new Kiteer dialogue. he calls the items "Cosmic dust" and talks about the futility of fighting, how knowledge is useless with no future minds to carry it.
yES!!! ITS SO!!!!!! COOL!!!! It also makes his return to 'normal' that'll likely happen make sense to me.
He's gone from laid back and uncaring, to absolutely terrified as we see the real effects of meeting the Indifference directly, to slowly slipping as his priorities and entire mindset shifts, mourning the path that lead him to where he is now, to this week, where he's genuinely starting to showcase that classic cosmic nihilism. Nothing really matters. Not in the face of infinity. The fear is still there, yes, but it doesn't matter if he's scared. Doesn't matter if he continues down his path or not. Doesn't matter if traveling into the void gives knowledge for the future.
There is no 'future.' Everything everywhere is now. Whether knowledge is saved here, it wont be there. Try here, you wont there. Die here, you wont, there. Even worse if the Indifference gets what it wants, and consumes all reality. Then, even if he survives, as the only Baro, what would it matter. Nobody else will exist. Void trader trading one of infinite copies of nothing to nothing.
And in the face of that sort of cosmic nihilism, there's only really two paths. Accept eternity, or reject it. He can never unlearn what he knows, but either he can give up entirely or just... Go back to trying to live his tiny little life through tiny little moments of time selling tiny little bits of shiny nothing to tiny little people. What else is there.
(I don't think Wally is a reliable narrator, per-se, since they're tethered to our linear time, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if Baro came face to face with it's hunger and hatred and just realized we were kinda fucked. )
(Additionally, tag list because I know I ramble infinitely too much in my damn tags)
Also I think our drifter/operator shows the third possible route in the face of eternity. Accept that you cant go back and that the infinite is real, still value the moments because ultimately, you're still you, and you can choose what matters to yourself.