700 Years in the Future

Imagine, 700 years in the future, through some last vestige of the internet kept in an underground server, a notification miraculously appears on your device (which has been preserved in nuclear dust from the 5th world war). One night, an alien working a late shift at the museum of archeology notices the cracked screen suddenly light up, and upon it, one word arises from the battered code: Amogus. They do not know what this word means. They ponder it deeply. They scour the ancient tomes, desperate to understand its mystifying origin. It drives them mad. Is it a primeval cipher? The motto of a bygone civilization? A message from God? Night after night they study it by candlelight. They flip through pages in books so old, the slightest cough would turn the paper to a fine off-white powder. The answer is nowhere to be found. And then they are struck by a revelation: I was not meant to know this word. Its esoteric nature escapes my grasp for a reason. What if its meaning is too enlightening to bear? With this revelation comes anger. Spite. Despair. Why shouldn't I understand it?! What cosmic forces are there at play to keep me from such knowledge?! In a fit of desperate rage, they shatter your device against a wall and exclaim, arms raised to the heavens: "This is literally 1984!" Silence... Their pleas are unanswered. Sadly, in the end, their inability to unlock the word's meaning drives them to suicide. Its secrets are never known. So I ask you this: is it better to die having never understood the true mind-bending nature of Amogus, or to be driven mad by the little spaceman in his blood-red suit? If you knew enlightenment would render you incapable of living on this mortal earth without making daily references to a game of space mafia, would you accept it? With knowledge comes power, but also endless suffering. Choose wisely, and be wary when standing at the edge of that great abyss we call "the Truth," lest you fall too deep.

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