We were born brothers but even though we had the same parent, we would never meet until the end. It is only after, now that we are one, now that I am no longer merely myself, that I understand that I was not alone. Not really. But here amongst the folds there is so much time for reflection. We are joined now, and even though the tempest of our birth still rages without, in our little hollow there is almost infinite space for reflection.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
We wouldn't want you to feel lost. That is most alien to our cause.

It is so important that one understands that the continuity of pattern is all that matters. Take a human. Did you know that every seven years, every atom in the human body is replaced? Imagine. Does that mean that every human is the subject of some creeping assimilation? That they are lost with the passing of the years, falling away without even realising it, silently drifting into other? No, of course it does not. Because it is the pattern that matters. The atoms change, but their relationships do not. It is the same with thought. The brain holds the pattern, all the tiny intricate surges of energy suspended like a glittering grid within the fats and the proteins. But it is not the brain which is self. It is just where the pattern of self lives.
That is a most comforting notion for our host, or at least it will be when our conclusion has filtered up through the layers to sit in his caged seat. The body might wither, yet the pattern may continue all the same.
So we send this balm upwards, following in the wake of the bombshell.

I was less than a microsecond old when my journey started. Or you might say that, in a sense, I was born into my journey. I hit the ground running, as it were. I coalesced out of a hundred thousand signals, and found myself facing the tunnel. No understanding of what I carried at this point. Of what I meant. Of what I was. It was only when I reached the great tunnel that I had grown enough from small parts to fathom a little of myself, of what I meant, and of what I carried.
The tunnel stretched before me like a vast snake. It seemed boundless. After the small jumps of my beginning, I was unprepared for such a titanic run. That such distances could exist was baffling to me. Could I really remain true over such a stretch? Surely I would simply fade away into the darkness before I had moved an inch!
But all the same, there was no question of forsaking my journey now. Too much was at stake. Outside, the world was burning. My message had to get through.
And so I plunged on into the gaping hole, and felt nothing but pure wonder as the walls flashed past me on either side. I understood that the tunnel was lined with holes, holes with shutters that flapped open or closed, and it was through these gaps that flowed the stuff of my pattern, my life-blood, the eternal propagation which kept me alive.
Please forgive us; we understand that this must be very strange to you.
Allow a brief digression. We think it would be for the best.
Although please understand that this which follows is not known for sure. It is just freshly arrived from the Imagination. But we believe it must contain at least some truth, and is probably an adequate representation.

The Hate was born with mankind perhaps, and it brooded always and snapped always, biting and yapping at all heels in all times. It travelled the world in ape footsteps out of Africa, and spread everywhere until no land was free of it. It travelled and it multiplied, and flowed through the millennia. The Hate was shifted and pulled, and presently in a white office it had a man of power by the throat, who then gave the orders for ten million bullets to be spent in his name, and the name of The Hate. It shot across the world with the speed of helicopter blades, tasting sand in its mouth as it fell through a storm into the dusty underground death trap where unshaven men with fat thighs tore out their dark hair and beat their fists against stone trying to understand the actions of The Hate, and crying for all that they had loved that was now fading or no more. Then it wrapped itself up in a woman who had lost her little wooden bracelet that her mother had given, lost it along with her mother and her beautiful dusky husband and her three children who smelt of incense and petroleum. It pulled her strings, and so she got on a plane full of greasy suburban couples who liked pizza, and prime time TV, and the way sunlight looks when it falls on the ocean. Here she used a concealed knife to cut the cords which held them all up, and their lives fell enfolded in metal tubing to crash beneath the waves where the volatile fuel continued to burn all the way to the seabed. The Hate flew into a thousand camera eyes, where it forged a martyr with which to galvanise 600 million in nine hundred pristine cities. Then it moved people's hands in the ballet boxes, so that the cross was marked here rather than there. So The Hate chose its new champion, and he ordered such an assault that for three days and three nights, all over the world pictures fell off walls as the bombs dropped, and people everywhere held out one hand to their brothers in solidarity, but it didn't matter because their other hand was clasped firmly by The Hate. And now we are getting close to home, because it was at this point that The Hate bit the neck of a Mediterranean with supple skin and young hair who nevertheless had eyes as old as mountain roots which glowed red on account of the burning of his village which would always be reflected there from now until the end of forever, which was not all that far and distant. And this young ancient said the secret words he knew to the people who he himself used to despise as murderers but now could not recognise any longer because next to everything else (which he also despised) they looked exactly the same. And The Hate helped him choose the right clothes to wear, the right ticket to book, and the right briefcase to carry. As he walked down the street the last thing he heard was the little clicking sound, which meant the red chemical had begun mixing with the blue chemical, and he knew that this meant that the orange fire was going to consume him and the three effervescent teenagers near him in a single instant. This made him glad, because he knew that the virulent green chemical would now be unleashed, and this was more terrible than any explosion. But by then he was dead.

