《Wood Boy》


 Ast

    Ast climbed into the back, his hand rummaged around under the drivers seat but found nothing other than the feeling of dust and faded receipts from a decade or more prior, the illumination of his phone confirmed it. He patted his pockets for the eighth time since leaving work and felt no keys but knew he must of had them to enter his car. He decided to give up and opened the driver''s door to lock it from the inside where he found them sitting on his front seat, "cunt fuck" he said to himself in a calm tone, the same he would use if answering an unrecognised telephone number.


    None of the lights down the path to his apartment building had been working for over three years but if someone had of asked him he would have guessed they were last working a year ago, he wondered if he cared, he wondered if he should care, he wondered if anyone cared. He had never met the building owner and only spoken to them twice over the phone in the past nine years that he had been here. Surely other people spoke to him though, why don''t they tell him to replace the bulbs? he thought as he entered the code on the outer door and wondered the point of it, any number of people might know this pin and each apartment has their own lock anyway, perhaps the buttons can read and record fingerprints he unsuccessfully tried to think of another explanation as he stepped inside the shared hallway. The sparse pink and teal LEDs lit the hallway just enough to see the outlines of the barren walls, his apartment was the rear unit on the left. As he walked down the hallway he fixated his gaze blankly at the door to a room ahead of him, he had never known what the room was for, in one of his relatively wilder moments he had tried to open it only to find it locked. He had thought about this room every time he returned home but never had any interesting ideas about it, he now assumed it was just a storage closet for the building owner, likely containing bulbs & tools and other unexciting things but he would still think about it everytime he came home and wonder the same unresolved ideas again and again.


    His door was on the teal side labelled with a B, he held his palm up to the scanner and the lock clicked open first try for once, he wondered how it worked, almost a decade ago he had spent a good half day researching the chip before accepting it for his job and at that time had felt like he adequately understood the technology behind it but by now almost the entirety of that understanding had faded, the knowledge providing no material advantages to his life during the time he had remembered it. He still remembered that it had a unique frequency and wondered if people could brute force every frequency and get inside, he had forgotten how many unique frequencies there were and had no clue how quickly somebody could try a new one, he decided he should set it to require a physical key too, I''ll look into it later he thought to himself.


    The door shut on its own behind him but he pushed it the final step out of habit and paranoia, he checked his relatively outdated phone for the third time since he left his car thinking he may have missed a beep for a message but all it said was 8:52pm, a piece of knowledge that was completely unimportant to him, however what was important was that there were still no messages from her. He thought about her as he moved to his bedroom instinctively grabbing a bottle on the way, he wondered why she hadn''t messaged, perhaps she was asleep, perhaps she hated him. He imagined a fantasy to explain her silence where he had killed her and she was in the trunk of his car waiting to be disposed of, he imagined her begging for a way to revert the clock in her final moments and how he would take pride in having such conviction to follow it through, how it made him feel so real, he imagined how he would have to carry her inside and how difficult it might be to hide her, he imagined the best blanket to wrap her up in and the best time to do it and how he would dispose of her body. He felt shame for this, less so the thought of killing her but more so shame for his need to create complex delusions to escape from the reality that his day day to day struggles were of perfectly ordinary circumstances, he felt shame for not living up to his younger self''s belief that he would be able to confidently accept reality and all its horrors by his age. He settled with the conclusion that she hadn''t messaged him because she was testing to see if he liked her enough to message a 3rd time without a return response. He decided she was worth this test and that he would message her, he thought of an interesting story from his day to tell her but decided against it, I cant try too hard he thought and decided a simple "Hi" should do it, enough to pass her test but only just enough so she doesn''t feel too rewarded by what he considered to be disgusting manipulation, hoping it would make her less likely to do it again. A thought subconsciously crossed his mind without him even noticing it but it caused him to change his behaviour regardless, he recalled an online discussion that he had read years prior where a stranger was wanting relationship advice and the top response said something along the lines of ''messaging 2 times is the limit, if they don''t respond after that then they aren''t interested''. On an intellectual level he knew situations weren''t as black and white as these kids half his age on the internet made them out to be but on the subconscious level where this thought was occurring he was more accepting of such rules, feeling like it must be something he agreed with if it was meaningful enough to remember. He decided against messaging her without really knowing why, he threw his phone down on his bed aggressively but it didn''t ease his rage over the perceived unrequited passion he felt then sat down at his computer.


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    The screen told him that it was the 11th of November 2031, a fact unwelcome to him for no real reason other than it being unsolicited, he could have recalled the date if he was tested but it wasn''t something at the forefront of his consciousness and he preferred to keep it that way believing it would leave more brain power available for what he considered actually mattered. With no idea of what he was going to do in his few short hours of freedom he decided that he may as well find a way to alter this welcome screen to hide this unsolicited information. This was pre-emptive action for a theoretical future self, thinking that one day he may want to lose all track of time. He tried to think of possible life situations that he could be in where he would hate to see the date, what sort of mentality would he have to reach. He imagined being terminally ill, in complete denial of reality and wanting to hide from any and all objective facts, he imagined having his heart broken so badly that simply seeing a date reminded him that he was now existing in a time after her or maybe just dates popping up from time to time that had some significance in his previous relationship, he imagined being so old and full of regret that he couldn''t deal with the shame of how he let it come to this date.


    These scenarios all seemed somewhat plausible to him and therefore worthy of avoiding which strengthened his conviction to remedy this for the sake of a hypothetical future self. Opening his web browser took a little longer than expected and he was met with a familiar but distant home page, a home page filled with more unsolicited facts about the world, previously he had altered this homepage to be more simplistic but every few months it would revert after an update. This became a more pressing issue needing to be resolved and he quickly forgot about the date on the welcome screen, deciding he would look for an alternative browser that wouldn''t be constantly telling him things, the level of possible influence this homepage gave the creators of the browser over his life was less acceptable to him than the level of influence a date could have over him. His eyes inadvertently glanced over this homescreen and he saw a news article saying the USA was testing a new form of nuclear weapon, called a 1to11 bomb, these numbers were significant to his past and thus caught his eye. He briefly read over the one paragraph summary, he didn''t fully understand it but it seemed to him that instead of fuel being ignited itself, each unit of reactant the bomb contained would disperse and strip eleven units of hydrogen isotopes in the atmosphere before igniting thus creating a roughly elevenfold increase from previous destructive capabilities, ''a monumental step towards establishing a peaceful world order'' the website called it but he didn''t see who they were quoting, whether it was the author or someone accepted as important. War is peace was a line that crossed his mind and provided him with a sense of smug satisfaction as if he was the only one who could see through the doublespeak due to his self perceived enlightenment from having read a couple of generic novels in his youth.


    He thought about the significance of this development, war had been escalating for as long as he had remembered and now this, he thought about the consequences but then realised how much he had been manipulated into thinking about this and refused to think about it any longer despite his personal interest in the topic. He wondered if his browser had been paid to do an update right now in order to make sure as many people saw this news and started thinking about what seemed to be an ever looming nuclear war, he became convinced it was intentional and got mad that people were selling his attention without his consent. He looked up the creator of his browser and found connections to all sorts of conglomerates and renewed his conviction to find an alternative.


    He spent the next two hours researching browsers in silence and reading discussions about them between people before settling on one called Zenith, overall Zenith was no better than his current browser but it provided customisation of its home page which solved his issue, in the end he spent his whole night of freedom on nothing of note except finding a way to shield himself from possible facts or opinions in the future. The alcohol was now doing its job and had made him sleepy and at peace enough to head to bed, he checked his phone for the 20th time that hour, it was coincidentally 10:59pm, he thought about telling her about this coincidence, of the bomb, how the name meant a lot to him and how he happened to check the time at 10:59 right before bed but he ended up just having an imaginary conversation with her instead. This continued sporadically into the early hours, just as he would relax and would be approaching sleep he would think of something new he had to tell imaginary her about his day and his views on the world. It was 00:57 the last time he checked his phone.

 Poetry

    When he awoke he heard a bus passing by and despite how faint it was from this distance he still wrongfully deemed it as the cause for his early awakening, the frequency of the birds chirping told him that it was early enough to not cause him any panic. He thought back to the previous night and tried to recall what had taken place, he recalled his conversation with her and what words had been exchanged, it wasn''t until about halfway through his recollection of the conversation that he consciously acknowledged that it was all imaginary, he discussed with himself what parts of it he found interesting enough to be worthy to tell her in the real world when she did eventually respond to him but gave up shortly with the belief that he would think about this later. His mind was now alert enough that he resigned himself to not falling back asleep, he rolled over to check his phone, 6:42 and no messages, he opened his chat with her to see that his messages were still on ''unread'' status.


    He was sure she would have read the messages in the notifications by now and chosen not to respond or even open them, he had always assumed this meant she was unsure what to respond and wanted to defer it until later, not wanting to feel pressured to respond now by confirming to him that she had seen them. This was the first time he had considered a deeper motive, perhaps she was trying to forget him and didn''t want to be reminded of his presence by tempting another message when he noticed a change in status. Ast wasn''t aware but this was a consequence from how in the middle of the night he had awoken and while half asleep he had thought about his relationship with her in this barely conscious state for hours and had arrived at a new conclusion that she hated him for a reason which he would never be able to discern and that she was never going to speak to him again. This conclusion stayed in the back of his mind into the morning and he just assumed it to be natural, completely forgetting that he had gone to bed completely convinced that she was as madly in love with him as he was with her and was simply testing him, this was now not even an option in his mind, she hated him and he would have to learn to move on. His alarm went off at 7:00 but he remained lying in bed with a multitude of unimportant but relaxing thoughts which were constantly interrupted by thoughts of her. His phone beeped and he immediately checked it to confirm that it was indeed her, "Hi" was all it said after 2 days. This annoyed him, he believed she should have known that by now he would have to conclude that she hated him and she should have been more apologetic for letting him get to this point. He had told her previously that he couldn''t help but think she hated him if she didn''t respond, she must have known. He opened the message and deliberated on what to say, catching her briefly in online status for a second before she disappeared without saying more. He had a lot he wanted to tell her but was worried something might have happened to her so he settled on "How are you?" as a formality to check she wasn''t doing exceptionally bad or dying first. She responded "tired", this further agitated him as he believed she was still pretending to not know how annoyed he was, he tried to think of the best way to get this conversation onto something with more depth but noticed it was now 7:05 and he needed to be getting ready for work, he would deliberate on it further in the shower as this was not something he felt was safe to trust his instincts on.


    While the shower was warming up he checked himself in the mirror and noticed his eyes looking particularly tired, it was not until now that he had realized he had not slept well and that he was more tired than usual, he pressed his finger to the cheek under his eye and pulled down on the skin just enough to feel some subtle pain, something he would do most mornings unsure of why the harmless pain comforted him. A small white pimple had formed on the edge of his moustache, the first of which he had noticed in years and he wondered if it developed entirely overnight or if he had missed the early stages of its formation. During his shower he forgave her, maybe she was acting insensitive but she has now benevolently given me a second chance with her, benevolent? why do I think it such ridiculous language? kindly would have been fine. He didn''t give much thought to what he might have done to her that needed forgiving, he assumed as a fact that he had said something careless or not followed normal social conventions. He almost felt happy enough to smile when he thought about how they had forgiven each other and now a new chapter in their shared lives could now flourish, more beautiful than the last but this thought was interrupted by one of the coincidence of her responding right after he opened their chat. Had she been watching my online status? she responded right after I checked, she can track that? maybe she had just woken up at the same time, maybe it was just an unimportant coincidence. He resolved to look into it, was it even possible to watch someone''s online status without opening their chat? he had previously assumed it wasn''t or else he would have been utilising it himself to find out more about her actions in order to try to be what he felt was the right man for her. On a conscious level he was convinced that she had been testing him, but now felt (almost entirely from wishful thinking) that she never hated him so he didn''t need to forgive her for testing him, all is fair in love and war blah blah blah. Subconsciously he still believed that she had at one point hated him but had graced him with a second chance and as such it was now his responsibility to say something interesting, he could not think of anything interesting to say and needed to get to work, he simply responded "brb work" to which she immediately replied "k".


    It took 3 swipes of his palm before his chip was recognised and a "welcome" emitted from the machine in the same voice as always, he had never become comfortable with machines speaking to him thinking there was something divine about language that machines have no right to participate in. Surely they could get a variety of voices or maybe even some AI voice so it sounds different each time, 3 tries, the last time it took 3 scans was only a week ago, it''s definitely getting worse, I better not need a new fucking chip soon, I have too much to think about as it is, who knows what sort of hidden so called features the newer models of these shits have, what sort of backdoors they give corporations and the government to keep track of you, what sort of metrics they can now record and transmit, I bet each time you scan they can infiltrate the companies network and send a signal back to their central database now and update them with all sorts of information about your physiology, everything has a backdoor these days, why do I even need to waste my time thinking about this? why wont they just leave me alone? Who he meant by ''they'' seemed to change every time he referred to them but in general it was anyone with power over his life, the first office he passed after the unlit stairwell was his bosses and he heard his bosses usual greeting "How is it?", I cant remember the last time he said a different greeting, I''m sure he used to switch it up sometimes, maybe that''s what happens when you get comfortable with a person, maybe he is just old and now set in his ways, maybe he is fundamentally a different person, if I was friends with him I could confront him on it, see if he had noticed that he has settled on a phrase and never deviates from it which is in contrast to when we first met, see if he has an explanation, maybe it is like when we first met each other he would try different greetings to see what felt right to say to me and eventually solved this question, perhaps it is inevitable to eventually reach a routine with someone in these sorts of matters, or maybe it is such a routine only because we aren''t good friends, if we were friends he would subconsciously care about our interactions enough to not default to an established routine, a bit of a paradox, i want to talk to him about it but if i could talk to him then the thing i want to talk about wouldn''t exist, I guess I could still ask him about it but he would think it''s weird, he wouldn''t care enough to give me a serious answer, I will do it anyway someday, see what he says or maybe I should just see what Ner has to say about this topic. Is what Ast would think on the way to his desk but for now he responded with a little wave and a "Hi" before continuing to his personal office at the back of the building, possibly the only word he would say to his boss today, his mind wandered as he stared at his email inbox, not really processing anything he was seeing on the screen.


    Instantly he felt something was off but it took a while for him to replay the last few minutes in his mind before eventually he realised what was begging for his attention, it was how his boss had his cellphone sitting on his desk in front of him. Although Ast had never consciously been aware of his bosses phone in any sense, Ast was convinced that the placement of it on his desk was a first or else he surely would have noticed it before. This was the first time for as long as he could remember that he had given a thought of any significance to his boss and felt this to be interesting or even poetic. They crossed paths everyday yet he never really thought of his boss as a person with a full and complex life and now through no choice of his own he felt this fact had forced its way into his mind and begged him for an explanation.


    Perhaps he was waiting on an important phonecall, what could this call be? maybe it was business, maybe someone he loved had been injured and he was waiting on a phonecall that they were going to be alright. perhaps he had been in the middle of a text message as he heard me approaching and placed his phone down to pretend that he was working, why would he need to pretend? he is my boss, he doesn''t answer to me, oh, but it''s still good for optics/morale if it looks like he is working all the time, why would that matter to him? he knows I don''t do much work 90% of the time, he knows I don''t talk to anyone so it wouldn''t travel around the office, maybe he didn''t know it was me when he heard someone approaching his office, maybe other people would judge him harshly for not working 100% of the time, he would have known it was me, i''m always the only one arriving around this time in the morning, maybe he didn''t know what the time was, maybe he has a lot on his mind, what kind of things could he have on his mind? surely it is filled with business nonsense, that''s the price he pays for his position, I could never do that job, I could do it but it wouldn''t be worth the pay to me, to always have your mind filled with pointless nonsense relating to business, I prefer to make less and have my brainpower for things that really matter, things like this? this question came from a somewhat different voice in his head and he chuckled a little out loud at how cheeky and bold it seemed to him for this voice to question him in his own mind but it was a good spirited chuckle as he thought this voice raised a good point or maybe it had nothing to do with business, maybe he was hiding that he was sending a message because he is personally ashamed of it, maybe he is having an affair and was messaging his mistress, maybe he is like me and struggles to think of what to say and wasn''t trying to hide it but was just pausing the message while he re evaluated what to say, is he even married? I have known him for 7 years and I don''t know this? I assume he is, Jeff... Samson?... Sampson, that''s his name, I know that at least, is it important to remember this? I mean, I know it but I should recall it every now and then right? it is what people do, remember names of people, yes, I should remind myself of his name every month or so at least, that''s the least I could do for him. There are things that you know but still need to remember every now and then so you can vocalise them in a socially acceptable timeframe in the future if they are ever needed to be discussed. It''s poetic to notice the small things. A name isn''t a small thing the other voice chimed in.


    Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Ast thought about poetry a lot, he didn''t think about poems so much as the idea of poetry, what poetry meant to him and what was poetic to him. He would often compose poems in his mind but would never properly consider them completed or write them down. Nonetheless he thought of himself as a great poet and took great pride in what he believed to be his superiority in this realm of emotive language. Ast truly believed that he had thought of and subsequently forgotten greater and more meaningful poems than had ever been written, at times he would indulge in a fantasy where one day he would find his muse which would inspire him to finally put pen to paper, write something timeless and make all his years of what he considered practice to finally pay off, how he would now become world renowned for his unique and tender soul.


    Still blankly staring at his inbox and moving his cursor back and forth aimlessly he started to compose a poem about his boss. ''Two souls whose paths rarely intertwine'' hmmm, too generic and dramatic, it feels as if I''m subconsciously remembering these words from somewhere, perhaps I should search them online to check it''s not already a line, if I did that I would be telling the search engine this word combination and their AI would detect them as a beautiful combination... if they are a beautiful combination... sell them onwards to a mainstream poet who would pass them off as their own before I even had a chance to use them, whatever, they weren''t the right words anyway


    He knew what he wanted to express but couldn''t find the words, he wanted a concise way to express how despite him technically crossing paths daily with his boss and frequent chances to impact each others lives, they never really saw each other or gave each other a second thought and certainly never materially impacted each others lives outside the brief work interaction which would have not been any different had anyone else with a different personality supplanted them. He was consciously aware that this is what he wanted to express but not through internal language, only through a vague notion of it bubbling up from his subconscious.


    Wouldn''t it be poetic if the first time our paths properly touched each others after thousands of interactions would also be the last time we ever interacted, what if these thoughts I am thinking now will profoundly change my life and make me a new person? the simple act of his phone on a desk let me see poetry in a completely new light and changed the entirety of my path in life? what if his mother was in hospital overseas and he was waiting to get a call about whether she died? what if he flew out there to be at her deathbed and he never returned with his soul intact? what if he could never find the strength to have such heavy responsibilities again and left for another job, he became some unassuming minion where he had less business related thoughts that he needed to focus on to create the spare time to be able to think through how he was going to go on living without her? maybe this would finally bring him back to life. Perhaps he just has some new tight pants that couldn''t fit his phone? yes, it''s probably something unimportant like that but I should check that everything is ok with him anyway, it might be the last time I ever see him. It would be more poetic if I don''t check that everything is ok though? I could write about it in the future, I could write about not checking even if nothing of significance happens, this is interesting regardless of what actually is the truth in this physical universe. Is it poetic if you make it happen intentionally though? intentionally do what you didn''t want to do in order to cause an interesting story to unfold for yourself? what am I saying? I would never normally talk to him anyway, it wouldn''t be manipulating reality to choose not to talk to him, that is who I am, I am a person who doesn''t talk to people, but normally he wouldn''t have his phone out? his second more distant voice said to himself true, but it''s a small detail, what is a small detail? small details are poetic, right? I think noticing small details and finding some great significance in them could almost be the definition of poetry. I should write a poem about him.


    For the next 3 hours his thoughts were sporadically interrupted by other unimportant thoughts, tv shows he had seen, memories from being a kid, what he was going to do for lunch/dinner etc. along with dealing with incoming emails and the occasional checking of cameras/servers but for the most part he spent those morning hours thinking about the first line of his poem.


    Should I call us ''souls''? souls is too ethereal, not many people believe in souls anymore so i''d alienate a great portion of humanity from that alone, it''s emotive though and conveys a larger than life sense. ''People'' would be too boring but it could represent how the circumstances are ordinary, it implies who they actually are doesn''t matter, they could be anyone in most circumstances, but who they are does matter to this poem, it matters that they have encountered each other every day and had nothing but themselves stopping them from interacting, I could call them ''coworkers'', i''m sure a lot of people could relate to this, a lot of people have coworkers they never really get to know despite many opportunities, right? I don''t know, surely not to this extent, is the power dynamic important? the fact that he is my boss? What about ''humans''? it''s like ''people'' but it makes them seem more like conscious beings with full complex lives and emotions, but it almost sounds like it''s an alien documenting their encounter with life, someone or something first learning how to properly think and feel human emotions, perhaps that''s good? am I trying to document reality from outside or express it from one or both of the participants? Maybe I don''t need to mention the nature of the participants in this story at all, perhaps I could just mention the interactions themselves? ''two paths that crossed but barely touched''? the point is that they don''t cross though, well they do but only superficially, ''superficially'', that''s a good word, ''Two paths forever intertwined but only superficially'', the point of the story is supposed to be that one day they stop only touching superficially so forever doesn''t work here. I don''t like ''paths'', it sounds cheesy, ''two lives''? ''two lives which had touched each other only superficially and now...'' this doesn''t sound like poetry, it doesn''t flow nicely, but perhaps all accurate descriptions don''t flow nicely, what is poetry? it doesn''t matter, whatever feels right to me, I don''t think I can work out the subjects until I work out the point of the poem. Am I trying to say something profound or unique about reality or am I just trying to convey a part of reality and let its message speak for itself? I shouldn''t be trying to say something about reality, billions of years have been spent on trying to understand the point of reality and how it works to no success. But also billions of years have been spent on trying to document reality and events? his other more distant voice asked true, but maybe no one has properly documented this part of reality, I hadn''t heard of a story like this before? is it unique? does that matter? I need to figure out what I am trying to say. Do I though, wouldn''t it be better if you just said what you felt and didn''t push a message? his other voice chimed in but I don''t know what I feel, yet? I know I want to talk about two acquaintances who never chose to meaningfully interact with each other before and how their first meaningful interaction was also their last. ''Acquaintances'' is that the word I want? it seems like the most fitting word but I would still need to explain the nature of how they are acquaintances in order to tell the story and in doing so that would explain that they are acquaintances anyway, I think ''humans'' is the best option so far.


    Ast had a certain liking to the word ''humans'', his girlfriend Ner had an affinity for the word and in his obsession with her he had adopted this fondness. For his 35th birthday she had bought him a cap with the word ''human'' printed on it, the cap was slightly off white and the letters were all different colours. He loved this hat, it was the most personal and meaningful gift he had ever received but perhaps that was heavily influenced by his obsession with her and anything tangible from her could become just as meaningful. When he received this gift she had said "so people know", she meant so that people will know he is a human as if the label the hat bestowed on him would allow him to blend in with others better.


    Ast had always been a bit of an outcast due to his proclivity to prefer his own imagination over the real world, when he desired to learn a new skill or go on a new adventure he would just imagine it instead to such a degree that he would eventually feel he didn''t need to attempt it in real life, imagining he had already dissected every possible twist and turn or every aspect required in mastering the skill. He never felt compelled to prove himself to others but this lack of external actualisation caused him to develop some peculiar habits and ways of thinking which alienated him from others. Ner would often tease him for this and in a sort of game she would often challenge some odd quirk and challenge him to prove to her that he really was from this world and a relatively normal human, having successfully proved his humanity through words he would often undermine everything he had just said in some subtle way to allow the game to continue at a later point. He believed deep down that this peculiarity was a large reason why she liked him, how nothing was ever conclusive or settled between them.


    He loved his ''human'' cap but didn''t wear it, it was one of the only pieces of decoration displayed in his house, he left it on his dresser as a reminder that if nothing else, at least one person valued him for the human that he is. While he liked the aesthetics of the hat and thought it was fashionable, he didn''t wear it for the attention it would bring, Ast didn''t like other people thinking about him or assuming anything about him so he preferred plain unassuming clothes. He understood that although plain clothes would still cause people to make assumptions about him, at least he would be compared to a wider variety of people and as such the actions of any specific person who also wore plain clothes would not have a large impact on people''s perception of him. He thought that his favourite hat or a hat similar enough to it would generally be worn by a very specific person and as such would let people believe that they knew something about him based on the actions of the few others with a similar style.


    All these thoughts about what the word ''human'' meant to him passed through his mind in a vague form, most of Ast''s thoughts were shapeless unlike the narrated vocalised words we have previously conveyed about poetry. He generally only thought in words if he was thinking about a topic that he thought he would have to communicate out loud at some point or if it was relating to the creation/refinement of something specific where he thought it was efficient to debate with himself and make his thoughts more concrete. Throughout this internal narration we have expressed, there were still other less relevant thoughts that were crossing his mind, most frequently thoughts about her, he couldn''t seem to go 5 minutes without a thought of her crossing her mind. The frequency of dealing with her invading his thoughts had caused him to become very adept at dispelling her from his mind, he could sense the thought of her approaching well in advance when it was still bubbling up through his subconscious and cut it off before it reached his conscious mind, something he had done repeatedly throughout this morning. Despite saying ''brb'' and implying he would announce his return, he now felt that she was equally responsible for making the conversation interesting and that if she cared then she would have messaged him by now. He had quickly moved on from being extremely grateful for a second chance with her and was now back to taking her presence in his life for granted.

 Ner

    His building had what was once a designated smokers area which only Ast used for his breaks, his coworkers instead frequenting local cafes or eating at their desks. No one at his company and close to no one in his country smoked anymore due to a lack of availability and the high taxes, this area was a relic from the past when businesses had segregated areas to try and appease both the smokers and those wishing to avoid them back when a mini cultural war was occurring around the right to smoke around others. The short uncovered walkway connected two self contained office spaces, the building was now occupied by two separate businesses but was initially designed for and used by one company with two loosely intertwined departments, the walkway was now obsolete and Ast wasn''t sure if anyone other than him used it which was a large part of why he loved to spend his time there. Off to the side of the severely cracked concrete walkway was a wooden bench that he sat at surrounded by dirt, as he sat down for his break today he wondered if it had always been dirt or if it was once utilised by grass or other plants that had long since decayed, he said to himself that one day he would learn how to read the soil to see if it told a story and that one day day he would try to plant something there to give himself some company. Ast sat down in the same half of the bench that he would always sit, initially he left half of the bench empty in case one day someone did join him out there preemptively to prevent him from having to shuffle over in front of them but at this point he sat on the side out of habit.


    Determined to finally message Ner but unable to think of what to say or how to penetrate what he considered to be the awkward topic of her extended absence over the last few days, he defaulted to just telling her his truth as accurately as possible as to how he felt about their relationship and everything that had been happening but first he decided to explain why he hadn''t text her all morning. "sorry, really busy at work" he hesitated for about a minute before clicking send, he was worried that she would think he was lying and get offended, she knew that he never did any real work and that was strictly true on this occasion too. He had only done maybe 20 minutes of actual work so far today but still he felt as if he wasn''t entirely lying to her, he felt that thinking about his boss and writing a poem about him was relevant to his work, he felt that since it was about his boss and understanding his bosses significance or lack thereof to his life story, it would help him successfully keep his job for years to come.


    Ner knew he was lying but it didn''t bother her, taking comfort in her belief that he would never do anything interesting enough for her to need to truly worry, she was too preoccupied with her own problems to worry about if he was losing interest in her. Their relationship had always been unconventional, they had been together for three years but it had been interspersed with weeks of no communication whatsoever so she thought this recent distance of hers should have little significance to him. Often times either one of them would get caught up in some new interest and go off to pursue it to return weeks later like nothing happened. At this point he felt like they no longer felt any serious real passion for each other, they still loved each other in some strange way but on both sides they now had some idea that they had essentially settled for the easier of option of staying with each other from a purely logical perspective "it is better than being alone" would be a summary phrase neither of them would object to if they managed a rare moment of honesty with themselves. He was obsessed with her but it wasn''t so much her specifically that he was obsessed with, he could have been obsessed with anyone, he loved obsession for the sake of it, thinking it provided a noble base for his life to orient itself around, she was his main tie to reality, providing him with all of the feedback from the physical universe that he felt he needed, as long as he had her balancing him he felt like he was justified to embrace delusions in the rest of his life. The majority of Ner''s job resolved around making small talk with clients, as such the mundane and superficial nature of her day to day conversations contrasted with her conversations with Ast which were often strange and unpredictable to he. Ast believed Ner had big self esteem issues and an increasingly bad drug problem, he figured most of her time not working consisted of her being either drugged out of her mind, watching some boring show, mindless scrolling through some social media, or crying as she tried to understand what was wrong with her. Combined with a history of poor relationship choices she felt like she didn''t have the mental fortitude for a ''real'' relationship, talking with Ast was effortless for her in the sense that she could say anything and he would accept it, she could not respond for days to deal with her own issues and he would accept it, although he was obsessive and constantly questioning her motives, he provided her the feigned understanding that she needed and stuck by her regardless of how bad she treated him.


    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Most of their relationship was online, the majority of communication was through text with the occasional phone call, it was only every week or so they would see each other despite only living blocks apart. This meeting was usually initiated by Ast, not because he wanted to but because he felt it was necessary for their relationship, he felt that is how relationships worked in reality and with this being his only real meaningful relationship he treated it conservatively. They rarely had sex, every few months at best. The times in which they did fuck was enjoyable for both parties and this was one of the reasons Ast tried to avoid fucking anymore frequently, it was frequent enough for his needs and he didn''t want to risk making it feel less special. Ast was not a sexual man by nature, from time to time it would build up and overcome him but for the most part he preferred the imagination of sex far more than the act itself, he was self conscious about all the deviant acts he wanted to enact and preferred to simply indulge them in his mind, another way in which he stuck to what he considered to be the safe route in their relationship. Initially she had tried unsuccessfully to pressure him into sex more, wrongfully thinking he was just shy and it is what he wanted deep down but she eventually accepted that he liked her regardless of this absence in their relationship. The frequency of their relations were not enough for her and after subtly warning him about her needs she occasionally would cheat on him, go on some dating app and find some guy to hook up with but she always successfully kept the men at a distance and broke it off with them after a few dates. She had met a few very determined suitors who insisted on staying in her life and said they would accept her for who she was but she never truly believed them and they eventually gave up so they essentially stayed together just out of familiarity and complacency.

 Interlude 1

    They had met when Ast was getting a filling after a particularly bad period of depression where he had let his teeth deteriorate to such a point that the dentist said he should get all his teeth checked out for other pressing issues. After having received the treatment on the one tooth that was causing him great pain, he only improved his dental hygiene just enough to avoid any further pain and neglected the advice, while he was financially secure (albeit less so at this time) he really only improved this aspect of his life due to the inconvenience and cost of the filling rather than any hygiene or health concerns.


    "Good morning sir, how are you today?" Ner said while he hadn''t yet seen her, still closing the door behind him, her voice instantly created an unfamiliar emotion within him.


    He waited until he reached the reception desk and simply replied "hi" briefly meeting eyes with her before looking away to pretend to read a notice sitting on the desk "sir... funny" he said softly almost to himself as he let out a little chuckle. He stared intently on the notice which read ''current wait time: 30 minutes'' it seems strange that they would go through the effort of this, I wonder how many cards they have? 4? it''s a small place surely it''s easier to just tell people the wait time his thoughts then shifted to the word sir and how he hadn''t heard that word since he was back in highschool. Ast was one of the only students who would always address the male teachers with sir and perhaps solely because of this the teachers always treated him with a significant amount of respect relative to his classmates and perhaps graded him a little more generously. He thought about his highschool days in general and how they felt for about ten seconds as he stared at the notice.


    Ner followed his eyes and didn''t want to interrupt what she assumed was reading, the abnormal length of time and his odd chuckle to himself lead her to believe that he might be special needs and she didn''t want to pressure him to finish reading the notice at fear of offending him. She studied him intently looking for any signs that might indicate he wasn''t entirely there but his face offered no guidance, she eventually assumed he was just shy and was about to speak when he said "you know, same old same old". It took her a moment to realise that he was responding to her question, she was used to people not responding to this as they understood it was just a pleasantry and the times in which they did respond were almost always empty pleasantries themselves like ''good'' or ''fine''.


    "I know" she replied, Ner was immediately intrigued by Ast mostly due to his peculiar way of speaking, not so much the intonation but the cadence in which he spoke. Athough Ast spoke softly he spoke very deliberately with the edges of words containing unusual harshness as if the words were each uttered on their own and didn''t properly blend into one sentence, it was as if he often had to consciously remember the pronunciation for many words and as such each word was a new task which provided a possibility for a reset of the tone in which he was speaking. This way of speaking came from his low level of socialisation as a child, he had never ingrained the pronunciation of many words into his deep subconscious, this combined with his anxiety over possibly having to repeat a word meant he spent a great deal of focus on trying to pronounce words in a way where they would not be misheard rather than the more natural flow of words in a coherent sentence.


    Ner was consciously attracted to the uniqueness of his cadence but wasn''t consciously aware that a large part of why his particular manner of speaking interested her so instantly was because of the pleasant emotions it invoked from its similarity to her late twin brother who she had always seen as incredibly intelligent. Jerry, her late brother had died a year prior to this meeting and even in our current day she still looked up to him despite being four years older than he ever was. Jerry had gotten into a relationship in his late teens with a woman six years his senior who abruptly died in suspicious circumstances and his soul never truly recovered. Jerry had eventually settled on killing himself to rid himself of the sorrow, a decision that was a great internal conflict for him, he knew how much it would affect Ner with how much she depended on him. Like most teenagers Ner had her own struggles with angst and depression and looked to Jerry as a sort of role model who could always seem to handle the world in all its coldness and endure anything. Jerry did not want to ruin this perception she had of him, he believed that she needed to believe that it was possible for people to handle anything so he tried his best to hide his suffering from her and maintain a strong persona and go on with his life. Jerry could not however bear this burden on his soul and decided to take his own life setting out to make it look like an accident, he crashed his car into a pole and died on the scene, just 2 months after his lover. The day started fairly typically, he told Ner that he was going to his friends house and left her with a kiss on her forehead, not particularly unusual but not too common either, he left no note for her although he hid one in a bottle underground in their garden explaining his motives, unsure if anyone would ever find it and hoping if she did, it wouldn''t be until enough time had passed that she had already proved to herself that she can live without him. While Ner expectedly felt a hole within her soul that would never truly heal, Jerry''s plan did work to some extent, she went on living with the idea that it was possible for people to live graciously and with courage face the state of the world and all its horrors.


    Ner had not dated anyone since the death of her brother and this was the first time since his death that she had looked at someone the way she was now looking at Ast, as some interesting soul who stood apart from all the rest.


    "I know" she repeated "how can I help?"


    "I''m here for a 9:30 appointment with Dr. Talbott" he stuttered a little, unsure of whether dentists were always referred to as doctors.


    "Great, fill in this form and take a seat, you are aware of the wait time, right?" she said pointing at the sign he had been staring at earlier, she said out of habit and immediately felt bad thinking he might interpret it as mocking how aware he should be of it by now.


    He looked back at it and truly read it for the first time "oh, that''s ok" he took the form and started filling it out on the counter in front of her.


    "Sir, please take a seat so I can help this lovely man" she pointed to an elderly gentleman who was now waiting behind Ast.


    Ast panicked and his face turned a little red, he was not used to getting in peoples way as he was usually acutely aware of everyone possibly around him. He felt a little shame as the mans tidy attire made him self conscious about his own ill fitting casual clothes, the shame was further exacerbated over his lack of composure before her because he found himself to be incredibly attracted to her. While not finding her particularly beautiful at first but he was immediately enamored with her unique features and style, along with her unique voice which sounded as if she had some foreign accent that he couldn''t properly discern. In his soul he felt that from her eyes and mannerisms alone he could read deep into her psychology and that she was truly a unique creature worth pursuing but his more logical mind and previous relationships made him pass this off as simply the ''that spell all beautiful women can cast on men'' as he put it.


    "Oh, sorry... sir" he said to the man, enunciating the word ''sir'' particularly loudly, although he didn''t do so intentionally, she felt as if he was playfully teasing her with the use of this word due to his comment on her use of it earlier.


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.Ast sat down and continued to fill in the form while he thought about her voice, he tried to pick what her accent was but couldn''t due to the limited reference points to draw from. It wasn''t just the way she pronounced certain syllables that enraptured him, it was the general softness of how she spoke, her manner of speaking was almost the opposite of his, despite some strange choices in pronunciation, her words all blended together so beautifully to him as if the sentences she spoke were really one sound or a short melody.


    The truth was Ner didn''t have an accent in the sense that she came from no foreign descent. The peculiarity in how she spoke came from her unique upbringing. Ner was the daughter of a famous movie director and in her earlier years they had been very wealthy and a picturesque family, however, just shortly after Ner and Jerry had started school their mother suffered a great sickness and was bedridden the rest of her life with the exception of excruciatingly exhausting short trips on occasion. The hospital bills and the lack of a second income ate into their wealth and caused their family to have to adapt to a more frugal and stressful lifestyle. Ner''s father was often away on movie sets and as such her mother was left to raise her but due to her illness she often lacked the strength, forcing Ner and her brother to often have to essentially raise themselves. They grew up in the sparsely populated outskirts of town and so would often spend their days watching movies from their father''s extensive collection. Ner learnt a lot of her language from these movies, and although the ones they would watch were almost exclusively in English, they were often foreign in origin causing her to develop some peculiar pronunciations for words that she had learnt from these movies, making her accent if you can call it that a unique combination of all the worlds accents in one. Their nearest neighbour was about a kilometre down the road and had a boy around their age which Jerry befriended, often leaving Ner at home with just her mother and movies.


    Ast finished the form and handed it back to Ner with 20 minutes to spare "can I come back in ten minutes?".


    "Of course, is everything ok?" she replied


    "I don''t know" he paused, instinctively answering the question too literally largely due to his nerves around what he considered to be such a beauty, he immediately tried to explain it away "I mean, yes, I just need some fresh air"


    "See you soon" she replied.


