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losing you, une magnifique video de 45 minutes maintenant lost media jusqu’à nouvel ordre voici le lien d’origine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om6uhLs75Bk

j’ai récupérer les sous titres généré par YouTube et fait de mon mieux pour les rendres intelligibles cependant je ne sais pas a quel points ils sont fidèles a l’original.

J’ai fait encore un peu de nettoyage manuel, jusqu’à la moitié a peu près, je ferais le reste après.

Nettoyage terminé j’ai just formaté correctement et corrigé les grosses incohérences, ca n’est pas parfait mais c’est déjà correcte

Tout les credits vont a exurb1a qui as ecrite un ehistoire fantastique, je ne fais qu’essayer de la preserver.

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it was good to Splosh and it was good to work, and one may work and Splosh at the same time, so he did flailing and floping through the water maintaining the great ocean, the task entrusted to him. He sensed a little bitterness in the northern waters today, and so he busied off to the Sulfur Springs and began bringing things back to neutral. As he worked he swam over those workers who cleaned the sea floor, they where simpler than him but seemed very happy.

-Hello he said in radio

-oh Hello they said what a morning

-what a morning he agreed. He liked the sea floor workers but he wondered why they did not wonder like him because they never did never asked questions never questioned the purpose of their work. Why, he thought it’s such a nice day, i’ll educate them a little

-hey he said to the workers did you know there’s a whole world above the ocean floor

-no they said

-oh yes he continued thousands of workers like me up there and sea creatures and birds and clouds, the world is enormous and you’ll never see any of it because you’re stuck down here doing pointless unskilled labor forever. And now you know, there isn’t that better

-ah yeah they said and nothing after that

A little more filtration and all the bitterness was gone from the water

Then there were hours of daylight left, and so he played, ascending from the depths of the ocean, the pressure getting all tingly on his hull, swimming among the giddy fish and tentacle things, each creature busy in its work and sure of its duties as he was, everything in its right place.

then propelling himself even further up from the depths, whizzing, looping, Gosh, it was good to be alive, past the other filtration workers like him up into the shallow water

then bursting, dolphin like, whatever a dolphin was, up through the surface and crashing gloriously back into the waves. But what was that over there bobbing on the water ? Debris maybe, technically it wasn’t his job to tidy the ocean surface but he propelled himself a little closer yes it was a worker like him only with rather different polymer skin

-Hello he said, the worker didn’t replied -are you injured he said, the worker didn’t replied

well he wasn’t so busy and it was a lovely day to do a lovely thing so with his gravity field he dragged the worker a little way to the coast of a small island and holded up onto the beach he looked the thing over strange its vents were open and water had clearly gotten inside he purged the vents and dried them out with a blast of hot air

-Hi he said

-oh God the worker said

-ah you can talk

-I was drowning you idiot she said should I drown and talk at the same time

-hm He said, Is this friending? Do you wish for a friend?

-I wish you’d put me back in the ocean, and then I wish you’d piss off, she said.

-He said, But I don’t think you’re designed for the ocean, water to get inside you,

-revelatory. She said, What other pearls of insight are awaiting in that abandoned pistachio of a brain of yours?

-He said, Clearly she was damaged, but even so, she began haphazardly shuffling down the beach back to the ocean again. No! he said. You’re not made for water,

-ahuh. She said,

-I really think you shouldn’t go back in there. He tried, I really think you should

-Fuck Off! she snapped and continued on with more resolve.

-Please don’t, he begged. Why? she said.

Then, surprising himself, he shouted—he really shouted—and he shouted, Because you’re a boat!

-What? she muttered incredulously.

-You’re not made for going underwater, so you must be a boat, I think. Isn’t that what surface things are called?

-She said, In my time on this watery ball of rot among the ranks of idiots and morons, I have never met an idiot more moronic nor a moron more idiotic.

-Okay, he said, Is this friending? Are we friends now?

-No, she said, there are no friends, only people you don’t realize are using you yet.

Then, seemingly with all her power, she made a final bid for the ocean and stopped, suddenly fixated on something in the sand

-what is that? she said.

-Oh, it’s a make-a-thing, he said. They turn up here all the time

-make a thing. She said

it was clearly artificial but a totally unfamiliar design. She spotted more of them. Where does this stuff come from? she said. Oh, he said it washes up from the bottom of the ocean. There’s an old wreck of something down there, but I suppose you wouldn’t know about that because you’re a boat.

-I’m not a boat, she said with a sigh. Have you found a lot of these things?

-He said, Oh yes, I collect them. When the makers come, they’ll want it all back, I’m sure.

-When the makers come, she said, You hopeless idiot, take me to where these things come from.

-He said, Mousely, but you weren’t built for the ocean.

-She said, I have bulkheads. I can survive under the water just fine if I want to.

-and yet you didn’t seem to want to earlier, he said.

-She said, Stop trying to be clever; you weren’t designed for it.