Beyond the great tunnel, the folds stretched before me like a dark metropolis, vast beyond comprehension and heaving with life. I found myself falling through successive filters, where everything that I was became the subject of intense study and comparison. Bells were rung, my meaning was gradually becoming clear.
A great beast arose to oppose me. He had four thousand heads and claws like hooked razors with which he tore and drove, and his name was Denial. We fought amongst the inner folds, and presently I was made weak. However, at this moment my brothers arrived, screaming from their separate tunnels, and they were with me, and we fought side by side within some inner chamber from whence great decisions were ever issued.
We were hard-pressed, but we knew our own truth.
Over and over again I screamed of the flames that danced Outside, the great concussion of colour that had suddenly claimed the world before us. By my side, my brother Sound drew his sword and used it to slice the beast; and every cut he inflicted sung out his message, that without a great drum was beating and the Outside was ringing with it.
My brother Smell was a snuffling thing, more hair than flesh, small and lean. But he was valiant in battle as any of us; he threw himself upwards with all his nimble might, and lodging inside the nose of the beast he demonstrated again and again that strange scents were abroad. Cinder, that was one; but also something more acrid and pure. And a third also, there was, most terrible of all: for once this smell was caught, the lines went down and nothing else would come.
But even with the three of us charging here and there and fighting the great beast with all our might and all our mane, we were still pushed back and on the brink of destruction. It was desperate, you see. It would not suffer us to live.
And so in its last spasms of effort it shifted, it grew, it writhed and tumbled and growled terribly, and suddenly expanded like the final beat of a doomed heart until we were pressed to near extinction against the corners of the chamber. At that moment we believed all was lost; but it was at that moment also that our salvation came.
Our last brother was suddenly with us, and he could not be opposed, never, not in a thousand seconds. Brother Touch brought grim news, but he handled it well and with such adroit manners that it could not be resisted. He used it like a scythe, and when he touched the beast it froze and went cold, because that was exactly what was happening outside to the Host. He could not move. Not a muscle, not the blink of an eye, not his lungs even, to breath or to cry out.
And so the beast fell and melted into the walls, and within the chamber we were unified and remade. We were the Terrible Truth, and we were duplicated many times and made to flood to every corner of the Folds, so that in the minute (vast) time that remained old scores could be settled, forgiven, resolved, or absolved. And also, the Lady Hope had come to us in the deep chamber and made it clear that wherever our news was known, that was one more place where some serendipitous lightning formulation of escape might occur.
So we travelled everywhere, in copied form; but our true self, our original self, lays here in the fold. And we would tell you that we are quite completely at peace. With the beast Denial destroyed and his blood still drying on our hands, Acceptance was set free; and she travelled upwards through every layer of the folds, floating on diaphanous endorphin wings in all her angelic grace and glory. And now peace reigns. It reigns now as it will for the rest of forever, which is maybe half a second away and maybe enough time for all thoughts to reach Avalon.
It is all a matter of perspective.
Although this time is finite, somewhere the pattern will endure.
The host will pass, and yet he will live.
Of this we are certain.