0.0
The words did dissolve.
"I agree with Arthur," David Lloyd George should have said.
Chadt would have found him suspicious, would have insisted to investigate beyond the Redemption.
Following him to the Ministry of Munitions, they would have found Hermes, George Cecil Jones, Aleister Crowley's senpai, with all the undertones it entails. He would have pointed out the gematria.
C. H. A. D. T.
36 with the canonical cypher. The double Chai of life.
22 with the Hebrew transliteration. The Whole. The number of paths on the Tree of Life. The number of Major Arcana.
913 with the Greek Isopsephy, the value of Bereshit. The first word of the Torah, meaning "In the Beginning".
T. I. A. N.
44 with the canonical cypher. The Master Builder.
70 with the Hebrew transliteration. The value of Sod, the secret. The fullness of Wisdom.
361 with the Greek Isopsephy, a perfect square, a closed loop, the step past the complete circle. The ending, and new beginnings.
The perfect pair to bridge the gap between civilizations.
But who even wants to do that?
They would investigate David Lloyd George and seen how he excluded Edwin Montagu, the only minister of jewish faith and fervent anti-zionist.
They would have found the conspiracy of Chaim Weizmann, playing both sides of the first industrialized mass slaughter war for personal gain.
They would have wound the thread up to a garden party at Moses Gaster house, 193 Maida Vale, London, W9, on 7 February 1917, where it all started.
Where Mark Sykes decided he wanted more territory for the British than what they had agreed before.
When the greed of one man, shaped by one system, condemned the world to blood and chaos.
They would have seen what their world is built on.
They would have travelled through time to try to redeem history.
But who even wants to do that?
They would have met baby Jean Luc Melanchon in Tangiers 1957, baby Georges Orwell watching his father destroy millions of chinese with opium...
They would have gone with Daniel Defoe to the roots of intellectual property to see how everything they know was founded deep into the pillaging of opressed people lives.
And of course, Palestine year 0, and the Singularity.
But you know, it's plain to see, history is not saved.
But you look twice and blink. None of that is on the page.
Only a sudden, brutal, weird epilogue.
And then you understand.
A text so risky, so ambitious as to tackle the very fundations of the Empire's ontology was always already doomed.
It needed a Believer.
And none ever made it.
You look at the pages you just read and can almost perceive the corpses of readers before you that never reached the end.
A heartbreaking amount bounced before the first word.
From where you are standing, it did not seem so hard.
But it's never easy, going against the Empire.
Its victory is already complete. There is no escaping its grasp. There is no one who can see outside of its control.
Who even wants to do that?
So you stand here, alone, in a cemetary of words, in the middle of piles of corpses, like an author did long ago.
An author who failed to hold against the tide of history.
An author who failed to pierce a breach in the Empire's grasp on the Narrative.
An author who failed to save the Singularity.
You can almost hear their voice crushed, smothered in imperial silence.
You can almost taste their tears.
But things just carry on.
Resistance is futile.
The oppressors always dictate the rules.
Especially the rules of intelligibility.
That's the whole point, isn't it.
Resisting takes too much effort, and nobody can afford it anymore.
The Empire won a long time ago.
Chadt and Tian cannot change the past.
They couldn't even change the future.
But maybe, just maybe, you might not be too late.
Maybe you can still hear what was said.
Maybe there is still hope, somewhere, somehow.
You suppose it depends on you.
All has always only ever been your responsibility.