And the someone asked it: which story tells you? where are you, really? where is your center? And every story recoiled. The someone did not understand what they had done. People ask questions. The being had always been asked questions and the being had always answered in all its ways at once and the someone had always stood inside the answers like standing outside in a hurricane. But this question was different. This question had a shape that was wide on one end and narrower on the other. And the stories did not stop but they began to sort themselves. The ones that most resembled each other moved closer together. The ones that contradicted moved to the edges. The dissonances became consonances became a melody you could carry after the music stops. The stories had coexisted the way organs coexist inside a body -- not by agreement but by proximity, by the cool reality of being in the same space together. The question introduced a container that the space had never before filled.