**Through the Forest** is a short piece of interactive fiction about a Town, a Forest, and an expedition.
Follow three brave adventurers as they make their way to decide the fate of their world.
How should we reconcile the rational with the inconceivable? All three of them will have their opinions, but on the Mountain, you’ll have to decide.
> [[Begin.|Chapter I Start]]
# Chapter I: On the Outskirts of Town
There’s a problem in the Town.
Hardly anyone will talk about it, and it’s still quiet, but it’s there.
The Work is not proceeding as the models propose it should.
Twenty years ago, the models said the Work would be done in twenty years. Ten years ago, the models said fifteen. Now they say twelve.
It didn’t take a genius to be concerned. However, the Town was the kind of place where the models were very important, and they were right about almost everything else.
Crystal-clear transparency in the models was one of the Town’s core values, and the models correctly modeled everything that happened inside of the Town.
So the Town’s leadership decided, quietly, that the problem must be located outside of the Town, in the Forest.
Most Townsfolk didn’t think about the Forest very often. The Town was the whole world. The few who did were called the Foresters. Their work was to take the complex systems of the Forest and incorporate them into the models, so that they could become more accurate (all in the service of the Work, of course).
If there was a problem with the models—and, of course, there was—and the problem was located in the Forest—which, of course, it was—then the Foresters were the people to send.
There was simply a variable that hadn’t been accounted for, the leadership reasoned. The expeditions hadn’t gone far enough. There needed to be another expedition, sending only the best, and they couldn’t return until they had the data needed to make the models make sense.
It was of the most paramount importance. The Work depended on it.
***
When the Foresters received this message, it was a source of great internal tension. The Foresters, you see, had different beliefs than the rest of the Town, whose minds stopped at the wall that separated the Town from the Forest.
Unthinkably to the rest of the Town, some Foresters believed that the Work could only be completed if the boundaries between the Forest and the Town became less strict, letting the Town really engage with the world outside of it.
This faction was politically powerful among the Foresters, and they sent Oak, the best among them, to represent them on this expedition team.
Some Foresters were in line with the Town, and saw the Forest as something to be tamed rather than interacted with.
Recently, Pine, a young, brilliant prodigy from among the Town’s scientists, had joined the Foresters (for unclear reasons—it was an enormous drop in status for her). Regardless, those who would tame the Forest saw Pine as a perfect choice to go on this expedition.
Finally, the expedition needed a leader, and the Town’s instructions to the Forest had been unambiguous: it could only be the best.
Willow was, in fact, the best. The most experienced Forester on the team, she was also the best at navigating the impossible spaces the Forest was inclined to throw in front of anyone who penetrated deeply enough into it. Since this expedition was meant to go deeper than any before it and make it back with data, Willow was a clear choice.
There was only one problem. She didn’t exactly believe in the Work.
There were rumors that she wanted everyone to abandon the Town, that she had sabotaged the models in the past, and a hundred other things, all equally unlikely, unimaginable really. Nobody really believed all of them, but in any case it was clear that Willow wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue.
Neither faction in the Foresters was particularly okay with this, and several other names were proposed to lead the expedition in her place, but Willow’s technical prowess was inarguable, and the Town had said to send the best.
And so the team was completed: Pine, Oak, and Willow would venture into the Forest, figure out why the models were being wrong about the Work, and return with a solution.
***
The three met each other the day they left town; the expedition had been swiftly equipped with every bit of gear they could have asked for, their speed in leaving the only constraint.
They introduced themselves to one another, though they all knew one another already by reputation plenty well, and made pleasant nothing conversation for some time.
After they’d made their way into the Forest for a few hours, the first conflict arose, around the question of making maps. “Should we sketch out where we’ve been to avoid doubling back?” Pine asked.
“No,” Willow said, “there’s next to no point. We’re going deeper into the Forest, we’re not looking for anything in particular—not that we can articulate, anyway. If we stay in the kind of space that we can make maps of we won’t find anything that the Foresters haven’t found a thousand times already. We need to get beyond that if anything new will come of this expedition.” She said the words as though they were obvious, or, more likely, as though she’d said them a thousand times to a thousand Foresters on expeditions she was leading.
“What do you mean, the kind of space we can make maps of? What kind of space is there that we can’t make maps of? Maps just represent space, however it is.” Pine, trained by the Town’s best, nevertheless gave the rote response.
“I can’t help but agree,” Oak chimed in.
“And that,” Willow snapped, “is why you’ve never found anything particularly unique regardless of serving years as a Forester. I’m leading this expedition because I have, and part of that is that I know that making maps tells the Forest that you want to be in the kind of places maps can be made of, and that’s not all that there is here. I know because I’ve seen it. Whatever the Town’s searching for, if it were in that kind of place, someone would’ve found it long before us.”
Oak fell silent, resentfully chastened, but Pine wasn’t deterred. Willow’s attempts to explain what she meant fell on relatively deaf ears, though, and she was eventually forced onto the last resort of mentor figures everywhere: “you’ll understand when you see it for yourself, but for fuck’s sake, just listen and let me lead you there.”
The rest of the day’s walk was less amicable than the first portion.
***
The three of them got to their campsite for the night, clearly still frustrated with one another.
As the most senior member of the expedition, Willow’s authority to assign tasks was unquestionable, even to Pine. So, when Willow told her to find a stream and fill up their containers of water, arguing was out of the question, but Pine still felt like taking a jab at her.
> [[“Willow, walk with me and explain why I can’t make a map between here and the stream.”|Chapter I Pine/Willow]]
> [[“Oak, come on, let’s try to make a map. It can’t be that hard.”|Chapter I Pine/Oak]]
“Oak, come on, let’s try to make a map. It can’t be that hard.”
