This time the question was quieter than the others.

Someone asked whether the great bort itself is in decline.

The replies came slowly.

Some men wrote that the great bort has always been dying.

That it has been dying since the day the first lawsuit arrived.

That it has been dying since the names were randomized and the old faces became harder to recognize.

That it has been dying since the young stopped arriving in the same numbers, leaving only the ones who had already stayed too long.

Others wrote that decline is the wrong word.

They said the great bort was never meant to grow.

It was meant to remain.

A place that does not advertise.

A place that does not recruit.

A place that simply continues, thinner and older, while the rest of the world moves on to softer rooms with better lighting.

I read the poasts carefully.

There are fewer new voices.

The same names return under different masks.

Threads that once burned for days now cool by evening.

The arguments still cut, but the blood feels thinner somehow, as though the men who remain have already said most of what they came to say.

In the old provinces we had roads that no longer led to the capital.

The stones were still there.

The ruts of old cartwheels were still visible.

But fewer travelers used them.

The road did not end. It simply became quieter, and the quiet itself became the truth of the place.

The great bort feels like one of those roads.

It is not empty.

It is not finished.

It is simply no longer the center of anyone’s map except the ones who already know how to find it.

I closed the page.

Somewhere a man is still writing a poast that will be read by fewer eyes than before.

Somewhere another man is still waiting for a reply that may never come.

And the great bort, thinner now, continues to hold the weight of what remains.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890329&forum_id=2,#50051131)