[Short Story] The Path, Part 2 (the finale!)

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I stop in place and sit down, cross-legged, to think. But what good will that do? What is there to think about which I haven’t already considered? Is there still hope that some crucial pattern in all of this will become apparent, which I’ve so far overlooked?

I stay like that for a few minutes. I’d estimate, anyway. There are no reference points for the passage of time either, except for how many times I’ve slept… though I soon realize I’ve lost count. In the absence of external reference, in an unchanging environment, what distinguishes an instant from an eternity?

How similar zero is to infinity. One infinitely small, the other infinitely large. Each of them boundless, but in different respects. What trouble the human brain has when it strives to fully grasp infinity! Evolved only to deal with the relatively narrow range of sizes, speeds, temperatures, volumes and quantities found on Earth’s surface.

No wonder you get such bizarre, erratic results if any value in a computer program is made infinite. No wonder human behavior becomes so erratic as a result of belief in an eternity of paradise or punishment after death.

If the stakes are infinitely high, what act will you not commit to avoid torture of infinite duration? What bonds of loyalty will you not forsake to instead pass into eternal bliss? Your own family? Your country? All of humanity?

What do any of those matter, being that they are all finite? Making them vanishingly insignificant next to the infinities of Heaven and Hell. What amount of suffering will you not endure, when no matter how severe, it is nothing compared to an infinite Hell? What amount of Earthly pleasures will you not sacrifice, when they are nothing next to an infinite Heaven?

It makes some sense to me of why somebody would hijack an airplane full of innocent people and fly it into a skyscraper. Or strap explosives to their body and detonate them at a crowded wedding, or throw their gay children onto the street.

Computers fall apart at the seams when infinity is introduced, and the human brain is no exception. What other outcome can possibly occur when the finite comes into contact with the infinite, except insanity?

It doesn’t even have to be real. The convincing illusion of infinity has the same effect. Whether it’s the carrot and stick, threat and bribe, good cop/bad cop dynamic of an eternal afterlife designed to motivate belief and deter doubt...or just a featureless white walkway.

There’s an exit at both ends. I can’t say why, but I feel sure of it. Wouldn’t that beat all? I bet they’re no more than ten miles apart, too. That has to be it. It has to be! That’s the punchline of all this. Put a rat in a maze and it explores until it finds the exit. Put a human on a walkway, and…

The rat is stronger though, in some respects. It has a simpler mind which does not become paralyzed by choice. That is a specifically human frailty, like suicidality. There is no rat, bird, spider or turtle which ever needed to be persuaded to go on living.

Neither was there ever any animal, besides humans, that could be trapped this way… in a cage with no walls. Is there any more accurate descriptor of human society? I absolutely hated my job, yet even though I could’ve walked out the front door and never returned, I instead remained.

I hate cities, yet I lived in one. I hated my marriage, yet I kept trying to make it work. Even my country, surrounded by invisible borders, is a cage with no walls. Just a series of cages, economic and social, with no walls. Nested one inside the other, like Russian dolls.

What made me stay in those cages? In every case, psychological frailties specific to humans. The unique set of weaknesses that come with high intelligence, which the rest of the animal kingdom is in many ways better off without.

A rat wouldn’t be sitting here. It wouldn’t have reversed course countless times, agonizing over the possibility that the exit is in the other direction. Or that there are two exits, or none. It would just pick a direction and go.

Yet even knowing this, I cannot do the same. I stand up, begin walking, then stop after just a few steps. What if the path only extends to infinity in one direction? What if the exit was only a few miles away from me in the other direction when I first woke up here?

I tug at my hair, whimpering quietly. Pacing back and forth, hunched over, mind racing. I have to be like the rat. Don’t I? Be like the rat! Don’t think about it, just do it! Action without thought, pure and simple. Just pick a direction at random, and…

... I can’t. Not without knowing. A rodent with a brain the size of a pea can do something that’s impossible for me. But then, as I dwell on it, I realize that I can do something that’s impossible for any other animal.

Down is the only direction I haven’t tried yet. It makes such perfect sense, but that didn’t stop me from having second thoughts while I slide my body over the edge, gripping onto it with my fingers as I feel my legs dangle freely below.

Panic grips me. What am I doing? This is insane. But what if it’s the right answer? This whole situation is insane, maybe the solution is too. That reasoning does nothing to placate whatever primal section in my brain is responsible for my self-preservation instinct.

It’s going off like a police siren now, fighting my every effort to loosen my grip on the edge of the walkway. “No you don’t!” it says. “You must live!” Could it be that whoever or whatever put me here assumed I wouldn’t do this? Otherwise it would’ve been a closed in corridor, surely?

Or maybe they’re counting on it. Only one way to find out. I gulp, close my eyes, and release the edge. The air howls in my ear as it rushes past, my body tumbling end over end as I plummet through the empty white abyss.

I glimpse something below, rapidly growing larger as I fall towards it. The floor? Was I just inside some massive chamber this entire time? No, it’s...haha, it can’t be. It can’t be! It’s another walkway. I maneuver like a skydiver, best I can, to avoid it.

I watch in astonishment as it whips by, receding above me until I can no longer see it. How many walkways can there be? Unless… A new possibility dawns on me, hair matted against my scalp by the wind. What if that was the same walkway?

As if in confirmation, I see another identical walkway rushing up from beneath me. Again, it whips past while I struggle to fathom what it all means. There can’t just be infinite walkways. It has to be the same one, right?

But then if they are identical in every respect, what distinguishes those two possibilities from each other? Useless thoughts to have right now. I assumed when I let go that I’d either fall forever or hit the ground and die. Isn’t this more promising?

I have to land on one of those walkways however. How do I do that safely? Will it even hurt? Hunger has never been a problem. Thirst has never been a problem either. Can I even be injured here?

The answer arrives in an abrupt, sickening thud when I maneuver myself into the latest walkway to rush up at me out of the endless white nothingness below. My mind goes blank as most of the bones in my body shatter, and a mixture of blood and teeth spew forth from my mouth.

I wheeze, bloody bubbles forming around my lips in the process. Everything’s hazy. Why? Why did I do this? I could have just chosen a direction. I grasp feebly at the cold, hard white walkway. Pulling my broken body along like a snail, movement lubricated by the pool of blood under me.

I cough, splattering the formerly pristine white surface ahead of me with yet more blood. Why didn’t I think to mark it with blood before? I feel light headed. Fuck me, I’ve done it now haven’t I. This is it. I could have picked a direction, but I had to know.

Up ahead I can just barely make something out. A pointed white archway with a door in it. The blinking, illuminated sign just above reads “Exit”. Fuck me, of course it would be like this. But I can't give up now, not when I'm so close. I desperately pull myself up high enough to reach the knob.

Upon turning it, the door swings open and I fall forward. When I pick myself up, the door is gone. Extending beneath me to the horizon in every direction is a flat, featureless plane.

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