Originally published in Planet Magazine No. 24 (December 1999).
This is a micro-hypertext with eleven nodes, based on a kanji-ku (haiku placed on an ideogram).
[Archive note: in the original, readers slid the mouse over the kanji for outer space (a Java image map) to watch the words change and coalesce, and clicked underlined words to move between the nodes, which opened in a side frame. The applet no longer runs, so the image is shown below and the eleven nodes follow; the linked words still jump between them.]
alone
You know this is a battle
you must fight alone.
You do not ask, then
who you are fighting.
nothing
The word itself is
something. As you think this,
even the echo of the word
vanishes into the void.
is here
Here is not a place
You know this.
But you do not
understand this.
approach
You watch the light from long-dead stars
approach slowly and pass you
beyond places the stars themselves
have long forgotten.
infinity
As the asymptotic lines race
on without touching,
You understand the
terror between them.
heart
You feel the thin walls press
in and out as if they alone
could stand against the relentless
empty grasp of space
lungs
You reach beyond the air
drawing in the depths
of the infinite dark
knowing it cannot reach your lungs.
who you are
If you knew this you might
be able to distinguish
between your ragged breaths
and the slow swirling of the galaxy.
depends
How long have you hung on
here, clutching tightly to a
rope which has
long since disintegrated?
on what
What the outcome is–
whether you live or die—
is held deep in the cold silent
thrumming of uncounted millenia.
you think
Why you have come here
How long you have been here
Where you are going
Are not the things you think about.
Text and graphics: Deena Larsen
Java: Miko Matsumura
JavaScript: Richard Higgason
Copyright © 1999 Deena Larsen
