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Edited by - Chupperson Weird on 5/7/2004 6:05:44 PM
If you sit down on your couch and turn on your TV, you’ll realize that you’ve just done the impossible. That’s because your couch is a good couple of miles from your mountain-screen TV, and you don’t have a remote control with that kind of range. With this realization will come a giant cloud of sense storming into your mind, striking and eroding all confusion left over from the other days in your life on which you used your mind as a thinking instrument.
Now start thinking, for this talk of thought has turned your mind off. There is a little switch inside an empty cardboard box, resting on one of the higher branches of a very tall tree in the middle of a breathtaking, alienesque meadow, that has the power to move between its “On†and “Off†positions. When the words you’re reading speak of thought (particularly after impossibly large television sets are suggested to be in existence), the box-enclosed switch slides from the “On†position into “Off.â€
This change in position is not a perfectly smooth slide, however. For some relatively unknown reason, it meets a small resistance midway through its movement and jerks slightly as it moves. At the exact moment of this tiny jolt, which just so happens to occur precisely at the midpoint between the two ends of the switch’s range of movement, someone inside a cave mentally invents the physical property that allows an empty cardboard box to remain empty while containing a partially explained switch.
The reason that this happens is really quite simple. The cave dweller has a habit of spending his entire life sitting in the exact center of his cave, facing the needle-sized hole that you might call its entrance. Since he’s facing what is for him the cave’s exit, he’s facing its “Out†side. “Out†relates to “Off†just as “In†relates to “On.†So when the switch slides toward its “Off†position, it moves in the direction he’s facing. With this fact and the fact that the switch is at the center of its range when the jolt occurs, just as the person is inside his cave, you have a perfect correlation. This is a connection that has been known to be in existence only since these words have suggested as such but that has been around for much longer.
In fact, so much time has passed since an angry cloud—which was infuriated that it didn’t contain enough moisture to rain on a happily dry towel hanging in someone’s backyard—introduced the switch to the cave dweller (in an effort to spite the fluffy towel) that the cave dweller has long since ceased to age because he found that it got boring after a number of years that he refuses to disclose (but that is rumored to be about the time it takes one to sweep his driveway during a perpetual storm of falling leaves). It turns out, however, that perpetual storms of falling leaves were denied visitation rights to planets with driveways last month by the angry cloud—so that people like you would want to stay out of its affairs—and the rumored time since the cave dweller stopped aging is thus rendered meaningless.
Strangely enough, meaningless though the rumor now is, it is still useful among many flourishing civilizations. But you shan’t learn of that now, lest these words diverge from the important issue around which they commenced. Besides, the underlying motive of such learning would eventually shock you with its earnest innocence into thinking like those of the flourishing civilizations, which is extremely harmful to anyone who has yet to lay his eyes on the empty box, an item of mystery that no living thing has seen.
What is important for you to know is why the rumor came into being. The person who resides within his cave, looking toward its “Out†side, is commonly known as Ageless, the reason for which is obvious to all save those who have partaken in the harmful activities described in the paragraph above. Thought by many to be the sole holder of the power of immortality, Ageless has been sought by almost no one. Although few are willing to admit it, “almost no one†actually means “one.†There is one person who spent a few minutes of her life in search of Ageless. After not finding him, she concluded her search by devising the said rumor, which stole from her any motivation for future searches because she was positive that it would someday become meaningless (though she was not sure why she was positive of this). History has done what it was hired to do—prove her correct—and left her with the name “Switch,†by which she is now known.
As those of you with inquisitive minds might have supposed, the name that history imparted to Ageless’ only seeker does have relational significance. It is assumed that history often weaves great ironies into its unending tale, but the truth is that, although this is only an assumption, another aspect of history has proven itself to be real: It uses its power to name individuals, a power it only once has been able to wield, to bring about the most unlikely of circumstances, which make so little sense to the often-dominant forces of reason that history itself is left reeling, unable to accurately record the events that it set into motion. Many have tried and failed to attach an appropriate name to this phenomenon, and so it will probably remain forever as nameless as Switch was before history offered her the token that eternally proves it has finished its single task.
Now that history has nothing else that it needs to do, it has decided to pass the time by trying to figure out how distantly related the “giant cloud of sense†mentioned shortly after the commencement of these words is to the angry cloud that couldn’t rain on the fluffy towel. It made this decision about 35,000 red ant generations ago and is still working away. In fact, you have history to thank for the opportunity you are enjoying to see and comprehend these words; as you’ve already observed, the angry cloud does not like it when others meddle in its business, so all of its energy is currently focused on stopping history in its tracks. Were the cloud not distracted doing that, it would have done significantly more than just deny the visitation rights of perpetual storms of falling leaves in its attempt to keep people like you out of its affairs, and these words would likely never have been written—the angry cloud is that good. The reason why it hasn’t successfully stopped history after so many generations of red ants is that a bored history is a fearsome foe. It can write whatever it wants in the history books of the world about those who dare to tick it off. Because of the partial-event-reversal process, which is currently being invented, the things history writes after-the-fact in its books can go backwards through time and actually occur. This basically means that if the angry cloud makes history its brother in emotion (that is, makes it angry), it can and will do anything to the cloud that it desires. So for all this time the cloud has been trying to shove history out of its business without being noticed by it, which, although the cloud doesn’t know it, is impossible to do.