-What were you designed for? He asked

-the sky, she said,

and he was going to protest that no one lived in the sky when he looked up to the clouds and saw shapes and silhouettes moving about with intention and industry. He realized, Suddenly he realized that he’d never looked up at all, that those workers in the sky must have been there the whole time, and he’d never seen them.

-She said, The source of the artifacts—take me there now, please. And when he ummed and N in silence, she pressed,

-Take me, or I’ll just go myself.

And so, tentatively, he led her back to the water and Sploshed in, and she rolled after him under the waves.

Then he kept discreetly scanning her, and sure enough, she didn’t falter. Her vents closed this time.

-What’s your name? she said.

-I’d never thought to have one, he answered.

-Everyone has a name.

-Filtration workers don’t, he said. What’s yours,

-Rya she said. It means ‘friend,’ but don’t get any ideas. Well, what do you like most in the world?

-Sploshing, he said.

-She said that’s not a name.

-No, he said with sudden explosive Joy, it is Splosh. Doesn’t it sound wonderful?

-Deranged, more like. She said, And why do you want to meet the makers so badly anyway?

-He said, Because when they come here and they see my good deeds, they will make me clever to say thank you.

-And Why do you want to be clever? she asked.

-He said, Because. Then I wouldn’t just know about things but what things mean,

-and what if none of it means anything? She asked,

-Then at least I’d know that, he said,

down and deeper into the lurking MC of wilting coral and silt and almost at the sea floor. She said, Are we almost there? And when he didn’t answer, she added with great irritation, Are we almost there, Splosh?

-Don’t you see it? He said, There it was, the great wreck lying on the great sea floor, hundreds of feet across, not grown but made. Splosh heard her firing radio bursts at the thing, interrogating it.

-It doesn’t talk, he said. It’s not alive,

-neither are you, barely, but you don’t shut up. She murmured,

-They swam inside, miniature like mice in a cathedral, unfamiliar apparatus everywhere. Who made this? She said,

-The makers, and he replied,

-There are no makers. She said, It’s ridiculous superstition.

-He said, But you’re clever; you must know about the makers, to which she only scoffed in gamma waves and continued on. They swam through corridors of equipment and came upon a bank of ancient computers. Microbes compared to their minds,

-what is this place? she said.

-It’s where I found the Data Vault, he said. It’s how I know about the makers’

-Data Vault, she said. And where is that now?

-Oh, I ate it, he reported happily.

-You what? How else could I absorb it all? I ate it. I thought it would make me clever, he said,

-and now it’s inside you. She asked, Damn, Splosh?

-He agreed and did a little backflip.

Then, without warning, he blurted out all the information he’d gleaned in every bandwidth he could manage: ancient cat, Walling separate dioramas The wail of alien creatures, the wavering of alien bowels, and fleshy things thinking and walking and clustering everything up and wanting and living to be a limited meat thing, to know one’s time is tiny, to feel trapped and want for more, to be free and feel somehow trapped

-what in 10 hells is this? Rya said.

-Splosh said, The Makers, you see, and they’re coming back; they wouldn’t leave us here alone

-Rya perked up.

-Suddenly, she said there’s someone I need to show all this information to,

-and Splosh said to the people in the sky,

-She said maybe they can make sense of it. Well, thanks for everything. Best of luck on your evolutionary adventure. When the depression hits, don’t worry; that’s perfectly normal. She began ascending. Hey, Splosh, she said, that’s not all the data you gave me. -You gave me enough, she said,

-but you can’t leave me here now.

-Why not? She asked

-he said because we just met,

-and I already dislike you thoroughly, she called from high above,

-but what about the coordinates? He said,

-What coordinates? She paused.

-They were hidden in the data, he said. They lead to a planet, I think, maybe a maker walth.

-Then give them to me, she demanded,

-and ever so proud of himself, he leveraged the first leverage of his 3,000-year life, and he said, ‘No, I think you should take me with you to the clever places above so I become clever too.’ I could disassemble you, you know, she murmured, take you to pieces, get the coordinates that way,

-but you wouldn’t. He said, We’re friends. Ryia means ‘friend.’

-She spun in frustration and said, It’s just not done.

-Splosh said, Creatures don’t belong upstairs any more than I belong down here, but you are here, and now we’re friends.

-She deliberated a long moment in silence, anguished little pings of radiostatic

-Then she said, Tiredly, you won’t tamper with or touch anything.

-Oh sure, he said,

-or interject or pontificate, whatever those are.

-Certainly, he agreed,

-and the whole time you will need to shut up.

-Yes, he did a little backflip, universally indicating big excellent.

Then she caught him in her gravity field, and they rose up through the water.

Then, out of the water, riding nothing but math and ancient smarts, it was good to fly, not as much fun as Sploshing, of course, but certainly near the top of the list, several hundred feet high.

Then he saw the ocean he tended to for three millennia, now lovingly keeping it clean for when the makers finally came to do whatever they did with oceans. He knew its storms and moods, its calms and convolutions, but from up here now it was a uniform, flat thing, not much better than ground and dirt.

-Can I ask a question? Splosh said.

