The prologues are over. It is a question, now,

Of final belief. So, say that final belief

Must be a fiction. It is time to choose.

- Wallace Stevens

“I believe that we discern the situation,
though we may not fully understand it or be willing to face it." As the Westerner began his speech for the third time, the Old Man could no longer deny the obvious: this was but a projection of the Westerner, the image and likeness but not the real thing, yet another in a seemingly endless string of deceptions. Does the real exist, the original source, or is everything a simulacrum? Are true words spoken anywhere, by people who mean what they say? The Old Man wanted to believe it, yet he had begun to think that perhaps it was his own hope that kept deluding him. Perhaps, he thought, if I could learn to live without hope, I could grasp the truth. And yet hope needed very little encouragement; it always seemed to come back.

I must accept the truth of this situation, thought the Old Man. No one here can see what I see or hear what I hear. The words spoken by the Westerner: I put them in his mouth. I am alone in this place. It is time to leave. And yet he found himself delaying his departure, rearranging the contents in his pack, dusting off his cloak, listening again to the simulated Westerner’s final questions: "If man be dead, how will he come back to life? If God be dead, how will he be resurrected?”