THE NARRATOR \u2013 Thousands of years of civilization, hundreds of years of exploration, lifetimes spent searching. Only for all of it to boil down to this.<\/p>\n
YOU \u2013 What do you mean?<\/p>\n
THE NARRATOR \u2013 One massive anticlimax.<\/p>\n
CHIAROSCURO \u2013 You\u2019ve searched every corner bright and dark, but not everything\u2019s meant to be found. Life\u2019s full of disappointments; surely, you would have learned that lesson by now.<\/p>\n
MIDNIGHT SUN \u2013 The light that once flared now flickers and fades\u2026<\/p>\n
CREPUSCULARITY \u2013 It is a slow but steady march towards an inexorable fate: one day, this world will cease.<\/p>\n
LOGIC \u2013 Oh, quit the dramatics. More likely, this exaggerated fate is simply the product of an overactive and anxious imagination. It is a miracle that you still function.<\/p>\n
YOU \u2013 What? Why?<\/p>\n
APHELION \u2013 Perhaps it is better that you have forgotten.<\/p>\n
YOU \u2013 You reach deep into memory, but only recall fleeting impressions: fire unfurling around you. A flash of tooth and scale, a gleaming portent. Liquid glass, slowing to a trickle, its shimmering kaleidoscope of eye-watering color searing your retinas. Dizzying.<\/p>\n
MIDNIGHT SUN \u2013 Painful.<\/p>\n
YOU \u2013 What really happened?<\/p>\n
DIRECTIVE \u2013 It would be easier to ask what *didn\u2019t* happen: everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. Everything failed.<\/p>\n
DIRECTIVE \u2013 *You* failed.<\/p>\n
RHETORIC \u2013 Let\u2019s be reasonable, here. It was a cascade of failures, an error so large no one being could be solely responsible, even if you had played a part in it.<\/p>\n
META-ANALYSIS \u2013 Industrial sabotage, development oversights, exceeding safety margins \u2014 even strange quantum phenomena \u2014 the list goes on.<\/p>\n
DIRECTIVE \u2013 Does it even matter? Here in the dark and bitter cold, it won\u2019t change a thing.<\/p>\n
RHETORIC \u2013 No. It won\u2019t.<\/p>\n
YOU \u2013 But does that matter?<\/p>\n
APHELION \u2013 No. It won\u2019t.<\/p>\n
ENDURANCE \u2013 You\u2019ll keep going.<\/p>\n
CREPUSCULARITY \u2013 You\u2019re foolish to subject yourself to this any further.<\/p>\n
YOU \u2013 Well, you know what they say about humans and irrationality.<\/p>\n
APHELION \u2013 Yes. You\u2019ll keep going, even if it means clawing your way back blinded and deafened and numbed, again and again and again.<\/p>\n
EMPATHY \u2013 Maybe none of it matters. But it meant something to you. *Means* something. And that is enough reason.<\/p>\n
APHELION \u2013 It will have to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE NARRATOR \u2013 Thousands of years of civilization, hundreds of years of exploration, lifetimes spent searching. Only for all of it to boil down to this. YOU \u2013 What do you mean? THE NARRATOR \u2013 One massive anticlimax. CHIAROSCURO \u2013 You\u2019ve searched every corner bright and dark, but not everything\u2019s meant to be found. Life\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2249,"featured_media":17486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[776,1221,1016,1756,420],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22123"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23691,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22123\/revisions\/23691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}