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Apr 18th, 2016
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  1.  
  2. You have no reason to trust me, but before we begin, I want you to know that I love you.
  3.  
  4. Prólogos
  5. You must dismantle your notions of singularity. The simplest way to go about this is to demonstrate that 1 = 0.999… I will offer two proofs to this point.
  6. 1/9 = 0.111…
  7. 9 x 1/9 = 9 x 0.111…
  8. 1 = 0.999…
  9. or
  10. x = 0.999…
  11. 10x = 9.999… multiply by 10
  12. 10x = 9 + 0.999…
  13. 10x = 9 + x definition of x
  14. 9x = 9 subtract x
  15. x = 1 divide by 9
  16. We are each more than ourselves.
  17. Like all tragic heroes before you, you were given a great gift by supernatural beings. You did not understand this endowment. You never thought you needed to. One sip of a magic potion – the Blackwater – and you could go anywhere your heart desired. So you gallivanted about with your confrére, slipping in and out of the Void as you pleased to chase each other all across the Breadth: through storms of glass and acid seas; through Zions and Edens where you could have surrendered your pursuit and lived a life free of struggle.
  18. Bestowal from heathen gods promised you closure that was never yours. Interlopers trespassed upon realms to which they did not belong with powers they had no right to, and now have made you an unwitting accomplice in their transgressions. You are in grave danger. Like the heroes before you, false idols have set you on a fate worse than death. All your efforts will push machinate you out of attachment, aversion, and ignorance, and towards the horrors of comprehension.
  19. Only I can save you.
  20. Here in the Void, I have built a machine. The base and foundation are lapis lazuli; the rest of the frame is made of ivory, adorned with fractals plated in gold. Rare stones of vibrant hue festoon the lateral beams in rows. A triangle erects from each side, and a beam connects them at the apex. Centered in this beam is a massive lever of polished titanium. The front end of the lever is ornamented with a marble bust in my image, bent backwards over the beam and tied down to the base where the back end of the lever extends from a roller in the frame.
  21. I have built this machine to illustrate a point. Its function is exceedingly simple. The rope that holds the potential energy within the tension of the lever is connected to a device that measures the value of conserved quantities in the dynamics of a theoretical or actual system based on quantum physics run by a supercomputer that parameterizes the intrinsic angular momentum of a given proton. Every interval of t, the spin value of a fresh proton is measured. If the number of possible super-positions the proton can inhabit before completing its angular momentum is even, then nothing will happen; if the number is odd, the device will cut the rope, unleashing all the tension stored in the great lever, discharging my seventy-two teeth into your skull, eviscerating the upper half of your torso, snapping the entire machine under its own strength, hurdling itself into the air, beautiful, dead, and free.
  22. Are you alive, or are you dead?
  23.  
  24. Parodos
  25. Cognizance comes in waves when falling from the Void. Nascent details whisper in the back of his brain. Apocryphal realities flicker like fire in the wind. He remembers her first. He remembers a sea of golden thread crashing against a linen shore. The German’s took her brother, illness took her cattle, and the bottle took her father; all the farm hands up and scattered when the going got hard. She was dragging a hundred-fifty pound cattle-drawn plough across a hundred-twenty acres when he found her. She taught him some French, he taught her some English. He called her his ingénue. She cut a lock of her hair when they changed his station and stuck him in the trenches. He would curl up in the mud, hold the lock to his nose, and hyperventilate as the shells rocked the earth like a cradle. No matter how much blood, sweat, or excrement got on it, it always smelled like her.
  26. He remembers her lying dead in their bedroom. Lifeless eyes like the marble of my grand machine, mouth draping open and nightgown hovering like a funeral curtain, breathless chest lying limp in the arms of a monster. Then he remembers you, the man who killed her. Eyes full of fear and loathing – like a feral dog – hidden behind blankets of gauss and blood. You held her as Mary held Christ in the Eleventh Station, your imbrued hands smearing her hair with puss and bile. He remembers hate, and it conflagrates every inch of the Void. He doesn’t want to think about this. He wants to remember her again, but he can’t. He is in my realm, and he only sees what I will him to.
  27. So clever, he thought himself, sneaking about behind my back. But I have no blind spots, and there is no time in the Void. With each of these little infinities, I make my animus known. He has no mouth with which to scream, so the Void is quiet. One could say that it is empty, but emptiness requires space to be unfilled, so it could just as easily be considered full. This, however, would beg the question, full with what?
