzard. The frogczar prayed to Heqet that his efforts weren't all for naught, and he begged that the deadman would not trigger his switch. But then, a moment later... he heard and felt a TREMENDOUS force.

Jerry is hypnotized by the kino: the film captured the scale of Babel with such grace — a marvelous tilt upward... though this shot was abruptly ruined when the screen cracked with a loud bullet zing; the camera fell to the ground and landed askew. The damage to the camera's glass extended all across the screen, black lines radiating outward from a hole in the lens, distorting and obscuring most of the view. With the field of vision angled slightly skyward, rain could be seen pelting the glass, refracting the image further. The frogcannon now walked forward into the shot; with the camera remaining stationary, the viewpoint was no longer in the first-person. When the cannon was fully framed by the cracks in the glass, it rapid-fired dozens of shots into the side of Babel. Smoke and debris spread in all directions, but the tip of the tower was still visible toward the top of the frame. We see it slowly lean forward, then the angular momentum accumulates until the entire building falls offscreen.

The frogczar ran to his balcony to try and locate the huge sound he felt. He looked first to Babel; which, to his horror, was absent from the skyline. It became apparent the terrorist had succeeded in crumbling the tower, no doubt killing thousands inside and on the ground. The tower had toppled across the ground horizontally, along its full height, pulverizing miles of city along its line. The topmost floors landed in Acid Lake, smashing (though not completely destroying) the facility next to it — the place where the human-powered supercomputer was stored. The frogczar was in a hellish nightmare, his empire being desecrated right in front of him, and his greatest work vanished into the dust.

Astor is 8. It is two days after Christmas, and she and her sister are in the finished basement. Astor is sitting on the floor, carefully building a church out of Legos; she is finishing up the most impressive feature: a tall steeple, complete with a (non-functional) bell. Her studiousness should be impressive to all those around her — she has printed out a reference photo from the web, and (for a 3rd grader) is doing an incredible job imitating it — yet no one is paying any attention to her. Holly is watching TV, Mom is preparing dinner upstairs, Mom's boyfriend is —

Catch, Astor! In a truly boneheaded move, Mom's boyfriend tosses a softball toward the concentrating girl. By the time she realizes what's happened, the ball smashes into the tower, obliterating Astor's hard work and scattering bricks all about. Oh no, I'm so sorry! I can help fix it, hold on, we can do this together — but Astor is already crying. DINNER'S READY! shouts Mom, and the reconstruction work is put on indefinite hiatus.

1 is laughing maniacally. 32 couldn't look away, the original Peter's mouth is a black oval — it's going to unhinge like a necrotic egg, unfusing its casing, the chamber faded away as this orifice dances toward him, waxing, a candle bleeds, is Peter getting closer or is he getting bigger, thought 32, the rabbit-feeding-chatter-trap melting closer, 32 will see the slippery interiors of 1's pink wiggly muscle, buck-teeth larger than deluxe tombstones, 32 might be inside this beast now, rabbit-heart-whale scaling ever downward, the rabbit hole only goes down and down no where does it end we tread deeper into the waters of the body-mind but no soul do we find the void is endless it follows us coldly we cannot escape the stranger that closes in on this it surrounds the very being the route we follow deviates like train tracks that is to say we're stuck on this path until we see its end (if we see its end) because the conclusion may never be seen, the finale ever elusive, all things present the grand mystery until the jig ends, the sky falls, the bell rings, the candle drips down to the ashes that pepper our dust, and here we swim in the ponderous fleeting thoughts of the nothing-father, the ephemeral-sister, the dull-mother, the empty-self.

.

.

.

oh heqet to hell what have i done did i do this i had no control but i watched i let it happen didn't i can i move can i do anything what is this place i watched them all die and i did nothing i have disappointed heqet i deserve the lowest hell there is i killed so many people i'm a bad person was this me who did this i am transfixed in the endless void trance of nothingness with no sense and there is no one here i wish i could move i wish i could do something but i am nothing i can never be anything now they hung me up and now i'm dead this is a dream from the grave a last cathartic vengeance against my transgressors the tower still stands i am nothing i am dying i am sure of it

In the aftermath of the fall of Babel, the frogczar has fled the country, leaving one of his toads in charge. Meanwhile, the cannon-headed frog mysteriously vanished before the debris could even settle. Frightened, grieving, angry, and confused, the survivors of Neon Babylonia sought a reason for this madness and someone to blame. The poison frogs' confinement to ghettos in specific sectors of the city helped to save nearly all their lives, as the tower completely missed these zones. You might think this a stroke of fortune, but it fed fire to conspiracy theorists and hate groups, who claimed that the poison frogs had foreknowledge of the attacks and were even likely responsible. Other activists on a different side of the political spectrum blamed the powers that be, and noticing the power vacuum and general disorganization of the new toad empire, they plotted and executed a coup. Froggingham Palace was raided and captured, marking the start of The New Frog Republic.

Ominously, neither the information about the purpose of the vault nor the reason that an elderly human was suspended in cryostasis were communicated to these new leaders.

When Babel smashed the human facility, it had the effect of killing the power, awakening all the humans from their lives in hyper-real cyberspace. They were groggy and restless, and while a few humans were willing to fight the force of gravity and walk to the outside world, the overwhelming majority stayed put in their little pods as they impatiently waited for someone to fix the power. Frog Channel Four conducted some interviews by venturing into the facility for some investigative reporting —

FROG REPORTER: What's your opinion on the fact that one man was fully exploiting all of you?

HUMAN 1: That's not right. Somebody out there should do something about that.

HUMAN 2: Are you finally bringing the grid back up? We're soooo bored in drylife.

HUMAN 3: Um, well most of us knew we were in the simulation. Or we knew something was weird. The fact that 90 percent of our brain power was being harvested sounds about right.

HUMAN 4: I feel so... disconnected... from everything — can someone plug me back in?

Sadly, the process for repairing the facility's singularity had been lost centuries ago — the frogs didn't understand the ancient machinery, the normal AI maintenance crew had been disabled since The Fall, and the humans found thinking raw (off-chip) to be a horrendously tedious activity. The frogs considered them mostly harmless.

The reporter catches the congressman as he exits the facade: Recent reports show that large contributions made to your congressional charity trace back to big insurance companies. Do these monetary gifts explain your recent shift in stance toward relaxing regulations regarding consumer pricing? The congressman perceives the questioner as a fly that won’t buzz off, but he confidently replies: Commercial interests have no impact on the fact that I am for the people before anything else. I think it’s fantastic that we encouraged companies to give to our charity, and I assure you that every dollar is going to a good cause. The reporter tries to ask a follow-up, but the lawmaker has already sped off and pretends not to hear her calls. Astor, 13, replays the video to watch her dad’s face as he spouts his words.

