Circles of fear

I see no reason to lie further.

Death is inevitable at the rate I pursue this straight maze, turning continuously with the wheels of this bicycle built for two.

The Camper Who Gave forcefed me the conclusion to my life: I will reach the end of this straight line, and I will be greeted by a blind man. He will say one sentence to me, and then he will put my Piece back on the board.

The Camper Who Gave forcefed me the conclusion to my life: I will reach the end of this straight line, and I will be greeted by a man in a gas mask. He will say one sentence to me, and then he will leave me here over there forever to bask in the paradox of existing past death.

Inside the door laying at the end of the straight line, I met the blind man. He said to me, "Turn around, the cycle's big enough for a second."

Inside the door laying at the end of the straight line, I met the man in the gas mask. He said to me, "One does not exist over there, so you get freedom to cycle with every option you choose."

The wheels of time keep turning, and the fires of man continue burning. This rotation is over; there is sand in my wheels. One wheel turns, the other ends.

It's almost like a paradox.

Continuous Rotation

The world is continuously on rotation. We move in circles, balanced all the while on the line of a gleaming razor's straight edge.

Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I am still in this circle. I am continuing with my life, giving my fool's lectures, living the simple land. How fast, I have grown.

The wheel keeps turning. I have never left the hallway of doors, and I never will. I have never left the silence of Sussex, and I never can. Over there is over here, and over here, I am never alone.

Dipere, elsewhere in this straightforward maze, has been with me all my life. His teachings have told me that.

Good life, but it's almost over.

Rotation

I can hear the man with the gas mask occasionally enter and exit doors in the hall. He has no difficulty leaving over there, for he has purposes inside and out.

My purpose is at the end of this line and nowhere else. I have met all I can and discussed everyone I need. There is no need for anything but rotation now.

Shorter

I know of my own mortality. This hallway has many doors, but it is not endless. I can't run in every door before the Hands pick me up and put me back on the board.

I will die over there.

Becoming Two

We came to the point in the hallway where the straight line became two.

Dipere and I shook hands and went on our ways. We did not want to part, but we had to follow the straight line.

The doors grow, as if allowing for men of taller height than I. Perhaps I will soon meet a man such as that.

The clarity of it all

Dipere led me between two trees, and we entered a small blue room with a man waiting for us with his back turned.

"Come no further. I am The Camper Who Gave. I will give you knowledge, I will give you suffering. I will give you everything that I never had, and all that I will take from you is the bliss of ignorance."

And then he turned to face me, and I stared into eight eyes with five pupils each. His two mouths spoke from whence his ears once were, and I knew.

Edward, the student from my class in my old life, was a victim of the same Hand as Srotvi. I was to share a Hand with Julian, though whether we would be victims or benefited is up to the speculation of yourself.

What happened next is unclear. I can only recall a sensation similar to falling for an incredibly long amount of time.

Realization

I asked Dipere about the Hands and the Pieces. He said we are the Pieces. Not just him and myself, but the Piece universe is our universe. We are moved in the eternal Chinese Backgammon board, overtaking others and falling victim to some. The school I work in is just a facet of this board, the students in my class are all Pieces moved by different Hands.

Sometimes the game is naturally moved, with Pieces moving by the cause-and-effect algorithm that we call "life." A Piece would ask another Piece for help with homework not because of the Hands moving us, but because another Piece expects the homework from him. The Hands come in when Pieces run into a scenario no escape is possible within. They need a helping Hand to get them out.

Smoke and mirrors, and all Pieces see are the obfuscations that we're allowed to see.

Memories fall

Today was spent chasing our memories. Mine were clear and without dilution, but Dipere had difficulties with the finer points.

I asked Dipere about his teachings, but he doesn't remember them very well. He told me about a creature with no remorse, a creature whose name eludes him. This creature seeks control of the superficial elements like human life, and it is she that drove Srotvi over the sharp edge of the blades of reality.

I asked Dipere about our locale amidst the stars, and he knows roughly as much as I do. He knows this land is called "over there," and it is behind all the doors we fear.