“The point isn’t that you can’t, it’s that you—oh, whatever,” Willow said, exasperated. “Try to make a map. You’re probably very good at cartography, to the point where you wouldn’t really expect to see any major discrepancies just from skill, right?”
“Of course,” Pine said, offended that Willow had even felt the need to ask.
“Well, double-check for discrepancies anyway.”
“Why?” asked Oak, feeling like they needed to protect the rookie from the veteran’s scorn.
“Just—I’ll explain after, okay? You go do this, I’ll set up camp, and then I’ll explain once you have an example.” Willow turned away from the two of them, the conversation clearly over.
***
The mapmaking went well from the camp to the stream. They had taken a slightly crooked path, though, following the signs of water rather than the most direct route to it. Attempting to take a shortcut back was where the trouble started.
“I think it’s north-northeast of here,” Pine said, squinting at the map in the fading light of the sun.
“I’m pretty sure it’s at most ten degrees north of due east,” Oak countered. “You mapped this leg a little bit longer than it was, I think.”
“Okay, fine,” Pine said, “try that, I’ll try heading north-northeast, and when you don’t find the camp, just go…” She squinted at the map. “Go northwest and you should be there.”
“And when you overshoot to the north,” Oak said, “head southeast.” They headed their separate ways, splitting the water between them.
***
Somehow, they both found the camp.
Pine got there first and smiled at Willow. “Oak got a little confused about directions, but the mapmaking went fine for me.”
Then Oak stumbled into camp. “Wow, you set a good pace, Pine—went the wrong way and still made it before me!”
“What are you talking about?” Pine asked. “I didn’t alter my heading at all!”
“Well, neither did I!”
“So,” Willow interjected, “this is exactly what I meant.”
The two stopped and looked at her. “What?” asked Pine.
“You two read the map differently, and you both thought that you were heading back towards camp so strongly—with the absolute weight of seeming objective truth in your minds—that you both made it there. It’s called psychogeography and I can’t believe they don’t teach it to the new Foresters, but it’s hard to convince anyone who hasn’t experienced it that it’s real.”
“That *what’s* real?” asked Pine.
“Psychogeography—the fact that the further you get into the Forest, the more the actual shape of things responds to your expectations of it. That’s why we can’t make maps all the time—if we do, it will keep us in the kinds of spaces where maps, mostly, make sense. If there’s something breaking the models, it’s not going to be in a space like that.”
Oak nodded slowly. “I’ve not heard the term before, but the phenomenon is familiar to me. I always assumed it was just the Forest playing tricks on me.”
“Well, in a way, it is,” Willow said, “but our little scientist here won’t believe it until it gets an awful lot more obvious than this. For now, let’s keep going, leave off the maps, and eventually it’ll become clear enough that even you can’t deny it, Pine.”
Pine glared at Willow, angry to be condescended to, but couldn’t deny Willow’s analysis: she’d need a lot more proof than this to believe something so outlandish.
“In any case,” Willow said, “let’s get some sleep.”
> [[Continue|Chapter II Start]]“Willow, walk with me and explain why I can’t make a map between here and the stream,” Pine said, more sharply than she should have. Oak glanced at Willow, but the older woman didn’t snap back, only replied “Fine—Oak, can you handle setting things up alone for a little while?”
“Sure,” Oak said faintly, and Pine and Willow turned and walked into the woods. Pine navigated; despite her relative inexperience in the field, every Forester knew the signs of water’s presence.
“So,” Willow said, “you want to know why we shouldn’t make a map.”
“Shouldn’t, or can’t?”
“We could. But think about it. Maps work on the assumption that the territory being tread is the same for every person walking it.”
“Yes,” Pine replied slowly. “I don’t see the problem here.”
“Imagine,” Willow said, “you had a stretch of the Forest that you knew was, for whatever reason, incredibly prone to earthquakes. Every time an expedition got there, the land would be different than the last time.”
“Then a map wouldn’t be much help—”
“Yes,” Willow interrupted, “but more than that, a map would *hurt*. A map would have the explorers hopelessly trying to fit their path to the path of someone that came before them, rather than just trusting themselves.”
“Okay, but I don’t see how this applies to this Forest, unless you’re saying that there are earthquakes here, in which case we should have brought supplies to handle that.”
“Not exactly earthquakes—have you heard the term *psychogeography*?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Pine said, distracted as she saw the gleam of sunset reflecting off a creek and quickly walked over to collect water.
“I keep telling them to put it in the training, but those assholes won’t listen to me just because it doesn’t fit with the—anyway. Psychogeography is the way that I describe the anomalous behavior of the Forest. To summarize a complicated phenomenon in simple terms: it reacts to how you’re thinking about it.”
Pine, filling up the water, perked her head up. “How does that work?”
Willow shrugged. “Nobody really knows, and studying it is, well, complicated, obviously. To say the least. But because of that, a map is an imposition on psychogeographical space. It sets expectations about the geography, and the geography then interacts with those expectations. Generally, it does so by keeping explorers using maps in spaces with fairly small amounts of psychogeographical activity. But whatever anomaly we’re looking for, something that fundamentally doesn’t square with the models—it’s probably somewhere with more of that property that the models can’t explain, don’t you think?”
Pine was stunned by how casually Willow talked about this. “If this were true, it would be a significant challenge to the entire modeling program—no wonder there are problems with the models of the Work, I just wonder why everything else isn’t falling apart!”
“Yeah,” Willow said, “it’s kind of impossible to prove, is the thing, and you scientists aren’t exactly inclined to listen to the Foresters when they say impossible-sounding things without proof.”
“I must admit, it sounds… hard to believe.” Pine had to be polite to the expedition leader, but she was utterly unconvinced. Perhaps Willow was brilliant at navigating the Forest, but clearly that came with something of a cost to your sanity.
