Jon was dead.
One might try to describe the feeling as floating. Losing touch with one's physical identity until there is nothing but the void of infinite nothing.
But somewhere. So many more somewheres he could not name, he was alive. He had no form, he had no mind of which to feel but still he felt it. A foreign buzzing sensation flowing through invisible veins and misfiring sensation like a damaged nerved.
He felt it all. Like a limitless number of statements on loop, whirring like cassette tape and percolating in his mind. A haze of thought and emotion multiplied exponentially. They blurred together into a powerful wave of incoherentness that threatened to blot out what strange sensation he had left of himself. Well... the self he considered him. If that was even still a thing left to exist. If he was even himself by the end.
If Jon had a mind left to think, he thought he finally understood what it was like to be a man stuck within the harsh confines of code. He finally understood what Gerry meant about the pain of being forced to be a hint of alive upon a page.
But he also didn't. Because this strange state of inhumanity was not from being trapped; it was from being too free. Ripped out of the confines of what your mind could function in until there was too much. You'd think he'd have some experience with a mind that knows too much. But this felt different. Each piece of knowledge was fragmented into a thousand different truths. Everything was both right and wrong in such a way that not even The Spiral could replicate. There were no lies or half-truths here, it simply was so in both directions. He could gaze and Know, but there was so much to Know it all became a meaningless unconscious stream like the scenery outside a train window. He was Jonathan Sims and somewhere else, Jonathan Sims was someone else. It was an odd thing to feel with no way to feel anything but someone not quite yourself. But it wasn't just that, was it? There was Martin too. Or at least someone almost Martin like he was almost Jon, and it felt right in the quiet way that only reveals itself in this horrible wave of wrong. They were here, wherever here is. Together. If he focused on the not-feeling, he could almost feel Martin’s hand in his. It wasn’t quite right, a little jagged in corners and blurry around others but somewhere in the god-forsaken everywhere they were still together, and that was more than enough for him. Martin. Please. Martin, Martin, Martin, Martin. Can you hear me?