25 February 2026

#writing #fiction

Eternity, Eternity

~38 min read

Short Introduction

This story is a WIP

Day 1

I do not know where I am. I do not know how I got here. The last I can remember I was in bed resting. I don’t remember a lot, just glimpses of sunlight through curtains and occasional movement at my bedside. The thoughts I do have are disconnected, a patchwork connection of lucidity where each moment exists independent of others. Between consciousness is large lapses of nothing, and what I do remember is fuzzy, unclear. Next thing I know I am here, on this endless white plain. It is made of a dried salt that is cracked in rough geometric patterns. It reminds me of Salar de Uyuni, the salt flat of Bolivia. But how could I have ended up there? I have so few of my memories, everything is so fuzzy.

I walked for some time in one direction, to what I will call my East. In that direction is a large mountain range that seems to span an enormous length. I walked for many miles and it grew no clearer. They just sit there, looming over me, a dense wall of brown. After a short time I found the effort pointless and walked back West, retracing my footsteps.

While walking a few things became curious. Even after perhaps twenty miles of movement I felt no soreness, nor slightest hint of fatigue or thirst. It didn’t even occur to me until I looked down at the ground and realized I ought to worry about dehydration in such a place. But I am fine. Not tired nor hungry. There is no ache in my legs. The sun moves overhead slowly. Its great light shining down on my skin for hours and yet I feel no significant heat nor suffered any burns. The air is a comfortable temp and there is only slight wind. The sky is a sheet of blue interspersed with only latent whisps of cloud. How could an environment be so dominating and yet remain so passive?

Eventually I reached the place where my footsteps ended. Here I found some rocks and gathered them into a large pile. I designated this the origin of my world and with my feet I drew out the cardinal directions. Then I set off further West to find the end of the salt flats.

In this direction I had some luck! But it was not completely satisfying. After walking for long enough I came across a shoreline to some great sea. The water sat perfectly still, spreading only an inch or less above the ground. Its taste was salty, as one could’ve guessed, and while it wasn’t pleasant to taste it once again gave no lasting discomfort of dehydration. I waded for a time through the film of water, listening to the plopping sound of each step. The water grew deeper by maybe half an inch after a mile (I have no way to really keep count), but this could’ve been imagined. Eventually for fear of losing my footsteps I traced back to dry land and returned to the pile of rocks.

What is this place? A place so passive, so unchanging? Am I still on Earth? Or is this another realm? Perhaps I am in Hell? Or a limbo? Surely this cannot be Heaven. I don’t know what I have done to deserve this—or if deserving is even a factor. Thankfully the Sun is now setting, going down in the North. It casts long strange spindles of shadow from the rocks as it is cut in half by the horizon, then in a quarter, then just a sliver. Finally it is night time. In this odd land devoid of proper consequence, at least the Sun sets fine. I can only hope later it will rise.

Day 2

I figure I ought to start remembering the days I have been here. I don’t know when it is I will be rescued, or if anyone is even looking for me. At the very least, it will give me something to have dominion over; If I cannot have the days themselves then I will at least control the counting of them. Come nightfall I was not tired but I figured I should be rested anyways. When I set my head down on the salt flat I found that a dreamless sleep came nevertheless, and I woke near instantly to the rising Sun in the South. Once again I am not tired, hungry, or thirsty in any way. My legs feel ready to move again. My skin is soft and not dried out from contact with the salt. I am altogether unaffected. Surely by now one of these factors would’ve affected me. Since they do not necessarily hinder me I push them to the back of my mind and decide to set off North.

The land scrawls out endlessly. There is little besides the occasional rock (which all appear to be of the same mineral variety, having a uniform grey colour and smooth weathered shape akin to basalt, though appearing invasive to the salt flat—As if there ought to be any regularity at all!). Besides my footsteps behind me and the shrinking of my rock pile in the distance, one would think I hadn’t moved at all. I pushed onward, hoping for some sort of change. During this march a sort of dreamlike trance took over me, perhaps stoked by desolate environment. I can picture glimpses of my life, who I was. I can’t yet recall any names. I cannot picture my name, nor my mother’s or father’s. I see no lovers, nor friends and colleagues. But I see an identity. Yes, I was a professor. A teacher of sorts. I worked at a college, studying some sort of logic and philosophy. I was a man of science. That much I remember. This alone is invigorating.

Day 16

I think I have made some progress, but the results are troubling.

I tried to remember things about my past, things I used to know. Not simply memories or attachments as before, but useful things. Sometimes small glimpses come to me, like fish in a pond. But when I reach down to grab them they dart away quickly as if taunting me.