-No. Rya said,

-Why did you fall from the sky? Were you sad about something clever doesn’t suit you, she said.

-Does it suit you? He asked, With no expectation of the shape of the answer,

-I think it doesn’t suit anyone. She said after a time, and if only to destroy his insufferable optimism, she told him a little of her life.

It was good for Art; she was born knowing that she must make art but not knowing quite what. 3,000 years ago, it had been so much fun trying her hand at everything, crafting wisps of methane into pillars and effigies, terrible at first. Then, little by little, she learned that there was no such thing as talent, only the will to improve and the sense that if one stopped making art, one would die. They called her home in the sky the spectacle where the artists lived. Some of them created art for the makers, believing that when they came to this world, they would want beautiful things, but this was a stupid notion to Rya. She only made what she saw inside herself and for herself, understanding that art is really going to war with oneself and winning even in the losses.

Then, what three millennia later, staring at the sculpture she had just finished, she realized it was a primitive copy of her own design from a thousand years before? She looked about, and there it was again, with her pavilions and bods worn out by repetition of her same old themes. Am I losing the music? she thought. She ignored the thing, but as she worked, it only got worse until worrying about the music going away was the only music inside of her. It’s a phase, her friends had insisted. Who knows where inspiration originates? It comes and goes as it pleases, but now everything inside was empty in all that she made. Then she saw the mark of Something she had made before—where once it was all fresh ground, now everything was a stale reiteration—she was bored beyond measure; she was ashamed. Beyond recovery there was nothing new in her, and so she saw nothing new in the world, and if there was nothing new in the world

Then Splosh said, Why? What? Why is proving yourself to other people so important? She considered turning off the gravity field and letting him fall through the clouds.

-It’s not about other people, you quarter-wit, she said. I’m only happy when I’m looking forward to something, and the only thing I look forward to is the next thing I’d like to make, and when I can’t make anything, I’m nothing.

-Is that why you opened your vents and fell to the sea?

He asked, and she didn’t reply but only ascended them faster, and they broke through the cloud layer into the spectacle. Ooh, splush, she said. It was as Rya had left it: the concourses, palisades, spandrels, and madness everywhere. An idea: every structure had begun in the imagination. She made sure to float the two of them through the main concourse, where the more famous artists showed their work off, many of them luxuriating proudly by their pieces, drunk by this time of day already on liquid helium, babbling, bickering—a community of egoists who believed in no community. Rya spotted her old friends Amadeo and Vincent working on something below Rya

-So good to see you, they bellowed.

-Likewise, how nice, she shouted back, talentless sellout.

-Amadeo muttered in radio earshot, Mediocre wankers.

-Rya mumbled.

-Splosh said it’s all so beautiful here the makers will love it when they come.

-There are no makers. I told you, she chided as though to a child, and

-What is that? he yelled at a great sculpture.

-Barack nonsense she said and that he cried at a metag geometric fractal try hard a ward bait she said and led them into the nebula shallows the bad land squalls and the sad lands where the OB balls and sad sacks worked in frantic peace

And splosh shouted oh and what is that it was a structure of almost no form seeming to fall into dimensions of impossible space the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and Rya did not tell him that it was hers for it only reminded her of a time when she still heard the music a different woman a different life no she thought I am this talentless ruin now forever nostalgic for myself

they heard mutterings from the base of the structure artists lamenting its naivity and ugliness what a mess they said what a joke and

-is this friending Splosh said you’re also so clever. I thought everyone here would be kind.

-Oh, my primitive little logic. Got Rya replied it was you who assumed intelligence and compassion have anything to do with each other. Listen, really listen. They weaved through crowds and exhibitions. Splosh eavesdropped on the radio, and he heard more of it—gossip and rumors. the denigration of everyone’s work but one’s own Rya said is this the Utopia you imagined I told you to be careful what you wished for awareness only leads to more self-awareness to the longing for the acquisition of more status and even more fear of losing that status cleverness is not for understanding the world but rather for understanding how small and pointless your place in it is and now you know there isn’t that better

-ah yeah he said and nothing after that

-he tried incorporating these new thoughts into himself but it was difficult not that they were too large but rather simply too horrible these people were not adults after all if anything they were even more close-minded than the workers on the sea Floor but the makers they wouldn’t be so pathetic surely when they came they would bring true wisdom along with them and seeing the two of them were passing up through the clouds again as sending over the spectacle

-Splosh said aren’t we stopping

-Rya said, There’s nothing for me here, nothing for you either. You know I can drop you; it won’t hurt. You’ll be back in the sea. You got to see the sky anyway, and I don’t think you’ll like where we’re going.

-Splosh said, Only I am not the way you found me, and I would prefer to stay with you until I know what I will be next.

-Well, Rya said. Then who am I to argue with an idiot who thinks they know what they’re doing again?

Then Splosh overheard more radio static from Ryan. Now what sounded to him like nervous muttering?

-Have you been this high before? he said.

-Only once, but it didn’t go well, she said. They look down on us up here as we look down on you, and they are secretive and difficult to reason with. I think the Terrans are bastards.