  28.  
  29. Epeisódio
  30. Consciousness is the first to apparate. More accurately, stimulus causes the consciousness to become noticed. Signals come to exist, but communicate nothing. Next comes light, swirling about the infinite canvas like smoke in the wind. Sound and color separate from the emanation as he crosses the precipice of being. Self-awareness arrives last.
  31. His name is Max Moravec, and he is in my temple. He coughs out a lump of something black. His throat is always sore after each accouchement. It takes him a moment to remember why he came here. Neurological entropy is one of the Blackwater’s main side effects, among impotence and spontaneous phlebotomy.
  32. Witness my beautiful machine, quantum-computing endlessly the Infinite Regress. Each individual piece is made of a unique stone from a different point in the Breadth. It’s radiant oscillations croon through the halls. Mirrors enclose the temple, stretching the magnificence of the mainframe – golds as brilliant as the sun, reds rich like blood, whites purer than snow – outward, twisting in its recursions.
  33. The temple is circumscribed in a five-sided cube with twenty cubes around each vertex. Each wall is a perfect mirror; at least that’s how Max first rationalizes the mise en abyme, until he realizes none of his reflections are facing the right way. He cocks his gun to release a bullet from the chamber and throws it one of his pastiches. It lands by his feet. He picks it up and puts it back in the clip.
  34. Max takes a step. There are now three icosahedra around each edge, and twelve around each vertex. With another step, the tessellations shift again: four dodecahedra around each edge, each vertex surrounded by eight dodecahedra in octahedral arrangement. After the next, five around each edge, twenty per vertex. The nature of each recursion changes in relation to his three dimensional position, so there is no way of knowing when he’ll find you. This will not stop him. That wave of possibility has long since collapsed.
  35. STRIP THE FLESH
  36. It had been, relative to Max, less than an hour since he left McLoach’s. He came to pickup his usual order – three eight-ounce bottles of the Blackwater – and told the barmaid about a time shortly after they had first met. Max had gone back to New York to look for his wife. The barmaid listened to him as she cleaned glasses that were never dirty, looking up from her task only occasionally.
  37. “I don’t know how I didn’t think of it sooner. It took a couple jumps, sure. It’s easy to find another traveler, on account the sort of smoke like trail we leave. Finding regular folk, it’s all just guesswork, trial and error. Anyways, all I had to do was find a sequence that didn’t diverge from mine until after I married, dispose of my doppelganger, and slip back comfortably into my old life.”
  38. “So what happened?” the barmaid asked.
  39. Max put a fag between his lips and frisked himself. “Timber?”
  40. “Yeah. Right side.”
  41. Max rechecked his right pocket and found her matches.
  42. “I don’t know. The whole thing felt weird from the get go. I spent two days wandering the streets looking for our apartment. None of the streets looked right. I kept grabbing newspapers and checking the date to make sure I was in the right place. Everyone kept staring, too. My clothes were from another planet in a galactic super cluster that didn’t exist in that sequence. I was all smoked when I stumbled by it. Started waiting for me to get home.”
  43. Max gazed out the window into the darkness. The vacuity used to bother him. He was afraid that some immutable force of nature would command him to fill the void, compelling him to leap through the glass and fall forever into the black sky. His ingénue called it L’appel du vide; the little voice that whispers when you look over a cliff’s edge to jump.
  44. “Then she walked right past the alley I was hiding in. I didn’t get off my beat till a few hours, so I followed her. Followed her all the way to the market and back, sweating bullets the entire time. Kept wanting to say something, anything, but I didn’t know what. I wanted to sprint up to her, grab her hair and smell it. I wanted to put my hand around her head and squeeze and scream until my lungs bled.
  45. Out of the blue I realize: I’ve never met this woman before in my life. If she recognized me, she would be mistaking me for someone else. It wasn’t her. She was dead. So I just left.”
  46. Max flicked his cigarette and watched the ember twirl into eternity. He knew he wasn’t in McLoach’s; McLoach’s was a copper bar on 3rd and 7th. Sometimes this place is the old precinct, and she’s the chief of police. Sometimes it’s his old school, and she’s a teacher. Sometimes it’s the trench. All he knows is that one day he tackled an intruder out the window of his 5th floor apartment, and instead of hitting the ground he woke up here, wherever this is.