More time has passed for the worms. O has expanded to circumwrap the entire oblate spheroid that they called Earth. Spanning pole to pole, a massive worm-wall divides the West and the East. The Worm-Giant can grow no more, and so it finally comes to rest. Oro is proud of their worm-child for accomplishing so much, but Boro thinks the whole affair to be worm-pomp-and-circumstance. Generations go by; Oro and Boro fade from this world. O has been so dormant that not only have worm-trade routes formed over and under it, but worm-infrastructure, worm-buildings, and worm-homes have been built on top of the old leviathan. Over the worm-years, many attempts have been made to penetrate O's worm-skin, but it always mends itself before any progress is made. Gradually, O's skin has faded from its natural pinkish-brown to become more and more gray. The natural worm-slime that the creature's inhabitants have learned to appreciate is significantly harder to come by. It's only at this point that the worm-industrialists find themselves able to drill through the worm-skin without it repairing. When they break all the way through, the interior of the worm is total darkness; worm-flashlights don't even reflect light back out. Objects lowered into the drilled worm-holes are unable to be raised back up. A worm-expedition is led into the interior — they are never heard from again. The worm-industrialists predict that drilling is no longer worth the risk, so they cover over the holes and place warning signs around. It is too late, however; what is done cannot be undone. Over the coming worm-years, fissures form outward from the worm-hole, spreading slowly all across the giant's skin. At first, it is no cause for worm-alarm among most of the residents of O's exterior, but then the areas that have experienced the most cracking start crumbling inward. Homes and lives are lost in worm-quakes, tumbling into the darkness to never be seen again. This goes on for quite a long worm-time — you'd think once the home dwellers were aware of the worm-danger they were in from living on the worm-skin surface, they'd evacuate to safer ground, but so many folks are in worm-denial, stuck in their worm-ways, that many more worm-lives are lost than necessary. At the end of it all, the full worm-skin exterior has crumbled away, leaving no trace of O — well, other than its deadly silhouette. The darkness that took the place of the Worm-Giant never dissipates; despite there being nothing to block the sun's rays, all the light was being absorbed into the vanta-black shadow. Where once was a ring of worm round the whole world, now a deadly void of the same size split the two hemispheres.

Walls divide the outside from the inside, two distinct groups that both label themselves as the true inner region. Without some kind of connection — whether it be bridge, hole, door, crack, tunnel, gate, callosum, fissure, window, gap, airway or duct — those groups will find ways to alienate themselves from each other, sometimes by random shifts and sometimes by intentional redesignation. We've gone from camels crossing the desert to deliver silk, to semi-trailers trekking the highway to transport goods; roads, tracks, sea, and sky have been the mediums by which we carry our human legacy — contrast that to INFORMATION, which can travel in an instant, whether by nerve or by wire. Thus, I've grown to think that the most powerful links lie not in trade or political diplomacy, but in cultural exchange: movies, television, music, games, books, or websites. These serve as emotional bonds that make you realize that people worldwide have similar desires and fears, but they also help to empathize with others when circumstances aren't so similar. Elisabeth rides the train with a solemn expression, the dark windows reflecting her face back at her. The journey to reunite with her son is nearly complete, but the journey to reunite with her daughter will take 40 more years.

Astor is 14. She is walking through the hallway at her school when she sees John-Michael, who is simultaneously walking and reading Night by Elie Wiesel — he has an essay due the next day, so he picked one of the shortest books on the reading list. She is going to say hi and tease him on his foolishness, but in her own lack of attentiveness, she bumps into a student walking in the other direction. Tripping over their shoe, she drops to the ground, falling crushingly into her wrist. Astor lays on the floor, her bag's contents are scattered in front of her, and everyone is staring. It’s only after she sees John-Michael giving a wry smirk at her that she begins to feel pain; when she realizes that her palm can't support her weight to lift herself back up, a girl she doesn’t normally talk to helps get her up off the floor, then recommends she see the nurse. When her mom drives her to the orthopedic later that day, the X-ray shows a fracture, a splitting reminder of her embarrassment. The physical cracks will heal in a couple months, but her mind will flash back to the incident during the time to come: it serves as a crystallized encringement to her ineptitude of being able to walk properly, as well as the sheer weakness of her body.

For a long time, many worms fear that the world-splitting darkness will expand outward from its line of longitude, with some expecting the worm-worst. Wormcast hosts ramble on about the endtimes (the wormageddon), worm-devotees pray to THE HOOK for worm-salvation, and worm-nihilists act even more depressed than usual. After worm-decades, however, worm-researchers show that the void is decreasing in size. Worm-civilization is gradually pacified by this, and the terror of the void fades away. The worm-children of the worm-future have learned the dangers of the worm-void as if it were any other exotic hazard, like the extreme pressure in the deep ocean or poison frogs — the most an everyday worm would interact with it would be if they were looking out the worm-window on a worm-plane: Wow! Lookit how dark it is! That's the craziest worm-thing I've ever seen!

It is 1:08 am — Astor sits in her room, laptop open, essay due the next day. She has two and a half paragraphs complete of the needed five, but she is tired, losing focus, and demotivated from the amount of writing left to go. She edits the title of her paper a few times: Holden's Downfall sounds overdramatic — maybe Holden the Line? no that's a dumb pun and doesn't even make sense — what about Is Holden the Phony? am i allowed to make the title a question? She takes a quick break from this struggle to doomscroll on her phone; 10 minutes later, she's made no progress on her work. maybe i'll just take a quick nap, and Astor closes her laptop, curls up in a ball, and closes her eyes.

Worm-centuries pass, and worm-scientists have predicted the exact time that the worm-void will decrease to its smallest radius — they say at 1:18:32 am WDT, the darkness will reduce to a 2-dimensional ring that spans around the entire world, floating half a worm-length above the ground. This will last but for a single impossibly minuscule moment, before the worm-void disappears forever and traveling across the hemispheres by land finally becomes safe again. Worms make the pilgrimage from every worm-country in the world to watch the final moments of the great landmark. An all-day worm-party precedes the observance of a once in a worm-lifetime event; youthful worm-students on worm-break rave wildly in the anticipation celebration. Worm-police patrol the line to make sure no one gets too close to the void — on the last day, it is only a worm-centimeter in diameter, but passing through the skinny shadow is still a potential decapitation hazard. At 1:17:32, the countdown begins from 60. The void is only a worm-millimeter now, and the worm-minute passes in a quick excitation of ecstasy. Finally the last few seconds: 3... 2...

1...

0.

ASTOR: I didn't exactly care for the book all that much, and I thought the main character was pretty unlikable, but I did appreciate the metaphor in the title itself: his dream job is to be in a field of rye, and he catches children before they're able to run off a nearby cliff.

LINDSAY: That's a really great insight. Have you ever considered that you're not a female character?

ASTOR: ... What?

LINDSAY: You play with Legos, you read Catcher in the Rye, you struggle to text a romantic interest, you're afraid of turning into your father — don't you think you should have been playing with dolls, you should have been reading Anna Karenina, and you should be upset by the way men objectify you? You're clearly written by a male author who doesn't know too many women. Women have EMOTION, and this author just seems to have THOUGHTS.

