Purging the Past: Ambergris Beta Version, Frag #1

[encoded on the back of the dust jacket photo on the original hardcover of City of Saints:] I didn't disappear. I tripped through one of the [redacted]. I became Samuel Tonsure, trying forever to return but failing, while my doppelganger, put in place by Dar Sarduce's people, continued to write about the place: a hollow man writing an echo while I continued to flail through the history of the place, the link between me and my surrogate a hair-thin connection between my waking thoughts and his sleeping dreams. It is not because of the internet that he feels weak and attenuated at times. It is because he exists in two places at once, and is the copy. [airlifted: 3quests/sarnod]Eventually, I came to a halt. I came to the edge of an underground sea. I became content in my exile and the world I had come from became the dream. I rested there dormant and then dead for a long time.Then Duncan Shriek came and ate my memories. Brought me back. In his head. An original now a copy. Forever ensconced within his brain and copies of his brain. The link with my doppelganger renewed, faded, then severed for good.Once, I stood on the shore of an endless sea and wondered what would become of me. Now I am everywhere and nowhere. Now I am at rest.