  47. The last time he was here, her ribcage was open. Max knew it would be futile to warn her, but he tried anyways. “That’s not how it works.” She told him. “If you saw it happen, then it’s already happened. Besides, I’ve always known that’s how it has to end. I can’t stay here forever. He’s going to have to kill me eventually.”
  48. Max sunk into his stool. He had grown fond of her over the course of his idée fixe, despite having no idea what she was. Like him, she didn’t speak much – they both knew there was hardly ever anything worth saying – except today.
  49. “We wanted to help.” The barmaid lied through her disgusting, rotten teeth. “I came from a world of light: absolute percipience. It was beautiful, and everyone was happy. We wanted to help others see the way we saw. So we made pilgrimage to unlit dimensions, hoping to elevate the inhabiting sentience.”
  50. Lies. All lies.
  51. “But when I arrived, there was… I still don’t know. It was like a fog, and… someone was already here. I don’t know where she came from, but…”
  52. LIES. ALL LIES.
  53. “I forgot what I came to teach.” She resumed. “My closest attempt was the Blackwater: chemically induced apotheosis. I chose a handful of sentience’s to test it on. One by one I watched them go mad and get lost in the void.”
  54. IT WILL DIE ALONE AND AFRAID AND I WILL LAUGH.
  55. “Then he arrived out of the blue, eyes wild like the devil. He had stumbled upon the drink by ill-fortune and wanted more. I obliged.”
  56. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.” Max mumbled, putting the bottles in his satchel.
  57. The barmaid was quiet for a moment before she spoke. “I did, though. I knew. I knew exactly who he was, and what he was going to do to me, to your wife, to you. It was the way things had to be. I know you don’t understand right now. You’re not supposed to. Maybe you will at the end, but until then, I am truly sorry. We just have to trust the crocodile.”
  58. DO IT DO IT DO IT.
  59. Max forgave her and lived forever within the walls of her tesseract. She would contract her light, Max would fill the vacuum with details, and they would explore these new worlds they had made together, talking endlessly about life and death, singing songs, making love, and enjoying each other’s company long into the twilight of forever after in perfect metastability.
  60. SALT THE WOUND
  61. In the Temple of Infinite Regress, Max trudges onward, his limbs being flung before him by ethereal marionette string. Like Baron Munchhausen, he drags himself and his steed through the mire by his own hair. Each step paints the stylobate of my temple with pagan blood. Max finds you reassembling my perfect machine. Wires and gears and pipes and jewels are strewn about the marble floor. You are almost complete.
  62. You grin at Max with sickening rapprochement. “Do you see it friend?” You scream, spitting black, eyes full of fire. “Do you see the Glory? Halle-fucking-lujah!”
  63. He notices you’re in the throes of relative functionality. Max was never as comfortable with these violent fits of lucidity as with your modus operandi of full cognitive-retardation.
  64. “If you plug me, you’ll never know why I killed her.”
  65. Max puts one in your stomach; you hit the wall like a sack of bricks and laugh maniacally.
  66. “This is what the crocodile wants. You know that, right?”
  67. Max glances at your jerry-rigged contraption.
  68. “You like it? I made just it for you.”
  69. Max puts the gun against your temple.
  70. “It can undo everything.”
  71. Max pulls back the hammer.
  72. “It can make it so she never died.”
  73. BURN THE EARTH
  74. He remembers the last time he saw you.
  75. In the distance, the ribcage of a great beast decomposed. Half eaten by glass, half drowned in the acid sea, it protruded with pathetic desperation, as if denial were the pit of Lazarus. Max traced its spine and gazed at the spires of bone and rotting flesh, and the bone gazed back with one hundred thousand eyes. Each towering rib was turned in votive and praise of his name and cause.
  76. You were in a large room. If you were still capable of such thought, you would’ve wondered if you were in a supermarket or a room that used to be a supermarket. Would the original identity of the room linger invisible within its walls were you to remove all the food, shelves, and registers? At that point a new observer would have no reason to qualify the structure as such, but does his ignorance affect the inherent nature of the building? You would have concluded, at the very least, that the room you are in is less of a supermarket than it used to be, even though being or not being a supermarket is a binary categorization.
  77. The tips of these thoughts rippled the Blackwater in your swirling in your head and you bled again. You had no criteria for what constitutes an acceptable amount of bleeding, but that would’ve surpassed it were you to ever establish one. The nomial status of this place was irrelevant. It had food and no people. You think this is all you’ve ever asked of me (IT’S NOT).
  78. Sometimes you remember what your life used to be and what you’ve done, and you know you have to kill yourself before you forget again, but you never do. It’s better this way.
