(Thirty days starting August 21, 2011, I was to write something, anything, fictional. Most of these were studies for a novel.)

Nobody will admit to the kinds of battles we have to fight these days. No one knows where they happen, how, and why. But they leave us bleeding. And bleeding sucks.

My name is Dante and this is why I whole-heartedly intend to screw up the entire world order: because the kagluyag—unearthly beings who know us by our names—told me the other day that I was just a human being.

I am not inordinately arrogant, but I am by no means just a human being.

I mean, okay, I am a human being, but it is amazing what being a human being actually entails. And if you don’t approach life with an appreciation of that emancipating fact, then all is lost, really. Don’t be dead before you are.

The universes are volatile because they begin with a seed of thought. A singular, innocuous, but ever-powerful inclination towards something. From it, waves of energy conspire and percolate and grapple. Things happen. Things don’t happen. Paths diverge or merge or wind behind one another in the taffy-like awesomeness of parallel / alternative multi-verses / meta-verses.

Or maybe they don’t. Maybe this is all there is. Maybe the un-chosen and all its accompanying ramifications shrivel up and disappear. Maybe there’s a giant garbage can where all the things and thoughts and ideas you lost end up in.

Choose what you like. That’s the beauty of being a mere human being: to be able to make choices with the absolute knowledge that there’s no turning back from here.

Well, maybe it’s not that absolute. Or it only becomes absolute after the fact.But then after the fact is only true if you’re looking at it from in front of the line.

What if you had powers to see from all points? Will your head explode? I woke up from that night in the river with the power to detect nodes: a point in lifestreams when, basically, things happen. They say I’m not the first guy to ever get this, and that I’ll hardly be the last. But what happens to people who do is an entirely different story.

“What exactly is your plan, dude?” Keebs asked me yesterday.

“I’m not sure. But I will not take this sitting down.”

“Of course you won’t. But how do you take down the infrastructure that has been the basis of everyday life on earth?”

“By being who I am.” I laughed.

And then he laughed. “That’s what we’re all afraid of.”