✴

“Inside and outside are one.” As you form this thought of speech, your perspective distorts again, and the wall of the tower in front of you curves outward, wrapping itself around you and binding all of the world within it.

The little singularity circles you excitedly, moving so fast you can’t track its position. “You’re finally starting to have intelligent thoughts. There may yet be hope for some of you humanoids.”

“Must be the exopath in me,” you say.

Standing inside the outer walls, you look up at the spiral staircase now winding up toward a bright star in the sky. Something about its light is as mesmerizing to you as the ætherglow, which hasn’t enraptured you as much since synchronization. You feel a strong pull, an absolute need to get closer to that star.

You step up onto the first step, when you feel the æther beneath you vibrating, like thousands of tiny steps cascading across hollow metal. Something is rushing toward you--a serpentine form running on uncountable little legs that flow past it in waves.

You stand your ground as it rushes up to you, but you raise your shield.

“What now, Ædan, afraid of a little bug?” your companion says.

The entity reaches you, stopping its charge very suddenly. It looks up at you with a thousand little eyes, each glowing a unique color. “What’s this? You are in my way,” it speaks to your mind.

“There’s room to go around,” you say.

“I do not go around, what sort of nonsense is that?” the many-legged bug says. “What sort of system are you to ask such an absurd thing?”

“I’m Ædan, a...complex system,” you say. “Who are you?”

“I’m the crawler. I walk up and down stairs.”

“I see... What for?”

“What for? Maybe if you walked up and down stairs you would understand what a meaningless question that is. Walking up and down stairs is its own reward. Now would you leave my path? I am very busy.”

“Well maybe I’ll let you pass if you can give me some answers. The other exopath I’ve met here hasn’t been very helpful,” you say.

“I know not the answer, unless it pertains to stairs,” it says.

“Maybe it does. What’s at the top of this tower?” you say.

“The stimmy place of course.”

“The star...” You stare up into its radiant light, deep red like a very distant server.

“Yes, yes, it’s very interesting I know.”

“But what are you in such a hurry for anyway? We’re at the bottom of the stairs already...” You turn and look behind you, expecting the floor, but only see a long descent down the stairway, spiraling down into the same stimmy red light. “Of course, no up or down...”

“Tourists...” the crawler says.

“I know,” the little one says. “It’s a wonder this one has not lost itself yet.”