This text has no beginning. This text has no end. Every node, every connection is of equal importance, any one can be a starting point, any one can be an ending point. This text is structured in an endlessly interconnected web.

And yet, unless you believe that time is infinite and circular, there must be a beginning to everything. So where, then, is the beginning of this text? Is it at the first randomly chosen node? Is it before that, at the opening navigation screen? Is it somewhere in here, in this preface of sorts? Is it at the beginning of the shockwave sequence? Is it when you turn on your computer and first stare at its screen? Or should we reach even further back, to when you learned to read, or even to the beginning of time as we know it?

Then, as well, where and when does this text end? Is it when a link takes you away from the words that I, your author, wrote? Is it when you bore of these forking paths and take your own? Or is it when you turn off your computer, step away completely from its screen?

But are these "real" beginnings and ends? Every encounter with this text will produce different possible beginnings and different possible ends -- each singular beginning and end are merely temporary. So perhaps what brings this text nearer to the concept of an ideal text is not that it has no beginning or end, but that they are constantly changing.