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133 lines
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<title>The Homestuck Epilogues: Candy - Chapter 14</title>
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<div id='s14'></div>
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<div>
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<h1>Chapter 14</h1>
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<div class="o-story_text o_epilogue type-rg type-sm line-caption line-copy pad-x-0 pad-x-lg pad-b-lg">
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<p class="no-indent"><span class="opener type-hs-opener-rg type-hs-opener-sm">Y</span>our name
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is Dirk Strider, and you know what you must do.</p>
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<p>The decision was made the moment John chose his course. This
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world has been set on a path that you cannot tread.</p>
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<p>You stand beneath the carapacian bell tower, poised to climb to
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the top. You’ve brought nothing with you but a long length of rope,
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coiled in your steady fist. It is the only thing that you need.</p>
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<p class="Command">> Ascend.</p>
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<p>You do not hesitate. Your legs feel impressively powerful as you
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begin to climb the staircase, two steps at a time. There is nothing
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of consequence but your singular task.</p>
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<p>You left a note, but you don’t expect any of your friends to
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understand. It’s not important that they do. A flip of the cosmic
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coin has rendered your entire life completely inessential. What
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could you accomplish in a dead-end existence like this? There are
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no stakes. No meaningful challenges. No structures or themes—only
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residual chemical reactions in a dying brain, a physical system’s
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obligate compulsion to exhaust its own lingering momentum. A
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cockroach with its head cut off, waiting to die of thirst.</p>
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<p>Halfway up the tower, you take flight. Every second you waste
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here is a drain on the concept of existence itself. You whip up the
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hollow vertical shaft at the center of the spiraling stairs and
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erupt into the air beneath the bell. You land on the ledge
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overlooking the Carapace Kingdom below and cast a cursory glance
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across the landscape beneath you. Its beautiful scenery is a
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comical illusion of no matter to you.</p>
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<p class="Command">> Get to work.</p>
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<p>Your hands move methodically to fashion the hangman’s noose. It
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is a gesture you have practiced well. You bunch a section of the
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rope into an S, and loop the end of the rope around its middle.
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Seven wraps, and you’re done. You tie it off at the bottom, then
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tug the rope taut.</p>
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<p>The corrosion has already begun. You can feel the gears slowing,
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all the intricate, unseen mechanisms coming unhinged from their
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mooring and drifting apart.</p>
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<p>Your friends might derive some sense of fulfillment from
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satisfying the elementary obligations of self-preservation and
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self-propagation, but there’s nothing here for you. It doesn’t
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matter anymore.</p>
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<p>There is a beam across the opening of the face of the bell tower
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that will serve as a convenient anchor for the rope. You toss the
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noose up over the beam and then rise to fasten the knot. You ensure
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that it is secure. There can be no mistakes.</p>
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<p>You touch back down on the ledge of the tower. You bring the
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noose over your head and pull it tight.</p>
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<p>Your choice is not between that of life and death. It is between
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an ignominious dissolution at the hands of entropy, and one final
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act of relevance that can bequeath your meager energies to the
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cosmic well from whence they came.</p>
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<p>In a certain sense, you’ve never felt so free.</p>
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<p class="Command">> Kill yourself.</p>
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<p>You jump.</p>
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<p>A meaningful death would, of course, be quick. Brutal. An
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expeditious descent, a splash of crimson at the base of the bell
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tower, a body that looks otherwise intact if you don’t flip it over
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to see the dark, mottled bruises where the fetid, septic blood has
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begun to pool. You made certain that the rope was long enough for
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the velocity of your fall to immediately decapitate you. It slices
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through the air with a vicious whipping sound, unspooling in even,
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silk-smooth rotations. Just as your epiphany occured at sunset,
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your death must occur at sunrise to complete the ouroboros of
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symbological harmonic resonance that is your personal arc.</p>
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<p>It is the very last moment of narratively consequential action
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that will happen in this whole, barren world. The few carapacians
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unfortunate enough to have left their homes this early in the
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morning will remember this moment forever, but in reality, it lasts
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only half a second. The noise your cervical spine makes when it
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sunders is indescribably gruesome. Many of the bystanders who
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witness your death will later attempt to recount it, but there
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really are no words that can adequately express the sound someone
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makes when they die. It’s a phenomenon that happens on two levels.
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First, there is the literal termination of organic processes, which
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is to say, the destruction of the meat. Then follows the
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dissolution of the ego. And you have quite the ego to dissolve, one
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that has flown so high above the forest that not only can it no
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longer see the trees, it cannot even conceive of the trees as
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material substance with objective meaning.</p>
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<p>Yours is a singularity of narcissism—an endlessly recursive
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existence so dense that it has no choice but to sprawl out much
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further than the boundaries of its person in any given universe or
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timeline. Once cut off from that, you become unbearably
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dispensable. From a purely utilitarian perspective, killing
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yourself is the greatest gift you could give to this dying world. A
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valorous sacrifice the likes of which this place will never
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experience again. If your severed head could speak, it might say,
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“You’re welcome.” But even then, maybe it wouldn’t. It might not
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care enough to do this shallow realm even that basic courtesy. We
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may never know.</p>
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<p>Your severed head remains suspended in the loop of the noose,
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tight under your jaw, while your limp body bounces off the side of
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the bell tower and tumbles to the grass.</p>
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<p>Screams sound from below. The horrified carapacian bystanders
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scatter and run. Your body tumbles down the side of the hill,
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spraying blood from its neck in a volume that makes the foot of the
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tower look like the scene of a massacre.</p>
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<p>Your heart keeps beating well after you’re dead. It keeps
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beating until every drop of blood is forced from your corpse, a sea
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of gore drenching the earth beneath the scene of your demise.</p>
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<p>Your body doesn’t get up, and your head doesn’t open its eyes.
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When you think so little of yourself as a moral character, any act
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of self-termination will result in a death that is Just.</p>
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