To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

Why are you shedding dust, O Multifarious Meatbag? Your excrescence is clogging my filters. – Gregorovich

Your hubris intrigues me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. – Gregorovich

Might I suggest unchecked terror and an expedited retreat?*

Heave and bluster, boil and froth; you can’t conceal the void within your words. If knowledge were yours, then confidence too. But ’tisn’t, so isn’t. Cracked the pedestal, and perilous the statue that stands above. – Gregorovich

Why should it be? Nature has no regard for those who squirm and crawl within its tainted depths. The storm that batters, batters all. None are spared. Not you, not I, not the stars in the sky. We bind our cloaks and bend our heads and focus on our lives. But the storm, it never breaks, never fades. – Gregorovich

So don’t think. Be a sleeper devoid of dreams. – Gregorovich

An empty promise from an empty voice. The fearful mind cannot accept its limits. It shrieks and flees before admitting ignorance, unable to face the threat to its identity. – Gregorovich

Deny, deny, deny. It matters not. The truth of what you are will out, regardless. When it does, the choice is yours: believe or don’t believe. I care not which. I, for one, shall be prepared, whatever the answer may be. Until that time, I’ll spend my hours in watching you, watching most intently, O Formless One. – Gregorovich

there was nothing I could do but sit alone in the dark and wait. I worked on equations, mathematical concepts you could never comprehend with your puny little brain, and I read and watched and counted toward infinity, as the Numenists do. And all it did was stave off the darkness for one more second. One more moment. I screamed, though I have no mouth to scream. I wept, though I have no eyes for tears. I crawled through space and time, a worm inching through a labyrinth built by the dreams of a mad god. This I learned, meatbag, this and nothing more: when air, food, and shelter are assured, only two things matter. Work and companionship. To be alone and without purpose is to be the living dead.”

“Beware the temptation of false hope,” whispered Gregorovich. “Resist and seek your validation elsewhere.”

“The universe is spinning apart: a pinwheel driven to the point of failure. Darkness and emptiness, and what matters still? The warmth of friends, the light of human kindness.

“We are all kings and queens of our own dementia. The only question is how we rule. Now go; leave me to my method, atoms to count, TEQs to loop, causality to question, all in a matrix of indecision, round and round and reality bending like photons past deformation of spacetime mass what superluminal transgressions torment tangential tablelands taken topsy-turvy by ahahaha.”

*Be a most troublesome thorn in its side, O Aggravating Meatsack,* said Gregorovich.

*Not that I ever really know who I am. Who does, hmm? We change as circumstances change, like wisps blown on the wind.*

The happiness of two beings might be a small thing when compared with the immensity of the universe, but what, ultimately, was more important?

Suffering was inescapable, but to care for another and to be cared for in turn—that was the closest any person might come to heaven.

*I’m glad to have known you, O Queen of Flowers. You are a prickly and problematic person, but life is more interesting with you around.…