"I believe his left is missing. But no matter. That is my perspective. Whether you like me, whether you hate me, whether you pity me, whether you forgive me, whether your father is avenged, whether he is alive, whether you are alive or subsumed or anything else: none of it particularly matters. My job will be over shortly. From there, it is up to you. Do you understand now?"

"..." You don't want to understand. "...Can you at least pretend to be mad about dying? So it feels good?"

"I'm sure I can arrange some helpless thrashing. But that's a later issue."

"...Thanks."

"You're welcome."

A silence. Richard wobbles his mug to refill his kaffee, or whatever it is. He appears thoughtful. You lace your hands.

"Ah. Wait a moment. You led me off track, didn't you? How sly. Mm. One more moment." Richard has to stick his entire snout in the mug to drink. You watch his neck pulsate. "We were discussing your death, not mine."

"I'm not going to die," you say.

"And I don't want you to. That's where we were. Are we now on the same page? There is no revenge motive. I take no special pleasure from envisioning this outcome. It's merely an outcome that, having gamed it out, seems likely to me. The Wyrm, battling for control— It will win. If It is alive in any way, over a sufficiently long period of time, It will win. It has existed for as long as anything has. You have not. It's that simple. Therefore something must be done. Now... the Wyrm cannot, as far as anybody knows, 'die.' It is not 'living.' It has no blood. If you were to take an enormous sword and cut off Its head— more than likely It would go on as before."

"Damn. I'll have to rule out the giant sword idea."

"I'll be honest, Charlie, I don't know if you're joking. The point is, It cannot die. But I would like to propose that... perhaps... there are alternatives." Richard swirls his drink with a finger. "The Wyrm, after all, is [WYRM], and to be [WYRM] is to be the Wyrm. It is self-contained. Perfect. This is what allows It to be what It is, but It is also... I believe... a vulnerability. Are you losing interest by now? Try to listen."

You stare over your own mug. "Uh-huh."

"Good. Now, if I were to manipulate your strings violently— severing as many as I could— this could be detrimental to you. You might experience deficits in memory, in functioning, in body structure, and so on. Crucially, though, it's exceedingly unlikely you would cease to exist. You are imperfect, after all, and contain redundancies."

"...Don't do that."

"If I was going to, I already would have— the point is, it's a bad idea. Now take the Wyrm. It is perfect. No knots, no tangles, no redundancies exist. It is [WYRM]. And if It is not [WYRM], it is not anything. Definitionally."

"...So it'd vanish?" you say. "That's the same thing as shrinking, isn't it? The world would—"


(4/long)