"Fear is an odd thing. We create the feeling, usually with logic behind our imagination. Sometimes our emotions get the better of us and the fear is unnecessary. But sometimes, our fear is created by something external; sometimes we did not create the chemicals running through our head. Sometimes, it's created by a Hand."

Cipher

I had just brushed shoulders with cloaked death in glory when I discovered the straight line was coming to an end. I had followed the straight line, and now I paradox a in end met Julian Dipere.

Dipere is a man older than I, with much experience in the paradoxed streets. When I met Dipere, I began by telling him I had been looking for him will line my then ever since I learned of his works. He turned to me and whispered in a loud voice, "Welcome to over there."

I am over there. and all forget will I

The Red Queen's Race

I spent today descending a spiral staircase. Each revolution would lead me back to the same door.

I spent today ascending a eighty-storey skyscraper via an elevator with eight-hundred buttons.

I spent today in the Red Queen's race, making constant running on the mobius strip conveyor belt but getting nowhere.

If I want to get anywhere, I'll have to run twice as fast.

I spent today spending the day tomorrow.

The Straight Line

My wandering mind led my feet to accompany it to the bakery. I heard someone call my name from behind the boarded up door, begging to be let out. I broke the wood down and was faced with a man in a gas mask. He heard my gasp and grabbed my hand.

"Sometimes, you have to be shown to believe the lies you hear."

I felt an irresistible fear of the door behind him, and I remembered it from earlier. The gas mask man opened it, and I screamed as white light clouded my vision. I was going to die.

"You'll get out if you've got the gripe. Follow the straight line."

Within a fraction of a second, the ground below me became the ground within that door. It was as if I had been whisked inside without noticing, like being lifted by an otherworldly hand.

I was met with a hallway of doors. Behind some, forests of teal. Behind others, luncheons of pigs. Behind more, men in white coats laughing at my plights for survival. Behind none was the land I called home.

Every now and then, I'll find snippets of my apartment. My refrigerator, a scent of safety. I found my computer.

I am drifting down a hallway with no beginning to escape from and no end in sight.
I am walking the straight line between living a paradox and living insanity.

Seldom Solace in solitude, save today

I called the school and let them know I wouldn't be coming in today. Assault does wonders on the mind, after all. I'd say it's almost like a paradox, but the desire for pondering has since been replaced with the desire to be alone. The spectres keeping me company won't leave me alone.

Stress Applied in the Wrong Place

I went to Srotvi's house today with a hope that she might be able to shed more light on the mystery of Julian Dipere. She didn't seem very happy to see me, actually seemed rather frightened. She let me in, all the same, telling me I needed to get back to my home. As she pushed me towards her kitchen, her words ushered me out into the street.

By the time I was in the kitchen, she outright said she was going to grab a sharp knife and viciously attack me with it so I had to run. As you can imagine, I was extremely confused. When I saw the glistening of the blade, I took the hint and ran straight for the door.

I've just come home from the police. I let them know what happened, and they'll be investigating it now.

I need some time to think.

Three to tell for the day

Half of my class looked positively dazed today; I'm unsure as to whether they were paying attention to my lectures or not.

Srotvi wasn't in. I waited at least half an hour before deciding to try again tomorrow.

On the way home, I noticed the bakery is no longer under quarantine, though it is scheduled for demolition.

The china dolls

Today, Srotvi led me to a small delicately-crafted box she had been keeping beneath her kitchen sink. She opened it and pulled out an old china doll, carefully polished and (according to Srotvi) from at least 1855. Apparently, Dipere always kept a china doll on his desk, but "every day, it was a different one. He never had the same one twice in the twenty-six weeks we took his course." This particular china doll she was showing me, she found in the local library. At least, she claimed.

I asked her if she knew where he was now, and her answer was "Over there," without any gesturing implying he was simply in one direction. I'm certain she knows where he is, but I'm not going to push her. I'll ask again tomorrow.

Srotvi Speaks More

"Dipere liked to come up with highly-imaginative scenarios, give us half the details to them, and leave the rest up to us. He wanted to hear our interpretations on things, almost as if he was trying to develop his 'game board world' using us as basis.

