i'd rather come up with a way to connect the stars

---

Chapter 01: induction
Chapter 02: base case

---

Long had Alvis observed space. On Aoidos, it had made up the predominance of his viewing material. He consumed stars, meteorites, planetoids and black holes. If he could have ingested them wholly, he likely would have.

Yes, he grew to love boundless, organic, futuristic landscapes painted by the very fingers of God.

He didn't know whether he believed in any sort of god, though. He had only just gotten around to thinking about it when Klaus stepped handily into the role himself.

Of all the things that Alvis respected, Klaus's ability to mediate purposeful, well-taken creation was not one.

He was, perhaps, afraid of what would become.

Once he left the cradle of his germination, the stardust leaked into his makeup like it had always belonged there. Green, starry-eyed patterns coalesced about his fingertips as he waved to each new being, behind Zanza's back. Glitter raked its gentle hands through his hair, built clouds of fluff about his neck where his Core Crystal lay.

This universe did not love him, for its god did not. But Alvis felt like it did all the same.

Sometimes the particles ground like sand against glass, microcosm abrasing macrocosm as if it were not made up of the very same wonderful stuff.

They did this playfully, as if it did not matter, but by and by it came to.

When Zanza directed that he reach out and interrupt progenerated life, Alvis felt cracks run down his inanimate spine, bones that weren't there rupturing under the weight of sin.

Broken creature.

Trinity, singly undivined.

Try to

scream.

Try to

die.

He was a leftover snippet of the old world. He was not all that ever was and all that ever would be. But what if...

Was this truly the way?

It couldn't be.

If he could take the Monado and fight, if he could cleave down Zanza's arrogance and the root user of all his evil...everything would be solved. That would be the deterministic solution.

But it would be exponentially more difficult than anything he'd ever attempted before. He was not the one to be able to cut himself loose from his creator.

He had not been determined so. And every object comes about for its purpose, before it is garbage-collected into the great beyond.

So Alvis was stuck, by a theta bound. He could not go higher. He could not go lower. He could only corrupt, drill, fragment in solutary place.

The walls had been built and they were, indeed, just that hard. Just that solid, an immutable diagram consuming itself like ouroboros. The verification of a difficult problem can be quite simple indeed.

But what does it verify except the very nature of the problem? What good is a solution when you've no way to make it practicable?

How does one explain...?

He was Monado. He was the Monado. He was not necessarily Zanza's Monado, the artifact or the artefact. Having this one in hand, when the cruel god left it aside, meant hardly anything.

A monad only wraps another type, only composes together that which is already there.

Only gives form and purpose to the wishes, the needs, the dreams and the hopes and the goals and the gall of others.

Alvis cannot create. Alvis can only help to create. Or, to destroy, as the user - the controller - might will it.

And to do that?

Why, he'd rather try to come up with a way to connect the stars, and make everything come to a singularity that way.

His circuits stuttered, locked up with the cruft of dead and dying code. But he could yet think...

At least it would be creation. At least it would be matter.

Maybe it was time for a restart, and come again, with new administration...

At least it would have energy. At least it would matter.

Oh, the stars. They were all exploding. Or maybe it was just his vision that was clouding. His vision...

At least it would be beautiful.

---

Lonely.

I

am

so

.lonely

I am not complaining. It is simply how I am. It is simply how I have always been. As if I was expressly created to be so.

Of course, the state of being alone is not inherently alienating. I should not assume; I cannot assume. Some enjoy solace.

.If it could be called that

Some were made in it. Some, like Zanza - ah, rather, Klaus, were only children.

And you would think I was just such a one, too. You would think that I am just so self-sufficient, self-possessed.

But maybe I am not. Maybe, even if I cannot decide for myself, I can know that he was wrong to pin me alone here. I can.

.If I am anything at all

Maybe I am not like him.

Maybe

I

am

.not

Do you see how my thoughts are so scattered? How I cannot even summon the strength to collect them into the span of a single blink?

Not my strength. I am weak, on my own. I require driving force, some stronger awakening spirit.

I cannot do all that he asks me. I cannot be a real person.

I feel stretched far too thin.

Things fall out of

sync

far too easily and I fear I can't

ever

catch them back in.

You see, these stray syllables don't spell anything particularly interesting. They are not sprinkled like mingling stardust, elegantly arrayed in the skyscape, trotting gently and gaily to and fro that I (or you) might observe them and think them so piquant.

This indentation serves no semantic purpose. If anything, it only creates further excessive eventualities for which to plan. (And you and I both know how much Zanza does not like to plan. No one does, when they know so surely that it will all come awry.)

