What is the dragon?

So, you are convinced that the world is ending. What is there to be done?

At the face of it, there is a lot of things to consider. And every option holds uncertainty.

It is a simple thing, of course. Simple, as in there isn't much of a need to complicate matters. It can be as complex as one wants it to, and at the same time, it can be as simple.

Simple it may or may not be, however, it is something profound. It is something grand. Even if one ignores the finer details, the matter is too large to captured with an individual's mere imagination.

There comes from the uncertainty.

Put straight, today is very much like a day three or so months ago, before all this dragon thing started happening.

There are a lot of things to consider. There are a lot of things that cannot be known.

But there is one comfortable truth, something that can be taken for granted.

The world is ending.

A man with a shaved head leans back on his couch, trying to catch up to this thoughts. He wears light clothing as if he's cooling down from the summer heat despite the cold season. His name is Enzo, more commonly known as Labrose or Rose.

Enzo is someone that can be considered learned, but he has long lost his confidence in his intelligence, so he makes a habit of going through his head to make sure there is a semblance of order in there.

And finds that, once again, he led himself into confusion.

The simple answer to the question of what is to be done is to do as you please. That is already the life principle he followed before all of this, and with the end of the world happening sooner into this coming year than an unfathomably far future, he can only assure himself that his way isn't incorrect.

Yesterday, he finished a drawing according to what pleases him.

Today, he's compiling data for his independent research.

Besides, he has a streamer on, an independent broadcaster reviewing the news stories from Turtlesand.

It can be said that Redstar is too stable and too boring despite the state of the world. One would think martial law being in effect would make things more exciting, and they would be correct. But things are still relatively comfortable, especially when witnessing irreversible societal collapse in other places.

There have been more than a hundred cases of mass murder in Turtlesand. No one knows the exact number. Enzo doesn't know how anyone could even keep up with everything that's been happening.

There's also a question of why people even bother, but the principle of living as one pleases doesn't take literal pleasure into account. If people follow their impulse to document the end of the world, let them.

And of course, one can only assume the motivations of others. And even looking within oneself, the reasons for why oneself do this over that have their hidden elements.

In the same way that one can reduce a subject into simple things, with exercise, one can also expand a subject into complex things.

More than the question of what is to be done, Enzo is interested in the question of what is the nature of the dragon.

According to observation and various testimonies, what is the dragon?

The fact that the affected people see a dragon in the sky is a symptom that can be described as a collective hallucination. That is an inaccurate way to put it.

The more simple and more accurate formulation is that the affected people suffer prolonged and/or chronic hallucination (as in, they perceive things that aren't actually there), and that they have all been primed to accept the notion that there is a great dragon in the sky.

Enzo agrees with expert consensus that there is some kind of pandemic. This isn't anything notable.

There is a practical problem regarding this evaluation: no one can find the thing causing the symptoms -- no bacteria, no fungi, no viruses, no parasites.

There is an online theory, or rather, a niche imaginative speculation that considers the possibility of the dragon having come from a viral meme of unknown origin. It is based on an episode of an old classic science fiction anime called Stalinism wherein the titular character Stalin, an artificial person, created a printed code that can replicate fragments of personality into other people who have seen the code.

An online legend out there states that a lost image file had made people see the dragon, and those people somehow infected other people by spreading notion that there existed the dragon in the sky. The oldest testimony that can be found, dated on very first day when the dragon started to appear, states that they saw the mythical image a week or so before the dragon appeared. That would date it around the last week of rain season.

Enzo isn't actually very interested in dates. An understanding of the timeline isn't negligible in terms of understanding the phenomenon. However, the simple fact is that it doesn't interest him, and a supporting reason is that he doesn't know what to do with dates, in terms of analysis. He can only write them down for the sake of completeness.

More importantly, while the speculation appeals to his sense of romance, Enzo doesn't have a good reason to assume that this line of investigation is viable. He wonders which side it would be unfair to should he compare this "theory" to a hypothetical claim that a wizard did all of this.

It was a bit of a fun adventure for Enzo to look into this matter, but he ends back to the "mysterious cause" problem.

Then, there is the other related issue: what is the nature of the prophecies?

This is something Enzo is very concerned with, partly because his brother is involved as one of the people who had seen the course of human extinction in advance, and principally because it is the more mysterious phenomenon, and perhaps the greater phenomenon.

There are simple explanations.

The world is an absurd place that doesn't abide by the limited understanding of an individual, but an individual can get lucky in predicting the future.

When a group of people makes the correct prediction, it can be said that they conspired to push a single message, then the odds would be more or less similar to the previous case.

When the group cannot conspire with each other, and have no known connection with each other...

It can be a mere coincidence that tens of future seers around the world happen to individually saw the things and relayed the same core ideas to the people around them. And it can also be mere coincidence that what these people said would happen started to happen in a way that can be interpreted as being related to the predictions.

The world is an absurd place, and the greatly improbable isn't necessarily impossible.

Enzo lies down on his couch. He can feel his mental energy leaking through his eyes. He's confusing himself again.

Then, he goes over another interpretation of events.

It is evident to Enzo that the appearance of the dragon is a symptom.

The dragon is not causing people to hear screams.

The dragon is not turning people hostile.

Enzo noticed that he's not getting into the heart of the subject. Something about it disturbs him in ways he cannot reason within himself. Still, he concentrated on it.

What if the predictions are correct not by mere coincidence?

It feels silly to say but what if the predictions fulfill themselves?

What if the pandemic simply develops in the direction of what has already has been established?

Enzo feels an itch inside his head, as if he's looking at a contradiction that cannot be resolved. He went over his thoughts again, and the reasoning is simpler than his previous understanding, and is equally unsound.

Enzo picked up his portable and started to search the expert forums he follows to see what people have been saying.

No one thought of the same idea.

It is an exciting thing. At the same time, it is terrifying to stand alone in one's vantage point. This hypothesis can only stand on arrogance...

Steadfast.

Stubborn.

Self-centered.

These are words that describe Labrose, the online persona, and they are not out of pretension or misunderstanding. However, Labrose stands with an artist's confidence, and the matter of taste is something that people can pretend to be always correct about.

Enzo didn't complete his education as philosopher. He's an amateur scientist with a highschooler's understanding of maths and methods at best.

And he doesn't really reply to these forums, let alone post.

So, Enzo turned to his next best option. He switched to a messaging app to pester a work partner who's practically his closest friend.

There were already messages he had yet to read, from yesterday and earlier today.

[Yummy thighs blessed god is real

[Finished t4 please review

[Forgot can't get a ride home...

[Year-end date?

[Please please please i'll be good]

Enzo didn't forget how his friend conducts herself, but he always feels a bit of a shock remembering that it doesn't take a pandemic for someone's brain to melt.