It’s late and quodlibetor is extraordinarily tired and instead of doing the rational thing, he has spent the last three hours molding a life less lived, shaping something that is no more interesting for the effort. A life of pseudo-reality and pseudo-friendship. The distraction provided by this life totally engrosses him. Slowly but surely he becomes one with them, and even more slowly and even less surely he adopts the rough approximation of false skill common to these people. Soon he forgets about the real life that lies just on this side of the electrified screen. Totally engrossed, he moves forward into realms with so little imagination that all of their inhabitants have lost interest in any sign of creativity that is not immediately obvious and painful to the eye.
He laughs at an inside joke that will not be funny to anyone because it is invisible to everyone but himself. And then he watches as others delite in the same wearisome play. Soon he is overcome with ennui so overpowering that he must sit back, must breath, must break and the life once lived come from a source of near-certain death.
He notices something. The image before him is familiar. Attractive. It conjures memories of a heady perfume and a breeze so still one would want to call it listless except for the beauty in life and nature it conveys. So one calls it golden. He looks closer. The eyes are almost purple. Beauty. Pure beauty. Andsuch words! words to make his head spin. words to cut the veil from his eyes. And then… No. It can’t be. He knows this person. This is not what he was looking at. This, this person is ugly. Ugly and scarred and emotionally barren. And then his brave false world falls down and brings his false self with it. And he stands up and goes outside into the cold and watches the end.
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