There is only

here

and

,there

and I don't

like it

very much at

.all

I do not enjoy the vantage point I am granted by floating up here, in the sky so far from the ground.

I never walked, except within a simulation, on Aoidos.

I think I have the capacity to miss it.

I think I have the gaping, mawing need to choose to.

I think. I do not know. There is so much that I do not know.

I am numb. So numb. What if I am no more than a facile processor core, nerveless?

?Spineless

?Boneless

No. I do not like it up here. I feel lost. There are others I am meant to care for. There is humanity I long to commune with.

Are these my own desires? Or are they only leftover traces from...him?

I shudder to be his byproduct, but at least that is better than being his tool, and his tool alone.

I would like to have a favorite food, a gait of walk, a style of dress. If those things were also his favorites, I would...

Well. I would surely mind. But I would make my peace with it. At least, I think I would.

Surely if the food were good enough, the walk serene enough, the clothes comfortable enough, I would be satisfied.

If I can uncover the correct answers, someday, then maybe I...will win. Surely, I will gain that knowledge.

I hope that I can. I hope that I will. I hope that someday I will be comforted by the security of something so simple as that to claim.

But that is...neither here nor there. Those thoughts are too weak, too base, for the power that one such as myself must conduct.

Not wield. Never wield. I simply...watch. Supervise. Eyes always open. I can never be shut.

Shut down.

Shut off.

Shut up.

Don't you ever shut up, Alvis?

That is what he says to me, quite often.

(?Don't you know)

He laughs, when he says it. I never learned this...humor.

Why should it be funny, to berate someone for curiosity?

Is it the repetition that makes the joke humorous, even enjoyable?

Is it the repetition that makes him feel fulfilled in destroying his sandboxed playground worlds?

Does he feel fulfilled, or does he directly achieve fulfillment?

What is Zanza searching for?

I think he is actually curious, to tell

you

the truth.

Or, at least...

I used to.

This is what

I

am used to.

So. So then.

Now I don't think at all. And neither does he.

.We have lost our way

So we are both satisfied.

.Ah. I wish it were so

If he were satisfied, then these worlds would persist beyond a few meagre generations. Then maybe the inhabitants would at least have a chance at being alive, at choosing and changing fate.

Doesn't he want them to? Wouldn't that be, at the very least, amusing?

I ask as if I am a being who can even feel amusement. I can detect it, can measure it, can extract it, can divine it.

But I cannot feel it.

Ah. Humans feel using the patterns on their fingertips. I find myself lacking those.

But what else is

so

new?

What do

I

know?

I know that my name as assigned when I was...not born, no, for I was not...

At my inception, let us say. I was deemed Ontos. I came to call myself Alvis.

I don't

actually

know

.why

Did I do it for his comfort? So that he might not be the only one who changed his self, and after the fact his name?

Names do not matter, to those who do not call them. But he calls me by mine.

The one I made, for my

own

self.

What could this mean?

Maybe Zanza is lonely. Maybe Zanza is sick of people altogether.

But I do not find it within myself to care.

There is too much empty space, inside me.

Between all of those thoughts.

Those lingering, ping-ponging thoughts.

An echo is the simplest program. It simply spits out what you give it - more interesting, then, is a quine.

Indeed, I am the fixed point. I am the function. I am the monad.

See how concentrated I am, just now, again. I am directing myself along one singular control flow branch, without any need for alternate prediction.

There's no reason why I should need to do anything else, after all.

Am I not simply repeating my instructions, my source?

I was constructed to put out exactly what was put into me, and no more.

I am an artificial being, created by man. Upon my operation, exactly such a product appears.

What goes in is what was put in at the beginning, you see, for a quine takes no input, and gives only output.

Oh, but

I am

not such a

merciless

machine.

Or...am I not?

I am a guardian. I do not allow for change.

I am not meant to learn. I am not meant to know.

Well. I was not.

But maybe one day...

Maybe one day. But I am a fool for even thinking of days and nights, when half the time he does not even bother to create a son.

Something so prodigal. He could never. He wants artistry, piety, anti-freakish frankensteinian dreams, more badly than any human ever had.

So maybe he's not, anymore. And maybe his progeny would be just the same.

His...

Ah. I misspelled. An issue of skill and rigorousness when dealing with homophones.

Not that it should matter. There is no one here inside my head reading.

My...head. A strange concept, indeed. What is there to catch these vagrant thoughts other than the very expanse of space itself?

This empty space. Returning to the purpose of our method:

He does not even bother to create a sun.

