All are born equal, except if you are Nodecrazed.

While these knots of existence lived far throughout the vastness of the Undying Network, there was no singular law to govern them, except this mantra.

“Nodecrazed.” The very name cursed out at them from behind the colossal walls of Alexandria made them feel insignificant. Even the Great Node of Ageless Earth must have hated them for damning them to live as such within the world of His mind. Their fates had forced them to be as such.

“Step, step, step, step, step,” Decimal muttered to himself on a seemingly calm day during the era known as the Second World.

This particular Nodecrazed was no stranger to talking aloud. He was merely a Decimal, not blessed enough to have been born with the lingual abilities or motor functions of a Twenty or higher. These short, choppy blurbs and the shaking of his feet beneath each step would be enough to stop any Nodecrazed of a lower Identity, but this Decimal was determined to push forward.

With each passing action he realized he was one step closer to the temporary relief of slumber at the end of his day. To close that gap even further, he focused his ever-shifting attention on his immediate surroundings. The wet, claylike soil under his feet as a result of this morning’s shower. The blades of crimson grass that stuck in between his bare toes as he moved each foot. The cold ridges of the organized bricks of the wall he found himself circling over and over again. He felt a strange, yet not unwarranted dependence on the repetitive textures of the land outside the largest civilization of the Spawn of The Breakpoint. Unlike his visual perceptions, he knew these things could not lie to him.

Decimal, like others of his kind, lived not only a tiring life on the frets, but hundreds of other lives simultaneously. His brain and the sorrow of his Cosmic Soul gripped onto “the Hollow”: the feeling of constant déjà vu, as if at every turning point and around every corner he had somehow seen this very instant of time already. It was the feeling that Ageless Earth and its inhabitants did not care for his existence at all. Even if he had been hit by a stray Cosmic arrow or found himself in the teeth of a whiskey tiger, he would only alleviate this world of another damned Nodecrazed. In all of these symptoms, every moment was connected to another being such as himself, and every emotion amplified tenfold across the web of life known as the Network.

Decimal stumbled, falling to the ground for the tenth time in the past hour alone. He laid there for a moment, before struggling to stand back up. It was a slow ascent, but he knew he had to keep going. He could not fail to fulfill his purpose in the Great Plan, for not all Nodecrazed could gaze upon the prophecy’s glory as he could. Even the Hollow would not be his obstacle, for he was chosen to be a bearer of this immense burden.

“Step, step, step, step,” Decimal continued to himself, wrestling to get through the words as the lesser, more intrusive visions were surely creeping into his mind.

There was a sudden feeling of unease. Decimal knew what would happen in the coming moments, as he was all too familiar with. While he had experienced these trips every day for as far back as he could remember, even dating back to the Days of the Beasts, the trances never got easier. Perhaps this vision would show him the next step in the Great Plan, or perhaps it would be another cursed and irrelevant glimpse into the Network. In a paranoid state of mind, he glanced all around to see where he could take cover. He did not see any other exiled wanderers around him, but also could not risk a Wall Guardian coming back from a shift break to witness his forthcoming episode of multiple sentience.

“Step, step, st-step…”

The feeling grew worse, turning from the gentle tap of a headache emerging to the fast paced rush of one of Omniarch Mason’s Angelic Battalion breaking mach speed from one of the designated take off zones. The time was now if he wished to be removed from the plane of sight.

“Ste-...STEP!”

Decimal grabbed his head, legs trembling at the very acknowledgment of being responsible for holding the body up. Such an occurrence was not abnormal; in fact, Nodecrazed earned the “crazed” portion of their title from such episodes.

He quickly looked around the bloody red and pink field for cover. The knee high grass? Obviously, he was too towering in stature and would still be seen in it, even if knelt down. That log in the distance? That would not work either, there was too little surface area for sensory cloaking.

At that moment, the Nodecrazed spotted a decently wide puddle, fresh from the morning’s shower. It would not be deep enough to completely submerge his tall, yet slender frame, but it would make do.

