Epilogue

As the years rolled on and more Intelligence Heads took their place as the great, sleepless machine maneuvered them into place, it was a common mental exercise for them to pull the files on this particular case and puzzle over what had gone wrong and what ultimately took place.  None of them got very close to an answer.

However, decades after the actual incident one did pay some added attention to an item that had barely been seen by most, a letter that was written from the subject to his brother shortly after those events beyond his control and understanding had suddenly taken hold of him and begun to shunt him into his intended slot.

It was a confessional of sorts, where he made many apologies for more than he was responsible for and grasped in a rather random fashion at many different possible excuses for things that needed none.  Nested in all of this was what could be taken as a type of philosophy, an underlying theme that seemed to the reader to suddenly crystallize a new meaning to the events that transpired.

He wrote of what was a fundamental need to rebel, and not just against the authorities around him, who he could easily see had been invested with arbitrary powers enforcing senseless laws for little reason, but a rebellion against whatever was running the entire show.  And it was clear to the reader in this case that he was not only calling out the machine and its workings, but even beyond that, to any authority in charge of the universe itself.

It seemed he resented the very setup of the whole, that being unaware of what the goal of life in general was could be taken as some sort of wicked abuse of power on the part of whatever wielded it.  And more, if there were some way to, as he put it, read the writing on the stars and know what the true purpose of this insane existence was, he would feel the need to do all that he could to do otherwise, to reject the very laws of reality, for he felt that inevitably they were written by someone or something with a narrow vision who never understood the whole of the thing and so the law that they had written was biased and ignorant regardless of how lofty they may hold it.

And then the key grew more solid with the next bit:  that if the point of life was simply to be, to experience whatever may come, be it good or bad, he would then do whatever he could to not live it at all, to not participate in any of it to the best of his abilities, simply to put a thumb in the eye of whomever came up with the twisted game as it stood.

So, as others had speculated about the unknown details of what had taken place, as to how he had not only rejected the path that had been laid for him but had actually disappeared altogether in a world where it was impossible (even if he had executed himself there was no evidence, no body, nothing), and they ran their minds in circles trying to discover the how of it, this Intelligence Head, having read this letter many times and absorbed its deeper message, realized what is was that he had accomplished.

It was as if he had been a character in a book and instead of following the handful of (limited) options offered by his tale, had simply walked off of the page entirely.