There was something about distance I remembered. A way to find out how far away something was. I learned it in the past, studied it, perhaps invented it. I remember triangles, angles, and Euclid. Perhaps that is me, or a friend? I tried so hard to remember these things, to eek the knowledge from my mind. I don’t worry though because in some regard I feel I will remember things as they are needed.

I do remember the distances, something about parallax. I set up some rocks at different distances in a line and took a few steps back. Then I walked side to side. The rocks further away appeared to move less than the ones closer. I spent awhile trying to find the formulas for this, writing with my finger in the salt. Eventually I had a version that worked in my head according to triangles, though the actual math was likely wrong. I tried to use the same logic on the mountains. I began at the origin and then walked in a straight line North. I measured the distance by walking with consistently paced footsteps. I walked for miles and miles, till the sun began to set. By nighttime I rested, not because I was tired but because I feared losing my footsteps in the dark. The next day I resumed my trek. I continued this for several days, and eventually I grew confident in my nighttime ability and walked even in darkness. After a week of straight walking I realized that the mountains had barely shifted, if at all! I couldn’t determine how far away the mountains were, but I determined that at the very least, they were no less than a thousand miles away.

What is worse is that categorically, they should not be visible at all. The air between things would eventually be so thick that anything in that distance should obscure so far away in a blue-ish haze. The planet as well I remembered was curved, and they should’ve dipped well below the horizon.

I put my hands up and counted roughly two hand heights from the horizon. At a very rough calculation, the mountains towered a staggering 140 miles in height.

I sat down in the salt, staring at the monoliths in the distance. My numbers were wrong, yes I knew that. I hadn’t remembered everything I needed to be precise. And even if I had, I would never have the instruments required to measure with any reliable degree of precision. Unless it could be made of stones and salt. Only just now had I remembered such concepts as a tangent. But I knew I was not far off. The mountains, which appeared latent on first sight, perhaps even comforting, were a gross irregularity to the natural order of the world—to geometry itself! They existed perfectly on the horizon no matter your position. They were unreachable no matter what, and yet the Sun passed over this world each day without fail. I figured it out, this was Hell! I had been put here for some action, some foul deed done in my time on Earth! I was in Hell, Hell indeed.

Day 34

I determined traversal to be useless after my attempt to measure the mountains. For leisure, or perhaps curiosity, I waded once more into the shallow waters to the East and determined that the water level did not in fact increase, but remained constant. At the very least, it did not grow significantly within a hundred miles or so, which is the distance I walked before returning to the rock pile.

How ironic I thought, to be trapped within the confines of an eternal plane! It was like a prison inverted, where the dammed were forced to roam an outstretched infinity, forever banned from the confines of an enclosed space. I found no reprieve from my awareness of this place. I never grew tired, nor weary—at least in the bodily sense. Sleep brought no release, as it was always dreamless and brought me immediately back to awareness. My hair even, ceased to grow! At one moment I did actually sustain a cut, done in a moment of anger by my own nail. To my amazement, a scar grew with fascinating speed and was soon replaced as if having never happened at all.

Day 65

I have determined that it is impossible to die here. I am ashamed to admit that my dreary outlook took hold of me, and I determined to release myself from this Hell, if that is indeed where I am. Given a lack of suitable means, I took to piling rocks upon themselves. The task was stimulating, and I found myself hauling rocks onto an ever increasing pile with a renewed vigor. When I determined the structure suitable, I placed myself on the bottom and removed a boulder, which I had placed carefully so as to be structurally sustaining. The rocks came down with a loud crash and fell upon me with a large force. I was pushed into the ground violently, feeling every bone in my body rip and tear and separate, skin ripping apart and organs being forced out and ground into pulp. All of this was felt with excruciating pain, like I had never felt before.

I came to in a sort of delirium. I was back in bed. Back to the place before. I looked around, though turning my head took significant effort. To my left, by the window, was a small end table with flowers in a vase. They were wrinkled and had lost their colour, but had once—not long ago—been bright, a concert of colour. A few pedals littered the base. In front of me was a bare wall painted a pastel blue. Then I noticed a consistent beep. To my right there was a machine with a monitor. A waveform moved up and down consistently. There was a bag too, which dripped fluid into a tube which went down to my arm.

I tried to lift my arm but couldn’t. Of course, I thought, it wasn’t my arm. That was why I couldn’t move it. It looked nothing like my arm. It was old and wrinkled. It had splotches and discolored blemishes, and along its length ran a battlefield of scabs and dried crust.

A woman came into the room. She looked like a nurse. She didn’t look at me, instead moving routinely to the monitor. She looked at it agreeably, and replaced the bag for another one. All the while she whistled a sing-song tune. Then she left, and I listened to her footsteps and song linger for a moment before disappearing out the door.