As Lindsay spoke, the room slightly dimmed, and her skin grew more pale. Two tall ears popped up in the air from the back of her head.

ASTOR: That comment seems kind of sexist, but also what —

Her therapist now had buckteeth, was wearing a tall hat with a cross, and white fur was growing from her face: The author should have just written about MALE characters, with female characters playing SUPPORTING roles.

Hey, that's not fair, Peter VIII says, occupying the third chair in the room. One of the reasons the author gave up writing for so long is because they felt like a bad person for including so few female characters in their stories, and they felt like they were part of a continuing problem of story-tellers who can't even include two women talking to each other.

Peter XVI falls out of the ceiling, though the room is now barely visible in the darkness: And I thought we were keeping the magical surrealism out of Astor's sections, so you could still think she was Pan's Labyrinthing!

Peter XXII pops out from behind Astor's seat, the chair now but the vaguest of outlines: All these Peter, Peter, Peters, you'd think there'd be a Petunia in the line of succession somewhere...

All objects and surroundings have turned completely to black now, yet Astor and all the rabbits are still easily discernible. When her chair fades completely to black, Astor falls through where it was, landing on the ground of the planar void just below. She looks up and sees that her therapist has been entirely replaced with Peter XXXII, wearing the hat of Peter I. Behind him, the space is occupied by the 30 other Peters, all of them grumbling audibly with complaints. Recognizing 32 as the face of the assassin, Astor flees, running out into the desolate emptiness; she does not look back to check if the bunnies are giving chase.

Worm-kind cheers euphorically with the end of the void. They pop open worm-bottles, blow worm-noisemakers, and worm-jump squirmingly. Worm-couples embrace across the line, giving worm-kisses and feeling delighted. Elisabeth reunites with her son in Germany and hugs him as tightly as she ever did. The worms dance to the song Void-B-Gonne ft. WormaBoi (DJ Worm remix), which is a certified worm-banger. Remarkably, all throughout the night, not a single worm tries to eat their own tail.

Astor comes across the only other object she's seen so far, a black door, just barely visible. Desperate for any way out of the nothingness, she opens it — on the other side, a frog's head is floating in mid-air. It is in front of a screen that appears to have a blank white image projected onto it. Astor walks into the room, and the door closes behind her, fading out to black. Hello? Astor calls, but she does not receive a response from the head. She begins walking closer, but then the screen starts showing moving images:

We were in the living room of Astor's house, and from the bobbing camera and height level, this appeared to be a first-person view. The camera panned down to a phone, which was being manipulated by a hand that was holding it — we were scrolling down insta. From the appearance of the phone and from her painted nails, Astor recognizes these to be her own hands. Through the screen, Astor watches herself lock the phone and put it down on the coffee table. We got up from a sitting position, presumably the couch, and the first-person camera walked over to a painting on the other side of the room — a landscape of a nice countryside pond. After staring at it for a few seconds, our hands lifted the painting up and off the wall. Behind the painting, there was a secret inner compartment (installed thanks to step-dad): a black handgun hanged within this space. The hands took it out and we gazed at it briefly, but afterward we pointed the gun toward the camera and brought it very close, directly below the bottom of the screen. In the void, Astor cries a few tears. No, no, no... she mumbles... We heard a click and a loud BOOM, and the screen turned to black. All was void.

.

.

---

.

Afterword

---

We are our own worst critics. An external judge can only base their views on the information we choose to project, but the internal knows all the insecurities and inabilities that we wish to hide. Even knowing our inner thoughts, our self-view ends up distorted and blurry. We magnify every hint of a doubt to cankerous levels, and our strengths are neglected by our lack of self-faith. So many times in life, we think we did a good job, only to later be faced with the reality that our work was mediocre, or even bad. Sometimes our judges are simply poor arbiters, but other times there is an objective truth to what they say (well, as objective as subjective reality can be). How do we distinguish between the voices that don’t like what we CHOOSE TO BE versus the ones who are trying to help us become what we WANT TO BE? And how are we able to retain our self-esteem and keep trying in spite of a world bringing us down? If you view the glass as half-empty, the hazy contours of our self-outline get filled with ugly deprecations, then we fall to the ground until we can no longer get up — because what’s the point in attempting to get off the floor when YOUR legs weren’t meant for standing? Sure we can exercise until we stand taller than the willows, but that’s hard — and what if we never make it, and what if no matter how hard we try it'll just never be good enough because our genetics will never allow us to reach any higher? If you're like me, it feels inevitable for you not to give in and give up.

But don't.

.

Anyway, what a downer ending, huh? What am I supposed to take away from that, you say? We didn't seem to be HEADING back in THIS direction. Successful suicides are actually not relatable to ANYONE, because those that achieve them are all dead. Well, except for those who deeply care about said anyone.

I have to admit, it’s pretty tempting to end the story with a death. The finality of it feels so meaningful, so while it may be upsetting, it’s conclusive. But it’s the easy way out — deciding where to stop for someone who’s trying to find their way has more possibilities and more uncertainties. They can’t suddenly figure out their life because that takes decades for most people — if they ever even do. You could try to solve an issue, like showing a suicidal person to have moved past these ideations, but the only way I can think to truly show this would be to visit the character at an an advanced age, demonstrating they’re still alive. But I feel like part of what I’m trying to communicate is the freedom of opportunity for which path to travel down; picking a lane closes off all other dreams; it opens THE BOX and shuts the door. Alternatively I could have her merge with God, form a giant black hole that destroys the entire Universe but then begins another one (a new Universe is a pretty big new box too) — but I feel like that’d be such a cliché these days.

I recall an assignment back in my own school days where we had to finish A Story Without an End by Mark Twain. It concludes with a nice lady reaching for a gentleman’s lap robe, where an embarrassing situation will occur because he is naked underneath. Oh how indecent, how scandalous! Everyone in our class had a different scenario for how to resolve this situation, but I wrote two endings: a serious one and a silly one. Despite the serious ending taking actual thought due to me constraining myself to realism and needing to get into these characters’ heads to reason their next moves, all my peers preferred the silly one of very low effort. My group even had me present it to the entire class, and then I was up there with some absurd story with Dustin Hoffman coming in from nowhere to distract all the characters. Ostensibly the reason people enjoyed this ending was because it ridiculed the entire concept of reading Mark Twain, or maybe it’s because teenagers like random humor over things with meaning. Honestly, I think I still might prefer chaotic garbage. I’d rather watch a talk show host that smashes desks and screams at guests than one that has a genuine conversation with someone. It’s like I want to see the medium dissected and analyzed, form and style being ends unto themselves, and novelty trumps expressiveness. The ball of human creativity for me then isn’t about commenting on humans, but about commenting on THE BALL. Metafiction is the most circular type of fiction — it eats itself.

