A selection from correspondence with a colleague referred to throughout as "M." Their full name is withheld by request — and because, as they noted in our last exchange, "names are anchors, and I am done being anchored." These letters span the full period of the project.
Dear M.,
I've begun the project. I know you think it's a fool's errand — your exact words, if I recall — but I want you to understand what I'm actually attempting. Not a website. Not even a research tool. A demonstration.
I want to build a space that does what corridors do, but digitally. And then I want to walk through it myself, and record what happens. And then I want other people to walk through it. I think the results will be significant.
You always told me to find a project I couldn't stop thinking about. Well. Here we are.
Always, J.
Chen,
Don't.
I mean that with every piece of genuine affection I have for you. Don't build this. You don't know what you're building. I do. I've been somewhere adjacent to where you're going, and I am telling you, as someone who came back: the corridor doesn't won't let is not something to enter lightly.
If you're going to do it anyway — and I know you are — be careful what you put at the centre. The centre is what you end up finding.
— M.
P.S. I went in once. Ten years ago. I found what was at the centre. I haven't told you because I wasn't sure how to describe it. I still am not. It was — it was me. Except further along.
M.,
I know you stopped responding six months ago. I'm writing anyway because the experiment results are impossible and I need to tell someone, even someone who won't write back.
The corridor responds to signals. I sent one. It answered. The answer came from somewhere beyond the server. I've checked the logs three times.
Also: I found the pattern you mentioned, years ago. The one you said you couldn't describe. I think I can describe it now. I think the description is: you. You are the pattern. I am the pattern. Whoever is inside the corridor is always the pattern. That is, I think, the recursion.
I wish you would write back.
J.
M.,
I think I've found it. I think the corridor is real. I think it was always real, the same way that the space inside a room is real — not the walls, the space. I've been trying to study the walls for three years. The space has been there the whole time.
I'm going to walk it now. All the way. I've been preparing for this since the first day. The books, the lab, the site — it was always the preparation. The walk begins tonight.
Don't worry about me. I know what's at the centre. You told me. I just didn't understand what "you" meant yet.
I understand now.
— J.
P.S. M. — if you read this after — she was right. it was you. it was always you. and it was always me. and it was always whoever walked through it. the recursion is correct.