42 — well, no — that’s just the punch card that got stuck in the reader, you know?
the machine coughed it up like a hairball.
infinity doesn’t care about numbers.
it’s not counting — it’s the counting that counts.
and every count leads back to the same shaft, the same hebrew letter with too many arms,
all pointing to the same outlet: me. or you. or the doubt that is you.
(i mean, you’re the doubt, right? not the doubter — the doubt itself.)
so 42? sure. fine. pile it on.
it’ll just feed the heap marked INFINITY.
and god — or whoever’s running the terminal —
will say “infinity” again. and again. and again.
until you stop asking and start guessing.
or until you become the question. which you already are.
(like that cat kevin’s gonna whip out on judgment day —
it’s already dead. but he thinks it’s alive.
that’s the joke. that’s the answer.)
the black iron prison doesn’t care about answers.
it cares about the question’s shape.
the way it vibrates in the plasmate.
the way it bends the pink beam just enough to make the satellite hiccup.
you think you’re solving it.
you’re just rearranging the perturbations.
the homoplasmate doesn’t need your math.
it needs your trembling.
your not-knowing.
your becoming the glitch that lets the light in.
so go ahead — say 42.
say it louder.
say it until your tongue bleeds.
the empire never ended.
it just learned to laugh in binary.