even once

From Zizek, "The art of the ridiculous sublime":

There are two standard uses of cyberspace narrative: the linear,
single-path maze adventure, and the undetermined, "post-modern"
hypertext form of rhizome fiction. The single-path maze adventure
moves the interactor towards a single solution within the structure of
a win-lose contest (overcoming the enemy, finding the way out,
etc.). With all possible complications and detours,the overall path is
clearly predetermined; all roads lead to one final Goal. In contrast,
the hypertext rhizome does not privilege any order of reading or
interpretation; there is no ultimate overview or "cognitive mapping,"
no possibility to unify the dispersed fragments in a coherent
encompassing narrative framework. One is ineluctably enticed in
conflicting directions; we, the interactors, just have to accept that
we are lost in the inconsistent complexity of multiple referrals and
connections. The paradox is that this ultimately helpless confusion,
this lack of final orientation, far from causing an unbearable
anxiety, is oddly reassuring: the very lack of a final point of
closure serves as a kind of denial which protects us from confronting
the trauma of our finitude, of the fact that our story has to end at
some point. There is no ultimate, irreversible point, since, in this
multiple universe, there are always other paths to explore, alternate
realities in which one can take refuge when one seems to reach a
deadlock. So how are we to escape this false alternative? Janet Murray
refers to the story structure of the "violence-hub," similar to the
famous Rashomon predicament: an account of some violent or otherwise
traumatic incident (a Sunday trip fatality, a suicide, a rape) is
placed at the center of a web of narratives/files that explore it from
multiple points of view (perpetrator, victim, witness, survivor,
investigator).

the proliferation of interconnected files is an attempt to answer
the perennial and ultimately unanswerable question of why this
incident happened. . . these violence-hub stories do not have a
single solution like the adventure maze or a refusal of solution
like the post-modern stories; instead, they combine a clear sense of
story structure with a multiplicity of meaningful plots. the
navigation of the labyrinth is like pacing the floor; a physical
manifestation of the effort to come to terms with the trauma, it
represents the mind's repeated efforts to keep returning to a
shocking event in an effort to absorb it and, finally, get past
it. (cf. http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/hamlet-holodeck)

It is easy to perceive the crucial difference between this "retracing
of the situation from different perspectives" and the rhizomatic
hypertext: the endlessly repeated reenactments refer to the trauma of
some impossible Real which forever resists its symbolization (all
these different narratives are ultimately just so many failures to
cope with this trauma, with the contingent abyssal occurrence of some
catastrophic Real, like suicide, apropos of which no "why" can ever
serve as its sufficient explanation). In a later closer elaboration,
Murray even proposes two different versions of presenting a traumatic
suicidal occurrence, apart from such a texture of different
perspectives. The first is to transpose us into the labyrinth of the
subject's mind just prior to his suicide. The structure is here
hypertextual and interactive, we are free to choose different options,
to pursue the subject's ruminations in a multitude of directions, but
whichever direction or link we choose, we sooner or later end up with
the blank screen of the suicide. So, in a way, our very freedom to
pursue different venues imitates the tragic self-closure of the
subject's mind. No matter how desperately we look for a solution, we
are compelled to acknowledge that there is no way out, that the final
outcome will always be the same. The second version is the opposite
one. We, the interactors, are put in the situation of a kind of
"lesser god," having at our disposal a limited power of intervention
into the life-story of the subject doomed to kill himself; for
example, we can "rewrite" the subject's past sothat his girlfriend
would not have left him, or so that he would not have failed the
crucial exam, yet whatever we do, the outcome is the same - even God
himself cannot change Destiny. . .