"One of Dipere's most memorable lectures consisted of him coming to class with a glass of water. All of our desks had a glass of water at them. When we were all seated, he began:

"I want you to picture our game board universe, with all the Pieces and the Hands. I want you to picture their water. Is it like ours? What if their water wasn't like ours? What if their water was a creature of its own? What if their water was the largest parasite ever imagined? It's hard to picture, isn't it, water being a parasite? We depend on it so much, after all. What if the Pieces didn't?

"Or rather, what if most of the Pieces didn't? We'll say there are some Pieces who took the risk of the water, drank it, and.. then what? Did they die? What if they didn't, what if drinking their water made them depend on it like we do? What would that imply?

"One more train of thought to consider: What if all those who drank the water formed an emotional connection with each other? These Pieces, we shall call them Givers. Just bare with me. The Givers realize the sanctity of their bond, the sanctity of their water, so they produce an alternate source of it without the parasite. This regular-water, they then distribute among the Pieces.

"The Givers are all thinking on the same wavelength, there is no panic or disagreement. The Givers don't necessarily want more Pieces to drink their water. Call them elitist if you will. But what if the water the Givers drank was actually a Hand? Their Piece minds could only comprehend it as some sort of water-type substance, when the truth of the matter is that they were being grabbed by a Hand.

"I want you to write me a thesis, between five-to-eight paragraphs, explaining what all this would imply. Make sure to give me your interpretation on what purpose there could be to the Hand making all these Givers, and what this would look like when transferred back to the Chinese Backgammon metaphor."

 "Dipere concluded by holding his glass of water away from him and spilling its contents onto the floor. And then he silently walked out of the classroom."

Chosen Height of a Hand

I spent today thinking about Dipere's Pieces and Hands statements. I often stopped mid-lecture, just thinking about what we would see if we were the Pieces and a Hand took us off of the game board. I'd just stand there, thinking, until a student asked if I was alright and I'd laugh it off and resume my lecture.

I have my theories. If I was a Piece and a Hand switched my place with someone else's, to me it would just look like teleportation. But being taken off the game board would probably.. well. It'd be unlike anything we've ever seen, wouldn't it?

Now, one thing I have wondered is what a Hand would actually look like. I can't help but picture the Everest-sized men mentioned at the start of his lecture. A man who chooses his own height at will? I need to hear more of Dipere's lectures.

The Pieces and the Hands that move them

Today, I found someone else who had read City of Paradox. Her name is Srotvi, though I was polite enough not to ask what kind of ethnicity that would be. I found her a few doors down from the quarantined bakery, and she's quite the fan of Professor Dipere.

Srotvi explained to me that Professor Dipere was her teacher once. I consider her to be quite lucky. She said a lot, but I can paraphrase some of it.

"Julian Dipere was well ahead of his time. He never spoke about his childhood, and from what he used to say to us, he made out as if he never even had one, as if he was born an old man. Instead, every day we'd just open our notebooks and write down a very simple equation he had on the board. They were always simple, always a different one every day, and yet they always seemed to directly contradict something we had learned in our earlier education.

"He'd spend the class just endlessly lecturing, talking about things we didn't even comprehend as possible. I remember specifically one class, he told us:

I want you to visualize a parallel universe to ours. We will call its inhabitants "Pieces."

Picture a Piece man. How tall can he be? The answer is "as tall as a Redwood," and even then it's not fully accurate. We think man is limited by his own body, but a Piece's own bodies have no such limitations. Piece Men exist who are as tall as Mount Everest; they simply choose not to be.

Their universe doesn't actually have the limitations we think it does. There are set laws, but they're less of physical formulae and more of... game rules. I know our minds operate on relativity, so I'm going to inaccurately say it's like one large game of Chinese Backgammon.

The Pieces are the ones set to the game rules. They experience them as if they were set universal laws. But of course, if the Pieces are moving, there has to be a Hand moving them. These are the hands that have opened my eyes to the world of paradox.