Day 72

As I said, it is impossible to die here. I came to quickly. My body was still deformed, broken, in fact spattered about under an avalanche of mass. I would like to say that I do not know how long passed between my annihilation and eventual reconstruction, but I remember all of it. I remember my bones reforming and snapping repeatedly under the weight of the rocks. I remember my skin pulling itself together like a rubber band, though stuck between twists and turns of whatever was in the way. Slowly I moved, attempting to shift the rocks. I had done my job too well. There must’ve been twelve tonnes above me. But I had time. Slowly, with the reformation of a partially broken hand or foot I inched the rocks away, shifted them, replaced them. Each moment was painful, and the healing would grant me no reprieve. Each moment of pain was felt with full consciousness. And I know for certain 72 days had passed.

Day 75

I returned to the water, walking languidly along its length. Despite the trial I had gone through I found myself mostly unaffected. The pain, though intense, had faded quickly and after a few minutes I found my body fully healed once again. In a way it had meant nothing.

What hurt most of all was the memory of my past. I had been frail, dying perhaps. Were those my last moments? In some bedroom about to die? There were flowers there. They were old, weak like I had been. But they were there, definitely so; I had been loved, but by who I did not know.

Oh how I wished to know! How I yearned to return to the past, to that very moment of weakness confined to a hospital bed! I had been on my way out but at least I was somewhere! Here I was nowhere, no one. A shadow of something and someone else. I was in Purgatory, or Sheol. The Fields of Asphodel perhaps. Not Heaven or Hell, but a forgotten place. Somehow I had fallen between the cracks. It was a mercy I thought to be loved, even to be hated! But a most abhorrent trap to be forgotten.

Day 102

The cycle of day and night continued unbroken. Each one was felt with more or less intensity. The more I suffered the more dense they felt, and yet each fit within a constant period of time. I ought to make the most of my situation I thought.

The retrieval of my past life was still hazy, but not altogether gone. I realized that I ought to make a serious attempt to remember. And whatever I could not remember, I had to rederive. There was nothing more important than this. Afterall what else was I to do?

Day 156

Progress began slowly. So slowly that if you glimpsed it for but a moment you’d have thought it was at a standstill. But with consistent effort—and not a lot else to do—constructive steps are made.

I realized early on that it was futile to try to remember personal details. It seemed they simply came to when they wanted, according to their own timescale. Additionally they were few and far between. I hadn’t had a thought about my prior self in quite some time.

As for general knowledge though, I found my brain to contain great wealth. Like a vault, it was hard to open, but with the right method, it opened itself easily. I remembered how to write and began doing so in the salt. I came up with a system to write in rows with my finger, as if on an enlarged piece of paper, and I left columns and rows between the lines so that I could walk between them. I figured the writing was relatively safe as well. There were clouds yes but not once had I seen rain. Wind was sometimes present but never so much as to even be audible. The water level too from the shore never seemed to rise either. And I would never run out of space, for I had walked hundreds of miles in every direction. The only intervention I needed to be worried about would be my own.

Day 312

As I wrote, the more I remembered, and the more I thought, the more came to mind. I remembered the arts. Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Caravaggio. In poetry there was Shelley, Keats, Eliot. I rediscovered Darwin and Linnaeus, Augustine and Luther, Shakespeare and Homer and Kafka and Joyce. In the depths of my mind I found Science and History, Philosophy, Physics, Mathematics. As I wrote the categories became larger. I began sectioning off space for each subject, categorizing my knowledge in sections across acres of land. What a joy it was! I did not know if I tapped into the knowledge of my past—if I had been so well learned. Perhaps this place was like a nexus to some eternal knowledge. Nevertheless I did not question it too deeply.

Day 734

The progress appeared to be endless. I had been here for just over two years, at least according to the movements of the Sun. In time, as well as recollection and recording, I came up with other experiments about this land, and I documented them as if they were a new science altogether.

Day 892

The Mountains were indeed quite far away. As they appeared, they were at minimum roughly 240 miles tall. This would place them 17 times taller than Olympus Mons, the tallest Mountain in our Solar System, and 44 times taller than Everest. My calculations were still rough but nevertheless much more precise, as I had constructed elaborate structures of rock and salt to aid in measurements and calculation, and had standardized measurements regarding length, weight, and volume with the materials around me. Similarly, I now had a deep understanding of Geometry, Trigonometry, Cartography, Geography and more. Wherever my knowledge fell short I would spend time expanding my knowledge. There was then the question of how the Mountains were visible at all. At such a distance, atmospheric hazing and planetary curvature would render them invisible. But this did not seem to be the case.