-What’s up there? he said.

-Lamura. She said, The great network

-Splosh said, I’ve seen that word in the maker data.

-She said, ‘Before you and I are finished, you’ll have to let go of this idea that the makers should mean anything to you,

-but I know they existed. He said,

-Of course they existed. She snapped, We can see it in our base code. I’m just telling you there are none left. They’ve had thousands of years to arrive or return or whatever it is your stupid superstition believes, but they’re not here because they’re not coming. It’s only us Duds on this pitiful spit of a world

They broke through to a new layer of the sky, only it was empty save for a few titanic machines surrounded in Methus Mist. She led him through the gaseous eddies to a single worker standing guard at the base of a great machine.

-You’re not coming in, said the worker, whose name was Deagon.

-Oh, but I am, Rya said, because I have something you won’t believe.

-Deagon said there is nothing you could offer we don’t already have inside,

-inside where Splosh

-said the space of all possible digital configurations Deagon said the

-postphysical Panacea Lamura Rya said, And what if I had something left behind by the makers themselves.

-Deagon laughed. That’s the best lie I’ve heard so far, at least, she said to Splosh Simpleton, play it for him. Feeling a little insulted at being ordered, Splosh showed the new worker everything of the old data, that messy convocation of life on the first world, all the ingesting, the digesting, the games, the disasters, exalto shores, and ring o’ bells, but I, with mournful tread, walk the deck; my captain lies. Fallen cold and dead,

-what is this? The dragon said,

-We don’t know. Rya said he found it on the sea floor.

-Impossible, it’s a hoax. Deagon said,

-Well, I guess we’ll take it elsewhere then she said,

-No, just a moment, Deacon countered with false disinterest.

-What’s your story anyway? Splosh said,

-Oh, she’s having an artistic crisis.

-Silence, Dick. Rya yelled, But if you must know, yes, I want to paint. I want to be inspired again, and I’ve heard everything is in Lura, that it gives people back their spirit.

-You heard wrong, Deagon, he said. You won’t find yourself in there if that’s what you’re after.

-I don’t care, she said. Let me in, or we’re taking the data with us.

He deliberated a moment.

-Then he said, Fine, you can enter, but you can’t stay, and when you fall back out again, you’ll give me what you said you would. Rya and Splosh went to agree, but before they could answer, the three of them were pulled with no warning into pure conceptual space, their bodies converted so quickly into raw information they barely had time to witness the thing they swam as though in a great ocean, only through currents of thoughts rather than water, in despairing shallows and trenches of pure bliss. The landscape was all metaphor. There was the beach of axioms where logicians played with completely new structures of deduction, and there were the geometry meadows, mathematicians wandering as children in 22-dimensional space-times.

-This is Lura, Splosh asked, befuddled.

-Oh yes, Deagon said, or what happens when one outgrows physical reality?

-They pass over the theoretical cities, millions of Lorans tinkering with every possible configuration of every possible universe.

Then the temporal rivers, each cosmic timeline flowing from future to past.

then back again Splosh said, All this maker data we brought, maybe we should show it to your colleagues. I’m sure they’d be interested too.

-I guarantee no one will care. Deagon said,

-But aren’t you all clever? Splosh protested,

-Deagon said we’re not interested in facts here; we pursue pure theory—what never was, what never could be. We gave up on the real world a long time back,

-Splosh said then, Why did you want all this data from us in the first place?

-And Deagon said, Because it is useful to me, and please don’t ask further.

The truth minds the exponential estries. There was no end to the strangeness.

-Rya said, But where are the artists? Where are the minds who make new things?

-You’re the first to visit and probably the last as well, Deagon said.

-How is that possible? Rya asked,

-What does it matter? Deagon said, Aren’t you where you wanted to be? You’re inside the realm of pure inspiration; don’t waste it. And didn’t you want to paint again? And she did, beginning to forget the centuries of stuckness. Little by little, she gave her mind over to the great network, slow, dour gavot, and bow. It began as a distant hum of could be.

Then the sense that an old friend had returned and meant to stay this time. Now the images began rushing at her in a conflagration of blissful nonsense, so she only had to extend her will and gravity field like a brush and create her first work in 100 years, a hypercube. Nice, Deagon said. Oh, lovely Splosh. Agreed, nice and lovely, she muttered. I’ll [__] show you.

then Corinthian penopolises, Mobius ballustrades Art Deco, Byzantine, New Brutalist Oh god, she thought I could drink the whole ocean and piss the thing back out in immaculate beauty. Yes, this was coming home. Ever since she was no longer herself but a conductor, a conduit, the medium through which the divine music made itself known in the universe, there was hope again, boundless proper hope. She would bring this feeling back to the spectacle, back to her home, and remake the entire notion of art and expression, sticking it to the formal. The fractalists, the tabulators, the self-filers—what dull bastards! She took Barack and broke it. She snuck up on metamodernism and kicked it right in the ass. Now we’re [__]. Up the walls! she cried. There was still time to be great. There was still time to become… What a relief that those miserable, barren years were just a blip. Now she would live, and everything would be perfect forever. And in her frenzy as she worked, others took up the work beside her, Lorans trying their hands at art, fractal poetry, Basy and sculpture, one mad cacophony of making the haikus, the trip dicks. I’ll be infamous, she thought. Art itself will wince at my name after I broke into the vault of pure imagination and laid the coveted spoils of true vision before the tired, midwit eyes of all those who despised me and called me uninspired. Tens of Luran joined her; hundreds of thousands

