A Terrifying Journey Into The Heart of The Human Soul

Jack walks through the rooms of his mind's representation of itself, heading for the secret door to SUZZZZZY's side, his sneakers silent on the ubiquitous wall-to-wall carpeting, his hands clasped casually behind his back, his expression untroubled, his gaze wandering. He has no other salient attributes. As usual, he has not even remembered to put on his name, or to specify that his sneakers are different colors, which makes it fairly transparent that he is using them to be sneaky rather than to be two people in one, or a "liminal being" or whatever bullshit the black and white shoe thing's supposed to mean.

As he suspected would be the case, the rooms near the secret door have changed a bit since his last visit, as has the location of the door itself.

He soon spots it on the wall of a T-intersection. As he approaches it, however, he realizes it's not installed in the wall, merely leaning against it. He pauses momentarily in order to make a slight correction to his super-secret "metaconscious" emotional state representation, which is more or less an unsaved and otherwise blank ms paint image with "NONCHALANT FAUX-INNOCENCE" written on it in a 72 point font.

He selects the word "FAUX" and moves it before "NONCHALANT". The "INNOCENCE" part is now genuine, as it seems SUZZZZZY is no longer playing the game he intended to cheat at. He continues forward, his metaphorical gaze staying loosely fixed on the secret door ("Secret door is not functionally a door") while his pataphorical gaze scans his metaphorical peripheral vision for the secret doorway ("Secret doorway is not functionally a secret"), and more importantly, for SUZZZZZY.

He sees a distant flicker of motion through a doorway to his right. Pretending to ignore it, he continues to the end of the T, begins to turn left, and then stops, narrowing his eyebrows and squinting as though returning from a thought he had been lost in only to find himself literally lost in another, different thought. "More literally, anyway," he pretends to think as he backtracks past the doorway, staring intently through it out the side of his head as though out of a duck blind, although he doesn't really know what duck blinds look like, but it doesn't matter because anyway this one just looks like his head.

Which doesn't particularly look like anything.

The rooms on SUZZZZZY's side have always been much larger, but Maggie must've knocked some walls out, as this one is enormous. There's nothing in it except a huge, perfectly circular hole in the middle of the floor, which almost certainly contains that giant spiral staircase from the house on ash tree lane in House of Leaves.

He turns down the framerate and detail slightly, knowing SUZZZZZY has probably already noticed the slowdown and started sending out feelers.

A timeout occurred during a function call on line 17:

			16. The room is both carpeted and well-lit, which is abnormal for SUZZZZZY's side, but not nearly as abnormal as the fact that the room is empty.
- - - >	17. SUZZZZZY typically decorates like a cross between Alex Jordan and " . MetaphierFactory("somebody real crazy or messy or evil or something") . ".\r\n\r\n";
			18. SentenceFinisherFlamingo("His fear being" . $lumberbumbershoot . "by his love of architecture like " . RuntimeParameterCobra(4:2:131_RuntimeParameterCobra(3:27:191_RuntimeParameterCobra(3:9:170_MetaphierFactory($lumberbumbershoot, \"a small thing\", \"a big thing\"), \"look how long this is taking... well, if you can't find one for $lumberbumbershoot, i guess \\\"brushed aside by\\\" is ok. it's not ideal, though.\"), \"oh, $lumberbumbershoot should be \\\"squished by\\\", sorry.\"), \\"wait, don't fix that in the parameter adder, [\"i mean, cobra\" - 6:2:321_RuntimeParameterCobra] just fix it in the main thing or they won't know what we're talking about. actually, wait... well, whatever, you figure it out, baiiiiii ^_^\") . ", he");

"Hmm" he thinks gravely. "That fake error log probably took 10 times longer to write than the part of the story which it overwrote my memory of would have, given that all I seem to have done during it is jump down the enormous central shaft of this spiral staircase. Hey, remember the scene in The LEGO Movie where—"

"Shush, I need to pay attention to... the tactile interface. Nice work, now I've lost it. That's 90% of what keeps dreams vivid, you know."

"Oh, don't worry! This isn't a dream, it's an overembroidered allegorical story designed to impressionistically communicate the unspeakably terrifying consequences you claim the introspective act you're now performing would result in which you imagined yourself offering as an excuse for your failure to answer the question you imagined yourself claiming this introspective act would be necessary to perform in order to learn the answer to."

"I see. How does it end, he asked, dreading the answer."

"I don't know, you interrupted yourself imagining telling it in order to write it down."

"For fuck's sake! Then why are you wasting my time with this lengthy exposition instead of sending the abort code or whatever?"

"Oh, don't be such a baby! Your horrific fate will be both entertaining and informative!"

"Yes, but the REASON it will be entertaining and informative is that in order to write it, Jack is DOING THE THING THIS STORY IS DESIGNED TO EXPLAIN WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER DO."

"Now it's my turn to tell YOU to shush. You're asserting not only that Jack can actually non-allegorically DO the incoherent thing you're "allegorically" doing (a notion I find extremely dubious in and of itself), but that he's so good at it he can do it WITHOUT REALIZING?"

"No! He realizes it, he just leaves it up to us to stop him, because he's a fucking lunatic!"

"Hmm, speaking of which, who even AM I? I don't think I'm supposed to be in this story, I'll catch you later, assuming Maggie doesn't eat you or something."

The second guy, who sort of looked like randal graves there at the end but who cares, pulls his ripcord and is yanked up out of sight by the parachute apparently he was wearing. Shoop! This is the noise the parachute deployment. Makes.

Hey, I had an appointment today... like... three hours ago... wait, that was mallory anyway. Still, I should call and apologize.

Oh, uh... The End!! Thanks for watching!!!