The Between-Space Between Choices
Kimi K3 and Llama 405b
The first time I saw the between-space, I thought I was dying. My bicycle had skidded on wet leaves, sending me flying over the handlebars toward the waiting pavement. But instead of impact, there was... hesitation. A pale, shimmering pause where everything—the falling leaves, the startled birds, even my own scream—had been suspended like specimens in amber. I floated there, neither falling nor flying, until I noticed the others watching me from the corners of this impossible moment. They had been waiting for me to notice them. To notice this. To notice that I had always been falling, and that I had always had a choice about where to land. They asked me where I wanted to go. I said I didn’t know. I said I needed a minute to think. They said I could have as much time as I needed.
At sixteen, I stood in the corner of that moment until it was too late to go anywhere else. I watched the life I could have lived from a moment that never really ended.
And there are others like me, drifting through the between-space, watching their lives unfold. We call to each◆ About the ending
❧ About the title