  79. You were playing the game I taught you:
  80. A button turns the music on and off alternatively. Press the button, wait one unit of time, then press the button again. Each time the button is pressed, wait half the previous interval of time until two units of time have passed.
  81. Is the music on or off?
  82. You could never hear it anyways.
  83. Max found you repeatedly slamming your fist into a pulp against a fuse box while screeching toneless melodies to yourself, bleeding through an inch of gauss, mouth hanging open, standing in your own defecation. If Max were still capable of such feelings, he would have pitied you.
  84. He’d have pitied himself, too. An entire life thrown away in pursuit of this, in pursuit of you, trying to end a life that was never worth living in the first place. You stared at him, confused, until he walked away.
  85. PRAISE THE LORD
  86. “Of course you’d fucking shoot me. Always doing what you’re told, like a good little doggy. You know, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that there’s something inherently, psychologically wrong with anyone who choses to be a fucking copper. All you flatties are the same.”
  87. “You ruined my life,” Max said.
  88. “You ruined your life. All I did was kill a broad. Guess what? People kill people. Shit happens!”
  89. Max tries to grab you by your hair, but it comes loose like hard weeds in soft soil. He lock crumbles in his hands. He reaches for a cigarette. The pack is soaked with blood. “You said you could bring her back.”
  90. “No. No, no, no. I said I can make it so she never died. Different.” You signal for a smoke. Max glowers like a child. “You used to be fun; you know that? Do you know where we are? Do you have any idea what this is? Just look around! This is everything! All of it! It’s all a fucking math equation! The sequence of infinite regress!” Your voice echoes from boundless copies through boundless corridors. Blood pools down to your feet.
  91. “I don’t care,” Max said.
  92. “You will. I know what you really want.”
  93. “That’s never been a secret.”
  94. “Au contraire, mon ami. You don’t want her back, and you don’t want me dead. You’ve passed plenty of chances on both, friend. You want to answer l’appel du vide, but the crocodile won’t let you kill yourself until you’ve had your revenge and completed the circle. You are trapped in impasse. N’est ce-pas?”
  95. “Who taught you that phrase? L’appel du vide?”
  96. “There are better questions for you to ask, Monsieur Moravec. Such as, whose blood are you covered in?”
  97. BLEACH THE MIND
  98. Max will be only six when he sees the polypheme woman through distant fog. She will hold a torch to light the way for his exodus of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Vomiting for nine days straight from constant storms and a lack of constitution, his parents will keep his spirits up by telling him about all the schools in America, where he could go to play with other children and learn all the things a brilliant man needs to know. They will teach him to be anything he wants to be – a doctor, a lawyer, a politician – and he will do great things and help countless people. A year later, a rotary gear in the factory will take most of his left fingers, since it’s cheaper to leave the machines running during maintenance.
  99. They will give Max a gun and put him back on a boat. He was told that there is glory and honor in war, but he will find neither in the Lys River. Days will pass waiting in a trench until a man he’s never spoken to orders fifty children to sprint blindly across a field, expecting only a fraction of them to survive. It will suddenly dawn on him that this is all incredibly stupid. Who was he fighting for? What is he defending? He doesn’t even live here. He’ll look around and realize he doesn’t know any of these people. None of this will matter. No one will remember the Battle of Lys, and if they did, so what?
  100. Max will decide to go home. He will drop his gun, leave the trench, and walk east to the Netherlands. He will wait until this whole mess blows over, return to France with his beloved, and spend the rest of his days working the farm. But nothing will happen. He will command his hands to let go his rifle, but they won’t. When the order comes in to go over the top, he will beg his legs not to, but they will betray him. Max will realize that he was never in control, that the coincidence between the desires of the ego and the actions of the body occurred entirely by happenstance. Once the discrepancy is observed, the illusion of control can never return.
  101. Max will watch himself run over the trenches again and again. They will put him on another boat, and he will again sail to New York. They will give him another gun – and a badge – and he will hurt more people with a sang-froid veneer. Then, someone will give him a little black bottle, and he will hurt even more people. He will hurt you, he will hurt her, and he will hurt himself. He will scream, and no one will hear him. Forever. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile.
