Epilogue

Lan-Ka Shun Gan

(An optional conclusion)

1

'It's almost time,' the gunslinger thought, blinking rapidly. He leapt up quickly, his body no longer hindered by pain. Gan's Tower had seen to that, so it had, and so much more. He leaned on the grey machine panel marked with his name. Nothing. He again paced the top room's perimeter, no longer needing to see where he was going. His boots found their way on their own now, and the smooth polish on the marble had been worn into a dull and visible path where he always walked.

Time seemed to no longer exist, except in the gunslinger's mind and with his fingers, which set to doing their trick. This included pressing each finger to his thumb on each hand, one after the other, over and over so that they rippled back and forth as they had when he had used gun shells for hypnosis. Roland stared straight ahead as he paced, his fingers flying in waves. It was how he counted now, and found that with nothing else to fill the time, he had learned the way very quickly, even allowing for the missing digits of his right hand. He had actually been surprised that the Tower hadn't "fixed" his fingers as well, as early in his arrival he had sometimes stared at his depleted hand as if waiting for new digits to sprout from the nubs like seedlings.

The numbers were only estimates he knew, and most likely incorrect, skewed by the monotony of perpetual time. Roland also understood that he was doing only that—passing endless time. Nonetheless, if his estimates were anywhere near accurate, and he supposed that were at least a good approximation, he had been in the Dark Tower's top room for five thousand, two hundred and forty-eight days since he had started counting. He chuckled when he realized the digits of this number added up to nineteen, and his fingers then quickly told him that this equated to just over fourteen years. He laughed again because he hadn't even started to mark time for what had seemed like an eternity after coming to the top room, making the true time far greater than fourteen years. Either way, counting had helped tame the bridle of insanity.

Yet, it wasn't the amount of time the gunslinger had been in the top room that fascinated him, for that was only a means of staying occupied. Rather, his greater interest became the amount of time that passed outside of the Dark Tower. In the fourteen years he had been in the top room, the sun had ever so slowly set and rose again three times. This meant that each day cycle on the outside of the Dark Tower corresponded to roughly four years inside the top room. Since the Dark Tower was the supposed nexus of time, Roland had become obsessed with wondering if almost four days or fourteen years had passed since he came to the Dark Tower.

This led to considering many other factors of his existence. For example, since arriving in the top room, the gunslinger had never been hungry, thirsty, or even tired. He also no longer felt pain in his body, and he believed that the Dark Tower or Gan was somehow filling him with life—perhaps becoming his life, as there was no other explanation for how he could survive. He no longer knew what it was like to yearn for sleep, food or drink, nor was he ever hot or cold, sore or relaxed. The finger on his right hand and his entire right arm had mended nicely and pain free even without a sling or support, and he had even ceased the need to make his daily squat or to pass water.

In a word, he simply was, and nothing more.

2

The fascination of no longer needing basic human functions was short-lived, as by then Roland had been already hopeful that he would soon meet his end. But the word "death" had become nothing more than a tease, a carrot on a string just out of his reach, and the words of the man in black echoed in his mind every time he thought of it.

'But never for you, gunslinger…'

After having been in the top for some unknown period of countless time, the gunslinger developed a general level of desperation, panic and insanity that was always present. He was not out of his mind, kennit, but the result of being literally closed out of reality for so long had finally begun to take its toll. After some other unknown period of time had passed after this happened, Roland returned to the Beam Panel and stared at the dials until he couldn't refrain any longer. He had not once touched the dogan's controls for fear of any harm that could come to the worlds and Beams holding them to the Dark Tower. Now, however, after so much time had passed, the temptation was unbearable.

Before he had known he had done it, the gunslinger twisted the "Bear/Turtle" dial to the right, eyes wide with anticipation. It did not move. Roland tried the other dials for the other Beams with the same result. Frustrated, he also tried the switches and the blinking indicators without success. Frustration gave way to anger, and he ran to every panel pushing, pulling, turning and flipping anything he could touch before he realized that he was powerless—merely a passive observer that still hadn't found a way to come forward in the Dark Tower to somehow end this perpetual torment.