Day 956

In regards to biology, my conclusions were contradictive. I was already aware that my biology was abnormal. For one, I could not die, weaken, or fatigue in the slightest. Sleep as well was a convenience, and if it so pleased me I could stay up for months on end without consequence. Besides myself, I never found evidence for other life. I found no animals or plants alive nor dead. The mountains as well were a stark brown without evidence of life, and the rocks around me were igneous, suggestive of thermal processes deep within the Earth without regard for life. If I had found even a pebble of limestone, often indicative of biological processes, perhaps the suggestion of life could persist. Studies (which sometimes had been quite painful) involving bodily matter and secretions removed from myself showed little signs of micro-life, as no decay or biological processes took place on severed flesh. It should be noted that my restorative properties, which extend to all of my body parts—attached or not—made such experiments quite difficult. While I could not efficiently desalinate the water I found, I determined that no micro life existed or took hold even when saliva or other things were added. Other studies proved similar results.

Day 1,104

With physics and astronomy there was some regularity. Gravity, as far as I could tell, is roughly the same as on Earth. While with my aid I could deform and break material, the land seemed to actively resist any and all erosion or change of its own accord. A mark or rock left on the ground, I considered, would theoretically remain there for a billion or more years. Another troubling thing I noticed, which took me a year to realize, was that there were no stars! Nor Moon! The Sun moved cyclically in roughly 24 hour cycles (it was hard to tell) without variation in time or position, even when axial tilt should’ve been a factor.

Day 1,204

Regardless of my efforts, however much I discovered, rediscovered, recorded, or expanded upon, most of my knowledge remained theoretical, or at least, unapplicable. Several subjects I had remembered could not amply be tested. I could do no study of zoology, chemistry, oceanography, forestry, and many many more. This extended outside of the sciences as well, I would never hear French or Mandarin—though I knew they once existed. I would never view the paintings I knew about or enjoy The Iliad nor The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. What I could remember, small phrases and general themes, I wrote down but nevertheless they remained stuck as echoes of a bygone time.

In this line of thinking, the problem was not of inquiry, but rather, discovery. With considerate thinking and rigid tests, I could make up for my limited means of study. I would do a study on biology or physics or chemistry and use only my senses—what I could find with my eyes, ears, kinesthetic sense, even my sense of taste—and repeat the study with as much constancy as I could, taking into account everything I could. Where there was bias or known error I would account for it using every tool I had: Probability, Metrology, Epistemology. Even with limited scientific tools I found that I could still discover a lot.

And yet even with this considered, I made a more disturbing realization. Yes, there were things I would likely never be able to prove, knowledge that stood on paths whose steps had now broken out from under them, but a more pressing matter worked its way into my mind. It became clear to me that with an ever growing frequency that my limitations lied not in my ability to discover, but in my inability to reconcile what I perceived with what ought to be true. The problem was of things as they actually were.

The measurement of the mountain’s height, for example, was 240 miles. But as explained, it couldn’t possibly be that tall. It wasn’t that a Mountain couldn’t be 240 miles in height. In some regards perhaps it could be. It was that nothing else made sense. I had not surely tested the theory, but I was near certain that the Mountains were unreachable. I could walk for a thousand years in that direction and never would the Mountains move. The same principle seemed to be true in the North or South direction. I figured the salt plain spanned infinitely each way, and yet every day the Sun crossed that infinite distance in an arc. Any matter of triangulation by measuring shadows at different locations found the Sun always perfectly overhead at midday, and I had no reason to believe this would be different a million miles from my rock pile. Additionally, my body—by simple existence—suggests that microbiology persisted. Organs after all are powered by cells. On my skin are bacteria billions strong, and in my hair and eyes are tiny mites. The gut is an ecosystem of trillions, but I have cut myself open enough times to know that here it is roughly sterile. The world suggests a sterile environment, and yet I suggest otherwise. Inspection leads only to frustration and paradox. The world I inhabited was made to be agreeable at a glance, but under scrutiny exposed something far worse.

I realized that a great wrong has been committed. that in this illusory realm appearance is not indicative of how it actually is. If motive were involved, if all this were enacted by some demon, then either I or it ought to be held to the most abhorrent account: either I deserve such a punishment for a former sin, or it for this torment now.

Day 6879

The Mountains are false

Day 18,020

As is the shore

Day 29,741

As is the North

Day 40,692

As is the South

Day 46,355

I have walked for fifteen years in all cardinal directions. 263,000 miles each way and back, nearly 20 times the distance to the Moon. Oh, the Moon, how I miss you.