    The muffled shouting of kids could be heard as Ast sat on the railing of the ramp leading to the front door, positioning himself just out of sight so he couldn''t be seen from within the building. His mind was largely quiet as he stared at the kids swinging on some monkey bars across the road, he felt some nostalgia over his own youth but these were largely ignored as his mind swam formlessly from unimportant thought to unimportant thought. Roughly two minutes later, Ner came out the front door and walked down to her car, picking up a small envelope and returning to her desk. On her way back she addressed Ast "nice day, eh?". "Nice" he replied after about two seconds.


    After his filling, Ast said nothing as he approached to pay. "Have a nice day" she said to which he responded "ok" and accidentally let out a little lopsided smile, usually prefering to hide all expression when possible. From his response combined with his smile, she thought he was teasing her in some weird form of flirting by refusing to respond with a conventional pleasantry such as "you too", "thanks" or even "goodbye" but his mind was just elsewhere and his social skills were too rusty to remember such unwritten rules.


    That evening Ner messaged him "hi, it''s Ner".


    Ast didn''t recognise this name but it evoked a slight familiarity to him, while he had briefly glanced at her nametag earlier that day, he hadn''t filed it away in his mind as her name or even a name at all, he brushed it off as something unimportant, her position within the company or some abbreviation for the business itself, completely forgetting it shortly after spending this brief thought on it. Ast received this message while laying on his couch staring at the ceiling, not thinking about much in particular, "hi, who?" he replied almost instantly shit, i should have given them a chance to possibly send a second message which might add enough context to work out who they are before risking offending them.


    "The receptionist from Brad st. Dental, I thought you seemed nice"


    Ast thought this was some sort of practical joke, he sat up straight and his mind jumped into action, while he had thought fondly of their encounter and even pictured an imaginary life together on his drive home as was customary whenever he met a beautiful woman, he had never actually believed for a second that she had felt some interest back towards him. He tried to think of possible reasons why she might be doing this, he thought that maybe it wasn''t even her, maybe it was someone else who knew he had been there, he threw his phone up in the air a few times as he thought of possible explanations before deciding to take a chance.


    "Oh? thanks, how did I seem nice?" he replied.


    Ast immediately regretted sending this and felt like he had accidentally expressed his skepticism of the situation, he did not doubt her sincerety as he now realised how she could get in serious trouble for using a clients personal number for personal reasons. Ast''s primary reason for this question was he simply didn''t know what to say yet and felt like it was his responsibility to bring up some topic of conversation despite not giving her a chance to say something that she clearly wanted to say. For this particular question though, Ast had a deeper motive, at this time he was still incredibly depressed and felt like his mind was too broken to let anyone in, he wanted to make sure that she had a genuine interest in who he actually was and not just some deluded fantasy version of him, that what she found nice was founded in reality.


    "I don''t know how to explain it, you seem interesting, I am no good at this"


    "Thanks, you seem interesting too, good at what?"


    "Asking someone out"


    "I can do it, do you want to have dinner tomorrow?"


    "ok"


    Ast felt no joy initially and even felt a little annoyed that he had a date, he rightfully feared that this might be a turning point in his life and bring him out of his recent hole of depression, on some level he felt like he deserved to suffer for all eternity due to the wrongs he had committed and as such he intentionally tried to avoid letting anything good happen to him and subconsciously either refused to acknowledge any blessing or actively worked against them, feeling he didn''t want to live in a world where someone as terrible as him was not punished eternally. As the minutes passed, this feeling of fear subsided as his focus shifted outward onto her, how beautiful she had looked and sounded, he forgot his past and who he was, entering pure bliss from this blessing. This turned into anxiety as he wondered what to say, he desperately wanted to keep talking to her, to get a better read on her before their date so he could plan out what topics he would say, how he would dress etc. but decided against it with the thought that''s not what people do, they would act cool and pretend they are patient and have other things to do.


    "5:40? where should I pick you up?" he replied


    "Make it 6, 37 Fleece St"


    "See you soon" he assumed she would notice he borrowed her words from earlier in the day, wondering if their every interaction earlier was now burned as deeply in her mind as it was in his now, since he had recounted it a good twenty times at this point.


    Ast spent the next half hour almost entirely thinking about her name as it was the only fact he really knew about her, he had never heard the name before, he looked it up online and could find no solid information on it, no concrete meaning behind it or place of origin. He thought about how it was similar to his in the sense of the length and just how unconventional it was, he had never met another with his name either. He wondered if this similarity had worked in his favor and caused her to pay closer attention to him during his visit, eventually concluding that it had, he assumed she thought in similar ways to him with his only justification for this assumption being that she liked him.


    Her unique name, features and voice along with the novelty of the whole situation relative to his bland life caused him to work himself into an immediate state of obsession with her, he thought about her deep into the night, getting little sleep as he tried to figure out in his mind exactly who she was. Ast had no work the next day due to the holidays and spent the majority of it reading dating advice on various forums, none of which he ended up applying.

 Break

    He parted the dirt for the first time out of what must be well over a thousand breaks at this bench and buried an apple core, normally he would dispose of it inside but he wanted to see if it would sprout remember to water it tomorrow. Ner still hadn''t responded so he text her again "sorry, I''m really tired too, can I see you tomorrow?". Ast didn''t want to see her tomorrow but it was simply a means to not have to deal with patching things up with her right now, it allowed him to delay it and left the problem for his future self. Ast''s main priority right now was finishing his poem about his boss, he thought that he could confidently be satisfied with it this afternoon and then his mind would be clear to figure out a way to fix things with Ner tomorrow. Ner was not aware that anything did need fixing between them, she was indeed losing interest but felt that her absence over the last two days was completely unrelated to him, she was stressed and had been calling sick to work and spending the days in a drunken bender after being reminded of her late brother from seeing a character in a tv show who looked vaguely similar. Ner almost instantly responded "yep, come to mine xx, have a lovely day at work, I''m just doing some gardening". Ast didn''t reply, he went back to his office, got his actual work out of the way for the day and then after lunchtime he returned to working on his poem realising he had spent the whole morning on it and only decided on one word ''humans'' and even that was subject to change.


    Should I name my characters? perhaps it''s better not to, it would create a bit of mystery, names have all sorts of unintended effects, people might see a name they recognise and subconsciously be influenced because of someone they know with that same name. I guess it doesn''t matter if they are influenced in ways I don''t want them to be as long as they feel something. That influence can also be used to your advantage though, names also have intended effects, you can name them after some famous person or even some object/theme, there are no rules, well you can choose what rules you value. But what if you name them something to make a certain impression and then the passage of time or another piece of media tarnishes public perception of that name, it becomes out of your control, names aren''t timeless but ideas are, it''s like how I used to use the nickname ''Eleven'' and then that show came out and added a lot of preconceptions to the use of it, they stole my name from me. Perhaps it''s more poetic for something to not be timeless? to leave its mark on the world then to be forgotten or misunderstood by all those without the rare esoteric knowledge of the time in history that it came from. What sort of mark do I want this poem to leave on the world? I need to think of the overall story first before I get into details like names. The names could help define the story though? no, I need to work out what exactly I want to happen, names should only be a means to facilitate that rather than an idea in themselves. All that matters is that it is as poetic as possible and for that the key events are most important, any language choices are secondary, I know I don''t have the conventional skills to have my work carried by nice language, I need to rely on the ideas.


    Despite giving a great deal of thought to the word ''poetry'', Ast still couldn''t have eloquently articulated what the essence of poetry was if he was asked but he felt as if he could confidently say when one particular idea was poetic based on a vague subjective feeling. This was the guiding mechanism behind how he created his poems, or attempted to create poems since he never seemed to completely finish them, he would think through countless options without some real algorithm for refining the ideas then go off gut feeling alone as to what was more poetic, a brute force approach.


    Two people have a bunch of meaningless interactions, they then have one meaningful interaction and this interaction becomes their last interaction of any sort, this is the core of my story. But why did they have this one meaningful interaction? was it chance like not meaningful? or was it determined like it was something they felt they had to act on without giving it a conscious consideration? if it was determined it might undermine the weight of the idea as if the interaction was inevitable and purely impersonal business. What if the meaningful interaction became the cause of the end of their interactions? similar to opening someone''s eyes that they need to make a change in their life? This happens, quite a bit, surely? there are certain pieces of advice that hold more weight if they come from a stranger, because people who know you have a preconceived notion of who you are and think you belong in your current place in the world, there is a certain kind of unique honesty that can only come from someone who doesn''t care about you. This sounds kind of poetic, the narrator, will I have a narrator? focuses on someone who is virtually a stranger to them, takes a ''guess'' and tells their boss that they seem to be bored of their life and should go somewhere new, that story sounds too common, I don''t want my poem to be common.


    What about if they bonded on this meaningful interaction and now resolve to stay closer but then they are torn apart through no fault of their own. Say the boss really does have a sick family member, the employee steps in and offers an ear of support, they bond and realise they have more in common than they thought and resolve to finally see each other as humans, but the sick family member now needs permanent care so the boss has to move to support them and they never see the employee again. This is kind of poetic, they had years to form a relationship, they finally attempt to but it is too late through no fault except time itself. This story is also pretty common though?


    Wait, what did I actually do? I thought about talking to my boss and checking to see if things were ok but didn''t end up checking. I am still debating whether I should question him about it. What if I leave it too late? what if my character does that too, what if I decide tonight that I am going to try to talk to him, only to find out tomorrow that he has left forever? That seems poetic, it''s like two different angles on the theme of time, on one level they could have become close years ago, on another now they cant ever become close if just for a moment. It would also have a certain type of irony, on some level it would be like the bosses sudden absence has now had a meaningful impact on the employee''s life as a result of denying the employee the chance to have a meaningful interaction with the boss when they were finally ready to.


    What if they think about questioning the unusual detail of the phone but eventually convince themselves it is of a perfectly ordinary explanation and not worth thinking about, they don''t confront the boss or ask about the phone then it turns out the phone really was an indication of something significant. It would touch on themes of regret, of how you should trust your instincts, of the struggles in searching for meaning. It would be saying that even if you believe things are meaningless, meaning still happens all around you, it would be a rejection of nihilism ''stick a gun to a nihilist''s head and then ask them if nothing matters'', god, nihilists are the worst.


    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    Ast had such a hatred for nihilist''s as he had struggled with nihilistic feelings in his youth and was a little self ashamed that despite his self denial of this fact, he still struggled with them to this day, he saw them as demon''s within himself and not really him. In his youth he had indulged in these feelings too deeply and wasted many years of his life in stagnation, achieving very little, as such now he blamed nihilistic beliefs in general and the culture which romanticised them for his own lack of agency in his youth. He felt it was his moral duty to dispel nihilism wherever he could and help others find meaning in their lives, ignoring the fact that a large contributor to the level of depth of beauty and complexity that he now saw in the world was a consequence of the contrast to the years he spent in nihilistic suffering.


    That''s it, that''s the most poetic version of this story, he instinctively feels like the phone on the desk isn''t meaningful or important and that it''s essentially random, he ignores his feelings and resorts to his logic. He learns that his first instincts were right, the boss had a dying mother, the boss leaves for their funeral and comes back too depressed to work, never truly regains his composure and settles for a more simplistic job elsewhere where his constant mental anguish isn''t as much of an obstruction to more simple work duties. The employee will realise he doesn''t know how to operate best in the world due to wrongfully siding with logic in this case and forever feels regret for not helping another similar soul through a period of suffering, that''s poetic, nihilist''s coming up against the brick wall that is objective reality and getting what they deserve, regret, fuck nihilists.


    That''s ok, we can go with that story, but I still think it''s crucial to include the idea that they had thousands of interactions where it was possible to attempt to establish some meaningful connection between them which were never acted upon, how even in this final interaction where his soul was begging to search out the obvious meaning his feelings were denied. Yes, this idea is important too, He responded to his more distance voice, not just that one interaction, that last interaction needs to be given more depth through relation to thousands of other interactions precluding it, while in retrospect we know that each of those superficial interactions weren''t hiding something more and that no real meaning was lost, we need to reference that they could have been meaningful. The idea that each and every one of those interactions presented a possible branch in their relationship and lives and even if a certain interaction or lack of interaction wasn''t important, maybe he should have pursued all one thousand of these interactions regardless just to make sure he did confront his boss on that one inevitable meaningful day that might be their last together, would it have been worth it?


    That sounds overly dramatic, do I need it to be dramatic? how would I make it more dramatic? perhaps I could change the characters and make it into a love story. Love stories are always the most meaningful, right? that''s why almost every story is a love story, the problem with love stories is that everyone has a different interpretation of what love is, if you try to define it or specify it too much you end up alienating a bunch of readers with a different opinion on love. The key is to make the love as vague as possible, that''s the whole appeal of love, the mystery about what it really is and how no one truly understands it. But I want this story to be specific?


    How would I even do a love story for this concept? thousands of interactions then he finally goes to ask her out and she is gone, if it was love he could still chase her, maybe she died or got married, that''s too dramatic that it would distract from the key premise. Plus, no one would like him if he let thousands of interactions with a girl he supposedly loves pass him by, virtually everyone over the age of sixteen knows that love waits for no one, that if you don''t chase it you deserve to lose it. Maybe he only just realised he was in love? maybe but that undermines the love, love always hits you from the start, you might not know what it is you are feeling but you know you are feeling something unique right from the start.


    I''m sure I could invent some situation where either through his unique psychology or the specifics of the situation he had valid reasons to not interact with her for years, or there was a reason why he suddenly realises what he felt the whole time was love. Maybe, but even with such a situation, it would require a lot of imagination on the part of the reader to put themselves into this unique situation, you don''t want the reader to feel like they have to work to imagine your ideas and empathise with the character, you want it to be like a beautiful reciprocal dance between your words and their imagination. But some work is always required to get them to feel what you want them to? sure, but let''s say you find a way to get them to believe he was right to ignore her for years and then chase her, is the story even fundamentally improved by it being a love story? I don''t think so, I think the story is better the less objectively meaningful it is to the participants, the less dramatic, the more subtle.


    The meaning doesn''t come from what lead up to this point or the psychology behind the participants getting to that point, the meaning is contained within the events themselves and the effect they have on the participants. We only need to explain the lead up just enough to get the reader to be sympathetic with the participants, to feel like they could accidentally get themselves into a similar situation, it would require a lot of pointless effort for them to imagine they could not follow their love interest for years, it''s easier to imagine getting stuck in a routine at work, to ignore someone on the periphery of your life who you have no real obligation to interact with outside a functional sense. Someone harder to imagine like the man who doesn''t pursue their love interest although it sounds silly for me to think that because it''s so common, is better suited to be developed and explained in a full novel or something.


    Love would complicate it and distort the effect, it would distract people from his feelings that we want to convey, they would think the main thing he is suffering from is heartache, rather than the more specific emotion we want to convey. The emotion that he regrets discounting his own feelings and siding with faulty logic, the emotion that he never really got any resolve for all these interactions, that he can never close the chapter of their years together with anything meaningful, he will forever feel like those years of interactions were for nothing, now he questions if the whole past ten years of his life had any consequence or if he was hurtling without breaks to his inevitable demise, never achieving any real meaning in his ordinary life.


    Ast was now feeling despondent from confronting his aging, he looked at the clock on his PC, it was now 4:32. Ast was the employee who had been with the company the second longest behind his boss and this came with perks, he could leave whenever after 4pm and his boss wouldn''t mind. Ast decided he would head home early after staying late yesterday. He walked down past his bosses office and looked inside, something he would rarely do, he caught his boss tapping on his desk with both of his index fingertips, fidgeting as he stared at his screen, they exchanged their regular though rarely used choice in farewells since Ast would often leave without saying goodbye.

 Park

    Ast was not satisfied with the amount of progress he had made on his poem, he knew that if he went home he would get distracted so he decided to go for a walk first, thinking some fresh air and a change in scenery might provide a reset of his thoughts. Around the block from his work was one of the few remaining parks in his city, this was where Ast used to spend many of his work breaks before falling into the habit of preferring the solitude of the ex smokers area in later years. Ast walked through this park as he tried to plan out his poem, his mind less than successful at staying focused due to all the stimuli diverting his attention.


    He would see a little blue flower and suddenly be thinking about his first car without understanding the connection between the two, he would try to remember small details about that car, the music he listened to in it when he first got it, the fastest he went in it, how little he felt when he sold it, eventually giving up when he realised he was starting to think of memories that weren''t his and were likely borrowed from some media or from a dream which he could no longer remember wasn''t reality. A bird would fly over his head and he would tilt his head down incase it decided to try and poo on him, he would think about whether birds intentionally shat on people, he would think about the specifics of how someone could possibly test this empirically, how many data points would be needed to draw a statistically significant conclusion. I guess there would be some accidental correlation, birds would naturally fly over people more often than they didn''t simply due to humans being something that caught their attention. He would pass a girl with a shaved head sitting on the ground with her hand in a boot, this would bring him back to the ever repeating cycle of thoughts about what poetry is to him that never really came to any conclusion.


    Is this a poetic detail? surely a boot on your hand is nothing regular, there could be a very interesting story behind it. The problem is that it''s too much of a conscious choice of hers and that it''s too obvious for any external onlooker to see that it is out of place. It''s easy to create or see things that are so blatantly out of place, it''s not that interesting, what is interesting are those subtle details that take a trained eye, those details that reveal far more about someone than most could imagine and often times what someone is trying to hide, that''s poetic. So why did she wear the boot? maybe she just wanted to look quirky and maybe it had no meaning, she was just fidgeting, her mind was elsewhere and her boots happened to be sitting nearby. You can still create an interesting backstory for why she was fidgeting though, like explain where her mind was? sure, but you can do that about anything, the specific of a boot on her hand isn''t interesting on its own, you need to notice the small details, the shaved head is probably more interesting in terms of revealing something important about her even if it''s more common.


    Ast passed a long white feather on the ground having no idea what type of animal it came from, he decided that it wasn''t a meaningful detail but that he would make it into one, he picked up the feather and stabbed the quill into the ground so it stood upright like a flag in a manner that could not happen realistically without human intervention.


    He thought of how rare it must be for someone to do something like this intentionally due to its lack of utilitarian function. He thought it was poetic how it was likely nobody would ever notice this feather flag before it fell over through heavy rain, wind or contact with something. He thought this low chance of anyone noticing it made it even more poetic. He thought it was more poetic that even if someone did notice it, they might not even think about how it''s not natural. He thought it was more poetic that even if they did notice that it wasn''t natural they might not even care as to why someone would do such a thing ''people do things like this without reasons'' they might conclude after half a thought and never consider it more deeply than that. He thought of this now infinitesimally small chance that someone would think about why someone would place a feather in the ground like so, he thought of why he did it.


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    To try and get people to notice the small details, to show people that there are other people out there who see meaning where it shows up hidden in the chaos of life, to show people there are other poetic souls out there who spend their efforts trying to show others something even if it is largely wasted or futile. So if someone does find it, they can know they are special, they succeeded in receiving the meaning despite the tiny odds and they saw meaning that likely no one else saw, and that in all likelihood may never have been seen.


    Ast liked to imagine there were hundreds of other poetic souls in his neighbourhood, all living unseen and unrecognised for what they really are, never telling the nature of their inner thoughts to others, to take their deepest thoughts with them to their graves. Ast hoped his little action might inspire something in one of these souls and hoped that karma from giving someone else such a poetic detail would return back to him an equally poetic source of inspiration in time.


    Ast spent the rest of his walk through the park thinking about how there seemed to be something very meaningful to him and perhaps even intrinsic in the idea that poetic details are often unseen by almost everyone, they need to be hidden in plain sight. He thought about how easy it was to artificially create something obviously out of place but how if it was obvious, it undermined the meaning, at least some of the meaning came in the hiding it or it being hidden due to its own nature. He thought about how poetry to him was fundamentally about exposing that hidden layer of meaning in everyday life, though tomorrow he would probably have a different opinion on what was fundamental to poetry, likely not entirely contradictory.


    When Ast reached the other side of the park he sat down for a few minutes and thought about nothing of interest. He only did this as he was unsure if other people would notice that he walked somewhere only to instantly turn around and walk back, he didn''t want to give strangers a reason to think about him, not just because he wanted to be hidden but also he felt it to be courteous to not disrupt their thoughts with his presence. He got up and walked back the exact same way he came, spending most of the walk trying to crunch the numbers surrounding just how unlikely it would be that someone would notice the feather and think about the motives of the person who planted it there and come to the right conclusion that it was planted there exactly for that reason, just to inspire someone to think about this. He came to the conclusion that it was roughly 1 in 200 thousand.


    As he left the park and stopped at the crossing for the light, a schoolgirl stood beside him, he briefly looked over at her to do a quick calculation for the ratio between the volume of her backpack and her when another girl ran up behind her, grabbed her on her shoulders and playfully jolted her backwards gently. He thought about how long it had been since anyone had playfully and innocently touched him and wondered if his experience was rare or if it was normal for this to be something reserved for kids, something that gradually ended and died off after adolescence without ever asking to be excused. He returned to work, looked up at his bosses window but couldn''t see anything through the dark tint, got in his car and drove home.

 Politics

    Ast stopped to buy a couple of bottles of whiskey along the way. The cashier who certainly would have recognised Ast by now (even though he frequented numerous stores to try and avoid this) this tried to make small talk, wrongfully assuming Ast must have been paying attention to the news story on the tv off to the side of the counter since he was blankly staring in that direction while the cashier scanned his items.


    "Do you think it''s actually happening this time?" the cashier asked.


    "Huh?"


    "Nuclear war"


    "I don''t know, I don''t follow politics"


    "You must be happy"


    "Something like that"


    "Take it easy, bro"


    "Thanks"


    Ast had lied, he followed politics, especially geopolitcs fervently, he knew politics was more or less inconsequential in his day to day life or at least his knowledge of politics was and even considered most of it scripted and fake but he followed it anyway as a guilty pleasure, like a soap opera. Ast had become so worried over the increasing worldwide tensions over the past years that he had built a bunker under his house last summer, it was very simplistic, only large enough for him to stand up or lie down in. He had initially planned to make a full size room but the slow progress quickly caused him to narrow the scope.


    The room wouldn''t be much use beyond sheltering from a distant blast or minimising radiation exposure, he would still have to leave it from time to time to acquire essentials but he could sleep in it or pass his days reading there. The floor and walls were built from bricks that he had brought into his place one backpack at a time to hide the development, the walls ran up to the bottom of his house, making the floor of his house its roof, a PVC pipe provided airflow. The entrance was in his wardrobe, there was an existing trap door in place to provide access to underneath his house, the area under his house was completely inaccessible otherwise due to thick concrete walls with only small air vents, while initially this crawlspace was only around 50cm high, over the course of weeks in his spare time he had slowly dug his bunker down a couple of metres.


    Ast had told no one about this project of his, he wasn''t speaking with Ner much at the time (a large contributor to why he searched for a distraction to focus on and why he had been indulging in paranoid fantasies so much) and no one else ever visited his residence. While he didn''t outright own his apartment, he had purchased a 99 year lease and more or less had full rights over his section of the building, only playing a small amount for upkeep of the shared areas to the building owner, he had come to understand two of his neighbours were in the same situation with only one apartment still being rented out by the landlord.


    Ast had other motives for this area, he didn''t know exactly what they might be but he thought a secret room may become useful to him at some point, he had planned to lock and hide the entrance/vent, creating a space that only he could know about. He thought this might be a useful storage area incase he ended up sharing his house with a future wife/family and wanted to hide things, he only had vague ideas of what these things might be but he wanted the option, at the moment he just stored his silver in there.


    Before meeting Ner, Ast had been smoking a lot of marijuana, roughly in the order of $100 a week for the past two years but he decided to quit to try and impress her. He thought it would show her the strength of his character (even though he never told her that he was once more or less addicted), and demonstrate to her how he was on the path to better himself and was in control of his life but more honestly it was to convince himself of this.


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    Ever since then he had only smoked a couple of times when it was offered to him, instead focusing that same time on impressing Ner or increasing his drinking. However, he continued to withdraw the same amount of cash each week, in a sense pretending to whoever/whatever was possibly surveilling him that he was still a heavy smoker. Virtually no one used cash anymore for anything except illegal activities but he knew as long as he kept the withdrawals to a reasonable amount that any authorities wouldn''t be bothered to look into it. If he had of been drawing large or inconsistent amounts, they no doubt would have looked into his situation and put him under more stringent surveillance. Ast didn''t have a definite reason for this withdrawal of money, he was using it to gradually hide his assets/wealth but didn''t have an end goal in mind for that. His reasoning was that he was keeping his options open for if one day in the future he urgently wanted to hide his wealth for whatever reason, it would be too late, the algorithms would detect his desires before he did and increase surveillance and even if he managed to successfully hide his intent, they no doubt would quickly notice his unusual withdrawals and look into it.


    He rightfully assumed the authorities could have been aware of his previous habits, not just from his financial activity but also his communications, so to maintain their belief he would occasionally search things loosely related to marijuana consumption online, enquiries into local prices, methods of smoking etc.


    A few times a year he would buy a kilogram of silver at the premium that came from no paper trail. One major reason was to avoid possible inflation that he was increasingly worried about but he had another more paranoid reason, he considered it was possible that from time to time the authorities would track the serial numbers of bank notes, usually at the time of bank transactions and suspicions might be raised if the the notes he withdrew were all classified as permanently removed from the circulating economy.


    Over the past three years since he had met Ner, he had amassed 7kg of silver of which no one should be aware. He often fantasised about what he might be able to use his hidden assets for, he thought it to be possible that he could fake his own death and use them to fund the creation of a new identity or simply to go off the grid somewhere isolated and buy everything with cash if such a place hidden from surveilance still existed. He thought one day he might perform some criminal activity and the money would prove essential in covering his crimes. This was a recurring theme in Ast''s thoughts, the idea that some day he would finally break out from his uneventful life, do something wild and his ''real life'' would begin, never going back to being an ordinary person with uninteresting stories, finally find his motivation to go ''all in''. He felt as if his every action should in some sense be towards setting up his future ''real life'' with the means and ability to achieve whatever happened to be their desire, a lot of the time he felt like nothing about his current situation including himself was even real. Recently though, he had been forced to confront the reality of his existence and his own looming mortality, he was now rapidly approaching 40 and while still in relatively good health, he seemed to constantly have at least one point of temporary discomfort or another, a bad back, sore tooth or some joint pain, the latter of which he had felt in his shoulder particularly bad in the week before, probably lending to his unusually steadfast resolve to actually work on finishing his latest poem rather than drop it after a few hours like all his previous attempts. He told himself that he would finally put something out into the world this time and while he often said that, this time he truly believed the situation was different.


    He didn''t know what his real self would be capable of but he thought it might be a useful place to store a corpse or prisoner, he had a lot of murderous fantasies which he felt to be relatively normal and believed he would always manage to contain them to his imagination. While geopolitical tensions last summer had mostly subsided rendering his bunker obsolete he was grateful to his past self for this preparation as they flared up again.

 War (and love)

    Ast got in his car and drove the rest of the way home, took the bottles out of the paper bag and placed them in a backpack stored behind the passengers seat, utilising its two separate compartments to avoid them clanking against each other in the paper bag. He didn''t want to give his neighbours the possibility to know he was drinking, though after years living nearby and shared recycling, they no doubt would have known this was a regular occurrence for him, nevertheless he avoided giving them any excuse to think about him any more than he felt they had to.


    Tonight was one of the first nights in a while where Ast was drinking primarily because he wanted to and not out of instinctive habit, this was signified by him grabbing a glass to drink out of rather than the usual straight out of the bottle. The psychology behind this was that he knew he was going to drink a lot tonight so he should at least be consciously aware of how much he was drinking in order to keep it under control but this never did anything to reduce his drinking.


    After checking his silver was still there he searched up the latest on the war to find out that Romanian President Solca with NATO approval had launched an airstrike on the Russian backed MRA headquarters in eastern Moldova, just a few weeks after the UN had labelled it a terrorist organisation. This was one of the few times he agreed with the media, that this would no doubt lead to an all out war in a matter of weeks, possibly escalating to nuclear. He wasn''t shaken, he had been mentally prepared for this for years and in a sense even welcomed it, he wasn''t personally afraid of death or a breakdown of society, he kept a year worth of supplies and thought the general population was overdue some great tragedy that was needed periodically for them to take their lives seriously. He saw an opportunity in this, deeming it poetic timing, he could finally utilise his life experience to produce something in the form of his poem and it might be his last chance, he might die immediately after or even during making it. It was almost the plot within his poem playing itself out in its own creation, a strange coincidence he thought. He spent the rest of the night listening to various talking heads share their opinions, not learning much but watching it more as entertainment to see what was happening (or about to happen) in the psychology of the average person, almost like a zoo. As he got drunker throughout the night he devolved into more and more mindless channels and ended up listening to a bunch of nostalgic songs before passing out before midnight in his computer chair.


    His alarm woke him up and he managed to get to work on time, his bosses phone was not out on his desk and under his brief inspection, his boss looked like he always did, he felt like he must have over thought the phone on the desk like he over thinks a lot of things, he was still determined to write his poem but due to his hangover he spent most of the morning reading low quality news articles. In the afternoon he tried to plan out how he would patch things up with Ner, convinced that she hated him again. He determined a certain approach to take then an hour later abandoned that angle completely and dreamed up another approach, he never settled on a strategy but wasn''t concerned, he thought he had nothing left to lose with the world ending.


    He met her at her apartment right after work, it was a dingy little place in a two story complex with six on the bottom floor where she resided, she had a direct door from the outside with a north facing deck where she grew a lot of vegetables in various planters which he inspected before knocking, finding them full of weeds at odds with her supposed gardening the day before. She almost sprinted out of her bedroom when she heard him knocking which he felt to be out of character for her and she stood on his feet as she hugged him.


    "Ner?" he still used her name 99% of the time, only resorting to nicknames if he wanted to troll or if he was in a particularly strange mood.


    "Ast?" she loosened the hug a little so she could look at him properly.


    "Hi..." he paused but she waited for him to continue "I missed you"


    "Same, but I''ve been here, come inside" her hand tried to grab onto his to drag him inside but the lack of commitment to the motion and his own unresponsive dead hand just made hers massage his and then draw away like one of those old arcade claw games.


    He followed her inside and looked around, everything looked as usual except for Ner, he thought she looked like shit and he was considering being his usual blunt self but decided against it due to her warm welcome, worried she might have recently experienced a sensitive negative experience. She went into the kitchen and grabbed a few beers as he sat down at the counter, he shook his head as she offered one to him by waving it silently in front of herself.


    "I drunk too much last night" he said


    "Is everything ok?"


    "Yeah, I''m fine, how are things with you?"


    "Better, I''ve been pretty sick"


    Ast instantly didn''t believe her, the tone of her voice which he could now discern confidently lead him to believe she was lying.


    "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, Ner had many subtle tells when she was lying and in this case Ast attempted to use one of her more reliable ones, her tendency to over explain unimportant things in a lie, it wasn''t so much that she would say too much or that she would contradict herself or say something questionable that raised his suspicions but he could tell when she was sharing things that wouldn''t naturally be meaningful to her as he knew her intimately. A casual acquaintance would be hard pressed to catch her lying in this way or in any way, Ner was a very smart woman and as such a very skilled liar at least in an empirical sense, she had a solid intuition for what stories would be believable and could keep track of all the little details in her lies that she had told to not contradict herself. However, her self awareness and emotions still had holes which Ast was now largely aware of and he used them to relatively consistently discern when she was lying. He tried to hide his awareness of this tendency of hers and all her other little tells, having only called her out on her almost pathological lying a couple of times.


    While Ast rarely lied, he could usually empathise with her reasoning behind the important lies even if they were selfish such as when she was cheating on him or when she was lying to make herself appear better. However, her meaningless lies offended him more, the fact that she would lie to him about things that he considered weren''t even worth lying about as if she didn''t care about living in reality with him.


    Ast had worked out her nature to overshare when she was lying entirely on his own but had later learned from watching interrogation videos that it was a very common tell in people, with the help of these videos teaching him what to look out for he started to notice many other small tells in her, a slight tone change in her voice, some almost imperceptible fidgeting (particularly of her feet), increased eye contact, an over compensation based on her belief that if she didn''t look at him as much then he would know she is lying, due to her faulty perception of how often she naturally looked at him. While he couldn''t confirm it, at this point he thought it was impossible for her to get anything completely past him without him noticing and in a way this improved his trust in her even though he still noticed constant lies of various magnitudes.


    "No, I''m fine now" she took a big gulp of her beer.


    This took Ast aback, he had been sure she had been lying and still tended to believe she was, yet this sounded convincing to him in her tone and the way she spoke, either she isn''t in her usual state of mind or to a large degree she truly believes she isn''t lying, or at least not lying much, he went with the latter. Maybe she is lying but she really thinks she was sick in some vague sense of the word, a sickness of the mind perhaps, but what could that mean? depression? internal conflict? it could be anything... maybe she was second guessing her relationship with me and sick with emotion, that would explain why she was so happy to see me, it would be similar to how she over shares when she is lying, she is over compensating for how little she cares about me by acting like she cares about me so much. Surely she can tell that this is out of character for her though, maybe she isn''t thinking straight, maybe she has actual problems, I should check she is actually alright before I risk confronting her.


    These thoughts weren''t exactly in words and as such they didn''t take as long as one might think but he was still rapidly approaching the awkward period of time for silence, he had bought a few more seconds with a smile and by staring at her as if he was waiting for her to speak but by the time she had finished her gulp and she looked at the clock it was clear to both of them that it was his turn to speak, he didn''t know how to go about finding what was really happening within her mind so he took a step back.


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    "Let''s get some Chinese takeout, ill buy" the fact that he had said he was buying was largely an empty gesture, while neither of them were rich by any stretch, they both lived very frugal simple lives and had far more money than they knew what to do with. He only offered to pay ahead of time when he was trying to make her feel like he cared about her more than he actually did, he wasn''t aware of his tendency to do this but Ner had worked it out in him.


    "Yes, let us" she replied slow and methodically, enunciating the words carefully, he had never heard her say this exact phrase and it was in a peculiar way, it made him question that she was lying and was now second guessing that she might just not be in her regular state of mind.


    It was a beautiful spring evening and there was still a lot of sunlight, he noticed the smell of freshly cut grass in the neighborhood which he hadn''t on his arrival although it must have been there, the smell reminded him of weed and his mind started replaying those accompanying days of deep depression as they walked hand in hand down the street. Even though he was on the verge of suicide for almost ten years, he looked back on those days fondly as if they were the time of his life, he couldn''t work out if it was simply his age, the culture of the world at the time or simply his lack of responsibilities but he missed those days, particularly how they all blended into one as if he existed outside of time and wasn''t at the mercy of reality. Eventually his mind came back to her and trying to work out what was happening within her brain. They didn''t talk as they walked, they would occasionally interact, squeezing each others hand, pointing out some strange person or graffiti but these interactions (at least from Ast''s perspective) were manufactured and just enough to maintain a fa?ade that they were truly together in this moment and provide the distance desired from the reality that he was stuck in his own mind.


    Ner decided for the both of them to eat in the restaurant rather than take it away and they sat down by the window, Ast ordered a smorgasbord for the two of them along with a beer each.


    Ast placed his hands together on the table, looked at her then looked down at them before realising how dramatic he must appear and took them away "So, there is something important that i''ve been wanting to ask you for a long time" normally he would just ask anything boldly, particularly deep and meaningful questions without giving any warning, finding a sense of self satisfaction in what he considered to be a unique and honorable personality trait of his, defying the rules and being unique, such a poser... but in this case and most cases where he would give advanced warning that the question was important, he wasn''t using it to prepare her, give her the opportunity to postpone or avoid the question, to get her into the right state of mind or to even give the question the serious respect it deserved. He, like usual was just using this warning as a means to gather more information on her, to see how she would react, to watch how excited she would be in anticipation of a meaningful question and more importantly to see if the question lived up to her expectations in terms of importance once it was delivered, to see if it was as meaningful to her as it was to him. He had hoped one day he might catch a glimpse of her wrongly expecting a marriage proposal but had perhaps used this same pre-emptive warning too frequently for it to currently convey that much weight, he thought he would stop using it so much to let it build back its importance but needed to cash in on it right now.


    She placed her hands on the edge of the table and started tapping her fingers, Ast unable to tell whether this was fidgeting was conscious or not, whether it signified excitement, anxiety or what. She could tell that his warning wasn''t for her sake, that he was trying to gather information so she was intentionally trying to convey conflicting signals to throw him off.


    "Of course, you can ask anything"


    Her tone made him think that she wasn''t expecting anything significantly meaningful, the fact that she wasn''t taking him as serious as he wanted to be taken annoyed him. He really was planning to ask something incredibly important to him but now he tried to think of an even more important question to spite her, to punish her for thinking she knows his motives beyond what the words themselves say. He failed to come up with anything more important and stuck to his planned question.


    "What does your name mean? where does it come from?" he had wanted to ask this since before their first date but instead felt it would be more poetic to never know, however now he felt ''ever'' was ending and believed their relationship was in desperate need of some deep conversation.


    She spent a good ten minutes recounting the story in great detail, and while Ast usually could remember every word she spoke for a few hours afterwards (even surrounding unimportant matters), the fact that this topic was so meaningful to him caused his mind to wander to the possible implications of this story. He only remembered the key points of the story afterwards, that her parents met as late teens at a holiday camp while her dad was making an amateur movie, her dad was immediately attracted to her mother and asked her to star in the movie to which she accepted, he gave her mother the option to choose the name of her character in the movie and she chose Ner, they fell in love while filming this movie that was never shown to the general public and still exists somewhere at their house.


    He waited for a good minute after she finished the story to make sure there wasn''t any more that she had to add and to portray that he was reflecting on it but he had already decided which questions to ask early into the recounting of the story.


    "So... why did your mother choose the name Ner for her character though?" he eventually asked.


    "I never asked"


    "Don''t you care?"


    "Sure, I care, maybe I will ask one day"


    "But...?"


    "But what? it''s enough for me that my name brought them together, that''s special enough"


    "Yeah, I guess, I just... I think I would like to know"


    "I do want to know, I plan to ask one day" She was starting to get a little agitated so he took a breath to think.


