The walls had vanished.
The ground was no longer beneath him.
And the light—what little there had been—left no trace.
Then… he fell.
Not a physical fall. He felt no rush of air against his skin, no friction, no weight. It was as if he were being consumed, disassembled piece by piece, atom by atom wrenched from time, stripped of his name, reduced to something far more abstract.
Then… everything stopped.
He opened his eyes.
No sound. No echo, no resonance. Just… emptiness. Absolute, cold, eternal.
The darkness enveloped him no, the darkness was the place. No walls, no ceiling, no discernible floor.
And Simon was sitting.
On an old wooden chair.
The wood was worn, creaking faintly at the slightest shift, the scent of damp clinging to it as if it had just been dragged from a cellar forgotten for centuries.
His hands rested on his knees.
His eyes were open, scanning the immeasurable dark a void that defied description, that refused even to be pointed at.
There was nothing here. Just him. And the chair.
Simon turned his head slowly to the right, as if afraid the mere act of looking might shatter the darkness' perfect stillness. At first, there was nothing. No sound, no movement. Just the black.
Then… something flickered. Not far, not near something suspended in the very fabric of Simon's vision, warping the darkness like a blemish.
A tiny puncture. A scratch on a featureless canvas.
It wasn't light. It wasn't glow. Just a shift in texture, a flaw in the void.
The puncture stretched. Slowly, unevenly, like a ragged breath until it yawned open, revealing something entirely new.
A desk.
A confined space, barely large enough to contain its own chaos. Scattered papers, splayed-open books, writing tools both ancient and modern some broken, some functional. Empty cups, unsent letters, wax seals, maps, and notes scribbled in a frantic, fractured hand.
The light in the room was dim, jaundiced.
Then, without warning… he was there.
No transitional movement, no shudder in the air, no bodily shift. Just presence. He had materialized inside the room.
He recognized it instantly. This was no ordinary chamber.
It was his mind's sanctum.
A secret locus, untethered to any physical place in the palace.
No door led to it, no corridor hinted at its existence. It appeared on no map, in no blueprint.
It was bound solely to him.
To his thoughts.
To the fragments of himself he showed to no one.
The walls were cracked but steadfast. Unyielding.
The ceiling hung low—oppressively low—as if urging him to duck, though it never quite touched him.
At the room's heart stood an ancient table.
Upon it rested a small sorcerous lamp its base of tarnished copper, its flame a quiet pulse of gold, unlike any known fire. Now the source of the sickly yellow light was clear.
Beside the lamp sat a music box.
Square-framed, carved from dark wood whose edges had been gnawed by time, its surface etched with faint, indecipherable runes.
From one side protruded a twisted brass arm, coiled like an archaic key.
Simon approached.
He did not hesitate.
His fingers closed around the arm.
The metal was cold, its end slightly jagged as if untouched for centuries.
He turned it.
At first, silence.
Then, music began.
But it was wrong.
No piano. No violin. No harp's familiar resonance.
Instead a dissonant marriage of guitar and electric hum.
The sound resembled plucked strings, yes, but each note bled into something alien, something wired.
As if the instrument were… electric. A guitar, but not.
The pitch was high, yet not shrill.
The tones overlapped, tangled as though multiple players fought for control.
This music did not belong to Simon's world.
He couldn't place its origin, nor fathom how such a sound was conjured… but then, this was a sorcerous music box. No melody lay beyond its mimicry.
Simon stepped back, leaving the table, the box, the lamp untouched. The sound swirled through the chamber that warped hybrid of distorted strings and fractured electricity.
He sank into the old settee tucked in the room's shadowed corner.
Its leather was cracked but warm, the cushion beneath him yielding slightly as if it remembered his weight.
He breathed deep. The air here was different. Not the palace's stale drafts, nor the world's wind, but the atmosphere of pure thought.
The music played on.
And this time words emerged.
The voice was neither quiet nor grating:
"Mr John Doe live in the past.
Not because he hates it
but because he never truly reaches it.
Every time he nears that moment
the one where things might finally change
something fractures.
Not a sound, but a feeling…
like the air pulling away,
like a page turning before it's been read.
Then everything resets.
The same moments.
The same mistakes.
The same silence stretching between words.
And he remembers nothing.
Has no idea it was his hand that pressed the switch,
his soul that dragged the universe back to zero.
He lives in the past because it's all he has.
Because the present dissolves before he can step into it.
And the future…
is locked behind a door
he doesn't even know exists.."
Simon shut his eyes and leaned back.
The world constricted around him.
Then he opened them.
Before him, less than a meter away,
stood a figure... himself.
A copy of Simon.
The same features, the same posture but with something in its gaze... something he himself had lost long ago.
The double raised its hand slow, deliberate, its face devoid of expression.
It clenched its fingers, then splayed them abruptly, as if shaking off something unseen.
A fine something sprayed onto Simon's face—invisible, scentless, yet cutting through the air like a silent slap. The sensation was like icy water dashed across his skin in the height of summer.
It spoke in a voice rough, unhesitating:
"Wake up."
Silence followed. The double stared, unblinking, and lowered its hand.
Then
It began to weep.
Its tears were not saltwater, but a thick black substance, like tar congealing on its cheeks.
The double's face began to sag. Its features warped, slackened as if its very skin had turned to dough, losing all will to hold.