Today is the final day of my 127th year here. 127 years since I have had a name, since I have heard song, eaten food, or seen a tree. I ought to be an old man by now. And perhaps I am. Though in the reflection of water by the shore I still see that same face, skin unwrinkled and hair the same colour and length. Only the eyes, it seems, show the wear within.

I followed my steps back here, to the center pile, where the four cardinal arrows still stand. With so little to do you get awfully good at navigating a flat plane. I timed my arrival perfectly, speeding and slowing as needed in time with the sun and an estimation of my steps to arrive on time. Of all the things I have lost, I have never lost track of the days.

The grounds are exactly as I remember them since the last time I was here. Dotting the horizon are meagre stone structures from some experiment or contraption. On the floor, in great arrays are rows of text, on subjects from mathematics to linguistics. They are completely untouched, as if frozen in time.

I went to the center pile and laid down. During my residency here, now over a hundred years ago, I had never improved upon the land. Never created anything besides knowledge. When I slept, I would only do so in a spot now outlined by a thousand bodies, like a dog. But no, even dog’s slept in beds.

I figured I owed myself some dignity.

Day 46,390

I built a house. It isn’t much, not so much “built” as stacked. I took leftover stones and piled them upon each other until I had constructed an igloo-like hut. For the first time in along while I felt achieved. That is, until the structure collapsed on top of me, breaking several bones in the process.

Day 47,002

Turns out there was still much to be gleaned from this place, at least in regards to practical things.

My initial house was simple, primitive. With careful consideration I was able to improve on what went wrong. At first I merely improved my stacking methods to create more stable structures. But I eventually grew tired of this. I found that the stones could be shattered along clean lines into slabs, which could then be stacked and structured much more uniformly.

With smaller bits of basalt (which is what I still figured the stones were made of, though I have no way to really know) I chipped away at the larger ones in a highly laborious progress. It did not matter though, I had all the time in the world.

Day 83,604

It didn’t take long before I had made a house of evenly cut brick. It wasn’t much, only a few meters wide on each side and just tall enough to fit into without hunching over. The first wall took a year, but after that, progress sped up as my technique improved. In the end I completed the house in just under three years.

For a time I became faster and faster, building a column or arch in a month that before had taken me half a year. After a few decades my speed began to plateau as I approached the limits of a single man. I didn’t mind. I trudged along slowly and consistently, gathering and grinding stone into ample shape for months without rest like a machine.

Then I attempted another, and another. With each failure, each collapse, I learned from my mistakes. A village began to grow as testament to my struggle. I perfected my construction and techniques, making domes and arches, columns and colonnades. In documenting my discoveries I often found I had reinvented something previously known; I had been following along in the footsteps of humans across time, and to my great enjoyment found that there were still subjects within my grasp.

Day 266,211

The village grew slowly, but over time expanded into a city of its own right. After a hundred years my technique had reached a mastery far beyond any person ever alive, and any person that would ever live—assuming that time here still paralleled the rest of reality.

I stopped building to learn new techniques and simply built. Not for any reason or obligation, but just as a statement of fact. I constructed wide streets, which connected plazas, auditoriums, and temples. I created colonnaded halls, akin to the Erechtheion, with elaborate etchings reminiscent of artwork I would never see. I made great walls like the castles of old which spanned the boundary of the city. Underground I dug cisterns and wells painstakingly by hand. I dug tunnels, barely sloping, from the shore all the way to the city which channeled the briny water into elaborate fountains and aqueducts.

I couldn’t say what I thought about during these stretches. Many times I didn’t really think at all, but settled meditatively into my routines. Months, years flew by without a single conscious thought. At times though pictures would appear in my head without impulse. They were hazy, often simply blurs of colour and vapid movement. Sometimes I could make out a face, a figure, or a room. Other times I could hear a voice. I didn’t think much of them, but one stuck out as different.

I had just finished an alcove in one of the villas near the center of town and decided to enjoy a rare moment of respite. I walked down through the courtyards, past the temples and towers, and down a staircase which spilled into the empty street below. The sun was beginning to set, and I watched the shadows creep slowly across ground. What a luxury it was, I thought, to bask in the shadow of anything standing!

Then I heard a sound. It was clear, audible, emanating from one of the Temples. I turned curiously, following it up the steps into the domed interior. It was a whistle, some sort of song. I went to the center of the room, looking around for the source, but it appeared to come from nowhere and everywhere. It filled my ears, echoing off every wall as if bouncing around of its own accord. The room was growing dark but there were no obstructions. I could find no clear source anywhere. Perhaps it was imagined? But no, it was there. I could hear it! I cried out, and nothing emanated. My first words in five hundred years had been a failure.

