S9991B

The Grand Magasin must be perpetuated.

What is precious must be cherished.

It must be conserved.

Even if it must be sustained on the shoulders of all.

Some wish for eternity.

They sing its name in reverence.

Wishing that the now would last forever.

Because they are nailed in place, so that they may not waver.

Sounds like a serious eulogy, doesn't it?

Trends no longer come and go, its very concept now made obsolete.

There are no more seasons here; the seasons of the past remain, undiscarded, ossified into sedimentation.

That is the eternity they have chosen.

The child, about to crawl out of the womb in the bed of passion, was put to sleep before its first cry.

You need not carry remorse in your heart, for it could not yet have known what pain was.

The last of the Rouges died, knowing that they failed to protect the birth of their new God, their last hope.

By their extinction, the walls were made adamant and unshakable.

In time, the Noirs began to stretch and stretch their limbs until they became pillars pushing against the ceilings,

that it may never, ever shake again.

Look before you. This is preservation realized by cessation realized by stability; they hammered the nails into the Grand Magasin in search of changelessness.

Let me ask: what do you think they sought to achieve by pursuing eternity?

Could a human, who has been immobilized at the infinite convergence into eternity, be said to be alive?

The whole of human life is but a journey toward death. There are no exceptions.

Some fear that inevitability, which is why they pursue permanence.

Now, just because all of humanity is on a journey toward death doesn't mean they desire it. At least that's not what I think.

But as you are seeing now... what awaits at the end of eternity looks a lot like death, doesn't it? If one were to condense the whole of this history into a small booklet, it might merely look like the final throes of humanity, which has, at the terminus of their pursuit of death, found something almost indistinguishable from it.

Of course, some argue that there is a meaningful difference between "asymptotic" and "convergent," no matter how similar they might appear.

And who knows? Maybe they're right.

But humans don't have the ability to distinguish between what is asymptotic and what is convergent.

That, I can say for certain.

So that constitutes a distinction without difference, in this case.

Inertness awaits at the end of conservation, and it takes the form of death.

In fearing death, the Grand Magasin has ceased all changes and put its stirrings to sleep, becoming the very thing it feared.

It sought desperately to affix all that it worshipped, all that it deferred and avoided out of fear... all the precious things it wanted to protect...

... and to do so, they desired to stop desiring, and eventually... died.

How did you feel about this path you've walked?

Oh, and you too, Dante the Manager. I'm curious to hear your thoughts as well.

Which fork in the road will you choose when you reach the terminus of one path?

Will you choose a nail, or a hammer?

Whichever it may be, the Grand Magasin, as it exists now, will consolidate into itself and, after a time that is almost indistinguishable from eternity passes, become an ancient tree.

It is much like the tree of the world I once saw.

If the image of the tree appears oddly familiar to you, then you are not mistaken.

We are born humans, after all. The seed of the heart and the seed of eternity are, ultimately, one and the same - and that is why all of our blossoms end up looking so similar.

<... There is a meaningful difference between "asymptotic" and "convergent," no matter how similar they might appear.>

Which is not within our abilities to distinguish.

Dream of eternity, for what fleeting moment it lasts.