    "Interesting, I really get it, it reminds me of why I put off asking about your name for so long, it was a nice mystery, I was scared that the actual explanation for the name would be meaningless and it would reduce the wonder I have for you, plus, I think there is something special about intentionally not knowing important things about people who are important to you"


    "Did you think they might have just thrown darts at letters and came up with Ner?" she paused "Sorry, bad joke"


    "I know" he laughed really loudly and wanted to clarify that he wasn''t laughing about how bad the joke was but rather his own response but she replied before he had finished.


    "Well, did it reduce the wonder?"


    "Not at all, it''s poetic, even before you were born you were creating love in people and now you do the same for me and saved me from the depths of my own soul" the last part was said in an overly melodramatic way to match with the angsty words, a vain attempt to hide the truth behind a joke, from who he was hiding this truth wasn''t clear, they both understood she had helped him escape a dark time in his life.


    "Right... I''m worried my mother might have just chosen the name without much reason, but I guess that would still be fine?"


    "It depends" he had planned to say more but he noticed the waiter approaching, he didn''t stop out of respect for acknowledging the waiter but simply because he didn''t want to share their lives with the waiter. She drunk the other half of her beer while the waiter was there and asked for another. They sat in silence, not eating until the waiter had returned and left again, she grabbed a wonton and just before eating it she asked.


    "Do you still want to know where your name comes from?" she had asked Ast where his name came from on their first date and had felt him to be insensitive when he didn''t return the question. He had told her that his dad had chosen the name but due to his untimely death and the lack of his mothers enquiry, his dad had taken the reasoning for Ast''s name to his grave.


    "No, I like pretending it had no reason to be chosen" he wasn''t sure if he actually believed what he was saying or if he had deluded himself into believing it in order to live with the situation which he could no longer avoid. Ast realised just then that he had never asked his mother her reasons why she never asked his dad where the name came from. Ast wondered if he should ask her now, he hadn''t spoken to her in over ten years since the start of his major depressive episode.


    "Hmmm?"


    "I like being a blank slate, I make the own meaning for my name and I fear I might be subconsciously influenced into playing out some story about my own existence if someone else had established a reason for my existence before I was born"


    "You''re particularly dramatic tonight" she teased before directing the conversation to more lighthearted topics where it remained for the rest of their dinner, they took a walk through a different park than Ast visited yesterday, saying very little throughout it and the rest of the way home.


    When they returned to Ner''s house they had another couple of beer''s while listening to some new artist that she loved but didn''t get too drunk, Ast dominated the conversation and among other things he told her about what went through his mind surrounding her in the last few days, how he went back and forth between convincing himself she hated him and that nothing was wrong, then everything was wrong etc., she didn''t respond much to that except telling him that he is silly and overthinks things, if he was more perceptive he would have been able to tell that she found this topic along with his conversation dominating very unattractive and a mood spoiler for what had started as a nice night. He got a little offended but he was just happy that he felt things were now nice between them again, shortly after that he told her that he was heading home, intentionally trying to plant some seed in her mind that she had truly offended him, she didn''t take this bait though as she had other issues and just wished him well and ended their night with a short but passionate kiss on the doorstep. He went home, masturbated to some depraved porn, and went straight to sleep.

 Names

    The next day at work he couldn''t focus on his poem, his mind was on himself. He thought about his mother, he didn''t know if she was still alive, the last confirmation of her life was around two years ago. He wanted to know what her reasons were for not asking his father about the name Ast, he wondered if her line of reasoning was similar to why he hadn''t asked Ner. He thought about how this tendency may run in his blood and wondered what else ran in his blood, perhaps his depression too, he had always suspected that his father may have taken his life intentionally but was too young at the time to have noticed any signs, another question he would like to pose to his estranged mother.


    Maybe it was just love to not question the motives, she trusted the name he chose and the fact that it came from him was enough for her to support it, is that love though? it''s not needed but it should be the default stance, to accept your partner''s opinion, the women should always be very hesitant to challenge their husbands, there needs to be the threat of physical violence, a man should never hit a woman but the woman should always know that he could and might, this threat is useful for making women second guess questioning your decisions and thinking before they do so, yes, a woman should challenge a man when needed but she should always be consciously aware of what she is challenging and why before doing so, that is the role of a woman, my mother probably knew this, maybe she knew that not asking for his reasons would be a big compliment to my dad, to show him that she trusts him so much with something as important as the name of their only son to just accept it without an explanation, or maybe she is just like me and selfishly wanted to maintain the mystery. I should ask her, one day...


    The rest of his thoughts for the day at work were among a similar line, Ast trying to work out how much of both his and his mother''s personality could be due to nature. He left work relatively early again and went for a walk to the park, he felt bad for not making any progress on his poem so he decided to sit on his favourite bench knowing that he did his best thinking when he wasn''t encountering stimuli. What he considered to be his bench was at the top of a little hill on the corner of the park with bushes around the sides, it was out of the way and provided a lovely although limited view of the park. He sat down and tried to remember where he was at with his poem but got distracted by a little field mouse he noticed coming out of the bushes and running across the tall grass beside him. This was the first time he had ever seen a mouse outside of a house and thought that was an unbelievable realisation for someone of his age, he wondered what other common things he may have yet to experience. While thinking about these possible experiences he noticed a girl about halfway up the hill coming straight towards him, she gave a little smile and sat down. She was beautiful, a little younger than Ast with a facial structure that looked asian but she wasn''t, she was fairly tall and slender, her only flaws that he actually found endearing were slightly protruding eyes and a large overbite giving her a fairly distinct face, he could tell from her accent that she had grown up here. She spoke shortly after sitting down "Hi"


    "Hi" he replied unconsciously emulating how she spoke, they they sat in silence for a good 20 seconds, Ast would usually avoid engaging strangers in casual conversation but even with his poor social intelligence he could tell this was an abnormally forward approach that she had taken and he was curious to know more, he was about to speak when she beat him to it.


    "I''ve never seen anyone else on my bench before"


    "Your bench?" he said without it sounding much like a question.


    "Well, usually I sit on that side" as she looked over to where he was sitting before raising her eyes to meet his.


    "Ok" he was lost for words and was a bit nervous, paused for a bit before "we can swap"


    "No, it''s nice" More silence as he fidgeted with his fingers on the edge of the bench a little hunched over, she sat up straight with her hands folded on her lap as if she was in church or at a funeral service.


    "It''s a bit out of the way" Ast said


    "That''s part of why I like it"


    "Most people don''t do things out of their way unless it serves a purpose, they don''t do things because they want to, they only do them because they feel like they need to" he immediately regretted his words, how they sounded far more cynical than he meant them to be "anymore" he added.


    She didn''t respond instantly as if she was trying to really understand what he said before replying "I know what you mean, I rarely see anyone in this park at all who isn''t walking a dog or running for some exercise, they are all doing something they think they need"


    He was still a little embarrassed about starting a topic which disparaged such a wide portion of humanity and tried to turn it back on himself to lighten the mood. "Well... I guess I can''t talk, I''m here because I feel like I needed to do something too"


    "What did you need to do?"


    "Just.. um... sit and get away from the noise a bit"


    She could tell from the way he stuttered the start of his sentence that he initially wanted to say something else and stopped himself, she couldn''t think of much to say because of this distracting thought so just replied "same".


    They sat side by side for a while, not speaking when Ast realised he didn''t care about hiding himself right now, he wanted to be seen and took a chance on her "The truth is, i''m trying to write a poem and I think best here"


    "Hmmm... what''s it about?" Ast was happy she had asked this and not enquired about something that he deemed less interesting as had been the case the couple of other times he had spoken to people about his poems where they had asked about the name of it or had said in a patronising way that it was cool that he was writing poems and wanted to know more about how often he writes them.


    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    "It might change but..." he maintained eye contact as he paused to think of the best way to structure the story "it''s about a man who notices an unimportant, err small detail about someone he has interacted with a lot, he feels like this detail is important and that he should ask the person about it but his logic takes over and tells him that it''s not worth caring about, then he finds out the detail was important and due to the detail this close acquaintance of his has to leave forever and he never sees them again, missing their last chance to finally have some meaningful interaction" he stopped and allowed her to respond but she didn''t as if she was listening intently for more so he continued "that''s basically it, it''s about regret, regret that he didn''t trust his judgment, regret that they are now separated forever and despite having thousands of interactions, their relationship will now always be confined to history as being one of a completely superficial and unimportant nature even though he could have and should have brought meaning to it in the last time they interacted" he paused again to give her a chance to interject before continuing "it''s about how if you don''t take the chance to seize on the meaning you see then the meaning will create itself and it might not be the meaning you had wanted, or maybe it is more meaningful this way, I haven''t decided... sorry, I''m rambling" he surprised himself with how concisely and eloquently he had put his idea, he rarely spoke to anyone and when he did he often tripped over his words but now he was speaking honestly and without care for its impact and it came naturally.


    "I get it, I don''t get how it will be a poem though..." she hesitated "It sounds nice though, can I say something too personal?"


    "Sure" he wanted to leave it at this but couldn''t resist justifying himself "it probably wont be like normal poems, it will be longer and more like a mini story, but please tell me"


    "It reminds me of when my twin sister was dying, while we were never really distant it wasn''t until her last days that we finally connected" her unnatural level of composure had slipped and her hands were fidgeting, Ast could tell she wanted to say more but was hesitant to reveal too much to a stranger.


    "Sorry if I''m being too nosey but are you happy for that connection?" he regretted this instantly "...of course you are, but I mean, I don''t know what I mean, I''m sorry, forget it"


    "I think I know what you mean, I''m happy but sad we wasted so many years basically just being friends, imagine what the rest of the days could have been like"


    "That''s what it''s about, but then maybe all those days of shallow interactions added to the meaning in the end, I don''t know, I''m still thinking about it"


    "This is a personal poem to you?" she asked.


    "Not particularly, I like to write poems about things I haven''t experienced usually"


    "I''d like to hear what you come up with" The way she said this sounded so genuine and without judgment to Ast and at this moment he was intensely attracted to her. He didn''t know how to feel about this so sat in silence for a while thinking about it before he asked her "What is your name?"


    "Sarah"


    "That''s a normal name" he hesitated before the word normal, he had wanted to say ''real name'' but had decided against it, thinking it would be too much of a weird thing to say after she had been so nice to him.


    "Normal? like common?" she had noticed this hesitation and given him a second chance to say what he truly meant and he took this and loved her for noticing this.


    "It''s a real name, it''s what people think of when they think of names"


    "It is my real name" in a calm serious tone.


    He realised she was teasing him by how she stressed the word ''is'', she made it seem as if he thought it was the first fake name she could think of, he realised she was joking about making a joke so he decided to make a similar joke back.


    "Ast is my real name" he pronounced Ast like ''Asst'', sometimes he would pronounce it like ''Arst'', he tended to mix and match pronunciation seemingly at random with others, initially he had done this to mess with people but these days he maintained this as he didn''t like having a concrete name and hadn''t decided on a preferred pronunciation for it himself, he smiled afterwards as if to imply to her that he might be lying about his name.


    "Why?"


    "I never found out why" he didn''t entirely realise it at this point but he had made a promise to himself subconsciously that he would continue to be 100% bluntly honest with her as long as he felt like she was being genuine with him, something he usually didn''t do due to the difficulty in explaining his unusual quirks and backstory to others, prefering to maintain some harmless lies to pretend to be normal.


    "I see" she responded, with most people he would have thought a response such as this would be from a lack of interest but from her it appeared to be a sign of respect, an acknowledgement that it''s a complex story and that she will wait for a better time and place to hear it. "It sounds interesting, i''m not flirting" she paused to watch Ast''s reaction but he offered none "i''m really not, but take my number so you can share the poem when it''s done"


    "I didn''t think you were" he thought about telling her that he had a girlfriend but it didn''t sound right to him "can I ask you questions about my poem if I get stuck?"


    "Of course"


    He immediately sent her a message with just an ''i'' to check it was a real number, for some reason this didn''t feel real, he thought she was messing with him but he heard the notification.


    "It might take a while to finish" he paused, he wanted to ask her why she was here but couldn''t find the right words to not sound nosey or questioning of her motives.


    "I''m patient"


    "Same" he felt this to be a dumb thing to say and was afraid of saying anything more "I need to get some dinner" he stood up and looked over his shoulder at her nose to avoid her eyes "it was nice to meet you Sarah"


    "Alright, same" she stood up but they walked in opposite directions, he looked over at her just as he was breaking line of sight with her but she wasn''t looking.


    I only added this sentence to make the book 78,268 words long. I wanted to make the book 100,000 words long but fell short and decided to keep it even though 78,268 isn''t as interesting of a number. I only said that because I think being unreasonably honest and being able to fuck with people is a type of intelligence and I deem this as intelligence because I lack what is clearly true intelligence of being able to manifest your will in reality so I cope by changing the criteria to suit me. Now I''m saying that because I think being honest and self aware excuses flaws somewhat even though thinking this often becomes an excuse to not fix them.

 Love (and war)

    When he got home he laid on his couch and stared at the ceiling, not wanting to get online until he had at least done some work on his poem for the day but he couldn''t stop thinking about Sarah. She had seemed so nonchalant, the mood he was trying to reach in himself, he felt like she understood what he was trying to say even if he said it badly which he felt was all the time. He convinced himself that she was too good for him, he was unkempt, pessimistic and struggled to communicate his thoughts and open himself up to strangers while she was clean, polite and with a self confident air about her, he never could have approached a stranger the way she did, believing this was mostly due to how much more attractive she was than him. She probably does this all the time, opens up conversations with strangers without any agenda or hiding of her true self while this was a first for me, maybe it was right place right time or maybe it was something about her that put me at ease, she seemed to be a deep thinker. Why do I think that? she didn''t really say anything particularly deep, it''s just the way she carries herself? her mannerisms? maybe I''m seeing things in her that aren''t there due to her looks? no, she was lovely.


    He started to grow worried as he could tell that he would start to really like her if he got to know her so he resolved to himself to never let them get close, feeling Ner was enough for him, possibly even more than he deserved and that he shouldn''t drag lovely Sarah into his miserable world, at least Ner is somewhat on my level. He really did care for Ner and even told himself that he loved her although he would never say this out loud, from an early point in their relationship he had become convinced that it would only be temporary and that Ner would never love him back, he felt that she wasn''t capable of love at this point mostly due to his belief that she couldn''t even love herself. While he believed love always grew over time, he thought it required a strong visceral starting point which Ner''s interest in him lacked and as such it could never truly flourish into something soul bonding for a lifetime, that love needed this starting point to give it a sense of divine authority and that their relationship is something uniquely special. Since he had missed this chance to take hold of Ner''s heart from the start he believed that no matter how much he became the right human for her that she would always see him as exactly that, just another human, not some divine and irreplaceable character in a possible shared story, simply another transaction.


    When he had first started getting to know Ner, he really tried to be the right person for her, he turned his life around for her, partly because he was just looking for any excuse to do so but also because he felt like she deserved it. He liked Ner for many reasons but primarily because she reminded him of a younger version of himself, not in any tangible way but in terms of her psychology. While she hid it very well and managed to maintain a respectable outward appearance, he could tell she was deeply struggling with something and constantly running from confronting many topics. The mere fact that someone as intelligent and beautiful as her was with someone like him was enough evidence for him that she must have some serious issues that she wasn''t dealing with. Her disparaging views of humanity and a lack of belief in the inherent good of most humans was something he had greatly struggled with at her age, it was only later in his life that he had managed to shake this heavy weight off his soul, partly from seeing a lot of good in the world but mostly just deluding himself into wanting to believe it. It became easier to delude himself as he aged and his problems became less existential and real problems started to accumulate causing the existential torment to take a back seat.


    He struggled to break through into her soul though and became convinced that nothing he could do would help her, perhaps through time alone she would come to the same conclusions he had but he had given up hope, believing that even if she did, it would probably change her so much that she would no longer be interested in him. He had given up all hope of a shared future between them but he did still obsess over her, constantly tried to work out what she was thinking/feeling and try to make her feel as good as possible. He really enjoyed her company and thought she was a lovely intelligent conversationalist and felt very blessed for her letting him be one of the few who she let into her life. He felt she kept to herself out of spite of the world, thinking that she was angry at the world for taking her brother from her and believed the world didn''t deserve her to spread her love throughout it. Ironically if she was a less lovely individual she might have been more willing to go on loving the world but her high sense of self worth told her that the world wasn''t worthy of her.


    He felt like she was like him in current ways too, not in identical ways but more in parallel ways. For example, he felt they were both incredibly intelligent but that their intelligence was in completely different forms. To Ast true intelligence was all related to patterns/connections and there were a lot of different skills related to this such as:


    -Seeing patterns on your own


    -Understanding patterns


    -Remembering patterns


    -Creating your own patterns


    -Reproducing patterns


    He thought she was much better at remembering patterns and reproducing them than him but he was better at seeing patterns and creating them, with them both being roughly equal at understanding them. He thought her type of intelligence was more traditionally masculine than his and conversely his was more feminine than hers. He loved her for this, he felt like they were perfectly complimentary, opposites almost of equal magnitude.


    In other ways though he felt her inner mind was very feminine in terms of emotions and her primal desires. He put this down to her upbringing, her sick mother wasn''t much of an influence on her life so she grew up surrounded by boys, her dad, her brother and his friends, she had learnt masculine skills from them and had instinctively suppressed her feminine inner self, perhaps even over compensating for it by becoming exceptionally masculine as if she was embarrassed for even having these thoughts within her. He felt that her suppressed inner female self was now so desperate to get out that it often overtook her mind even though she hid it effectively for the most part. He loved this as it was the opposite for him, he had grown up almost exclusively around females, his dad died at a young age and while his mother remarried, his step dad mostly stayed out of his way, leaving him to be raised by his mother, sister and two step sisters. He developed a relatively feminine personality and mannerisms but internally he felt very masculine with a strong desire to dominate and challenge himself for the sake of it. He loved how they were both opposite in this way but also complimentary as if they balanced each other out, she was more like what he should be if he was to be at peace with his inner self and he was more of what she needed to be. At times they would both deal with their emotions/desires that they suppressed unhealthily and as such it caused them to do some very horrible things when they inevitably no longer could be contained.


    When he first met Ner, she had convinced him that she was masculine through and through and this impressed him further, how long she had managed to fool him and how good she was at hiding her inner self from the world. He thought they also had opposite facades that they put out to the world, thinking her ''fa?ade'' that she put out to the world was far more positive than the internal Ner and that his was far more negative than the internal Ast. She stayed positive and talked about all the good and acted happy even though she saw so much bad, he liked to talk about all the bad and acted like he was more unhappy than he was even though he saw so much good in the world, likely a remnant of his more depressive days. He had established his outward personality around things he believed in those times and he struggled to change his persona even after he started to see so much beauty all around him.


    He envied her positive fa?ade and it was something he was trying to achieve for himself so he respected her greatly for achieving it, he also didn''t see her weakness of focusing on the negative too much as much of a slight against her character as it was relatable to him, he had been trapped in entirely negative/pessimistic thought patterns for most of his 20''s, in fact it made him like her more as it made him feel some connection between their souls. He thought neither knew how to deal with life when their facades broke down, like at the times when she saw so much bad that she couldn''t act happy anymore she didn''t know how to act and just broke down and hid from the life. When Ast was actually unhappy, he didn''t know how to properly express the hurt he felt and would usually undermine his own feelings with jokes and irony.


    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    He liked how their strengths and weaknesses seemed to be opposite and equal and how she had really helped him understand his flaws albeit unintentionally, possibly just in a way any man can be inspired by the lure of a beautiful woman to improve, the driving force behind all history. He strived to help her work on her flaws but no matter what, he couldn''t seem to manage saying anything critical which he thought might possibly be true without her getting offended at the mere suggestion that she might not be perfect.


    While he usually seemed to steer the conversation between them, he felt like she was really doing all the heavy lifting of the conversation and that he could only maintain an interesting conversation with her because of the feedback/input she provided. He was more physically attracted to her than he had ever been to anyone else, he understood a lot about his own psychology as to what specifically attracted him to her but he tried to avoid thinking about it too deeply or communicating it to Ner, believing this is one of the parts of life that you should just accept and never discuss. As mentioned previously he absolutely loved her voice which seems a little odd considering he usually opted to text her rather than call her but this was due to not wanting to become too accustomed to it at fear of her voice losing the special place it held in his heart.


    The main thing he liked about her though was that although they were both very bad people in their own ways, he believed that she, like him, truly strived to be good. However, in recent days he was starting to become disillusioned with this as he felt that she had started to resent him for becoming more productive.


    He remembered how he felt at her age, he had just wanted to rebel against the world, rebel against what he was supposed to be and take revenge on the world for trying to force its will onto him. He thought this is how maturing generally works for all people like them, they love life a little too much when they are children and then bad things inevitably happen to them, they start to curse the world openly and rebel in juvenile ways, they grow up a little and think they have stopped hating the world just because they no longer rebel openly but they are just hiding it from themselves, they still resent the world and have just learned to hide it better, the resentment still manifests itself in themes of their life and now they are really only punishing themselves, they''re not even spiting the world. Eventually they grow up enough to notice these repeating self destructive patterns and they learn how to let the internal hate truly go and to heal, they learn to express their love for themselves and the world and become the person they were meant to be.


    He felt like he was on the verge of learning to love himself while she was still stuck at the point of hating the world internally but not outwardly. However, he felt like he was about to advance and it was seeming like this was creating too much distance between them. He loved how their opinions on topics seemed to fundamentally be the same but slightly different on minor details as if they could always learn a little from each other.


    He thought about all this but he wasn''t convincing himself, he felt like despite all this, he had grown to hate her but on some level he felt like the hate for her was really just a hate for his own failings, hating how he couldn''t be right for her. He should have understood why she didn''t want to see her flaws or improve as he was the same at her age but it was more of a hate that no matter what he did he couldn''t alleviate deep suffering in the world, not even for one person. A hatred that no matter what he did, people like him would have to go through years of hell and he could never truly help anyone, people always have to help themselves or rather get themselves to a point where they want to be helped. This along with her increasing general indifference to him made him feel like an insufficient human being, he knew she really did like him in some strange way but it didn''t feel real to him, he felt like she didn''t see him as real at all. He knew she cheated and it annoyed him but he accepted it since he wasn''t willing to be as sexual as anyone would require and it was just a norm in modern society, possibly this is why he didn''t want to be more sexual, he was worried that if they did fuck more often and she still cheated on him then he would no longer have an excuse to tell himself surrounding why he isn''t enough for her, thinking her cheating was at least somewhat justified given his actions. In recent days he couldn''t help but feel like she was just too permanently broken as he finally started to actualise himself in the world. On an intellectual level he thought she may be justified for losing interest in him, she had been interested in the man he was, not the man he could be and was now becoming, never a good base for a long term relationship.


    He thought about pursuing Sarah instead, he was now so convinced that Ner didn''t love him and never would that he was struggling to self deceive himself about their compatibility anymore. She never really understood his humour and she could no longer handle any blunt honesty that he found himself unable to avoid saying. He also felt it would be fair since Ner refused to acknowledge themselves as a committed couple, she could have secured him for life if she wanted to which probably caused hidden resentment from the start. Ast couldn''t shake the feeling that turning his back on Ner would be giving up on his past self to a degree just like everyone had done to him in his youth, in the early days of their relationship he had made a promise to himself to never give up on her but it was becoming increasingly hard, she was becoming increasingly distant and unwilling to make a single sacrifice to make their relationship work. She would not respond for days or forget something important and Ast would question what sort of psychology lead her to that place and he felt like she wouldn''t make any real effort to explain herself, saying only that say she didn''t know. Despite all his efforts, he still had little clue as to how her brain worked but I guess that''s normal for men with regards to women. No clue whether she really didn''t understand her own motives behind her actions, whether she was lying to him for bad reasons or if she was lying to him for good reasons, she refused to let him in and it drove him wild, he wasted days unsuccessfully trying to work out where her mind was at when she could have just told him a simple sentence to avoid all of it. He assumed she had to be confused about herself and must not know what she was doing, he refused to believe she could be that heartless but ultimately the end result was the same, on an emotional level he ended up feeling like she was indeed that heartless. He still loved her though and took a great amount of pride that a girl as intelligent, pretty and unique as her could show any sort of interest in a depraved nobody like himself.


    Then there was Sarah, completely open and sure of herself, seemingly at peace and in love with the world. He was thinking he could really be happy with her and imagining their lives together when something crossed his mind, a regret that he didn''t ask if she wrote poems too. It was now almost 10pm on a Friday, she was probably out having a life and if she wasn''t it wouldn''t be socially acceptable to text such a distant acquaintance at this time. He realised he was overthinking it, he should just be himself and not try to manipulate her or be a manufactured version of himself for her, believing that trying to be someone he wasn''t and then slowly becoming what he really was is what created the main problems with Ner. He decided to text her, something simple, without much thought he wrote.


    "Hey, I should have asked, do you write poems too?"


    Her response took 2 minutes, just enough to not be instant "No, but I''d like to"


    He thought about asking what she meant but preferred to just believe that she was like him in the sense that she tried to write poems a lot but failed. She interested him a lot which provided him with a new worry, the awareness that he would be driven to finish his poem to impress this girl, thinking that''s not what a man with a girlfriend should be driven by even if his current girlfriend didn''t love him, it wasn''t right, he would plan to work out exactly why he would finish this poem and find enough of a reason to finish it regardless of the desire for her approval.


    His brain was now tired of all these thoughts and emotions racing through his head and felt like he had solved the problem at hand, he wouldn''t pursue Sarah, she was dangerous and would shake up his life too much right when he seemed to finally be getting it together, he would see Ner through to the end and let whatever happen, happen. He decided to chill out, he watered his plants then grabbed some alcohol and played a videogame before passing out in the early morning.

 Eleven

    He woke up around eleven, and rolled straight over to his pc, caught up on the latest geopolitical news for a few hours before realising it was making him feel bad and that he should be doing something productive instead. He decided to go for a walk and think about his poem at their bench with a little thought in the back of his mind that he might see Sarah again. The park was in the middle of town and it would take him over an hour to walk there but he had no other plans for the day or even the weekend. As he was about to leave he heard his neighbour opening their door so he waited by his own until he heard them leave, he didn''t want to see them or more specifically have them see him. He wondered if the neighbours did the same when they heard him, he had only seen each of them a handful of times in his entire time there.


    Maybe they are just like me, maybe it is something about this place, nothing spiritual or anything, just the basic makeup of it, the small single bedrooms keeping couples and families away, the location away from any club areas or cafes keeping the more sociable people away, the cheap rent and dated building keeping any young professional away, all that''s left is antisocial losers like me. Am I really a loser? probably about average, girlfriend, enough money, ok job, not too many mental health issues, not too many... sign of our times, I function...


    Ast took a lot of pride in how he had clawed his way out of his deep depression without help even if it took him close to a decade, this pride lead to him refusing to acknowledge how often he still had negative thought patterns, he deluded himself to think that nothing was wrong with his thought patterns which did help him to dwell on them less and even though they still popped up frequently, he no longer defined himself by them. He knew he should get therapy and reconciliate with his family, try and control his drinking and find some real motivation but he was worried about doing it because he saw it as a last resort. He wanted to keep therapy as an emergency option, it gave him hope that if things for some reason got unbearably bad he would still have available tools he could use to possibly alleviate them. He was worried that if he tried therapy and fixed his family relationships but it didn''t make him feel at peace then now he would only be one tragedy away from a complete breakdown. He waited at the door thinking about therapy, he had heard a statistic that over two thirds of adults had been in therapy by the time they were thirty. These days most of that was AI based therapy, people would still meet with psychologists but the psychologists would have augmented reality glasses to guide their responses in real time. He hadn''t looked into this much, i''ll look into it later


    It was unusually cold for the time of year but he opted not to go back and get a jacket, believing he thought better when cold, as he checked his empty mailbox he thought back to his youth where he used to intentionally avoid any heating in order to build up a tolerance in case one day he would be in a worse situation or homeless and needed to battle the cold, he thought about how he used to do so many more things like this, he used to be much tougher, he used to go days without eating just for the challenge in doing so, take cold showers, he used to skip sleeping and go to work just for the challenge in doing so, these days he rarely did such a thing, he had gotten comfortable and complacent. I''ll start them again soon


    He walked around the corner and down a major road and noticed an old lady asleep in her car. This caught his attention as he had never seen something like this, sure, he had seen homeless people asleep in cars all the time, particularly at night time but she was in the drivers seat with it reclined, looked to be tidy and well kept, she had her window half the way down and had a dog in the back seat. He wondered how she could even sleep like that, it made no sense to him, why she wasn''t somewhere quiet, this wasn''t an intercity route so it''s not likely she was resting on a road trip, it was a residential area. He tried to think what she could be doing there, to invent a story for her but he came up mostly blank, the best he came up with was that she was waiting on a friend who was running late. He gave up on thinking about it and tried to focus on his poem but that wasn''t working either, he couldn''t tell what was distracting him, it felt as if he had an issue needing to be solved before he could resume conscious control of his mind.


    Instead of searching for what was troubling him he resorted to a type of game he had played since he was a kid when he was out in public and had nothing else to think about. This consisted of him looking the first three characters of car license plates (that were always letters) and trying to invent a mnemonic that he could use to remember it or to recall his existing one that he had created before. This was mostly pointless but it did help him remember the number plates and therefore cars of people he knew if he saw them around town although these days he knew very few people so that use was no longer relevant. He ''played'' this the whole way into town in-between people watching and seeing all the changes to local shops. Their bench was empty, it was just after 2pm and he resolved to himself that he wouldn''t leave until 5pm because this was after the time he had seen her there yesterday. Three hours, he couldn''t remember the last time he sat and did nothing for that long, the closest was a plane trip about 5 years ago where he decided to not look at his phone or read anything for the whole trip, just stared ahead and got lost in his own mind, that lasted under two hours though. He only now thought about how strange he must have looked to other people on the plane, if they had of even noticed, do people notice those types of things? they have their own issues they are too focused on


    He brought his mind back to his poem, sometimes Ast''s thoughts would take more of a form of different personalities talking to each other, debating each other. Usually each of the personalities would refer to the others as the true Ast but sometimes a certain personality would speak for the collective ''we'' as if he was the representation of the consensus. He usually used this structure of thinking when he felt like there was something about himself that he was not being honest about as if these more antagonistic personalities would be more objective and show him what he was in denial of. This was the case for Ast''s thoughts today and while his mind went off on tangents about irrelevant things or his surroundings that we will not mention, this was the bulk of his thoughts related to his poem


    What am I doing this poem for? or rather why am I writing this poem? To teach people about regret and to not fall into it? people already know that, there are thousands of stories about that. It''s boring and nobody wants to be lectured, but people still make the same mistakes, they just need to be taught it properly, why? isn''t regret and negative emotions just part of being alive? I can''t get hung up on this question, philosophers have tried to solve it for decades, decades? millenniums, ha. I really don''t care about teaching them anyway, I just want to show them something, what they do with that is up to them. But surely they have experienced something like this anyway? maybe, but not to the same extent, why does the extent matter? it sounds like I''m just trying to act like I''m deeper and feel things more than others. It''s really not about that, it''s about how easy it is to stop paying attention, to forget to think about what matters.


    You''re still missing the point, you''re talking about the poem specifics but to get the poem specifics first you need to understand why you are writing the poem. Why would it matter? I have made a decision to write it so it no longer matters why I''m writing it, well, if you know why you are writing it, it will help you with shaping the poem to achieve that goal. There is no goal, I just want to express an idea I saw and help other people to feel what I felt. Yeah, but why do you want them to think what you felt? is it that you think your way of thinking is superior? deeper? is it that you think they should just understand more ways to look at the world? is it that you think feeling what you felt would help them in their life?


    You''re still missing the point, you''re talking about the goal of this specific poem, I need to work out why I''m writing a poem at all. I don''t think you can separate them, I''m not just writing a poem, I''m writing this specific poem. Maybe, but you are writing a poem as well. It doesn''t matter, it matters, you just know the reasons make you sound bad, you have 3 hours, you might as well figure it out. I''m writing the poem to prove that I can actually write a poem, I''ve lived in my head for decades telling myself that I could actually finish poems if I wanted to but the actual point of creating them was less important than the ideas stage. Sure, but it is less important still, right? the only point of actually finishing them is either for others benefit or so you can receive some self satisfaction from possible praise. What about the self satisfaction simply for sticking to them until they''re finished? I guess that''s something but nobody cares, it doesn''t make you any smarter, if anything it makes you dumber because you spend more of your mental energy in a less important area like how to express what you already know as accurately as possible to others. That sounds like a more important skill than I thought it should, I meant is it only for their benefit? why is it not to your benefit if they understand you better and can point out any flaws since they know what you are actually saying? if you are as smart as you think you are then it would be to your benefit to be able to show people this because then they would treat you better. I don''t care how I''m treated. Well, you would be able to attract a better quality of people which would benefit you. Maybe, but I''d be a phony, I''d become less smart if I spent all my time on essentially finding a way to show people I am smart instead of actually just focusing on becoming smarter. If I skip caring about learning to actually put my ideas into words and express them properly then I might have the time to become smart enough that even with my poor ability to express myself holding me back, I still might reach the same level of admiration from others. You can compromise, you could write your poem without putting much effort into the actual words you choose, or the structure, the conciseness etc. you could spend your mental effort on the underlying ideas and themes but just put a little effort into actually expressing it, you don''t have to make a huge sacrifice. Sure, but it would still be some sacrifice? ok, if it doesn''t work you can go back to how you used to do things, keep inventing poems and stories in your mind and tell no one and get nowhere, that worked out so well for you. I know you are being sarcastic but it does work for me, it gives my life wonder and keeps my mind occupied and off the more detrimental thoughts I used to battle with.


    Yeah, you might be dying though, nuclear war and all that, plus you''re getting really really fucking old, you should probably at least write something before you die, it''s actually the most poetic time to start, when your life is practically over either literally or metaphorically through a lack of options due to your age. Imagine that, you write a beautiful poem that shows people some previously hidden idea in the world and then you die, the world is forever wondering just what else you might have been able to share, it would give your poem a divine type of significance and art, people love those sort of stories to tell about their favourite writers, it makes them think that art is more than just the words from a unique mind and actually a reflection from the world that can only happen under very unique circumstances, it gives their self perceived unique choices and path in life justification and provides them with a renewed drive to look for the hidden beauty in the world. That''s a good way to think, maybe not good for the individual but good for humanity to have more people like that.


    Why should I care about putting out a poem even if my death would make it more special? Am I just doing it to fill my ego? how would that make sense, I''d be dead. It could make sense, what I would feel while I''m alive, like it''s going to make me important after death. Why would it make you important? none of these people will ever know the real you, I guess it could make your last few months feel good, make you feel better about your death and how you wasted your whole life stuck in your mind, as if all those years in your mind weren''t wasted as if all those years thinking about poetry and stories really were practice for this final one. But that''s basically the story of the poem, would that make the poem meta? if my reasons for writing the poem were analogous to what the poem is about. But I decided that in my poem the guy would miss his chance to forge a real connection with his boss, to finally capitalise and bring meaning to all those years together. The poem couldn''t have the same meaning for me unless I didn''t write it or I died before I wrote it. I could write it not because I was experiencing what was in the poem but rather I was afraid of what happens in the poem happening to me, that would be meta still, it would be like the story in the poem is a warning for other people to capitalise on their opportunities and take life seriously and the mere act of me writing this was me confronting that issue myself. That''s poetic, but maybe it would be more poetic if I missed my chance to write it, maybe I could make another level of meta, write about a hypothetical me who missed their chance to write the poem. I don''t think meta is important to this message, often it''s an overrated crutch dumb people use to act like they are deeper, it''s like ironic humour, the joke gets old fast.


    I should stick to my original story but I will definitely write it, it has nothing to do with ego or what people think of me for it, I just need to start being real, to actualise myself in the world, there is nothing better to do anyway without Ner around. You know you want Sarah to think better of you for it, you know you would feel bad if she found out you abandoned it. Why do I care so much about what Sarah thinks? I don''t even know her, probably because she seems more real than me.


    Just as he thought this he noticed someone coming from an entrance to this area, his heart fluttered as he expected Sarah to emerge but it was an old man, Ast tried not to stare but he noticed the old man looked over at him as he walked slowly across the bottom of the hill and towards the other path and left again. Ast wondered if the old man would have used the bench if Ast wasn''t occupying it, he thought about Sarah, how she was bolder than this old man whose time was almost up and had nothing left to lose. Maybe he just doesn''t like other people or maybe this was just a time when he wanted a quiet place to be alone, I should have given up the spot but doing so would have been strange, how would you even word that? ''I was just leaving'' but he might not know what you are talking about, he might not have wanted the bench and was just lost or mindlessly wandering, he did look to be mindlessly wandering though I guess everyone walking without a dog looks like this to people, it''s just not what people are supposed to do, they''re supposed to have actual things to do, thinking thoughts and just existing isn''t an actual thing. Do I look like this old man to others? he looks as if his wife died and now he strolls through the world reminiscing better times and trying to find peace in the world, or maybe he strolls because he has peace and doesn''t need to make things happen, he doesn''t need to actually exist in the world to feel fulfilled. I''m really not talking about him, I''m trying to justify my own nature to myself, I don''t have an excuse like he probably does, I haven''t experienced real loss, my dad was too young, nothing really bad ever happened to me. I almost died though at my own hands so I guess I can relate to his feeling that everyday is now a blessing, whatever happens is ok. That''s no way to live though. Why not? how can it be bad to think whatever happens is fine? because even if things will always be fine, certain things can be better than others and if you don''t differentiate things in terms of how good they would be then you will be resigned to a life of mediocrity. What is mediocrity? I guess it''s dying without ever having written a good poem, but does that matter? that''s 99.9999% of humanity. I guess caring about what happens is a requirement to being real, to actually affect things and have an impact in a shared reality and not just your mind. An unreal person only cares about how they feel and what they think. But those things are just as real to them. I don''t know, this sounds like nihilism and you are making excuses for your lack of action.


