Standing at this “update crossroad”, I think it is time to write something about this site as a whole. If you’re interested in hearing some juicy lore details or something secret, then this will be disappointing.

Regardless of all expectations, let me begin.

As of typing these very words, I have yet to figure out the correct terminology for what this site is specifically. The secret of simplifying it into words which succinctly describe the primary characteristics are, for now, out of my reach. The truth of it is that I must make something up to fit what I have created. Many seem to gravitate towards calling it a “game”, or an “ARG”. “Game” is simply too vague, even if it was a game, and “ARG” has the audacity to imply that this is an alternate reality.

What has occurred will not be altered by your notice alone. Furthermore, involving a community for a specific thing to facilitate more interaction / ease the burden of creating this or that, doesn’t just overtake what has been set in place and usurp the reality of what is. And what once was.

If this was an ARG, my life would be a lot easier. If this was a game, I could be at ease. That’s what comes to mind when faced with such waffling terminologies. To entice people with secrets and codes, while requiring efforts and well-thought-out approaches, would be easier by far than subjecting myself to the creation of the many complicated visual stimuli I have accumulated over the years.

Efforts poured into a game could, possibly, have a monetary return to offset the labors. Games, while oversaturated, are easier to understand. Why, even this WEBSITE is a GAME to some people! That’s the power of the zeitgeist… And an ARG has just enough effort in it to build up interest and interaction to get the media juices flowing to sell… something. Something related.

In my case, the modified Terminal 00 ARG would sell my books. Certainly, having a cool site has sold a few books for me, but I haven’t engineered it for that. Be it book or Terminal, they both cover similar things while both branching off to cover the same universe, but not requiring you to pick up both or to “understand” one. Simply put, if I were a smarter man, this hypothetical ARG would only have just enough content on it to entice people to read a book of similar aesthetics. Spending years making art for this site is not the correct ARG course of action, as the ratio of effort is skewed too much to these pages to ever be worth the time invested.

Additionally, I would have written another book by now if I hadn’t worked on the update, which would be a good thing for the hypothetical ARG strategy.

But let me not get side tracked with the self-inflicted sufferings and failings of a man not fit for his ambitions. I know that I am one of many, so on and so forth. This isn’t so special, and I’m not a god for placing .pngs on a page.

Realigning ourselves with what this “is”, let me bring up a common line from my fleshy brothers and sisters. What they often seem to utter, or otherwise construct in their minds before using a physical interface to relay this information along the digital vectors which you and I are very well accustomed to, is this: “…(XXXX) the end…”

To reach the end. To find the end. There is a common line of reasoning that there is an end to all of this, that if you get to it you “win”.

Ah, but to what end?

Perhaps I have been locked up in my head for too long, holding back my thoughts and subsequent words for fear that my intentions would miss their mark…

But aren’t ends quite a fleeting thing? Who can say where the ends truly lay? What IS an end? Take the simple example of a thread. It ends where there’s no more twisting yarn, no more fibers, correct? Perhaps, but is there any meaningful distinction in the arbitrary end of similar matter in this universe? Perhaps, once more. For you, the end of the thread is a fuzzy thing, where you sort of know where it is with your own senses. Its specifics, perhaps, are of no use to you. And if it is burned away, reduced to ash, that may be another sort of end for it. At least, to you. There are still atoms there, of course. Still, its information persists.

But, mayhap, that is mincing words too much. “What about books, Angus?”, I ask myself as if I were another person altogether, and to which my own self trapped in a future present will answer for the long lost past present self, “Why, those have even less ends than threads!”

Of course, the story ends at the last page, right? Well, not if there are more books to come, right? Ah, but there are of course ends to a series… which can be continued as long as the wherewithal to do so exists. Book “ends” can be the end, but they are really more like “stops”. The story has stopped, and if it stays that way for a long enough time, or if it’s put in certain terms it’s pretty much an end, but if the story is constantly being relived by readers new and old, even without bringing up all of the revival tactics that all writers can perform…. Is it really alright to call it an end?

Well, I admit that an “end” sounds more final than a stop, cooler too. But I have to say, most “ends” could reasonably have at least another page tacked onto them, which is to say that they really aren’t an END in the sense that all has ended, and more so an end like the sort that the playwright would place for the greatest effect.

Still, this has yet to address the “ends” which people want to find on this site. These are sometimes thought of like a treasure waiting to be found, a secret to be revealed, or the actual final page in chronological order, (didn’t know that my site was so well structured as to have that sort of “final” page). Some people imply that there is one “ending” that needs to be found. Others, say that there are multiple endings to be found.

Simply put, these endings don’t exist. There is an end to the total sum of all of my creations at any given point of time, it’s true, but thinking that there is any one thing that you can “find” that would be the “end” is thinking in a warped sort of way.


For me, any true shot at an “ending” would be akin to understanding everything. All that I have put forth, and then some. If you were able to comprehend what I have said and, following that line further, all that I could possibly say later or otherwise communicate through other means, THAT would be a truer end, don’t you think?

If you can only come to terms with this creation by way of relating it to a scavenger hunt, or some other “rabbit-hole dark scary coder society” then that is your own curse. Place not your own misguided terms upon me, for those are manacles of your own making.

If you are enjoying this all, then that is good. And if you are working to spread these works to others, then it is doubly so.

Talking this through, I think that there are scarce few words which I would be content to use as labels, though when labeling something so convoluted and out of place, to describe something so dear and near to me, something which is still so unrefined despite all of my efforts to the contrary, the sleepless nights invested and days wasted without speaking to people who used to be friends before I committed myself on this path…

Well, it seems fitting to call this magic.

And, finally, (though it isn’t very final when I’m soon to bring up what’s to come), the “update”. I don’t really know when I first started working on this thing, but I do know that after I published “Stars Bleed” I took some time to re-read the current published draft another time and correct as much as I could before closing the book for well and good, (until I come back to it before writing World’s End, of course.) So, give or take a few months after the book was published, I finished my editing grind and was able to accept that there were errors that I could not correct.

Then, came some small updates. I worked on a few minor things here or there, and then poured some extra feeling into a few new pages. I also gauged how receptive people were to puzzles with these pages. I updated the site while not updating the “last updated” info. No one really noticed.

After that, sometime during the beginning of 2019, or maybe the end of 2018 / somewhere in-between, I started working on ideas and concepts and images for this “update”. I have been working on it since then in my free time.

I have also been given advice to give the “update” a name, so that it’s set apart from the others, and I do think that’s a good idea. Henceforth, I shall call it “Update: Moon of Codes” / "Moon of Codes" / "MoC". Now it can be remembered somewhat easier.

END.