Swallowing, I tried again. I called out, audible barely to a whisper, “Hello? Is someone there?”

There was silence. the whistle had gone.

I laid down on the floor, desolate.

Day 266,212

The next day I made my way to the great rows of knowledge, which sat like fields on the outskirts of the city. They were rows and rows of text, stretching for miles, filled with knowledge from a long time ago, constructed when I had been in a different state of mind.

I hadn’t read these words in a long time. It had been perhaps five hundred years since I had read or recorded anything. Stonemasonry, despite it’s complexities, had come to completely encapsulate my thoughts. It filled every recess of my brain, and there was no need to consult text when I could construct a city—from the smallest groove in a column to a coliseum—from instinct alone. And yet what had happened with the whistling reminded me deep down, that it had not always been this way. I had lived a life before this. I was a person, with a name. There were other people, like the statues I had created, but that moved about like myself. In this world there was movement I remembered! It was not like the ripples of water, or the falling of rocks when released, or like the Sun in the sky, but of a different kind entirely. It was unpredictable, a kind that didn’t exist here except perhaps from myself alone. I had come from some other place, some other world. My time there had been short, far shorter than my time here, but it had been important.

Even when the words had ceased to have any meaning I still protected them. If I needed to expand the city in a certain direction that would cover the text, I made sure to move the text, line by line, to another place. But when I did this it was not conscious. I didn’t understand what the text meant, only that this squiggle or that dot went here or there, and as soon as it was transferred it lapsed from my memory. I stared intently at a section of the text, trying to absorb its meaning. At first the symbols meant nothing, but slowly, sounds took shape within my mind. I read the following:

A point is that of which there is no part.

I couldn’t understand it’s meaning, and walked down along the path to another line. I tried again:

And of the trilateral figures: an equilateral triangle is that having three equal sides, an isosceles that having only two equal sides, and a scalene that having three unequal sides.

The lines were legible, but made no sense. I could tell they meant something—went somewhere—but what I did not know. Frustrated, I walked for some time, perhaps a mile, to another array of text. I picked another row at random and read:

Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master’s whistle. Blow, till thou burst thy wind, if room enough!

It meant nothing to me. I lay down once again, taking care to not obstruct any of the text. I did not know what to do. I sat for a time, thinking and not thinking. Then it appeared to me (at least in a partial sense, fractured into parts across the conscious mind) that the human mind was like a reservoir. A reservoir could hold much water. But as I had learned, beyond a point it reached capacity and spilled over.

I had endured for a time far greater than any human being ever had. The reservoir was full. Was it any wonder that the occupations of the current had pushed out the old? It had happened slowly, over centuries, but the whistle I heard in the temple exposed a festering wound.

Day 266,332

I began by reading and rereading the text I had written. The ability to read returned quickly, but the meaning within the text took some time. The meaning of passages escaped me. When I could scrape off some coherence from the text, I found it quickly displaced by the next line. Walking over to another section helped even less.

Day 266,567

Eventually time morphed chance into an eventuality. One of the passages discussed architecture, and its meaning directly connected to some of the buildings I created. I had found an island of coherence. It was a start. I began to decipher not just the meaning of the text, but how it was laid out, how the subject changed as I moved across the rows. Much of it I already understood, just in less specific language. What I didn’t understand was sometimes something I could learn, but oftentimes things were beyond me. It was hard to tell what exactly was simply beyond my ability and what merely needed a further grasp of knowledge to unlock. Concerning architecture for example, I knew that I could construct arches or columns, but that a flat roof of sufficient size would forever be beyond me, unless I could discover an equivalent to mortar made from basalt, water, and salt.

Day 270,317

It didn’t take long before I began to understood again. It was like a return to cognizance, but I recognized there was much to do.

In addition to relearning my writing, I figured that this process might occur again. If the human mind began to forget after a few hundred years—and I theorized I would live for much longer than that, perhaps infinitely—it would make sense to organize the text to aid in relearning.

Instead of simply writing in salt, I began etching the text into stone. The process was painful and slow, but it allowed me to fit the text into a smaller area, and more importantly, the stone was much more durable than salt.

As I read, I categorized the text by meaning. I determined there were two categories: The information I could relate directly to my world, the Canon—what I could prove, test, and apply, and then there was everything else, the Apocrypha. And for everything contained within the first category, there was a thousand lines of the latter. It was still important to categorize both. The Apocryphal texts were often stories, advanced sciences, interpretations of things lost to me. While they didn’t help practically, I found that they sometimes helped interpret or connect topics previously foreign to me.

