“I wish I had kept a journal,” I said to Romulus, looking into the fire. I winced, touching my sore cheek muscles. “But I’ll do my best to tell you what I remember.”

“When I lit my candle with the Fiveflame I found myself in a prison as well.

It was a tiny cell, with squalid conditions, flanked on either side by two other cells whose prisoners let out terrible groans from morning to night.

I couldn’t remember how I had gotten there, or the Fiveflame, or you, and I tried to work out what I might have done to be imprisoned, but to no avail.

On the first day, a set of heavy boots came walking down the hall, with a large jingling ring of keys. The footsteps stopped at the cell next to mine and asked the man inside: “Are you happy yet? We’ve given you the pens and paper you’ve asked for.”

The man replied, “Of course not. This toilet-paper manuscript can’t hold a candle to my best work, which was completed in cafés in Vinaste, where goats roamed the streets and women printed indigo dyes at the foot of the waterfall. Just let me go back there, please, and then I’ll be happy.”

I heard the clink of a bowl being set on the cold prison floor, and the footsteps came closer.

“New meat,” said the guard. “Are you happy yet?”

“Of course I am,” I said, lying, with a forced smile.

“Good,” he said, putting the bowl down in front of me.

He continued over to the next prisoner.

“Are you happy yet?”

“I’ll never be happy,” said the second prisoner, “I’ve never accomplished anything, and I can’t see how I ever will if you keep me locked up in here for a crime I didn’t commit.”

“I’m not the one keeping you locked up here,” said the guard, and I heard the clink of another bowl.

When his footsteps receded I turned to the other prisoners. “Why does he ask that?” I said to them.

“No idea,” said the first prisoner. “Cruelty, I think. He knows I’ll never be happy until I can go back to my old life, when I was successful, on-top.”

“And he knows I’ll never amount to anything,” said the second prisoner, “Even if he gives me tools to create things, nobody will ever see them.”

“I might see them,” I said, trying to be kind.

“No, you won’t,” he said, and fell silent. “And if you did it wouldn’t matter.”

Several days like this passed, with the guard coming by and asking his question. I began to grow despondent.

When I fell asleep one night after plenty of tossing and turning on the hay-filled cot, I had a strange dream.

I dreamt I was in a society where everyone had to appear cheerful at all times, and give the illusion of progress, because a powerful class of overlords came to check up on us. While we worked, we wore smile-stretchers, these leather muzzle-like devices that froze our mouths into permanent grins. We tried desperately to become happy. We were constantly talking about how to grow happy so we might do away with the smile-stretchers and the lies to our overlords. But in this world, happiness was fleeting, and when it (rarely) came, life grew even worse, for trying to capture it was like hunting a shadow.

I woke up in a cold sweat at dawn, and couldn’t fall back asleep. 

When the guard came in the morning for breakfast, his footsteps passed by the first prisoner’s cell without stopping and came directly to mine.

“Are you happy yet?” he asked.

“Why didn’t you stop at the first cell?” I asked him.

“That man is dead,” said the guard. “He wasn’t able to maintain his happiness. And the one on the other side is dead, too. He never found happiness.”

“Are you happy yet?” he repeated to me.

“I don’t think the question is relevant,” I said, exhausted. “I don’t care whether or not I’m happy. I want to make meaning for myself.”

“I see,” he said, “In that case, you can follow me.”

He led me to a small room with a glass panel looking inward.

I was shocked to see you, Romulus, working in a tiny workshop, surrounded by wooden scraps.

“When his supplies run out,” the guard told me, “You’ll hit the buttons that refill them. He won’t be able to hear you, so there’s no point in trying.”

Every day the guard brought me there for three hours while you worked on your automatons. I wasn’t happy to be there, not at all, in that cramped room with nobody else there to hear me, but to see you toiling away brought a kind of energy to my spirit despite the misery. I channeled that energy into a kind of stewardship. I made sure the workshop was always stocked, so that it would appear seamlessly magic. I swept, again and again, the small room that was my office. And back in the prison cell, I did the same, tidying up everything.

I began shaving for the first time since I’d arrived, using a piece of glass I uncovered while sweeping. I regained a sense of dignity. What I did was of no consequence to anyone but me, but I had found a kind of purpose in the work. Nobody would ever see how clean the cell was (the guard certainly didn’t seem to notice).

On the first day after I began shaving, the guard asked, “Have you found meaning yet?”

I told him that meaning was not something to be found, but to be realized through action.

The following days he asked me: “Have you realized meaning yet?”
On the fifteenth day of this I told him that I had, and for the first time could feel that I was telling the truth. The guard came closer, and looked solemnly at me. For the first time I noticed that he and I had the same face, like we were identical twins. The bars melted away and I left immediately.”

The rain poured down onto the tarp above as we sat in silence for a moment.

“The reason there’s no new location on the map,” I said to Romulus, “Is because we are meant to choose this next location ourselves — to realize the meaning in it without external direction. We’ll need to make a bristle-hair brush, and melt down some gold, then daub the melted gold into a ring on the map. Then it should show up as a true ‘location’. We will take responsibility for some quest in that place, and in doing so, make it a worthwhile addition to our map.”