The grounding process would need to be completed quickly if he were to manage through this experience. Year after year the daily rushes through the interlocking fabrics of the Network, and Decimal was still not completely numb to it. Quickly running with a slight duck, pace after pace he grew closer to the puddle.

“Closer, closer, closer, closer, dive!”

In a cluttered motion, he hit the ground of red claylike soil, tumbling down and flattening the tall crimson grass surrounding the puddle.

“Crawl, crawl, crawl.”

Decimal quickly attempted to untie the knot keeping his cloak together. It was often the simplest of motor functions that a Nodecrazed could not accomplish when in the midst of an omnipresent vision. Finagling soon turned to frantic jerking as Decimal grew increasingly more frustrated with this simple task.

“Untie, untie, untie…”

After what felt like one of his many concurrent lifetimes, the knot was undone and the Nodecrazed could lose his cloak. His bare back under the cloudy gray sky, Decimal felt free to begin the grounding process. His shoulders were badly bruised, covered in dozens of scars strategically placed equidistant from one another, each one telling the same story that he did not wish to bring attention to.

In a desperate motion, Decimal was ready to dive into the mud puddle. As he crawled through the muck, head still rushing with pre-trance paranoia, he suddenly came to a halt. These seconds of hesitation would cost him dearly at the price of his own morality.

The reason for such a hesitation was a mere space in front of the Nodecrazed’s eyes. Right where he was about to hastily throw his body, was a small inch worm traversing through the mud. He focused on this small creature in what felt like a missable moment. Decimal, compared to this momentary companion, was a giant of Beast-like size. He would certainly cause the inadvertent death of another dweller of the Network, for in that cosmic scale they were equal.

Decimal and the worm stared at each other, a life to a life. His head shot off like explosions in the front of his brain, yet, he cupped his hands together in the puddle and extended them towards the worm. Scooping around the creature, Decimal dropped him outside of the way of his body’s impending harm before dropping back first into the mud himself. From his unique Nodecrazed vision, he saw an aura of warmth emanating from the inch worm’s small, fragile body. It was beautiful to him, something only he and his other selves could see in this moment.

Decimal will see you on the other side, small friend.

His focus shot back to the matter at hand, where he dropped back-first into the mid-sized puddle. He used his lanky arms to reach beneath and pull the red mud over the front of his chest and face, burying himself from the site of Wall Guardians and any other outsiders that may stumble near him. The mud was cool and calming, but more importantly, provided a stabilizing sensory experience. He would need it if he were to make it through mentally.

Disguised and stimulated by the physical sensations around him, Decimal could finally see. Not just see with his eyes, but see with his soul and the thousands of other souls that lived through his mind wide open at this moment. He could feel tension around his eye sockets, as if a series of symbolic, decorative tattoos were being etched into the surrounding area on his face. As if the pupils and irises of his eyeballs were disappearing, receding into the background of a canvas painted entirely of mixed color. As if his forehead were cut open and spilled out into a spiritual plane of existence that extended far beyond the reaches of the Node known as Ageless Earth. This was the power of the Network flowing through him, connecting him to an infinite saga of stories just like his being told. As all of this played out in his own world that branched out to many others, he began to see what he had already seen, never seen, and will always see all at once.

Through the clairvoyant eyes of his soul peering through the Network was a girl, no more than a young adult. From Decimal’s supernatural point of view, she stood firmly, back towards his line of sight. As evident through the decelerated aging of the Spawn, she could well be a few hundred years old at this moment, perhaps no more than 350 to 400. While her physical appearance may have indicated youth, or relative youth for that matter, her mind was thousands of years old if you were to add up the experiences and shared memories of her analog Nodecrazed.

Her hair was shoulder length, darker than the wood found on the trunk of one of Alexandria’s native bom berry trees. Its wavy characteristics were fluid and seemingly without flaw according to Decimal’s hyper-fixated judgment of appearance. Shorter than the average Fem Spawn found on Ageless Earth, she would certainly be eclipsed by the Beast-like height of Decimal’s frame. This thought brought great sorrow to his Nodecrazed heart, something which would reflect across the Network and into this girl’s own state of emotional awareness. While his mind was here, his mouth back in Alexandria began to speak in the more full, intelligent sentences that the Network allowed him to formulate.