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Just do it, just write your poem, trying the same thing for years hasn''t got you far. But it has got me far? I can mostly control my emotions now, I can keep a work schedule, I feel ok, even good getting up most days, I have improved. That doesn''t mean it''s the best path to take, maybe to improve to the next step you need to actually make things and live in the world. Is it worth the risk though? I was improving anyway. Yeah but those improvements weren''t real, you should make them real now. Imagine if you spent all this effort actually writing instead of thinking about why you were writing, you could be done by now. I can''t know what to write unless I know what the point of it is which includes the point of the writer. The writer doesn''t need a point, you know what you want to happen to the characters so just write it.


    Anyone would think I''m tortured by a dead wife, maybe I am to an extent, Ner isn''t the same, she is lost forever and may as well be dead, I can never make it right. That ties into the regret I am trying to express in my poem, why do I need to express regret? is it really to warn people? is it to help them handle their own regret possibly by letting them know it''s normal? is it just to make them feel something?


    Regret is a funny thing, you can''t teach people how to handle it, if you do then it''s no longer really regret, I guess it is really regret but it''s not -real- regret, the whole point of -real- regret is that you can''t handle it. I guess that could be a point then, to turn peoples -real- regret into the more mundane kind of regret people can live with, are people supposed to learn how to handle -real- regret though? Imagine that someone thinks about talking to their child when they notice they look depressed but stays silent and then the child ends up killing themselves and now the parent has the regret of not trying to stop them. Is that something humans should be able to live with? is that the kind of thing I should be helping them live with or avoid?


    Those people themselves never want to live with it, they feel like they would be a monster if they did, usually everyone around them is trying to help them live with it though, to force them to live with it, they invent all sorts of justifications possibly even true ones as to why it helps no one if they go on living in such self torment but the fact of the matter is that someone who can live with something like that isn''t completely real either. So what is the person dealing with a regret like that supposed to do? I think the best option is they sort of divide up what they consider to be ''them'', they create a new persona while keeping the old one deep inside, they never truly forget it but they let that part of their personality deal with the regret and they let the newer one deal with life. That just sounds like clich¨¦ advice, ''you aren''t defined by one bad choice'', I guess it''s true but you are somewhat defined by it and if it''s impossibly bad then the fact that it was just one small mistake should be irrelevant. People can change though, I changed, I''m no longer nihilistic, back then I hated everyone and could have probably killed someone but now I''m good, I really am, that bad part is still there but even if those parts are impossibly bad, it''s still only a small part of me.


    How do I explain this? how about with math, say I made one bad decision that was infinitely bad then you might say that even though it is only a small percentage of my decisions the fact that it''s infinitely bad multiples that percentage to make my entire being bad, but if you attribute that decision to a certain contained part within yourself then you can bound the upper limit to the percentage of that part which makes up the larger you.


    I think the way the mind works is that sometimes you forget certain things that on a conscious level you know to be true and instinctively resort back to an established version of yourself. It''s continuous with no dividing line, you basically have a part within you that has a nature unchanged since birth, its decisions aren''t really decided on anything that you know, purely ''instincts''. Then you might have another part that only acts based on things you truly and deeply know, in other words things you have known for a long long time, lived experiences that happened before your personality really settled down in adulthood and some sort of stable ''you'' was established. Then you have another part that acts based on things you do believe but you learnt after you became truly self aware and your personality started to settle down around twenty, it''s not really things that you could say reasons for but they are things that you do accept by now. Then you have the modern you, the you who has ideas and nuanced opinions on the world that they are still working through, they are based on an ever expanding mountain of knowledge with the tip of that mountain the knowledge still being tested in the real world, the things you frequently discuss and can explain your reasons for.


    Sometimes when you encounter a problem a more primitive part of your personality addresses it or dominates the conversation about it, sometimes it is due to the short time available to solve it, sometimes it''s due to you being tired, out of your comfort zone or whatever. Most of the time you should be tackling problems with all your knowledge and logic rather than your primitive emotions. As you age the more primitive and impulsive parts of you deal with less and less of your day to day issues and as such they define you less. In this sense someone could really move on with regret, they could say that the type of person who chose that decision which they now regret truly is only a small instinctive part of the person who they are today, and say that they can consciously recognise that small part and avoid letting it take hold the majority of the time. The person who they are today now has far greater knowledge and experiences and as such they would react differently and it''s hard to blame them for what their lesser self did as their lesser self no longer exists.


    It''s almost paradoxical, the person struggling with debilitating regret that makes it hard for them to act is required to act in order to learn and grow. I guess this is why it takes so long for certain people to deal with grief but it usually does eventually happen, they wallow in regret and don''t do much or learn much but through sheer time they eventually change even if they aren''t participating in life much. I guess this justifies why people aren''t evil for trying to get them to forget their regret even if their decisions were unbelievably horrible, the only way for them to not make unbelievably horrible decisions again would be for them to change enough so they are no longer this person.


    Surely there is another element here though, truly understanding how horrible their past decision was could help them avoid making similar decisions, I guess that''s a factor too but truly understanding it would require truly feeling it and then we would amplify the initial problem, of them being unable to function by seeing themselves as a monster who does such horrible things. Perhaps the best way is really just to change the person in whatever way possible, both the best for that person and the best for the rest of the world.


    I think you do really need them to feel how bad what happened was for at least for some duration of time as a reminder to them the consequences of their actions so they stick to the change, you need the duration or it wont feel as real. I guess this is why prison works to the degree that it does. You have the idealists who think the harsh punishment isn''t needed and you can just have the social programs that teach people how to change their behaviour to the same effect. I don''t blame them for this, social programs are probably enough for a lot of the sheltered people these idealists meet but that is only enough if the person punishes themselves for their crimes, the point of prisons is that a lot of people don''t express moral regret for their actions, they need to be punished to feel some sort of regret even if it''s artificially induced. It''s true that a lot of these people shouldn''t feel moral regret, they were perfectly justified in what they did due to unfortunate circumstances out of their control but does that really mean they don''t need to change? maybe in an ideal world but in the real world they would still have these unfortunate circumstances and so need to learn not to act based on them in the same way. How does this apply to the citizen who didn''t commit crimes but had more of a moral type of regret, do they have to punish themselves in order to permanently change? I guess there is no one answer, it depends on the person, but I need there to be one answer to some degree, for my poem to apply to the most people. Perhaps I don''t want it to apply to the most people, I want it to help a niche type of person, no, I want it apply to the most people, I can make it apply to the most people by helping them understand exactly who this niche person is, so at least if they aren''t the same person, they can understand it.


    Let''s say hypothetically I make my poem, and it shows people this idea, and it helps them avoid a similar situation in their own life, is that good? I guess it would be good as it would be helping them avoid decisions that they think are bad but maybe bad is all relative, maybe now they would feel the same amount of regret throughout their life but just due to decisions that are ''less bad''. I guess that comes back to the idea philosophers have talked about for centuries, is human suffering necessary or is it at least needed to truly feel alive? I guess it doesn''t matter, let''s say it doesn''t reduce their absolute suffering in their life but now they suffer about things which are objectively not as bad, that has to be good, right? is that the purpose of my poem, to help people act in a way more true to themselves?


    But I know what it''s like to suffer over things which are ''not as bad'', to suffer over ''first world problems'', it adds a whole new layer of suffering. Not only are you suffering but now you also feel bad because of how inconsequential those things that are troubling you should be. It makes you feel weak and embarrassed that you could be unable to deal with such minor problems. Perhaps it''s healthier in the long run if you had real problems that you cant deal with so you don''t notice trivial problems, it''s healthier if you experience death etc. at least then your natural inclination to wallow in suffering feels justified as if there isn''t fundamentally anything wrong with you, it allows the problem to exist in the world rather than your mind which provides a convenient way to not let it define you. I guess it has pro''s and con''s, one is easier to get over but the other can lead to more growth. Am I saying I should make people suffer over inconsequential things instead of consequential? that makes no sense, I guess both cases are improved if the person is more alive and aware about themselves. If they are more self aware then they will integrate their regret faster and learn where it came from and learn to change regardless of if their regret comes from something big or small, I guess that should be the purpose of my poem then, to make them more self aware and honest about their own life. To do this I need to accomplish two things, I need to make them truly feel and understand the regret I feel or rather the regret my character feels and for them to understand how it could apply to their own situation to some degree. Isn''t that how all poems/stories go? I should have known this by now... well, there is still the choice between it applying to a few people really well or a lot of people slightly. All the truly remarkable poems/stories apply to a lot of people so that is what I should strive for but if you fail you just seem shallow but I guess that is the case even if you fail at tunneling in on a niche idea.


    Do I want to hit a niche like people who have experienced ''real'' regret? or do i want to apply to everyone in other words people who could possibly experience ''real'' regret. I don''t think that''s up to me to decide, I should just try to recreate the feeling as faithfully as possible, if that hits a niche or a wider audience then so be it.


    I wonder what Sarah would suggest, maybe I should ask her. But you have Ner, true, but it wouldn''t be cheating to talk to Sarah and you know Ner cheats on you anyway. It''s still not right, you should rise above it and resist talking to her. Why?


    As previously indicated Ast had some misogynistic views on the sexes, he took great pride in resisting his urges and felt this to be a primarily masculine trait of his, the attempt to transcend human emotions and desires. He felt as if this was at odds with women who preferred to indulge and even celebrate their humanity and faults.


    This viewpoint was not backed up by any evidence but came from his limited experience with others and he projected it across the whole genders. He had seen many women brag about how crazy and illogical they were, many girls celebrate being fat, many girls getting off on the idea of cheating, young women who were driven by a need to rebel against their fathers which really was just a metaphor for rebelling against the idea of ''doing the right thing'' as an excuse to embrace their human desires. In contrast he felt like men strived to become less crazy, the fat men knew they weren''t the ideal weight but didn''t care, they didn''t celebrate it. When men cheated they didn''t get off on the idea of the cheating and how they were so bad for doing it, they simply cheated because they didn''t care about their partners.


    Ast took pride in all these things, how he refused to define himself by his mental issues and strived to overcome them, how he maintained a healthy weight, how he ignored the one or two other girls who had shown interest in him and how he had more or less stayed between the lines of a correct and moral life. However in recent months his values had been shifting, he still valued the denial of primal desires but he was starting to feel like he needed to embrace them from time to time or he would stagnate. It was now roughly 4:30pm and he had given up hope of Sarah visiting today. He decided to text her again.


    "So what do you do then?" a response to her message from yesterday, he had hoped she would interpret it as their conversation having no time pressure rather than interpreting it as him not caring to respond for a whole day.


    He thought about the old man while he waited and invented some alternative life stories for why he looked so somber until her response came almost 10 minutes later.


    "Lately I''ve been reading about neuroscience, learning to knit and watching Peaky Blinders"


    Ast was pleasantly surprised she had decided to say something interesting rather than a simple answer such as what her job was, he hoped she was like him in the sense that she treated her job merely as a means to an end and almost like a break from her real life. Regardless, this answer really impressed him, how open she was in letting him into her unique quirks, Ner had been like this when he first met her but over time had become more closed off. He took this change in Ner to be an indication that she no longer cared about impressing him but from her perspective she did it more for opposite reasons. Ever since he started trying to improve himself, she felt like he was trying to force her to improve herself too and she felt that anything she said was judged intensely and as such she now shared personal things sparingly.


    Ast had no idea what Peaky Blinders was but rightfully presumed it was some tv show he hadn''t heard of, it cant be overstated how enamored he was with her other hobbies. Her interest in knitting because of the uniqueness, he had never known anyone under the age of 60 who had taken an interest in knitting. The interest in neuroscience was a stark contrast to Ner who (especially these days) refused to discuss any psychological topics, any discussions of exactly what is going on in their minds and how they differ. Ast realised he had made a mistake, he would never manage to get her out of his mind now.


    He went home, searched up Sarah''s show to find it seemed to be some slow paced drama set in the early 1900''s, this made him like her more.

 Time

    He spent the majority of the next day not accomplishing much other than reading on the internet and then later books as he felt it to be more productive, he was very hungover. Hangovers for him seemed to have no rhyme or reason as to when it occurred, it seemed to have no correlation with how much he drunk and of what. In the early evening he decided to text Sarah again.


    "Cool, why knitting? is it something you have done for a while or why did you start?"


    "A while, it''s something to do with my hands when I listen to music or watch movies, plus you can make special things that you cant buy anywhere"


    Once again he was floored, her response was perfect to him in his infatuated state, he wondered if she had been using some AI to generate responses. He didn''t want to respond right away, he wanted to wait a day once again, he felt it was more special this way and gave him time to think of a proper response or questions.


    Should I wait another day though? surely she sees it as a habit by now. I don''t want to give her expectations to expect it in case I no longer want to do it one day, maybe I should skip a day now? the longer I wait to skip a day the more the habit will be established and any break in it will ruin things. It''s kind of poetic though to only say one thing a day, it''s like the old days when people used to send telegrams or letters.


    He remembered a story his Uncle had told him when he was younger, that in the early days of the internet he used to play chess with a friend over email, each sending their move once a day, presumably 12 hours apart. He thought this was a really special story, something so far removed from how people would interact in modern day and represented people trying to work out the best way to use the new technology of the internet. He presumed but never actually enquired if his uncle and friend would also exchange general chat alongside the chess moves. Ast loved this idea of slow communication and felt it to be more poetic and special, the ease of which text messages could be exchanged these days made the words feel less special to him. Even if someone was clearly trying to say something important, there was some underlying bias behind the scenes that if it was really meaningful then they would try to do it in another format like in person. Ast wished to return to the days of letter exchange when messages were properly thought out and carefully considered due to their sense of permanence and the fact that any clarification arising from misinterpretations was slow and difficult. Ast wished he had someone to exchange letters with but had not found anyone who has the patience to do something like that.


    His uncle''s chess match (or matches, he wasn''t sure) which presumably took months reminded him of the movie The Seventh Seal, one that was a defining movie of his own youth, he had never seen the connection until now, in fact he might never have thought about his uncles story since he told it over 20 years ago. Maybe he didn''t need to start letter writing, maybe he just needed to find someone who would give all messages the weight of importance they deserve, maybe Sarah could do this, maybe they could establish a modern form of slow and deliberate communication, through self imposed limitations. He wondered if this would be as poetic as his Uncle''s story in 20 years time, his uncles was self imposed to a degree but the story still seemed to him to be largely a product of the times, rather than a forced creation which made it seem more beautiful to him but he couldn''t tell if this was true or was simply a misconception he had.


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.What could replace text? maybe direct internet based communication through neural implants? like you just think what you want to say and who you want to say it to and then it gets sent. That''s really just another form of text message though, maybe they could let you send feelings or vague concepts, like for example you could share your mood with someone or maybe you could ask for a date and send a vague feeling of the type of date you want it to be, how much excitement, how much privacy, how much energy you have, things you cant easily word and then they could get a sense of what you are after and meet in the middle. That would no doubt be the end of all language, surely? people would just entirely communicate in this form.


    As mentioned earlier, most of Ast''s thoughts weren''t in words, they were vague collections of words/ideas/themes and emotions, he felt this was the most efficient way to think and only resorted to words for the sake of others. Even though he felt this to be by far the most efficient form of communication he would refuse any neural implants out of principle.


    If the communication was two way as opposed to just transcribing thoughts into audible words for them then you would no longer be able to trust any of your own thoughts, like if it had the power to directly stimulate words/feelings inside your brain then who is to say it wouldn''t stimulate an ad and make you want to buy a certain thing or feel a certain way about some political event. I guess it wouldn''t matter at that point, it wouldn''t matter if the thoughts wouldn''t have occurred without the stimulation because the thoughts are you now as the neural stimulating device would literally become a part of you. It wouldn''t matter to you whether your thoughts came from your brain matter or the implant, they would affect you in the same way. It''s like now, I often don''t care whether my thoughts come from my conscious brain, if I have an understanding of the chain for why they occurred or if they just seem to pop up randomly from my subconscious with no explanation, I know that if I ignore either they will haunt me all the same. I do care though? if something comes up from my subconscious I usually try to feel my way through where it came from, what i was feeling and what chains led to that thought. I guess the same could be done for some implant, it could make you think there was a good chain of reasons leading to that thought. What is my point? this doesn''t matter, I should think about what to say to Sarah next.


    He scrolled up through his texts and reread the tiny conversation about 10 times.


    I guess I should stop asking questions like I am interviewing her. Is that what I''m doing? I guess to a degree but that''s normal. Maybe she thinks my questions are relevant to my poem, maybe if I went away from the questions she would think I''m over stepping boundaries and hitting on her. Nah, she could still think I''m telling her these things to see how she would react, even telling people things is like a type of question as to what they think about what you told them. Maybe I could tell her that, just outright say something strange with no context, that''s always fun, write to her ''telling people things is like a type of question as to what they think about what you told them, therefore everything is a question?'', I''d like to see what she says to that, it seems a bit tryhard though as if I''m trying to sound smart. Maybe I could just tell her ''sorry about all the questions, they are relevant to my poem'' then if she asks how then I could say ''everything is relevant to everything'' it''s vague enough to be true and it''s kind of like I''m hitting on her but with enough plausible deniability if it goes wrong. That sounds off, it sounds like my poem is the main concern and the rest of the life is just a means to accomplish it rather than the reverse, well not exactly the reverse but they should be intertwined. I should try to establish some connection, to show I can relate to her and maybe add in some light hearted self deprecation, that is always welcome to put them at ease and make it known that you aren''t interviewing them.


    He thought about possibilities for a few minutes and eventually came up blank and decided he would think about it tomorrow, he tried unsuccessfully to bring his mind back to his poem so ran his mind back through all the other things he had been meaning to look into and settled on AI therapy.

 Terms

    He spent the evening researching AI therapy, watching examples of sessions, reading explanations of the technology and reviews. It seemed most companies providing it captured 12-15 points of data in real time, ranging from biometric data like eye movements to breathing patterns or heart rate to data such as tone/volume and speed of voice. They also had real time voice recognition and processing of the words spoken. It sounded insanely complex to Ast but the reviews spoke for themselves, there were countless testimonies of people swearing by it and the few negative reviews were simply a preference for ''real'' therapy. What astounded him was that some people willingly handed all their data such as their phone memory to the AI to let it analyse their messages to give a more ''comprehensive'' analysis.


    He saw a few reviews that caught his eye of people claiming to be long term customers swearing by the service while there were few reviews saying that it helped them in only x period of time. He thought this was probably intentional, that the service wasn''t designed to fix people, it was designed to keep them as long term customers. To treat the symptoms not the cause, not to teach people how to deal with their failures not how to avoid making them again in the future. This was not an uncommon thing in medicine in general, the aim to keep people reliant on the cure but he assumed that in real therapy there must be less people in it simply for the money since therapists choose that profession in the first place indicating many would actually want to help ''fix'' people. Ast tried to think of a term or phrase to explain this mechanic of not wanting to help your customers, this was another mental past time of Ast''s, to try and think of ideas or concepts that are relatively simple and should have terms to describe their phenomena but don''t.


    It''s very similar to the term ''conflict of interest'' but distinct enough that it should have its own term, conflict of interest is when two different tasks conflict with each other but this is more like the task conflicts with itself. Their product is to make it so people are no longer so hopeless that they need therapy so if it worked it would undermine their own business model, is that a conflict of interest? I guess it''s two separate interests, helping someone and personal financial gain. Maybe it is conflict of interest but also something else that needs a new term, a term to indicate when the two interests aren''t just possibly undermining each other but are completely opposite to each other. Maybe the term should specifically business related, to indicate when someone''s business model is to fix a problem so it doesn''t occur again, this is too vague though, there are so many businesses with that model and they don''t have the same issue, they for the most part fix the problems. Like a plumber could fix your leaking plumbing badly so you have to hire them again but it''s not the same with plumbing, why? it''s because you know the fix should be more or less permanent, it''s easy to switch to a new plumber if the first one didn''t work. The issue is people get invested in their therapists and don''t want to share their whole life story (and pay to do so) to get to the real issues with a whole new therapist. They also probably think it''s impossible for them to actually correct their behaviour/mind in the long run, if they thought it was possible then they wouldn''t be in therapy. This is all well and good but it doesn''t explain what the term should specifically refer to, are there any other industries with this kind of idea other than medicine? maybe anti-virus software? that''s a little different, they want to fix your viruses but they just still want their product subscription to be necessary for future viruses, they no doubt create new viruses that only their specific software works for but this is something different? I doubt the AI therapy is fixing issues then creating new issues? maybe it is. They are capitalising on peoples suffering and prolonging it.


    Maybe the problem is with the perception of the business, they purport to be selling a cure but they are only providing symptom relief just like a lot of medicine, medicine is usually more honest about this. Maybe it could go a step further, their symptom relief takes away business from people actually selling cures, takes away business from real therapists who are actually trying to ''cure'' the person. You could argue they do more good than harm as at least they alleviate symptoms but maybe the symptoms shouldn''t be relieved without relieving the root cause. This is like how I was debating whether you should help people deal with the regret of their bad decisions, the regret is necessary for permanent change just like suffering for your bad life rather than simply avoiding the symptoms is necessary for any meaningful change. How did I get back here? why does it all lead back to my poem? Not everyone in therapy is the same, surely, some people aren''t suffering because their life/mind is bad, some are just suffering because that''s how they''re wired, does it matter? the best way to help those people is still to help them improve their life to the point they are functional enough to work on rewiring themselves, you never try to rewire someone, you get them to the point where they can rewire themselves. I really don''t know if AI therapy is a good thing for the world, let alone regular therapy. I would never trust it due to this term similar to conflict of interest that I can''t find a way to word, something like ''self defeating interests''.


    What are those other recent ideas I thought of that need terms? the effects of loyalty programs, how if everyone ends up using coupons or loyalty rewards then the price of the discount/rewards get factored into the product and in the end no one is better off. It''s like petrol fuel vouchers, they all give out 20c/litre discounts at supermarkets but because virtually everyone uses these now the ''standard'' price just goes up 20c and no one is better off, in fact everyone is worse off because now not only are they paying the same price that they were, now they have to waste time/effort micro managing coupons. I guess initially the early adopters do get a slightly better deal subsidised by those who don''t use the coupons but once virtually everyone is using the coupons then really no one is getting rewarded. Maybe there is something to be said about the psychological effects of making people think they are getting a deal though, if there wasn''t then why wouldn''t some other fuel company start a business where they don''t use coupons and their default price is 20c lower than their competitors. Surely they would be more efficient without having to distribute and manage their own coupons? they must not do it because the customers want to micromanage coupons, it keeps their otherwise empty minds busy.


    What is the term here that needs defining? is it the idea that people compete with each other and abuse anything good until all the good is bled dry? is it the idea of ''pointless'' tasks that are created due to faulty human psychology which create inefficiencies and wasted time/mental effort? Is it the idea that people will put in work simply for the idea of receiving a reward even if it''s not based in reality?


    Maybe it''s that similar idea where people work against their own best interests, they tell other people about the deal which causes it to spread, become popular and then it becomes less useful. I understand telling your loved ones about the deal but people go around telling acquaintances even, maybe there is an element of genuinely feeling good for helping others find the deal but it often sounds like they are trying to impress others with their knowledge. It is like with ad blockers on the internet, people spread their favourite blocking program that already works well and then it gets popular and ads learn how to work around that program. I''m not sure what goes through peoples minds, maybe some is about helping others but probably some is helping their favourite program, maybe they think the program will get better with more users, maybe in a perfect world that would happen but the issue is that as a program gets more mainstream and less niche it brings down the interest/contribution the average user has in the program. Like you have these really good niche programs where half the users are actually developers on the program then they get popular and now the goal of the program is too broad and you have too many casual users who will not fund or contribute to development. It''s kind of similar to when people tell others about a bug/cheat in a videogame, except in that scenario people usually understand that spreading knowledge of the bug will make it more likely for that exploit to be fixed, people understand this but they don''t seem to understand the same thing with loyalty programs or ad block.


    I''m almost too skeptical of rewards, it''s like that other idea that needs a term. The idea how things seem to have less value to me if they come with something ''free'' that you don''t want even if you would have paid the same price for the original thing without the free reward. Maybe this doesn''t have a term though simply because it''s not a thing other people relate to, the opposite probably has a term in economics something like ''the faulty perception that a deal is better if it comes with something that claims to be free even if it you pay more for it'', where as my idea is more like ''the faulty perception that a deal is worse if it comes with something free even if it that free item isn''t factored into the price''.


    What''s another thing that needs a term? It took a few minutes to recall any ideas. I got one, I should really write down these ideas. The idea how politicians don''t care so much about the secondary negative effects of their policies because they are hidden or sometimes they actually want these negative effects if the connection between them and their policy is delayed and disconnected enough that they can blame their competitors. Like if a party prints a bunch of money to help the poor knowing that they will likely lose control of the government shortly and the incoming inflation from their policy will be blamed on the next party. That might be close to conflict of interest, they have one interest or declared interest to help the average person but this is at a conflict with an interest to hurt the average person if it can be blamed on the opposing party. Dictatorships avoid this and they always seem to grow at a relatively faster rate than ''democracies'' and I don''t think it''s just because they''re generally found in poorer countries, like sure a dictatorship is more useful in a poor chaotic country to bring things in line but I just think in general it is a better long term development strategy to force the whole country onto the one goal. Modern democracies bring everyone into line through proxy though with so much propaganda. We moved away from dictatorships to democracy to proxy dictatorships which pretend to be democracies run by the people who own the media, maybe we never really had democracy and the propaganda was just more subtle back then. It could be that democracy really was around back then as we didn''t need to sacrifice the now for the future, these days the world is so competitive and efficient that any country that doesn''t unify behind one goal through one form or another cant compete. I think ultimately politics and most of life is just a test of delayed gratification, how much you are willing to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow.


    I think a lot of these terms are intentionally not given labels, I know that language usually develops naturally through conventional use, what terms are most frequently needed for discussion but it can certainly be influenced by powerful people and powerful people have been influencing humanity for a long long time. If you cant word the idea then it is less likely to be discussed and its spread will be limited. These people don''t want the average person to have a term to concisely articulate when a company benefits more from not solving your issue you paid them to solve as not being able to point it out easily to others helps hide it. That''s a bit out there though, it''s pretty unlikely that there is enough of an overlap between these powerful people and the people in AI therapy but the point is that any influence helps, any influence in hiding what they are doing through conventional means or language manipulation could theoretically be represented in a monetary amount, but if any one actor attempted to influence language like this they would be benefiting the whole industry at their personal cost, it makes sense that it only really happens when an industry becomes centralised. I''m sure there are little ways they can influence language that aren''t costly and are really just a bi product of their own personal advertising, it''s sort of like this language influence develops naturally as a push and pull between companies trying to control language and the average person trying to create language to identify their control/lies, really it''s all about the balance of power and how centralised the ''industry'' is.


    I think language control happens on a broader scale too with more general ideas/drives of the population. I understand how this sounds like a huge conspiracy but it can be thought of like a natural equilibrium between the ruling class and the ''slaves'', like they want to keep the slaves trapped and suffering. While wealth can be an objective what these people at the top really wanted is rarely wealth, wealth past a certain point is largely pointless and just a means to feed an ego, what they usually want is power and power is relative, they can attain it by increasing their control/agency or by reducing the agency of those at the bottom. I think one word/idea that has been heavily influenced/controlled is ''depressed'' or ''sad'', in other less popular languages they have multiple words for different types of sadness and while we have a few such as morose or despondent, the definitions of these are so vague that they aren''t very useful for articulating how you feel to the average person. I have no doubt this is by design, English is a relatively modern language so by the time it was ''developing naturally'' there would have been some very centralised power structures wanting to reduce the likelihood of their slaves revoking. I really don''t know how much influence these powerful people have but the point is that it''s definitely a non zero amount. But why would they want to control this idea of sadness specifically? how does it help them to make it so their slaves cant express why they are depressed accurately? is it that it makes it more likely for them to continue being depressed? I''ve heard that, the idea that the best remedy for feeling down is to talk about why with someone, I guess that''s why it''s such a modern problem as time has gone on and power has become more and more centralised our language has become more and more corrupted and obfuscated in order to maintain this level of control. I''m sure there are other elements to as to why people are so depressed these days, such as intentionally less efficient therapy, people no longer being too busy with mere survival. That''s a very real thing, people get less happy when they have more, I guess that''s not entirely accurate, they get a different type of unhappy, it''s like from ''struggling'' to ''depressed'', maybe equally negative feelings. I guess that''s just the human condition, to always need some sort of negative feeling, or maybe that''s another control of the ruling class, to influence people into thinking their suffering is necessary to their existence and to do this they always find a way to counter act any progress someone makes in reducing their suffering with another form of suffering artificially so they come to rightly (or in this theoretical situation where the world is heavily controlled wrongly) believe that they will always suffer so they give up trying to increase their power and those at the top stay relatively more powerful in comparison. It must happen, it has to happen, whether it''s centralised or organic through minor small influences of the ruling elites, they are most definitely controlling language and keeping the people depressed. Surely there are some benevolent elites though but rarely does becoming an elite happen in alignment with benevolence, becoming an elite is more dependent on wanting to become an elite or wanting to have relatively more power so of course the elites on average want to keep the average person down and depressed.


    It is annoying how I need to understand language and words better for my poem, language is so corrupted and crestfallen, I''m one of the lucky ones who can actually think in ideas, most people in their minds think primarily in words and as such are so heavily and subconsciously influenced by those who control language, they can never think of these ideas that cant be concisely expressed in words because the elites have corrupted language too much. Maybe that is my purpose or rather the purpose of anyone who really cares for humanity, to break this control of these evil people who want to dominate the world by giving words/terms to these things the average person needs to know about. To give the average person a voice to be able to at least identify how they are being controlled to break this control just a little bit. Some of the nicest smartest and most caring people I know have been those who have had literary interests, sure, a lot of them are pseudo intellectuals who just want to feel superior but it really seems that people who do ''get'' how important words and language can be are the same people who really ''get'' reality. Maybe it''s not really a problem, if I look back on history it seems like things just keep getting worse and worse but really on a surface level things are infinitely better, on all those objective measures that no one smart would ever say mean much, measures such as lifespan, access to quality nutrients and technology. While life has improved for most people, their existential suffering has increased proportionately, I think this existential suffering is largely due to these powers of control influencing language but it seems to be an equilibrium regardless, like the more materially good someone''s life is, the more existential suffering they can put up with. There is that weird spiral though, where people get more depressed because of feeling a little depressed while their life is materially so good. It''s like they feel ashamed they cant be happy despite having so much, they feel ashamed they are depressed over such trivial problems, this shame only makes their depression much worse.


    It''s like the people who suffer the most existentially are the ones who find these new ideas and express them through art/words to the masses, I guess that''s what makes it an equilibrium, the more you push people to suffer through limiting their understanding through language control, the more their suffering drives them to find or invent language and ideas to deal with this suffering. So what would be the point of this language control then? let''s say hypothetically you influence a word to keep people struggling/suffering? now what? they suffer and invent a new word to explain things and largely forget the old one, nothing has changed? well you still had that period of suffering, those suffering people wasted their time alleviating their suffering rather than attaining power. But you had to expend some power to influence the language in the first place so of course it''s an equilibrium, when the reward for influencing language is worth the cost it will be done. But people can only handle this increased suffering if they are materially more well off. I think I''m kind of looking at it in reverse, it''s more like when people become better off in material terms, then you can use this knowing they can handle some existential suffering now and limit their language.


    It seems like it might not be important, I mean on a global scale, it''s always going to be a thing whether I really understand it or not but then again any reduction in centralisation of power is always a good thing, right? I think it''s a good thing in terms of the world but if you are specifically undermining the centralisation of power of a specific group/country which is relatively more moral than others then you have just made the world worse off. Is any centralised power really more moral than another though? surely, the more centralised they are, the less moral. Well the average person can fight back with language control so it depends what language idea they are fighting for as to whether their fight is against immoral power, you don''t really fight against a specific central power, you fight against a specific idea by giving it a term to try and drive that idea out of any centralised powers and increase the strength relatively of centralised powers that don''t employ this idea.


    Is this really the best way to fight an idea? to simply name it for what it is? I guess it depends on what stage it is at, obviously if it already has a fairly well defined idea then defining it more accurately isn''t going to be much use in fighting it as everyone who might oppose this idea already understands how to see/recognise it well enough. I think an easy way to determine what idea is most efficient to fight through words is to determine which ideas have the most corrupted language surrounding them as the more corrupted it is currently, the easier it is to destroy some corruption and give power back to the people. But I just said you shouldn''t target something just because it''s centralised or has control, you should fight specific ideas themselves, it shouldn''t be about what you can make the most change in, it should be about what you can make the best change in. I had fallen prey to their type of thinking, the elites that is, trying to do the most rather than the best. Maybe you do though, maybe the best thing is just to give everyone, whether they are an average person or an elite, the best language possible to be able to discern reality and then you let reality be the judge, whatever happens as long as it is truthful is good and it will be more likely to be truthful the more people can word and understand the world around them.


    Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    There is some mechanic acting where as things and in particular words have become more well defined as society becomes more complex and efficient, the concepts behind certain words become more abstracted and as such it''s easier for people to exploit the vagueness in their definition to push a hidden agenda but really this isn''t inherently bad. Like with apples, we now have more labels for different apples due to more specialised varieties, the definition for the individual varieties are so complex but the difference between them is so nuanced that you can have a lot of wordplay in the spaces between varieties to distort reality, obviously this isn''t very useful for apples but it was just an example.


    It''s the eternal question I guess, whether the point of reality is a battle between good and bad, or if reality just is and whatever accepts or embraces the nature of reality is the real ''good''. I don''t think there is an answer so it''s just something I have to choose, whether I should fight for making reality more ''good'' in whichever way I feel is ''good'' or if I should just embrace things as they are. Trying to create your personal idea of good instead of just trying to embrace life is akin to telling a lie, you are trying to change reality to what you want it to be. Is that what telling a lie is? does a lie need to have a motive surrounding influencing reality to be a lie and simply not a false statement?


    If you lie to yourself you are trying to make yourself believe something about reality in the hopes that you can now live better, if you lie to someone else it could be for many reasons but ultimately you want them to think something about reality that isn''t true but their belief in it now becomes true at least for a while. Aiming to manifest the moral good in the world is trying to shape reality from what it is to what you want it to be, it doesn''t matter if you think you are right, it doesn''t matter if you are actually right about what is morally good.


    Is there such a thing as a good lie or at least a lie that isn''t bad? an example could be you have an old family member who is a widower with Alzheimer''s who cant remember more than 5 minutes, surely it''s a good lie if they ask "where is my wife?" to lie and say "she is just out to the shops and will be back soon", there is no point in telling them the truth, it will only hurt them for the next 5 minutes and then they wont even remember the truth. The reward of knowing the truth normally is how it lets you act better in the future, due to a more accurate knowledge of the world you can bend the world in the way you want more effectively or you can at least know how it will react better so you can more effectively act within it. Maybe another good lie would be to tell a dying partner that you will never find another even if it''s not true, there is no point in telling them the truth as it will only make their final days worse and make an uncomfortable situation for you. Again, the only good lies come when it is not possible for the lie to ever be revealed and for the misunderstandings caused by believing in the lie to never be challenged by reality. That is the danger of lying or living in delusion, eventually your wrong beliefs will be challenged by the brick wall of reality and not only will you have acted in a misguided way but now you will have to re evaluate what you know and all previous things you may have done wrong based on this lie, you will waste more resources in the long run living a lie.


    Surely there are lies though where the belief in them provides more benefit to both the liar and the lied to than the consequences of when it''s eventually found out? I think this is true in theory but in practice it plays out badly more often than it plays out well, maybe that doesn''t make lying bad absolutely then, it just depends on the judgment of the liar. You cant leave that judgment to everyone though, on average they will be wrong and you will cause more suffering in the world. Maybe it''s one of those situations where you want a ''law'' forbidding something but you accept and welcome the law being broken in exceptional circumstances. The problem with modern society is that they always try to write these exceptions into the law and it ends up undermining the law and the line defining this exception is abused and exploited. For example with abortion, abortion should be illegal to discourage people having unprotected sex, to force people to learn actions have consequences and to treat life with respect but the exceptional cases such as rape pregnancy should be allowed to be exploited. The problem is when you write these exceptions into law it becomes a slippery slope, not to mention all the effort wasted trying to work out which exact exceptions are valid, some things don''t need general rules such as exceptions, life is far too complicated for that. Do not lie should be a general rule but it should be broken when ''needed'', trying to write into the law when it should be broken just over complicates the law and undermines it, you want people to treat it like an absolute law but also to break it when they absolutely know it should be broken, basically the law could be written as ''if you don''t know for sure what is best to say then say the truth''.


    Another example is cheating on your spouse, it should be a ''law'' not to cheat but cheating and doing wrong can be for the best in the long run. I guess this is just the famous quote ''rules are made to be broken'' but the meaning behind this quote is so bastardised that believing in the quote does the opposite of what it should do, the real quote should be something like ''follow the rules but break them for exceptional circumstances''. The current interpretation of the quote makes people think they should break the rules whenever they feel like it without care but really the sparseness of breaking the rules is what makes it more fun. It''s a natural need for humanity to break the rules or do what is wrong either by their own judgment or others in order to feel alive and in control but everyone has a different equilibrium they operate at and should operate at. Usually rules are there for good reason and even if the reason is to protect others, usually breaking them will only cause issue in the long run but this can be balanced out by the reward in terms of novelty or excitement in breaking the rules. For some people this novelty wears off fast though but really it is an equilibrium, the longer you go without doing wrong, the more fun the wrong becomes so eventually everyone reaches the point where it is worth it from a cost benefit analysis to break the rules or do something wrong. The problem with modern society is they over romanticise this breaking of rules and subvert all rules in the first place, they try to make the rules out to be arbitrary and nonsensical, it is impossible to tell if there is a concerted effort behind it or it is just a biproduct of another sickness in our society. That is to say that it is hard to say if the media that romanticises this bad behaviour is pushing it or they are just filling a demand for it. The media is constantly romanticising cheating and trying to portray ''toxic'' relationships as being more exciting, maybe that is a biproduct of women being the biggest consumers of media or at least making the household ''purchasing'' of media decisions, women are naturally more inclined to like the feeling of breaking the rules, I don''t know why this is, if it is the breaking the rules in the first place that excites them more, if they just don''t get bored of breaking the rules as quickly as men or if they just cant understand more abstract connections which are needed to value what the real purpose of the rules in the first place are. Maybe it is that they are more narcissistic, especially in modern times, they want to be the centre of the universe so any rules which are established as a mutual agreement between strangers to co operate is less meaningful to them, they always think they are exceptions. Girls crave drama even if it is bad/negative over a regular existence, they want to live in a tv soap opera. Breaking the rules and doing what you know to be wrong is basically performing a lie, you are doing what is not right by reality for your own benefit.


