A Discovery

I found myself somewhere I was not supposed to be.

It was a City, vast and empty and quiet, and, somehow, aware.  Somehow malevolent.  How I found my way there is unimportant.

The Young Master discovered me, however.  He chided the City, remarking that it was not fair to take his toys from him like that.

He separated me from the City, returned me to this doomed world.  He sang a little rhyme as he went:

"The slithery dee, he came out of the sea

He ate all the others, but he didn't eat me.

The slithery dee, he came out of the sea

He ate all the others, but he didn't eat..."

He trailed off, and once again, I was here, away from him--or, rather, as away as I ever can be, awaiting silence.

But in my reflection, I wonder.

Are these beings separate from the unmaking I have witnessed?  Do they persist past it, or is each Young Master I encounter a new Iteration, each with the same cruel love for my bottomless loneliness?  Is there only one?  Or are there many?

If it is the same, what would happen if one was devoured by the Quiet?

And then I wondered further:  the City is vast and unnatural.  Is it infinite?

If it is, what would happen if the Quiet claimed it?

Naturally, this depends on whether there is one City, or a new one for each Iteration.

If there are many Cities, and they are all infinite, then the answer is it gets unmade as everything else does, with no fanfare.  No special attention, or, perhaps, they are all being devoured, forever, as we speak.  An infinite abyss consuming an infinite number of infinite Cities for all eternity.

But if there is but one, one vast, empty City for all realities...

I wonder what would happen.

I Wonder

What happens when one feeds an infinite something to an infinite nothing?

I'm So Lonely

I am sitting here with my children's blood on my hands and I'm wondering why.

Why do I keep doing this?  What am I accomplishing with this course of action?  Why will he not just let this end?  I wish this would end.  I wish I would not be spared.  I would give anything for oblivion.

I cannot keep doing this...but I cannot end it.  For some reason, I put the gun down.  I do not swallow the poison.  I do not press down with the knife.

What is stopping me?  Why do I continue this endless cycle of death?  Of mercy killing and coveting a life I can never return to?

Why must I be so lonely?

An Observation

I have observed some trepidation with some of my more brutal methods of sparing my family.  I assure you, they do not suffer.

But maybe they should.

Is a lack of feeling not what I find myself up against?  Is pain not an affirmation of the very existence I wish my family to remain a part of, even long after the Quiet has claimed their iteration?

As Stephen King once wrote, sometimes, dead is better.

And, as I have observed through falling through countless iterations of existence, pain is the ultimate teacher.

Perhaps my children deserve a lesson.  Something to ground them in reality, a reality that is fading before their very eyes.

Or maybe, the loneliness is wearing at me.  Perhaps this is not about helping them.  Perhaps I am jealous that they get to die and I am too much of a coward to end this suffering for myself.  Too afraid to risk my own death to actually go through with the most obvious solution to my problem, the same solution I have applied to my family countless times.

Something more to think about as this world crumbles, at the very least.

Thanksgiving

This season is hell.

Family togetherness.  Love for humanity.

All I see is the iteration's end.  The impending unmaking that will claim this world, this reality, before long.

I desperately wish to Usurp this iteration.  I want to be the one at dinner, with my children and my spouse.  I want to hear about their lives, to hear all about this world they have and are thankful for, this world so wonderful simply because it has them in it.

I have not, however.  As selfish as I may be, perhaps it is better to allow this iteration some peace in the time before everything falls Quiet.

It is, perhaps, one of two gifts I shall bestow on my family.

The other being, of course, the sweet embrace of death rather than the cold consumption of the unmaking.

This Quite Succinctly Sums Up My Current Attitude Regarding My Situation

A Troubling Development

I have witnessed something with, perhaps, far reaching consequences.

I have noticed certain inconsistencies between iterations.  At first, I merely considered them a quirk of the multiverse, that some iterations contain one thing and others do not.  However, as I go farther and farther, I have come to a single inescapable conclusion.

I believe the Quiet is eroding all realities, even those it has yet to claim.  I believe that it has the ability to claim specific objects, people, and concepts and remove them from every universe, ever.

I could be wrong, however.  Perhaps, as stated earlier, I am simply noticing a lack due to my unique mode of travel.

But, if I am right...

I hope I am not.  I deeply, sincerely hope I am not.