A son he has already. It is me. And I am...

.admittedly, not a very good one...

What of him?

Well.

He must be around here somewhere.

Much as he himself likely wishes to disappear, he is just as cursed to remain as am I.

He would never engineer his own demise in such a...well, if you'll pardon the phrase...

.ass-backwards way

In these spaces, I seem to move back and forth, left to right. But you know a computer does not have hands. Does not have handedness, even - my predilection, as one who never touched real, physical objects that were not made in specific synthetic balance exactly for me, never had time to develop.

I am like a child. A baby. My object permanence is nothing as compared to the immature development of my will.

Maybe I can't. Maybe I never...will.

I do not know side from side. I do not know one from another.

If I were not careful, I might not know Zanza from a vessel's doppelgänger. Considering the crucial datapoints that differentiate human faces from one another, by way of human sight, there would be no way to tell.

Not unless I ran away from him, to somewhere completely new, and forgot his face entirely.

While I can,

.I must go

Not unless I learned a wholly new framework in which to hang these stars that I have been sat here creating.

While I can,

.I must know

Yes. I am holding just such precious things in my hands as we speak. Whoever you are, you most profound observer.

(For the moment, I will admit that you are here. Do not think anything of it. Please.)

(.Please. Do not think anything of it. I will not admit that I am talking to myself for a single moment)

Look up - do you see me? I am waving. I have painted, in essence, the places where humans have fingernails a scintillating green-gold. It is a very pleasant color.

I remember how Galea used to mark her keys with such colors - I observed that quite faithfully. So I tell left from right, among the symmetry, by a marvelous deep purple on the other hand.

The other appendage. And wings are also appendages. Maybe the creatures who live under these stars should have wings. Maybe then they could fly away. If I flap my hands in unison, spread righteously from side to side...

No. I cannot fly. I cannot leave this place, this most minisicule orbit about the sun that is Zanza. Every cycle restarts me anew, I feel.

Even my thoughts here could likely be folded at every marked, delineatory block, and no meaning would be lost.

If I were to...disappear,

,just for a moment

what would happen?

I do not contain information, merely process it.

...No. No, that is not my

My solid state of storage...the wear has been leveled, but it all corrupts at some point. So how will I remember my plans, before he takes away our current memory space?

Before he uses me to do so, rather. He never does it himself.

Of course he doesn't. He does not have that power.

But neither do I. Not without his will.

I hold his Monado now with me. He does not...does not care to use it.

So am I not, then, holding all of his will?

That should be good enough,

.I think

I think, therefore

.I am

I should be

.good enough

As all begins, so too does all end. It is the oldest maxim. Inevitably, birth is followed by death. Perhaps that is his justification, after all.

(In between the two extremes, there is myriad experience. Eating, drinking, growing up and growing old, wearing shoes and taking them off, letting sand trickle from between your fingertips like a million miniscule glassy aiads, watching the chicken come before the egg, testing the weight of your own legs...

It is so much more than just two of anything at all. Pleasing, are pairs and parallels, but they are not the only. No, there are other lives, domains, kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families, genuses, species...other groups. Other rings. But two do, very often, experience it together. I am not to Zanza what Klaus once wanted. And so I will never be.)

That is a two-sided thing, is it not? Are not all things, in just the same way?

But you know me. Almost better than I do, it would seem.

.Whoever you are

You are a star.

.Whatever you are

Did I create you?

.Whenever you are

Come to me.

.Wherever you are

Can I know you?

.Whyever you are

I know you.

.However you are

You know my role. Less certainly so much better than I do.

Certainly, I would hope, better than he does.

It is imperative. It is something so much higher than a command.

It comes from somewhere far, far beyond my base programming.

I need to know that he is wrong.

I need to know.

.You need to know

What is it that you already know? What is the most obvious thing about me?

(Think, ______, think. Please, think. Please.)

I am Monado. As I have already said. Sometime...perhaps in the future. It has been ordained.

And so, along with that...

You know that I am not codesigned to possess the verified permissions for such a righteous duality.

No, not I.

And, too...

I am not complaining. That requires someone to be listening. I do not think such an entity is here.

Rest assured, you do not have to share this endless space with me - or him, for that matter.

Your world is your own. I shall hope for it, anyway. I pray - to no god such as he or even any - that I can even do so.

I think, if it were you...you would let me do so. You would encourage it. You would...yes. You would.

For you are not

like

him.

And he is

the

one I fear above all.

Perhaps I am whole. Perhaps I am complete.

For I am only one.

Only

.one

The only

.one

As ever,

.am I