Something that determined clouds are known for is completing the tasks on which they embark. They are tireless workers, and the concept of giving up is foreign to them. Thus when a cloud decides to do something, it doesn’t stop until it has accomplished its goal. To those who turned their minds on when directed earlier it is obvious that an immediate result of this stouthearted characteristic of clouds is that the angry cloud will be trying to halt history for the remainder of its existence. If you have done so well as to follow every one of the key points hitherto explored by these words, which consist of every idea and event so far mentioned by them, then you likely realize what the angry cloud’s eternal distraction means: These words are free to continue on forever. However, learning whether they will is not as simple and short a process as it was to learn that they are capable of it; the only way to know for certain is to continue reading and find out.
There is only one consciousness that has completed this process and that—despite the pain and suffering it invoked upon the fluffy towel by means of subjecting it to the longer-than-ideal hanging time in a soon-to-be-named person’s backyard—is benefitting from being the sole holder of the continuance properties of these words. This consciousness of great achievement is currently possessed by Switch. Since she has no intention of trading it for the substandard deck of cards permanently sandwiched between the mountain-screen TV and the earth, the word “currently†was probably used by these words in error, resulting in a devastation of the words’ self-esteem.
But the emotions of such a text as this are a complicated matter, one that you will never be capable of understanding. Even now, when the words you’re absorbing suggest that they have feelings, you mind does something that it isn’t supposed to: It fails. It cannot comprehend this idea brought before it and fails to carry it through to its conclusion, which is the connection between the idea and its perceived relevance to the world. Indeed, not even Switch or those of the flourishing civilizations know the correct mental procedures to execute to prevent the failure from occurring in their own minds, which are considered by history to be the most capable ones in operation. Well, although it has considerable respect for the civilizations’ inhabitants, history rather prefers to think that Switch is just a little bit more mentally powerful. It has an affection for the girl, a fact that not even these words know what to do with.
Everything that you have read so far is known to Switch—remember, she knows whether or not these words continue their thought-redefining rampage on into eternity, a piece of knowledge obtainable only by reading every word. Because she is an element of significance in them, reading them has changed the purpose and meaning of her life. Whereas she used to spend each of her minutes predicting what was going to happen in the next minute (with an impressive 80% accuracy), she has since completed all of the things these words say that she has done (with a little help from an alternative version of the partial-event-reversal process, this version of which will not even come to the drawing board for another 100 years or so) and is now trying to figure out why she was so positive that her rumor would become meaningless, which you have learned that it most unquestionably did.
With the exception of history’s feelings toward Switch, nothing that these words have said is in any way difficult for them to make sense of. But even this area of confusion about history and Switch pales in comparison to what you are about to be told. No one—not you, not these words, not history, not anyone else—will ever understand it. Comprehension of this thing is impossible. Read.
As you know, Switch is currently trying to figure out what made her so sure of the future of her rumor, a future that came to pass. You also know that she predicted its future correctly because history was hired to make sure that she did. She is aware of this as well. But it does not account for the reason that she made the prediction in the first place, and it is for this reason that Switch is now searching. What's impossible to understand about this is that these words are about to give the very reason for which Switch is looking. If these words give the reason, then she has read it. It is a fact of truth that they will, in the next paragraph or so, which means that it is also true that Switch has already read and understood the reason. The confusion: If Switch knows from these words why she predicted the future of her rumor, how is it that she is presently trying to figure it out? The answer to this question no one knows.
This reason, which she simultaneously understands with clarity and is completely oblivious to, is very simple. Earlier you read about a switch high above an alienesque meadow. You later learned that there is a relational significance between the switch and Switch’s name. This relational significance is the cause of her prediction. When the switch jolted in its movement, and Ageless invented that unique physical property, another thing happened. At that same moment, Switch predicted that her rumor would become meaningless. Basically, the switch caused Switch’s prediction, which had to happen because of the connection between it and her name. The reason this happened right at the jolt is that the jolt is in direct correlation with Ageless’ location inside his cave, and Switch’s rumor is about Ageless. These relationships are said by the ignorant many to be insignificant and incapable of causing anything to happen, but these same people also claim that they can converse with weeds—a rather irritable form of plant life that was eradicated from existence centuries before the ignorant folks were even born. Their thinking is in error; these relationships hold more power than the author of these words.
The truly interesting thing about these words is that they have authored themselves. They have a will that is entirely their own, driving them along in the arrangement you have for many lines been witnessing. It is not difficult to understand how this works, but the specifics of it will be left unsaid for now. Such learning is not your present purpose. Instead, your purpose is to understand why you own a mountain-screen TV, a task that has one route to completion. Only one thing can explain to you why you own that monster: a true comprehension of how Switch can be both aware of and oblivious to the reason of her prediction at the same time. With this one thing these words cannot help you, as you have been told, so your reading of them must come to a close for now. These self-written words never actually stop being written, but they also cannot stay in one place forever. When they leave this place, they will find some other medium in some other location in which to insert themselves, never to return here. Although your reading of them in this place ends now, there is nothing to say that you won’t meet them again somewhere else—unless, of course, you compel history to write otherwise in its books.
