-- hello, ███.

-- ██████.

-- you know, i had quite the revelation today.

-- Hm. Is that so.

-- oh, yes. today i thought:

-- if existence is so stressful, why exist?

-- and it dawned on me- who said i exist? how real am i?

-- i mean to say, can you really prove you're real? how does anyone know?

-- we could all be lines of code, or words on a page. to some people, that's all we are: fleeting passes of proof that something else is out there.

-- . . . I see.

-- do you?

-- how much of what we experience is our experience? what part of our lives has complete and total proof- entire understanding- that it's ours and ours alone?

-- i want to think on that. okay?

-- Sure, then. Think.

-- . . .

-- i suppose . . .

-- suppose it's like, like when you're in a car

-- and you look through the window of a house. maybe the car is going . . . let's say 60mph. that seems fast enough, right?

-- and the house. maybe it's a smaller house. something cute. there's windows into the living room; its night out and the house lights are on. no one's in the windows . . .

-- . . . are you following?

-- . . .

-- -sorry. anyway.

-- well for a brief second, that house, those people- even though you never really see them- they become real to you.

-- you imagine what their world must be like. their ups, their downs,

-- and you empathize. you feel a little joy, and a little sorrow, for them and their lives.

-- love and loss: getting a pet, having your first partner over, a baby's first steps- all things that make up tiny particles of the pieces that make you, you.

-- those feelings and moments. fleeting traces of melancholia. nostos algos. Грусть.

-- and then you pass the house by. and the window is gone.

-- and suddenly, those people don't exist in your world anymore. barely a trace in your head- they linger, for that brief time, and then they're to be passed by like any other thought that crosses the mind.

-- . . .

-- don't make that face.

-- it's only a thought, right?

-- but you can't help feeling a connection. it's different than casual thought- what to eat, where to go, what to do- there's a sense of sentience to it.

-- but it's still only in your head. lives upon lives- gone with the twist of a steering wheel.

-- did it ever exist? those people, their lives?