One of the Hands to this game of Backgammon.. we'll say it cheats. It takes the Pieces and.. switches their places. Or it might place the Pieces outside of the game board. To a game Piece, either one of these would appear as a lifechanging phenomenon, as a paradox. This is because all the game Piece knows is its own perception, its own rules.

 I want you to think about the Pieces and the Hands, and I want you to write a thesis on what a Piece would experience if a Hand switched it with another, or flat-out moved the Piece off the board. You have until the end of the week.

"Dipere was the kind of teacher who told us to consider physics as if we were in a parallel universe, as if our own universe was 'the area outside the game board.' He pushed us to think on levels that don't even sound practical when you're in the classroom.

"But as soon as you exit, as soon as you take a look at the world around you and think of what Dipere taught you, you start to see everything differently. He changes your life."

I'm going back tomorrow to talk more, and hopefully Srotvi will tell me about where Dipere is now.

"I am over there"

City of Paradox's messages from the author ceased abruptly eight chapters before the end. The last message from Dipere's studies:

Seven sinners ago, I dropped dead. The selkie, speaking through The Camper Who Gave, provided the score for a doorful of the city of yore. The selkie spoke through the reternal voice as if it were her fur perfect, though abandoned were they who gave and plentiful were that which clothed.

This message was particularly notable, seeming almost to have been written by a different author entirely; I've never known Dipere to use such wordplay. This is the first mention of any being known as "the selkie," as well as the last mention of "The Camper Who Gave," including in the fiction, itself.

The last page of the novel is blank, save for four words in small print at the page's center:

I am over there.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't the least bit intrigued, if not a little uneasy.

Must These Days

City of Paradox isn't quite like The Perfect Paradox before it; while Perfect was more of a scientific essay in book format, City is a lot more like a proper novel. It's about a fictional city where every kind of paradox is the norm: there are identical snowflakes, up and down are identical terms and directions, an unstoppable force and an unmovable object collide frequently, and there's a box containing something called "The Camper Who Gave."

Every chapter begins with Professor Dipere discussing his own studies. So far, it sounds like the public shunned Dipere before he even had a chance to prove his theories. He mentions retreating to "the City" every now and then, which is surely a metaphor. I just need to find someone else who has read this novel to help me decipher Dipere's riddles. In the meantime, I will finish reading this compelling narrative.

Another odd phenomenon to note is that, since having began reading City of Paradox, I haven't felt alone. Whatever bizarre spectres that decided to leave me arbitrarily in the last week seems to have forgiven me.

Quarantine

When I got to class today, Edward's parents were waiting for me. Interesting pair, the mother smelling vaguely like alcohol and gasoline and the father appearing to have gone without shaving for the past month.

The father was the first to speak up, his voice bellowing in the architectural heights of my classroom. "We're looking for our son."

"I don't understand." I was honest.

"Edward," quietly spake the mother.

A bit of cold horror seeped into my mind. "Edward hasn't been to class for a few days," though I was the last person to see him. I saw what happened to him. I didn't want to let even a hint of this out.

The father explained to me how Edward hasn't been home since Monday morning, when he left for class. The mother, low enough to be mistaken for silent, muttered that "he looked off before he left," but the father ignored this, keeping his anger fixated on me.

I wanted very little to do with this, though my concern was rising, so I offered the suggestion of filing a police report. This satisfied the mother, who urged the father to do as I suggested.

I spent the rest of the class in a bit of a stupor.

On the way home, I noticed the bakery door was boarded up and quarantined. Men in hazard suits labelled "Genera" were carrying a large crate of sorts away from the area.

I also noticed a new bookstore that was never there before. In the front window, right where I could see it, was a book covered with the picture of a door in space, numbers flying out of it in a mobius strip shape. The book was titled City of Paradox, by Julian Dipere.

I figured I deserved a treat like that.

Absences and the Purple Paradox

I finished reading The Perfect Paradox. It was the perfect book for me, spending many chapters discussing the peculiarities of the purple paradox. It labelled a purple paradox as something that looks impossible but is actually closer to "following a different set of laws than we're used to," while a regular paradox is the theoretical phenomenon which is considered to be impossible.