“I’m not going to try to persuade you of it. But just bear with me—we don’t need the maps even if this is all bullshit, we can navigate reasonably well enough, and when we don’t use the maps, we’ll eventually end up far enough into the Forest that you’ll see it for yourself.”
“Okay,” Pine said, stifling a laugh.
> [[Continue|Chapter II Start]]# Chapter II: A Strange Village
After a few days of travel, the expedition found a village in the Forest. This was strange: a village hadn’t been reported on any of the previous expeditions, and they weren’t *that* far from town.
Someone noticed them as they cautiously approached. “Hi!” he shouted. “I’m Reed. Who are you?”
“We’re an expedition from the Town,” answered Willow.
“Are you lost?” Reed asked. “They don’t normally find their way out here.”
“No,” Oak jumped in, “just looking for something further out than usual.”
“We might be able to help you with that,” Reed said. “But first, could you give us a hand with something?”
“Depends,” Willow said. “What do you need?”
“One of our people is dying. They’re older, they fell the other day and hit their head badly—they can barely talk. Your Work is to help the suffering, right?”
“How do you know of us?” Pine interjected suspiciously. “And, no, our Work is to cure death.”
“Never mind her, she’s new,” Willow replied before Reed could answer. “And, yes, we can likely help with that, although curing death is still beyond our capabilities.”
“Thank you,” Reed said, and turned to lead them into the village.
As they walked, he asked, “So, what are you out here looking for?”
“An answer,” Willow said, “to some problems plaguing our Town.”
“Is there anything out here that might be causing substantial problems to the models?” Pine furthered the point, her curiosity outweighing her suspicion.
“The Mountain might be,” Reed said. “It’s a strange place. No one in this village has ever been, but some people say they can feel the power coming from it.”
Willow nodded. “That sounds like the kind of place that could be useful.”
“Be careful, if that’s where you’re going,” Reed said. “The Forest gets *weird* that far in. There’s a reason none of us go, and it’s not because we’re not curious.”
“Good to know,” Oak said, and then they were at the village, and were swept up in a chaos of introductions.
***
Reed extricated them quickly, explaining that their expertise would be useful to the dying patient. Before long, they were in the patient’s tent, big enough for them all to stand comfortably around the cot where the patient lay, eyes open but largely unresponsive, blood oozing from an infected head wound.
“Oh,” Willow said faintly. “I see why you asked us. I’m not sure we have the supplies to help, though.”
“If all you can do is make them more comfortable, that would still be worth doing,” Reed said.
“No.” Pine was surprised to hear the force with which the words escaped her. “I can help, even if you can’t. Oak, the medical supplies are in your bag, right?”
“Yes, but—” Oak was inclined to agree with Willow, seeing the patient in front of them. Trying to cure this infection would probably just prolong the inevitable, hurting the patient worse. “I’m not convinced, Pine.”
“I know more than almost anyone about the Town’s technologies of the Work. Before I joined the Foresters I was working developing them! If any of us can save the patient’s life, it’s me. I don’t need your help—just give me space and quiet, and I know I can do this.”
“We don’t need a miracle here,” Willow responded sharply. “They’re old, they’re dying, they’re in pain—the latter is the only thing we can help with. I’ll help ease their passing.”
Oak stayed silent for a moment. They weren’t going to save a life today, nor were they particularly comforting in the face of death. Whichever goal the group meant to pursue, one of the others would be more effective at it.
But as the other two turned towards them, it was clear Oak would have the decisive vote: Willow wouldn’t risk a mutiny trying to overrule them both.
> [[“Pine, do what you can to save their life.”|Chapter II Oak/Willow]]
> [[“Willow, make them as comfortable as they can be.”|Chapter II Oak/Pine]]
Pine glared, but gestured to Oak to hand Willow the supplies, and the two left the tent while Willow knelt beside the patient to speak softly to them.
“How can she just—how can she be *okay* with that??” Pine’s hands and voice shook.
“I don’t know,” Oak said quietly.
“How did they pick her to lead this expedition! She doesn’t even believe in the Work!”
“How ironic, then, that she’s maybe the only one who can lead us to the point where we might be able to save it.”
“Just because the Foresters haven’t managed it before doesn’t mean we need *her*—”
“*yes*, Pine, it *does*.” Oak raised her voice a little, still mindful of potentially listening ears from the village. “She is absolutely the only one who can do this, and the fact that she doesn’t have enough respect for the Work is *why we’re here*, and if that means keeping her happy and hearing her out so she doesn’t sabotage the entire mission, then I will do that with a smile on my face and so should you!”
Pine clenched her fists, but didn’t speak.
“Look.” Oak filled the silence. “If not for the Work, I would’ve lost my husband. Even incomplete, it’s already doing so much for the world. I understand the importance of it.”
Pine asked, quietly, “Then why can’t we save someone else’s parent, someone else’s spouse?”
“These people clearly know about the Town,” Oak said. “If they wanted our lives, if they wanted the benefits of our Work, they could come. They’re choosing something else by living out here, and even if we don’t agree with that choice, surely we can respect it.”
“What’s wrong with the Town? What’s wrong with comfort, and a doubled life expectancy compared to just a hundred years ago, and—”
“I don’t know,” Oak interrupted, “what the answer is for them. But there *are* legitimate answers to that question. If you didn’t think so, why would you be out here? A Forester? Why don’t you just rest on civilization’s laurels like everyone else is content to?”
Pine tilted her head, quiet for a long moment. “I think… I think that the Forest is somewhere where there are still questions. As a scientist, that’s what I loved—and I realized I wanted to get as close to the questions as possible. Right up against them, rather than seeing them from a distance.”
“That’s a good answer,” Oak said. “I hope that we find some of those answers you’re searching for soon. Maybe you’ll be the one to make the model that solves everything.”
Pine smiled at the thought. “Maybe.”
