INGRAM

NOTHING OF THE KIND.

Ingram was neither handsome nor strong, nor popular, nor was he considered more than what he was. His family was like him, and like many other families, they all shared the same fate. A fate of slaves to their own comfort and the resentment felt at the mere mention of the word "change." It couldn't be said that they were radically conservative; simply, if something pulled from the front or pushed from behind, they moved in the movement called "progress." One thing, however, set Ingram apart. He was Ingram...

CHAPTER 1 (and the last) – FOG.

In the morning, fog always covers the city, sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes where it hides ugliness, sometimes where it obscures the dawning beauty. Later, the sun cuts the clouds, like a divine glimmer in the minds of the conscious few... Life awakens, the Situator awakens. The Situator – son of the abyss. The abyss is not evil. The Abyss is the embodiment of Nothing. Paradox in its most pristine form. The Situator reaps neither the bad nor the good. The Situator is the only (non-)being who treats everyone equally, like a combine harvester in a field of ripe wheat. Is one blade different from another? But sometimes it seems the Abyss thinks. It directs life on the Ground. It voices fears, makes demands. Poor thousands don't understand it, poor individuals can't explain it to thousands. And so individuals disappear in the mist of thousands.

When Ingram gets up in the morning, according to the Flow of Things, he dresses and goes to work. He doesn't consider the Mist, doesn't know the Situator's name, doesn't know the face of the Abyss. For him, the Abyss is nothingness, associated by the human mind with something described by nothing. Is this true? How can a person know...? Isn't silence a scream, more or less loud? The Situator often passes close to Ingram, looks into his eyes, nay! Sometimes looks through his eyes. And either he does something or he doesn't. The Situator feels no command to do anything, no prohibition against anything. The Situator feels the nothingness of Nothing. Does the Situator do anything at all? Does He exist? Can He exist? Can we know about Him? People have always sensed Him in their own way, yet humanity stubbornly denies its roots. How many civilizations has He known? There is only one answer – He knows Everything, Everything completely fills the space left by Nothing. And here lies the mystery of the Universe, one of many... what, then, lies between Everything and Nothing? One could seek an infinite breaking down of the boundaries of individual layers (if one were to attempt a layered interpretation within the limitations of the human mind)... But the simplest solution would be to assume that humanity finds its place between these layers (...). Humanity is undoubtedly something that is certainly not All, but it also certainly exists, so it is not Nothing. How great is the gap between Nothing and All? The notion that this gap is infinite is deeply appealing! And that humanity fills this entire area? If we were to reject this possibility, then, in our limited state, we might begin to wonder how small an area we occupy? Shouldn't this area seem infinitely small? In fact, it is only fantasy that prompts this line of thought. Or perhaps it would be more apt to call it imagination. The assumption that we are the only ones within the boundaries of the Between is quite... infantile... Can we, in our universal infantility, agree to this? Of course – No...

The Situator is a comb between... The Situator can be any deity, in this respect he is the perfect (non)creation...

the definition of the world is enough...

...Ingram heads to work and ponders how women treat him. They don't treat him badly, maybe they even treat him well, maybe they're afraid of him. Only he knows how harmless he is. Every time he discovers he's been a humorous episode in a woman's life, a shiver of naivety subtly mixed with a sense of the Abyss runs through him. There's no longer a division between good and evil. There's only himself left, and on the other side, Everything else. Who, then, is Ingram? Proof of the fractal structure of the Universe? Whoever he is, Ingram is distraught. Can all these definitions of the total division of something that shouldn't be divided register his almost trivial feeling of sadness? It doesn't even matter the reasoning behind this state of mind. Someone set the atoms in motion, someone has to stop them...

Ingram searches for arguments, arguments for and against, alone he knows what for and against what. The arguments seem to intertwine and blur in a way that's hard to bear, deepening his depression. Arguments are important, but incomprehensible; when they become understandable, they're no longer worth a pound of hair. The eternal law of complementarity between opposites—the need to give and the need to take—when one is positive, the other is negative. As we know, the balance must be zero. The more you care about giving something to someone, the more they begin to feel great uncertainty. A deeply embedded sense of balance causes complications; its absence would cause chaos. Or perhaps there is chaos now?

How could she be so blind to Ingram? The last vestiges of emotional materialism fall into a deep chasm within his self. He stops wondering; the chasm is not infinite; Ingram wishes it would never begin to spill out. He doesn't know that a deep chasm and a high mountain are the same thing. His human mind compels him to seek other solutions. It wasn't his ship that was too fragile. It was the sea that was too wild.

He feels very tired, as if his abyss were perfectly filled, yet not a single thought protrudes above the edge. Shouldn't he strive to maintain this balance? But he can't know this; a desperate person, to put it simply, associates opposite poles with things that have no center, with things that absolutely do not fulfill or complement each other. Between them, there is no compromise. Fire and water, commonly considered opposites. Another limitation on the mind. Ingram wants to disappear. He would give so much for that