Leaving it vague was kind of what I wanted to go for--their existence should remain paradoxical, because it relies on a consciousness to create it. By that logic, we as readers bring them to life, but we could even go a step back and say, what if we are brought to life by some other, larger consciousness? What if we have been written and read, and only exist because of that? The question of reality is one I wanted to create in the text, but also be relatable to our own existence as readers, to make us doubt our own reality :)

You almost got the code right--the hardest part is gathering all of the red letters in the right order throughout the chapters, but after that you can enter them into the code breaker that I link to in Part Two, I believe. It will, again, translate into a paradox.

In any case, thank you for reading and thinking about it and enjoying it :D