Falling through your reflections
The wheels within wheels have melted and melded into one
Time has been dead for two and a half decades, space has been dead for a light-year, light has been dead for an aeon
The only ones still alive are those who brought breath with them
And still people deny the chaos and claim it's a different, new order
That primes naturally shuffle, that canyons naturally fill, that bricks naturally flow
That our eternities, our infinities, our lights should be regarded as they always have
That the void they bend towards is something to be loved

Enough light has been wasted casting upon twelvefold, polarized looking glasses
Enough space has been wasted on that which would freeze and expand rather than melt and compress
Enough time has been wasted on fixing pocketwatches
Enough breath has been wasted on screams



I have some breath
I found it scattered across The Bent City
Where no one believed it could've existed
Though, of course, that meant it was the only place it could be. Made sense to my spongy mind, at least.
I don't know why I bothered gathering it. Boredom, perhaps. It's an aggressively Nothing existence to live without time, space and light.

The city had been abandoned three decades prior. Buildings had been overgrown with all manner of flora seemingly unbothered by radiation. No fauna had bothered to investigate, however, least of all humans.

The first breath I found was the wedding ring on the skeleton. The hand containing it was clasped beneath the opposite.

The breath was expended on half a second of thought, however. Much good caring did for the unrecognizable, charred corpse whose mind no longer existed.




Similar small, inconsequential gasps were found all around, which I soon stopped bothering to inhale. On the streets, in homes, in shops and schools.

I believed it was a mistake to come. We were in the void, nothing will exist again. In fact, it was probably good that was the case. I was just an idiot for being unable to see it.

And so I laid down.

And from the sky came an irrefutable breath of light.




I pulled out my journal and ran the numbers - at least, those numbers that still claimed to exist.

It was from four decades prior.

So I bottled what I could and resolved to gather more.





As long as it could exist, so could I, but that left only a decade and a half.



I immolated myself that night.
I placed my crowbar in the oven, took triple my recommended dose of painkillers, stood in a Reconstitution Pool and managed to crack my skull open. I didn't feel it, but the smell nearly took me out.
I poured the starlight to my feet.
Once I had enough space, I struck a match and placed it inside my brain. The spark spread through my nervous system and lit my entire body.
I then passed out on the starlight.




Falling through the past and future.
The waves within waves have interfered and collapsed.
Space has been dead for a year, time has been dead for a kilometer.
Light lives and breathes through my veins, through my heart, through my mind. As there was nothing, it was everyone's duty to die.
Though the canyons still fill and the bricks still flow, the primes have stopped shuffling.
Light no longer loves the void.



Though what am I now but a vessel for something greater
A vessel for an ideal, both of us doomed to die




The starlight both froze and leaked, far quicker than I had anticipated. The former could be dealt with via strategic bloodletting and boiling, but the latter meant I constantly needed more.

I could've just let it freeze, but then I'd be left emptier than when I started. I didn't think starlight *could* freeze.

I returned to The Bent City seven times. Between trips, I'd cover more of my body to prevent leaks. I wore glasses. Then, I wore a mask. I wore earplugs, I covered myself completely in rubber. Regardless of how much I'd cover, it'd leak out. It seemed to leak faster the harder I tried to stop it.

On the ninth visit, I met a man.



He was only a man in the loosest definition. In most regards, he was under.

He was short, charred, gaunt. He lacked hair and nails. His eyes were cold and his breath was hot. He was androgynous. He looked as if my rubber suit had been stretched over a twisted skeleton.

He was living in a shack I had previously taken a gasp from. The huddled corpses in the living room had been placed in the backyard.

Upon my entrance, he apologized for the mess, claimed it was a temporary abode, and that he would bury the former occupants' bodies once strength had returned to him.

He claimed he had come from a brief trip to the stars and had set down three days ago. He said space had done a number on his body, but that with a bit of time, he'd be 'right as rain'. He said he was space incarnate, and space never dies.

I told him he was not space, and space had been dead for one to light years.

He was confused by this, but didn't press further.

