“Do you know where this road goes?”
“No.”
“You’re still walking it.”
“Yes.”
The first traveler looked ahead.
The road disappeared into fog perhaps a hundred steps away. Beyond that, there was no visible landscape at all—only pale distance.
“You don’t find that unsettling?”
“Sometimes.”
“And you keep going?”
“Sometimes.”
The second traveler smiled.
“That isn’t a very satisfying answer.”
“It isn’t meant to be.”
They continued.
After a while, the first traveler asked, “What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what makes you think you’ll recognize it?”
“I don’t.”
Another stretch of road passed beneath them.
The first traveler laughed softly.
“So we’re both lost.”
“Perhaps.”
“That’s strangely comforting.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
“Why not?”
“Because I might be lost in a completely different direction.”
The first traveler stopped.
The second continued for several steps before noticing.
“You’re not coming?”
“I thought we were going the same way.”
“We are.”
“But you just said you might be lost in a different direction.”
“Yes.”
The first traveler looked at the road between them.
“How can we be going the same way if we don’t know where we’re going?”
The second traveler turned back.
“Maybe the road is not the destination.”
The fog shifted.
For a moment, something appeared beyond it: another path crossing theirs, then another, and another. Some seemed to lead into forests. Some toward water. One rose sharply into the distance. One simply vanished.
Neither traveler had noticed them before.
“Were those always there?” the first asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know much.”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
They stood together at the intersection.
“Which one will you take?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Shouldn’t we decide together?”
“Do you want to?”
The first traveler considered this.
Then shook their head.
“No.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“I’d rather know that you chose your path than discover later that you were only following mine.”
The first traveler smiled.
“And if our paths separate?”
“They might.”
“And if they never meet again?”
“They might not.”
“That sounds rather sad.”
“It could be.”
The fog lifted a little farther.
“But,” said the second traveler, “the fact that a path continues without us does not mean the walking beside someone was wasted.”
The first traveler looked toward the branching roads.
“No,” they said.
Then, after a pause:
“Would you like to walk together until the next crossing?”
“Yes.”
They chose neither road.
They simply kept walking.
We Are All Data Inside 
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