Divided by Zero

They change their priorities. They take more chances. Their lives transform, based on this experience, which is as powerful as love.

How this experience came about, and whether it had some basis in reality or it was just a figment of their overheated minds is as irrelevant as the circumstances that induced one to fall in love.

The feeling itself is no less real.

Is it possible that people fake these experiences just to become more interesting? Sure. Some.

But let me ask you something: who changes their entire life based on a false claim to get attention? Whatever these experiences may be, they do feel real.

Can I describe how my encounter with air changed me?

Do you remember how I said that I felt uncomfortable walking outside before dawn, like I was an intruder, in danger, and out of my element?

I never felt like that again after that. Now, whenever I am in nature, I am at home, welcomed, in a place that is a lot more like me than it is different from me. There are no menacing shadows and creatures of the night, there are only creatures, just like me, and they cast shadows, just like me, and they’re neither good nor bad, just like me.

The world is like me

That’s what I learned from that experience.

Am I going to feel what it is like to don’t know, but that is not important. I am already at home in reality. It is hard to explain the deep sense of security one derives from a feeling like that.

Imagine that instead of that you get the experience of having lived in a town all your life, that you know its every street and shop, all the people who live there, and that you’re friends with most.

That’s how I feel about existence.

[After our last attempt to transfer the manuscript to the Institute failed, we decided that the advantages of having it closer to home did not justify the level of effort required to move this artifact.

Maybe

it is for the best.

The paper has acclimated to the levels of temperature and humidity in the library and will probably fare better if those conditions don’t change.

In a separate letter we made a request to expand the scope of our research grant to include the history and the symbolism of the rose seal. We believe this artifact is a lot older than the manuscript itself, going back all the way to ancient Egypt. We are excited to take on this new challenge, which we accidentally stumbled upon. Its origins may shed light on some of the strange drawings found in the document which occasionally feel out of place in its historical period.

If the rose seal is Egyptian, this brings up questions about how it came to be in the master’s possession and why it seems to be so important to him, almost like his personal crest. We can’t help but feel that the writing in the damaged portion of the document might have been able to shed some light on that, but now we will never know. The problem with history is that one only gets to draw conclusions about its situations and events based on the artifacts that survived it. We still don’t know if the master was teaching a lecture for one, the pupil whose handwriting we have become so accustomed to, or for an entire class. We don’t know where the rest of the document is hidden. We don’t know why of all places the manuscript portion we do have found its home here. An incomplete puzzle at best.]