Wonderful and fascinating story. I'm really enjoying it. Sorry I didn't review easier chapters. I've been friggin tired. Xoxo Robin

Wow, this is definitely unlike anything I've ever read on here. I don't think I quite understood everything but it was a wonderfully fascinating read nonetheless. Thank you for writing this.

I've said once and I'll say it again, I love this story to bits and pieces. Every single word written, every character mentioned. Love looooove this story. -T.M

I absolutely loved this story. I couldn't get enough of it. It was beautifully written and very thought provoking.

Beautiful story. Makes me really think about life and how in some aspects I'm exactly like Leon and in other we're are totally different. You are a wonderful writter and have a magnificent mind which you used to write an exquisite story- T.M

I'm at such a loss now. I've spent over six hours straight reading this and it ended with such a mindfuck that I don't know what to do. I really loved the story and your writing style, despite it being way over my level of understanding. I love the back and forth time jumps. It wasn't difficult to follow and it added a type of simple beauty to it. It was all so beautiful and fucked up and well detailed and plot-twisty and I don't know what to say. And to figure out that this is nine years old makes it so much worse in my head. How dare you write something this good and it be nine years old.
I want to comment how much I liked Roman as a character, and how Leon was great and perfectly odd/different, but I cant get past the mindfuck at the end. The characters don't lose their qualities, but it turns into an Inception twist where the 'were they really good if they never existed in the first place?' idea comes up. (I'm probably scaring anyone future readers who are reading the reviews, whoops.) For being 'anarchist' gang members, Pherkin (great name), Roman, and Jonas were extraordinarily well cultured, deep/intellectual, and overly non-violent people. They were just scary and/or intimidating.
There were mild typos throughout the story, but not really worth bothering about. But there were two times where you said Roman instead of Leon and, while it was 100% understandable, it was still funny. Also, I tried, can't find out which chapters they were in.
I plan on stalking you more once I get some sleep.

This story is confusing, but not confusing. Making sense and no sense all the same, and I absolutely love it.
But what happened with Leon?

I thought I would understand it more when I finished the story but... Here I am as confused as ever... It was interesting to try and understand of course, I just had trouble wrapping my head around it,,,,

I think what this story is trying to achieve — in a most cryptic manner — is that we humans are on a relentless pursuit of knowledge. Somehow (according to how I perceived it) this story is an artistic tool to tell us that we are not supposed to figure out everything about life because there is just no way we — nor even the most brilliant mind — can.

On a side note, yeah, you're right. The ending was unsatisfying, mainly because I read it for romance. Moreover, the subtle romance that there was lacked depth and emotions, most particularly from Roman. Yet, I'm glad there was not enough emotionally-romantic investment on Leon's part either. Otherwise I would have been extremely depressed (like I have been with 'Out of Luck') by now since there was no definite conclusion on their relationship. I'm a sucker for happy endings but I wouldn't mind an occasional tragedy when the situation is reasonable enough.

I've read most of your works — solely to enrich my literary perspective; and I'm extremely grateful that they did — but I couldn't get myself to put any of your stories to my favorite list because for a story to make it to it they have to make me feel happily dazed, invigorated, ethereal-ly nostalgic or epiphany-ic. Although I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter to you.

My observation, however, considering all your works, is you kind of appear to be the type of guy who doesn't believe in happily-ever-after. Either that, or you're just obsessed with tragedy. And, oh, I also noticed you seem to loathe women (based on your works)? I couldn't pinpoint if that's a reflection to your inner workings or just a theme-obsession. Either way, it's really none of my business.

I guess I've said pretty mean things in this review. If you're offended, that's okay. I'll take the lashing. But just so know, you have a scintillating mind :)

...

It is actually hard to find words to say for this story. For one, I haven't really finished the entire story, but decided to skip ahead a good ten chapters - worst insult to any author, I know, I'm sorry - to finally understand the 'perfect question' and all the theories. But, alas, there wasn't any answer. And that in all, was truly the answer. There was never truly an answer to his question, as there was never a question good enough to cover all bases.

That was what I thought.

This story is highly complex. I actually had to think about every single sentence and then wait for my mind to process it, and it still failed to do so. Mind boggling, this story is. Especially with the 'arealism' issue. It took me a while to convince myself that when I typed it into the Google search engine, it wasn't lying to me when it found no matches. All in all, I'm not even sure I liked it. It's more of a... in between liking and disliking it.

Great story, though, I like your writing style. :)

I understood everything except the "knowing everything means knowing nothing". If someone who got it ends up reading this they should PM me, I'd really like to understand that. This story was lovely, I liked it a lot, thank you for writing it.

