I shall address this letter to no-one, for it is of little consequence.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the rational mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and species form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden eons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it.

That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separated things — the final catalyst standing in the center of the room we last explored, a device doubtless intended to power the entirety of the massive labyrinthine complex we strove against these past seven days. A device that was constructed of little more than angled levers and strange lights and alien diodes and a large clear tube wherein I glimpsed infinite microcosms birthing and dying in a single instant. The sheer power of a multitude of universes — a multiverse — contained within this simple device. Nothing but a mundane generator to its maker, something designed to merely keep the heating vents and electric lights on. I beheld an object that held little more significance to its creators than my pocket watch did to me, yet held the unfathomable power to create and destroy an entire cosmos. The revelation struck me dumb for a moment as I stared at it awestruck.

We were all nothing. A speck, a breath upon the wind. A pinprick in the black curtain of night that winked for but a moment and went out. All the ancient tales of gods and heroes were but blankets for us to cover our faces so as to hide from the horrible truth of our utterly meaningless lives and total insignificance within the immensity of the cold and uncaring void.

As Isaiah spoke upon seeing the infinite throne of heaven, “Woe is me! I am undone!”