OVERTURE
There are black voids in the bright web of creation, pools of darkness
invisible to an eye permitted to detect only light. The stuff of sense,
of life, of time, has no place in these unmade cysts; it cannot exist
there, it cannot find them, and would not stay if it could. The stuff
of sense, life, time - stuff that defines reality - can exist only
throughout the fabric of the web, not through the voids which define
the web's shape. The web is all; intricate, endless, limitless in
size and variation of pattern. Yet, without the void it pretends to
conquer, the web would collapse utterly and completely. Reality is
the prisoner of an unreality it cannot conceive. Light requires darkness,
to exist. The web is very like a net dipped into a stream. The net
billows with the current of the water, but lets the water pass. The
water, heedless of the net, rushes through it and around it, playfully
bending it around a bit but generally not bothering itself to notice.
But there are things, things not of the net, things of their own conception,
which can exist in the water, in the void, and which do take notice
of the net, for good or ill. And when the net, the web of creation,
encounters such a Thing, the strength and form of the bright fabric
of reality is tested, and the dark but essential unreal prison is
threatened.
In the wide maw of eternity a sigh, or a pebble, or a shiver of exultation,
or the warm promise of exaltation, or life, or a whole sweeping majestic
range of mountains, doesn't count for much. In tallying up infinity
one quickly runs out of fingers. It's so much more comfortable - not
to say practical - to deal with the detail at hand and disregard the
remaining overwhelming mass of matter which is not. The sublime tread
touches not the mundane trail; the young clerk explains all from his
perspective.
Accordingly, perspectives vary from an arm's length to a lifetime,
not - surely! - to the ends of eternity. Or so one might suspect.
But this is a tale of one who found infinity, and returned.
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