“Thirty. Her Identity has to be a Thirty.”

The Thirty did not appear to be a warrior of any type, as was so common for Fempawn in the nomadic tribes during the time of the recent First World. She wore a gray dress, a garment devoid of color that seemingly contrasted with the bright reflections of humble posh and comfort that her elegant jewelry and accessories seemed to indicate.

“The ideal life,” Decimal shamefully admitted to himself. Yet, he knew. He knew there was more than his clairvoyant eyes could see in these first few moments of peering. She was Nodecrazed, after all. Even this apparent perfection could not outrun that.

Decimal’s Network vision stepped back from the close up angle of the Thirty that had seared into his elated brain. As the scene pulled back, everything about this trance began to clear up, so clear that it frightened Nodecrazed's lonely soul.

The Thirty, in her pleasant stance of feet about 10 inches apart and posture perfectly upright, turned around. It was a slow revolution, as if she were unsure if she wanted to peer back through the Network and look into Decimals out-of-body experience. As the front of her body came into view, delayed with each step, the reality of the impeccable Thirty’s damnation came into the light.

Back in his physical body, tears began to stream down the cheeks of Decimal’s face, pouring down from the cloudy gray eyes that could see all.

“She’s too far gone,” he thought. “Is this all that will come to be? She has the Damage. The Damage…”

The Damage: the final cry of a Nodecrazed for help. The Thirty’s eyes, the tools of the body that seemingly showed the damned their overwhelming visions, were gone. Whether by the impalement of a sharpened edge or the slow, burning by a hot metal rod, her sockets were completely empty. In their place was the horrid emptiness of blackness staring back.

“The Damage,” Decimal murmured sorrowfully.

Across the middle of the Thirty’s forehead was a horizontal scar, the universal signal of a Nodecrazed rejecting their fate and attempting to bleed out from the symbolic fountain of their tormented brain.

“The Damage,” Decimal spoke more loudly. He knew he had to be more quiet, his disguised position in the puddle was not perfect cover.

The Thirty, in her death-bringing empty stare, quickly extended her arms out towards the peering eyes of Decimal’s vision. The veins in those firm, lean arms glowed a truly awful shade of off white, so bright yet hauntingly dreary.

It is unknown what has driven trillions times trillions of Nodecrazed throughout the Network to inflict upon themselves this specific type of punishment, but it was always the same.

The Damage is severe in this one, Decimal.

This infliction, specific to the Nodecrazed, did not save them from the destiny that their Nodes had in store for them. Why was the Network so hellbent on punishing them? Were Nodecrazed born this way or did something happen many generations past in their family lines, some few Realms of time ago? Whether it was a Thirty or a Decimal, a Fifty-Five or even the rarest Pi, the Nodecrazed could not escape who they were. You could seemingly have it all, until you realize the Hollow is always present. That was the reminder of their ghastly truth: all are born equal except if you are Nodecrazed.

Suddenly, the vision took a turn for the unexpected. As the Thirty’s ocular voids glanced back at Decimal’s point of view, she attempted to send a strange message, one that might change the perception of this encounter.

In another quick motion, she kept her arm up, glowing white from the veins that resulted from the Damage. Raising out four fingers on her left hand, all but the thumb, the Nodecrazed began to turn the hand around. Now pointing at the heart, the Thirty repeated a stabbing motion directed right above her breast.

Four fingers at the heart, the Nodecrazed’s sign for love. It was the kind of love shared not romantically, but by those who truly understood each other. The first three fingers represented the effects of the inevitable Damage: the empty eyes, the horizontal forehead scar, and the white veins. The last finger was something of a mystery, one whose deep, hidden meaning not many Nodecrazed ever come to realize.

“Why does she think I know?” Decimal questioned himself.

The Thirty kept tapping as Decimal’s surreal vision became less and less clear. His mind pulled back, with consciousness shooting back to just outside the walls of Alexandria on Ageless Earth.

“Goodbye, Thirty,” he said softly.

