The road is a long field of apples as far as the eyes can reach. It is a solid black line painted on a background of feasts and famine. It feels like an additional limb yet is but one. I don’t know what is real anymore, merely that there is a black road that I must run along. This is awful, a comedic insult to life and thoughts. I regret killing Fa, not for the act itself but knowing that he was experiencing torture like this – he should have lived a nice and long life here. A fool I am, yet there is nothing I can do to bring back the dead… well, almost nothing. I could go to the plane of potential – there is a potential that he is still alive somehow although I am not sure if that’s how it works – although who actually knows how that psychotic place works? I am just happy that I didn’t end up spending much time there. Where am I going? What am I doing? I can see millions of outcomes for my each step. I die in quite a number of them from falling rocks, from my body exploding randomly, and all manner of torturous events yet I still live. I still move forward. Each future is experienced to its fullest, and thus now I know what it feels like to be killed, and what my parents must have felt. There is a strange pattern to this all, a peculiar sense of understanding. There is a ratio, a golden ratio of sorts where there are millions of futures that have been laid out before me, yet only a few thousand end in death, and only a few thousand more end in torture. The rest are ever possible movement I could do, and what will happen if that occurs. Jumping off the road? Every possible outcome is before me yet none can be understood to their fullest. Once a future is seen, there is no exploration. There is no discussion, I am merely onto the next.

I pant. My body feels like someone elses. My limbs are alien to me – am I even a human anymore? A human dies once, yet I have experienced thousands of deaths. Has humanity abandoned me? I wonder if Fa felt like this – I wonder if Fa was so insane that he ended up killing because at least if that happens, I can guess what my future truly is. Either I get caught or not. Either it works or it doesn’t. Either I become a monster or I become broken. The one or the other futures are the kindest to my soul, for there is a rhyme and reason for them. Each step I take breaks my mind. So many concepts, memories and outcomes… my brain feels overloaded.

My brain… my… me… who even am I? Am I a single entity or millions? Am I the same person who took a step a moment ago or am I now a completely different soul? Has my body stayed the same or has a gaze in the wrong direction dictated my future and fate already? I can’t stop thinking of a name.

Fa Fumerunner.

The name strikes fear, anger, hatred, and an odd lust in my heart. Who is this person? A friend? No, there is fear and hatred. Something about the name makes me want to attack the individual this name is attached to. But there is a sadness like I have lost something. I know not what is happening, merely that it has somehow. What is going on? What is happening to me? I have no idea, the only thing I – the ground slams against my chest as I dive down, narrowly avoiding nothing. There was a future that the air could be vibrating at a frequency that stopped my heart from beating, but now there is a future in that I die from severe internal bleeding from a disease that has just sprung up – but also a future that I might find a million dregs on the ground, just waiting to be picked up.

What is an emotion? Something that I connect to a name. Fa Fumerunner. I feel something, an emotion. Perhaps several, I am not sure. Regardless of emotions, there is something about him… about it that just goes beyond my imagination. I laugh. I laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh – why? I duck, avoiding the strike of a monster that has not appeared. Again? Again, nothing. I am by myself, running. My muscles are burning, my soul is heavy, and even with my eyes closed, I can see oh so many outcomes that could be, but are not. I would call this sight a lie, yet there is one future that comes to be. The most boring future – the future where I have just moved forward without an issue. What is real though? I know not. Everything feels like a lie and nothing is true, yet the truth that a truth cannot exist is a truth itself…

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STOP!

I can only take in so much information at one given time, yet more continue to flow into my brain. My head feels like it is about to split at any given time. It feels like I am unable to remember even the most basic actions. Walking – the word sounds familiar but it has lost all meaning. Instead, I can see movement, and with each move I take, there is another billion outcomes. Crawling, that sounds like something I can do. Something I can achieve. Something I can act on… yes.

A door?

What is that? It is big and made from… something brown – or green or red or purple or yellow? Such words have lost all meaning, I forget who and what I word is, and what it is related to. What is colour? What is light? What is sound? What is taste? What is “I” and “me”? Such singular expressions do not capture fate in its glorious light. I dive against the door – there is something familiar and enthralling about its magnificent form. I am enchained in my own soul, in my own body, in my own individualism. I rub the door, trying to remember how it works but… but all I can see is the billions of outcomes that could occur. The door swings open and cuts me in half, I push the door at the wrong angle and my wrist breaks. I don’t interact with it and the door comes to life, eating me alive with a long, gnarled smile. I slam my body against the door – fuck it, if I can’t get it to work, at least I can use it to feel something – to feel a world that potentially exists before me, yet could easily be an illusion of fate.

The door slides open.

It does? How weird, is that even what it is meant to do? Is that even the action that should be taken? I can see that if the door opens inwards I could die, yet outwards means that there are many chances I die, but also live. I find my family, I am presented with a glorious feast – I get to breathe! I just need to get through. I bounce up and down, moving forward through some strange actions that my leg muscles seem to be very familiar with. How strange. How peculiar. Perhaps I am a genius, naturally gifted in an act that only I can do, and once through this door, I will be heralded as a hero. I can see so many futures where this is the case – I bring life and movement to a broken world where people are only able to crawl. What a strange place, but somehow real. That must be my reality – I am the first person to move, bobbing up and down on my feet! I bound through the door – my genius will not be contained!

Silence.

My visions stop. The futures stop. Everything stops. The only thing that doesn’t, is my breathing and heart. People dressed in light robes interwoven with small, thin pieces of metal.

“We are not expecting anyone. Who are you?”

Who am I? That is a great question. Oh… there is something… I need to give something to this group maybe? Or perhaps I should not give them anything, perhaps they are an enemy. I can see it, enemies everywhere – I must be here because of an enemy!

“Your name!” so forceful this time, how very strange to ask such a meaningless question.

“I am someone yet nothing, a thing that has come here because I arrived.”

I am getting an awful many blank stares. Amusing and wonderful, yet desperately I want them to approve of me for some reason. Who am I to think these things? My headache flairs up.

“That might be the craziest thing I have ever heard, and I was at the Fumerunner trail!”

Fumerunner… that name again. There is something about it… the way it rolls off the tongue – I hate it. I hate it will all my soul. I want it gone, but I also know that I can’t act right now for some reason.

“Search him, guards!”

Figures move in my direction. Hands move across my body. They grab Savra, my darling knife. They look in my backpack. They do much but nothing. What need do I have for anything?

“A piece of paper from Pastures captain!”

“Give that here-” a person pulls a page from another’s hand. A page…

“Oh… oh no. This is a guard. He has most likely gone insane on the march. Guards! Get him to a room for recovery. He needs medical and psychological attention now!”

People grab at me. I push them away. I use Savra, at least she is always by my side.

“Put down the knife, Gan.”

Gan. That is me. What am I… who am I? What am I doing?

A clang.

Savra is on the ground.

Fuck I cannot think, I have seen everything and nothing and everything again.

Sillouettes surround me.

Countless hands grab at me.

I am pulled to a room.

I sit.

Who am I? I am Gan. What am I? I… have no answer.