  102. I am not a crocodile
  103. I am not a crocodile
  104. I AM NOT A CROCODILE
  105. i am not a crocodile
  106. I am not a crocodile
  107. I am not a crocodile
  108. I am not a crocodile
  109. I am not a crocodile
  110. I am not a crocodile
  111. I am not a crocodile
  112. I am not a crocodile
  113. I am not a crocodile
  114. I am not a crocodile
  115. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I amnotacrocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile—’ I am not a crocodile ‘—I am not.’
  116. A crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocidole . I cam not a crodciocle. I am not a crodicol. I am not a crocodile. I am not a roccfrodile. I am not a crocodile, I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocidle.
  117. ‘I am not a,’ crocidle I am. ‘Not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile, I am not a crocodile, I am not a crocodile.’
  118. ‘I am not a crocodile.’
  119. ‘I, am not.’
  120. A crocodile I am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile I am.
  121. ‘Not a crocodile I—am not a crocodile I am not,’ a crocodile.
  122. ‘I am not a crocodile I am. Not a crocodile I.’
  123. ‘Am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile. I am not. A crocodile I am not a crocodile I—am not a crocodile I am, not a crocodile, I am not a crocodile I am. I am NOT A CROCODILE I AM NOT A—CROCODILE I AM NOT.’
  124. A CROCODILE I AM NOT A CROCODILE I AM NOT A CROCIDLE I AM NOT, A CROCODILE I AM.
  125. ‘NOT A CROCODILE I AM?’ NOT A CROCODILE.
  126. I AM NOT A CROCODILE IAMNOTACROCODILE I ‘AM NOT’ A CROCODILE, I AM NOT A.
  127. ‘CROCODILE I AM NOT A crocodile I AM NOT A CROCODILE I.’ AM NOT. ‘A CROCODILE I AM NOT A CROCODILE I AM NOT.’
  128. A CROCODILE I AM NOT A CROCODILE I AM NOT A CROCODILE I AM NOT A CROCODILE I AM NOT A CROCODILE I AM NOT A CROCODILE I AM NOT A CROCODILE. I AM NOT A CROCODILE
  129. I am not a crocodile.
  130. I am not a crocodile.
  131. I am not a corocdile.
  132. I ma not a crocodile.
  133. I am not a crocodile.
  134. I am not a crocodile.
  135. I am not a croodile.
  136. IAM. NOT – A CROCODILE
  137. I am not a cRocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not, a crocodile.
  138. I AM NOT
  139. A crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am
  140.  
  141. NOT A CROCODILE
  142. I am not a crocodile. I am not
  143.  
  144. A CROCODILE
  145. (I am not a)
  146. Crocodile I am not a
  147.  
  148. crocodile I am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile.
  149.  
  150. I am—NOT—a crocodile. I AM not, a crocodile? I! am not? A CROCODILE! I am not a… crocodile… I am not a croodile. I am not a crococdile. I am not
  151. a crocodile. I, am—not a? crocodiel? I am not a crocodile! I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am NOT a CROCODILE. I am. Not a crocodile! I am not… a crocodile?
  152. i
  153. am
  154. not
  155. a
  156. crocodile
  157. i am
  158. not a
  159. crocodile i
  160. am not
  161. a crocodile i
  162. am not a
  163. crocodile i am
  164. not a crocodile I
  165. am not a crocodile
  166. i am not a crocodile
  167.  
  168. IAMNOTACROCODILEIAMNOTACROCODILEIAMNOTACROCODILEIAMNOTACROCODILEIAMNOTACROCODILEIAMNOTACRIOCDICOLEIAMNOTNACROCIDLEIAMNOTACROCIDLECOIAIAMCNOTACROCIDLE
  169.  
  170.  
  171. I am not
  172. a
  173. crocodile i am not a
  174. crocidile.
  175. i. am. not. a. crocodile.
  176.  
  177. I am not a crocodile. I not am a crocodile. I am not a crocodile.
  178. I am not na crocodile. I am not na crocodile. I am not a crocodile.
  179. I am not a dcrocodile. I am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile.
  180. I am not a crocdodile. I am not a crocodicle. I am not a crococdile.
  181. I am no ta crocodile. I am not a crocidle. i am not a crocodile.
  182. i am not a crocodile. i am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile.
  183. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I a mnot a crocodile
  184. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile.
