Katabasis

by R.F. Kuang

Aristotle does not use the term “celestial space worm,” but it is a nice way to visualize his physics.

they do not perceive that he is always pursuing death and dying; and if this be so, and he has had the desire of death all his life long, why when his time comes should he repine at that which he has been always pursuing and desiring?

Human minds were fallible, but hers less than most, and hers was now the only mind she could trust.

Peter Murdoch and his bird’s-nest hair, scarecrow limbs balanced atop a rickety bicycle, looked like he’d never tried at anything in his life. He was simply born brilliant, all that knowledge poured by gods without spillage into his brain. Alice couldn’t stand him.

She felt, as she often did, that her body had no defined boundaries from the material world; that if she stopped holding herself together as a subject, she would dissolve like a sugar cube in tea.

What Alice needed most then was a nice long holiday, and then perhaps institutionalization at some remote facility near the sea.

Peter’s confidence made her confident in turn, and she found herself lulled along by his smooth, reassuring rumble.

Meteorologically, Hell didn’t seem much worse than an English spring.

The word paradox comes from two Greek roots: para, meaning “against,” and doxa, meaning “belief.” The trick of magick is to defy, trouble, or, at the very least, dislodge belief. Magick succeeds by casting confusion and doubt.

And she believed, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, that she was all right, that everything was all right, that she did not need help, that she could just stiffen her upper lip and keep on going.

Hell was full of minor tragedies. There was no point fretting over this one.

Not the very weird stir in her gut she felt at his being vulnerable, depending on her, and how very unsatisfying this was despite the fact that she’d wished for so long that Peter might reveal to her any weakness at all. But all this did was make him seem human, and the more human Peter seemed, the more he baffled her.

Pascal’s Wager said that you could choose to believe in God or not, but if you bet wrong on God and didn’t live as though he existed, you were missing out on the infinite wonder of Heaven.

As always, mathematics induced in Alice the acute urge to weep.

What, do you just take everything you read at face value?” “I mean, if the math checks out.” “Unbelievable,” said Alice. “This is why everyone hates logicians.”

How unfair this was, she thought. As if she had never seen him asleep. As if she had not curled in next to him many times, their breathing deep in matching rhythm, both of them murmuring about stars and numbers until their conjectures bled over into dreams. It used to be so easy. Yet here they were, negotiating space like strangers.

“Christ,” said Peter. “Hell is a campus.”

Only when one acknowledged the truth about themselves could they wash away the burden of past lives to begin anew.

Memories rushed to the fore of her skull, hot and choking foul, and all she could think then was how nice it would be to offload them to the depths; to swirl away and then disseminate forever. She was so tired of the contents of her mind. Her thoughts were so loud; they pounded her skull, it never stopped, it was all too much. For a long time now it had been all too much.

She spoke as if in a dream, half-unaware of the words coming out her own mouth. “I feel sometimes it is so difficult to be conscious.”

Alice could never make up her mind on how she felt when Peter explained things. On the one hand, it was so condescending, the way he postured as if he were her tutor. On the other hand, he was very good at maths, and she really didn’t know this stuff, and competence was always attractive.

Stop it, she wanted to shriek, put it down, get out—but half these Shades did not even have ears. If she screamed to them, would they hear?

And back then all she wanted, with every fiber of her being, was for people to remember she was his echo.

Most likely Peter was just that brilliant, arrogant, and absent-minded all at once; a combination of traits that only talented men like him could be, for the world forgave them any number of transgressions so long as they dazzled.

You, on the other hand. You don’t talk like them, you don’t look like them, and your research doesn’t fit what they’re looking for. You will always have to perform twice as well for half the acclaim. You have no room for mistakes.”

Perhaps this was how immortal deities passed the time, perfecting their own mythologies.

And if falling in love was discovery, was letting yourself be discovered the equivalent to being loved?

All Alice needed for company was the confident scribble of Peter’s chalk beside her. She was not alone. She was safe. There was at least a single other soul in this universe who vibrated at her same frequency. And really that was the happiest Alice had ever felt—how wonderful, truly, to have a friend whose silence you adored.

And when at last the fact of the matter sank in—that Peter did not wish to see her, and did not hold her in special regard—she still could not wrap her mind around it. She could not understand how you could open your mind to someone so completely, for so long, and then slam it shut again. She wanted to ask him what had happened but could not formulate the question in a way that wasn’t childish. Why don’t you like me anymore? Why don’t you want to be my friend? Questions for the playground; pathetic utterances. She would not say them, she would not confirm for him that she was too dull for his attention.

Alice did not think this was standard dueling vocabulary.

She had never articulated this to anyone; she had tried for so long to pretend it was not a problem, because admitting the problem would make it real, and this could not be. My mind is broken and I cannot fix it, I cannot sort reality from dreams—that was not true. She could not live if it were true.

But the lesson there, the nugget of truth within the paradox, was that happiness was comparative, not absolute. And this meant that if you could just outlast the other guy—if you could hold off even ten minutes before opening the cork—then at least you wouldn’t be the fool who drank the shitty wine.

“Don’t quote Nietzsche on my boat,” said Elspeth.

for it was the first time a poet seemed to understand that wrath was not merely external; was not just a screaming raving tornado of destruction. Sometimes you swallowed it down like a hot coal. Sometimes it only ever burned you, slowly, from the inside out, until you choked.

And I think the whole point of Hell is to show you the full extent of what you wanted.”

The upshot is, Hell’s not so bad for the people who are in it. They’re exactly where they wanted to be.”

How could she explain it? What was devastating was not the touch—he had hardly been violent with her. No, what hurt was how easily he could reduce her to a thing. No longer a student, a mind, an inquisitive being growing and learning and becoming under him—but just the barest identity she had been afraid to be all along, which was a mere woman. It was all such a fucking cliché.

Why didn’t you ever tell me?” asked Alice. And Peter gave the only correct answer, which was the true answer, which was just the question flipped. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” All this time, thought Alice. All this time they’d both been drowning, and thinking the other was gloating at them from the shore.

“And I just thought, if it wasn’t working for me, then that meant there was something wrong with me,” she said. “After all, you were doing just fine.” “Funny,” said Peter. “That’s how I felt about you.” They blinked at one another.

Basically, it says no theory of mathematics can ever be complete, because for any reasonable mathematical system there will always be truths that the system cannot prove. Math has its limits. There’s always something we don’t know.

There’s a million things to keep a soul from writing, all in the service of making you better at it. Remember that, Alice Law. Hell is a writers’ market.”

She would have liked the luxury of having a mental breakdown but unfortunately, now time mattered again. She was hurled back into a schema of change and there was forward momentum now, a destination, things to do and get done. She had to busy herself with whatever happened several hours from now. Futurity! What a concept.

“If I die, I die,” said Alice. “But there’s no life otherwise, I think. Life is an activity that’s got to be sustained. You have to fight for it. Otherwise it’s no life at all. That’s just it. It’s just an impulse. And we’ve both determined that’s not enough. You know that.”

“Magicians,” she sighed. “Fools, all of us.”

“There’s no why,” said Elspeth. “You don’t have to understand it. You just have to accept.”

It was all so unfair, she thought. You thought people were giants, and they devastated you by being so human.

I wish I were the night, so that I might watch your sleep with a thousand eyes.