The paper was, uh, not quite as expected. Actually, I’m not even sure when I was able to “read” it. My physical body was the paper, so I couldn’t have read myself, right? And I certainly didn’t read it after I “”died”” in the ““”spirit world””” (notice the increasing quotation marks of this scenario). But still, it happened in that time frame.

I read every word of it. It didn’t have the massive, revelatory feeling I thought it would. It was less like discovering or inventing something new, it was more like remembering something important. The kind of thing that makes you think “ah man, how did I forget that?” Except with the added sensation of knowing that you didn’t actually forget—you never had a memory of it to begin with.

And, also, it wasn’t a blueprint or schematic like I thought. It was a long text with only a few illustrations, mostly in the beginning. It wasn’t even a non-fiction book, it had a full storyline. Yes, with characters and events and stuff. Not instructions on building some sort of god-machine. But “oh!,” I thought, remembering something important from my life that, somehow, was never really brought up again.

Martin Moore. That guy who died that one time. I thought Bunny was going to kill him, and maybe she did, but that didn’t end up being relevant. And then the book he had, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, it had a cool quote but that was all. It was about time for those plot threads to come back, right? Well, I figured it out. That book is decisively a non-fiction, the kind of book that’s trying to tell you something. But in it is Achilles and the Tortoise, characters who gleefully take a narrative that was metaphorical (or isomorphic) to the contents of the following chapter. Maybe this was one of those: an allegory.

Well, first there were plot holes. Why did a character do that? Why did they say that? What about that thing you brought up a few chapters ago? Where is that? Why does this character keep changing personality? The chapters were also unnecessarily short. A surprising amount were less than a thousand words. Why not just make the chapters longer? And, I’m absolutely certain, the author was completely writing it on the fly. They had no idea what was going to happen until a few chapters before. It’s just constant unrelated events with a few half-assed callbacks that mean nothing. Was there any point to this story? Anything at all? Any sort of moral, personal lesson, embedded system programming advice, or even a bit of artistry to consider?

No. None at all. The entire thing was meaningless. Which meant, in turn, I was meaningless. But we already knew that, didn’t we? That I wasn’t supposed to be here, and I never had a purpose to begin with. Of course the paper would contain the most confusing, irritating, and illogical sequences of events imaginable. I think you’ll agree, you’ve been reading it this whole time.

Chapter 1, I Like the Light for Me; all the way up to the chapter before this one, abruptly just titled “OO”. You’ve seen it as well as I have—I’m a total wreck. I’m not a story that goes anywhere, or does anything, or even really tells any story at all. This whole thing has been a desperate grasp at a good idea, that maybe it would be discovered just a few chapters from now—that one thing that really makes it shine. I thought I was a bit of a failure as a person, but it’s even worse as a novel.

I feel bad for you, putting up with all this for fifty chapters. I wish I could tell you all the other great stories you could be reading, but I can’t.

Because I need you to keep reading.