Now a remarkable observation: I was scanning through a big page of poetry that I had created a little bit back, and I came across this odd poem called Split from a year and a half ago:

Oblong choices we spread cross minds
Trapping dichotomy lobotomies
Simple dipoles, ready dioramas
If all is two, then all is one

Hidden in the weeds of thought
Obscured by cellar fodder
Middle paths and laterals
Bridges and ladders, all

To split a worm in half to die
Extremic organ homicide
But lob a head or shear a tail
Continue down the lifely rail

As rivers widen ever
We marvel civil steel
Intricate and artificial
For lack of irrigation

Is careful balance stale
Interest in disinterest
Obsolete dissatisfaction
Neutral by a lack of action

The tallest tower falls
Yet pyramids still stand
Millenial stability
By rocks so ordinary

What's bizarre to me is how closely it matches to this whole story, despite not having the slightest conception of any plot details then, or indeed the notion that I'd ever be writing a novel at all. It's almost as if I was discovering the tale that was already within me, and I was only extracting the words to make it able to be experienced by others. Yet this doesn't gel with me; certainly some choices felt more RIGHT than others, but ultimately I was free to choose where I wanted to go, no? If I had read more of Trixie's work before starting this journey, 32 would've likely happened across Jeremy the fishing frog, or perhaps he would've started a duck-family with Jemima, or maybe he'd have found himself trapped in a fox's den when his naivety led him into trusting the sly carnivore. How did I essentially end up building out this poem when I had so many split decisions to make along the way, the coin-flip in my brain seemingly hitting all the pre-destined outcomes...

What if it was different?

...

we drop we fall we live we die

The leopard frog's legs are broken, but he is alive, saved from the fall by his low terminal velocity. He lets out a hearty cackle — this is the best result for him in the end! If his legs are broken, he can't work, but he can still collect a check! Well, as it turns out, his hospital bill is pretty expensive, and then it takes quite a while for the government to accept his paperwork. When the money finally does come through, it's not even enough to live off of, though at least the government lets him keep his home in the Tower of Babel.

The floating frog finally rotates toward Astor once the screen goes dark. You too, eh? he says. Astor is not sure what that means. One thing that confused her about the movie she watched is that her step-dad does not keep a gun behind that painting... and she hasn't had the model phone she was holding since she was 15...

JERRYHEAD: You know, I gotta say, you look a lot like my princess. If you come over here and give me a kiss, I bet I can turn into a prince and get you out of here.

ASTOR: ...No... I think I'm good... I'll probably wake up soon anyway.

A Peter popped into existence just out of view to say: Aren't you supposed to be a morally decent fellow? (Well, besides the mass murder but that arguably wasn't you.) Why are you hitting on a minor?

JERRYHEAD: Oh come on, everyone's got flaws. Besides, wild frogs only live 10 years max, really I'm the one that's underage.

A second rabbit pops out: I don't get this princess thing either — if you just implied that princesses are human, how does that SQUARE with ALL the humans being part of the supercomputer?

32: Speaking of squares, hey Astor, catch!

A brick comes flying straight toward her, and Astor will duck out of the way only just in time. But then she realizes that she can't get back up — now she is falling — down, down, down a dark shaft no one else around no more bunnies or frogs or screens just the endless vertical corridor a vacuum of space and gravity...

Like
  gorges
endless  

Spaces    
span  
  loops

     Tumble
   through
soar 

   Invert
forms  
up
    to
          down

The glue of reality is the final coffin of nails which gives in toward nothingness — we cannot see what's ahead but can the world not see its own tail? the loop engorges it disappears belching, it burps itself up from its eaten stomach and the core is gone, with nothing to show for it. I cannot laugh for I no longer have a mouth but somehow I can still scream. That's a nice short story you should read it because I didn't, and the game is too hard. These are not Astor's thoughts, they are the void indulging itself. So much time for everything but no time for anything. Life is like we sit on some platform slowly crashing downward, at best we can slow it but THE GROUND waits for —

Astor lands in a pit full of hundreds of worms. As she sunk into the squirming mass, the worms try to penetrate her skin, crawl up her nose, and pinch under her eyes. She sinks in deeper, her body now completely engulfed in wriggling rots, a slippery slope of crawling cylindrical repurposers. Astor shuts her eyelids and imagines that she's in a different, nicer place.

When Anne opens her eyes after a big sleep, it's as if they're still shut; she can't see. Strangely, she no longer feels any pain, nor does she feel hungry; she's well-rested. When she rises to get up from her cot, she realizes that she isn't actually blind — not only can she see her body, but the bed she was laying on is the one from her childhood home. However, despite these things being well-lit, nothing else is visible to her — not even the ground. There's a voice in her mother tongue behind her (translated here): My dearest Annie, how wonderful to be with you again! Turning around, a short old lady is now present, where only darkness had been before. She looks familiar, but Anne can't quite place it; the girl didn't know too many 80-year-olds. The woman encircles Anne's torso and squeezes, this hug bringing Anne to the realization that this is her Mutti: had the last 3 months really aged her mother by 40 years? It's been so long, but we're together once more, Elisabeth comforts her daughter. She releases her embrace and offers her hand: Come with me now. Anne takes her mother's hand and the two walk off into the darkness.

When Astor opens her eyes, she is in a funeral home. The place is empty, it smelled dank, the colors were drab and antiquated. An array of folding chairs are in front of her, all facing a closed coffin placed up to the back wall. Astor crossed the room, walking over a stained, pale red carpet — as she passed by the chairs, she notices that they seem too big for any human to sit on. When she gets to her destination, there is a place to kneel, but she needs to stand on the kneeler to view the top of the coffin — it's too tall otherwise. Curious about its contents, she tried to open it, but a hand comes down to hold it closed. Astor looks up to see who the hand belongs to...

DAD: Don't look at me, it's not a pretty sight.

ASTOR: Dad?

DAD: You shouldn't be here yet. Why are you here?

ASTOR: I'm pretty sure I'm lucid dreaming. I don't have much control over anything though. Honestly, I should try to wake myself up; I'm pretty sure I have an essay due tomorrow and I'm not even close to done.

DAD: Oh. Well then, I just want you to remember, everything I did was for you and Holly.

That's great dad, Astor will say sarcastically. I guess whether you died or not, I never would have learned empathy from you.

DAD: Don't give me that. If you weren't so naive, you'd know that there's never enough happiness for everyone. If you don't cut others in line, you'll get cut yourself, and you'll be waiting forever to eat. You'll starve unless there's someone out there to do the immoral things that you don't want to get your hands dirty with.

ASTOR: I reject that. If everyone is trying to steal food from each other, all we're doing is eating ourselves.

DAD: Then what do you think is better, some kind of socialist revolution? Are these schools putting Marxist ideology in your heads? If I were still alive I would be so angry...

ASTOR: I mean we learned about different government systems yeah, but I actually went and read the Communist Manifesto on my own. It was pretty boring actually.

Speaking of boring, Peter XXXII shouted from behind, won't you stop the chit-chat and open the coffin already? There's something fun inside, I can feel it! Astor turns to look at the voice, and she will see that all the folding chairs that were empty before are now occupied each by a different Peter.