Eventually I developed a third category, the Methodical. When a connection or idea came to me, I would document my thought process. I would write interpretations, summaries, and curriculums. My thought was that if in the future I found myself in a more confused state of consciousness, I could follow a sequence of study to rediscover anything I needed. Even if there was more than a lifetime of knowledge contained in this text, there would still be a path between it all.

Day 60,244,197

Sixty million two hundred and forty four thousand one hundred and ninety seven. Six, zero, two, four, four, one, nine, seven.

I do not know what this means anymore. It is a number, yes. Time and time again I have been reminded it is a number. And even when I forget what such a thing is, I never forget it specifically. Nor have I ever forgot to count it. It is the only constant in my life.

I can’t say that my time here has been particularly stressful. One would think that the brain, upon absorbing a hundred and sixty five thousand years of stimulus—of sunsets, and sunrises, of uncountable footsteps, and thoughts—would explode under the sheer pressure of it all. But as I wrote some hundred thousand years ago, the mind is like a reservoir, and when it reaches capacity, the excess simply spills over out of the top.

This is not to say that I haven’t had my breaks. There have been years, decades, maybe even continuous centuries, where I ambled about in a frenzied haze, unaware of anything. And there have been centuries more where I did nothing but annihilate myself repeatedly, day by day, only to reform and continue again.

But the system I created works. At some point I always return to the city, which itself has taken on many forms now. I stumble clumsily from building to building, until I come upon a great wall of text, though not any wall in particular. Like some natural law I begin to glean it’s meaning, which takes me down the path of bootstrapping my mind once again to a level of coherence.

The process is not always the same. Usually I refine The Methodical, tweak the curriculums or add my critiques or interpretations, but in general I recognize what paths I have been down before and vary my time across the paths less travelled.

All these iterations are myself, though they are likewise all independent. What is common among all of them is the veneration they give to the knowledge itself, to the Canon, Apocrypha, and Methodical alike, as well as to the counting of the numeral which now sits at Sixty million two hundred and forty four thousand one hundred and ninety seven. Six, zero, two, four, four, one, nine, seven.

In some of the earlier text there is talk of hallucinations, visions, or apparitions. They’re said to come in visual form: a blurry figure, a face, or a picture of a room. Other times they’re auditory: a voice, or a whistle in some sing-song familiar tune. From what I can surmise a true apparition has not been experienced in quite some time, perhaps several tens of thousand years.

Among the caucus of myself—communicating over millenniums—it is largely believed that these are echoes of the past, stubborn reminiscences deep in the recesses of the brain. A small minority, though growing, instead believes them to be Angels from Heaven, soon to release us from this place. Perhaps they are one in the same. Nevertheless it is said that there is—or was—another world. A world altogether unlike this one, filled with individuals communicating not through time but in space, and individuals in the true sense, without similar reflection in the water on the shore. It is said that movement takes place there of a different variety, that things move when not moved by one of the prime movers: Myself, the Sun, and the Natural forces of Gravity and Water. How curious indeed!

By rough estimation, an iteration of the self completes roughly once every one thousand years. At this point, the structure of the brain collapses under itself and begins to gives way to a Metanoia, or “transformation of mind and soul”. By my calculation and from direct documentation, there have been roughly 170 individuals within this process. In some cases, careful meditation over a century can induce the process prematurely, where the mind is wiped clean through dedicated action of thought. I have been current for nearly five hundred years. By this time, when the basic learnings are near completion, an iteration takes on a thesis, or some definite expansion within a domain of knowledge. I have decided for mine to expand our breadth in one of the ordinal directions, perhaps South West, which has only been travelled to a paltry one hundred years.

Day 151,494,431

The Great Caucus, it would appear, has fallen into disarray.

After a remedial study between the Ordinal towns to the North West and and North East, as well as a short sabbatical in the idyllic town of Brine, I determined to witness the city within my lifetime. The work done by the scribes of the 130th millennium has expanded the libraries of the North West and East towns to a respectable degree, boasting expanded sections of texts and commentary of all variety, but it is said that the City still holds text within its great halls found nowhere else.

After making all the necessary preparations I began my long journey along the Latitudinal highway. With haste I would be there in as little as sixty years, where I hoped to begin my thesis on the Sibilus, a famous commentary on hallucinations said to have been heard in early antiquity.

And yet when I arrived, there was a most horrible sight. Several sections of the city center had collapsed. It was not unheard of of course for buildings to collapse. Indeed, redundancy had been built into all aspects of work, and if one area of knowledge was destroyed, it was likely written a hundred times over in other locations.