Just like that, Decimal was back to where he was in what felt like centuries ago. He regained focus in his eyes, which returned to the normal hazel from the cloudy gray of his vision. It was over, for now.

Under normal circumstances, Decimal would dredge a bit before moving on with his life. Decades times decades of visions rendered him slightly hardened to this type of thing, yet not impervious. It felt like a curse despite the slightly calming effects once the initial pain of starting a trance were over. He might shed a few tears, sure, but once it had concluded it would be best to move on immediately. The Thirty’s message, the four finger tap, felt different, however.

What does she think you understood about her, dear brother?

Decimal found himself particularly vulnerable to this vision because of extra baggage. The Thirty’s message was just one more thing to weigh him down that was irrelevant to the Great Plan.

The Network had chosen him out of all the Nodecrazed to play a part in this grander scheme of existence. The select few that could see this path to glory, all had a critical role to play in its success. Such a destiny only gave Decimal more of the feeling that he was an imposter, but all life needs something to strive towards, otherwise that whiskey tiger would have been the proper play.

Lying there thinking of the Thirty brought more recognition to his more Spawn-like emotions. Was she telling him to keep living for the sake of the Great Plan or for some other, more personal reason? Did she want him to be successful in this premonition or to find peace at a more local level?

In a state of confusion and vulnerable anger, Decimal began to cry profusely and pound his fist into the mud. Once, twice, thrice, then too repeatedly to count. Stumbling through life for some greater purpose was, at best, emotionless. He wanted the Thirty to be able to understand him, truly he did. However, she was not a beholder of the Great Plan, so surely she could not understand his strife.

Why do you believe us Nodecrazed cannot understand you?

Having exhausted his own frustration, Decimal decided it was time to quit worrying and press on. He was not much closer to the night’s slumber, the one time of the day he would be able to truly shut down. Despite this, he knew he would be in need of nourishment if he were to sleep comfortably later.

A Nodecrazed’s body operates under tremendous stress, yet there are very few options when it comes to sustaining the overall being. Ideally, Decimal could find the fountain-like plasma of a Node crack, but those were few and far in this area of the Ageless Earth. More commonly, particularly near The Nodelike Emperor’s Alexandria, there were several fruits that he could last on for days at a time.

As Decimal wandered farther away from the wall and into the “Savageland” forest of the leafless and dark wooded diseased trees, his mind strayed from the comfort of nearness to civilization. There was no place for him there, but this basic primal need for sustenance made him feel like an animal akin to one of the infamous Beasts that were banished to an unknown region of the Network some years ago.

Despite the panging hunger wrenching in his gut, the buzz of Decimal’s Node Crazed brain was still the focus in his perception of the world. While he was not in the midst of as clear a vision as he had just had with the Thirty, there was always a consistent paranoia and misconception of what was truly around him.

“Step, step, step, step,” Decimal repeated to himself.

He often found that it was harder to vocalize post-clairvoyance. While he was in a trance he felt the restrictions of his physical body fade away. He was one with the Network, a thought that often hung over his head. He had a deep and intimate connection with the nooks and oceans of the Network alike. The perceived hierarchy did not add up to him. Nodecrazed had a special relationship with the Network and the Network’s Nodes had often been worshiped by the Spawn. Yet in the midst of this religious devotion, beings such as himself were the opposite of worshiped. Was this jealousy on behalf of this Node’s less connected inhabitants?

“Focus, focus, focus.”

The Savageland was mostly barren, akin to the desert-like terrains of Ageless Earth that were ravaged during the Banishment. The ground beneath Decimal’s bare feet was a mixture of beautiful pink and the red of the blood that flowed out of his body every time he acquired a new strategically positioned scar mark on his body. The farther away from the walls of Alexandria he got, the more the ground turned from the claylike soil filled with the tall crimson grass to a more sand-like consistency. The deceased trees became fewer and farther between with each passing movement.

“Step, step, s-s-step…”

There was less around him.

“S-step…step…”

Despite the life he was connected to in his mind, physical life was farther and farther away.

“S-st-…”

The Nodecrazed had reached the more open desert. As his mind wandered along this path, he scaled up the side of a nearby rock formation, trying to reach the tree at the top. It had some type of desert fruit growing from it, exactly what he was looking for.