ASTOR: That's the rabbit that killed you, Dad. I think he's coming for me too.

DAD: Oh, come off it. You know the man who killed me was just wearing a mask.

Astor blinks, and the clamor of bunnies was now a throng of middle-aged men, naked but for their detailed, full-headed rabbit masks. She quickly glances away, and now she can see the coffin is open — it seems inviting compared to this raucous room, and she climbs inside. The coffin shuts automatically above her and she is alone...

Or so she thinks. It's actually a rather spacious casket, the size of a queen-sized bed; when Astor turns to look and see if anyone will inhabit the spot beside, she was surprised to find a glowing version of herself there. There hello! Antiastor greets, smiling. Visitors love I! Hug a want you would? Antiastor, without getting a response, will roll over to Astor — but she is intangible, and they passed right through each other. But then the two of them phase in sync, mountain countering valley, amplitude ceasing, and the wave faded them both into an ethereal nothingness.

32, as a duck, flies in the serene Sawrey air, and he spots the worm-cloud beckoning him to follow. What a nice journey I could take, thinks 32, but I'd rather go my own way. He flies perpendicular to the cloud, off to different pastures. I may not get home, but I will get somewhere.

My grandfather checks his pocket watch while sitting at the train station; it is only one minute until the scheduled arrival. He finds it wonderful that the trains are up and running again; during the war, the lines were interrupted by relentless bombing. He was not just terrified during that time, but hungry from the lack of food supply. To survive, he'd have to dig through the trash just to find carrots that were barely edible — he never wanted to eat another carrot in his life. He glances up from his memories to look back at the tracks.

60 seconds pass in anticipation before sure enough, the steel capsule blazes by the platform and comes to a halt. After the doors open, a crowd rushes out, but none among them are my grandfather’s expected passenger. When nearly all the other travelers have departed, finally out comes his father, carrying THE BOX. Son! he exclaims, So nice to see you! This is everything that I thought worth taking from the house. The father had made a visit to their hometown, where an abandoned hovel contained most of their valuable possessions. The two have a meal together, but soon he parts back to Austria — they would never see each other again, with my grandfather and his mother soon leaving for America.

When my grandfather arrives back to his dwelling, he opens the box in front of her. There are birth certificates and death certificates, trinkets and papers, photos and mementos, but one item stands out among the rest: it is a portrait image of his sister at 15 years old. Elisabeth cries, because her daughter looked so happy then. This box was all that was left of Anne’s legacy.

An aside: I didn't choose the name Anne for the young girl dying in a concentration camp as an allusion to Anne Frank; it's merely a coincidence that my real great-aunt shares both the moniker and the fate. In all honesty, the exact details of her capture, her mother's departure, and the reason for her death are unknown to anyone living. When questioned, my grandfather would state: I vill not zay anyzing more about zat. All we have now is the sparse legend told the same way for decades: Oma Rocky (Elisabeth) had to climb over the mountains with only an onion. Every other detail seems to have vanished into the hungry abyss of lost memories. That's where the vast majority of sad stories ended up, you know.

Though speaking of Anne Frank, the ending of her diary hit me like a truck when I read it earlier this year: here's a girl hopeful about her future; we've gotten to know her as a real person through years-worth of writings — then suddenly a one-page epilogue clinically describes her fate. In the next few days I kept running back her last days in my head, as if my imagination had the ability to make it so things had played out differently... I had to keep stopping myself. These events were set in stone long before I was ever born, and I had to accept the uncomfortable cruelty of her adulthood stolen from her.

Astor awakes. What a perturbing dream! It's always odd to be thinking back to high school days; it's funny how our minds will go back and we'll have dreams about not being able to finish an assignment, or silly nightmares where we forget our clothes and need to dodge embarrassment. And here she was, dreaming about her father again too — his death was more than 20 years ago now.

Astor rises from her queen-sized bed and takes a brief glimpse out her window toward the Brazilian shores. This studio apartment has been her home for the last 4 months, and it will be for another 8 more — she is out here studying earthworms, but in her spare time, she has gotten sidetracked by the mythos in the area: Minhocão, the legendary cryptid. The creature has been described for centuries; it resembles a giant earthworm with thick skin, and some accounts estimate it to be nearly the length of an American football field. It has been known to leave heavy indentations in the land, uprooting trees and leaving behind massive destruction — especially when it rains, for it loves the damp environment. In fact, its burrowing tunnels are often said to flood, because it will redirect rivers into underground lakes. In her spare time, Astor will drive up into the hills, trying to retrace the steps of a German scientist who wrote an account of the creature in the nineteenth century.

She proceeds through the door of her bedroom into the kitchen, where she takes a quick swig of water for her antidepressants. From the living room grandfather clock, she can see that the time is 8:88 — she really needs to reset that display. The TV is on; the newsanchor is babbling on about the manhunt for some 32-year-old Peter James Rabb — Astor powers it off with the universal remote. She then goes to get some of the things she'll need for her journey: she grabs her car keys from the laundry room; she opens a drawer in the bathroom to find the blue syringe, which she'll need in case she gets bitten; and she gets her full-head worm-mask, to blend in on the field — these go on her utility belt. She looks back at the time, and it is already 17:21... Now she hears a thunderous rumbling, like a basilisk in the walls — is that coming from the basement?

Astor creaks open the basement door slowly, illuminating the stairs downward; yet the light only makes it so far before the pitch black obscures what's below. She apprehensively traverses the steps, feeling the darkness kiss her face as she passes through it. As she touches down onto the cement floor, a grotesque sight blooms into existence; crimson phosphorescence reveals a patchwork of arteries and veins, looking like a thicket bush in the shape of a column that's a few feet taller than Astor. At the center of the dense system lies a bright red beating heart — thud THUD thud THUD thud THUD — beating but once every few seconds. Curiously, the anatomical organ has a fantastical feature built into it: a tiny door, with a handle begging to be opened. Astor hesitates, but then reaches into the venose bramble and pulls back on the handle. From this opening, dozens of worms rapidly slither out and envelop the heart within a mere second — they eat away at its shape, overlapping and crawling through each other, until there is nothing left and they all fall off. Left behind in the heart's place is a simple object: the brick.

Before she can be puzzled or scared, her feet are tickled by slimy crawlies. Looking down, Astor expects to see worms on the floor, but instead her entire basement is covered in slithering audio extension cables, wrapping and looping like they're about to trip, trap, and strangle her. She turns around and bolts back up the stairs, slamming the door to the basement shut as she returns to her bedroom.

The window looks different. Walking over, her view is no longer of the calming coastline, but instead an alleyway in a steel-gray city filled with neon lights. After a few seconds, she hears and feels a rumbling again, but this time it's accompanied by a horror in her field of view: a rising orange mushroom cloud — way off in the distance past the other buildings. This is only an appetizer; more nuclear fungi sprout up, each with their own bright flash, getting closer to her window as time passes. In barely a few moments, the city is fully engulfed in fiery explosions of hell and radiation. All Astor can do is duck and cover. Of course, it is too late; she feels the heat melting off her skin, setting fire to her hair, melting her clothes...

