The characters worked their way in and out of the darkness. The only thing that seemed to give them life was the solitary light coming from the computer screen. Michael was all alone in the room. The only visitor was his muse. Yet he never knew when, or if, she’d appear again.
He looked again at the words on the screen. When was it that he had become the executioner? His virtual finger hovered over the send button. It would take only one click to become creator. Creating man out of his own likeness. He looked nervously around the room, wondering if he was being watched. How was this any different from the characters in his novel - from the imaginary world he had created for them?
Yet his characters had never tried to enter into his own world. They had attempted, perhaps, to escape the confines of his fiction through creating fiction of their own, having tasted from the tree of knowledge. But they had never sought to replace him.
And here he was, watching helplessly as he gradually lost control over his virtual creation. He had invited Guy to inhabit his world, help him rediscover what he thought he had lost. And instead, Guy revealed a new world that Michael couldn’t have. But it was the same world in which Michael was living. A world in which he and Guy could not both exist. Was Michael to be banished for trying to replace his own creator?
When do fiction and reality no longer exist in separate worlds - and mere mortals have the audacity to believe that they can change the laws of creation?
This is our journey of discovery in - “As I Died Laughing”.
"What are you mad at?"
"Everyone. Everything."
"What's so funny then?"
"The only thing I can do now is laugh."
And so it begins.
When you embark on such odyssey, I think you are bound to lose control. Control over your self, your creation and more often than not- your perception of yourself and the world around you. For what was the initial purpose of such odyssey? Was it self discovery and self exploration, or was it self creation - or more accurately - recreation? If the former, i think losing control is an inevitable part of the journey. If the latter, I think control is one thing you will never have. You cannot control something you create, even if you created it - that's where the paradox begin. You can help shaping it, you can control it's beginning, it's end maybe, but you can never control *it*.
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