“Axiom of the Empty Set” is an interactive story that requires a password for each level. To reach the end, the reader advances through a series of story genres. Each page contains clues to the password that will unlock the next vignette. This page contains an easy-to-spot clue to the password for the next vignette (they get more difficult in subsequent sections). The answer will be lower case, contain no articles (like “a” or “the”), and, if multiple words, will include spaces between them. There is a HINTS page in case you run into trouble.

 Axiom of the Empty Set | I. Buried Secret

…Drip-drip. Rhythmic water falling. Open your eyes. You see nothing but planar emptiness.

But don’t imagine emptiness as loneliness. Though it’s true that this colorless grid extends in every direction from where you stand, remember that emptiness is nothing less or more than the place we start—and you are the God of Emptiness.

Here, the stories are all your stories. The physics, geopolitics, mythology, quantity of moons, rules of gravity, mating habits of species, denseness of atmosphere, sky hue are up to you. Taxonomize. Send the planet spinning with a careless hand. Tap your foot and rend the tectonic plates; breathe and watch the jungles froth up—animals creep from the sea. They die and their bones petrify in the silt. Inhale and the oceans dry, leaving salt flats. A long, straight road runs through the salt flats, where you drive alone, listening to a radio evangelist. He asks his caller about the time she saw the devil and she says, He wore a straw hat.

Light a cigarette. Look: There’s the spot at the side of the road where your husband left you. There’s a cross, stuck in the ground, to commemorate a death that feels like yours. Someone’s affixed a rabbit skull to it and left a bouquet, now dry and rustling. Down from here’s the car dealership that sold you the LeBaron with the dented door for the cash in your pocket. A sad flag hangs limp on a flagpole. You never saw your husband again. This emptiness isn’t loneliness made manifest—it’s a world, waiting for its creator!

Turn the car around and drive back to the cross at the roadside. Look down the length of the road: This road is the x-axis of your life. Look above you at the blazing white of the heavens: The y-axis is the zenith of the sky. Hug yourself. Listen to the rustling of the dry flowers. They have something to tell you. They whisper about a buried secret you can almost remember.