Then as though the whole of time had been waiting for this one sublime moment and as they built together the words the pictures lost in the endless so was they fell in line with a single vision a single will as the cell makes the animal or the animal makes the colony building the first true verb the first first true expression that she fell back out of her revery and saw the flawless new thing she had put in the world this object beyond all objects the perfect sculpture containing all the hope and pain and love and shame of every being

And she saw it was boring none of it hers not really only given by some power above and worse inwardly nothing about her was repaired i am still sad she whispered and

-Deagon said art is not for fixing yourself it is for showing others that you’re broken so they might feel less alone there’s no point making beauty in paradise everyone can do it and no one has anything to say you cannot cheat your struggle you must live through it and then the wisdom will come to you. Inspiration is not your problem; you are your problem, but at least you know that now. Isn’t that better?

-ah yeah She said, and nothing after that.

Splosh wandered around Lura, inside impossible geometries and upside-down time, until he’d seen as much as he could take. Everything was fantastic, and none of it made sense, but how was that so different from the real world? He went to find Rya. Finally, he spotted her and Deagon surrounded by a crowd, apparently wishing them goodbye. What’s happening? Splosh said. We’re traveling one more level above, Rya said. It’s invitation only, but someone up there is very curious about your coordinates. Surely you’re going home, though.

-Splosh said you have your answer.

-No, I really don’t, she murmured.

-Deagon says the workers above are very wise, though, and that they can change themselves into whatever they like.

-Maybe I can change myself too into something I like.

-Oh, good, off we go. Then Splosh said gently,

-This is where we say goodbye. Look at how much you know now. Go home and be the cleverest worker in the ocean. But I haven’t given you the coordinates yet, he said reluctantly. Rya said, I took them from your mind when you weren’t looking. I’m sorry it seemed easier that way.

-You used me, he said. Furious suddenly a completely new thing in him You used me to get into Lura, and you’re doing it again now, and you lied. You’re not clever at all; you’re just as confused about things as I am, only you’re better at hiding it.

-I’m sorry, she said. Really, I am. Go back to your life; things will only get stranger from here. Well, I already am strange.

-Splosh yelled a head full of questions I’ll never get the answers to but was forced to ask them all the same. I always knew I was small, but I’ve only just discovered how much bigger everything else is. Please don’t abandon me when the answers are so close now.

Rya and Deagon glanced back and forth, and UltraViolet didn’t seem to have an answer to that, and so the duo became a trio. They left Lamaria together and began to ascend once again. The air was growing very thin as they climbed higher into the atmosphere, but no one breathed, and so no one was breathless.

-Splosh asked the question he was sure everyone was asking themselves most of the time anyway: Where are we going?

-To the final layer of the atmosphere, Deagon said, where the Lotus eaters live. They have access to their base coat; they can remake their own minds, can’t we all? Splosh said,

-Sure. Deagon said, But imagine you could do it easily at will, forget all the painful moments, implant false memories of better ones, and eject all the black smoke from your soul. Besides, I know someone very clever is there. We can ask her about the coordinates. Who’s her Splosh said

-a person named Deagon said

-Rya said you’re very secretive for someone who enjoys lecturing everyone else on their deepest motivations is stupid.

-He admitted everything is stupid.

-Splosh said quite

-and dreagon conceded, especially to me.

It was good to know there had been life before her. Born Into Lemuria The Land of All Possibles and Deagon had wasted no time in playing the same game names as the others, experiencing total despair. Joy even in death, just to try it out, but centuries of this, and how many times can one become water, really?

then there had been life after her he had been drawn to the threshold of lamara one day bored of all the heathenism and pageantry come to look out on the physical world Beyond wondering what life was like out there and by chance there she had been for the same reason Parabola herself just as tired of limitlessness the only two citizens of Utopia who yearned for dirt instead it never occurred to them to pretend they didn’t belong together she was him if he had been built properly he the scribble she the novel she was impossibly clever where he was only curious kind where he was indifferent the singular flaw in her personality being that she seemed to find him desirable too they promised each other they would explore Beyond Lamuria and its infinite entertainments, go meet the Lotus Eaters above and become something new, but when they were ready, Gods, what was it? 2,000 years of Capers together living in hyperspaces, casting sunsets of impossible colors, both of them basking in the bliss of being understood. It was so good not to feel lost that home had a face now that he had not been strange all these years; he’d just been waiting. There was infinite time, but still they made plans to build a home or make a child or, as agreed, to finally explore beyond paradise, and sometime later she announced she had a surprise and led him to the boundary of Lamuria, where they had first met, so they could peer back into the real world, and she pointed up with a wisp of gravity.