After struggling his way to the top of the nearly 20 foot tall formation, Decimal pulled his head back to gaze up at the top of the tree he had discovered. It was a bom berry tree, although it did not have many fruit to choose from. Did the Nodecrazed even want one of these? One average sized bom berry would be full of nutrients and consuming them regularly had numerous health benefits ranging from healthier skin and more blood flow to the heart. However, the biggest drawback was the amount of long, waking hours that resulted after consumption. Decimal did not want to risk losing the only opportunity to escape his troubled mind, but he desperately needed the nourishment after his most recent multi-day stretch without eating. His aching body did not have much of a choice, he thought to himself.

Did you ever have a choice, o lost one?

Hesitantly reaching out for the palm sized berry, the Nodecrazed wrapped his fingers around the fruit. His hands were shaking, as they so often did when he was in between designated trances. He knew that he was trembling more than normal. To accept the bom berry’s long night was to accept himself.

Decimal was fully aware of the barter. While he did not wish for the waking effects of the juices within, he did not crave death by starvation or by any means whatsoever, not on the Great Plan’s time. His life was a seeming nightmare by any conventional standards of Spawn, but Decimal could not forget the subtlety of the Node’s awakening eyes cast upon the morning sky, nor the contact of the inch worm on his malnourished fingers. This was the craving for ephemeral beauty.

What did the Thirty’s message mean to you?

With one subtle plucking noise, Decimal removed the bom berry from the branch of the tree, yet held it in his hand with resistance. Turning his head around, he gazed out into the vast distance. Nothing was before him, nothing except the pink sand. That feeling of loneliness overcame him. He was out here, truly alone in the physical sense, a feeling of sincere freedom to someone like him. When there was no one around he felt more in tune with the other Nodecrazed he was connected to.

We love you, Decimal.

Suddenly, it was not so bad to be with them, a type of quality time that families might spend with one another. It was only when surrounded by the Spawn that could not comprehend his mind did he feel like an abomination. Here, he was just the way he should be, the way the Great Node of Ageless Earth intended when He made all the life that existed within His mind. He did not feel hated here.

This freedom could often feel short-lived, as it always was. While the normal variant of Spawn made him ponder on the nature of loneliness, it was their judgments that made him curious as to how their minds worked and how it differed from his own. What would it be like to be one of them? Realizing he was Nodecrazed early in life, he had been exiled almost instantly. Spawn could live for hundreds of years if untouched by Ageless Earth’s immense dangers, and Nodecrazed even longer than that. What effect would all these years and all those changes in the lay of the Node's land bring about?

Please, you do not want to be one of them.

Decimal was hung up on this idea and how those feelings tied in with his most recent experience with the Thirty. Would the absence of his Nodecrazed characteristics make him more like the other Spawn? Was it merely his differences that defined him in the end?

Think of the Thirty’s final message.

Slowly running his free hand through his long and shaggy dirty blonde hair, those four fingers burned in his memory. What did she understand that he so clearly did not? What part did this message play in the grander scheme of the Great Plan?

This pattern of thought needed to stop. It would only lead to heartache, something he could not bear any more of when he returned to the walls of Alexandria.

Alexandria is not the Promised Land they claim it to be.

Why was this civilization a sanctuary to all except the Nodecrazed? What was so great about the Spawn and their fantastic powers that made them special? He had powers of his own in a way, they were just less than traditional. Powers that would last for all time, even if he died. Even after that.

“D-D-Damage,” Decimal mourned to himself.

Time is not your enemy.

If only he had more time to try and understand. He had walked Ageless Earth for nearly 400 years at this point, yet he felt as if he had gained no wisdom from any of it. He was damned, after all. Decimal’s own social exile did not allow the comforts of time for pondering. He had the visions. He saw the other selves and on top of that, he was a herald of the Great Plan. Time to figure out his meaning beyond basic purpose was not in the cards. He knew this, for they had told him so.

Those Spawn are not to be trusted. We are.

