103,496 words. 1.0.3.4.9.6 words. Last word written! It’s a goram first draft now!
…Sorry, I’m at that stage of the novel-writing process. I’ll be better in a bit, I promise.
Even the fuzz seemed to recede for a moment. You learn out here very quickly that there are things you must never say aloud. There are topics so taboo, you may not even think about their outlines. At the top of that list — the very, very top — is the dread certainty that somehow, all of this death and destruction, all of the endless ghosts on alien winds and twisted fragments of a wondrous civilization, is our fault. None of us know why it’s our fault, but it is. You can forget about it, for a while, but not forever.
Maybe all of the myriad iterations of The Process isn’t sapient, after all. It must have deduced what we instinctively know; and yet, it does not hate us. I don’t think that I could extend that kind of grace, if I was the one being so wronged.