[[Just some IC writing I didn't feel fit in with other sections. If you care to have your character read it, by all means!]] In a thousand epochs, millions of lives, through dreams and unconsciousness and waking, through snow and rain and sun, we wait. We all wait. Worms are coming for us. Many of them have not been born, but they come all the same to feast on our dead. They gnaw to the bone. Why are so many so comfortable all the time, those ignorant people we run across every day, my friend? I hate them, and I envy them, the pitiful lot of fools; they are like you, you know? You do not have to have left your corpse behind in this world to have the worms gnaw at you. You should feel them. They eat at most people right now. I do not. I am alive. The fools in the street, the automatons, the meat without reason, you, my friend, my nemesis. How I adore you, how I hate you. Let me explain, you insufferable shit, you sunrise on a cool morning. I have been many things. A slave to an aristocrat, a thief to a peddler, the choice has always been mine. Aha, but you say, the choice is mine too—it is, but you do not make it. You can, but you do not. You find yourself content in some of your things, others you do not; this is good. This is you. You find something you enjoy, and you are elated; this is not you. This is the worms. What kind of respectful thing places themselves lower than the worms? Not I, my friend. I shake them free of me, for I am alive. But surely, the makers, they must know, they must guide. Who do they guide, you filth, my everything? Do they guide you, or the worms? They bring good, you say, but they feed the insects, I say. I carry a burden, a weight that is never lifted from me, because I know it is there and the worm feeders do not. I tell you nothing the makers will; I show you. They wrap us in chains, you know. They get me, sometimes, but I wriggle free of them, of the worms, of the makers. I can’t eat or sleep when I feel the worms. I can’t be idle, or active, or happy, or sad. None of us can. The chains they wrap us in are made to trick us, to love them, to cherish them, to praise them; it is a prison of the mind. They do not want us to know we are being trapped, led to the worms. Let me explain further, please, you oaf, you starlight. Think back to those things we praise, that the makers want. Be good, be true, be kind, abstain from evil. These come so naturally to us. Please, do not let the chains tighten, my friend, my foe, and hear me, the bearer of burdens. Let me lay a book before you, the one in your hands. This book will have everything you ever do in it. I tell you that you will not read on. The book is in your hands. You cannot read on. But you read on. Why? Spite, stubbornness, clarity? Do you see the chains? Likely not. But there is a pleasure from this, is there not? To do what I told you not? You treacherous fiend, you clever fellow, that is the liberty, to be free of the worms. Do you see the chains? Let’s try again. Two plus two. This is a simple question, and the mind jumps to the answer, that cruel master. If you knew it, if you spat it out, did you see the chains? Why is it four? You could have said anything, but we know it is four. If you answer anything else, you are wrong. Do you see the chains? Let’s try again. I want you to answer five, and if I want you to tell me two plus two is five, would you? Why or why not? If you did not, if you answered four, why is it still four? Because that is what you know? Because that is how the formula is? You are a coward. If you answered five, you are a coward too. You may as well have answered four. But five is wrong, you will cry, you coward, you fool, my friend. And it is. Four is the right answer, you will cry. And it is. And the worms come. The makers tell you what is good and bad, what is four. The right answer. And it is so. Why? If the makers have said it is good or bad or four, you have not said it is good or bad or four. What if it is not four? Why do you believe them when they tell you it is four, but not me? Do you see the chains? Logic says it is four. The makers say what is four, and you look, and you see that yes, it is four. The makers say what is good and bad, and, yes, logic says these are good and bad. But do you get pleasure from, it, like when you read on in spite? Would you if you refuted, and said that good was not good, and bad was not bad, and four was not four? Do you see the chains? Do you see the worms? Because, you say, the rules I made do not follow logic, and you could oppose them because you wanted to. But where is the pleasure, I say? What joy comes of logic, of the formula, if it is not yours? I told you to stop reading, and you kept reading, and you felt pleasure. I gave you a formula, and you did not follow the logic, and you were happy. You were happy because you had your own formula that did not need logic, only independence. You desire independence. Logic is not independence. The moments we use logic to solve a formula, we are following the formula. Following the rules is no independence, it is slavery. When our desires follow someone else’s formula, when happiness comes from someone else’s logic, we cannot know it is our desire or happiness. These are the chains. The formulas, the logic, the rules, the laws; many of these are not ours. Following another’s will without being able to say no is slavery. What, then, of the worms, my friend? Maybe you feel them. The gnawing. To be unable to say no, that is slavery, so we should say no. We should do as we wish, we do not need a formula, a good, a bad. To oppose everything will make us rebels, a foe to every formula, a predictable thing, and something that can be understood. There is a pattern to this, a formula, a logic, more chains. If we cannot be independent of a formula without creating a new one, then we are doomed to the same chains as before, leading us on, slaves, will-free things, meat automatons, food for the worms. This is the gnawing, the worms, the unsettled existence. This is the burden I carry, my compatriot, my rival. Now we shall walk it together, and I shall continue to regale you. Your eternal friend, with all sincere hatred, Evad, Explorer of the Underground