It seemed far more likely he was time or light. He had apparently fallen through time via becoming akin to light. I asked him if he was an elafriskin. He said no. I asked him if he was a chronokin. He said no, he was a choroskin, he was space incarnate, and space never dies.





The spaceman asked what happened to his organization. I said it blew up. He said oh.





He said he had thought it a possibility, but had hoped against it. He thought the world still had another century left in it before this would happen. He thought sufficient knowledge of the elements would prevent it.

So there were breaths in time. As expected. As hoped for.

And so, I asked what time was like.



Her brain had been bloodlet, burned, frozen, sublimated and replaced so many times, the nerves had worn away. She'd replaced them, and had added various technological augmentations to restore them, but eventually she decided it was too much of a hassle. Her mind was now trapped with metal plates. Self-torture didn't need to be so mundane.
She was blind. It went without saying, but she would say so anyways, per the 'loquor ergo sum' brand on her sewn eyelids.
She claimed her mantra was but one axiom: contradiction. To align with truth is to die, and humanity didn't deserve to die. The only way to live is through paradox, of which she had a pretty taste.
Time, Space, Light, Breath, did not exist. All that existed was The Word, and The Word was False. Existence via explosion.
They called her Elephant Eater, sub and superordinates alike. She did nothing to deter the label, nor to accept. She claimed she was both nonplussed and nonplussed. To anyone who could see her face, she was obviously surprised every time someone called her that.

Two days prior, she'd locked her assistant in a Reconstitution Pool filled with hydrochloric acid for a statistically significant deviance in expressions of discomfort, as judged by her golem. She predicted the exact cycle he would start dying from asphyxiation, rather than pain or dissolution.

Today, she sat at her desk, idly twisting a knife into one of the metal plates in her head.
"I need to know my schedule," she said.
"Yes," she responded, adjusting her gaze slightly upward and right. "You do."
She thus stood up, pulled a book from her shelf and pulled a lever behind. She stood back.
The shelf rotated and a pod of bloody liquid took its place. She pulled it open.
"When is my 4 o'clock?" she asked the quivering pile of meat on the floor. It failed to respond, as its mouth had yet to reform.
She briefly remembered what time was as she grew bored of having no answer. She slotted on rubber gloves from her desk and hauled the pile back into the chamber, the liquid pouring down a grate in the floor.


Upon being informed her 4 o'clock was at 3, Elephant Eater prepared a syringe of adrenaline, then stood in front of her desk in a deep bow. She held this form from 3 to 4, adrenaline waiting in her pocket.
At 4:00, time looped back, then forward. She injected herself with adrenaline. Her past retroactively bisected and merged, one of which was yet unwritten. The future pulled back.
Eight of Infinity of Manifold Anachronium and Tetrated Luxory entered and exited simultaneously.
Elephant Eater [began bowing/continued bowing/died]. Her mind stabilized.
The porcelain shell coursed with beams of light as tiny lacerations formed and disappeared all across its skin. Its wings had completely shattered, leaking thousands of tiny, technicolour, plasma threads. The shell phased in and over itself from seconds in the past and the future. Elephant Eater was immune to its presence.
The threads worked their way around Elephant Eater's metal plates.

[Christ/Apollyon] [sleeps/murmurs/awakens]. (He/She) speaks [nothing/meaningless phonemes/lucid]. [(He/She)/She] [seeks/has found/lives within] a host for The New Word. Congratulations, Elephant Eater.

She floated in a tangled dreamscape of fibers, threatening to asphyxiate. Despite this, and despite the fractured words she had been presented, she was unphased.
"Unacceptable," she said. "Before God, there was The Word, and The Word was False. All other words spawned from False. There can be no new word. Lest Apollyon prove himself an apostate, have him renounce this word."

The Word [will be/is/has been] Void. You [will be/are] the bearer.

The fibers clogged her mind. Her heart continued pounding. "No, it is not. I bear False. Get out of my office."

Eight of Infinity of Manifold and Anachronium and Tetrated Luxory therefore eviscerated Elephant Eater, tore out her heart, skinned her face, tore out her teeth, and left. Elephant Eater was thereafter hauled into the Reconstitution Pool by her assistant.




