[ WP ] Do n't blink , or you 'll miss it

I do n't read. It's not that I ca n't, I just think it's wrong, somehow. Like when you're just meeting someone, that mandatory nanosecond pause as you're pulling up their info, it just feels dirty to me. Like reading someone else's diary. I know people are infosafety-conscious now, but back in my day, we were n't. So I do n't read people. My grandkids tell me it's unsafe, but I think that sooner or later, if there's anything worth knowing, you'll find out anyway. 
 
 You know me from textbooks. You can imagine how I feel about that. I've read one, it says: `` they flew into a brilliant cloud that offered them a choice.'' Half a sentence for an experience that happens once a universe. That's another reason why I do n't read. 
 
 As you know, we were on a routine freight route as part of the Mars project. Mars was a planet. Planets were bodies of solid matter that typically orbited stars. Stars were superdense blobs of superheated matter that were held together by gravity. Gravity was a physical force. Physics was the law of the universe. The Mars project was an attempt to move the problems with our planet to a different planet. 
 
 We had no choice but to fly into it. It was n't supposed to be there, because our instruments had no way of reading it. We just saw it. Seeing was a sensory effect of converting photons to neural stimuli. Photons were a building block of the universe, and neural stimuli were the building block of our consciousness. 
 
 We all know what the cloud did. After all, we are the cloud. But what you do n't know is that before it happened, it asked me. Not my teammates, me. It asked me one question. First. 
 
 I do n't read. I do n't want to know what answers you've given to what questions. I'd rather you told me yourself, and if you do n't... well. I guess I'll never find out. Sometimes, it's better that way.
