A Lone Boat on Ten Thousand Waves, a Drop in the Vast Sea

Special thanks to my friend ChicagoViolin, who spent three years rolling around in this story's worldbuilding with me before I dared bring all its twists and turns to life on the page.

This story has the bones of history and the soul of myth, the cold gleam of ancient technology and the warm hearts of martial-world wanderers. It can travel from the grasslands and the martial world to space opera, then suddenly slip a philosophical thought into the middle of some absurd nonsense. After all, the protagonist is an unlucky fellow wound up with the gears of “time and memory” and casually tossed into the world by a supreme being.

You have to join him: travel through an absurd cosmic wager, lurching back and forth between giving up and struggling on. You might punch a hole through the world's timeline, or play the “serious actor” for two cosmic old-timers in their cycle of reincarnation.

Life, you know, is like Sisyphus pushing his boulder. Who knows if it'll crush your foot the very next second? But maybe Worldline 667 will have just a little better luck?

A new writer has poured three years of blood and sweat into this tale, from its initial concept to the final words. Welcome to this special presentation of the “Civilization Quantum Theater”: “How I Wandered for a Thousand Years and Still Had to Win a Crappy Bet.”

After all, amid all this absurdity, the journeys that weren't written into a predetermined ending are what prove we ever existed.