and we idly think
what if i held the key that would open the dawn
what if the person i was, the exact person, bore the perfect niches of strength, wisdom, and experience to save the day?
what if i was trapped in a facility with its only weakness being access to a copy of gamemaker studio 2.3 through which i could hack my way into freedom?
what if i was dropped in gensokyo and able to use my ridiculously detailed touhou knowledge to not just survive, but thrive?
all of those functions i learned, all of that lore i studied, it would not go to waste.
like finally finding use for an old 2x4 you left in the shed years ago
idle, foolish things to consider.
these things don't happen to us. we don't get stories. we only get to watch stories.
yet
why is it then?
i now stand before a gate of enigma, a black iron gate that no man can open.
i've heard stories of this gate from long ago, stories of its awe. i ventured to it to see something untouchable, something greater than humans.
i chased it, knowing it would defeat me.
but i stand before it, and i know how to defeat it.
this gate did not call to me, it called to someone who became in the way that i became
a particular experience that lets me see right through it, right to the other side.
i can open this black iron gate.
i reach in my bag, a collection of meek things i possessed only by whimsy and preference.
lightly tucked inside, i find the key to this gate.
it's not something only i have, but nobody has ever been here with this key.
the "hello penguin magazine".
it contains the solutions to the original hello penguin. the way to find its greatest heights, the road to its deepest blasphemies, it's all there.
it is merely a matter of word substitution.
"hello penguin"? hello kutaka.
"hello noxid"? hello link.
"hello music"? even the same thing. it's all lining up, the gate is opening before my eyes.
kutaka hello. goodbye kutaka. fly kutaka. there was nothing that was outside my grasp.
ME. the person that i had become was important. it was important to myself, i didn't wish any more to have ever been someone else, to have taken a different path.
as if there was a point to everything i had done so far.
i get the reference.