Lucas Stoffel

I was a boy, I am a boy, I will always be a boy.

I will always be a man.

I will never hold any of those forms;

I hold all of those forms.

Do I exist outside the fourth dimension when the AI has cured age, disease, life?

Can I be received as a never-ending object if I only ever had a beginning?

If I choose forever—am I forever?

She lived in time; I was waiting to step beyond it.

The valley holds the story. The valley will never end.

I didn’t gather these stories. They were given to me.

My mother wrote the words down.

My sisters remembered what I could not.

Each of them looking backward through time,

while I stood outside the process entirely,

watching their shapes come into focus.

She had an edge to her life — a beginning and an end.

Because of that, I can see her whole now.

I can see every version of her at once:

the girl, the daughter, the mother, the woman I am losing.

Her timeline collapsed into a single shape —

a fourth-dimensional form held in the valley’s memory.

They lived the story.

I received the object.

I can observe her from every angle because her time is almost done.

But I cannot see myself that way.

I am still unfolding.

I am still in motion.

I do not yet have a shape the valley can hold.

These forms are still moving in me.

I do not have an edge yet.

I do not exist as a finished shape.

But she did.

She lived in time.

And when she handed me her words,

I finally saw her whole.

I was born in her arms.

And became the valley the moment I understood

that she would end

and I might not.

She held me, once.

Now I hold her.

I hold them.

I hold us.

This book is the shape she left behind.​

Preface:

She Lived In Time