In the end I feel like all this isn't supposed to be understood. In a certain way it does seem to make sense, but the whole thing about reality is too complex. Since there are so many forms of realities - the subjective reality of person a, the subjective reality of person b, the objective reality that can not be seen by anyone (if it even exists),... - it is extremly hard to even try to define it

The whole "perfect question" thing confused me, though. Perfect is something completely subjective. Every perfect is different to the perfect of another person's perfect. In every subjective reality it has another meaning.
The absolute perfect question therefore would have to be completely objectively perfect - which seems quite impossible because there can't be any definition of perfect - every human has a different view on it. But since perfection is a human made concept, there is no objectif view on it, making it impossible for an objectifely perfect question to even exist.
And for that matter, it's the same with the perfect answer. The concept of perfection ruins every single theory on it.
There are many perfect answers in certain opinions, but there are also none in other opinion.
Perfection is too subjectiv to be of objectif importance.

It appears to me that this is a story about several people being/going insane over the concept of reality.

Well, another concept that I didn't quite understand the way it was used in the story was the one of "nothing".
If you know everything, you don't neccesarily have to know nothing. Nothing is only a word to betitle the non-existence of anything. If you know everything, of course, you will know this concept. You will know the word nothing and it's definition.
In the other meaning of the word "know" you might feel familiar with the absence of everything - with nothingness.
As formulated in the story, knowing nothing doesn't have to mean not knowing anything. But that doesn't mean that is just like knowing everything. Because Kyle, the "pansoph" in fact didn't know everything. He only knew the opinions of people. He had no idea of the objective knowledge. No human ever will.

Actually, to be honest, I think that most of what the characters are talking about is insane bullshit.
Why would there be a person - the pansoph who knows everything? Knowing everything simply is impossible for a human - we don't live long enough to gather this knowledge.
Also the antisoph doesn't work. As soon as he/she knows even a single thing, they probably won't question it. And if they do and continue to question everything, it doesn't even make sense. It doesn't work either, because there are things the antisoph doesn't know about and therefore can't question.
And if he stops questioning everything, does he stop being the antisoph? Following Kyle's logic...

"if you learn the answer, your questions, and therefore your existence, will be meaningless"

...he would stop being the antisoph as soon as any of his questions would be answered. And Leon is, if I recall correctly, 17 years old: In those 17 years he sure would've got some questions answered.
Therefore he wouldn't be the antisoph anymore.
Since if he stops being the antisoph because he'd believe Kyle's answers, he would've also believed the answers he got all his life. The antisoph wouldn't have any knowledge at all. (soph wisdom, right?) They wouldn't even be able to talk. The conept doesn't work.

Honestly, this is just a story of several people losing their mind.
Of course, I did like it quite much and I've read it to the very end, but I feel like this isn't meant to be understood. Because whatever is in that story are the ideas of some people going mad over the definition of pan- and antisoph.
Anyway, big compliment on the story and actually getting me confused

I had to review this being the philosophy fan that I am, but ugh, Descartes. Yes, I wasn't a fan of Descartes. This story tickled my philosophical mind at the same time it didn't. Mainly because it deals with the topic of reality. For one, I'm not sure how Leon is an arealist and here I am acknowledging that arealism exists when I actually don't think it does. I feel if it does, we are all arealists in the form that I understand it, but in that regard I am a (space) realist in a sense. I reject that there is a reality but I acknowledge that it must exist since I am aware of it. I'll summarise what I'm saying by a John Legend quote "I try not to fall for make believe but what is reality?"

I liked the ending the most because there was no conclusion. Isn't that philosophy in itself, a lack of conclusions, but I loved Leon. He reminds me a little of myself when I was in High school (only a little) because I'd always whip out my notebook and start writing thoughts in it and it drove me crazy because you can't quite discuss it with your peers. Also because there is always a kind of one sided view to philosophical reasoning and someone points out an alternate view and it's like "hmm, I didn't think of it that way."

To conclude my rambling, does it matter? The whole concept of reality is something I shy away from due to the fact, that I know with a strange certainty I'm here and there was the question of well how do you know you're not a reflection, etc. But even that is irrelevant because even if I was a reflection or part of a dream, I still exist. Simply, so what, you're still here. And even if you are creating your own version of events, it still to me is irrelevant. To use a simple analogy, you are on a train, I don't particularly care where it's going, if it will crash, etc. I am on it for the time being so let's just let it go.

So... Roman died? Im so confused

Wow. I feel as if I'd been mindfucked. This was one of the best stories I've ever read. And really made me think about things, even if half the time I couldn't make sense of what I was thinking.