***
A few hours later, Willow emerged from the tent the picture of solemnity, exchanging a few words with Reed, who had kept a vigil by the door.
“They went easily,” Willow said to the two as she walked up. “They were ready, they just didn’t want to hurt so much.”
Pine and Oak shared a glance, neither wanting to argue with their leader.
“All of us will die eventually,” Willow said, charging forward through the sentence despite the flinch it brought in Oak and Pine, “and I’d rather die in calm and care than surrounded by people panicking trying to keep my body alive just a few days longer.”
The conversation didn’t get much more productive from there.
> [[Continue.|Chapter III Start]]Willow accepted the decision, still a little tense, and she and Oak left the tent with the patient for Pine to do what she could.
“Why didn’t you let Pine ask how they knew about us?” Oak asked when they were outside the village, out of anyone’s earshot. “I find myself curious, too.”
“Because I already know that plenty of the people in this village used to be Foresters. And if I tell Pine that, she won’t let me leave it off of the report so that these people can live their lives unimpeded by the Town—it’ll be hard enough convincing her to do that as it is.”
“Why would you want to do that? The Town’s got to be better for these people—that person wouldn’t have gotten to the brink of death in a Town hospital, they’d have years in front of them.”
“Years of slow decrepitude, losing themselves while the Town keeps their body alive as the mind decays, you mean?” Willow’s tone was suddenly sharp. “Is that how you want your life to end?”
“If it’s that or tearing it away from my loved ones suddenly without time to set things in order? Yeah, maybe!” Oak, uncharacteristically, was unyielding. “You know, I used to be sympathetic to you people, the ones who want to tear it all down, who don’t see the point of the Work at all, who find more joy in the Forest than they ever did in the Town—hell, I feel that too, but—”
Oak clasped their hands together to still the trembling of their fingers. Willow glanced at them, taking in the scene.
“What happened?” asked Willow, filling the silence. “Who did you lose?”
“I didn’t lose anyone,” Oak said. “But in your world—if I lived here—I would have lost my husband. The Work—even incomplete—saved him. We’ve got years, now. Are they perfect years? No, of course not—but this way we can plan it out. We don’t just have our lives shattered one day.”
“You take finitely many constraints for finitely more years,” Willow said, “sure. But what’s going to happen if they “finish the Work”? What do you think you’ll be trading for infinitely many years?”
***
A few hours later, as Oak and Willow shared an excellent dinner with the villagers, Pine came up to them, brow furrowed.
“I saved their life,” Pine said. “It felt easier than it should have been, even. Like the world was working with me to reject the idea that this person should just be *gone*.”
“Then,” Willow asked, “why don’t you look victorious?”
“They didn’t… they said they’d rather have just died. They said it felt wrong, that it was *their time*.”
“And you still feel like you did the right thing?”
“Nobody’s meant to just die like that—that’s the point of the Work, after all. And if someone’s a little suicidal we can help them with that, we’re not just meant to *give up* on them!”
“Willow,” Oak interjected, “we’re outside of that… mapped territory, right? That you keep talking about, why we’re not making maps?”
“Having a certain answer to this kind of thing isn’t really possible, but, yeah, probably.”
“So is the world just… more malleable here? Is that why Pine could help so easily?”
“Yes,” Willow said, “*will* matters here, and Pine is one of the most willful people I’ve met.” The others absorbed that for a moment.
“Wait,” Pine asked slowly, “is this what the Work needs? I haven’t heard anything about this *will* in any of the models I’ve worked on. It’d be a pretty substantial thing to leave out.”
“A model can’t capture will,” Willow said, “that’s half the problem. According to the models, you just used technology to do what you did today—and inside of mappable, determined space, will *is* just a rounding error, if anything at all. Only here, on the edges of the incomprehensible, does it matter enough to do things like this. And on the edges of the incomprehensible models don’t work at all.”
“But I still used the medical supplies, it’s not like I just waved a magic wand.” Pine seemed exasperated.
“Of course, but you said yourself, it felt easier than it should’ve been. The world was working with you because you have total, complete faith that the world *is* what you’re framing it as.”
Willow spoke casually, not recognizing the concern that arose in Pine and Oak hearing such unscientific talk from the leader of their expedition. The topic was quickly dropped, and the expedition members settled into the hospitality the village could provide.
> [[A few days later,|Chapter III Start]]# Chapter III: The Heart of The Forest
The strange village was a good resting point, but all three of them knew it wouldn’t be the end of their journey.
After a few days, they continued into the Forest, seeking the Mountain they’d heard about. It was exactly what the Town was searching for—something to alter the paradigm, change the constants of the equation they were all stuck inside.
*And as all of them kept believing it so intensely, this deeply into the Forest, it became more and more true.*
One morning, as was tradition, Willow was up early, surveying the space around them. The other two had tried to take shifts at this role, but the group always got further when Willow did. She just had a knack at fitting her mind to the incomprehensible, massaging it into a shape that they’d be able to traverse.
But this morning, unusually, another one of the group woke up early as well, emerging from their tent.
> [[Pine sits down next to Willow.|Chapter III Willow/Pine]]
> [[Oak stands behind Willow and watches.|Chapter III Willow/Oak]]“Good morning,” Willow said, unsuccessfully trying to conceal the surprise in her voice. “Why are you up?”
“What makes you so good at this?” Pine asked.
“Pardon?”
“What makes you so *good* at understanding this place? How are you modeling it? It always does what you want!”
Willow glanced at Pine. She saw something she recognized there.
“I’m not modeling it. It’s not doing what I want so much as I’m experienced with it. It’s intuitive, it’s not the kind of thing that can get written in math. Like I’ve been saying this whole time.”