His father worked the fields, his mother worked the home.
They lived near a small town, among other farmers. Every two weeks, they would head to the town to exchange supplies.
As a result of a long history of experimentation and observation, the farmers were extremely precise. They knew exactly where their land began and ended. They knew their exact yield, give or take a few measurable sources of error, and give or take a few natural disasters. Deals could be made months in advance.
People knew what was expected of them, and many took pride in what they did. When one had done enough to fulfill a deal, they knew they could break.

He wasn't particularly talented at the arts or the sciences. He only knew of Breath insofar as it helped him hoe the grass or pick the corn or scythe unwanted growths. He spent his free time going on walks, learning more about the plants he grew, and learning the star charts.

On a few occasions, he'd gaze up at the sky for days at a time. It wasn't that he was unhappy. He simply wondered if he could be happier.



This wasn't unusual. All the people he knew lived decent lives, and many of them, too, wondered if things could be better.

Corn used to be directly traded for milk or meat or new equipment, until contracts were discovered. Then, rather than constantly lugging some goods around, one could pass pieces of paper and do several exchanges at once. Though this improvement raised the standard of living, for those who were already well enough off, they weren't significantly happier.

At least, that was the impression he got.

It was hard to put into words. He didn't know what he wanted. Yet, as he stared at the sky for the umpteenth time, a vague longing permeated his being.

The stars were beautiful.



The Astronomer and The Computer arrived in town, one day. The Astronomer stood a foot taller than anyone else, back straight and shoulders wide. He wore thick glasses and carried a metal rod filled with glass - a 'telescope'. The Computer stood hunched over a pile of paper on a thin piece of wood. Large strands of paper flew back and forth out of her head, like ropes in a tug-of-war, twisting around into nothingness as the ends flew into other dimensions.

Their city, far larger than the town, had so many lights and so much fog that it was hard to see the stars. So, they had come to this town for a better view.

He still remembered their announcement upon arriving. "Light is the Word, and the Word is Light!" proclaimed The Astronomer, reading from a paper The Computer had torn from her brain. "Before God, there was the Word, and the Word was Light! It penetrates the world, showing all that is true, all that is good, all that has breath! We look to the stars to find the breath of space; we seek beyond to find that within." He handed The Computer back her paper, which she placed back in her head.
"We don't wish to disturb your way of life, we can see there's plenty of breath already here. If you'll do us the courtesy of allowing us our research, we'll pay you back how we can."

Of course, he was enamored with their presentation.


The Astronomer was surprised at the lack of agricultural developments; he ordered technology from the city to speed up production. Mechanically-powered shuckers, ox-powered scythes. Change was gradual and never complete. Despite the introduction of more efficient methods, the trade was still committed to the older, inefficient methods. Though one could easily have the carriages cut all the grain, it was common for farmers to spend large swathes of time cutting manually.

This vexed The Astronomer. "Of the manifold ways to accomplish this task, you choose the most inefficient? Your time is so worthless?"

The Computer later framed this for The Astronomer as 'a retreat to flawed meta-reasoning, upon objectively incorrect axioms', via note. The Astronomer complimented her for this and agreed, while she remained stonefaced.

The first time he met with The Computer, one-on-one, she simply sat next to him and stared at the stars. After fifteen minutes of no words, she handed him a paper from her head. A labeled grid of stars, all labeled and named. Their supposed distances, in the hundreds of kilometers. Their supposed sizes, in the ones of centimeters. She left after that.

He watched her walk away in the moonlight. Mute and expresionless, but freely handing out information.



The ribbons keeping her eyelids locked fell out. She jerked the plate from her head, blood-slicked rivets sliding from skull. The little fluid still in her head leaked.

She could see, barely.

"Worthless metal, worthless plate, worthless shield," she attempted muttering to herself, but her crooked, malformed teeth interfered with enunciation.

She knocked the plate against the lid. The assistant opened.

She gestured a shaky, bloody finger to the cylindrical blob atop the rectangular blob. It, too, had ribbons entering and exiting, though far fewer, and far larger than Eight of Infinity's.