Its visage melted slowly: the nose collapsing, the mouth drooping, revealing layers of raw, grayish flesh that had never been human. Jagged teeth protruded like rusted nails. It laughed a sound inverted, its voice scraping the ear from the inside out, as though the world had been rewound.
The double stepped back, each footfall leaving trails of dissolving viscera in its wake, spilling from the hollow pit of its stomach.
Simon did not move.
The double tilted its head skyward eyeless now, its skull jutting through the ruin of its face
And in an instant, a searing electric flash erupted beneath it, blinding everything.
When his vision returned, he did not rise. He remained seated but something had shifted.
His face had grown sharper.
His eyes narrower, his gaze deeper.
His expression had shed its bewilderment, replaced by a silent severity.
As if all frivolity had bled from him, leaving only a weight behind.
The music played on:
"Mr John Doe lives in a shack,
waiting for the world to fade into black.
He counts the fingers on his hand
He loses track,
The he starts again.
He doesn't know why the children still blame him.
He watches the world
with his eyes
he keeps shut."
No one else was in the room.
Nothing but the voice, the music box... and Simon.
...And he was waking up.
"I could never pinpoint the source of my deepest fear.
Was it my ignorance of fate?
Or was it because, in my marrow, I knew success and failure were never mine to command?
In the beginning, I was blind.
A lost thing shuffling from one shadow to the next, leaping from experience to experience, clinging to the delusion that something out there... was calling me, waiting for me.
Like a child groping for his toy amid the carnage of warring gods.
But now, as I witness my infinite selves unravel and fall, one after another, I understand.
I understand how small I was.
And that very understanding has birthed in me a terror so raw, so thick, it freezes even my comprehension of this paralysis. I fear to acknowledge it.
Butler once told me: 'God is not a gambler... He is the casino.'
And the casino, by nature, cares not who wins.
It lets you taste just enough victory to lure you deeper.
It tempts you to lose more, to trade hope for greed.
In this vast field of infinities, there must be at least one Simon who achieved immortality.
One Simon who is the sole victory God permits us.
That Simon would be, literally, the only 'triumph' woven into eternity's fabric.
Could it be me?
Logic says no.
But necessity demands it.
For the infinite to be complete, this exception must manifest no matter how impossible.
It is like asking a man to choose one number from infinity.
The odds of selecting any specific number? Zero.
And yet, he will choose.
He will defy logic.
By that same token, there must be one Simon who shatters the rule.
Can I claim to be that Simon?
Absolutely not.
Though I see specters of endless possibilities, some lie beyond my sight.
There may be versions of me that have transcended this state entirely become entities I cannot even classify.
The tree of Simon's possibilities is so vast, it renders 'infinity' a feeble word.
Every change, no matter how minute, splits a new branch.
The shift of a single electron spawns endless divergences.
A falling leaf.
The tremor of a butterfly's wing.
A shattered glass.
Each births new realities.
And that is just me Simon.
What of millions of other beings, each with their own tree... their own story?
Yet amid this absurdity, one ember still burns in my palm a lone spark of hope:
No matter how much branches and repeats...
Three things do not recur.
The Girl.
Fayet.
And Clonmacnoise.
These three belong to no probability tree.
They are not part of my possibilities, nor Moghan's, nor any other creature's.
They have no tree.
This makes their existence anomalous... transcendent.
Fayet once told me the Girl is bound to an unfathomable entity an absolute God, a flawless idea.
Clonmacnoise, too, is one of three manifestations of this enigmatic deity.
As for Fayet herself, though not one of those four, she claimed to be organically tied to the fourth manifestation the Book.
Thus, it is logical I cannot access their probability trees.
They operate on a plane beneath reality to communicate with me, as they might with any other Simon.
And yet... they do not.
No other branch manifests these entities. This defies the very principle of infinity.
This branch, specifically, is unique.
Sacred.
Stranger still none of the other Simons I've cataloged could even perceive this possibility's existence.
Are there other hidden branches where Fayet, the Girl, or the Ship appear?
Unlikely.
For their emergence is tied to my tree, not an isolated one.
But what makes this all the more absurd is that no other branch repeats this pattern.
It is singular.
And the other possible branches... do not exist.
So either this hand I hold...
Is the greatest ever dealt,
Or the worst."
Simon contemplated the room around him as the black fog swallowed it and him with it.
"I could stay here...
The void is safe. Cold. Unchanging.
No pain, no screams, no surprises.
I could dissolve into it...
Become part of the sacred silence.
And that would be... immortality.
A beautiful eternal life."
He closed his eyes for what felt like an eternity.
A high-pitched electric whine screeched from the darkest corner of his mind.
He opened them again.
The darkness had consumed most of the room.
"No.
No.
This is not what I want.
I must do what needs to be done.
I must end the story... my story."
Simon rose from the settee.
He looked sharply to the left.
The room dissolved, as though it had never existed.
The darkness returned, enveloping him.
There, waiting, stood the wooden chair.
Alone.
Still.
As if it knew.
Simon murmured, almost smiling, in a voice as faint as a man leaping into an unfathomable river:
"Que sera, sera."
He repeated it to himself, trembling
"Whatever will be, will be."
Then he awoke in the stone corridor, before the painting.
And he walked away in silence, the only sound the echo of his shoes against the ancient floor, fading into the distance.