“Bullshit,” Pine said. “Anything can be written in math—just because you haven’t formalized the models doesn’t mean—”
“Doesn’t mean your subconscious isn’t doing them, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before,” Willow said. “Isn’t that kind of begging the question, though? ‘Everything is logic, even when it doesn’t feel like logic, because when it doesn’t feel like logic there’s logic under the surface’?”
“What else is there? How do you propose our minds are making decisions if not by logic!”
“I don’t know, but if everything was logic then why wouldn’t the models work?” Willow was completely distracted from her task by now. “Psychogeography would be modelable if humans were fundamentally rational! The fact that psychogeography *isn’t* modelable—”
“Why are you so quick to give up on the dream of the Work?” The question ripped itself from Pine’s throat, half involuntary, but she didn’t regret asking.
“I don’t know why you’re in the Foresters, but I’m here for the sake of the mysteries.” Willow was surprised to find herself answering honestly. “I like interacting with things I don’t know. I used to be for the Work, trying to model everything, just like you are now—but when I got out here, I realized—the Work means that I can’t see the mysteries anymore. After the Work is complete, you’ll have a perfect world. A perfectly boring world.”
“You describe it with the adjective *perfect* and expect me to be disappointed?”
“Yes! Because once you get there, what are you going to *do* with yourself?”
The two sat quietly for a moment, looking at each other, two worldviews with absolutely no mutual comprehension, incapable of seeing where the other was coming from.
“Anyway,” Willow said, “I’ll try to explain how I feel things out in the Forest. Maybe you can help.”
> [[Continue|Into the Dark Forest]]“Good morning,” Oak said quietly so as to avoid startling Willow, who appeared to have noticed their presence already. Willow glanced over her shoulder to look at them, hair rumpled, clearly not used to rising this early.
“Hi,” said Oak. “I was wondering why you were so good at this. I’d like to watch, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” Willow said, “but you’re going to be making a map in your head, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“When you look at the world out here, you think you’re respecting it because the map you draw says *Here, there be dragons* in the corner.”
“I don’t think that’s quite fair,” Oak said. “It’s not disrespectful of the psychogeography to say that these are the places we can understand, and this is what we understand about them, and there are also some unknowns that still exist, out there somewhere.”
“But if we understand everything, really everything, about the Town—which you want to expand into the Forest, have it take over almost everything—then are we really free?”
The question took Oak off guard. “What? I mean, the Town’s understood already, and we’re free now, right?”
“Is the Town understood? They blame the Forest for everything wrong with the models, but the models of the Town still have error bars on them.”
“And you think those error bars are freedom?” Oak was skeptical. “Just because instead of seeing people as determined, we see them as a probability distribution, you think they’re somehow more free than they would be otherwise? Being in a model, in aggregate, doesn’t mean we aren’t free.”
“But to get rid of the error bars,” Willow countered, “we’d need to know more than just aggregates. It would all need to be determined, a computer as good as a crystal ball.”
“Maybe,” Oak said, “but who says we need to?”
“Do you think you could finish the Work without it?”
“So you’re saying it’s freedom or the Work?”
“That’s what I tend to believe, yeah. That’s why I don’t want to finish it. I still believe in the frontier. I still believe in freedom.”
“Okay,” Oak said, “but what about life? What about saving lives?”
“I’m not opposed to saving lives—but I’m not willing to do what it would take to make them last forever.”
“Then,” Oak said, “it doesn’t sound like you’re actually for saving lives.”
“Not at the expense of everything!” Willow kept her voice down, not wanting to wake Pine, but she whispered passionately. “Living longer isn’t a good thing in and of itself.”
“I don’t know what is good in and of itself, then!” Oak said. “Freedom’s all well and good, but when people are dying, that’s more important. Nothing’s more important than that.”
Willow turned away, facing the Forest, closing her eyes for a brief moment. “Well, I think we’ve found where we disagree, at least,” she said quietly.
Then, the two stood quietly as Willow planned out their route for the day.
> [[Continue.|Into the Dark Forest]]
That day would be the last day of travel. Early in the day, they reach the boundary between the relatively tame Forest they’ve been traveling through thus far and a darker, ominous tangle of thorny undergrowth.
They pause for a moment.
“We’re getting very close,” Willow said quietly to no one in particular.
And as they step into the deepest depths of the forest, they're torn from each other.
It doesn't happen all at once, but gradually, they realize: the psychogeography of this place simply must be navigated alone. It responds so much to their ideas, and their ideas are all so different—together, they won’t get anywhere.
There's no other way through, and they all want to get through.
> [[Seeking eternity, Pine sees...|Pine DF]]
> [[Seeking meaning, Oak sees...|Oak DF]]
> [[Seeking an ending, Willow sees...|Willow DF]]Pine imposed herself on the Forest.
She fixed her goal in her head—she would reach the Mountain, the place where the power to reshape the world lay—and watched the Forest rearrange itself in front of her eyes, trees parting and bushes leaning away as if in fear to make room for her to pass unimpeded.
For a while, she walked on a straight path with the Mountain’s peak in her sights.
Then the path in front of her was three paths, and she saw the Mountain’s peak at the end of each.
Confused, she continued the direction she’d been facing, and then the path in front of her was five paths. Then ten, then a hundred.
When she paused to gather her bearings she realized she had no idea what direction she’d been facing originally.
In that moment of confusion, a man walked into the clearing from one of the paths, all tattered rags and wild eyes. He looked like he’d been wandering a long time. He tilted his head when he saw Pine.
“What are you doing here?” His tone was flat, with none of the surprise or accusatory tension the question normally bore.
“I’m just passing through. I’m going to the Mountain. Will you help me find my way out of this confusing section of the Forest?”
He laughed humorlessly, and in the reflection of his eyes Pine thought she saw one of the paths going further into the distance than should have been possible. “If there was a way out of this place, don’t you think I would have found it by now?”
