A noise draws my attention. I sweep my gaze across the crumbling ruins. I probably shouldn’t be in here if the upper floor and its supports are as decayed as what little I can see in this gloom… But, as ever, emotions administrate logic, not the other way around. And the feeling keeping me here is hard to describe. Reasons are meaningless anyway. They’re always known second, if ever. Like all mammals, I chase stimuli that brings me pleasure, avoid that which brings me pain. The rest is ignored.
At the very least greed for more information is present. Willingness to endure risk. Yes, this place could collapse on me, but it’s also beautiful. There is an arcanity here. A hint of forgotten and hidden power. Opportunity. Vindication. Proof.
Authenticity is always in question. The need to express alone can be overwhelming, or at least an easy source of that pleasure and evasion. Maybe there’s nothing here but art and fiction. Myth at best. A lie I can be forgiven for believing in. But the gamble is worth it and so I hope, and I look.
I take in my surroundings. Surprisingly fresh smelling. The miracles of plant life and fungi. A few square meters terraformed by evolution and time. A human space, abandoned, and reclaimed, by its original owners. With no compassion, but also no judgment. The beetles and worms under the stones don’t love us. Nor do they hate. They simply accept. Mindless organic machines. I hope?
Do they chase their own wormy pleasures? I hope not. I wonder for a moment about when pleasure evolved and why. A familiar abyss opens before that thought process, and I turn away. Focus can sometimes be a choice. To whatever degree choice can even be that is. Another abyss dodged, of a completely different sort.
The joys of being this far in are exhausted. The risk of being crushed and suffocated insufficient to push me away. More proof against deterrence as a concept. Being human is ignoring threats. I thus move deeper into the ruins.