The Moonbeam Roads

[noise-vs-signal]

The Garden of Forking Paths

“Basing his work on the strange legend that Ts'ui Pên had intended to construct an infinite labyrinth and on a cryptic letter from Ts'ui Pên himself stating, "I leave to several futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths," Doctor Albert realized that the "garden of forking paths" was the novel and that the forking takes place in time, rather than space.

In most fictions, a character chooses one alternative at each decision point and eliminates all of the others. In Ts'ui Pên's novel, however, all possible outcomes of an event occur simultaneously, all of which themselves lead to further proliferations of possibilities. Albert further explains that the constantly-diverging paths sometimes converge again but as the result of a different chain of causes.”

From “The Garden of Forking Paths” by J.L. Borges (1941).

[moonbeam-roads]

The Moonbeam Roads as depicted in the works of Michael Moorcock, with art by Walter Simonson.

[moonbeam-roads]

The Moonbeam Roads

The Moonbeam Roads are ruled by Hecate.

These are the forking paths, that stray into different versions of what might have happened, what will happen, all the variations and alternative realities that can be reached from a given point.