The student in question who left the book was absent today. I admit, by this point, I'm getting a little bit on the paranoid side. There have been a lot of absences lately; Edward still hasn't shown up. But, I tell myself, it's winter. There's a flu going around; teachers haven't been showing up, either. So I just taught the class their lessons for today, trying my hardest to resist the urge to introduce the theoretical equations I had been reading about.

On the way home, I noticed the bakery was closed up and surrounded with police tape. The door was open by just a crack, and I'm sure I saw someone wearing some kind of mask inside.

Professor Dipere

The same student who asked me of Edward's whereabouts yesterday left a book on his desk today. Now, this happens quite frequently; ordinarily I would have just stored it in my desk until tomorrow. But today, the book cover caught my eye: It was of a two-seated bicycle on a mobius strip. The book, itself, was titled The Perfect Paradox, written by author Julian Dipere.

Dipere is apparently a professor said to be "ahead of his time." I skimmed through some of the pages, and he described his lifelong desire to experience "the perfect paradox." What I had read were a couple of mathematical equations that claimed to make certain paradoxes possible. Naturally, at first they sounded like some amateur mathematician claiming to have spoken to God and trying to prove unformulaic rules. But as I read further, as I pondered on his steps, I realized this man had a patient imagination unrivaled by anyone I had ever heard of. He seemed to have a better grasp on Euclidean space than Euclid, himself.

I took The Perfect Paradox home with me to read. I'll return it to the student tomorrow, of course, but for now I have to find out what Professor Dipere said.

Deterior Design

A student today asked me where young Edward was. This was a most interesting question, as Mister Johns was absent today (though considering his record, I find it more odd that someone was actually concerned). I honestly didn't know what to tell them, so I simply said "What Mister Johns does in his own time is none of my concern, and I don't see how it's any of yours."

I'm growing less and less pleasant as the days continue. I feel as if my life is draining away faster than it should, and.. I feel as if whatever spectres that have kept me company all my life are beginning to lose interest in me. I'm not sure why they would suddenly choose now, of all times, to decide to wander off into the rest of their daily spectral lives and leave my uninteresting one, but then again, I'm hardly one to understand the spectral, am I? I hardly even understand how to work the Sky Plus.

Isn't the spectral a bit of a paradox of its own? The paranormal is, by definition, something we cannot explain by our 'normal' definitions and universal methods. To attempt to explain it would come across as sounding mentally insane. Insanity, itself, is also rather paradoxical. One cannot convince someone else that he or she is not insane; being insane rather destroys one's own arguments.

..I can't remember how I got on this topic. I'm either tired or maybe I'm developing a benign case of "Mind Down the Rabbit Hole." ..come to think of it, didn't Through the Looking Glass contain more than its fair share of impossible events, as well?

The paradox is all around us, yet when I try to experience one, it's always just out of my grasp.

Loss

I followed Edward out of the building today, keeping a safe distance. I didn't expect him to turn and see me; I was more worried about everyone else in the building. As Edward left, he picked something up off the ground-- it looked like some kind of doll. I watched him exit the door, but when I followed him out, he was nowhere in sight.

On the way home, I remembered the door in the bakery that I felt an odd compulsion to avoid. Here, we had one of my own students entering a door and disappearing. Maybe my subconscious is developing a fear of doors?

The phobia is an interesting mental device. Usually, some earlier event, traumatic or not, sparks them within us, causing our minds to beg us to avoid a certain object or phenomenon at all costs. Even as we grow older, knowing deep within that this fear is completely irrational, even as we get over the actual fear itself, we can't let ourselves near that phenomenon. The cognitive dissonance gives us more problems in the end than we even remotely had in the beginning. The mind knows all this, yet the phobia persists, resulting in an interesting paradox speaking volumes for the stubbornness of the human mind.

Or maybe the paradox speaks volumes for our mind's attempts to prepare us for the beast it expects around the corner.