But, then again, what is hope to me?  Hope is very nearly as alien a concept to me as the Quiet is to any living, thinking being.  How does one conceptualize something more empty than empty?  How can someone quantify something deeper than a void?

At any rate, I shall dub this potential phenomena the Unraveling, and I shall watch future iterations to make certain whether or not it exists.

Quiet

Sometimes I allow myself to forget what it is like.

It is beautiful, in a sense.  The nothingness, deeper than anything we can know.  Wider than anything we can comprehend.  Blacker than black.  A void so deep it lacks even emptiness.  The truest silence, an overbearing, overwhelming, cacophonous Quiet.

First go the stars,  the planets.  Then goes the moon, right as the world watches, uncomprehending.

Then, the world is slowly eaten away, and one can see the frayed edges of reality tear and unravel into the ravening maw of nothingness.  People flee in terror, or freeze in horror, or throw themselves in with despair.

Ravening maw does not do it justice.  It simply stops being.  To look into nothingness...it is what I see when I close my eyes.  What I see when I dream.  

Sometimes, I prepare myself.  I say to myself, "This time, I will just allow myself to be consumed."   But even if I charge the hole in reality, it will not let me go.

Because the Young Master is not yet finished with me.

So I find the iteration shifted, and once again, I am alone.

The only person left out of countless universes, once more, I find myself the leftover piece in a puzzle I do not belong to, the superfluous component to a machine that runs without me.  An unwilling herald, sent not to prepare the world for it's coming, but to mourn the countless worlds already lost, spurred forward by an uncaring child for whom my despair is the sweetest confection.

I Wonder

I shall, for once, dispense with the euphemisms, as I have a query severe enough that it should not be masked behind a less intense idea.

I wonder when I should kill my children.

This iteration's children, to be precise.  For if there is any chance for them to exist beyond life, I must kill them before they are unmade.  It will be my final act as their parent, even if I am not actually that in this iteration.

Even if there is not an afterlife, it is humane to kill them soon.  Before the fear overtakes them.  They do not understand that the stars are going out.  They will not understand when they see the emptiness come for them.  I do not want my children to die afraid.

I must stop referring to them as such, however.  They are not my children.  My children were unmade.  They no longer exist.  In some respects, they never did.

Weakness

I may have been presumptuous in celebrating my victory over my  own selfish impulses.

Usurpation has been successful thusfar.

I feel ashamed, and yet...relieved.  Like an addict, I suppose.

Oh well.  I have picked a poor time to do so.


Thirty-six hours until silence claims this iteration.

Uncertain Path

I may not have thought my current course of action through.  Or, rather, I believe I have miscalculated just how important continual Usurpation is.

The more iterations I go without Usurping, the harder it will, in the future, be, until it reaches that point where Usurpation is fundamentally impossible.  Granted, it is easier to Usurp in some iterations rather than others, but the point still stands--by not Usurping here, I am hindering my ability to do so in later iterations.

Maybe I should.  Perhaps the afterlife is a separate thing from what we think of as reality.  Perhaps I am doing them a favor by Usurping them.

But those are empty words, I fear.  My true reasons for Usurpation remain the same:  the desire for self-delusion.  To be able to believe that I am, in fact, in the company of my own family.  That they are not strangers, they are my beloved.

It is a lie.  A lie that rings increasingly hollow with every new iteration.

And yet, still, it is not without its comfort.

I must think on this further.  After all, I have nothing if not time.

At least, until I don't.

A Breakthrough Of Sorts

Today was, in some respects, a victory, and in other respects a defeat.

This was the first iteration in which I have not attempted a usurpation in some time.

On one, very valid hand, this represents a key point in which I have not succumbed to my usual melancholy and done something extremely rash and pointless.

On the other, equally valid hand, this shows that I have given up.  I have accepted the facts for what they are, and have not violently denied another what I so crave in order to grant myself scants weeks, days, or perhaps even hours of comfort from a doom that I know recognize I can never truly avoid.

Which I suspect is exactly the point.  Young Master Vinton would not have it any other way, I would presume.

I shall endeavor to see what can be made of this place regardless, however.  While I will not give into previous temptations, I will try to make what time I have here as fruitful as possible.

Before this place, too, falls into silence.