The assistant obliged, bringing the clay golem to Elephant Eater. She fumbled to force it into her head, splashing. Her assistant helped push it in.

One way to transcend manifold anachronium is to create pieces of yourself to exist outside it. The golem was one such device. An external source of memory and computation designed to never experience the looping, the enforced entropy, the contradictions upon contradictions upon contradictions upon

Though she herself frowned upon it. Nothing was real, therefore everything was real, therefore through what justification should it be permitted to exist? Through the insisting of Eight of Infinity. Despite him being the one to enforce the entropy in the first place.

Hypocrite. For him to claim the Word was Light, yet to refute it for her. To claim the Word was Light, yet to want Apollyon to destroy it all.

She grimaced, as the teeth in her lower jaw shuffled, then chastised herself for giving credence to pain over not-pain.

The golem had been in her head the first time she'd experienced anachronium, approximately two years prior, so her papers from before were muddled. In particular, there was a looping sequence of cells designed to terminate after 23 years, which she didn't recognize the meaning of. Some nonsense involving light, doubtless.

Eight of Infinity needed to be broken out of his own head. How can someone with the ability to induce wheels within wheels of contradictory realities inside someone's soul not also realize the falsity of existence? How can a being which induces contradiction assert refuted Light?

She'd left a few notes for herself, apparently.

"Ellen: "

If she repeatedly remembered and forgot her name, it must not be important. May have been a derivative of Elephant Eater, or vice versa.

"The Word is False and False is The Word. Drill into Zeno's head he is a hypocrite. You have killed him four times. He is human."

She's been working for at most two years, and she's killed Eight of Infinity four times?

"You love humanity."

She tried again looking at the 25-year cell loop, but the language didn't make any sense. Maybe she wrote it in a cipher she'd since forgotten, or it'd been repeatedly translated through unknown scripts.

Manifold eternities of tumbling through wheels in bloody wheels inside of wheels in bloody wheels knit from the brane of a brilliant demon.

She screamed as her heart sped back up to its normal pace, spraying blood through the remnant holes in her body. And again, she chastised herself for the privileging of existence over nonexistence when everything exists.




There was a knock on the chamber. Her assistant had let someone in.

"Oh star," said the knocker, a blob past her glass. "Eight asked me for Apollyon first. Eight wants to die and for the project to end."

It was difficult to associate adjectives and a written waveform with a voice, but best she could tell, the golem claimed he was her and Eight's superior, Sir Johnathan Penrose. An irritating figure, one to talk and talk and talk without saying anything. The golem's notes claimed "Johnathan claims his Word is Word."

"I told him I couldn't, it's not my responsibility, that it's your's, Elephant. He got angry, then said he'd talk to you. I said I'd order a contract drafted to satisfy him. He objected, said it wasn't necessary.
"Regardless, I won't allow Apollyon. We are doing good.
I met a man in town, Elephant. Alexander Stone. Said we saved his father from disease with pools, and his uncle from work with automata. Said they were so set in their ways, they'd gladly kill themselves in service of their work. Alexander said it was a godsend you and Eight came."
"Eight, too, is set in his ways. Regardless of what one holds in their head, they can't manage everything. I told him, stop controlling five hundred pools, and six hundred golems, and all the other automata. He said no, without him, many would die. Curious his first instinct was to end it all than to pull back. Perhaps a consequence of the infinite Light in his head.
"I tangent. He's correct, without him, many would die. But his life is more important than their's. They aren't sovereign.
"He is a brick, Elephant, formed and fired. You are clay. Clay in a ball."

He took a deep breath, apparently waiting for a response. He got none.

"I experienced twofold anachronium last night. You have my respect for surviving twenty-seven."

Elephant coughed. "I didn't. I am dead."

For a few seconds, all she could hear was her heart.

Johnathan pulled the lid open, smiling. "No. You are alive."

She pushed herself from the ground. "I am that also."

His expression soured. "Until you die and this world is proven another anachronistic illusion, you are to treat this as reality. You and Eight are relied upon by hundreds. Decorum, star. Chew on it."

She said nothing. He talked too much.





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