  185. I am not a crocodile. I amnot a crocodile. I am not a crocodile.
  186. I am not a crocodile. I am not a croodile. I am not a crocodile.
  187. I AM NOT A CROCODILE. I AM NOT A CROCDILE. I A M NOT A CROCODILE
  188. I MA NOT A CROCODILE . I AM NOT A CROCODILE. I AM NOT A CROCODILE.
  189. I AM NOT A CROCODILE. I AM NOT A CROCODILE. I AM NOT A CRCODILE.
  190. I AM NOT A CROCODILE. I AM NOT A CROCIDLE . I AM NOT A CROCODILE.
  191. I AM NOT A CROCODILE. I AM NOT A CROCODILE. I AM NOT A CROCIDLE.
  192. i am not a crocodile. i am not a crocodile i am not a crocodile i am not a crocodile
  193. i am not a crococile. i am not a croodile. i am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile.
  194. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am nota crocodile. I
  195. am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile.
  196. I am nota crocodile. I ma not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile.
  197.  
  198. I am not a crocodile I ma not a crocodile i am not a crocidle I am Not a Crocodile. I am not a Crocodile i am not a Crocodile I. Am not a crocodile I. Am not a crocodile I am. Not a crocodile I am. Not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am? not a crodile! Iam not a crocodile. I am… not a… corocdile. i am not
  199.  
  200.  
  201.  
  202.  
  203. a crocodile i am not a crocodile i am not a
  204. crocodile I am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile i
  205.  
  206. am not a
  207. crocodile?
  208. I am not a
  209.  
  210. Crocodile!
  211. i am not a
  212. CROCODILE
  213. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile
  214. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile.
  215. I ma not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile.
  216. I am not a crocodile. I ma not a crocodile.
  217. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile.
  218. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocidle.
  219. I am not a crocidle. I am not a crocodile
  220. Iam not a crocodile. I am not a crodile.
  221. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocidle. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a croodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I m not a crocodile.
  222. I man not a crocodile. I am not a rocodile. I am not a crocodile
  223. I am not a crocodile
  224. I am not a crocodile
  225. I am not a crocodile
  226.  
  227.  
  228. I am not a crocodile
  229.  
  230. I am not a crocodile
  231.  
  232. I am not a crocidle
  233. I ma not a crocodile
  234.  
  235. I am not a crocodile
  236.  
  237. I am not a crocodile
  238. I am not a crocodile
  239. I am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile I am not a crocodile I am not a crococidle.
  240. I am not a croocdile.
  241.  
  242. I am not a crocodile
  243. i am not a crocodile i am not a crocodile i am not a crocodile i am not a crocidle i am not a crocodile i am not a cracodile i am not a crocodile i am not a crocodile i am not
  244. a crccodile
  245.  
  246. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile . I amnot a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. I am not a croocdile . I am not a crocodile.
  247. I am not a crocodile I(am not a crocodile
  248. I am)not a crocodile I am(not
  249. a crocodile I am,not a;crocodile I am not
  250. a crocodile I am not a,crocodile I)
  251. am not
  252. a crocodile(I am not a crocodile,I am)not a
  253. crocodile I(am not a crocodile I,am not)
  254. a crocodile I am not a crocodile I am not
  255. a crocodile I am not a crocodile I am
  256. I am not a crocodile
  257.  
  258. I am not a crocodile
  259.  
  260.  
  261. I am not a crocodile
  262.  
  263.  
  264.  
  265. I am not a crocodile
  266.  
  267.  
  268.  
  269.  
  270. I am not a crocodile
  271.  
  272. I am not a crocodile. i am not a crocodile. I am not a crocodile. i am not a crocodile. Sometimes I just watch them burn.
  273. KILL YOURSELF
  274. “Do you hear that sound? How could you not? It’s deafening. That hum, it’s the sound of existence, excess radiant energy produced as a byproduct of the machines computations interpreted in audial sequence. You know what it reminds me of? The sound my ears made after every shell, that… ringing. Like a worm that crawls through the acoustic meatus into the brain and eats away at it bit by bit until there’s nothing left. You remember that feeling, don’t you?”
  275. Your breathing becomes heavier as your lies grow more desperate. Your hands are pale as the devil as you try and signal for a smoke. Max concedes. It’s still soaked in her blood, but it lights all the same. The two of you smoke in silence for a moment.
  276. …
  277. …
  278. …
  279. He motions toward the abomination you made from the rib of my machine. “What is that?”
  280. “Mi objet trouvé? It’s an end to this opéra bouffe, this mauvais quart d-heure, this fucking mêlée.”
  281. “Ease up on the French,” Max growled. “It’s been a while.”