He sank to the floor. Underneath the baseline level of madness Roland knew that this made sense. There was no coming forward in the Dark Tower because he was forward already. He was interfacing with the Dark Tower through the top room, although he wondered if the top room was something he could even understand. He believed the last time he climbed the Tower he had seen it in its truest form, and so he believed the same for the top room. However, he also came to know that this was as close to Gan as any human could be, and that Gan's existence and knowledge was simply be more than he could comprehend. Instead, he experienced the top room as a dogan, much as Susannah had been with Mia when there was literally nothing she could do to change what was happening.

There was nothing he could change or do to interface with the Dark Tower. He removed one of the shells from his gun belt and held it before him. Roland wondered if he could change or do anything regarding himself. He hadn't touched ammunition in all the time he had been in the top room, and it felt strange and distant to his fingers. He held the cartridge to the light of the oriel window. It was one of the only two remaining possibilities, and although his gun was on the Dark Tower's landing, there were other ways to make rounds fire.

He decided to shoot out one of the panes of glass. This would do little, he realized, as he wouldn't be able to escape that way, but it would at least destroy the barrier between himself and the outside world. It would allow for sound, wind, the rose's song, and maybe even some sanity. Of course there was a chance that the bullet wouldn't pierce the crystal-like glass, and the round could ricochet. But, what of that? By then Roland had started fantasizing about ending his own life as a final option, even though this went against everything that he had ever been taught, and it disturbed him that he could even consider it. Still, he yearned for an end more than anything else, and if that came from breaking through the glass, fine, and if it meant his life ending that would be fine too.

It wasn't hard to get a round off without a gun, but Roland knew he would have to be creative given the limited items he had to work with. He laid the bullet on the floor and carefully stood on it with his boot heel. This bent the casing slightly, increasing the pressure inside between the primer and the bullet head. Next he removed his belt and one of his boots. With his left hand he held the shell and the belt, with the belt's buckle folded back and the bar clasp positioned over the primer cap. He held this towards the blue pane and picked up the boot with his other hand heel-side up. He swung quickly and hard, striking the bar clasp dead on and driving the pin into the primer, but nothing happened.

He tried again, then a third, fourth and fifth time. He cursed under his breath, dropped his boot, and ran to the Beam Panel with the round. He turned it primer-side down, aiming at an angle away from his face and towards the glass, and brought it down square on the panel's edge, but nothing happened. He also tried this many more times with the same result, even after using several new bullets. Roland then used several bullets on the various dials, switches and levers on the dogan's panels, smashing them down on the sharp edges and button tops, but none ever fired.

He finally dropped the shells, sure that the Tower had kept them from going off, and again sat on the floor. The Tower kept the knobs and dials from moving, shells from firing, shit and piss from flowing, and anything from changing. After more hours, days or weeks of thinking and no changes to anything, the plans to end his life became more specific. Finally, some untold time later, Roland decided that was the only way he could escape the Dark Tower.

He believed there was only way that he could do it, and that was to break his own neck using the dogan's sharply-angled front panels. Planning this took ample time and pleased him, since it was something new to do. The distances had to be measured exactly, for if he made even the slightest error, he knew that he would either miss completely, or only succeed in possibly maiming or even paralyzing himself.

He calculated his height to the center of his neck using his boot while lying on the floor. He did this twenty times for accuracy and because it filled time. Then he measured the distance from the edge of the machinery's front panel out into the center of the top room the same number of times, and marked where to stand using a shirt button. He would stand profile on the button and simply fall sideways, hoping that the weight of his body would be enough to break his neck as it hit the edge of the machinery. It was a crude plan, a mad plan, but it was also the only plan.

