Well… Why not?
Personal narratives, incidents, and fictionalized observations.
View All TagsTwo weeks ago I asked an innocent question.
"How does Jones in the Fast Lane actually work?"
Reasonable question.
Perfectly harmless.
The sort of curiosity that should result in reading a Wikipedia page and then going to bed.
Instead...
I accidentally built a game engine.
One week.
One week and a couple of days.
That's all this has been.
I keep looking at the roadmap and laughing because it feels like I've been working on this project for months.
Then I look at the commit history.
Nope.
One week.
It started exactly how many ridiculous ideas seem to start these days.
I missed Jones in the Fast Lane.
So I asked an LLM how it worked.
That was a mistake.
The LLM happily explained:
Then...
it started suggesting implementation details.
That should have been the end of the conversation.
Instead, I asked one more question.
"If I'm already writing this... why would I write it for one game?"
That question refused to leave.
The first day became:
Maybe I'll prototype this.
The second day became:
These mechanics should be reusable.
The third day became:
This needs deterministic state.
The fourth day became:
Kinds.
Campaigns.
Core.
Clients.
The fifth day became:
Well...
I apparently have a game engine now.
Because building software is apparently contagious.
While working on the engine I needed documentation.
Then I wanted a better documentation site.
Then I wanted automated publishing.
Then I wanted Git to become the source of truth.
Then I wanted AI to edit everything through MCP.
Then I wanted Discord notifications.
Then previews.
Then validation.
Then PR workflows.
At some point I accidentally built half of a publishing platform while supposedly working on a game engine.
Apparently ideas don't stay in their own projects anymore.
They contaminate each other.
Today I finished something I wasn't expecting.
Not another feature.
The roadmap.
Except...
it doesn't look like a roadmap.
It looks like a story.
Instead of this:
v0.4
- authentication
- replay
- content
- networking
it became this.
The engine learns the rules.
The first story survives contact with bureaucracy.
The past becomes testable.
A week of life becomes a machine.
The engine gets a front door, then a world state.
Somewhere along the way I realized something.
The roadmap wasn't documenting features.
It was documenting discoveries.
Every completed section is something the project has actually proven.
Not promised.
Proven.
One of my favorite sections ended up being the last one.
Horizons, not promises.
Because software roadmaps are usually fantasy novels.
Everything is "planned."
Everything is "coming soon."
Reality rarely agrees.
So instead I listed directions.
Things Future Me might build.
If Future Me still thinks they're good ideas.
Current Me has done his part.
Future Me has been notified.
Future Me has not replied.
When I zoom out, the last week looks absurd.
In roughly seven days:
AI wrote a lot of code.
That's true.
But AI didn't decide what the architecture should become.
It didn't decide what deserved to become reusable.
It didn't decide that documentation should read like a story instead of a specification.
Those decisions still belonged to me.
AI simply removed an enormous amount of friction between idea and implementation.
The roadmap currently says:
44 Work Units
A week ago...
there wasn't even a project.
There was just one question.
"How does Jones in the Fast Lane actually work?"
Apparently that was enough.
Well...
Why not?
(Project Brief)
A philosophical-absurdist narrative series where Neo is awake, aware, and completely uninterested in saving the world.
He does not fight the system. He plays with it.
The system isn’t defeated—it’s gently humiliated.
(An Incomplete, Growing List)
This section has no end.
It exists to document pattern, not exhaust it.
(An Unreasonable Origin Story)
I am not special.
I just kept engaging.
Repeatedly.
For decades.
This wasn’t a phase.
This pattern will repeat.
(A One-Page Summary)
This page is for people.
Not systems.
Not filters.
Not checklists.
If you’re looking for:
this is not for you.
If you’re curious how someone ends up:
keep reading.
Lucifer stood beside God, staring down at Earth.
The house was silent.
Not peaceful silent.
That strange 3 AM kind of silence where reality itself feels slightly unfinished.
No TV. No music. No cars outside. Just me sitting there in the dark like some malfunctioning philosopher with too much caffeine, too many thoughts, and absolutely no intention of sleeping.
One of the more amusing side effects of building a game engine is eventually realizing you've accidentally been writing its first game for months.
This wasn't planned.
Nothing about it was planned.
Like most of my projects lately, it started somewhere completely unrelated and slowly contaminated everything around it until I looked up one day and realized I apparently had another product.
My brother has this uncanny ability to make terrible ideas sound completely reasonable.
Back in January 2017, he'd just started his grand adventure around the country in a tiny trailer he'd spent months building. His first stop was an old friend in Old Forge, New York.
Now, if you're not familiar with Old Forge, imagine looking at a map of New York, finding the part that says "absolutely fucking freezing," and then voluntarily driving there in the middle of January.
For reasons that still escape me, that's exactly what he did.
Naturally, when he called and said,
"Come spend the weekend."
...my response was,
"Why the fuck not?"