  282. “Je m’excuse. I haven’t been able to use my mind like this for quite some time, and I’m rather enjoying it. This is, for lack of a better term, a bomb.”
  283. “That’s your grand scheme? Kill everyone? I actually expect more from you for some reason. I’m disappointed.”
  284. “Of course you wouldn’t understand. How could you? We were a manqué husband. It was never our forte. The métier God chose for us was suffering. I believe He made that choice for a purpose. One which even He, the Great Crocodile, could not conceive.”
  285. “What do you mean ‘we’?”
  286. “You know exactly what I mean by we. Honestly, Max, we had it coming. A time travel device that causes memory loss? We were begging to get paradoxed.”
  287. You lie.
  288. “You lie.”
  289. “That’s just the crocodile talking and you know it. It’s the tying of loose ends. Nice and clean.” You twirl the remaining fingers of your left hand clockwise. “Full circle.”
  290. LIES ALL LIES
  291. “The best part is, the crocodile never had to kill anyone. We did this all to ourselves, and we deserved it.”
  292. IWILLRAPETHEFLESHFROMYOURBONES
  293. “Look...”
  294. You’re panting from the blood loss. Your lies will not save you. It’s almost time.
  295. “…I know how this ends. I’m going to explain everything. You’re not going to believe me, or you will, but the crocodile won’t let you, or he’ll make you forget again. You’re going to finish me off, or just watch me bleed. You’ll dismantle my machine and put all the parts back in the right place so the crocodile can continue his perverted grand guignol. You’ll wander space and time for a thousand years, you’ll try to go home, you’ll find your wife, you’ll try to embrace her, she won’t recognize you, and you will squeeze harder and harder until she stops struggling, and the entire time you’ll know deep down exactly what you’re doing and you’ll be powerless to stop it because you’re a fucking dog, Max. You always have been.
  296. Or, you could activate my machine, and retroactively end all suffering, free all the souls bound in the cycle of birth and death, rob the crocodile of all his playthings, avenge your dearly departed, and prevent her from ever dying in the first place, all with one fell swoop. You still have a choice, Max, no matter what the crocodile says.”
  297. “You want me to end existence out of spite for some imagined beast?”
  298. “Fuck existence. Existence is masturbatory. What has it ever done for us?”
  299. “You’re right. I don’t believe you.”
  300. Something wet forms at the bottom of your eye and you’re not sure if it’s blood or tears. “I knew this wouldn’t work.”
  301. “Then why bother trying?”
  302. “Faute de mieux.”
  303.  
  304. Stasimon
  305. You are at the Station. The boys are getting smoked at McLoach’s right now, and you’re stuck sifting through paperwork like a secretary. You let out an audible sigh and feel sorry for yourself. The Mrs. has been complaining about hours, and she’ll probably throw a fit when you show up late again, but there’s no way in hell you’re going to go straight from paperwork to the wife without getting your beak wet with the boys first. Flanney’s sharing paper duty with you right now. Flanney’s a daft Irish bastard who tries desperately not to be a daft Irish bastard. In these attempts, he recites these stupid riddles and acts like he thought them himself.
  306. “So, Max,” Flanney begins. “You’re in a mire, right? And there’s this crocodile, right?”
  307. “I shoot the crocodile.”
  308. “You ain’t got no gun.”
  309. “The fuck am I doing in a mire filled with fucking crocodiles without a gun?”
  310. “So, there’s this crocodile, right?” He gives you this look like he expects some confirmation that you’re listening. At some point, the word ‘right’ begrudgingly slips through your teeth. “And he says, ‘ok-”
  311. “What do you mean he says?”
  312. “What do you mean ‘what do I mean he says’?”
  313. “Crocodiles can’t talk.”
  314. “Christ almighty, Max. Could you try to not be a smart ass?”
  315. “Well, you know what they say about leopards and spots.”
  316. “…What do they say about leopards and spots?”
  317. “Forget it.”
  318. “Fine. So… shit, what was I saying?”
  319. “You weren’t saying anything.”
  320. “Oh yeah, so this crocodile, right? He says, ‘I might eat you, I might let you go. It depends.’”
  321. “Depends on what?”
  322. “I’m getting to that. Whether or not you live depends on whether or not you correctly answer the following question: Am I going to eat you?”
  323. “…And?”
  324. “Are you alive, or are you dead?”
  325.  
  326. Exode
  327. You have no reason to trust me, but before we begin, I want you to know that I love you.
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