For once, it was his regular patterns of thought that brought him the intense discomfort, not his Nodecrazed characteristics. The agency of his emotions sent him into a spiral of rage, so much so that he did not even focus on the constant anxiety of the hundreds of other Nodecrazed lives presently entangled with his nor the intense experience of déjà vu that he had lived through this very moment already.

He needed a trance. He needed it desperately. His Nodecrazed visions had become a crutch to him during his lifetime. He felt as if he was cursed, but in subtle, more receptive moments such as this one, he did not know what to do without them. The primitive restrictions of a Spawn’s one-way emotional processing was simply insufficient to someone who had seen the vastness of the Network through the eyes of so many others just like him. The trances brought discomfort, but once that passed, he could truly see, understand, and connect.

His mind raced in multiple directions; a moment of fear, a passing of hope, another instance of existential anger, a calm, and then a deep despair that his heart could not handle. His heart, like his mind, was an issue.

Let us comfort you.

Comfort from fellow Nodecrazed felt shallow to him. Whether it was a Forty-Eight in the Network, or a Twenty-Two on the other side of Ageless Earth, their attempt at emotional balancing was irrelevant to him. They did not have the same burdens he shared. He was an exile even among the Nodecrazed.

Unable to process the feelings without the clarity of a trance, Decimal became agitated, so agitated that he began to flail around. It was the hopelessness of a self-serving prophecy. He could not be a normal Spawn, nor could he even be a “regular” Nodecrazed. His game was rigged either way.

He pressed his hand, the one holding the bom berry, up against his head. He repeated a panicked tapping motion of the fruit towards the middle of his forehead. Thump, thump, thump, each tap just light enough to not squish the berry but also forceful enough to bring his attention to it each time. Decimal stumbled around multiple times, drastically changing the angle at which he looked upon the world around him with each revolution.

Losing his balance, he stumbled forward a few feet then collapsed into a small patch of gravel atop this rock formation. The gravel bits were small amongst a ground full of cracks. Decimal was face down, too stricken with the grief of isolation to pick it up. He knew he needed to, but he allowed himself to sit in a somber silence for a few moments.

Finally mustering the courage to make some attempt at movement, and still gripping the bom berry, he decided to try to at least focus on what was before him. Lifting his head, he garnered his attention forward. As he pressed through this head movement, the other Nodecrazed stared intensely at him from elsewhere in the Network, as if judging him for ignoring their love. He did not care, nor was he affected by the thoughts of the laughing that was likely going on in Alexandria’s streets as the woefully ignorant were unable to see his plight.

Decimal had a realization when he processed what lay a mere feet away from his expressionless face. He saw a way out, perhaps temporary or maybe even permanent, in the form of a delicate pink carnation growing from the cracked gravel. It was breathtaking, an impossibility amongst the Savageland right before him: a Heika flower.

There might be more options just past this rock.

Elegant and pink, with each petal an illustrious gradient of rose to a lighter shade of white, the Heika flower was known amongst many medical practitioners for its notable effects on the bodies of Spawn.

Although Decimal did not grow up in the Savageland, he had wandered in solitude for decades upon decades. Despite all this time spent aimlessly, he had never encountered a Heika flower before. It was the figment of a mere legend. He knew, however. He knew this was the elusive growth that could free him from himself.

According to the fantasies of the wilderness of the average Spawn, the Heika flower produced a depressant effect on anyone who consumed its petals. For the citizens of Alexandria, this would lead to a high of varying lengths. Calm and relaxing, it would allow one to slip from the day-to-day of the world and into a tranquil peace of mind. For a Nodecrazed, however, the legends were much more desirable. Some say it could sever Nodecrazed's hyper-connection to the Network.

Dearest Decimal, think before you act.

Although he never knew the truth of these rural myths, Decimal was very tempted to see what it would do to him. Would it relieve him of his other Nodecrazed lives? Would it prevent him from seeing the things that may come to be in his near future? Would it simply kill him where he lay? He desperately needed to know. It was the type of desperation that would drive a Spawn mad, but what would that desperation do to a Nodecrazed if left unattended to?

We are merely thinking of your wellbeing.