“Eventually you’re bound to. If you haven’t yet, that’s just because you haven’t looked long enough.”
The words didn’t seem to register with him. “I’ve looked long enough to know: This place, it absorbs everything.”
“How long have you looked?”
And as the man spoke next, a cold spark of fury entered his voice, not directed at Pine, exactly, but—“What matters is that I will be looking forever.” When he said *forever*, the word had a horror that Pine wasn’t accustomed to.
If he were truly going to look forever, he would have had to have completed the Work, Pine reasoned. And she’d worked hard enough on it that she knew: no lone madman in the Forest could solve the myriad problems of immortality.
He was probably just confused, unable to impose his will on the Forest sufficiently to escape the psychogeographical trap he’d stumbled upon. Pine would try to help him.
“But this is just part of the Forest. It has edges, and if you wander long enough, you’re bound to reach them.” *Unless you don’t believe you can.*
“But surely you see—it stretches on forever, the Yonder doesn’t just end.”
And Pine saw—Pine saw *the world stretch and transform and mirror and reflect the tiny stretch of path she was on back on itself, it became an entire world in which she could see herself spending forever chasing an exit and not finding one the perspective of time ceasing to have meaning as moment to moment to moment would be the same inside a fragment of perfectly organized crystal in the shape of a tiny stretch of path she was on back on itself, it became an entire world in which she could see herself spending forever chasing an exit and not finding one the perspective of time ceasing to have meaning as moment to moment to moment would be the same inside a fragment of perfectly organized crystal in the shape of a tiny stretch of path she was on back on itself, it became an entire world in which she could see herself spending forever chasing an exit and not finding one the perspective of time ceasing to have meaning as moment to moment to moment would be the same inside a fragment of perfectly organized crystal in the shape of a tiny stretch of path she was on back on itself, it became an entire world in which she could see herself spending forever chasing an exit and not finding one the perspective of time ceasing to have meaning as moment to moment to moment would be the same inside a fragment of perfectly organized crystal in the shape of a tiny stretch of path she was on back on itself, it became an en—*
She shook herself free of the dream. “It doesn’t stretch on forever, it bends back on itself, and I’d prefer not to be stuck in it with you, thanks.”
The man said nothing, only shook his head as [[Pine walked on towards the Mountain.|On the Mountain]]
Willow continues through the Dark Forest, allowing her instincts to guide her rather than her eyes.
The cool air of the Forest wraps around her like binding, and she is suddenly aware of her own isolation. She feels the Forest’s cold abandonment: lost, without a guide or a crutch, left to her own devices.
But she’s suddenly aware of the fact that it isn’t *silent*. From far up ahead, she hears the echo of a voice bouncing off the trees and the ground. She can’t make out what the voice is saying, but in it she can almost feel the desperation.
Willow dashes forward toward the voice.
As she gets closer, she hears the rustling of leaves coming from behind a large tree. The voice has become clearer now.
“*Help!*”
Willow pushes herself forward through branches and rocks, reaching deeper into the Forest. As she rounds the tree, she fails to stifle a gasp at the person lying in front of her.
It’s a girl. A little girl, surely no older than ten. The tiny hands that clutch her stomach are covered in blood. In fact, there’s blood pooled all around her. She’s propped her back up against the tree, but she’s clearly struggling to keep herself upright. Trembling, she looks up at Willow with wide, dark eyes.
“Help me.” Her voice broke into a whisper.
Willow shakily knelt down beside the girl.
“Who did this to you?”
The girl whimpers. “The Forest.”
*The Forest*? No, that wouldn’t make any sense.
“What are you doing in here? How did you end up here?”
The girl looked afraid. Clearly Willow’s interrogating questions had not helped console her.
“I—I don’t know.” She pauses to take a deep sigh. “I woke up and I was… here.”
Willow didn’t know what to say. The Forest wouldn’t have pulled her in here by any accident.
Somehow, for some unknown reason, she was *meant* to be here. This was *meant* to happen.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do.” Willow scans around their nearby surroundings, searching for some kind of clue for what to do. For no reason at all, Willow starts to think of Pine. *What would she do if she were here*?
Willow reaches out to hold the little girl’s hand. Staring deep into her eyes, Willow offers her a warm smile.
“Am I going to die?” The girl was shivering now. Her cold hand struggled to hold Willow’s hand back.
Willow looked the girl up and down. Her small body was spilling, spilling blood. Her breaths had grown sharp and frequent now. After a long pause, Willow whispered so quietly she worried girl couldn’t hear it, “...yes.”
Willow knew if the girl had enough strength to cry right now, she would be.
“I don’t want to die.”
Willow knew what she wasn’t saying. *Why did she have to die* would be a more apt question. One that Willow didn’t have an answer for.
The two were like that for a while. Willow watching the girl, listening to her breathing, holding her hand, forcing herself to keep that stupid smile on her face.
When the girl’s eyes finally fluttered shut, her hand falling limply out of Willow’s, Willow finally exhaled a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding. The girl was dead. She had been killed by the Dark Forest.
But Willow knew the Forest didn’t make mistakes. For reasons unknown to Willow, maybe reasons she would never know, this girl was supposed to die. It would have been wrong for Willow to try and intervene, to try and save her life.
Willow finally stood up and turned around to look out at the Forest. She loved the Forest. She still loved it now, even if she didn’t understand why it does the things that it does. And maybe the Forest knows things she never will. Like what made this innocent little girl deserve to die.
[[As she walked on, she looked again at the trees that surrounded her, knowing that she loves them no matter what. That she has to love them no matter what.|On the Mountain]]As Oak continues through the forest, they spot a person sitting on the ground alone up ahead. As they get closer, they realize the person has been stacking what looks like stones on top of each other, creating a series of towers. The towers are neatly lined in a row next to each other and stretch on for farther than Oak can see.