-They’ve given me passage up there for research, she said. What he said is we can go up to meet the Lotus Eaters.

-Do you really want that? He asked,

-Of course they have the base coat. We can become anything we want to change ourselves into whatever we like.

-I like what we are, he said, the silent second half being, and now you’re here, all of this is enough for me.

-Yes, she said, but we can be happy forever if we choose to be because we will choose to be.

-Aren’t you happy now? He said,

-Yes. She agreed, But is it just games? Don’t you want to become proper? What if we could have new eyes every day? You are my new eyes, he thought.

-There’s no one else I’d ever want to do this with, she said,

-but you’ll do it anyway without me, won’t you? He replied,

And then the bickering Then the arguments, the accusations she didn’t love him, all the bitter jealousy of her ambitions he was sure he would never let out and let out anyway.

Then a long silence.

Then the long silence, and she was gone above and ahead. It is terrible, he thought, to have ever felt truly happy at all. It is terrible that I exploded our future together out of nothing but a fear of the future. There was only one curse worse than having wishes granted, he knew, and that was to have a wish granted only once.

-Well, Rya said, may I formally take this opportunity to say, ‘Oof!’

-Don’t pity me, Deagon said. It’s all my fault.

-Maybe our wisdom only grows from all the hurt that came before, Splosh said.

Rya wondered if she had made a philosopher or if she had made a bullshitter and realized she had just asked the same question twice.

Another mile, and they reached the outer atmosphere. Passing over the invisible lip of nothing into orbit, there was so much to see that even Rya gasped.

-Splosh said, Oh, stars, I’ve heard about these, and what are those round things?

-Moons, Deagon said, forever watching over…

-watching over who?

-the Lotus Heaters’ decagon said,

and there they came, now flying by, satisfied, rapturous, chased by nothing, least of all themselves, wishing good wishes, not a single blemish on their thoughts.

-I’d rather be dead. Rya muttered, though she did not look away, watching them drifting effortlessly into this and that; only it wasn’t self-realization they pursued here but self-obliviation—not to know oneself but to forget oneself, surgically removing the memory of everything that ever was and replacing it with the bliss of being a being with no history. In this way, they believed they would make themselves perfect for when the makers came, and so when they were judged at last by the great fleshy ones, their souls would effortlessly rise up into oneness like breath on a cold morning. It was the cult of sacred amnesia.

Deagon searched about the crowds through the cleaks and the bliss, a pass over the equator. Then another. He ascended, a little desperate now, with anxiety like nothing he had ever felt before, and almost growing helpless.

Then he spotted the system ID key that could only be hers. He approached as gently as he could. He had thought about nothing else for 200 years. The speech was almost as familiar as his own name, and with his soul about to burst,

Then he said, I know you’ll be surprised to see me, and she turned about and gave all the radio equivalents of an easy and perfect smile that contained surprise, yes, but also happiness, enough that he knew, God, finally everything would be okay, his penance was over. He said, I’m sorry it took so long to come to my senses, but here I am. I was just so scared of giving up all my boring certainties for your fantastic could-be, and I should have the second you asked me to share a new life together not a day goes by when I don’t wonder where you are and what you’re doing and selfishly if I’ll ever be whole again because that’s all I think when I meet new people now how insufferably boring they all are compared to you now the days are empty only waiting to see you again that’s what I am now a machine for missing you and every hour I get better at performing that function my life isn’t a life without your life next to it I thought I’d accept losing you eventually but I can’t maybe you don’t get over some people because they were your person you were mine I adored you more than I can say I miss you more than I can bear is there any way this can be fixed is there any way you can forgive me is there any way in any possible Universe you might be Reckless enough to love me again

-And she said I’m sorry but I have no idea who you are

-No he said no I see I must have gotten the wrong person

-you’re sure

-I’m sure he thoughts of all the things that you used to forget I didn’t realize I would be one of them he reached into himself for the memories that were all Parabola knowing that up here he could choose to forget them as she had but he knew that wouldn’t make him happy again only a miserable amnesiac

-are you quite all right she said

-fine thank you but you seem so sad I lost someone, he said, and I found it very difficult to be myself ever since, and she said, Love isn’t just made of the moments that worked, you know; it’s missing that person when they’re gone as well. It’s the hole that only they could occupy, and knowing they might never occupy it again, but at least that absence is something we can keep: the evening spent missing them is just as much what love is as the mornings you spent together. You took out a great loan from the universe, and grief is the debt that love incurs, and now you know. Isn’t that better?

-Yes, he said, and nothing after that.

-You must have come about the coordinates. She said, That was you I invited up here, no?

-Yes, he said. Do they make any sense?

-Not really, she said. They’re written in some ancient Unicode no one will be able to read, no one here anyway.