More hours, days or weeks passed after he had measured for and placed the button on the floor. He had not attempted his plan because part of him still hoped that something—anything—would change or help him see his purpose in the top room. When this didn't happen and he realized that he was no longer going to starve or thirst to death, however, he decided it was time. He remembered carrying Susannah on his back as they ran ahead of the large worm monster under Castle Discordia. They had nearly died then, despite trying everything they could think of, and escaping out to the open had been the only thing that had saved them. Crafting makeshift Sterno torches as they ran had helped, but they both knew they would have never been able to stop the todash beast had they not found the exit. The torches served only to delay the inevitable.

Roland knew that he was only lighting Sterno torches in a way now in the Dark Tower, except he could find no exit. Nothing could stop what was happening, everything he did only pushed the end back some. Susannah had planned to ask him to leave her behind in those tunnels under Fedic, so that he could continue to the Dark Tower, and she had known well enough to keep one slug in her gun in case they couldn't get out.

And that did it—it was not an honorable end, but it was a humane end.

He checked his measurements three final times, and stood on the button near the middle of the floor. The gunslinger closed his eyes and found he had no final words or prayers—only the desire for an end, a way out. It proved easier to do than he thought, and he had let himself fall without another thought.

There was a mere instant where he felt peace and closure as he fell, but then he felt his body slowing, resisting, as if falling into an invisible net. He opened his eyes and saw that he was hovering several feet above the Beam Panel at an awkward angle as if suspended or stuck. Nothing he did allowed him to move closer to the panel. Finally he moved his feet forward and stood up. He tried four more times before accepting that the Dark Tower was also keeping him from dying.

That was when Roland had begun counting.

3

It was all a rhythm, of course, as it had been when Cort had taught them how to count a perfect moment using only their minds. Roland discovered that counting eased him and blunted the edge of what it felt like to lose his sanity. After he failed at killing himself, Roland had sat in the middle of the top room, the last light of the day still shining over him as it had when he had arrived, and he had counted out an entire day in minutes, keeping track on his fingers as he went. When all five of his left hand's fingers had marked a minute, he held up one on his right hand for every five that passed—and then ten, and then a hundred, and then a thousand.

The relief of again knowing when a day's time had passed was instant, even though time outside the Dark Tower was moving far more slowly. And so, Roland counted more days, and found that after counting many days the diurnal rhythm became like that of counting a minute—you came to just know when exactly another day had passed. Once he had discovered this, he began to use his fingers more, discovering ways to calculate weeks and entire months. In the absence of anything else, this fulfilled Roland greatly, and he again began pacing, fingers flying, and muttering numbers as each day passed.

As even more time lapsed, he noticed that the dial to the "Bear/Turtle" Beam clicked another notch to the right roughly every four months. Since the dial went from 0-9, the gunslinger calculated that it would take thirty years—at least going by time inside the Dark Tower"—for each Beam to regenerate from nothing, which—the gunslinger stopped, looked at his fingers as if to verify something, and then to the Beam's control panel.

"It's soon," he said. His own voice sounded foreign and cracked to him from barely being used. What truly connected the gunslinger to the ratio of passing time was the "Bear/Turtle" Beams' dial. Although he felt the rhythm of passing days long before, it had been the dial that had centered him to how much time had passed since he became trapped in the Dark Tower. Although it was now long ago, Roland remembered seeing the Beam Panel for the first time when he came to the top room, and watching the "Bear/Turtle" dial click one notch to the right.

Although Roland assumed that Gan's Tower was preserving him and preventing his death, he also assumed that was true only for the top room. Were he still outside of the Tower he would no doubt continue to age and experience pain as he had his entire life. It was as if his life had literally been paused or stunted, so the gunslinger's obsessions about time and the idea of an end—any end—became centered on the dial that showed the "Bear/Turtle" Beam's strength.

The dial served as both a checkpoint for time passing, but also as a countdown of sorts. Roland gained knowledge and pleasure through checking his estimates of passing time when the dial clicked forward. He also learned that each time the dial moved, approximately one full day had passed outside, and this equated to just over four and a half years inside. The next time the dial clicked, it would represent the start of the fourth sunset since he had come to the Dark Tower, and each sunset also served as a countdown to when the Beams would all finally be healed.