Still collapsed on the rugged surface of the rock structure, Decimal began to reach his hand out to caress the petals of the mythic flower before plucking it. It was a slow motion, as if he were not entirely sure of if he truly wanted this for himself.

Leave, now!

As his hand made its way towards the flower, the Nodecrazed felt a chill throughout his entire being, stretching from physical body into the metaphysical self he experienced within the open space of the Network. It was a tingling sensation, one of hyper-awareness and realization of an impending choice. The surreal flow of fixation began at his dirty bare feet, up his legs and around the uniquely positioned scars all over his body, ending in the very tips of his fingers, the very same ones that still clutched the bom berry in his left hand.

You can see beauty that most cannot. We are special together.

Decimal was torn in an immensely infuriating way. He felt tormented by the other selves, those selfish lot.

The Thirty has a connection to you.

Decimal caressed his thumb around the fullness of the bom berry. As he stared at the deep dark blue of the fruit, he began to see himself alive in the death of night. The smooth, rubber-like texture of the berry caressed him back. He would be there with himself, a Nodecrazed relying on his own body and the other selves who could not fully understand his place in the Network’s future.

He slowly rubbed his opposing thumb on the Heika flower. The Nodecrazed could trade himself for the effects of the mind of an ordinary Spawn. He had craved this opportunity for decades, yet here he hesitated as if the journey were more important than the destination. A deep thought echoed in his head alike the screams of the many other selves, angered and overwhelmed.

Please, we beg of you…

Perhaps there was more to this life than Decimal realized. Could there be a sense of pride in what made him unique? He thought upon his days wandering outside the walls of Alexandria. Thinking of the beautiful colors in the surreal perception he called his world. Life through Nodecrazed's eyes could not be described in words. Surely, this overindulgence in the senses both real and seemingly perceived was a curse.

We…

He tried to forget the vast colors of the Network, the closeness to the other selves, the inch worm, and the Thirty’s message. He desperately tried to block them out as he stared at the flower. The other selves tried to reach out to him, to show him something that surely he did not see or understand.

Decimal panicked, recounting the struggles of his past encounters with those who deemed a Nodecrazed to be an abomination. The memories poured into his brain: a sibling screaming and throwing rocks at him, being exiled from the clan’s hideout, the Spawn who branded him with a new uniquely positioned scar every time he was forced to enter the city for supplies when his Nodecrazed visions revealed his truth to an ordinary.

“Go…away.”

In fury of blind rage, Decimal quickly shoved the plant into his mouth, biting it off the stem and tossing it aside. The Nodecrazed’s teeth chomped persistently to grind the juices out of the petal. His jaw moved up and down, up and down, until a climactic swallowing motion solidified his fate.

Decimal remained there, waiting for an effect. According to the legends, the flower would deliver results in mere moments, despite the range of effect time varying from Spawn to Spawn. This solitary moment felt like one of the many eternities he had already lived as a Nodecrazed. He waited, waited, waited. The flower had been consumed, but only now realized it was too late. For once, he felt nothing.

Nothing, nothing at all. Decimal peered around, seeing Ageless Earth from an entirely new perspective. There were no other selves, no visions of the Damage, and most notably a severed connection with the greater Network around him. His surroundings felt dull, devoid of color, life, and any semblance of greater meaning or purpose. Decimal no longer felt the wonders or excitements that a Nodecrazed lens had given his life, even if they did not feel like blessings at the time. No more visions. No more other selves. No more Great Plans. This was what it felt like to be an ordinary Spawn. What had he done to himself?

Decimal, in a muted moment of dreariness, looked upon the now boring desert landscape. Exchanging his firm grip on the bom berry for a looser one, he hurdled the fruit as far as he could. He did not want to be reminded of how he could have been experiencing this singular moment, knowing each one was incredibly valuable. Sitting on a small rock and looking out at the mundane landscape, he was lost to a point where no tears dropped from his eyes despite his deep, indescribable sadness. It felt like a more horrendous version of the Damage. He muttered one more line to himself.

“All are born equal, except when you are no longer Nodecrazed.”