404 Documents Eighteen: From Inside

(More 404.)

Remember how I said I am obsessed by patterns, that I've always seen them everywhere? The patterns are like the glue holding the universe together.

Let me see if I can explain this another way. It might seem that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. And, see, by appearances that is right. But straight lines are curved: the amount that they are curved is determined by the force exerted upon the fabric of space and time itself by another body. In my dream, the equation that poured from one girl’s mouth to the next, that’s what it meant.

When Bradley passed through my life, my course was irrevocably changed. When Stella left, there were no other bodies exerting enough gravity to keep me in a neat, orderly orbit. I hurled into deep space. Just a little nudge at that critical moment can change everything.

I looked for patterns and clung to them so tightly because I was afraid of the chaos. Now, sitting in this cell, it all unravels, unspooling around me like intestines floating in water, sweet slippery tendrils scrubbed clean by the alkaline nothing. Nothing. Nothing matters.

And it’s okay. It may as well be okay.

Twenty five years looking for meaning in news clippings, the scent of the flowers or garbage I just walked by, my dreams. Numbers, patterns. Only now do I realize. Nothing holds me anywhere. All bonds are illusion.

For now I continue with the role, a patsy for a fictional art crime, a crime that never occurred. The situation, a lifetime in a cell. The motivation? There is nothing here but a mask. What part of N-O-T-H-I-N-G don't we understand?