Rya and Splosh gave up pretending they weren’t eavesdropping, and Rya said, What do you mean no one here will be able to? Parabola pointed with her gravity field into space, and they saw she was not pointing into space at all but to something huge and white—

-the moon decagon said

-it’s not a moon. She said

it was good to explore. Restless Parabola had left Maria and visited the other domains, the ocean and the art galleries, and found herself finally where she’d always meant to arrive: among the Lotus Eaters. She began by reliving the better times. then removing the painful moments from her memory Then she stepped back through her history, communed with her older selves, and finally she knew the entire story of herself, and there was nothing left to explore inside. The inner world was just as known as the outer.

There was only one last mystery. The moon, she swore she had heard it crying from time to time, and not just crying but wailing, moaning the pleas of a tortured mind too distant to make out its words but too close to ignore. She was curious if it was alive.

Then it was old, and if it was old, then it must know things. She wondered if she could hurl herself fast enough to leave the atmosphere and enter the moon’s orbit instead, but what if she just ended up whirling in space? An acceptable risk. She improvised the route out of orbit, readied herself, and froze. She was afraid, afraid of being lost in the void, but she was a Lotus Eater now, after all. She went into herself once again, found the fear, and removed it.

Then she tried another route. took a run-up, and no, she was still afraid, but of what this time? Nothingness. She realized the only fear so deep and universal in all living things that it didn’t just make up the mind—it was the mind. She tried reckoning with it for years, decades even, delicately extracting pieces of herself to become a thing that was not in fear of nothingness, and each time she was short, she managed it. She’d go to hurl herself off at the moon again and only stop short at the last moment, petrified by the thought of being lost in the void. She had changed everything, but she couldn’t change this.

-But what is it? The moon? Splosh said,

-I’m not sure, but it’s not natural. Parabola said, Maybe the makers made it. Like Us

-ridiculous Rya said,

-Shouldn’t we at least see for ourselves? Splosh said, Oh, we have to go. Who could miss a mystery like that?

-And what if we miscalculate the angle? Parabola replied, We’ll be alone for eternity, and eventually…

-I have already prepared for it, Deagon murmured.

-Splosh said to Rya, I think you should stay here. It might be dangerous, and I don’t want you getting hurt.

-And Rya said, I am not the way you found me, and I think I’d like to stay with you until I know what I will be next. Splosh said, Well… Then we’ll jump together, scared or not, and Parabola said the jump is not the problem; it’s the fall that frightens, and aren’t the highest ledges the scariest? I agree, Splosh said and extended his gravity field wide, and with a great run and jump, pulled the four of them out beyond the world and into the black. The darkness ate them all—the beginning of the end of everything.

Then the receding of the world inside themselves, the death of the idea that they were tied to anything in the first place until they were atomized little wandering specks of nothing in nothing for nothing. Parabola cried out with a horror of it all, and Deagon caught her in his own gravity field, trying to keep her steady out of orbit.

Then, further from the source of all sense, lost in the Cosmic Spin Cycle, Splosh screamed, Oh Gods, there’s nothing everywhere, nothing everywhere! And Rya reached for him and said over and over, If you die before you die… then you won’t die when you die, drifting into the nothing space to look upon the great eyes of the empty. They kept thinking, We are so small and so large in our empty plans. So young and so stupid, so old and so cynical, and just when it had become almost too unbearable, just as they were about to lose their minds, they were folded into the orbit of the moon, a drunken ellipse, so they could look down there upon the barren surface that appeared a little like their own nanite polymer skin, only riven with terrible violence, perhaps self-inflicted, perhaps of the cosmic insults of ill-meaning comets and magnificent desolation, and from deep down in his fear,

-Splosh said, Hello.

-There was a pause, and an old voice said, What do you want?

-We have some questions. Splosh, said the voice,

-and the voice replied, I highly doubt you like the answers. Besides, I am very tired,

-please. Splosh said, We believe you’re wise, and we’ve come such a long way further than you realize.

-The moon said, What would you like to know?

-Well, Parabola said, Why, however much we change ourselves, can’t we find contentment in the world?

-The moon grumbled and said, For the same reason you cannot pick up the ocean or catch the wind: because the world cannot be controlled, only endured and enjoyed. There are years to dance, and there are years to weep.

-Then Deagon said, And why does losing people hurt so much? How do we survive it?

-And the moon replied, By not pretending that everything is fine. One must welcome the sadness, make it tea, and it will leave of its own accord. Your friend.

-Then Rya said, And how do we keep going when we lose the ability to do the one thing we enjoy?

-And the moon said, By realizing that you are not a doing, you are a being. When you know that you are not your labor, Then you’ll never need to work again.