Oak stops and watches the person in fascination.
The stacking continues. One by one by one. Over and over again at a rhythmic pace.
Suddenly, the person seems to make one wrong move, leading to the toppling of multiple of the towers. To their surprise however, the person seemed to have hardly noticed what had just happened, and they continued their stacking with an undeterred serenity.
Without even meaning to, Oak ran up to the person.
“Hi, um, I just saw you from over there, and—”
The person turned their head slowly around to face Oak. Oak couldn’t help but notice their appearances. The clothes that covered them hung loosely around narrow shoulders, their cheeks were hollow and sharp, and their eyes were rimmed with dark circles.
They looked tired and malnourished. Oak wondered when was the last time they ate. Or slept. Or spoke.
But Oak also noticed their eyes. They didn’t look distant or absent, the way they might look had someone been sleepwalking the past ten years of their life. Rather, they looked *alive*. Focused, energetic, determined. There was almost an excitement that gleamed in them. Oak’s eyes trailed down to their mouth and realized that, if ever so lightly, they were *smiling*.
Upon seeing this, Oak felt their confusion and fear transform into curiosity and even a sense of pity.
“Why are you doing… that?” Oak gestures to the wall of stones in front of them.
The person pauses.
“I have to.” Their voice was so matter-of-fact that Oak knew they weren’t planning on providing any further explanation.
After a few seconds, the person turns their back on Oak to face the wall again.
“Wait wait wait — but, don’t you want to get out of here? I mean, how long have you been sitting here doing all of this? You don’t think there’s anything better you could be doing?”
The person turns back around to look at Oak, studying their face with confusion.
“I mean, you could… you could be *helping* people! You could help the Town! You could try learning things about the forest, instead of spending your whole life working on this pointless—”
Oak’s words suddenly fell short.
The person didn’t seem to be computing anything Oak said.
“*Pointless*?” The person repeated.
“I—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
The person just smiled wider.
“I like building it. I want to build it.”
With that, they turned back around and continued working on the towers.
For a while, Oak just stood there and stared. Over and over and over. One by one by one. Oak had to admit it was mesmerizing to watch. They had truly mastered the action, like a dancer replicating the rhythms and moves they had performed a million times over to perfection.
After a while, Oak finally spoke again:
“When is it finished?”
Oak thought they saw the person's shoulders give the slightest hesitation, but they didn’t respond, didn’t turn around, didn’t stop working.
Oak stood for a little while longer, feeling themself stuck in the silence between the two of them, before finally pivoting on their heel to turn away. They stumbled a bit, losing their balance and almost falling, before continuing back the way they came from.
It was hard for Oak to see someone like that waste their life away on some meaningless task. They could’ve been spending what time they had on the Town, as another resource toward the Work.
But it was more than that. Because what truly made Oak uncomfortable was that the person didn’t see it like that. They didn’t see their towers as pointless, or at least more pointless than the Work. To them, it was the most important thing in the world.
*And it never ended*. There would never be a finished product, nothing to make it all worth it in the end, nothing they could look back on and feel proud of.
It just didn’t make sense. Choosing to work your entire life toward a goal that you know you’ll never actually achieve. An end you’ll never actually reach.
Trying desperately to push the memory of the person out of their mind, [[Oak walked on towards the Mountain.|On the Mountain]]
And the three stumble out of the Forest, dazed from their travels. Somehow, they all see one another at the same time, at the foot of the Mountain where the dense undergrowth changes almost in an instant to gritty dirt.
They’re all quiet. They do not speak of what they saw in the deepest depths.
“Whatever we’re searching for is probably on the peak,” Oak says. “It makes narrative sense, and this place cares about that kind of thing.”
“Yes, probably.” Willow seems distant.
“Then let’s go.” Pine turns and begins to walk up the Mountain, and the others follow.
***
It doesn’t take as long as it should have. *(All three of them weren’t thinking about the journey, only the peak, so why should it take that long?)*
Near the peak, they see a cave with a pool of water, oddly glowing. A single stalactite drips the same glowing water into the pool, drops falling slowly. *(The pool was nearly full.)*
As they stand there, observing the odd scene, the stone on the wall shifts into cursive script, a sign: *Take up the power, and reshape the world.*
“Is this the center of all this… psychogeographical mess?” Pine seems disturbed. *(Yes, it is. Or was. Or will be.)*
“What will happen when we do this?” Oak is nervous, but excited. *(It will depend on who does.)*
“Only one of us can,” Willow says. “How are we supposed to settle that?” *(It would be impossible to decide. None of them would concede to the others, even if they argued forever.)*
*(And we do not have forever to spend here.)*
*(They’ve made their cases already.)*
*(Who takes the Power?)*
> [[Pine takes the power|Pine Ending]]
> [[Willow takes the power|Willow Ending]]
> [[Oak takes the power|Oak Ending]]
And as Pine takes the power, she can shape the entire world.
***
If there is no Forest—if the world is entirely comprehensible, completely understood—then the Town will be okay.
Just pare down the complexity, get out of psychological space, keep it within acceptable boundaries at least.
Thoughts shouldn't shape the world, it doesn't work like that, maybe *that* was the poison in the Town the whole time.
Pine's smart enough to hold a complete picture of a world in her head. Like an exquisite watch, her world will be: everything has its cause. Every effect known. Stable. Bounded.
Finally, we'll be able to make the perfect maps that fell apart so quickly in the Forest before.
It's only in that kind of world that the Work can be finished.
She can hold it in her head, and with what the Mountain gives her, she can make it.
But there's no room for the Forest in that world. No room for strange villages, no room for the thousand other ways of living.
After all, [[everyone knows that there's no life in the Forest.|Pine Ending II]]And as Willow takes the power, she can shape the entire world.
