For a moment, he thinks he might be able to manage such a thing. Should he have nine thousand years of his own to study the makings of life as a whole, from this place, with its inexplicable denizens of magic and mechanics, a universe of experience all its own.

"Damn you," he says at length, but rather fondly. "The game to you, then."

He chuckles wryly, shaking his head. "Eliminate the impossible, and whatever remains, however improbable...must be truth. But when the only possible solution denies any existance of a solution, what can it mean?"