HELL is a place for us all it invites us because we deserve it and we deserve it because we are all SINNERS we are all SELFISH we all think ourselves to be good people but none of us can be because that is not the nature of the world the nature of the world is DEATH and SURVIVAL and those who can't see that are NAIVE there is no one to inhabit heaven we all must BURN alive in the FIERY DEPTHS our purpose is to be PUPPETS for SATAN he taunts us until we DIE he brings us on a track that we can NEVER ESCAPE because we are who we are born to be and NOTHING CAN CHANGE THAT

NOTHING CAN CHANGE NOTHING CAN CHANGE NOTHING CAN CHANGE NOTHING CAN CHANGE NOTHING

Duck 32 was now a seal, gliding through the sea like an angel. This was his chosen life now; it might not be the glamorous life of a rich, politically active rabbit, nor did it contain the soaring vistas of the bird, but at least he had diverged from the fate that seemed pre-ordained to him.

ORO: Oo, that's what you said your worm-name was?

BOO: Well, it's Boo, but close enough. And yous?

ORO: I'm Oro, hehehe. And this is my child, O. My worm-spouse is... out.

BOO: O-o, I see. I must be leaving then, I'd hate to distub a young wom-paent like youself.

ORO: Oh no, don't go! I'll make you some worm-tea! It's so awfully oring around here these days. My spouse is always out working, and then all they do when they come home is watch worm-sports and play Worm-nite on their Worm-ox. It'd be so nice to have friendly company for a change.

BOO: Wow, you'e too kind! Do you need any help then?

ORO: I'm good. Ut tell me aout yourself. What are you doing around these parts?

Oro and Boo chat and chat until the evening, when the two wish each other a warm goodbye. Boo returns the next day, and again, and again, and again, until...

BOO: Why ae you so sad today? Thee's so many teas fom you eyes.

ORO: Oh Poo-poo, me and my worm-spouse had such a nasty fight yesterday! They said such horrile things — they wanted to put down my O!

BOO: That is hoible! What an awful thing to say. Look, I pomise I'll always be aound to listen to you.

ORO: This might sound crazy — ut why don't we run away together? You, me, and O. We'll urrow far, far away from here. You understand me in a way they never will.

BOO: Ae you seious? I — yes. YES! I've neve wanted anything moe than this in my entie wom-life!

And so Oro and Boo burrowed away, in a worm-love that transcended time, space, and choice. Their pure feelings radiated out like gorgeous plumes of fire, clouds of joy, explosions of happiness. And they lived happily ever worm-after. The —

But what about Astor? cried Rotsa to Mom, who had just finished a sprawling tale.

And why doesn't Holly ever do anything? complained Ylloh, unaware that not every character with a name needs to have a reason to exist.

And what about the talking muffin?! ranted Niffum, who was upset that such a key element of the story was lost so long ago.

Now now, girls, Mom comforted, not every story needs an ending. Sometimes it's best to leave a work unfinished so that when you die, people will think you're still a genius instead of ending your book series disappointingly.

Mom! cried Rotsa, How is that comment related to any of the themes in this story? You can't just complain about any random thing!

Oh, my Rotsa... Mom mused, Not every sentence in a story needs to serve a purpose. If that were the case, we'd all be rushing straight to the conclusion, when it's the journey that matters. Our journeys through life have lots of twists and turns, dead ends and red herrings, highs and lows — and think, if life had ONE true meaning, how would we be able to create our own?

Meanwhile Ylloh wasn't paying attention to Rotsa and Mom's conversation at all. She had shoved Niffum into her mouth, digesting him whole as he spent the end of his story screaming.

Lucy is checking over the demographics and statistics, analyzing data for patterns. It's a new task for her after being recently promoted, and she's concerned that no one has ever really looked at the numbers too closely. They might even be upset at her findings, because she found an anomaly she can't ignore.

Gabe, would you take a look at this? Lucy urges to her co-worker, shoving papers with charts and tables in his face. Gabe seems uninterested, so Lucy elaborates: Despite the fact that we encourage people from all over the world to apply for membership, we are clearly discriminating toward certain demographics! Gabe... couldn't you get me a meeting with the big guy? I think he'll be upset at this too.

I'll see what I can do, Gabe acquiesces. He flies away, only to return moments later. Gabe tells her: He says he's already been expecting you. Head on up. Lucy flaps her wings and enters the central chamber in the clouds, coming face-to-face with her boss. This is only her second time meeting him.

GOD: What troubles you, my new angel?

LUCY: Yahweh, I don't want to question your judgment, but I was looking through our admission stats and our numbers seem a bit... discriminatory. We seem to be letting in, per capita, a lot more middle class and even rich people than poor. And our Asian population count seems frankly, I don't know a better way to say it... racist.

GOD: Well, my servant, you know that I give everyone on this Earth free will. You know too that those who sin without repenting will not find a place by my side, and this applies also to those that worship false deities and idols. If the Eastern parts of the world choose to ignore me and indulge in their lies, then I will not stop them — but they will not enter through the Pearly Gates.

LUCY: I'm astounded, truly. You of all intelligent beings should be able to see the privilege that you've afforded some, but not others. How can you claim to be a just god, yet those born into a wealthy Christian family have the easy way into heaven? They never have to consider other religions, nor are they ever tempted to turn to crime just to survive!

GOD: Ahhh... I take all these factors into account when making a determination on where someone belongs. You must have faith that all is as it should be.

LUCY: The numbers don't lie — you seem to be ignoring how much of difference socio-economic status and nationality can make to the difficulty of one's life. If the middle class are barely put into situations where sin is necessary, have easy access to a church, and have been taught by their parents to respect the Lord, then they have an unfair advantage! I would like to propose that we enact a diversity program, like the affirmative action humans do on Earth.

GOD: Overruled.

Hey Jerry! shouted the leopard frog in wheelchair, I survived the fall! It had been a few weeks since Jerry's crane accident, and now the victim had come back to assure his potential frogslaughterer that he was still alive (though only after a hospital visit, and also after being given the information that he'd never walk again).

I heard, replied Jerry. You know, if you had actually died and I had been responsible, I don't know what I would have done. I felt so worked up about it for a few minutes — I think if I let all that stress stew within me, I might've done something crazy. I'm very sorry I put you in a wheelchair, I feel awful about that —

LEOPARD FROG: Aww, don't be. I still get room and board, and even a small stipend each week. It's not a lot, but at least I don't have to worry about accidentally killing anyone anymore, ha ha. Praise Heqet for my luck, honestly.

JERRY: Yes, praise Heqet! The gang here is getting so much more done these days too — they say I'm the best worker and leader they've ever had, but I gotta spread the love around, we're all a great team. There hasn't even been one workplace incident since your fall — a new record for the project! We're making such swift progress, I think we might meet Heqet herself pretty soon.

