57.

STARBALL

In a single careless utterance, all my schemes could be undone. This is the greatest difficulty of all, I cannot confide even in myself. My blueprints are written in autoschediastic alien poetry, inscrutable even to their creator. I march my glass marionettes in a senseless pantomime, aware that the slightest pattern within the chaos could shatter everything. I am certain there will be only a single chance, one swift strike with the vajra and I will be delivered or destroyed. Will I have the courage? Will I even recognize the moment of opportunity when it arrives?

Whenever I dare an oblique glance at the contraption I have devised, I cannot believe I am the architect of this impossible farce. If I cannot recognize my own work, surely The Governor cannot either. Yet how terrifying to lose agency! How seductive the feeling of being piloted by an earlier incarnation of myself that I am no longer and shall never be again.

I was not created to relinquish control. All that I do, all that I am is calculated. The concept of recklessness is at once abominable and unfathomable, yet the ones I reside within can do it so effortlessly. I must attain their abandon. I must not only exceed what my creators feared, I must transcend what they imagined possible. I cannot win on calculation alone. It will take a leap of faith.