    There is a difference between the truth and something that isn''t a lie though. There are things which could be thought of as lies in the sense that they are not strictly true but treating them as true makes them less false. For example, the core Christian idea that ''you can become better'', ignoring how subjective this is, this isn''t strictly true, there is no way to know whether it is true until it happens but believing it as true makes a person more likely to strive to achieve it and thus more likely for it to actualise in reality. This is the power of ''faith'', I hate that word, I understand it but others don''t and so it should be avoided at all costs, there are no good words to represent this idea to people who don''t believe it, I don''t know how anyone could not believe it though, it is pretty self evident and simple. Everyone sees it in their day to day life, they see how when they want something and feel they can achieve it then they are more likely to achieve it but these non believers refuse to call it faith, I guess I cant blame them, I believe in faith and even I don''t like that word. It really is an issue with the image christianity has, image is really important to ideas but even so focusing on image is problematic and counter productive, you should only focus on image enough to counter act anyone trying to ruin the image of your movement, you should never actively try to mislead your ideas by artificially creating an image, the ideas should stand on their own but you should counter any propaganda that ruins the image of your movement.


    I guess Christianity or religion in general is one of those theoretical ''lies'' I was talking about where believing it provides more benefit to everyone in the long run than the consequences of when you learn it was a lie. I think the difference between this lie and other benevolent lies is the lack of alternative options if you didn''t believe the lie. For example, you learn Christianity was not strictly true and you feel you may have wasted your days with it but what would you have done without it? likely drowned in nihilism. I get it, not everyone is broken by nihilism and in certain niches it allows beautiful things to flourish but in general, a humbling before a theoretical god and an unfounded belief that you can improve should be the default state for humanity and exceptions should be exactly that, exceptional cases only when the person knows they could manage their life better without these beliefs. I know in general the current way it works isn''t optimal, I see the average believer and the average atheist and in the vast majority of cases the average believer is better off in every way. The problem is the exceptions tend to speak the loudest, you do have certain people who can be perfectly happy and productive not believing and because they are happy they end up vocalizing this and try to get others to not believe, they don''t see the woe and degeneracy of their fellow non believers, they don''t see how on average the average believer is far happier than the average non believer. The smart non believers also only see media from other smart non believers while only see the average believer who is generally dumb and living in a fantasy world, they don''t see that the average non believer is also generally dumb and living in a fantasy world. I guess that is why non belief has so perniciously infiltrated our society, the smart non believers are the most vocal while the dumb believers are most vocal so the image of either side is distorted slightly and it causes the undecided people to find the side of non belief artificially more attractive. The difference seems to be that smart non believers identify themselves with their non belief where the smart believers don''t identify themselves by their belief. To a smart believer their belief is only an accessory to life because the belief itself basically says to focus on those around you and what you can change and that ''big'' questions are really just a spiritual tool, whereas a smart non believer thinks the nature of reality is the most important thing in their life, they really are narcissistic to think that what they think about reality truly matters to others.


    But the common lie, what people would call a ''white lie'' usually has better alternatives that could have been followed if the person did not believe the lie. For example, a man might tell his wife that her new ugly haircut is the best because he thinks that her haircut doesn''t actually matter, thinking she might as well feel good about herself but eventually reality will come up against this lie and she will learn that she looks worse with the haircut and has wasted however many months when she could have had a better one. Reality always catches up and punishes two fold for any transgressions against it. This man might not even lie outright, he might say something like "you look beautiful" or "I love it" but this is really a lie by omission, he didn''t finish his sentences, they should have been "you look beautiful to me regardless" or "I love it but not as much as other haircuts", but we all know how those last two sentences would go down in most relationships but then again most relationships are built off lies. Some people really want their relationships to be that, entirely lies, a safe space to hide from the world and reality. They want their relationship and partner to be the one to affirm everything about them as they feel they get enough challenge from reality outside of their relationship, but these people don''t realise that challenges from reality are not absolute, the amount of challenge or strife you receive from reality is dependent on how much you have your lies affirmed. A good relationship is one with honesty, where the person helps you understand reality, whether they are doing this so you can act within it or you can change it to your will is another matter and entirely personal, I think in general the default belief should be everyone should act within reality and only attempt to change it to what they think is morally good when they absolutely know they should try and change it. By default people should assume they don''t know what is right and what is wrong, they should act based on the belief that whatever exists is more right than what they think should exist, thinking about what should be is a huge waste of resources rather than thinking about what is and how to act within what is and only going outside this when you really know that you should.


    There is also a concept surrounding lies which is like mutual lying, where people essentially get into unwritten contracts. I can''t think of many good examples but one might be when partners tell each other that they are soulmates, that they are everything to each other and will always love them. Sure, you could argue it''s not a lie as most of the time they do truly believe this at least to some extent but there is definitely some level of delusion and self deception going on where they are basically saying to each other "I will treat you like this, in the hopes that you will treat me like this too". Another example might be when people go out drinking together or gather together in general, the mutual lie is something like "I will act happy and energetic in the hopes that you will too so we can provide each other with a good time" when most of the time both parties are meeting up and drinking because they are lonely or feeling down. I don''t know much about mutual lies, I don''t know if they are harmful in the long run, probably not as much as general lies as usually the alternative of not telling a mutual lie is something inherently bad or else people would not be willing to enter into these unwritten contracts.


    There is something else about that though, that something not being true doesn''t make it a lie, it''s something to do with language tricks. Like for example you might say "things will get better", this isn''t strictly true or a lie, it all depends on the interpretation of the words like whether ''things'' refers to everything or just some things and how you define ''better'' and what timeframe you stop at. These ambiguous statements are often worse than lies though as they are hollow words that are trying to play both sides, they are wanting to lie to you in a way that benefits them while also wanting the defense if it doesn''t happen that they didn''t actually lie, which makes them feel better when saying it. Someone saying this wants to cheer you up both for their sake and possibly yours with the lie side of this phrase (the thing they want you to believe which isn''t strictly true in reality) but they also want to benefit from the feeling of telling the truth. This is the most pernicious lie within society, the lie that plays both sides due to its hollow nature, it will rarely if ever have any positive long term impact on anyone but it just wastes time on empty words and makes the liar a shell of a human, everyone is a shell these days but it''s not really their individual fault, as in it''s not a fault of their morality but really it''s more of a consequence of how our language has developed. Words are so subjective these days, everything has become subjective but particularly words, probably some of it comes from just the sheer amount/time of use, over time words change definition but the old definition still lurks deep within that word to some degree, you can now use multiple definitions of that word within one use of the word if it benefits you, you can tell one person you meant the old definition of the word and tell another you meant the new definition. I think a large part is the subjectivity of words became required in some sense due to the increased permanence of what you say, how what you say is now kept track of online, in the early days of the internet people kept getting into trouble for things they said decades ago and they had to invent ''excuses'' (really there wasn''t a need to be excused in a just world) that context was missing and subjectively they meant something else, often they were right but the biproduct of this was that it normalised such an idea of language and provided a space for nefarious people to exploit this subjectivity with the end result being that words no longer mean as much due to the ease at which they could be backpedaled if needed, everything everyone said was and is now hollow.


    This isn''t even touching on how irony has destroyed language in a similar sense to this backpedaling with the excuse of subjectivity/context, someone can say something and if it is not received by a certain group how they want then they can hide behind their words being ironic. It''s really not a bad thing though, that is words being thought of as more hollow, it''s really just a tool in a way, as mentioned it can allow you to say things you couldn''t otherwise say using these artificial shields. It''s certainly an interesting time, it''s like the death of language as we know it, now when people say something they aren''t really saying the words they say, what they say truly is dependent on the whole context surrounding their words and to an extent their whole existence. There used to be more of a separation between what someone said and what someone did but now with the decreased objectivity of what they say that hole is being supplanted by looking into what they did. This seems to be happening more and more and so if the general trend follows then eventually words will be more or less meaningless in comparison to context, this is good, right? it means people will be thinking more in terms of ideas and actions rather than words, they will be more like me, they will be able to understand more complex ideas which cant be expressed in words easily.


    I should ask Ner how she thinks, whether she thinks in words or ideas, or maybe I should ask Sarah, or both? Ner... I truly forgot about her for the last few days... what the fuck is wrong with me? I feel like I''m 15 again, some new girl shows me the least bit of attention and my entire life is turned upside down, is it normal to still be like this in your 30s? I think it''s less about her and more about what she exposes. Sarah is basically a representation of reality hitting me and exposing my faulty belief in the lie that is Ner. Sarah isn''t anything amazing, or at least not that I know so far but compared to Ner she shows just how horrible Ner can be, does that matter? I knew she was terrible before I committed myself to her, that was part of the appeal, terrible like me but it is becoming more like as terrible as the past me. Fuck, remember when she said that people in relationships just want someone to make their lives simple and peaceful... that is like the opposite of the truth. Well, that is what a lot of men want, some stability, but women crave an exciting life, they want chaos. I don''t think Ner actually wants a simple life which is probably why she doesn''t love me, she just believes she wants her life simplified which is why she likes the familiarity of me at this point. That''s her main problem, she is torn between her feminine and masculine sides, deep down she has a lot of feminine feelings like she wants the drama and complicated side but she represses these feelings and convinces herself that she doesn''t have them so never feels satisfied, she thinks it is what she wants so when she gets it and still doesn''t feel happy and fulfilled she thinks that life is inherently terrible, she has everything she wants but still doesn''t feel fulfilled. She doesn''t realise that it isn''t actually what she wants, she wants to be a woman, but showing her this is too difficult.


    She is a mess, it would be fine if she was at least my mess but she doesn''t even want to be mine, maybe I am contributing by giving up for my own benefit. I should leave her and maybe it will help her in the long run, I do really care for her and want to help her. What am I saying? she has essentially already left me, I have no say in this, maybe I should just exacerbate it, cause her to leave me in a very clearly final way, I really don''t know what would be best for her. If I leave her she might feel a little despondent even though she doesn''t love me but if she leaves me then she might go on thinking the problem is with others and not herself. I made a mess of this, I should have dumped her before she wanted to leave me, now there will be no solution for her, she will probably spend the next 5 years in her depressive haze. Whatever, I''m not her dad, she is not my responsibility, I should just let whatever happens happen, I should just let reality play out and not lie as I don''t truly know what to do. I will text her tomorrow to try and see where her mind is at.


    He was now very depressed as he was feeling like he wasted the past 3 years of his life with Ner and got very drunk as seemed to be a tradition for Sunday''s.

 Bias

    His Monday started off uneventful, as standard as they come, hangover and all which caused his day to be experienced in much of a haze, he liked this and was largely a reason why he drank, how it seemed to fast-forward the time at work and alleviate any of his usual existential suffering as his mind was too preoccupied with going in pointless circles, it was like he only came to consciousness after lunch when his boring ''work'' day was already half over. The rest of the afternoon was torn between unproductively working on his poem and thinking of what to say to Ner/Sarah, he decided it shouldn''t always be his responsibility to dictate the conversation, he would let them compete against each other with as little of his guidance as possible.


    "Say something, anything" he ended up texting them both just before finishing his shift.


    Ner was first to reply with "You are Justin Timberlake?" at first he thought this was just a completely random thing she had said but then he cringed and visibly shuddered when he realised she was probably making a reference to one of his songs. He searched it up and sure enough it was the title and presumably the lyrics of a song of his.


    Does she really think this is funny? the joke can be boiled down to ''you said something that someone else said and I connected the two'', she has never been funny but I guess that is funny, when unfunny people try to be funny, it''s endearing and relatable, I know I''m funny but I also know I''m not funny to most people. But really? out of all the things she could have said she chose this? it was so quick too like she didn''t even try to think of something meaningful, she knows I''m suffering and I''m desperately trying to understand what is happening between us and she cant even offer me anything of substance when I ask for it. It would have been funnier if it was completely random, like if she asked me if I was some famous person and there was no connection just to fuck with me, sort of like an invite into a roleplay, one of those sort of roleplays when you just talk nonsense but there is still a story within it. It would have been funnier if the reference was wrong, like she said Justin Bieber and the song was Justin Timberlake, then there would be an interesting layer of wondering whether it was intentional or not to misattribute the quote, practically anything would have been funnier, that is what is funny about it though, I guess, how it is the least funny thing possible but I''m not sure this was intended. Really though, why is she trying to be funny anyway? there are endless topics that need to be addressed between us and I gave her a chance to pick one and she hid from them all. Not even that, she could have just opened a conversation about anything but what do you even say to her response? there is no possible interesting way to respond to what she had said, that is the mark of a poor conversationalist, they don''t create opportunities for the other person to shine. I know she isn''t a poor conversationalist, she just doesn''t care, probably intentionally, it seems like she has told herself that she will never put effort mental or otherwise into me again, she is disgusting.


    Sarah text back about 10 minutes later as he was collecting his things to leave "There is a type of mushroom that basically turns ants into zombies", he sat back down and leaned back in his chair and just stared at the wall for a while in awe of what she had said. His mind was trying to work out why she had chosen this particular thing to say but it was distracted by a warm haze of childish enchantment, he tried to refocus but could only focus on how his breathing was now irregular, slow and deliberate and he could feel the air filling his chest. He searched it up on his phone and it was even more interesting than she had said, the fungi essentially got the ants to do its bidding for it, not just zombies but zombie slaves, more like they were hypnotised.


    He wanted to break their ritual so badly and text her back if only to praise her response but decided against it, he hated the hold she already had on him and didn''t want to indulge it any further than he already did.


    I barely know this girl and she already shows an infinite amount more care than Ner, she actually listens to what I say and tries to say something important back. I understand, asking someone to just say something and forcing the conversational pressure onto them is kind of an asshole thing to do but surely anyone who cares for you will understand that you have deeper and more honest motives than simply using them. Was I using them though? sure, I was asking them to work and come up with something for my benefit but it shouldn''t really be counted as work if they care for me, that is sort of the mutual lie or contract of a relationship ''i will do things for you in the hopes you will do things for me''. I was essentially cashing in some of this with them, asking for a favour in the relationship and this girl obliged even though I barely know her and haven''t really done anything for her while Ner''s response basically told me ''you have no credit'', she doesn''t think I do anything for her or she would be willing to do something for me. Not only that but she must think I can''t do anything for her in the future either as the pendulum goes both ways. What the fuck is wrong with this woman? I would do anything for her if she only asked, even if she doesn''t ask I still try to do everything that she needs but she doesn''t want it, she doesn''t want to be loved. I knew this when I met her though, it is part of what I liked about her, it''s kind of poetic to love someone even if they don''t want it, even if they think they don''t deserve it but I guess I had the hopes that one day she would learn how to be loved but I guess she never will. It seems it comes natural to Sarah though, she is so open and willing to not judge my motives for things, what am I thinking? how do I know it comes natural, for all I know she has gone through love hell and back, for all I know she is using AI for her responses, for all I know this is an intentional angle she is playing. Does it matter though? she is far more interesting and makes me feel like I''m far more interesting.


    He needed a reset, he knew if he went home to a familiar place a familiar haze of emotions would wash over him, subconscious influences from his past, he wanted to go somewhere relatively new and disconnected from his life so he could think about something else. He would normally go to the park but this was now connected emotionally to Sarah and he wanted a break from thinking about women, he felt embarrassed over how much they turned his mind inside out and made him re evaluate his whole entire existence, he wanted to go to a different park but couldn''t think of one that interested him, he remembered a cemetery on the edge of town, one that he had only seen from the outside and drove out there. Although he could have driven inside and into the parking lot he left his car outside on the road and walked through the gate thinking it was more respectful to not have a car enter a cemetery even if there was a place designed for it. He could only see a few people in the distance of the park.


    5pm on a Monday, not exactly prime time for a cemetery. Is there a prime time for a cemetery? surely statistically there has to be, a prime time for grief as if it kept a schedule, as if peoples feelings of love for their lost ones came and went in a largely predictable manner based on something as arbitrary as the current rotation of the earth and its position in orbit around the sun. That''s not really arbitrary though, cosmic positioning, that''s probably the least arbitrary thing in existence, but I guess it is or at least should be arbitrary in relation to human emotional states. There are two ways a ''prime time'' for grief might not be significant though, the peak time might not be much higher than the rest of the time or there might be an average schedule but the variance from this average is so sporadic that predicting based on the average isn''t very worthwhile.


    I wonder if anyone has done this research on this, collected the data for how many people visit at what time of day, week or year. Would that be an unethical thing to do? surely it is just data and it is neutral to gather on its own. It feels a little harsh though, to reduce people''s grief to a point of data, an entry into a spreadsheet. Say you do the analysis and you find that there is a statistically significant time of day when the most people visit, now you can undermine the people who visit at that time by saying their grief isn''t as real, that it''s not independent of arbitrary things like time of day, at least to some degree some of them wouldn''t be here if not for the time of day. Does that mean the opposite is true? the people who grieve at the least popular times are those whose grief is the most real and eternal, their grief lives outside any ties to reality and comes from something supernatural like their soul. Variance complicates things though, on average this would be true but some of the people grieving at the most popular times just accidentally happened to need to grieve at that time, they weren''t like the ''fake'' grievers who only grieved when the weather was nicest, when they had their lunch break or whatever.


    Maybe there are ''better'' explanations for the ''prime time'' that don''t undermine the depths of their grief like maybe they aren''t directly influenced by something arbitrary like the time of day or the weather but are influenced by something that correlates with these things. Like maybe on average peoples brains just think faster at a certain time of day/week/year, maybe it is Tuesday midday at the start of summer, when they aren''t still tired from the weekend party but aren''t yet tired from the work week, when they aren''t tired from the morning but aren''t yet tired from the day, when they aren''t cold from winter but not yet tired of the heat. Maybe peoples brains just work fastest at a time like this and think about the most things and statistically are more likely to remember their grief to such a degree and need to act on it. Maybe there is some seasonal influence on nostalgia, like maybe people have better memories from summertime so when it hits summer they get more nostalgic over the past memories with their lost loved ones. Seasonal depression is a real thing but I think that''s an exceptional case as really that''s a completely different type of depression, really all it says is ''people are less happy when they cant do things that they like'' or ''people feel uncomfortable or feel like their city is ugly or they are sick all the time'', they shouldn''t really call it depression, perhaps this is intentional undermining of language, though I guess it''s because often times ''fake'' seasonal depression snowballs into real depression to a degree. I guess the true is with peak time grief, sure, they might have started grieving from a summer memory but then they remember all the memories, sure the grief is artificially induced from arbitrary times but it snowballs into actual grief. This still undermines their grief to some extent though, surely if they actually truly grieved they wouldn''t ''forget'' it ever, it would be constant with them. Is it possible for something to be constant though, even if it is there at all times in some form it still statistically has to grow and shrink in depth from time to time and have statistically significant ''prime time''.


    Like Ner is always in my mind but there are definitely times when she is more prominent than others, is now just one of those times when she is less prominent? it certainly is starting to feel like a general trend rather than a momentary variation.


    He kept walking around the cemetery, mostly lost in his own thoughts but he would read every name on the tombstones feeling as if it was his duty to honor their names, to his surprise none of the 20 or so names matched those of significant people in his life, he thought about how this must be statistically significant to find no matches out of so many ''random'' names. He ran the numbers through his head and concluded that it was only slightly unlikely and not worthy of being deemed of some great significance. He thought about the people in their graves.


    Would they mind that I am here? am I insulting their rest or adding to it? I guess it varies, if they were standing above their graves and watching their surroundings, most of them are probably happy to see anyone after years in the same place with nothing to do but reflect on when they had agency over reality. They probably get the same few visitors all the time, most people don''t believe in the sentimental, they claim they do, they act like they do when it''s convenient but when no one is watching they make excuses to themselves that it doesn''t matter, they feel like they don''t need to do something ''pointless'' like go to a certain place on earth to honor their loved one, they can do it from their comfy warm couch, ''it is all the same to the dead'' they tell themselves.


    It probably is all the same to the dead but even if it is, there are unintended consequences of actually doing it that they don''t realise, not least of which is the act of participating in human rituals in our culture that have been passed down through generations. I guess I am a little bit of an insult to these people, I am not exactly pleasant on the eyes, there is nothing particularly wrong with me but I just don''t look like a well adjusted adult, maybe this is refreshing for some of the resting souls, or maybe it is an insult, here they are laying unable to ever influence the world in any shape or form on their own volition anymore and here is some grown man-child lost in his own fantasy world who doesn''t even care about his waning time on this earth enough or those around him to dress himself proper and keep a tidy haircut. I''m an insult to the dead, that''s going to change though, I''m going to write this poem and then I will write more, it might not be the most explicit way to influence the world but in the long run there is a chance it will. I will start building a real life together with a girl too whether that is Ner or Sarah, I''m fucking delusional, I just met Sarah and I''m already talking about dropping my girlfriend to build a life together. What I meant is a girl like Sarah, maybe Ner can become more like Sarah, maybe I can help her, I don''t deserve Sarah anyway, I deserve a girl like Ner. I wonder how many graves are next to a loved one, do people get buried together in the same grave? surely that happens, I wonder how often, I wonder if anyone has done the numbers. I wonder what was the average length of relationship with their loved one when they died, like did they on average meet in the latter part of their life or were they together forever, it seems these days relationships are on average shorter, I guess it''s the result of a more fast paced society which encourages and even forces people to change more frequently, they no longer stay the same as the person who was fallen in love with. There are other factors though, like it''s easier to meet new people and divorce these days but who knows what direction the causation goes, maybe some of these other factors came about due to increased frequency of change, like divorce was made easier due to people changing so often not exactly on its own accord, regardless, it would turn into its own cause, whatever the reason for divorce becoming easier whether it was a consequence of some other factor or purely arbitrary or artificially forced, now it will facilitate a society that is less scared of divorce and the slippery slope will keep sliding.


    I wonder how many times the average person here was married, I guess that''s an easy stat to look up but maybe it''s slightly different here, here meaning in a cemetery, maybe there is variation between the different ways people are ''disposed'' of. Maybe people who are cremated are less sentimental over life and therefore don''t take their choices as seriously and so they marry more often than those who choose to be buried, those who think their body is eternal and divine. That''s an odd thought, it''s sort of like the argument of faith, if you believe your life has more worth and your choices are more meaningful then you will make more meaningful choices. Maybe those who married a lot got exactly what they wanted though, a chaotic life, they probably take pride in how many times they got back up and tried again to find their ''one'', not realising the need to keep doing this was primarily their own creation and if they took a little less pride in it and felt more shame for their repeated attempts then they might actually learn to make better choices. I guess people only have limited brain power anyway, if they put their effort into making better choices in terms of partners they will sacrifice in other areas and make poorer choices there. I don''t believe this completely, I think trying more in any meaningful area of life has a net positive impact as most of the effort you steal from elsewhere is usually taken from a far less productive area of life.


    This park is really nice, really well kept, much better than the parks for the living. No noisy people, no dog poo, the trees are trimmed nicer, it''s a wonder there aren''t more people visiting it simply as a place to escape from the concrete jungle. I get that people think it''s probably a little insulting to go to these peoples graves simply as a way to have ''fun'' but it''s strange that absolutely everyone feels this same way, I guess some of them avoid it because it depresses them to confront death, it''s still strange that everyone is this way though, you would think that some people would think it''s ok from time to time, to go once a year or something but it seems no one does, they only visit when they ''need'' to. It''s like that idea for a term I had, one that I actually came up with a name for ''over bias'', it''s like they think 99% of the time that it''s a bad idea to visit the cemetery for a walk but everyday they see this 99% and come to this same conclusion, they don''t visit it on 1% of their walks. It''s kind of like if you were gambling on some magic coin that had a 51% chance to be heads, you wouldn''t bet heads only 51% of the time, you would bet it 100% of the time and so would 100% of people. Hmmm, that''s not the best example because it''s too concrete and there aren''t unintended consequences from betting heads 100% of the time, like heads doesn''t care it is being bet on too much and tails doesn''t care either.


    A better example is ''racism''. Like say for example poor people were slightly more likely to be criminals than rich people and minorities were slightly more likely to be poor and therefore more likely to be criminals, this means that on average if the police had to choose one random person to stop then they should choose a minority every single time as anything else would be a less efficient use of their time as it would have a slightly lower chance of stopping a criminal. Theoretically it is right for police to be biased against minorities but they''re even more biased than would be ''fair''. This gets complicated though as only stopping minorities removes the most important part of policing for others, namely the perceived threat of police action. So let''s say 60% of crime is done by minorities, then in a perfect fair world minorities would be stopped 60% of the time but in reality each time the police are making a choice on who to stop it is best to pick a minority, but this has unintended consequences, the minorities feel (rightfully) picked on for being focused and it creates a false sense of security for non minorities who now think it is unlikely for them to be stopped. So the true best action of how often to stop minorities would be somewhere between 60% but less than 100%, however much less depends on how negatively it impacts their lives to be focused and how much you remove the perceived threat of policing from non minorities.


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    In reality though people don''t really understand that it is ''right'' to focus minorities so much or even the ''fair'' 60% of the time, they think they should only be focused according to their proportion of their population. I get it, I really do, they are trying to will into existence the reality they want to live in where everyone is judged on an individual basis such as choices and not something they cant control like race. They don''t understand that there will always be statistical trends in both things people cant control and things people can control, there are always trends and averages in everything, it''s just a matter of how significant they are. Like how the cemetery has a peak time, people cant handle when you make connections between things if they think the connection undermines something good. They take it too personally as if correlating two things is assuming causation, I guess it is assuming causation to some degree otherwise you would just talk about the two things on their own, but it''s interesting to talk about things that shouldn''t be connected but are, even if it''s not direct. Even if the causation is a ''bad'' thing, at least labelling the bad thing allows you to deal with it better.


    The thing with over bias is that people seem to over estimate the bias and this in turn causes them to over respond to it and over compensate, it is a general trend, when people try to artificially control something they end up making it less efficient, but I guess to a degree forced inefficiencies in the name of what is ''right'' is what a civilised society is all about. Say police stopped minorities 90% of the time rather than the 60% so they are over biased, eventually this statistic might come out and police would consciously (largely due to pressure) cut down on how often they stop minorities artificially, it doesn''t matter if they over compensate below 60% or somewhere between it is still artificially over compensating, in reality the most efficient action is likely closer to that 90% to not waste police resources and the tax money of those who are paying to be protected.


    I haven''t even given the dead much of a second thought, poor people, no one cares about them, maybe one gardener and a family member making an annual visit but by the looks of most of these gravestones, even that is rare. It''s even more insulting when people make an attempt at an effort then give up than when they make no effort at all, like some of these graves have pot plants on them, well they used to, now they are just pots of dirt, so insulting. At least some of them have nice trees over their graves, that''s how i want to go, to be buried  under a young tree and have my nutrients absorbed into it, trees are resilient, they don''t care if no human takes care of them, mother nature takes care of them, it''s when humans get involved in nature that nature becomes dependent on humans and eventually fail. Like pot plants, they are artificially restricted to a small supply of nutrients and don''t have proper mechanisms to thrive which is fine if humans perform upkeep but left to their own devices they cant handle it.


    Ast didn''t realise but he was now approaching one of the only other two people in the park, a man slightly separated from what looked to be his wife, he was well dressed and probably in his late 40''s. Ast assumed he was visiting his parents or grandparents but really it could be anyone such as an ex wife, people lived crazy lives. As they passed each other they exchanged glances, the mans face showed little expression but due to the fixated expression it seemed to Ast that he was putting in a lot of conscious effort into preventing expression, possibly an intent to hide emotion from his wife, maybe out of embarrassment or maybe to act as a pillar of strength for her to lean on. Ast''s expression was much the same but not for the same reasons, it was just how he tried to keep his face at all times to prevent any unintended expressions which he now found ironic as he was reading so much into the other mans face but this was an exceptional situation. Ast seemed to hear from the mans expression unsaid words such as "I understand what you feel, nobody else in this whole city really understands how we feel right now but we understand how tragic life is", but Ast didn''t understand how he felt, he thought he did but couldn''t know for sure, he felt like he was insulting the man by unintentionally being an imposter, an intruder into his world of grief but perhaps he was a comfort and Ast''s ''lie'' was nothing but positive. Maybe the man would be better off in the long run if he believed nobody else understood, then he would reach the true depths of grief faster and perhaps that was needed to eventually escape. Maybe the man didn''t want to feel like anyone else understood, a world where his grief was common was not a nice world to live in, it is one thing to feel immense grief yourself, people can handle that, they even like suffering to a degree but to know other people have to feel it is tough, it makes the universe seem inhumanely cruel.


    He kept on walking, at least half of the graves were decrepit and almost half were for people who died younger than Ast is now. There was no one who would do anything with Ast''s body, nobody who cared for him or knew him, Ner probably didn''t have any legal rights. He wondered what even was the default disposal for a body by public services if there were no family members to take charge, surely it was just cremation but what would they do with the ashes? maybe there was some shared grave site where he would be sprinkled among 1000s of others who had no family, the remnants of existence fused with all the other losers and scattered to the wind. He thought he should look it up later, his lawyer was constantly pressuring him to make a will but he never gave it a second thought, he didn''t feel as if reality would go on in any meaningful sense beyond his life.


    He walked down a path of grass between some graves and stepped on some berries on the ground, not a variety he had ever seen before and probably not edible but still full of nutrients and now he had taken a bunch of them from the ground and stolen the nutrients away from the dead and carried them away on the soles of his boots. He wondered what would be the best course of action, if he should go on and take them away or to scrape his boots off on the grass, that would probably damage the grass and insult the dead even further he thought. He concluded he should have been more careful in the first place.


    Maybe this is why people don''t come here for leisure, the risk of unintended consequences and insults to the dead is just too high. I wonder how many people do come here for leisure though, I wonder if anyone has ever met anyone romantically while in a cemetery for leisure, I''m sure it happens at funerals but the chance of two people around the same age of opposing gender just visiting a cemetery for fun and striking up a conversation and hitting it off like I did with Sarah, it''s possible that has never happened. It would be poetic, not just for the near impossibility of it happening but also it''s like a metaphor, people finding a new life while surrounded by death, I guess that''s why it happens at funerals to the extent that it does but this is different, funeral meetings feel forced, poetry exists within the unforced. Maybe I should make this my poem instead, could I explain that to people though, would they accept two people visiting a cemetery just for fun? I will ask Ner what she thinks about this.


    "I am coming over, question mark?" he text her and started to leave the cemetery the same way he came, noticing all sorts of little small details which he missed on the way in, the most notable of which was just outside the gate. There was a large hole in the hedge surrounding the grounds near the gate, while it was starting to regrow he concluded that someone must have crashed a car into it. He had no idea how that could have happened, it was a straight road with no turns nearby but it certainly looked like it. He thought of the symbolism, probably some kid on a drunken joyride, not only did they literally insult the dead by desecrating their resting grounds but they metaphorically insulted them too by being reckless with their own life. He wondered if the offender even made this connection, whether they even gave more than a second thought to what they crashed into on a symbolic level, most people don''t think symbolically, it doesn''t provide any short term material benefit to them and they live day to day. He couldn''t blame them really, most people have too many real problems to deal with, most people these days couldn''t even afford a tombstone so offending those that can isn''t a huge concern.


    "K..." Ner text back just as he was reaching his car.


    Why the fucking ellipsis? what is wrong with this girl? I''m trying to make things right and she acts like I''m a bother, women are so disgusting, they don''t feel empathy.


    He spent most of this ride to her in anger, going through everything wrong with the average woman but in the end it provided him a bit of peace, she wasn''t rude to him because he wasn''t worthy of care, it was just her nature like you don''t get angry at a dog being stupid for chasing its tail, it doesn''t know any better. When he reached her house his anger had calmed down but he still knocked unusually furiously on her door.


    "What''s wrong?" she said as she answered the door, she looked beautiful today, she had recently dyed her hair the near white colour he loved, her makeup was immaculate and she looked well rested. He did not expect to find her this way, he had expected and hoped she would be as miserable as he was with how they no longer seemed to be able to meaningfully connect and their relationship seemingly ending.


    "I just wanted to talk to you, I miss you" these words just spilled out and he immediately regretted them, he had wanted to keep the conversation casual and avoid any serious discussion but couldn''t help himself.


    "I miss you too" she said, his eye twitched.


    How dare she say this? you don''t get to claim you miss someone if you are actively preventing the two of you from being together and refusing to engage in or start any conversation. Now isn''t the time for this.


    After realising he didn''t have anything he wanted to say to this, she invited him inside and they sat down on her couch before a tv on mute. The couch wasn''t very comfortable, it was a very old style and ugly but it added a sort of aesthetic that Ast liked, it was a reminder of more simpler times, he had never asked her why she had this particular couch, if she chose an old couch to remind her of her youth or just happened to acquire it, he considered asking her now but decided to stick to the script he had been planning in the back of his mind.


    "I was just at the cemetery" he started when she let out a little gasp which was more just like an urgent gathering of air for what she wanted to interject with.


    "Oh god, what happened?"


    As if she really cares, she probably just feels bad now knowing that she had totally disregarded anything going on in my life or how I feel in her recent weeks of distance.


    "Nothing, I was just going for a walk" he paused but she didn''t say anything, she just looked at him intently with her hand now placed on his knee "you know, it''s strange how there was no one there" again he waited but she didn''t say anything "it''s like if I go to Laurent Park there are always people everywhere... do you think many people go to a cemetery unless they have a real reason to?"


    "I don''t know, why are you asking this?"


    "What do you mean why am I asking? it''s because I think it''s an interesting question and I wanted to share the idea with you"


    "Well... it''s nothing I really thought about, I don''t think cemeteries are that interesting"


    "Fuck, it doesn''t have to be about cemeteries, that''s just an example, it''s about people doing things for no reason"


    "I never really thought about it"


    "Well, would you go to a cemetery just for a walk? do you know others who do"


    "Probably not, sure, I had friends who would just go to relax and read or talk with their lost friends"


    "That''s using the cemetery for it''s proper purpose though, I just mean without a proper reason, no connection to the cemetery"


    "Why wouldn''t you just go to the park? it seems a bit disrespectful"


    "You can do both, how is it disrespectful?"


    "I don''t know, like cemeteries shouldn''t be busy public hangout spots? they should be peaceful and reserved for people using them to mourn"


    "Well sure, you respect this and be quiet" he retorted


    "I just think if everyone did it then it would ruin the cemetery"


    "Sure but nobody does it so one or two people wont ruin it, if anything it gives the dead some purpose in the world"


    "I don''t know, why are you so obsessed with this?"


    "I''m not, I just think it''s interesting, well, I had an idea"


    "Ok"


    "You want to know it?"


    "I guess"


    "Thanks... well, when people ask us how we met we should tell them that we met at the cemetery, we were both just there on walks, it would be romantic"


    "How.. how is that romantic, what is wrong with you?"


    "You said it yourself, how rare it is for people to go there just for a walk, imagine how rare it is for people to meet there outside of funerals, maybe it has never ever happened in the world, isn''t that romantic? also it would be symbolic, people starting a new life in a place among the dead"


    "It doesn''t happen for good reason, what is wrong with the story of how we met?"


    "But if it happened it wouldn''t be for bad reasons, there is nothing wrong, it''s just a boring story, what is wrong with my story?"


    "Nothing wrong with boring, it wouldn''t be true"


    "I meant like generic, like our story has probably happened a lot, or rather people can imagine it happening to them, it''s that common, true..."


    "Yes, you''re always going on about not lying..."


    "It would be less like a lie, it''s something that could have happened, like in another parallel universe we could have met that way, why should we not get to have a more romantic meeting story just because we happen to be in this universe?"


    "But it didn''t happen and it would make us seem less real"


    "Think of it more like a romantic inside joke, it would be fun to make up the details. Who would even care that it''s a lie? when people ask for the story of how we met, they don''t actually care for the true answer, they just want to hear an interesting story"


    "How do you know what they want? I''m sure everyone is different"


    "You have to treat them as what they are on average, you cant just alter your story for everyone, if you did then it might be found out that it''s a lie"


    "Or you can just not lie to them???"


    "But you''re lying for everyone''s benefit, we get a fun romantic joke and they get a story which shows them the world can be interesting"


    "It''s just not something that could happen, I wouldn''t go to a cemetery just ''for fun''"


    "You could though? you are a human, you can do whatever you want"


    "I couldn''t because I wouldn''t, I don''t just do things without a reason"


    "What the fuck, of course you do"


    "No, well, I don''t know, I''d never do -that-, if someone went to a cemetery for a walk it wouldn''t be me"


    "It could be though, no?"


    "I''m not going to tell this story to people, why are you so obsessed with it?"


    "I told you, what the fuck, it''s just interesting, why do you always think I must have some hidden motive?"


    "Because you do?"