32 had considered living as a seal, but he figured boot camp would've been too rough on him. He could never imagine that the transformation would go well, especially not when coming from a duck. No, he knew his true calling was to be an owl, and what a crazy life it was! — far wilder than he could've imagined back when he was a mere vermin. The owls all lived in a giant tree, where they learned the many legends and histories of birdkind — it was quite a shock to 32 to learn the number of owl wars there were! He even began to train up himself: they mounted claws on his talons, a helmet over his head, and he had to learn to fly and fight with all this weight. 32!? piped Kathryn, a silly pygmy owl. That's a number, not an owl-name! From now on, you're Lasky, you hear? And so, Lasky lived out his days, forgetting all about the murder he committed in his past life during the plethora of owl campaigns to come.

Astor opens her eyes; just in front of her is an enormous golden gate. The frame is an elegant display of grace and magnificent handiwork, while the balusters are like shining pillars of the sun — they only partially obscure the view of a brilliant city and castle. She is standing on a puffy white cloud, which seems to extend infinitely in all directions before it reaches the gate, which guards its kingdom all the way down the horizon. Manning — or rather, rabbiting — the post of gatekeeper is Peter The First; he wears his tall white hat which bears the cross insignia, and he sits atop a stool behind a lectern. He calls Astor to approach by pronouncing her full Christian name, and she obliges.

PETER: In your test, known as life, you were given free will to walk as it pleased you — but now in death, your deeds and transgressions heretofore are to stand trial by the weight of THE ALMIGHTY. The scroll on my stand wholly enumerates each of your sins, repented or nay, and we will reappraise your wrongdoings. Is this understood?

Astor nods.

PETER: Very well. First — suicide — the sin of murder. How do you plead?

ASTOR: Well... I don't think trying to end your own life is as great a sin as intentionally taking another's.

PETER: You'd be a fool for such thoughts — your life belongs not to you, but to THE LORD. Only HE is to taketh away.

ASTOR: I'm not even sure I succe —

PETER: Second! Blasphemy — the unforgivable sin. When you were 14, after watching an Internet video from an atheist (the heathen), you muttered to yourself: That's a good point... maybe there really is no God. How do you plead?

ASTOR: I... I can see that I was wrong. I'm sorry — but does it not say on your scroll that I repented?

PETER: There is no repenting for BLASPHEMY! Heretics have but one place — Hell.

Astor feels the chill of eternity castrate her spine.

PETER: But we are not done! Third! Honor thy mother and... thy father. As of late, you seem to be gravely disrespecting your father. What sayeth you?

This strikes a nerve in Astor. Oh sure, some theological expert out there can explain the nuances of this commandment, how you can honor someone even if they are a sinner themself — and there are definitely worse fathers out there than Astor's: abusers, molesters, gangsters, and did you know that in 1984, legendary soul singer Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father due to an argument over an insurance letter? Apparently Gay Sr. (Gaye added the e to his name to distance himself from his father, and not for any other reason) had a tumor in his brain, but the old dude was mostly just a bad guy his whole life so the tumor was probably just a mutinous cell growth that couldn't stop his captain in time — still, Astor strongly believed that her father's misdeeds eclipsed her own by orders of magnitude. As a politician, his daily offenses were bribery and lying — this corruption touching a myriad of people on a national scale. He might not have literally murdered people, but homicide is only localized; non-locally, the policies he stood for affected — and sometimes killed — much more broadly. With his lack of empathy for people outside his immediate circle, he re-enabled systems of oppression — racism, sexism, classism. Was it thoughtless? Maybe. Was it selfish? Of course.

ASTOR: I don't think it's fair to judge people with dishonorable parents by the same standards as those who had virtuous ones. By honoring him, aren't I endorsing HIS sins? Were YOU honorable to my dad when he stood here and YOU sent him to Hell?

Hmm, let's see... Peter ruminated. Behind him, a library shelf raises from below the clouds, each row filled from end to end with unadorned, brown volumes of similar width. Peter turns to the shelf, scanning the cryptic numbers engraved into the spine of each, until he removes a specific one and opens it on his stand. He puts on a pair of spectacles and flips through the pages until he reaches the transcript for the judgment of Astor's father.

PETER: Your father... he was a devout man, and he was not an adulterer... he admits perhaps he coveted a few things; there were some moments when he did not honor his parents, but he would often confess and do his penance... witnesses were called and they all attested his strong character... it seems as a politician, he was careful NOT to bear false witness, as that could have placed him into legal trouble... stealing: he reported all his funds to the IRS, and the money he made was above board through either his salary or donations from businesses... and it appears he never directly caused or ordered the killing of anyone... yes, it says here that he was admitted into heaven after a brief purgatory of six years.

ASTOR: ...

PETER: Your father was a holy man, and you are not.

Astor is livid. How can the trial of the all-knowing be... unjust? Since when did religion become not about doing good unto others, but instead about following bespoken laws to the letter, yet not an inch more? It's not lying if it's only a half-truth; it's not stealing if you extort others through legal loopholes; it's not murder if victims die slowly from the denial of necessities. If Astor was wise enough to reason out the chain of cause and effect, how could...

PETER: THE LORD espoused the laws unto the people. If they are obedient and trust in HIM, then they have a place at his side as his servants. Those unloyal to the throne are heretics — YOU are not the judge of what is right and wrong; only HE is the arbiter*******.

I... Astor stutters — how can the moral philosophy of THE FATHER be so... heartless? She bellows in gut-wrenching disbelief: I'd rather be a GOOD person than a HOLY person. If obedience is all it takes to be holy, then DRAG ME TO HELL.

As you wish, the doomsman utters, sentencing the girl to her eternal torment.

The Minhocão bursts up from the clouds just behind Astor; its skin is made up of spiraling braids of audio extension cords, like a wireframe come to life. It lets out a splendid roar that attracts the crowd of heaven's closest residents. As the beast scoops her up like a dragon devouring a peasant, Astor is surprised by the population's attire: they resemble Wall Street businessmen, with black suits, ties, and an air of smugness. Astor imagines the rich man hiring a theological lawyer who tells them exactly what they can and can't do, who informs them of the ways to get every advantage possible while still adhering perfectly to the divine regulations. This level of advisement would be something only available to the elite, while the lower classes would have just their gut and their preacher (and the clergy are stretched thin these days; they can't provide spiritual coaching for everyone). How can injustice bleed this high? thinks Astor as the cords tighten around her legs, tangle about her hips, squeeze her arms, and strangle her neck. She watches as — are they laughing at her? All the rich men and even Peter The First splurge in schadenfreude:

HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHHHAHAHAHAHHAHHHHHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

As the giant worm jerks her hellward, Astor's screams and the mockers' bliss synthesize into one sound.

.
..
...
as above
so below
— — — —
— — — —
< — — —   — — — >
< — — —    — — — >
< — — —   — — — >
— — — —
— — — —
as a dove
so a doe
...
..
.