The idea of a countdown seemed more likely than not, but was nonetheless pure speculation. It was all Roland had to think of or hope for, as he found that when there was nothing—absolutely nothing—that was ever different, he found it easy to hope for anything. As he considered this over the years he came to believe that life also continued as it had on the outside, but Roland wasn't able to experience life in that way because he was in the top room—within the shroud of the dogan.

Roland now believed that he was Lan-ka shun Gan, which literally translated into "Gan's punishment," but was more commonly spoken as "Gan's prisoner" in the common vernacular. He had been imprisoned through Eld's horn, by his own free will. He had chosen the top room—to enter the living Tower's most sacred space to all of creation—a room that represented Gan himself, an enormous and complex deity that Roland's mind could never experience accurately as a mere hume. Instead, Roland's prison cell—the dogan—became a simpler method of comprehending, although Roland felt he understood very little.

Over time, Roland believed there were two possible outcomes to this imprisonment. One was that he would remain in the top room forever—that the Dark Tower and Gan would simply allow him to continue to exist without end in the throws of madness. However, the more he considered this, the more it seemed likely that this sentence of sorts, like most others, would have to end. The Dark Tower and even Gan could also want it to end, would want to be rid of him in fact, so there could finally be balance again in the multiverse. By his calculations this end was so far in the future it was hardly worth thinking of now, but he believed this to be the most logical possibility.

Roland also believed that the Dark Tower had entered a standstill of its own—a hibernation, kennit—since he arrived where its energy only focused on the Beams' recovery. If this were true, it explained why Roland and the Dark Tower no longer shared khef, why nothing changed, and it would mean the Tower would remain in this state until the beams had fully regenerated. The gunslinger came to hope that would be the point he would be released from his prison.

The dial clicks on the Beam Panel became signals and confirmations of that hope, and every four years Roland actually experienced some joy and relief when this happened. Counting time between the clicks helped him remain focused on this possibility, and the next click was due in very short order.

Roland stopped his pacing and knelt at the Beam Panel, watching the "Bear/Turtle" dial with desperate eyes. He felt the rhythm of time beating in his brain, and his fingers flew back and forth pressing his thumbs in perfect synchrony. Beyond the grey machinery and through the blue glass-crystal, the sun hung low in the sky, just at the cusp of sunset as it had when he came to the scarlet field so long ago—Roland's fingers stopped

It was time.

He watched the "Bear/Turtle" dial, biting his lower lip. Finally it was time. But the dial didn't move. The gunslinger stared, not daring to blink or flinch. He began to wonder if something was wrong or if he had miscounted, but then the dial at last clicked loudly into place. No, not something wrong, just the effect of his excitement speeding his count by a few seconds. Roland smiled and stood, leaned on the machine's grey panel, and stared out at the sunset as he had the day of his arrival. He was one step closer to knowing what would happen when the beams recovered, and he relaxed for the first time in months.

4

His relief was short, however, as the usual thoughts returned to his mind. The sun would very slowly set once again, leaving a nightfall that would last for two years. The gunslinger glared at the sun, knowing that the darkness of night was still many weeks away, but that after that there would only be the blinking lights and stars to see for a very long time. Roland used his fingers to re-calculate the time it would take for all of the beams to recover since the dial had just clicked a notch closer. This took a while given the length of time in consideration, and the outside cycle of night and day would repeat many more times before that time.

But a part of him still needed to know how much closer it was. After another couple minutes his fingers stopped and he again looked out the oriel window—it would be just less than one hundred and fifty years from now.

He tried to imagine a world that far in the future and found he couldn't. He tried to imagine himself both in that world and inside the Dark Tower for that long, and found he couldn't do that either. He looked back to the Beam Panel and saw the other dials that were still turned to "0s"—there was so much time left the enormity of it all barely seemed to fit in his head.

Lan-ka shun Gan.

He was still standing there when the darkness finally came.