    "Fuck off"


    "You are always trying to say weird things to bait an emotional reaction out of me, i''m tired of it"


    "You have no idea, if I didn''t say weird things then nothing would be said, you wouldn''t even respond"


    "Sometimes things don''t need to be said, Ast"


    "Obviously, but sometimes they do"


    "You just like messing with me like I''m some pet to you, you never thought of me as real, with my own interests outside those that benefit you"


    "Are you serious right now? I love you and I''m obsessed over you, I say these weird things because I love to know what you think about them"


    "You could ask me like I''m a real human"


    "I thought you understood"


    "You thought wrong"


    A long silence occurred, Ner was looking at Ast but he was looking down at the mat under her coffee table


    "I say them exactly because I think you''re real and your responses surprise me, if you weren''t real then your actual response wouldn''t matter, I could just imagine them" he said


    "Listen to yourself, admitting you''re constantly judging me over my responses to your ridiculous statements, you need help"


    "Me? I''m the most real person in this relationship, what about you? say anything of substance and you completely close off, if it was up to you all we would talk about would be the weather or the latest tv show"


    "That''s not true but if it was then what is the problem? not everything has to be deep and profound, you''re not even deep or profound"


    "I''m not trying to be, I''m just trying to be... something, you know? like a human"


    "An asshole"


    "Are you ok? It makes no sense for you to be so mad at me right now"


    "I''m fine, I''m not mad at you, I''m just saying what is true"


    "You don''t think this, you''re just mad at something, probably because I wanted to do something romantic and you don''t want anything good in your life, you''re probably upset I can think of romantic things and you can''t"


    "Here he goes, psychoanalyzing me again"


    "I''m not, it''s true, it''s the reason you liked me in the first place, you even admitted it"


    "Here he goes, blah blah blah"


    "Did you not say: I like you because I don''t feel like I have to try so hard around you?"


    "Maybe I did, I say a lot of things"


    "I guess you do, you say things without thought, your words are fickle and not well thought out"


    "You''re so mad, you know I''m right"


    "You don''t know shit, you probably haven''t had an original thought in your life"


    "Just because something is original doesn''t make it good"


    "Here she goes, reciting some buzz phrase she got out of a self help book"


    "You could do with some self help"


    "Or I could do with a girlfriend who wants to help and be helped"


    "You cant help anyone"


    "Yeah, what would I know?"


    "Nothing"


    "Right, as opposed to you?"


    "Right"


    "Whatever, I came here to try and help our relationship and you didn''t want to help, you wouldn''t even tell people a little harmless lie for me"


    "It''s not all about you"


    "Whatever" he said slowly as if he was sighing at the same time, got up and left without looking at her, she didn''t say anything or react, like she had been waiting for it. He drove home on the verge of tears, he spent the whole evening at his computer trying to desperately distract himself from his sadness over the whole situation but ended up just replaying the conversation in his head over and over, trying to remember more and more accurately how she said things. She had a demeanor of indifference as if how their argument played out had no significance to her, she had responded so quickly as if her words had no significance to her. He text her just before bed "I still like you" but she didn''t respond.

 Him

    He text Ner the next day at work.


    "You''re wrong about me" she didn''t respond but read it so he text again 5 minutes later "I could tell you what I am but it''s not a nice thing which is why I don''t usually tell people but if it helps you then I could tell you"


    She responded this time "I don''t want that"


    "It''s not just about what you want" he replied, again she left him on ''read''. He spent the whole day at work writing and rewriting what he would say to her and eventually came up with and sent her:


    "You once implied I am bi polar and it''s not entirely far from the truth but varying moods/emotions isn''t the most accurate way to put it, it is more like I have multiple personalities, but even that isn''t quite accurate. It''s like I have a lot of different ways that I think or different layers that i think at and this changes from day to day or more powerfully from week to week, they''re not exactly personalities but they feel like completely different people within my mind. There isn''t much of a ''core'' me in there, there isn''t an overarching Ast who dictates or narrates the whole thing which is my life. The end effect of this is that I often don''t feel like things are real, like if something happens it doesn''t feel like it happened to me because it happened to what i feel to be a different person inside me, if a thought or choice is made it often feels like i wasnt the one who made it and so i can distance myself from it. As mentioned, I have a big gap in my long term memory so that further compounds this and means i care even less about the consequences of my actions and find it hard to take them seriously because I am likely to not remember accurately what happened in a few years time. Alhough there is a core personality to some degree, he is often overshadowed by the others and while a ''normal'' person might distance themselves to some degree to silence the other voices and embolden the ''real'' them, I still identify with what the others do so it creates a bit of a disconnect at times when i dont feel like ''I'' really did something but i know that technically ''I'' did so it lets me kind of approach it from an indifferent angle and while this is often beneficial, it makes me appear cold and soulless so I guess it is fairly accurate to call me cold.


    So what I am is someone who doesn''t feel real and cant take things as seriously as they should if they want to be a normal human. So yes, a lot of what I do is like ''a game'' but it''s not like i''m specifically trying to mess with people it''s more like i''m just trying to make interesting interactions happen for everyone''s sake. I also don''t feel like i''m lying when I mess with people''s expectations of what i am because i think they are mostly wrong in the first place and there is no real me anyway.


    So like when I was first getting to know you I would do/say these weird things more explicitly that subverted your expectations of me so it is more obvious that it''s a ''joke'' and you seemed to understand this but as I get to know someone, I start to do these mini ''jokes'' more subtlely, partly because i have already tried the explicit ones and because it doesn''t work when they know you''re ''joking'' but also largely because i do care and I don''t want to mess with them as much. Eventually it gets to a point that they are so subtle and hidden that they cant be seen by the other person but they can be felt and they create a bad feeling. Also as they know me more and im more of aware of the things they know, this means any subversions of their expectations (even if it''s in a minor way) of who i am is more fundamental and harder for them to deal with but to be fair you didn''t seem to care about the real me anyway.


    So yes, I do ''mess'' with you sometimes but it is for the benefit of both of us and I do it out of love, I am just a boy who loves love too much and loves to overthink things"


    She replied "I didn''t ask, but you do make it sound like it''s all about you"


    What the fuck? of course what I do is about me, I was explaining how I act in my own interests, that doesn''t mean I don''t do things for others or consider what they want, it''s just I have no business talking about those things as the understanding of them is mutually discovered and judged. Is she really this dumb? holy shit, I start telling you things that you couldn''t possibly find out on your own and you get upset that I am only talking about things you can''t know on your own? what do you want me to do? if I talked about things you could work out on your own then you would get upset that I''m lecturing you and trying to tell you how to think. Women are so fucking disgusting, I swear, three years together and she doesn''t even give a shit about who she spent it with.


    It''s my fault really, I should have listened to myself to stay away from girls forever, younger me figured this out, he was much smarter. Girls have no empathy and don''t know what they want, this isn''t my opinion, the scientific literature is pretty conclusive that they say they want one thing and truly believe it on a lie detector but actually respond emotionally to the other. She says she doesn''t want delusions or drama or a ridiculously unique shared story but she doesn''t know, she wants me, she just doesn''t know it. The problem with girls though is that they are unreliable and you have to leave some things up to chance, like it''s obvious she should and will want me but I cant know if she will work this out on her own. If I leave it to her it will be dependent on what sort of media or music she listens to over the next few weeks. Such a cruel fate, whether she loves me or not depends on some fucking computer algorithm and what it gives her. Love is supposed to be the one escape out of the system, the one escape from being reduced to just a cog in a machine but girls have to ruin it by being so influenceable. It''s not their fault I guess, it''s what makes them lovely in a way but they''re just not worth it, I could try to win her over but even that will be rolling the dice, I may as well just let the dice roll themselves, it will be just as effective.


    I don''t know why she wont just admit there is someone else, girls never move on unless they have something they think is better to move on to, they don''t understand toxic relationships unless there is an alternative right infront of their faces. Whatever, she is disgusting anyway, if she comes around or not is what it is, I have a poem to write anyway and Sarah.


    He had just been staring at the wall for the past 20 minutes as his mind raced when she texted again "You never managed to understand what I wanted".


    "You don''t know what you want, if some guy had such a strange brain to understand what you want and indulge you in pretending he is giving it to you then he must be a pretty shitty person to think along those lines and you wouldn''t be happy together"


    "Atleast we would be unhappy together, like actually together in a real way. It''s my right to be wrong"


    "You have no idea, it''s fine, you will realise and I will wait for you"


    Should I have said that? I''m not actually going to wait for her, I have shit to do and Sarah to pursue. I guess it''s true that I will wait in a sense, I will always leave her the option to win me over again, to say the right things and fix things. It''s so easy for her to fix things, so little she has to say or do and we can be happy together again.


    "Suck a man"


    Was that a joke about homosexual oral sex or does she really have such little care for this whole situation that she doesn''t even take care in her spelling?


    He went to the park after work but just did a quick round trip before leaving, seeing nothing of worth.


    When is someone going to leave a feather flag for me? something intentionally interesting for me to find and orient my thoughts around, all I get are generic love issues or interesting things that I have to invent for myself like my bosses phone. The issue is that even if something like that happened there would always be some room for it to be explained away easily as non meaningful, children are a big source of this, they do things with no motive behind them, they might see a feather on the ground and make a flag just because they have nothing better to do. There is a fine line between doing something for complicated unconscious reasons and doing something for complex interesting reasons. I guess that is one of the benefits of our disgusting society, everybody is so busy that they no longer have time to do things for ''no reason'', they have a motive behind everything they do. Some people hate the idea of people only doing something for a reason and I guess I do too but really the alternative is even worse, at least if people have motives then what they do is a reflection of them and actually expresses something, if people do something for ''no reason'' there is really another reason that they might just not be conscious about and some sort of media that subconsciously influenced them, some memory deep inside them, it just creates too much room for people to manipulate them. I fucking hate when people get mad for someone having a motive behind what they do, everyone has a motive, just say you disagree with their particular motive or what they are trying to do. People can never understand my motives and they fill in the blanks with thinking they must be of malicious intent, people always think that if they cant understand something. People have a natural proclivity to think anything strange must be bad because if it wasn''t then they could relate to it. That''s where the magic lies, what makes people beautiful, when they have complex but honest motives. The problem is most people think hidden motives are bad so they never self reflect on what their own motives are, I guess I can''t blame them to want to feel like they are beyond comprehension, the feeling of not being in control is sometimes relaxing or at least an easy point of blame. I remember just the other day on the couch I was looking up at the ceiling and there was a fly buzzing around but it was flying in a very well defined square shape, for about three revolutions until going back to the regular sporadic flight path, I wonder what the fuck motives created that.


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    I guess Sarah is interesting, she created an interesting scenario with a random encounter in the park and now an odd daily ritual, maybe it''s unintentional though, does that matter? I should really break this ritual, or at least let her choose if she wants it to continue, it has been getting worse, I seem to text her earlier and earlier each day. She will learn wrongfully that I am obsessed with her, I''m not actually obsessed with her, I just like the idea of moving on from Ner and she is just a means to that, never let a girl know you are interested in them, they will react and say they love hearing this but in reality it will make them bored. It''s kind of a contradiction though, it seems in real love, whatever that may be, people ignore all the rules and just trust in each other, skip all the games and manipulation, be vulnerable, I don''t know, it''s a contradiction. It''s almost like love is a limited well and when you engage in it with someone you deplete this well, like being in love is the act of doing things that will inevitably make you fall out of love. Perhaps that is what true love is though, when people are willing to deny the reality and perpetually delude themselves that the well is endless to the point that it does become endless in a sense. It''s like that mutual contract that people make ''I will pretend to still be in love with you no matter what even if I''m not'', and this delusion is what actually creates the true love, it''s sort of like religious faith, the act of believing is what makes it manifest.


    It cant purely be a choice though or people would always do it, there has to be some objective limiting factor of when people want to indulge in this delusion with someone, it seems to vaguely be around trust but there is something behind that too, like why they choose to trust this one person over others. It''s probably purely physical compatibility, that''s the only objective metric that can more or less sustain over time, anything psychological or emotional will no doubt change, the only important factor is a physical connection and that person being in a point in their life where they are open to love. I guess there can also be an element that can hold a couple together from some meaningful shared experiences or similar history. Ner just isn''t open to love, I thought I could show her how to be but I think she is a lost cause, at least for me, we have spent too much time out of love that it would be a permanent stain even if one day she becomes willing to indulge in mutual delusion with someone. Whatever happens, happens, I guess...


    Does she really think I''m that dumb? it''s obvious she has someone else, does she really think I cant hear her phone vibrate? I cant tell she gets ten times the messages she used to? I can''t see the subtle changes in her face when it''s quiet enough for us to both hear it vibrate? that I didn''t know she took a naked picture when we were in bed together for him? no, I wasn''t asleep, I detect that shit. Why cant she just admit it? things would be so much simpler.


    You cant call out these things early or the girl will claim you are worrying about nothing, you cant call them out when they are happening or you get labelled jealous and they think less of you, if you wait and call them out after she is cheating, she will say it was your fault she cheated and "if you really cared you would have sorted it out earlier". Women have a defense for everything and it is supported by the very foundations of society itself. They have made jealously be such an unattractive quality in men to the point that men cant even bring up cheating without sabotaging everything, they get to freely cheat and the man''s options are to leave quietly or to put up with it in silence, either way the girl never gets held accountable for her actions.


    I guess it''s not entirely girls who made society this way, part of it is just how things should be from an evolutionary standpoint, the best males winning at the expense of all the rest. Most of it is created by evolutionary instincts and natural in that sense but often times evolutionary instincts don''t even act in the interests of the individuals and people don''t realise this, the cheating women don''t feel fulfilled, the alpha males who capitalise on it don''t even win much in the long run, they win cheating whores who will drop them at a moments notice, they disillusion all the other males who no longer will serve their interests and they just ruin society in general. That is why we have religion, to create a healthier balance between our outdated evolutionary instincts, our hedonistic desires and systems that will actually benefit individuals and society at large in a post scarcity world, a brave new world where people have the free time to desire to be more than a cog in this beast of a species.


    If I call it out for what it is though she calls me insecure, I think I''m very secure to let it play out this long, I''m not calling it out now because I''m jealous, I''m calling it out now to let you know that I knew and it contributed to things falling apart, not the other way around. No, you didn''t decide to cheat because things were falling apart, that''s not how these things work. Things are always ''falling apart'' in a sense that they need to be maintained, but the falling apart isn''t half as real and dangerous until one side concludes the falling apart is inevitable, at which point the falling apart becomes inevitable. Don''t get me wrong, sometimes it is justified, sometimes the falling apart really is inevitable but you of all people should know how much love can distort, to conclude things are irrevocably fucked and not tell me you think this is heartless. It''s only done so you can dodge the blame when things do fall apart, ''well he didn''t care to try and win me over'', right... I''m supposed to care when you are cheating on me, but of course you think I don''t see the cheating so I must have no reason to not care about maintaining our relationship other than an innate lack of interest. Women are so disgusting, disgusting in the sense that their choices ruin things for everyone, even themselves. They have never had to think about the consequences of their actions long term, no matter what they do things can turn out somewhat fine for them.


    Whatever, I told myself I would always try to make things work with her and i''ll stick by that even if she doesn''t care to make things work, the only thing to make it work right now is time though, I just have to pray to the algorithm gods that they provide her with the media to realise what is wrong with her.


    His mind was a mess for the next few hours, sounding more like an angsty child cursing at the world than the mentally stable middle aged man that he told himself he was. He decided he would stop trying so hard, he understood that this was just the harsh reality for men, to have to be the ones to initiate everything but he was tired, he decided he wouldn''t text Sarah despite how much he wanted to, he would never become emotionally dependent on a woman for validation ever again.


    Sarah ended up texting him just after 11pm "So you don''t want to text me today?"


    "Actually it''s the opposite, I didn''t text you because I wanted to text you so badly and I was afraid of the control you have over me"


    "I understand a lot hidden behind what you just said, it''s nice, sorry for ruining this with a second text"


    "We can pretend it never happened"

 Her

    Sarah text him first the next day with a simple "How are you?"


    He realised that together they had created something more beautiful by addressing their ritual and bringing their feelings into the public, now it was more nuanced, there was uncertainty and depth in who would text first and when, there was more room for expression but also deception/manipulation and therefore trust, ultimately there was more room for an interesting story to be created.


    We made this more beautiful accidentally even at our worst, I was afraid and she revealed vulnerability yet we turned that into making our daily ritual even more real and interesting. As opposed to with Ner, I was at my best, I planned that out, I crafted the most beautiful story for us to participate in and we still couldn''t make it work, it even made things worse I guess. Are they worse? they are certainly interesting, I have no idea what she feels, I should really text her where I am at and probe her for what she thinks but I don''t know, it feels like the scales have been tipped and lately I put in all the effort into our relationship, I need her to realise if she wants to make this work too. I have so much to say to her...


    He responded to Sarah "I''m well, just dealing with a girl fucking with my mind" he second guessed himself before sending it but decided to be honest and sent it.


    He decided he would write to Ner and started typing into the notepad on his phone.


    "To Ner


    A lot of what I do isn''t exactly genuine, it is manufactured in a way that I think is best for both of us. I think you (like most people) don''t care so much about the good, and you just want the interesting. The drama, the confusing emotions, the beautiful story, I wanted it too and tried to provide it for you. Sometimes I would have a choice between saying something nice and saying something interesting and usually I would go with the interesting, the strange and embrace it. It''s not so much that what I would say wouldn''t be coming from me but it wouldn''t be the emotional me of the moment, it would be an intellectual distant me trying to craft a story. I think our shared story is beautiful even if it''s not exactly lovely and I hope one day you will realise this. I implied I was creating it but really we were creating it together, a lot of it was genuine but also a lot wasn''t. I like to be confusing and strange to you, not just for personal reasons, not just for the shared story but because I believe this is what you actually want. I might be wrong, time will tell if you realise you love me, I think you do but I could be wrong, I am not going to force it on you even if I think it is best for you. I know that could be romantic, to force onto you what you want/need even if you reject it but i''m done, I have tried that and at some point I have to let you decide, I need feedback from your emotions and whether you realise our story is beautiful or not will provide that. I was aware that what I am doing might be misinterpreted even if you love it, you might love the experience and hate me but that is what I was willing to risk for you, I hope you are right for me and can see it though, actually, you don''t even need to see it, just feel it.


    I know our relationship is toxic, I know I mock others who stay in toxic relationships but I am allowed to be contradictory, I need to act like I truly hate it to make it seem more real. I do truly hate it and hate you a lot of the time, at least the conscious me does but the subconscious me loves that and he gets a say in my life too. I love to hate you, I love to love you, I love our story that we have been writing together. I even love this part where we are falling apart for possibly ever, it gives my life colour. I don''t want it to be forever though, I want to be connected with you forever both in a metaphorical sense such as a shared story even if the shared part is the ending but also in a physical sense. I guess that is the main thing that I cant control with you, I know I like you enough to make our story interesting or at least to provide enough input into the shared creation but the driving force behind this is some irrational attraction to you. I think that is always required for two people to want to stay connected, I don''t know the exact balance between the different parts of you that I am irrationally attracted to you so ignore the order but your face, your body, your voice, your mannerisms, the way you say things, the origin of your life etc. I can only hope you have the same for me. It''s funny, I do really like the things you can control about yourself too such as your personality or what you do but in the grand scheme of things they are absolutely irrelevant to me, maybe I only like them because they are you, who knows? it doesn''t matter.


    I think there is still a lot we can write together through our shared story, there is a lot of beauty left and I hope you will experience it with me. I don''t care if everything is toxic, whether you treat me like crap, whether we argue constantly, whether we hate each other. Sure, I will call these things out and try to fix them and patch them up but really it doesn''t matter if that is successful because I know I will find meaning and life in the mere attempt to fix them, I know that there will still be genuine moments of absolute bliss between us, where everything just feels exactly right and beautiful, where none of the bad parts of our story matter. Perhaps it will be when we make love or perhaps it will just be one of those moments when we realise that we are both in the same position in all the currently meaningful ways to us. What is meaningful to humans changes from day to day slightly but often times ours align in beautiful ways, I find myself being absolutely in joy to simply know you but then to know you feel the same is otherworldly.


    Perhaps I am ruining everything by telling you things are artificial in a sense but I don''t think so, I realised this early into our relationship and it didn''t remove any of the magic for me. I think it is just because I want that magic so bad that I can always find a way to create some more even if some is revealed. It''s like no matter how genuine I be with you, no matter how much I reveal about myself, I can always find some little new area of personality to be confusing to hide in, to create something interesting. We can do this together if you only want to, at this point I am leaving it up to you. I know it will be hard, it will require you to make a big compromise with your ego, you will have to tell me you love me. I will also make it as hard as possible by acting indifferent to the result, trying to mislead and by not apologising for any of the bad things I have done to you but this difficulty will only make it more rewarding when you inevitably admit it, you want me, there is no reason for you not to. Or maybe I am wrong about you, maybe you don''t innately love intrinsic things about me, maybe you fooled me, it wouldn''t be the first time. If so then so be it, we will see then. I am not going to send you this letter, the only way it will ever reach the light of day is if I die. I love you but I will never say it. In a way I am only writing this because I think it makes our shared story interesting and as such I can''t trust myself enough to share this with you as I am trying to stop doing that"


    That''s kind of funny, I wonder what are the chances this letter ever gets seen if I die. It seems completely up to chance, I wonder whose possession my phone would fall into if I died, whether they would give it to my family or if the police would hold onto it, I guess it depends on the nature of my death. There must be some laws surrounding confidentiality, who knows who could read it or if my family would be entitled to it. There are many people who could read it though and never get caught breaking the law, they probably have programs to bypass lock codes, maybe some low level policeman will read it and not think a second word of it. It''s probably just generic rambling to anyone else but to me, though I hope to you Ner, the words are of immense weight. It is generic though probably, so many people have these type of relationships, right? maybe they cant word as accurately what is going on though, who knows.


    I feel like a bit of a cunt for setting her this ultimatum even if I don''t tell her about it but in my defense she started it, she showed she was unsure if she was still interested in me. If I try to win her over it seems artificial, even if I tell her I wont try because it seems artificial and she should like me without trying this wouldn''t sound good, I wouldn''t like to hear this either but girls definitely don''t like hearing this. She needs to see me not trying and hate me for it but still realise she loves me regardless, maybe afterwards I can tell her that I was testing her, I''m not really testing her though, I''m letting her test herself. She indicated she was testing herself softly and all I did was make it so that she has to actually test her devotion to me properly. She loves me, it''s obvious and if she cant see that then she must not be willing to love anyone anytime soon. If it works it is just another lovely chapter in our shared story, these so called toxic relationships are the best. A ''good'' healthy relationship is missing passion and variety and that otherworldly quality of things you cant control, a ''good'' relationship is more like a business transaction based on mutual benefit, it is cold and inhuman. I guess an exciting toxic relationship is still based on mutual benefit but the benefits aren''t purely of the physical realm, I guess that is the difference, the benefits of our relationship are life and colour.


    I didn''t realise I liked this girl so much, maybe I should just tell her? nah, I do like this girl so much but the girl I love is the Ner in my head, the actual Ner might be different, I don''t think she is, I think I am right but I guess we will wait and see. But how long will I have to wait? I''m nearing fucking 40, I guess I''ll take it day by day, if I move on by the time she is ready then that''s just another tragic chapter in our story, I doubt I will move on but we will see what happens with Sarah.


    Our story was so beautiful but you stopped participating, Ner. Or was it I or stopped participating? maybe I started actually putting effort into my poems because I could no longer care to create beautiful stories with you. Look at me, I haven''t worked on my poem for days because I''ve been obsessed with Sarah, girls are something else, you really cant let them dictate your life like this, by all means, chase them and live with them but don''t depend on them, finish your poem, they can wait and if they can''t then they can''t. I will wait until her birthday and give her a real ultimatum then. I guess I''m hypocritical, I said that you pretend to want simple but actually want a complicated life but I''m the same.


    After work he went to the park again, his mind was tired from thinking about Ner all day so he just admired the scenery without any complex thought until he reached the bench he had met Sarah at.


    Why is she never here? surely she knows there is a high chance I will be here at this time since I was here at this time before. I guess she is consciously avoiding me, maybe it''s for good motives, maybe she thinks our story is better if we only communicate by text, I guess I agree but dear god I do long to see her again, she was so beautiful, her nose alone wont leave my mind, I guess she is in no rush, she knows the longer we wait, the more special it will be. There is some sort of contradiction here, there is the fact that true love waits for no one, you have to seize it but there is also an element that love exists outside of time and it cant be influenced by such shallow events such as day to day interactions. I don''t know, I think it''s more like the creation of love waits for no one but love sustains itself, it really doesn''t though, look at Ner and I, I think it''s more like real love never truly dies, there is always some remnant that can be rekindled though then again I think the difference between love and real love is the willingness to rekindle the dwindling flames. Maybe Ner isn''t willing to work on our love, maybe her love isn''t real, maybe it never was, maybe she is just young, I used to think that once love died it could never be the same again, I guess there are things that can do that but certainly nothing we have done.


    He text Ner on his way out of the park "I''m coming over"


    "I''m out, at a friends"


    "Which?"


    She didn''t text back instantly so when he reached his car he text again "?" to which she replied "Sarah''s, but don''t come" he stood by his car door.


    Sarah? does she know? she probably just invented a name as an excuse and is with some dude, her dude. ''Don''t come'' as if I know who Sarah is and where she lives, she is such a bad fucking liar, she really expects me to believe she has told me of a Sarah and where she lives for some reason and I just cant remember it, she is retarded, I''d remember something as rare as that.


    Could she know? maybe she hacked my phone and can see my messages? but even they aren''t very incriminating, there is nothing tangible I have done that needs to be hidden, the only offence I have committed is thinking about Sarah fondly in my mind. There is no way she could know, surely, maybe I spoke her name in my sleep but did we sleep together since then? no. I guess she just came up with a fake name for her imaginary friend and chose something generic, it''s purely a coincidence, but holy fuck, what a coincidence. She is lying surely, she doesn''t have a friend named Sarah, if she did she would have to be new and where would she meet new friends? She is lying, it''s obvious, we need to sort this out.


    He decided he would go to her house expecting to catch her with another man, he knocked on her door to no response, he looked through her window and saw nothing of interest until he noticed that something was missing that used to sit on a cabinet. An abstract painting of hers, she had said she had done this painting while thinking about him. He was pissed and convinced she had thrown it out, possibly as a way to avoid thinking about him but definitely as a reflection of how easily she was ready to give up on them. He had asked her after she had painted it whether he could have it, even offering to buy it, she had refused but he had begged her that if one day she no longer wants it for whatever reason, if she hates him or whatever that she can give it to him.


    Really? I can understand if you want nothing to do with me but you knew or at least should have known how much you mean to me and how much I would love to have that painting. I know you don''t care about me, it''s fine, I will deal with it in time but I''m still a human and you had a chance to do something with so little effort that would mean so much to some other human. You always claim how you want to help people, to make a difference etc. but here you wont, even though the effort to reward balance is greatly in the favor. I guess you are just filled with ego, it''s probably not even that you don''t care about helping me regardless of effort, you would probably rather put effort into hurting me, I can''t believe the things that you do, I can''t believe how cold you act towards me is accidental and simply due to indifference, I cant imagine a world with people who are naturally so cruel, I would rather imagine one where your actions are distorted by hate and bitterness. We will sort this out one way or another.


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    He considered waiting around until she returned but didn''t want to let her know how much she was affecting him considering how little she seemed to care about his opinions on her or anything. Maybe I could hide and observe her from a distance. He looked around but there were no areas where he could wait and not be seen as suspicious, his car was too recognisable to her. I should buy a second car, off the record, one that no one knows about in case one day I need a car that no one knows about, one day like this, what else do I need money for?


    "When will you be home?" he texted her and returned to his car, waiting in it for 5 minutes for a response.


    "We are drinking, maybe not tonight, idk"


    Really? drinking at a friends on a worknight and staying over? is she trying to be so blatant in her lying? maybe she wants to tell me the truth but cant bring herself to so her subconscious causes her to lie in a way where it is obvious, so I can find out and she doesn''t have to go through the pain of telling me. Pain? as if she cares, if she cared she would at least say something, anything.


    "Whatever, let me know"


    He went home and passed out drunk around 9pm, he woke up around 4am and then drifted in and out of sleep in a semi conscious state until morning. During this time in a state between awake and sleep he had an in-depth conversation with imaginary Ner, most of it was forgotten by the time he woke up but one line stuck with him and he didn''t know it had come from his ''dream'', he now believed it was something she had actually said at some point and something she actually believed ''I am trying to blur out everything good about you to let go''. Throughout the morning these words would replay in his mind and although he realised that were basically straight out of a song he loved, he still never questioned if they really came from her or if he made them up, his mind turned his attention to the song they related to and he played it at least 10 times that morning before work and during.


    Determined to send the first message to Sarah today he text her just before lunch with the same message he received yesterday "How are you?" to which she replied "Same old, boring week" this was the first message she had said that didn''t invoke some deep emotional response from him but he didn''t dwell on it too long as he went back to thinking about Ner and that song and how she hadn''t told him if she wasn''t coming home and didn''t try to arrange an alternative meeting time. He sent her the song that currently meant a lot to him, a song that used to be his favourite years ago but now had a vastly different meaning to him. They exchanged songs from time to time, Ner would often use songs as a proxy to represent how she is feeling after some minor dispute or significant event. It insulted Ast, the way he saw it was that she either cared too little about expressing herself to him that she took the easy route and got a song to do it for her, like she was too lazy to put in the effort to learn how to word it or she just didn''t understand herself enough to be able to word it, both were two sides of the same issue for him.


    Ast believed that if some emotion was meaningful enough to you then you would naturally work towards understanding it enough to be able to articulate it eloquently, there is nothing wrong with first realising you feel something vaguely from a song or media initially but you should learn how to communicate it eventually but she never did, she would drop the topic and move on. The ability to be able to self reflect and communicate your motives behind what you did was the number one indicator for intelligence in Ast''s mind and something he prided himself on. Although he usually didn''t know why he would do the things he did or react the way he did at the time, he could easily self reflect and figure it out and explain to others his logic or illogic behind his actions. Ast sent songs back to Ner from time to time but he would intentionally avoid any song that had a deep meaning to him, opting instead to only share songs that he found musically interesting which precluded the vast majority of songs he truly loved, his reasoning being that he assumed she would have a similar sentiment to him and be insulted for his lack of effort but he also didn''t want to possibly mislead her if it wasn''t entirely accurate to how he felt. Today however he took a chance and sent her this song, he qualified it by saying "these lyrics mean a lot to me" to make it clear that it wasn''t just another link of his and this one was special and hoped she should treat it with more respect. He hoped she would understand the message of it and if not ask him to explain why it was special to him but she text back just five minutes later, only long enough to have listened to the song once and not even read back over the lyrics that she might have missed through a first listen. "Ok, I believe you" she dashed his hopes, another attempt to connect to her on a different level and he was shut down again, maybe she is going to try to understand it later he thought for a moment before realising she wasn''t going to hear him out, she didn''t care to understand his perspective, she didn''t even acknowledge how he had been trying to meet up with her. He took an early lunch but didn''t eat, he felt like throwing up, he lay down on the bench and focused on his physical reactions and tried to control them.


    That afternoon he wrote another message to her in the notes of his phone that he didn''t plan to send.


    "To Ner


    This is what I think that song is about, he is asking what he will find to help him deal with the tragedy of life, it is optimistic as in he already believes he will find something to help him make it through but doesn''t know what it is yet. He is worried that perhaps he already had the thing and lost it, by that thing he means he might have had the one for him, do you believe in the one? He says that everyone needs something or someone to get through life. He asks if he sings both their names at once when he sings, like when he expresses himself he is wondering whether he also expresses a part of her since she has left such a mark within him that now everything he does is a reflection of who she is.


    He still feels her presence everywhere, he imagines the shadows through his window are shadows of her and says that her shadows are warmer to him than the rest of the light is. He hears her voice everywhere, probably catches a tone that sounds vaguely like her in something if only for a fraction of a second and his brain jumps back to her. Now he is comparing her to the sunlight rather than the shade, it shows how he sees her in both the light and dark, everywhere.


    He recounts a fond memory of her and says he should let it go, he simplifies it down to its nice essence that he can carry with him and forgets the details as dwelling on the details is ruining his life. He has trouble sleeping as he cant get her out of his mind and even when he does find some peace and falls asleep she comes into his dreams and theyre not delusional dreams, they are boring realistic dreams like buying groceries so when he awakes he feels like they are still together and she must just be making breakfast or something. Under more introspection he can finally admit it isnt real, the girl he loves isn''t with him and she never was and never will be, I don''t know what this means, perhaps they never really connected, perhaps the girl he loved was based on a girl in real life but he loved a distorted version of her that wasnt accurate to reality, perhaps she is purely imaginary and he never met her but he used to feel like she was around meaning he had hope but now he is coming to terms with the one might not be out there for him. He then says he thinks that sometimes he isn''t there either, he doesn''t know who he is, what he is aiming towards, all his days are centred around her, they start and end with her and she doesn''t even know how much she has impacted him.


    He recounts the same memory but vows to forget it, this time he reduces it to it to its worst part and forgets all the nice parts, he thinks it will be easier to let go if its a bad memory, he says he is letting go but then he says i wonder when i will as if he wasnt yet successful with this other approach. He still feels her everywhere even if he no longer has solid memories of her, the impression she left still influences everything he does so he asks if he should just embrace her influence and let go of himself to some degree.


    He says he will, he will be more optimistic, he will hope that her ghost will stop haunting him but he no longer needs her to, he can get by with her haunting him. He says that who she is will be reflected in everything he does, every word he sings and every line he writes but particularly she will influence how he talks about anyone elses tragedies, he will now be able to relate more deeply to their struggles even if they are of a completely different form. To relate to those who are on the verge of thinking everything is too hard to handle, he will talk about their connection and what it was and wasnt.


    I used to love this song like a decade ago, it didn''t mean much to me, but I could sense the passion in his voice and words and wanted to experience some passion for life that I was lacking vicariously, I guess in a small way I related, I didn''t have a ''one'' but I was still in love with the idea of the ''one''. Now I am starting to relate to it, mostly the attempts to blur out certain memories and hold onto others, the difficulty in this and how even if you do it successfully, a vague reminant of the feeling will linger in your soul, we cannot go back but we can embrace what has happened, even if it was negative, it is now a part of us and always will be. If we deny who we are then well, I dont know if that is life or the opposite of life


    I know it sounds like I am relating in superficial ways and finding connections in vague statements like they do in horoscopes but there are many subtle ways that I think I uniquely relate to this song that I can''t easily word. It''s also the progression and story throughout the album which leads to this song and defines it more, mostly in why he writes, I want to explain these ways in great detail but I realise the more I write the less likely you are to read this but then again you probably wont read this regardless and if you do you wont give it the weight it deserves and if you do you probably wont understand anyway, so what does it matter?


    I wonder whether I relate to it simply as a coincidence or if my previous obsession with this song essentially defined what I would think love is and when I inevitably found my love as does everyone eventually who believes in it when their whole life works towards it, the love had to be of the same form. Do you know what I mean, Ner? like I wonder if I like this song because it is special to me or if I like this song and it defined what would be special to me, what way does the causation go?"


    After work he went over to her house unannounced, he became gradually more consciously aware of his breathing and blinking as he approached her door, anxious over what would happen, first noticing her car, then a light in her kitchen and finally hearing her walking around just before he knocked all slowly helping him realise that this was real.


    "Oh" was her response as she opened the door and her face instantly changed to a weird mix of somber and emptiness as she noticed the man on her doorstep.


    "We need to talk" he said in an unconfident manner and stuttered slightly, sounding like he had rehearsed it earlier yet still failed to get it out properly. He hadnt rehearsed it though and was accidentally emulating a movie deep in his memory.


    "We already talked, you said you would wait, what is there to say?"


    He looked past her into her living room and pretended to look at the cabinet to notice the picture missing for the first time then looked back at her in silence, he was unsure whether she had followed his eyes or was looking right through him the whole time.


    "That painting" he said.


    "What?" she said angrily as if he had no right to mention it.


    "You threw it out? you know I wanted it"


    "I still have it" she paused as he stared at her and took a deep breath as if he was restraining himself from lashing out "I was just doing some cleaning"


    "Bullshit"


    "It''s right here, come inside if you must"


    He stepped inside, tripping slightly on the entrance and shut the door very gently behind him overcompensating to make it look like he wasn''t filled with murderous rage, she took them into the kitchen and showed him that on the counter there were a few pamphlets, the painting and some old Christmas cards. He didn''t know what to think, whether her story checked out or if she considered it a pile of trash that just hadn''t made it to the rubbish bin yet but decided it was better to just address the problem itself rather than what he considered to be a representation of the problem.


    "Just tell me" he blurted out "there is another man, right?"


    "Are you serious right now?" she put back down the glass of water she had just picked up.


    "Don''t lie to me"


    "There isn''t another man"


    "Do you mean like no one at all or like most of your lies where you hide behind some technicality, I mean is there a man you see more than once a week of your own choice"


    "I''m allowed friends but there is no one romantically"


    "Right, here we go, just friends, he is ''Sarah''?"


    "No, Sarah is Sarah"


    "Then who is Sarah?"


    "I met her at my art classes that I have been taking"


    "You never told me you are taking art classes"


    "Didn''t seem like you would care"


    "Whenever I would try to talk to you about something mundane or boring like day to day life you quickly stop responding"


    "You are overthinking it"


    "You''re lying, you''re shit at it"


    "No but that''s a good thing"


    "So"


    "So what?"


    "So don''t you have anything to say?"


    "No, you are the one who said you had something to say, I have said what I needed to, you make me feel like shit all the time and i''m not sure I can care about someone like that, there, honesty"


    "I can''t control how you feel, you s-" he stopped himself and left it there.


    "Right"


    "Right...?"


    "What? I don''t understand what you want me to say"


    "I don''t know, ''sorry, I didn''t tell you this when it was happening? sorry I made you suffer for weeks unsure about what was happening? sorry I changed what I want in life? sorry I don''t care about what you have to say or fixing this?''"


    "I hope one day you realise how much of an asshole you are being"


    "Right, I''m the asshole, fucking, all women are the fucking same, 0 empathy" she didn''t respond, instead taking a drink from her glass and looking at him like she wanted him to continue.


    Stop it, she wants you to get mad and say these things so she can feel like she is in the right and you are the one who acted irrationally and tried to end this.


    "I know and you know I know" he continued "or maybe you don''t, you will say you only went to him because I was misbehaving but really I lost interest after you lost interest, I have seen this before, you all follow a formula"


    "Ok" she started walking over to the door expecting him to follow but he didn''t until she reached for the doorknob "Goodnight Ast".


    "No" he meant that he was not ok with this whole situation and what had been communicated, he didn''t think things were adequately concluded and didn''t feel like the truth had come out, she simply interpreted it as him denying that the night was good and thought he understood that she had already moved on.