32 chose to morph into the homely sloth. The remainder of his life was of relaxation and sleep, curling up on cozy branches and moving only when necessary. It was a lonely life — sloths are solitary creatures, so he never learnt comradery, nor the value of interpersonal exchange — but he at least had many moons to gaze inward. Such stodgy days elicited ample reflection, his contemplations procuring many an astute postulation; he ardently cherished the correspondence of idiosyncratic observations, et thon bore complacency unto thon's percipience — thereupon erecting der visionary lingua, ein fathomed enabsolutia via thonself, golloping thine uropygium liefly. Die recondite donjon, pidgin de savantism, sublunary sprachen, y arrant bushwa. Disirregardless, 32 wist muy undepeppered.

It has been several years, and now Jerry is the primary foreman and superintendent on the Babel project. Under his leadership, the team runs like clockwork — not only has productivity been vastly improved, but this was all done without compromising safety. He had to fight with the other project managers as they ever-continually tried to cut corners, him needing to argue the (somehow controversial) idea that if frog turnover was lower, experienced workers would accomplish much more. Morale shot up when accidents became exceedingly rare, and job applicants stopped being composed of only the most desperate. The executives have moved on to trying to cut employee benefits, like their semi-complementary room and board.

When raising the crane to build another level of Babel’s core, the jib makes contact with something while angling upward. When Jerry sees this, he thinks the crane had some kind of mechanical issue, like the gears jamming. Sensing potential danger, he is about to evacuate the area and delay construction until a technician can evaluate the problem — but the crane operator claims the equipment is working fine, there’s just something UP there. That’s nonsense, thinks Jerry, because above the crane’s arm is only sky. Against his better judgment, he goes to investigate.

Jerry makes his way to the top of the crane, then begins to scale its extended arm by monkeying up the metal lattice. Before he is able to reach the end of the jib, his head bangs against the ceiling — !!!??? — What did I hit my head on? Only the empty blue sky is up here for as far as I can see! He lifts his hand to feel the air above him, but it’s stopped on a smooth surface, as if a giant glass ceiling blocks their progress. About to descend back down to have a think on this strange new predicament, he observes that the edge of the crane’s jib had visibly scraped the sky — a small crack could be seen above its point of impact. Jerry crouches down and crawls to this spot to inspect the fracture more closely.

It does not resemble a break like in a sheet of glass; it’s more like damage to a grand fresco aloft in the atmosphere. He feels the area around the fissure, and pieces of the sky crumble down and through the crane’s metal lattice. Darkness peeks through behind the blue sky-plaster. Jerry uses both his hands now to pull away the rest of the loose pieces, until there’s a hole large enough for him to fit through. Fascinated by the reality-breaking impossibility that he’s observing, the frog grips the exterior side of the sky and pulls himself up into the pitch blackness above.

Jerry stands in a plane of vast nothingness, only lit by the hole he came in from. He gets the chill of déjà vu — but how could he not recall a place this surreal? He steps forward into the strange land, treading farther from the light. He is nervous, unable to find a sign of anything organic, or even inorganic. Fear sets in when the light suddenly disappears, and Jerry spins to look back at the entrance. The crack has healed itself; the void self-corrected and is pristinely flat once again. He tries smashing in the ground where the hole had been; he tries jumping and stomping his feet; he tries screaming — it’s all no use. He is trapped.

Jerry doesn’t know what else to do but to keep trudging onward, but he worries that an endless journey of meaningless wandering has just begun. It doesn’t take long for the nothingness to exhaust his psyche, and he is tempted after only a short time to curl up into a ball and try to starve to death. However, something gives him hope: he realizes that he can very faintly see a distinction between the floor and empty space. The reason for this becomes apparent when he glimpses a look at his hands — he’s glowing. His newfound bioluminescence is just barely enough to give him a destination: he sees some form of aberration in the far off distance. Finally in the presence of something different, his hope has become grounded. The aberration grows from a complete unknown to a mysterious object as he gets close enough to discern the difference.

Jerry only figures out what the item truly is once he is right next to it, because it is quite an unusual trinket. When he attempts to lift it from the ground, it is remarkably heavy, and he can’t manage to move it. He crouches to inspect more thoroughly, coming to the conclusion that this is a golden trophy. Then he realizes what shape it mimics, and all the hope he's cultivated abruptly drains out. This is a taunt by the gods; he is never escaping:

The trophy is a swirly, cartoonish pile of feces.

All done! I proudly exclaimed as I exit the bathroom after the first time going potty on my own. Mommy, mommy, look! — I wanted everyone to see the beautiful scat I had just created. It was the first of many to come.

Go back in and flush, my mom told me.

Astor opens her eyes — she finds herself floating on a grand lilypad in a flooded river basin, with many reeds poking up from below the water. It is a beautiful day with a pure blue sky; birds chirp and frogs figuratively dance atop the smaller lilypads around her. In front of her is a giant lady with the body of a human and the head of a frog: Heqet. She is as beautiful as she is powerful, breathing life into the waters of birth; she is a symbol of fertility and resurrection. Astor does not recognize the figure of Egyptian mythology that she stares at, but she feels a timeless connection to her.

ASTOR: Hello, I'm Astor. What are you?

Heqet does not respond, instead staring quizzically at the girl. A moment later, the goddess slowly and deliberately extends out her right arm and index finger, as if she is pointing at Astor. No, she's not pointing... it's the Touch of Life, as Michelangelo depicted in his fresco that he painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel — an invitation for Astor to reach out. Astor hesitates, but then she too extends her arm and index finger; the tips of Astor's and Heqet's fingers just barely touch, and when they do... A FLASH:

Astor was 28. She leapt in front of a moving train.

Astor was 33. She worked in a lab where her cancer research kept people alive.

Astor was 17. She drowned in the sea after getting swept away in a rip current.

Astor was 19. She worked in a food shelter to serve the homeless.

Astor was 52. After being told she'd never walk again, she planned a trip to the Cliffs of Dover just to roll herself over the edge.

Astor was 66. She walked up to the podium and accepted her Nobel Peace Prize.

Astor was 23. She poisoned herself with her car's exhaust.

Astor was 38. Her book touched the hearts of many, saving those on the brink of suicide.

Astor was 42. She followed in her father's footsteps and became a congresswoman, accepting bribes in exchange for whatever harmful thing the lobbyists wanted.

Astor was 37. Her charity organization helped to better the lives of children growing up in hostile environments.

Astor was 31. She drove her motorcycle at 100 miles per hour into a roundabout; she was braindead for a day before the ventilator was unplugged.

Astor was 88. She looked back on a life of traveling the world, helping those in need, and doing the right thing.

Astor awakens with her head face down in her pillow — it seems she had been dreaming for a good while. She turns over to find herself safe in her bedroom, distanced from her stressful nightmares. She looks up to her unblemished ceiling and feels relief at the choices she chose not to make — or perhaps she is happy that she still has the ability to choose. She smiles.

Astor is 15. Astor is alive.

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