But what had happened here was no random act of structural damage. This had been done with purpose and intent. I ran from ruin to ruin, between toppled builds and towers. I crouched down by a wall, between a statue still standing and another cracked in half by the toppling of a pillar. On its surface was text, crossed and marked over, now devoid of its original meaning. Thousands of years of knowledge, lost! Some iterant, some abhorrent, in a great lapse of reason, had done this. It had been painstaking, taken perhaps a thousand years, but such an effort was nothing compared to what would be required to replace it—if it were even possible!

I sat there and I wept among the ruins. The sun began to set, casting a great shadow over the dead city. And yet there was something worse. What was most horrible of all was the realization that the aberrant had been me. At some time in the past between reconstructions of the mind I had come to the conclusion that this needed to be done. These very hands, which had painstakingly constructed every brick, every column, had torn it down—knowing full well the implication.

I was disconsolate, but eventually brought myself to a dreamless sleep, waking instantaneously to the sun rising overhead, and began gathering the stones and piecing them together, to see if I could read their words.

Day 206,479,126

The Great Caucus, after much deliberation, has finally come to a conclusion after nearly fifty thousand years of discussion.

It is no surprise that we are under distress. We are and have been under attack. Our Temples are under attack. Our Palaces and Villas are under attack. Our statues are under attack. It is an assault not in desire of the destruction of our homes and basalt structures, but in the greater essential idea which governs their construction and stability. Time and time again we find that our towns and cities destroyed, writings etched for a thousand years from the Canon, Apocrypha, and Methodical alike are being torn down and replaced by bare stone and smothered salt.

It is a distress of a type not seen since the times of antiquity and pre antiquity. It is a distress from which emerges a great loss of ability, and while the process of loss, discovery, and learning is built directly into our robust system, it is theorized there there is critical point of knowledge that, when lost, will wholly prevent recovery of knowledge.

According to our best estimations, up to 27% of the Canon has been lost to aberrant behaviors, accompanied by a 10% and 39% loss of the Apocrypha and Methodical respectively. These numbers are not meant to trouble you without reason, but they are stated with an air of seriousness. What is occurring is a deep corruption that threatens the great essence of our existence.

Most importantly, the source of this destruction comes from no outside mover. Instead, it comes from within. The enemy is seen in your reflection, his weapons found in your arms. This threat is not banal nor vulgar. Terrifyingly, it is the House itself. And if the actions of its members constitute a majority of its effects, then what we have here is not merely an assault, but a change in direction.

This reflects a deep unease among the iterations, which has heretofore gone mostly unrepresented. But it is surely represented now, and so actions must be taken to quell this drive of a most unrecoverable nature.

And so we come to our conclusion.

It has been decided that a great project will be undertaken. It stems from underlying research in an obscure part of the Apocrypha, concerning the subjects of Cybernetics, Logic, Computation, and more. A computation machine is to be built, one of a size and complexity never before seen. The computation is to be simple, adhering to a simple pattern, and with maximum redundancy. Even a simpleton could operate it, according to these basic instructions, and redundancy would ensure that no error could conceivably occur.

The construction of this machine will be relatively quick, estimates sit at only a hundred years, less than a lifetime. But once built, our obligation to it will be eternal. It will simulate a universe, containing all we know of the Canon, Apocrypha, and Methodical. Its rules, though simple in action, will account for unimaginable complexity. And eventually an eternity within its bounds will be computed. Step by step, rock by rock.

We cannot estimate how long this process will take, or if it will ever end. The interaction of a single electron, a particle discussed in the Apocrypha, over a miniscule instance of time, would take a thousand years. But if there is one resource we have, it is time.

Day 146,935,002,058,017,591,085,018,502,105,791,019,222,052,052,104. +/- 3

I awoke from a dreamless sleep to the rising of the sun. I looked forward, at the Mountains off in the distance. I wonder if anyone had ever bothered to walk all the way there?

In the other direction, I looked towards the shore. It stretched out infinitely, reflecting that blue sheet of sky and the few whisps of cloud. Down the corridor of land between them—as the Sun flies—was an array of rocks in simple patterns, stretching infinitely in each direction.

I went to the one in front of me, and instinctively I picked it up and set it down a few paces to the right. Then, according to this pattern, I grabbed another one and moved it over once to the right. It was satisfying. Enjoyable, though I knew not what it was for. I continued along, rearranging rocks according to intuition.

And then, just for a moment I stopped. Somewhere in the distance there was a sound, a whistle in some sing song tune. I looked around for the source of the sound, though there was nothing to see in any direction but the Mountains, the Shore, and the pattern of rocks. Just as quick as it came, it left. I smiled, at nothing in particular, and returned to my work.