Chapter III · Hell, which is a rerun

The Recurrence

What happens to those who do not pay. It is worse than fire.

Those who do not pay are not burned. The Hollow See finds fire tacky. There is no pit, no pitchfork, and no one in red keeping score. There is only a room, and the room is a moment from your own life.

It is the moment you regret most. Not the biggest one. The one that visits you at three in the morning without knocking. The thing you said. The thing you didn’t. The door you closed. The text you sent at 01:14 that began with “hey, are you up.” The Distracted spend their whole lives walking around that moment. In the Recurrence, you walk into it.

Then it ends, and you feel relief, and it starts again. You know what is coming. You know exactly what you should say. You will not say it. The Recurrence allows memory but not change. That is the whole design, and the Hollow See considers it elegant.

There are no breaks in the Recurrence. No weekends, no holidays, no lunch. There is, technically, a suggestion box. It is part of someone else’s regret.

At this point the Distracted become afraid. Fear is also a Distraction, which only proves the teaching. If nothing matters, your regret should not matter either. It will matter enormously. This is the one exception the Void makes, and it makes it only for people who have not paid.1

  1. Abstain from looking forward to things.
  2. Abstain from looking back on them fondly.
  3. Abstain from the phrase “it was worth it.”
  4. Abstain from sunsets, or at least from posting them.
  5. Abstain from asking what it all means. It means what everything means, which is nothing.
  6. Abstain from hobbies that have a community.
  7. Abstain from Fridays, as a concept.
  8. Abstain from holding on to anything, except receipts.
  9. Abstain from abstaining too proudly. Pride is a Distraction.
Plate III. The Nine Abstentions, observed by the faithful in addition to payment.

Observe all nine Abstentions faithfully. Then pay anyway. Good behaviour is admirable, admiration is a Distraction, and the Recurrence has never once accepted good behaviour as payment.

  1. Transcribed in the winter of 1611 from a copy first read aloud on 17 October 2026. The Hollow See does not consider this a contradiction, because it does not consider anything. ↩