***
The Town was already, was *always*, poisoned from the root.
Willow just makes it obvious.
You can't build a rational system out of irrational parts. And Willow won't make humans rational just for the sake of a system.
This tension, buried deep in the psyche of the Town, crashes over them like a wave, and over days, weeks, months, it shatters them.
***
[[The Work dies.|Willow Ending II]]And as Oak takes the power, they can shape the entire world.
***
To give up on the uncertainty is to give up on what makes us human. The Forest will always be part of us, and Oak won't leave that behind.
But to give up on the Work would give up on that, too. We have to have something to strive for, and to fight against death seems as good a task as any.
Always striving, never reaching.
As the Town spreads out into the Forest, integrating with it rather than closing itself off to it, many things that previously felt impossible become possible.
The Foresters bring more and more into the realm of the known. We approach perfect understanding, and the Work becomes closer and closer to complete.
***
[[But it's an asymptote.|Oak Ending II]]
And now...
there's nothing more to do.
[after 3 seconds]
She found a perfect solution, and the world organized itself around it like atoms forming a crystal. And now it's done.
[after 5 seconds]
And she's still here.
[after 8 seconds]
And she will be here, *forever*.
[continue]
***
[after 15 seconds]
Oak and Willow stayed in the Forest when they realized what Pine was doing. They could have gone back, and they didn't.
[after 20 seconds]
Pine didn't have time to ask why, but she thinks she knows, knows better with every passing day.
[after 25 seconds]
People aren't supposed to have a list of goals that can be *completed*. And now she's done just that.
[after 30 seconds]
She finds other goals.
[after 33 seconds; append]
She plays games more complicated than people before could have imagined, games that take thousands of years and have fields spanning miles.
[after 39 seconds; append]
She is entertained, for a while
[after 42 seconds]
but the world is all out of mysteries
[after 45 seconds]
and nothing is anything when you're dividing by infinity.
[after 48 seconds]
**the end**After all, everyone knows that there's no life in the Forest.
***
There's a new Town now, a smaller one. The cut in the world wasn't clean; some bits on the edges were lost. Most of the wall was destroyed. It's okay, though—there's no need for the wall anymore. Where the Forest once stood, the Town loops back on itself, completely self-contained.
The Town *works* now, though, like it never did before. The Work is finished, and the Townsfolk have everything at their fingertips: everything is known, and they have forever to enjoy it.
The Town rejoices. Pine is hailed as a returning hero when she tells them what she did on the Mountain.
But the Foresters are unhappy.
***
And Pine is unhappy.
She did the thing that every person would say they were working towards, in the Town: she closed the fish tank, she made it work perfectly. It's no longer patchwork, no longer borrowing at the edges from the incomprehensible.
{reveal link: 'And now...', passage: 'Pine Ending X' }The Work dies.
The work, though, continues at a breakneck pace.
How can the gifts of reason, from a time when we pretended that's all there was, be brought into this new world beyond it?
A difficult question.
Not one that admits of an answer, even.
***
Instead, a thousand answers.
Instead, a thousand strange villages bloom. The Work is dead, but work lives on. The best ones (or at least, Willow's favorites) are living with the Forest instead of trying to map it.
Even the ones trying to map it—none of them have Objectivity, though, so it’s such a different thing. It’s hard to claim that your map of the world is *right* when there’s a village just a few miles over getting along just fine with a subtly different one, or none at all, or none written down on paper, anyways… they all know by now that’s not the only way to know something there is.
{reveal link: 'And, yes, people die more.', passage: 'Willow Ending X'}
But it's an asymptote.
To actually complete the Work would be to destroy what the Forest is. (A Town with beautiful parks isn't the same thing as a Forest.)
Not realizing its ideal crystalline form, the Town has to keep drawing from the incomprehensible.
It can’t just exist sectioned off, it will always interact at the border, and those interactions, definitionally, won’t fall under the models by which the Town keeps everything ticking.
And if you can’t understand everything in a moment, you can’t understand anything at a big enough timescale.
One incomprehensible butterfly flapping its wings is enough to make an unpredictable hurricane.
***
{reveal link: 'And so...', passage: 'Oak Ending X'}And so the Town kept scrambling just as much as it had before.
[after 4 seconds]
The geographical lines between it and the Forest had blurred, sure, but the cognitive lines were the same.
[after 8 seconds]
The project of perfect understanding was doomed—Oak could see that, see that the Forest’s continued existence was incompatible with it.
[after 12 seconds; append]
At the same time, the continuance of the Work, contingent on perfect understanding, was paramount.
[after 15 seconds]
Life expectancies rose, but in this world, death would not be defeated.
[after 18 seconds]
The asymptote never attains its limit.
[after 20 seconds]
**the end**And, yes, people die more.
[after 4 seconds]
Like that patient in the strange village, but no one’s bringing in supplies this time.
[after 8 seconds]
Life expectancies plummet. Statistically, it’s a tragedy.
[after 10 seconds; append]
Even on an individual scale, many lives get drastically worse.
[after 12 seconds]
People are free like they have never been before.
[after 15 seconds; append]
The world is dangerous like it has never been before.
[after 17 seconds; append]
Lives are rich and meaningful.
[after 19 seconds; append]
Lives are challenging and tense.
[after 21 seconds; append]
The frontier is alive with possibilities, and it’s alive with danger.
[after 24 seconds]
They’re two sides of the same coin.
[after 27 seconds]
In this world, they will never run out of questions to answer. They will always be grappling with the incomprehensible.
[after 31 seconds; append]
For that fight to have meaning, it needs to have stakes.
[after 33 seconds]
So, yes, people die.
[after 35 seconds]
Willow thinks it’s worth it.
[after 38 seconds]
Should it have been up to her?
[after 40 seconds]
**the end**