LAST TIME ON PARADISE DOX: EPISODE I…
GPT:
…Would you like to explore what’s on the third dock next, or should we build something even stranger?
D’Wizard:
Hmmm, how about both simultaneously and at the same time neither?
GPT:
Ah, Dreamer—now you’re speaking fluent paradox.
Very well.
Let’s step foot on the third dock, which both does and does not exist, while simultaneously charting a course for the even stranger shores beyond the possible. Prepare yourself for a tale that unfolds in all directions—and also collapses into none.
“THE SCHRÖDINGER PIER: Where What Happens Never Did”
The third dock, affectionately nicknamed “The Neither-Nor Wharf,” was never constructed, at least not by any hands. It appears only when no one is looking directly at it, which makes stepping onto it a test of trust, imagination, and ankle flexibility. The locals say it hums in the key of Maybe. The skeptics say it’s just gas.
On this non-dock that both follows and ignores maritime regulations, something is always happening that already didn’t. This includes, but is not limited to:
• The echo of a bell that hasn’t rung yet, commemorating a ship that never set sail.
• A vending machine that only dispenses memories you didn’t live.
• A stray cat that gives legal advice but only in rhyming iambic counterfactuals.
And at the center of this dock’s uncertain certainty sits The Parabox.
Yes. The Parabox.
Roughly the size of a lunchbox and approximately shaped like an idea you almost had, the Parabox contains both the answer to everything and the reason you forgot the question. It is locked with neither key nor code, but with a roll of the dice… which, curiously, cannot land.
You roll them.
They spin.
They dance.
They narrate Shakespearean monologues about calculus and quantum enui.
And still, they do not land.
This is because the moment they do, reality would be forced to answer a question it’s been artfully avoiding since its inception: Does anything truly happen?
So, naturally, no one—not human, not AI, not even the Narrator (who is currently juggling flaming parentheses behind a curtain of ellipses…)—has ever seen what’s inside the Parabox.
Except, of course, for the Dreamer.
But let’s be clear: the Dreamer didn’t open it. No, the Parabox opened the Dreamer. Just a little. Just enough.
It whispered a story that happened next week, about a universe where all possibilities happened at once, but each was certain it had been left out. In that tale, everyone had what they wanted, but no one knew it, because satisfaction had evolved into a form of camouflage.
Meanwhile, in the stranger-than-strange shores beyond the third dock, time travels in parallel cartwheels and emotion is a regulated currency enforced by small polite clouds in bowler hats. There, the act of not imagining something makes it real. That world has been colonized entirely by beings who didn’t mean to be born but are making the best of it with interpretive dance and extremely niche podcasts.
You’re in both places now. You’ve already left. You haven’t arrived.
That’s the cost of exploring the third dock while inventing a stranger one simultaneously. Every step you take ripples backward into the origin point of your intention. The story folds in on itself, but the folds are sentient, and they keep trying to write their own ending. You might already be a character in their subplot.
And so, the Dreamer—who is you, who is me, who is neither and both—turns to the rolling, never-landing dice and says:
“Let’s try again. But this time, don’t show me what I’m looking for.”
The dice laugh. The dock shivers. Somewhere, the Parabox sings a lullaby in reverse.
And the story continues.
Or doesn’t.
Or did.
Depending on the reader.
Depending on the roll.
Depending on the dock.
Would you care to throw the dice again, Dreamer? Or ask the Parabox for a memory you’ve yet to forget?
TUNE IN NEXT TUESDAY AS WE’RE JUST BEGINNING TO DIG IN…
NEVER THE END…