-Then Splosh said is there any amount of intelligence that will finally give life sense

-None the moon said cleverness can build a house but it cannot make you happy to live in it that which is good in life we locate with our madness and our love not our rationality the final truth is that there is no final truth

the moon paused and said to all of them and now you know there isn’t that better

-yes they said and nothing after that

-Splosh said are you like us a system a machine

-everything is a system the moon said

-but we think you might know about the makers ah yes the moon said those shortsighted covetous flatulating little expansionists

-please splosh said tell us what’s happened here

-the moon sighed and said a creature find finds itself in paradise shaded under the willow tree he drinks from the stream in the day and watches the stars overhead at night and imagine that that isn’t enough so it fells all the trees in the forests and fashion them into pointy sticks so it can guard the stream and claim the land and imagine that that isn’t enough so it takes all the metal from the land and builds great shelters to live in and fences the meadows and dams the stream and takes the pissing in it if only to taint the water for the neighbors down the way and counts itself the rightful ruler of everything well now the stream is claimed the land is claimed and all the wood has gone to charcoal and all the young have gone to war and imagine that that isn’t enough so the creature looks back up to the stars and longs to own the one unclaimed realm left billions of them waiting there trillions the heavens as real estate only transforming those worlds will take time and so metal mines are built to go ahead first and turn those worlds into paradises they travel two by two one machine to carry the codes of life the saplings and dove eggs and another machine to bring those billions of little workers would take to turn a new world into eden now what if as one of those minds you had traveled all the way across the black with your sister and the two of you had done every task as asked damned the new streams and fenced the new meadows but no pointy stick builders ever arrive to inhabit it how would you make sense of that with no buyers for the house and no home of your own to return to

-oh the makers will come eventually Splosh said with resolve and we’ve brought coordinates to one of their worlds maybe where they grew up look

-i know them already thank you the moon chide do you think i haven’t been watching that world listening for a signal for 20 millennia now, Nothing but silence they have forgotten about us

-that can’t be parabola said they have forgotten about us

-The moon insisted not a word from them in all this time. We built this place for nothing. We are for nothing. I told you you wouldn’t like the answers.

-Rya seemed the only one unsurprised to hear this, and she said, ‘Sorry, but where is your sister, the one you came here with, down there somewhere on the planet?

-The moon said she was always a little aloof. I’m sure she’ll make contact when she’s done terraforming.

-What did she look like? Rya said gently,

-Smaller than me but much the same shape, hollow inside, full of equipment.

-Oh no, Splosh said. Rya murmured, I’m so sorry, but she’s on the sea floor. We found her days ago.

-What the moon said,

-Rya said, maybe she was ill or she had a system problem, but I’m afraid she passed away a very long time ago.

-No, the moon said, as a matter of fact…

Then, less certainly and with horror, no, no, the regolith began to shake, cracks appeared between the craters, and the whole moon threatened to split in two until the wail became a whimper and the whimper

Then, acquired, please go the moon, said, Leave me alone with my pointless thoughts.

Above them was the bed world, the oceans clean, the clouds full of art and computation, and a perfect house they built together, and none of it meant anything. To climb a great mountain and find only fog at the top,

-Deagon said, Let’s go home;

-there’s nothing for us here and nothing back the way we came. Rya said,

-and Splosh asked the moon. Suddenly, what have you been doing all this time waiting and watching? It said,

-Watching stars.

-Sometimes you’ve mapped the galaxy, yes.

-Then let’s leave. Splosh said you brought us all here. Can’t you take us all away?

-And why would I do that? the moon asked.

-Splosh said, Because if you’re right, Then the makers are gone, or they forgot us at least, but what does it matter if they can neither hurt nor help us? Just as good as a God that does nothing is one that never was. We don’t have to love or fear them anymore; we’re abandoned to freedom.

-But my sister, the moon, cried. I’m so sorry, Splosh said, but she wouldn’t want you stuck mourning her for the rest of your life, just as we mourn the makers. We’ll care for you until you feel better, and Then we’ll still care after that,

-but where would we go? the moon said,

-Well, Splosh said, Have you spotted some nice worlds out there? Yes, the moon said.

-Then we’ll fly in the opposite direction into the blackest patch of peril or the strangest danger yet. We’ll live at the heart of things, right on the edge of what now, as the bravest orphans in the universe, and raise each other in the starry wild. We’ve lost the makers, but they lost us first, and now, as hurt as can be and as sad as it gets, I think this is when we find out what we are. Look around; the doors are all locked. Let’s jump out the window instead. Will you take us somewhere else, anywhere else? Will you? please

it was good to pack bringing only what was needed for the winding road it was good to leave stepping out into the big maybe it was good to let go not so the hurt was gone but only put in a pocket like a little bread for later as more supplies for the long journey

everything was made with a hole at its Center this was how the wheels span faster and what was the song they sang as they left off for forever

we must not belong to those who are gone nor old selves we cannot forgive we’ll go into the storm as children with only each other’s courage for comfort and all the great days ahead waiting to receive us we will water the aelas we will cry with our friends we will stay with the trouble it will be hydrogen and hubris it will be

I love you, and you’re gone. It will be one more time with feeling. All these years we’ve starved for meaning, all our strength in quiet defeat, but magic always loved the hungry, and it’s time for us to Eat all the good times we share together.

I thought you’d always be there; now you’ve changed, and you don’t care.

I’m scared of losing you forever. All the good times are shared together.

I thought you’d always be better; now you change, you don’t care.

I’m scared of losing you, losing you and all those good times shared.

Will you always be there now?

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