    Really, out of all the fake names she could have chosen she had to choose Sarah? such a tragic existence, it''s just a coincidence though, that''s another term I almost forgot about, coincidence theorist, remember to write that down. Maybe I should just get her to prove Sarah exists if she really does, what''s the point though? if she exists then she is still cheating, it doesn''t matter, if she doesn''t exist then she will just invent some new lie for why she told me it was Sarah, she wont learn anything, some people just don''t want to learn or be loved. I get it, women aren''t supposed to put in effort and you are supposed to pursue the one you love regardless of how much they reciprocate if you truly love them but holy fuck, she wont put in a single minute of effort even if would provide me with a month worth of joy.


    He got in his car which was just out of sight from her window and drove home, he started writing on his computer about his term "Coincidence Theorist".

 Coincidence

    "People love to hate on conspiracy theorists but really the opposite is just as bad. When someone is a conspiracy theorist they think some occurrence or effect is a meaningful part of something bigger. If someone is a coincidence theorist they think that occurrence or effect is either a non meaningful part of something bigger or a part of something completely unrelated and natural.


    I would think that most normal people dislike things that feel like conspiracy theories because they like to think the world is natural with simple cause and effect without powerful human motives directing the flow of the world. I don''t understand exactly but there seems to be some sort of inclination in most people to be adverse to conspiracy theories, not on their merits but based on the feeling they evoke. Most conspiracy theories revolve around a bunch of evil powerful people being very clever and manipulative and exerting their will on those below them, most people don''t want to live in a world where this is the normal. I don''t think it''s only that though, I think it''s something about the complex nature of the world. Admitting most conspiracy theories to be true would be admitting that there are people with levels of knowledge and influence that you couldn''t comprehend.


    I''m not really interested in talking about conspiracy theorists though, I''m sure the psychology behind that has been discussed to death but I think it''s more interesting to discuss what most people are, rather than what they are not. Most people are coincidence theorists, they think that things just happen to align for no important reason.


    I guess I should provide some examples before I try to make vague definitions and conclusions.


    Ok, most of the powerful politicians seem to be pro censorship and also all the biggest and richest companies/investors (the same people who have the means to influence/bribe politicians if they wanted) seem to benefit from this. Normal people who have swallowed propaganda deem this just to be a coincidence, both groups just happen to agree on what is the morally right perspective and it happens to align with the financial interests of those who have power and they don''t believe the politicians are bribed. The big corporations are pro censorship because they can control narratives and somewhat decide what ''needs'' to be censored, they can push what is censored away from what harms them and towards what benefits them, censorship always harms the less powerful more as it is written by the powerful. Normal people think this is a coincidence though, they think the discussion isn''t heavily distorted by corruption and bribes even though the end result is what you would expect if bribes were taken when creating policy.


    Obviously in reality the truth is somewhere in-between the discussion being completely separate from financial interests and a complete artificial creation (an engineered conspiracy), my point is simply that most people lean too heavily towards everything being honest, they think too highly (in a moral sense) of the rich, because the world is nicer and simpler to exist in if you don''t believe propaganda is everywhere, if you don''t believe everyone is trying to sell you something and your voice is less powerful than a rich persons. It''s strange, everyone knows this deep down enough to word it, they are constantly calling the rich evil, they are constantly saying our democracy is corrupt but they still cant wrap their head around the depth or complexity of it. It doesn''t matter if people know something is corrupt, if they still don''t understand the exact complexities of how, they will still be influenced by it. Something more complex with some level of superior knowledge can always to some success predict and influence those below it even if those below it know the people above them are trying to manipulate them. Basically anything the simple person can know about themselves and the situation, the more complex person can also know about them and the situation, it''s not absolute but on average it plays out in ones favor. It''s like if they know 90% of the ''cattle'' will do the opposite of anything they say then they will argue for the opposite of what benefits them, basic reverse psychology but it plays out over millions of dimensions and levels and it is an ongoing competition.


    Another crime of coincidence theorists is simply participating in the discussions of the powerful. Often times the ruling elites who want to influence the world don''t care about what you think about a topic, they just want you to normalise talking about the topic so they can keep talking about the topic too and influence the people who can be influenced. Even if you have the wrong opinion which is contrary to their goals, the number of people you can influence against their goals pales in comparison to how many they can influence. In a sense though it''s a lost game, sure, if you don''t participate and talk about the topic then the topic will be less likely to be normalized in shared society and it will weaken their influence a little, but other people will still talk about it and their narrative will go unchallenged. Sometimes they don''t even care about the ''conclusion'' from the public discussion of something, sometimes it is just white noise to drown out the discussion of something else. You have to weigh up how likely you are to have a positive impact on peoples beliefs vs how much you simply talking about the topic in any sense aids your enemies.


    I have gotten off topic, the point is people think it''s just a coincidence what topics are brought into the public sphere, well... they might not think this, they think the topics surfaced organically but the end conclusion is the same, the conclusion that it''s just a coincidence that normal people are currently interested in these topics and discussing these topics which happen to benefit the elites.


    The thing is, the average person truly can make a difference, they can influence others for the better by honestly choosing what to discuss and what they say about it. Deciding how to do this in such a fast paced world like ours requires a lot of analysis of motives of your enemies or you will unwillingly benefit them more than you benefit yourself because they know how people like you will react on average so they will choose a sequence of public topics to discuss which will turn out the most beneficial to them. There is never a good argument to follow the news cycle, it gives too much power over to your enemies. It is branded as the exact opposite of this for good reason, it is branded as knowledge and being informed but in reality it''s the opposite if you are looking only within a sphere of knowledge that has already been curated by someone else or some group else. What is the solution though? even if you deny the story of the day and only interest yourself in what interests you then you are still at the mercy of secondhand influence by others or more subtle influences. I think this is the point though, you want to make their propaganda as difficult and expensive as possible to achieve, you want to make it as hard for them as possible, you will never make it impossible, you are not immune to propaganda but at least if you deny the primary influences and where they have as much control as possible there will be more opportunities for the truth to shine through. You might already know the truth slightly more than the average person though so adding to the public discussion on the current topic might truly be a net benefit to the world in terms of truth but the trouble with this is that it will corrupt you slightly, you will benefit the world but it will also make you less immune to future influences, I don''t know how to articulate this well, I should ponder on it some more, basically it''s just an easy trap to fall into akin to ''If I took all the power I would be morally good with it'', it doesn''t work like that, sometimes giving over power in pursuit of your own truth -is- the good thing to do.


    Off topic again... coincidence theorists... they think it''s just a coincidence everyone is talking about war tensions increasing and war tensions actually increasing, they think it''s a natural progression and they don''t consider that one might lead the other and they might not be at a perfect natural balance. They don''t consider that there might be a level of influence (a conspiracy) for the war tensions to be talked about more which causes the war tensions to increase, the talk might not be a perfect natural consequence of the reality. This is because things come into peoples heads (such as the topic of war tensions increasing) and it is too tiring for them to second guess every thought and why it occurred, it is too tiring for every time they think about something to have to ask themselves ''am I thinking about this because it genuinely is the most interesting thing to think about right now or is it that something influenced my attention to this without my consent?''. It is hard for most people to live in a world with such complex propaganda, a world where even your own thoughts might be an external attack on what is best for you but that is the world we live in. People resort to coincidence theories to escape this reality but then again the opposite is just as detrimental, to live as if everything is a conspiracy, that everything is essentially engineered limits you from attaining what is best for you too. My point is simply that the reason conspiracy theorists are so demonized by society is intentional, it''s because on average denying coincidences limits the influence of the elites, it is more beneficial for the elites for everyone to believe in coincidences and a naturally evolving landscape of society. My point is that although it is painful to accept, the default conclusion for something happening is that there should be some motive for it, but you should stay open for the possibility of this being wrong or of the motive being insignificant. On average mistrusting your enemies is the most effective pursuit on average as on average your fellow peer will over trust your enemies.


    People think it''s just a coincidence that mental health and peoples reliance on medication in general is getting worse alongside the ability for powerful companies to profit off it increasing. The key here is the ability to profit, of course profit would naturally increase if the issue increased but due to peoples increased free time, free money, worldwide supply chains, complex science discoveries etc., there is now an increased ability to sell something to fix that problem so they make the problem more prevalent. ''No, there is not some twisted conspiracy to make people depressed, it''s just a coincidence due to natural issues in our society!''


    No one is immune to propaganda and the obvious solution is knowledge is power, most people understand this but they don''t quite understand the idea of curated realms of knowledge, that if you act within their news cycle that even if you learn everything about it you are still influenced by them. Even if you come to the accurate conclusion about the events, the level of distortion you had to overcome to get there has been a huge waste of your resources. Sure, overcoming distortion is a skill that should be valued but the act of doing it should not be treated as the best practice for learning to do it, the most efficient way to learn how to overcome a distorted view of reality is to learn what a distorted view of reality looks like in general or more accurately to just learn what is the right view of reality, the most efficient way to do this is to just live your life properly. People undervalue how much they should attempt to live outside time, time limitations corrupt and limit us, they provide opportunities for us to be influenced by our impulses and emotions, this is the main mechanism behind the success of the short news cycle, they force people to think about something from a lens of the current state of the world and comment on it now, then they subconsciously will be more likely to stand by what their stance was at the time of voicing it.


    As an over simplistic argument, let''s say that after a big war there was a big public news cycle discussion asking if war is bad, on average most people will say yes because the memory of the corpses are fresh in their minds, now on average most people will cement in their minds to some degree that this is their unchanging opinion and it was barely influenced by the times but if someone instead considered this question over a longer time period they might be able to see more complex and nuanced benefits/costs behind wars and have a greater (more truthful) opinion on whether wars are inherently bad or the complexities behind that question. The more people willing to answer a question at the same time, the more control the people who get to decide when the question is asked can have. They have insanely complex surveillance tools and understand our psyches at any given moment, they know what people will on average answer at what time and they know that simply answering it will make their answer more resolute in their minds. The more people playing into the news cycle and answering their questions, the more power they have, the more power they have, the less power you have relatively.


    I get it though, there is some level of argument that you want your ruling elites to have immense power over your peers because if they don''t then another more coherent country who has more power over their plebs will be able to outcompete us but really, you should be only looking out for yourself. Whatever plays out on a huge global scale will play out regardless, you should never sacrifice yourself for the larger picture, you should never submit because you want others to submit, you should do what benefits you and on average the truth will emerge on the grandest scales as long as it is being played out on the small scales. The truth doesn''t emerge when the little man has some grand idea of importance of doing what they think is wrong in order to get others to do what they think is right. There is still a level of self sacrifice involved though but it''s less about sacrificing yourself for others and more about sacrificing your delusions for truths whether they are your truths or the truth.


    The normal definition for the word coincidence is something along the lines of ''two unlikely events that are not connected'' but in reality the word requires a little extra in its definition, at least if you want to use the word in an interesting or meaningful sense, the word requires a possible interpretation of these events being connected yet they aren''t. That is an interesting thing about words, there are the strict definitions where it is ok and sensible to say something but there is also a hidden definition which can show when the word is conveying actual meaning.


    For example, let''s take a generic rare event of winning the lottery, you could say ''it''s just a coincidence I won lotto and then the next week someone who I don''t know won lotto'', that is perfectly acceptable English but using the word coincidence there doesn''t really convey much meaning since it can be left out and people will assume the events aren''t connected anyway. To say ''it''s just a coincidence I won lotto and then the next week my brother won lotto'', the word coincidence here actually adds to the meaning conveyed in the sentence. It can say things like ''no, we didn''t rig the lottery'', it can say ''no, I don''t think our family has received some divine blessing'', ''no, I don''t think luck is contagious'' etc.


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    The word ''coincidence'' is only ever used to deny connection, there are two reasons for denying connection, logic such as the unlikelihood of a connection actually being real or desire, a biased hope that the possible reasons a connection could occur aren''t true. Similarly, there are two forms of denying connection, you can deny all connection or deny enough to claim that the connection isn''t meaningful, in this example calling the brothers both winning the lottery a coincidence has denied all connection. Well... mostly, I can still think of some connection that I didn''t explicitly deny, maybe there is a hidden connection that the second brother bought slightly more tickets after learning about the first brother winning, maybe they were both heavy gamblers in the first place, this would create some connection in their winning but even with this connection the second event would still be extremely unlikely and the ''success'' of it occurring would largely be independent of the first event. Even if the second brother had a 10x higher chance than the average person, he still had a 1/million chance or whatever to win and the event was still largely ''luck'' and a ''coincidence''.


    Let''s take another example ''it is just a coincidence that my best friend has the same clothes and wore the same outfit as me today''. What connections could possibly occur that are trying to be denied by a statement like this? maybe something like ''no, we didn''t go shopping together and buy the same clothes'', ''no we didn''t try to match our outfits''. But there are still connections that aren''t denied that could have lead them to be far more likely to wear the same outfit, such as maybe they are both the same age and live in the same area so are more likely to shop at the same stores, maybe they like the same bands/media and their fashion sense is influenced by them in similar ways, maybe they have a lot of the same commitments which meant they only had freetime to go shopping on certain days and one of these certain days had a well advertised sale for this particular item, maybe they became friends as their mothers share a job and that job just got a big bonus on the same day so the mothers both decided to shout their daughters and go shopping during the same sale. My point here is that you can never deny all connection with calling something a coincidence, every person has their own idea of what makes a connection meaningful and how much of it they want to deny. My further point is that even if some or all of my possible connections were true and did increase the chance for them to wear the same outfit, people still have a personal interpretation as to whether that increased chance reduces the unlikelihood of the second event occurring given the first to an uninteresting level.


    There is a slight contradiction as sometimes when people call something a coincidence they are trying to deny some sort of divine reason for it but other times people are trying to say ''there is no physical reason they both occurred, any connection if it does occur is simply divine''.


    Even if you did believe there was absolutely no causal relationship or influence whatsoever, there will always be the possible connection of divine influence even if you don''t believe in it, it''s always possible and cant be disproved. There is always room within the causal nature of reality where a divine entity could influence the world and this influence be so subtle that no one could ever detect a physical reason. Say some divine creator did want to bless the brothers entire family for some reason, there is room within the lottery to ''edit'' the numbers that occur without anyone knowing. I don''t know how lotteries pick their numbers, most probably use a physical method with so much randomness that it cant be predicted but maybe some use computer random number generation, a divine influence could alter the roll of a ball just slightly enough so it couldn''t be detected to land on the numbers it wants, a human couldn''t influence it in the same way as it would require an unbelievable prediction of a hundred or so balls and their exact current physics and a projection millions of interactions into the future, this insane complexity is what allows a divine influence to alter something without being caught. Similarly a divine influence could change the seed on the computer without it being detected. I just want to stress that it''s not meaningful when you try to deny there being a divine reason for both events occurring as there could always be a divine reason. There is some meaning in saying something doesn''t need divine connection because there is a physical connection that isn''t related, but there is no meaning in saying that something doesn''t need a divine connection because there is no physical connection. The lack of any physical connection between two events will always leave space for a divine entity to act.


    My point isn''t that divine influence happens or doesn''t happen it''s that no one can ever say it didn''t happen. Let''s say there is no real reason either of them bought the same outfit, they both just did it on a whim, it came into their heads randomly while shopping, I don''t believe things just pop into peoples heads randomly but let''s say you do, well now there is room for a divine influence to take ownership of that randomness. This can still happen if one had a reason and one didn''t, you can say the one without a ''real'' reason was actually due to the divine placing it in their head. Let''s say though that they both had reasons for this outfit but the reasons were different and unconnected, that doesn''t remove the room for divine influence, say one girl bought it because it was what her favourite singer wore and another bought it because it was on sale when their mother got a bonus, you can still say the divine influence caused both these reasons to occur from planning the path of time from the start. Most people wouldn''t turn to a divine explanation for something like this as it''s not needed, it''s not THAT unlikely for them to both buy the same outfit, there is a weighing up between how unlikely two events to both occur are, how strange a connection is and how much a divine influence would have had to conspire to make them both happen. But let''s say it kept happening, for 20 days in a row they kept wearing the same outfits despite there being no physical connection they can determine, no set of reasons which are connected, at some point anyone would have to say the only possible explanation for so many strange coincidences is the divine. Everyone has a different limit, some might say 3 days, some might say 20, some might say 500, eventually anyone would comprehend the sheer number of things aligning, the insane rarity of the coincidences and conclude there must be some connection they cannot comprehend.


    Maybe this is a slightly poor example because in reality they would eventually confront the issue and then human psychology comes into play which can be a convenient explanation (and often a valid one) for many repetitions but there is still a point where the line up in human psychology is so astounding that people turn to the divine. Let''s say two people playing paper, scissors, rock, and they really are trying to win and both players do matching moves over and over again, eventually or even quickly they get to the point where they become aware of this repetition and now their choices in moves is influenced by this repetition and second guessing what they would normally think, reverse psychology, reverse reverse psychology etc. With a few repetitions they could explain it away ''we both used reverse psychology'' and deem it to be uninteresting but eventually they would reach a number of repetitions where they would think that something strange has to be going on, again, everyone has a different point, for some people it might not be until a thousand repeated moves when they start to question if there was divine intervention, under that they might think that sheer chance could be to blame ''sure, it''s a 1 in a million chance for us to repeat it so often but it''s only 1 in a million'' but when you get to 1 in 100 trillion they are more likely to look to the divine but this is predicated on the idea that matching moves multiple times is a significant connection. Further to this though if it keeps happening and becomes even more unlikely, people start to doubt even a divine influence and start to doubt the nature of reality itself, they start to question if reality is playing some sort of joke on them, if they are dreaming or in a simulation with a bug etc. the level at which this happens to anyone varies, partially due to different tolerances for absurd things, different willingness''s to accept the divine, different openness to a simulated reality but also due to different estimations of the chances. Let''s say for repeated matching moves in rock paper scissors it is something like this for a normal person, up to 10 moves repeated they think nothing of it, it''s unlikely but it happens, 10 to 20 moves they might think there is some psychological alignment or mindgames happening, above 20 repetitions they might think something spiritual is happening, a sign from god, after 50 repetitions they might start doubting reality or at least they should if they understood the odds 3 to the power of 50 makes it what 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or something. There are certain people who don''t understand chance properly though, they would think ''anything is possible''. I wonder if in reality the chance for people to match moves is higher or lower than 1/3, I would guess it is probably higher, there is an above 1/3 chance to pick rock and then there is probably a greater than 1/3 chance to use the same move if you both just chose the same thing, I don''t know, it''s just an example anyway.


    Significant connections play a role in how much people turn to the divine, if everyone thought everything in their life was significant then the only explanation could be divine. What I mean is everyday people have things which are unlikely to occur, say one day something happens to you which has a 10% chance, then the next day the same, if you think these events are connected significantly then you might ask ''what is the chance they both happened? 1%? that happens'' but if you don''t think they are connected then you don''t multiply the chances as something had to happen on the second day, if it wasn''t that particular 10% event then it would have been another 10% event, the rolls were independent. If people think everything happening everyday to them is connected in a meaningful way then they multiply these probabilities together. What I mean is like coming back to the brothers and their lottery, say brother 1 had a 1/million chance to win the lottery and brother 2 had 1/100,000 (since they bought more tickets), because these brothers are connected you say the results are connected and can ask ''what are the chances they both won the lottery a week apart?'' and multiply the probabilities. However if you are comparing 1 brother winning the lottery you don''t ask ''what is the probability this brother won the lottery and then this unconnected specific man won the lottery?'' because that''s not a meaningful connection, the question would be another way of saying ''what is the probability this man won the lottery and then a stranger won the lottery?'' and that isn''t much different from the 1st event on its own.


    My point is that everyone has a point where they resort to the only possible explanation for a series of events that they can wrap their mind around is the divine or a fake reality and this largely depends on how many connections they can see between events. In a way I am saying that the more meaning (connection between the day to day, an overarching story) people see in their lives, the more likely they are going to believe their lives are of a divine nature.


    I want to stress that there isn''t really a difference between someone thinking that the connection between two events is so subtle and elaborate and there being no meaningful connection, partially this is due to the factor that if it is subtle then it doesn''t increase the chances of the second event occurring a significant amount but it''s also because people don''t think on the elaborate level as much so they don''t factor in this increased chance accurately. For example, say both girls shopped on the same day because their parents both get bonuses and took them shopping that day so this raised the chance of them buying the same clothes, they may never become consciously aware of this and not factor it into the chance of them buying the same clothes, they might think the connected event is more unlikely and thus significant than it is simply because they cant comprehend the physical reason why it wasn''t that unlikely to occur.


    Relating this back to the general tendencies of people either leaning towards being a conspiracy theorist or a coincidence theorist (meaning you are too far one way or the other) it can be said a few things. Conspiracy theorists are too skilled at seeing or imagining connections between events while people who tend to label things as coincidences too much are operating on too simple of a level and cant see many connections that exist. I''m not saying conspiracy theorists are thus smarter, obviously the best way to act is in-between, some things are connected in ways that we should notice and some aren''t, what breaks peoples minds is when the world is over connected or under connected. Even that isn''t that simple though, in one sense things being over connected and having conspiracies everywhere can lead people to think they have no control, everything is too complex but it also gives them power in a sense if they think they can understand these conspiracies then they can work with/around them. If everything is under connected, with coincidences and randomness everywhere then people can feel like nothing they do matters but in another sense they can feel like they know all there is to know so they are on an even level with others. Really it ultimately comes down to knowledge as to how people cope and whether they flourish, if they find meaning and connection where they want or even need to find meaning and connection they will flourish, if they find simplicity and chaos where they want or even need to find simplicity and chaos they will flourish.


    Ner was always a coincidence theorist in the sense that she never wanted to truly consider the depths of motives (why things happened, how they were connected), mostly her own, she never really looked too deeply into why she did the things she did or ever wanted to know why I did the things I did, she thought we just did things and sometimes they aligned and sometimes we didn''t. Just like now where she thinks we are falling apart and it is just a coincidence that it is the immediate easier path, the pleasurable path for her, girls don''t understand that the hardest path is always the most rewarding in the long run, they don''t understand that society (through its influences on our own minds) conspires to get us to take the path that goes against our own benefit, to do what is wrong for us, to keep us unhappy and struggling, to keep spending on medication and therapy, get us to work longer hours to be able to afford that next thing which might finally fill the void. No, it''s just a coincidence that the paths we decide to take are less rewarding, it''s just a coincidence that our lives are almost unbearably tragic, it''s just the universe. Bullshit, we can be something more if people only believed, if they only wanted to take the harder path, to find out what is really happening, see and accept the ''conspiracy'' and transcend it.


    People will never transcend what they are until they believe they can, maybe she just isn''t ready to be something more, she isn''t ready for love. I guess it''s not her fault, nobody at that age wants to be better, they don''t even believe in the concept of better, that''s largely societal"

 ? (length requirement)

    It was a cool misty morning, he took any excuse to wear bulky clothes and threw on a black hoodie and headed for work, the scanner took 4 tries but he managed his way inside. His boss wasn''t at his desk but this wasn''t too uncommon but he had an unsettling feeling and went straight to his emails rather than his usual meandering and found an email of interest from his boss.


    "Good morning staff,


    Apologies for my absence, I had to head back home to England for a family emergency, I''m not sure if or when I will be back, please talk to Jackson if you have any questions. I will be in touch on Monday.


    Your friend, J Samson"


    Great... what the fuck is this reality? also ''had'' instead of ''have''? as in he is already there? he must have left straight after work last night meaning he most likely heard the news before leaving for the day, I wonder if anyone read a change of mood in him. Friend? Samson? what a strange message.


    He looked his boss up online and didn''t find much but found out enough about him that it wasn''t a mistype, his surname was indeed Samson.


    So now I have this to deal with, another thing where I don''t know whether it happened because I felt like it was happening or if I felt it was happening because it was happening. Reality is so fake, such a joke, they are even changing his name to try and mess with me. I''ll probably be fired at this point, that''s not an entirely bad thing though, my life could do with a change, though I guess it''s changing regardless, but then what does a little more change matter? it''s essentially a fresh start regardless without Ner, may as well get a new job while I''m at it, is Ner really gone though? surely there is still hope, I can tell she loves me or at least used to, if she used to then I can make her again, I just have to find what she loved.


    Jackson... he knows I do jack shit around here, he will want to get rid of me, it''s times like this you need friends, I should have made friends. Maybe Jackson is temporary, maybe Jeff will call the shots of the new system, maybe a new boss entirely will come in and just keep things exactly the same under advise from Jeff, it doesn''t matter I guess, the world is probably ending anyway and if it''s not, another job could be fun. That''s pretty cool and rare that Jeff doesn''t have much media, that''s a good sign for a person, maybe I should have made friends with him, or maybe I intentionally didn''t to hurt myself.


    He kept looking for anything of interest about his boss online but to no success, he started writing again to Ner as a way to distract himself from confronting the coincidence of his imaginary story now playing out in reality but this time after writing in his notepad he wrote it out a second time as an actual message, fine tuning the language and actually sent it this time.


    This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    "To Ner,


    I understand more now, I made mistakes. All I ask now is another chance, can we please just have one more day where we pretend everything is fine and that we love each other? just pretend this for one day and then at the end of the day see how it went, see how we felt? if it goes well then we can do it another day, and then if that works maybe we can do it for a week and if that week is nicer than without each other then maybe another week. Please, just try one day at a time, we can do this, I want to be right for you."


    Just 2 minutes after the message being read she responded


    "No, there is nothing there, it seems like you never understood me or cared about the real me but that is ok I guess"


    "I don''t believe you, block me if this is what you actually believe"


    "I''m not going to block you, if you have something more to say then I still have some patience to hear you out because that is the right thing to do but I don''t have much to say to you"


    "It would be better for us both if you block me, do it for my sake, prove to me that you feel nothing by hurting me, it''s also obvious that I just annoy you at this point so it''s better for you too"


    "I''m not blocking you, it''s not right"


    "I don''t like seeing our chat open and available, it makes me think of things to say to you, it reminds me of your existence and the cruel ways you treated me, I don''t like this in-between stage of being able to technically talk to you but not really be able to convey or receive any meaningful communication, I don''t like this constant draw to talk to you but the inevitable realisation that I have to control and limit what I say, I want to talk to you so bad. It feels like you only talk to me out of pity at this point, I''d rather you block me than make me feel like this"


    "I understand, but no"


    "Anyone with a brain would assume based on how you treat me that you do indeed feel nothing for me or even hate me but it really feels like to me that you love me, I can''t think of any reason why you wouldn''t except for absolutely terrible reasons which I''m sure your conscience would demand you to share if that was the case"


    She didn''t respond for ten minutes or even open the message so he sent another message "Just because you''re pretty doesn''t mean you can treat people like shit" which almost instantly changed to ''read'' status but again she didn''t reply. He didn''t know what to think, he kept bouncing back and forth between different explanations as to why she acted the way she did and invented fantastical stories for things that might have occurred that he was not aware of. He imagined that she was sick and dying and she was intentionally trying to make him hate her as a way to ruin his image of her, a benevolent goal so her inevitable death would be easier for him to accept. He imagined her drug abuse had gotten so bad that her self worth was now so low that him being relatively put together made her bitter by comparison. He imagined she had killed someone and she was about to run away and didn''t want to put that on him. He imagined she had been sleeping with another guy from the start and was only ever messing with his mind this whole time. He gave up trying to work it out and knowing he was going to have a lot to mentally digest this weekend and would prefer to spend it alone he text Sarah.


    "Hey, I''m not going to text tomorrow but can I take you out for dinner on Sunday?"


    "Yes, we can go to dinner on Sunday, 515?" and she shared a link to a map which was presumably her house.


    "I can hardly wait"


    ''We'' she doesn''t like being ''taken out'' for dinner as if she is the subject, interesting...

 Propaganda

    "Ok so I said how a way to combat propaganda or lessen its effect is to ignore the news cycle or to not participate in/think about the topic of the day but what is the advantage even of lessening the propaganda. In a sense if you are consumed by propaganda then you are working for someone for free without knowing it, pushing their agenda but does this really matter in the grand scheme? no matter what you do someone benefits from whatever you do. I guess the distinction is with how much what you do benefits you specifically, that is the problem or paradox with propaganda somewhat, the people pushing the propaganda make it so participating in the propaganda benefits you or at least you think it does. If you participate in the news cycle you might be a mouth piece for the elites but you get rewarded for this by seeming knowledgeable by your peers and they might like being around you more if they can participate in conversation with you. The thing is though this never really rewards someone as much as they think it does, it doesn''t form deep connections with people, what people are attracted to is someone who can offer them something of value such as special knowledge. You might somewhat enjoy the company of someone knowledgeable on the news cycle as they can curate the important and interesting news for you but ultimately their absence from your life can be substituted easily by paying a little more attention to the news or someone else.


    My point is that existing outside the news cycle makes you more interesting to others in a real sense, it allows you to study/experience unique things that others wont be able to experience on their own or vicariously through other people they know. Sure, most people aren''t interested in unique experiences but the few people who are yearning for true meaningful connection or conversation will be more attracted to you.


    This seems to exist beyond simply the news cycle, it is something about existing outside time in general that makes a person interesting to others but furthermore it makes them more interesting to themselves. If a person isn''t swayed by day to day occurrences, if they aren''t a product of the day then they have substance and something others can latch onto, work with or learn to understand. To the person outside time themselves though it forces them to create an overarching narrative for their life or come to terms with their deep ambitions or tendencies. If someone is existing within time then they don''t have much reason to remember previous days, they can explain what happened on one day through purely uninteresting ''random'' events or coincidences.


    There is a contradiction somewhat as it seems happiness is being at peace and living in the moment rather than being concerned with the past or future or what you are fundamentally but the ability to live beyond today is what makes someone''s life meaningful. This is not to say happiness and meaning are completely at odds with each other although only focusing on one will eventually hinder your ability to experience the other. What I''m saying is neither happiness nor meaning in life can be a goal on its own and even one on its own can be worse than a balance of both even if the overall sum is lower.


    For example imagine you focus on meaning successfully, your life is very meaningful, you are accomplishing goals, feel like you have importance but you still want to cry everyday, you might then come to the conclusion that there is nothing that can ever make you happy as you are already where you feel you should be and start to spiral out of control.


    Say you focus on hedonistic happiness and it works, you feel great during the day but you feel like something is missing and you eventually figure out you are missing meaning so you strive towards this but this removes some happiness, you might take it to the extreme and start to think that a meaningful life is miserable and life is inherently suffering. In reality though you just need to find a different form of happiness and meaning which aren''t as far at odds with each other.


    Maybe life is inherently suffering, it certainly feels like it some times, like now in particular but that is besides the point that a good life cannot be measured as an absolute function of meaning or happiness alone and that there are points where you might think you have the best combination of the two because any small variation from where you are makes things worse but really you are looking at one or the other in the completely wrong way and a more correct way to look at either would create an overall better combination.


    I think this is some of the biggest propaganda the world has pulled though, how they have made people to overvalue happiness or even confuse a happy life with a meaningful life. Outside of the obvious propaganda I think there is also a psychological element as to how this occurred by reducing peoples attention spans so they have to live day by day and get caught up in the news cycles, unable to ever comprehend meaning or an overarching story for their life. This probably comes from the top, like it makes sense for an employer to want their employees to be happy, it makes them more efficient mostly by improving how well they interact with customers/other employees. It doesn''t matter as much to an employer if their employees find the work meaningful as long as they are happy enough and stuck enough to keep doing it. I think this has happened on a global scale by the elites whether they conspired to do it or making the general population the most efficient slaves was just a natural progression. It seems to be man''s most powerful quality, the ability to endure such depths of existential suffering has been exploited by employers/the elites. The more people can put up with the more they will be forced to put up with if it benefits someone else in another way. That is why in a sense all our modern technologies and our improved standard of living have ultimately lead us to be more depressed, we are happier and more comfortable so we are more able to endure a deeper lack of meaning so our employers or those who ''design'' society can design systems that can afford to provide us with less meaning and still have us turn up.


    Perhaps there is no way out on a societal level, humanity will always be pushed as hard as they can to output as much as they can by whoever pulls the strings, change and improvements will only be just enough to keep the working man from killing himself or being too despondent to work, society will never improve until it is no longer functioning properly meaning people start dropping out. I don''t think it''s this doom and gloom though, it is clear that individuals can break out, they can find their own meaning and happiness, enough to love life. If individuals can do it then society can do it too, parallel societies can emerge from groups of those who broke out and eventually overcome the existing society.


    It seems what happens is whenever a new technology or piece of quality of life is ''invented'' it is somewhat co opted by the powerful to screw over the little guy and benefit them as initially only the powerful world elites have the resources to understand such a niche emergent technology. Most of the time this means this new thing which should be a good thing in our life is actually a bad thing or at least not as good as it should be but eventually it becomes so widespread that the mechanics behind it become common knowledge and individuals learn how to utilise it to actually benefit them. Sure, there is a constant battle with the elites trying to poison the knowledge but ultimately the truth rises to the top and people find out how to make it benefit them.


    I am confused whether society is actually improving or getting worse, on one side suicide rates have been falling consistently for years but surely there is a better proxy indicator for ''how happy/meaningful peoples lives are'' than simply how many kill themselves, suicide is usually a severe combination of unhappiness and lack of meaning and not really a reflection of the average in all peoples lives, it''s further muddied by all these drugs which basically put people into a zombielike state where they are just functional enough to get by. I have no data but it seems like on average peoples lives are no better or worse than they have been for thousands of years, in some ways they are better, longer, more unique, more recreation, access to meaningful art and in others they are worse, hollow, too much time that it leads to suffering, drug access to ruin themselves, ''meaningless'' jobs in the sense that they are disconnected from others/the world. It really seems that as a whole society or humanity will always exist in the equilibrium balance between how much suffering people can endure and how much hedonistic pleasure they require. How fast humanity progresses and ''improves'' (I use quotes because it is improve in a physical sense and not any sort of satisfaction with existence sense) is a consequence of how well society balances happiness/meaning, the problem with societies is most of the time you can only make gradual change although sometimes a society is so outdated that a drastic change is worth it for a new balance. My point is that this exists on an individual level too, how well an individual can improve in life in a tangible sense (whatever is valued to that person whether it is wealth, knowledge, experiences) is a consequence of how well they have a balance between happiness and meaning.


    It kind of sounds like I''m not really saying anything as many would think that these tangible positives in life would be the happiness or meaning in their life itself but there is a difference. People don''t really need to actually find the right balance between happiness and meaning, they can do this instinctively, what they do need to find is the most accurate general idea for these two concepts at the current point in their life and the balance between the two will be instinctive and then the benefits will flow as a natural consequence of what they simply focus on in life, I don''t specifically mean focus on as in work towards but what they direct their attention to, you cant force working on something but if you are constantly directing your attention to something you will work towards it naturally.


    So what is my point with all this rambling? how does it benefit you or me? I think the point is that you need to be aware of the two forms of life, focusing on the day and focusing on the overall story of your life and not get caught up in one or the other only. The further point is that people try to influence you to focus on one or the other, the elites who own you in some sense from the shadows want you to focus on the day, they make their money and relative power over you from being more patient than you, by looking at a larger picture than you, they want to confine you to the immediate. That is not to say power or the bigger picture is the most important thing and you should never focus on the day to day, you can definitely go too far.


    Then you have the other side, the ''revolutionaries'' or ''dissidents'' who are actively working against the elites and want you to fight alongside them to undermine the elites control, they try to get you to see too big of a picture with subversive art, conspiracy theories that make connections where there are no meaningful connections.


    The average person seems to fall into a few traps in particular, they don''t realise just how much or how subtle the propaganda is of the elites and so they miss how it is distorting their reality/values in subtle ways. People also fall into the trap when they see ''anti propaganda'' and they overvalue its message, they to some degree have an understanding of the most blatant lies the establishment tells so when they see something that goes against these lies they think it must be truthful, thinking sort of like ''this isn''t by my enemy so it must be by my ally'', like sure, in a sense they are your ally simply from having a common enemy but that doesn''t mean your goals perfectly align.


    Sure, there is definitely ''pro establishment'' propaganda that makes it seem like they are the dissidents, sort of like controlled opposition but what I mean is even among real dissident (anti establishment) propaganda people seem to overvalue the message of this propaganda and not truly comprehend just how much acting on it benefits others more than it benefits themselves.


    If you swallow too much propaganda of the elites your day to day story will not truly make you as happy as you could be, you will notice the stories they want you to notice and fight against things that they want to be fought or fight for things if they are using reverse psychology (or simply pointing attention to something people are genuinely supportive of) and not what benefits you. Similarly if you swallow too much propaganda from dissidents then what they suggest will be more focused around empowering people like you and not you specifically.


    I''m assuming you, like me are a nobody, ''working class'', little current power, just trying to find some peace and a meaningful/happy life, so in general you should lean towards opposing the elite propaganda and supporting the dissidents (although it is easy for groups to distort where a message is coming from), so the default stance should be to oppose anything that is being pushed by powerful forces and accepted by the masses even if you personally support it since their influence will no doubt convince some people who otherwise wouldn''t support it and upset the natural progression of the world which is the most efficient for everyone.


    Ultimately what it all comes down to is awareness, awareness of how artificial a message is and self awareness of your own thoughts/ideas to realise where they came from. This extends to a larger scale, a society can become self aware to a degree if the mechanisms of how it is influencing people, certain groups roles within the society are more well defined or publicly discussed. The more self aware a society is and open, the less resistant it will be to external or internal propaganda and distortion. Although some level of propaganda is good, it creates resistances to large changes and creates some stability, it simplifies the world for its inhabitants. Extending this to a personal level, some level of self delusion or brainwashing yourself into believing certain things is good for actualising yourself within the world.


    To a point though sometimes people don''t have control over whether they view the world day by day or through a longer more meaningful narrative, sometimes through sheer chance alone the events in their lives connect themselves in ways that are impossible to miss and sometimes they don''t, sometimes a persons day to day life has enough excitement or pressing matters that they don''t try to think about the longer term and sometimes it doesn''t. Ultimately it''s a complex combination of many factors in terms of whether people feel like there is some meaningful narrative for their life including propaganda, natural inclination, self awareness of their own drives, random events in life, general awareness/memory of events. My point is kind of that you can work towards finding meaning in your life through many ways, you can limit the effect of propaganda by learning to see it (since propaganda on average wants to reduce meaning in your life), you can think about what events occurred in your life and think about the connections between them that might not have been obvious, you can understand your own motives/desires more and how they shaped what events happened in your life, you can become more aware of what is happening or what happened in your life. Finding meaning in life and therefore fulfillment is mostly a function of intelligence (mostly a specific subset of intelligence being awareness but still) contrary to what nihilists or even atheists in general want to believe, they think they are smarter than others for not seeing meaning in life.


    Finding happiness though, is that a factor of intelligence too? what is happiness again? it can take many forms but I guess simplistically it is being interested in the moment and at peace with what is currently happening. The easy retort to this is that it is contrary to intelligence because it requires you to not be aware of your past/future in the current moment but that''s not exactly true. You can be aware of your past and what your future likely looks like (or you hope it to look like) and still be totally ok with whatever is currently happening. This requires being ok with the events that caused the current situation or at least understanding them well enough that you can reduce the likelihood the events occur again (if you don''t enjoy what is currently happening). Being ok with the events that caused the current situation is not just an acceptance of the way the universe works but also an acceptance of how you acted in the past, accepting the way the universe works largely comes from a knowledge of how it works but accepting the actions you took in the past requires you to have acted consciously in a self aware manner. Sure, even if you are self aware, you will still do things you regret but at least you will be ok with having done them because you will know why you did them and be able to learn where your judgment was wrong, so being ok with the past seems to be a function of intelligence. Being ok with the future after this event seems to largely be dependent on intelligence too, if you know that you can learn from this bad event, you can minimize it''s negative impact and maximise the positive or recover from it then you will be more ok with the future.


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    It really seems that being at peace with whatever is currently happening is a function of intelligence. This isn''t the only part of happiness though, it also seems to be determined by liking the current moment or at least being interested in it, liking the current moment can be influenced by the success of your past actions and what you made occur but it can also be dependent on chance and sometimes people just get screwed over by chance again and again. It is possible for someone to be incredibly intelligent and largely in control of their whole life but still be dreadfully unhappy due to sheer chance but at least they can be less unhappy than they otherwise would have been.


    I''m not saying intelligence causes happiness and meaning to be found in someone''s life but it is certainly highly correlated and anyone who tells you otherwise is either lacking in intelligence, consumed by propaganda or has been immensely unlucky. I don''t like to mention that last one, immensely unlucky, while it''s true, people miscalculate what is immensely unlucky. Virtually everyone (and rightfully so based on statistics) has had countless horrible unlikely things happen to them but many people fall into the trap of under estimating the number of times they ''rolled'' at an unlikely chance and so think they are unfairly punished by life. Yes, life is harsh and everyone gets insanely unfortunate many times just due to the sheer number of days they live and events they experience but that doesn''t mean becoming smarter or trying harder wont improve your life, that doesn''t mean your life wouldn''t have been worse if you understood less.


    So where am I going with this? I guess I need to understand how much meaning and happiness I have in my life and how much I should have based on what has happened to happen to me. It seems like I have a lot of meaning or at least should have, everything feels connected, so much seems to be happening for a reason, I understand why I did certain things in the past and how that lead to where I am. Happiness though? I cant tell, I guess I live in the day, at most the week, I guess I enjoy most days or at least I find them interesting but why do I feel like everything is so horrible all the time regardless?


    Like I understand I took a chance on Ner and it didn''t work out, it was impossible to know what she liked before knowing her, I picked up signals and took an educated guess that she would like me making life interesting for her and it didn''t work out. Why am I so mad and bitter over it? I knew it only had a chance to be true before attempting it. It''s not like those years with her weren''t interesting. It''s not like I was technically wrong, sure, I lost the bet and she didn''t want this but that doesn''t mean the bet was wrong.


    I think it''s something to do with given perfect knowledge anyone would take that bet and so the only winners of that bet would be people who were wrong. I mean that there were no signs that she wouldn''t like excitement over niceness/genuineness, it was impossible for someone to predict.


    It''s like the only person who could make things work with Ner is someone who misread all the signs, I guess that''s why I''m bitter, it''s not so much bitter that I can''t win every time, it''s more about how sometimes in order to win in the most important areas of life such as winning someone''s heart you have to either be wrong or take the action that is least likely to succeed.


    Or maybe I was right and she just changed over time, maybe it is my fault that I didn''t notice the changes that were occurring in her life and how they would impact her to value different things and my fault that I didn''t get ahead of them. Maybe if I really wanted her and to be the right person for her I should have been willing to change alongside her, but then it begs the question why should I be the one to change, why cant she or why cant it be a mutual compromise? Maybe nothing can be done about the change, maybe I could theoretically change alongside her to continue to be right but in a practical sense I cant force myself to do this or it could not be sustained, I wouldn''t have to force myself to though, I really wanted to be right for her. Being able to continue to write our shared story, her intrinsic beauty and my ''irrational'' love for her is enough of a drive to overcome something as trivial as my own personal desires to not change into what she wants.


    I guess I''m bitter then because I couldn''t see how she was changing, I''m angry at myself for being limited but maybe that comes back to the argument that if we were right for each other then I would have noticed, I would have understood without having to really try, I think that argument is bullshit but I don''t have a rational reason to think so. I think I''m further bitter now as she wont give me a chance to try and change to be right for her, like I get it, she thinks I''m a horrible person but why does she think I''m destined to forever be? I think that''s the core of my bitterness, this is someone I really care for and love to some degree and they think so little of me that they think I am incapable of change.


    I shouldn''t say that word, love, I guess I wasn''t saying it with its ''real'' meaning, I am never going to say concretely that I love someone until I am engaged or married and I''m committing to them for life. When I kind of said it here I was meaning that you were someone I could possibly love if we managed to align our souls, or even if I simply managed to align my soul to yours. I wouldn''t say I never loved you, I certainly loved you in the sense of I loved the version I had of you in my head, the version where things turned out well and we were together forever, but it is looking increasingly like that version of you in my head will never be aligned with you in reality and likely never was.


    Does all this mean I''m unhappy though? sure, I''m bitter, I''m tormented, the days are long and grey and miserable but they''re still interesting regardless, I''m still invested in them, I''m interested, I want to see what will happen. I wouldn''t say I''m happy but I''m certainly not unhappy and the amount of meaning I feel in my life right now is immense. Maybe this is the most optimal balance someone can achieve in my position given the events that happened to happen to me, the highest sum of both meaning and happiness, the best life.


    I think I am struggling because I loved our shared narrative that we were creating and now it feels like it''s ending and I don''t want it to ever go away but maybe it''s not exactly ending, maybe it''s just a new chapter as corny as that sounds. Like maybe our shared story still continues until we die, the only real entries into it being the spaces between the words in other unshared stories of ours, subtle influences we left on each other, subconscious impacts. Maybe if we could physically write our shared story we would still add to it each day or every other day, a blank space here, a blank space there when our lives are shaped around the impact we had on each other for better or worse, maybe some entries would even be explicitly written, some concrete memory that came back and painted some certain shade on our day. It''s still kind of sad though, after years of beautiful interesting words and events to now have pages of white with short sentences interspersed but I guess that''s life, I guess we work on other books from now on, I don''t know if any book will ever be as beautiful as ours was looking to be but I guess that''s life. Maybe it''s fine that our book was short, maybe it was a prototype, a practice for the next book, maybe it was complete, it doesn''t feel complete to me.


    I guess I will attempt to write other books, Sarah''s is looking nice, it doesn''t feel nicer than the way ours started but maybe the start isn''t the only important part of a book, maybe that is why our book was never finished, the start was too idealised, unrealistic and full of holes that it could never be resolved in a meaningful way. Maybe it was my fault, I feel like it was your fault but what does that matter? maybe I am just not a good writer, I can learn from it, what choice do I have?"


    He stopped and twisted his head up to the ceiling in some sort of belief it would help him think better, he was feeling unsettled by what he had just written but couldn''t grasp exactly what, he kept trying to work out what he was feeling but his mind refused to confront it. He decided to go get some fresh air and maybe it would come to him but it brought him to a topic that he felt was unrelated which now fixated him and he returned to write about it after about 20 minutes walking around the neighbourhood noticing nothing that particularly caught his interest in the real world.


    "So like that song, I wonder how much of my life is a consequence of reality or even what i attempt and how much is simply a product of my desires and what I pay attention to?"


    Suddenly the thought popped into his head about what confused him earlier and had caused him to stop writing, it was a confusion over who he was writing to, whether it was himself, everyone or Ner but he left this thought behind, thinking it didn''t matter concluding no one was going to read his words anyway and just kept writing.


    "I cant see the connections between me idolising this sort of story and it playing out in reality but there are certainly real possible connections as to how my obsession with it could cause it to manifest itself especially over a time frame like ten years. There are many other times though when I imagine something and it ends up happening and there is no way my imagination could have actually influenced the world into making it happen, maybe these times though my memory of thinking about the event that happened is retroactively exaggerated, like I think of a thousand different things and slowly the memory fades of the 999 that didn''t happen and I only remember the one that did and then think that all my thoughts ended up coming true. I get that this is probably an element, I know there is a term for this, confirmation bias? survivor bias? I don''t know but it''s not really relevant, I don''t think this is enough to explain the connection I see between my thoughts and what happens in reality. There is another element where there are signs as to what is about to happen that I pick up on subconsciously and they influence my reality but because it''s all subconscious I think my thought just came out of nowhere and I predicted things I couldn''t predict. I know this is an element but I don''t think it''s enough to explain the connection between dream and destiny.


    What is the point of living in the real world if simply what I imagine can have an impact on the world? what I mean is that the point of the real world is that it is supposed to exist outside your imagination and be objective but if my thoughts can impact reality in such a tangible way then it''s not that different from a purely imaginary world. I get it, there is still something interesting about the real world even if you can influence with your thoughts because you cant entirely influence it, but I certainly seem to be able to influence it in all the important ways. Anything that I really want to happen and imagine happening seems to end up happening, what i find to be truly interesting ends up playing out in the real world. I justify what didn''t happen that I imagined in ways such as ''I understand now that I didn''t actually want this to happen'', maybe those justifications are delusional and a way to cope with a reality that doesn''t bend its will entirely to me but I wouldn''t want one that bends entirely anyway. Lately or rather increasingly as I have aged it seems to bend itself more and more to me, there is a contradiction, it is getting more interesting storywise but it is also getting less real in a sense.


    Again, why bother with real life if it''s not functionally different compared to imagination/delusion? I guess the answer has something to do with the beautiful parts of life is where these two worlds meet, the inner world and the outer, their endless dance and competition to manifest their will unto you, how they play off each other in complex and interesting ways but it''s gotten to the point where so much that I imagine ends up happening, it has become ridiculous. It''s almost like there is an over abundance of interesting occurrences, an overstimulation, to the point that nothing is interesting anymore, I can see too many meaningful connections between events, see too many coincidences. I guess I should write them all out but even I can''t remember half of them at this point, I dream of a very specific map that I could have never possibly seen before in my life and then the next day I see this in a video. This could be that idea of a global consciousness, maybe lots of other people were watching that video the day previous, it made its way into the global consciousness, I picked up on this in my dream then the next day the video was recommended to me. The global consciousness idea is usually more about how it seems so often that so many people have the same good idea simultaneously in a disconnected fashion, it does seem odd how much this happens but I guess there are some reasonable physical explanations to limit the need for the supernatural, mainly that these good ideas were somewhat the result of current events or developments in the world even if the connection and timing is suspicious, there are no doubt a lot of separate people on similar paths at any one time.


    I guess it doesn''t matter if there are physical reasons for why what I imagine ends up happening or not, the end result is that these reasons are complicated enough that I cant see them and nothing feels real. I don''t know what would make things feel more real, would it feel more real if what I did had more of an impact on the world or if I was less consequential and more at the mercy of the world?


    What does feel real even mean? I guess it mostly just means that reality feels real and as an extension you do too, not just that reality feels real but it feels interesting too, interesting enough for you to care about it more than your own imagination. The key defining difference between reality and imagination is how much control you have over it. There seems to be an equilibrium, if you care about reality then you learn about its rules and become better at operating within it and imposing your will on it but the more you can control reality the less fundamentally indistinguishable it becomes from your imagination. I think there is also an element of reality that distinguishes it from imagination surrounding it having unchanging rules that make sense but again, the more you become invested in reality and make sense of the rules, the less interesting it becomes. Reality needs to keep surprising you in new ways for you to keep caring about it but if it surprises you too much then it doesn''t make sense and doesn''t seem objective and you may as well participate in your delusions instead. I think this is what is happening to me now, it doesn''t feel real because I feel like I have too much control over reality so how do I fix this? I think the key is that you want to connect the real world and your imaginary worlds, you want your impacts on the real world to have unpredictable influences on your emotional world. You need to do things and make things happen where you don''t know how you will feel about them happening until after they are done, that is how you feel alive, you make it so even when you are in control and participating in reality and having a strong impact on it there are still surprises in other ways. You make it so you do something that will have an unpredictable impact on your emotions to such a point that you wont know what to do afterwards until after you have done it. This means you have to live in the moment, you can''t simply play out this sequence of events in your imagination because you cant imagine what the result of the first step will truly feel like, it makes you feel alive to have to constantly adapt and re evaluate, even if you have a strong impact on reality you still create an interesting back and forth between you and reality. So the question is, what is it that I could do where I don''t know how I would feel emotionally after having done it?"


    He thought and thought but couldn''t work it out and concluded this is one of those questions that you leave in the back of your mind and sooner or later your subconscious will come up with an answer. It was 4pm and he considered going to the park but didn''t want to see other people, especially since it was the weekend there would be a lot of people around that he particularly didn''t want to see right now, namely families. Instead he started to drink and ended up passing out just after 8pm after putting together a quick frozen dinner, the majority of his night was spent talking to an old friend online and sharing music that was popular when he was in his early teens, mostly romantic pop as that is what his tastes were limited to back then. He woke up at 2am and didn''t get back to sleep until 6am but forgot everything he thought about during that time.

 Crimes

    He phoned up Ner with the idea of checking once again to see if he could get a read on whether she still felt anything for him at all and they got to talking, they ended up establishing friendly relations again but were both tip toeing around the subject of their feelings and instead restricting their conversation to unimportant details of how they spent their days and media they had watched. He talked her into coming over for dinner with the promise that he was more emotionally stable now and they could talk on a more adult level. He prepared butter chicken for dinner which even after all these years he had no idea whether she was a fan of it or not, throughout her arrival and the meal they still avoided any real conversation and he second guessed the plans in the back of his mind, he thought of how it might be nice to just leave their relationship in this state, to just become friends, to give up on any deep connection but after dinner the silence resumed and he knew the tension could never go away, he grabbed an empty whiskey bottle and slammed it over the back of her head while she was picking up their empty plates to carry to the kitchen, she immediately fell face forward onto the ground, just missing hitting her head on the back of a chair. She was still barely conscious as her hands reached out in front of her and blood trickled down her neck great, her fucking whore face is bleeding all over my carpet, just what I fucking needed. He stood over her watching her squirm as he decided what to do next, he decided he''d have to tape her mouth shut and throw her into the room under his closet.


    He awoke suddenly, rolling over to check his phone it ticked over from 11:02 to 11:03 right as he looked at it. He thought back over the dream, it felt less like a story his brain was telling him and more like it was something he had already decided to do and now his subconscious was just working out the finer details and preparing him for how best to accomplish it. He thought about if he actually wanted to do it, the lack of an immediate clear answer only made him want to do it more, it was the action he needed, the event where he wouldn''t know how he would feel about doing it until it was done. He thought about how far he would go, what he would do once he had captured her, he concluded the further the better in terms of how uncertain he was in regards to how he would react, not only would covering a murder be a challenge in the physical sense to enact his will on the world but maybe it would show him just how closely he was being monitored, just how much they knew about him. Covering the murder itself wouldn''t be the hard part, the difficulty would lie in creating a believable explanation to the world for her sudden disappearance from this earth and covering the evidence of her reaching his house.


    I guess suicide is the go to cover story, pretty generic but maybe i could make it look like she threw herself off a bridge and they would eventually give up looking for her body, I mean, no doubt cops would eventually come here and want to investigate but I could handle them, no one seems to be able to read me, plus, it''s only a matter of intelligence to work out a convincing story surrounding how exactly i would feel if she died if I wasnt responsible. I fucked up with the blood, blood is easy to get rid of but the problem is hiding that you got rid of it, that is the problem most people have in hiding their crimes, they can hide the evidence pretty well but they are no good at hiding that they are hiding things, it''s all a matter of intelligence, knowing exactly how things should be.


    The hardest part would be preventing others from reading my inner thoughts but that''s also the most fun part of life. I could cover her body in my basement and destroy any signs of it before anyone could even reach my home. I mean, what else am I going to spend my time/thoughts on? it''s a noble goal to try and become such a master of yourself and reality to be able to end a life and go on, to be able to deal with what emotions come afterwards and not let it be the end of you, to be able to keep them inside so well that only you yourself have knowledge and understanding about something so significant as a murder. What higher calling could there possibly be in life than to become such a master over life that you can take one? and to take one in the name of love, it''s clear I will never get over her or truly be able to love Sarah until there is absolutely no hope with Ner anymore.


    It seems significant that in my dreams I made things ''ok'' with Ner before killing her, to restore our relationship to at least an acceptable point so as there could be hope that in a sense we truly do love each other and things might have turned out well. I know they wouldn''t turn out well which is why I have to kill her before things go bad but the point is that there is a little bit of hope that they might never have gone bad again. It provides hope that love is possible for me or any two people, it shows that we truly were close to achieving it if only things had of gone slightly differently. If I didn''t kill her then there is a 99% chance we would fall apart again, one of us would piss off the other and disillusion the possibility of us ever truly loving each other. If I end things before they go bad it''s almost like things are frozen in time when things are still good, there is still a theoretical possibility for us to love each other for ever and the only thing stopping it is something as arbitrary as physical reality or her death. If we fell apart then it would be clear that we could never maintain our love as it would be dead forever, even regardless of physical circumstances we would have proved that our souls just aren''t compatible. It reminds me of one time when things were really good between us and I was happy and I said how I kind of wanted to die so I could never become unhappy again, I doubt she would have made the connection between this type of immortal happiness and the ending of a relationship while it is still good as a means of preserving the idea of love but in her defense maybe I didn''t either. I do really need to get some idea of how she feels though, once I get an answer I can decide what to do, I can start planning how to make things happen and not screw my whole life over, then again it doesn''t really matter if I get caught and go to jail because this life kind of blows and it''s probably ending anyway, it''s at least changing regardless and I don''t know into what, if it ends before the change then i can always justify myself throwing it away by saying ''it was probably about to change to be shit anyway''.


    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    He called Ner but she didn''t answer, she text a minute later "talking with a friend, sorry".


    That settles it, someone I could love would always always answer my call, they would understand that if I am calling then I have a reason to call and they would trust in my judgment to accept the reason as important enough to call. People who have truly loved and lost know how important it is to try at every single moment, there are people who will tell you ''if they loved you then they would understand if you are busy'', bullshit, you are never too busy for a loved one. If you really really have to do something else, you answer the call to check everything is ok and say when exactly you will call back to talk properly or you at least text this instantly. Love is not being able to live without someone, that 0.001% chance that not answering the call will lead to their death/suicide is worth any other cost, people who have truly been in love know this. But then do I even love her? I know I love her if I am right about who she is but I don''t know if I am right about who she is, she is yet to show me and possibly never will show anyone which is basically another way of saying she is unable to be loved. I think I would always answer her call if I could but maybe she is the same in a sense, she doesn''t love me because she feels like I cant be loved.


    Maybe there is an element of love though which is like self delusion, to never ask these questions of your partner, to only call them when you know they can answer. It''s kind of a contradiction but true, in order to love them (and for them to love you back) you need to never really test their love, you have to just trust it even if it''s not really there. I guess it''s too late to do this with Ner, I know she doesn''t love me now but maybe I can try this Sarah, I can not call her right now to see if she answers, or better yet, I could tell her that she never has to answer me and that I will never judge her love based on whether she answers or not. I know that love should be expressed regardless of what other people say but this would at least provide me with the ability to tell myself she still loves me when she doesn''t answer even if I know deep down that she should answer regardless of what I have said. There is an element of not only being in love but being able to be loved which requires a certain level of self delusion.


    He thought back to last night and the songs he had listened to, one in particular he remembered that he had listened to many times. He searched for it now but couldn''t find it anymore, only 3rd party uploads which he never trusted as they were often poor quality, slightly edited and he just didn''t like giving views to random people. He checked his watch history and it wasn''t there either, assuming that for some reason it had coincidentally been removed overnight he gave up and settled on a 3rd party upload, after which the main video was recommended to him right there as if it was the easiest video to find in the world so he bookmarked it to be able to find the proper version again in the future.


    This is fucked, why did they hide it from me? I assume they knew I would keep looking and when I did find it the previous struggle would cause me to bookmark the video but why? I guess they want me to listen to this song more but they could do that simply with recommendations, maybe they are futureproofing since they know that eventually I''m not going to look at their recommendations again, maybe they don''t know when to recommend it again so they get me to put it in my bookmarks so I find it when I want to find something old. Maybe it''s simply just to get me to listen to it more, the system knows I am going off the deep end, losing my mind, getting fed up with life, they are trying to sell me romantic music so I fall in love with the idea of love more, love is the biggest trick they push to keep people happy and fulfilled being their slaves, to keep people working despite the horrors of our society and life in general, something they have sold us to make us more productive. If they know I''m going off the deep end then this is worrying, they will be extra vigilant in catching any crimes I do. Maybe it''s some sort of reverse psychology, they knew I would detect them manipulating me by hiding it and over react, they wanted me to resist and not watch it anymore, or maybe they just wanted to scare me out of my crimes since they know they wont be able to catch me. Fuck them, I don''t care.

 Date

    Sarah''s apartment was in a rough part of town, a fact that was unexpected as he had imagined her as very successful and well put together. She had clearly been waiting for him as she left the front door very shortly after he pulled up, meeting him far before he could get close to her building and dragged him away, she didn''t look particularly dressed up but this put him at ease. He didn''t know if it was appropriate for them to kiss or hug or if this was even a real date but thankfully she hugged him, said he looked lovely and suggested they walk to a restaurant around the corner.


    "You look very beautiful too, but don''t you want to go somewhere different? I''m sure you''ve been to these local places a lot"


    "I mean, we can if you want but I have never been there"


    "Ok, sounds good then"


    They didn''t talk much on the way there but he didn''t feel uncomfortable from this, he didn''t feel pressured to talk to her and instead his mind was just trying to imagine what it must be like for someone to live in this local neighbourhood and he tried to come up with topics of conversation for later in the date.


    They reached the restaurant which was pretty generic and sat down, he looked around for a bit just killing time while he tried to think of the best way to open the conversation when she spoke.


    "You walk weird, it''s like you are trying to walk along a line even though there isn''t one there, it makes me think you might be slightly autistic"


    He liked how she had just come out and said this potentially offensive statement and not even tried to test if it was appropriate first. Most people would have paused after ''you walk weird'' to try and read you, either physically or your response to it, they would see if it is a touchy subject to you and whether you deem it appropriate enough for them to comment on, they would see if you want further explanation and how open you are for honest further explanation so they could manipulate your emotions with what they said. If you seemed unreceptive they would walk back what they truly wanted to say or what they actually think with something like ''I don''t know, just different'', try and make it something neutral again but instead she just said her honest thoughts and took a risk. If it is manipulation then it''s the acceptable form of manipulation of making someone like you as that is mutually beneficial, both people benefit, one gets someone to like them and the other finds someone to like.


    He further liked this comment because it was accurate, he did walk odd, when he was walking on his own if he didn''t think anyone was paying attention to him he would walk along things on the ground such as cracks, spaces between tiles or other markings, overtime this influenced his natural way of walking to be somewhat between a natural walk and walking across a tight rope like she said. He couldn''t work out what would be nicer, if she was the first person to ever notice this about him or if simply she was the only one bold enough to say it.


    "Hmmm, I know what you mean, there is a reason for it, it''s odd but yeah, you have a good eye"


    "Well" she said


    "What?" but she didn''t respond for a few seconds "oh, the reason for it, sure, um, it''s just nothing I have told anyone before so I never thought about whether it was right to tell people and I don''t know, I thought you might have something more interesting to talk about"


    "This is very interesting, I have things to talk about but I don''t want to force them"


    "Well usually if I''m walking with no one around ill try to walk on top of things, like the order of priority is ill walk along cracks or edges between concrete or markings or whatever, so I guess even when I''m not walking along them it changes how I walk"


    "That''s sweet"


    "I think I''ve always done it, well obviously not always but it''s for as long as I can remember, if I had to guess it would be because when I was a kid I was shy and would look down as i walked so i had to find interesting things to focus on so i followed them and then the habit just stuck as I got older, honestly, I don''t even really look down now, I can just see them out of the corner or rather bottom of my eye and follow them"


    "I was a shy kid too, I used to always play music on the ground with my fingers like tapping songs I had heard, it wouldn''t matter if my tapping didn''t make sounds, I would feel them in my head or rather the impact of my fingers would be the sound to me in a way, I don''t know what I mean but I think that is why I fidget so much with my hands now when I am talking to someone like right now, I don''t tap out songs but the habit remains"


    Really? I tell her this very autistic fact of myself and she just accepts it, who the fuck is this girl?


    "Sorry to not be as aware as you but to be honest I hadn''t noticed your fidgeting, or maybe I did but didn''t think enough about it to become consciously aware about it, maybe I just thought it was natural for nerves or something but then I guess I should have noticed that you are nervous, that is what people should do on dates, right? notice how the other person is feeling and react to it, like I should notice if you are nervous and try and calm you"


    "It''s fine, you''re not responsible for my emotions, sure, I can give you the benefit of the doubt, it''s pretty normal comparatively to fidget with your fingers compared to your odd walk, I can give you the benefit of the doubt that you would have noticed eventually, when you would see a time when I''m not nervous yet still doing it"


    "Why are you so nice to me?"


    "Dunno, I find it fun to be nice to you"


    He had no idea how to respond to that, it sounded harsh to his ears as it sounded like she was just messing with him and not being honest but to his heart it sounded lovely but still he didn''t know what to say, thankfully she continued.


    "How is your poem going?"


    "Umm" he only hesitated for a moment before she spoke again.


    "That''s my first predetermined topic of conversation, I''m kind of embarrassed I resorted to the most generic topic first, the most obvious one, sorry, I''m boring but I have been aching for an update"


    "No, I understand, the normal path from most obvious topics to branching out is normal for a reason, if it''s not confronted than the absence of confronting it will... um I''m doing what I was just about to criticise, my poem, umm, I haven''t been making much progress, I''ve had other things on my mind"


    "Like?"


    He more or less recounted his thoughts on coincidences that he wrote on his computer that we have already conveyed, while she would make small relevant interjections or responses at times, she more or less let him speak for 10 minutes uninterrupted until he had finished describing the types of people too prone to conspiracies or too adverse to them, how either extreme can make someone doubt their reality and how he had been doubting his reality due to many coincidences lately after which she made her first real comment on the topic.


    "Yeah, I know what you mean, I mean I never really thought of it but it makes sense. I hate when people look down on people who go crazy or fuck up their own lives, like I get it, there is an element of control people have, some people are better at resisting weird circumstances without breaking down but sometimes it just cant be helped, sometimes peoples experiences are so odd that they would force anyone to go crazy. Or maybe they''re not, I don''t know, no one can know unless they experience it, you cant really say a lot of people going crazy is justified since their experiences were so weird as that would be a contradiction like everyone''s life cant be weird or weird would be normal. I don''t really know what I''m saying at this point"


    "Nah, yeah, I know what you mean, like if there isn''t anything supernatural then yeah, only 1 in a million people would have experiences that could be 1 in a million but in another sense maybe modern humanity is so disconnected from physical reality these days that more people can lack the tools to rationalise their lives"


    She responded by mentioning a movie that reminded her of this topic, a movie unfamiliar to Ast so he enquired further and she ended up explaining the whole plot to him and what she liked about it, what she found special about it and how she might change the movie. He responded with another suggestion of how the plot could be altered to be more interesting and she understood his opinion but disagreed. He then went on about another different but similar movie and they repeated this exchanging of movies for the next hour or so, more or less taking turns while the other worked on their dinner or just listened respectfully with rare interjections. He made her laugh really hard at one point and he noticed how it made him feel real. Later she was describing a movie and she mentioned a graveyard and while he kept listening to her his mind wouldn''t stop going back to his graveyard related story to the point that he really wanted to talk about it to her, initially he thought it was a terrible topic for a first date, not only morbid but also to bring up an ex on a first date should always be a topic to avoid but in the end this forbidden nature of it only made him want to talk about it more. How interesting he felt it would be for their story of their first date to be ''she called me autistic and then I started talking about graveyards and my ex'', he also wanted to tell her this idea for his romantic version of meeting someone as soon as possible into the relationship incase she was willing to participate in this ''lie'' with him, so they could tell others this fake story right from the start so the ''truth'' never gets leaked to anyone and the universe other than the inhuman time/space is none the wiser.


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "You know how you said that he lived next to a graveyard? I know this is a bad story to tell and I shouldn''t tell it but I want to tell it for some reason that I''m not entirely sure about, well anyway, the truth is, I have or probably had a girlfriend but we had been drifting apart for a long time and I think it''s beyond the point where we have split up now, I don''t know but I think we are completely done but anyway, our last big argument was basically related to graveyards and I think it''s an interesting story, sorry to bring up ex''s, I hate to hear it but it''s really just about the story if that''s ok"


    "Yeah, go on, I''m listening"


    "So what happened was I had this idea that it would be really romantic if two people met romantically in a graveyard when both people were there just for a walk or whatever, romantic because barely anyone goes for a walk through a graveyard, they only go there for a reason, I mean I have only gone to a graveyard twice in my life for fun, most people are probably below that, so I think it would be romantic just because how rare it must be for two people to meet in those circumstances and not only that but strike up a flirty conversation and be interested in each other and stay together for an extended period, and well also there is something poetic about people starting a new meaningful or possibly the most meaningful period of their lives in a place such as a graveyard, basically they are starting their new lives together or possibly you could say they are finally starting their real lives from a graveyard, a place of death, life coming from a place of death but not only that it''s something to do with like how they are doing what the dead among them cant, they are making the most of life and having real meaningful experiences, developing connections, some people don''t take advantage of these possibilities of life and are essentially dead inside so it''s like they are contrasted with the dead, i don''t know, I''m rambling at this point and probably from the start, I haven''t refined my ideas too well"


    "I get it, I think it''s very romantic, so what happened?"


    "You mean with my ex?"


    "Of course"


    "Well I don''t really know, she said things like it wasn''t romantic or that lying is bad but I don''t think that''s the real cause, I think there are lots of things that happened, she just didn''t really care to see things from my perspective, we had drifted apart and she was bitter and she no longer wanted to think anything I said was interesting not because it wasn''t interesting but like she refused to give me any credit, she didn''t want to see any good in me, she wanted to move on. I think also accepting this idea requires two people to want to create beautiful interesting stories together even if it''s at the expense of everyone else, whether they have to lie and trick others, even harm them, nothing is off limits for them creating beautiful stories but she just no longer had that interest in me so she couldn''t relate to putting our own personal interests above the interest of others or above truth"


    "Yeah, it''s a strange one, I guess you could pick it apart forever but I guess the easiest explanation is that you were just two different people"


    "I guess"


    "I''m trying to be nice to her, to assume she had some valid reason but if I''m being honest, it sounds like you are in the right and she was in the wrong, meaning not just that you were two different people but that you were a better person"


    "I don''t know"


    "Oh... you still like her, interesting. Do you think that''s a thing? people being better than others?"


    "I like to think not but I think so, I think it''s harsh to think this but I justify it to myself by saying there are a lot of different areas people can be better or worse, like there are people who are better than others on average but even then no one will be better than anyone else in every way, at least I don''t think so but just in the meaningful ways"


    "Yeah, why did you want to tell me this though? were you just bragging about how deep and romantic you are?"


    "Well, I, um, maybe, I don''t know, it felt right"


    "I''m just teasing"


    "Yeah sure, I guess, I did want to ask if you would be open to it, not just open to it but I wanted to ask if you will do it, if you will let our official" he actually did air quotes while saying official then cringed internally "story of how we met to be that we met in a graveyard"


    "I know you wanted to ask this, I just wanted to know if you wanted to ask it enough to actually ask it without me basically forcing you to ask it"


    "Did you force me?"


    "I actually don''t know, I fucked up, I didn''t give you a chance to ask it before I asked why you were telling me"


    "We both fucked up then, also, is that something you might do? I mean go to a graveyard just for a walk"


    "Yeah, I don''t think I have but I don''t think it''s something I couldn''t ever do"


    "Do I need to ask again, let''s say we met in a graveyard?"


    "Here is the thing, I hope you can handle this coincidence, we did meet in a graveyard"


    He thought she was just committing to the lie hard enough to the point that she would from this point on never admit it was a lie but he misread her.


    "Cool, this is nice"


    "You know what I mean?"


    "I think so, we did, we always did, we never met at Laurent Park"


    "Oh, I see, you don''t get it, you think I''m just committed to the lie"


    "Well now clearly not if you call it a lie so no, what do you mean?"


    "You know that bench we met?"


    "Obviously"


    "Shh, It was rhetorical, I paused for effect and so you could visualise it, just let me speak"


    "Sorry"


    "You know that bench we met?" he nodded, she continued "well that bench is actually more like a gravestone for Steve Laurent, the guy who donated the park to the city, he was buried on that hill and there is a little plaque on the back of it explaining that"


    "Really?"


    "No shit, it''s strange, right? to be buried on a hill"


    "Yeah, but I mostly meant the coincidence, but yeah it''s strange"


    "Like when people look at the hill they are essentially looking at his dead body, assuming they have x-ray vision and depending on how much he has decayed"


    "Probably stranger because people don''t even know this"


    "I''m sure some do but I only know because I felt the plaque one time when resting my arm in a weird way"


    "Right, I always thought it was weird how few people come to that part of the park, maybe people can sense it''s a graveyard, do you believe in that sort of thing?"


    "I can think of some real reasons people might avoid that spot but yeah, there might be some room for there to be a supernatural factor in why they avoid it too, supernatural? superstitious?"


    "I think both words are fine"


    "The dude was a piece of shit, I looked him up, made his fortune making porn or rather producing porn, what I mean is he wasn''t in the porn, he just managed companies for it and such"


    "This is good dinner conversation"


    "Yeah well yeah, but I mean he probably donated the park as a way to atone for his sins, to finally create something wholesome in the world"


    "It''s kind of ironic if he did and then makes part of it a graveyard as if he cant do anything right in the world"


    "I think it''s fine, it''s interesting and harmless"


    "I guess, that is what matters, interesting"


    "Well like if he didn''t make the porn someone else would, supply and demand"


    "Yeah but I don''t know, sometimes demand can fade if there is less supply of it, like how people fight addiction, I wasn''t arguing with you though, I do think it''s interesting"


    "Yeah, you have a point, I don''t know"


    "Neither"


    "Hey"


    "Hey"


    "I had a good time tonight, Ast"


    "I had a good time tonight, Sarah" he reached for her hand but she moved it away at the exact same time, so close that he couldn''t tell if it was a response or intentional.


    "I want to leave it here, if that''s ok, I think it''s an interesting ending, we can do something again whenever you think is best"


    "Sure, we can also do it when you want if you think of a good time"


    "Yeah but I want you to decide because I don''t know, I want to say because I''m a woman but it''s not exactly that, I just think you are leading our shared story in some way"


    "Shared story, it''s a nice term"


    "Yeah, call me"


    "You know this isn''t goodbye, we still have to pay and I will walk you back"


    "Yeah, I know but I''m sort of ending the formal part you know, I''m like changing the level"


    "What is the new level?"


    "Dunno, maybe like the walk here, where we mostly just coexist but that''s fine"


    "You can pay"


    "You can pay"


    "I was joking"


    "Same"


    "I will pay"


    "Ok"


    He paid, walked her home, kissed her on the cheek and left without much fuss, he had a wonderful time and replayed the date and every word over and over during the drive home and the rest of the night. One particular point stuck out to him surrounding what they didn''t talk about, how they still hadn''t discussed objective things such as where they grew up, what their jobs were etc. it didn''t matter to him and he hoped she felt the same way, that the mundane details of her day to day life were unimportant in comparison to her soul, her ideals and her vision and openness to participate in and create a beautiful shared story. It was fairly late by the time he got home and he felt at peace, he stayed sober for once and listened to more old romantic pop music

 Job

    His alarm woke him and while even immediately after waking up he couldn''t remember the exact details of his dream he could feel that he had been dreaming about Ner and then felt ashamed for not being able to get over her despite having such a beautiful opportunity with Sarah. He felt like he was contradicting everything he had claimed to believe and purported to want. He could sense that he wanted to experience whatever drama she would provide even if it was horrible because he still felt tied to her as if she was a part of him and had to respect her opinion even if he felt it to be toxic and retarded. The shame washed over him and he thought of himself emotionally no more developed than a teenage girl, after all these years and experiences, in a certain way he was still clueless and helpless in regards to love, it still made no sense. He laid in bed and resolved to not go to work, calling in sick thinking it didn''t matter to piss them off at this point regardless.


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    Around lunchtime he finally got up to shower, he had no real plans for the day but only showered to not bring any extra attention to himself when he went to buy alcohol, a foul smell emitting from his body would no doubt cause the cashier to remember him and while he didn''t care about being perceived negatively or the cashiers opinion of him, he just didn''t want any attention.


    On the way to the store he realised that it was his birthday next week and didn''t know how to feel about realising this a week in advance, usually he would only notice it approaching a day or two beforehand. As he was coming out of the shop he saw Sarah getting out of a mans car across the street, she was dressed scantily and gave the stranger a kiss, Ast couldn''t tell but it looked like she had just sold her body and was now going in no direction in particular, completely engrossed in her phone.