In an eariler article (Mindblowingly Boring Star Map) I have outlined an algorithm to display a maze of practically arbitrary size. This is a demonstration of that algorithm. More information about the maze itself can be found below.

This is a pretty standard maze, it has a start (red dot) in the top left corner, and a goal (green dot) in the bottom right corner. There is exactly one path. Each square of the maze is only reacheable by exactly one path from any other square. There are no loops, and no unreacheable areas. Just what you would expect from a maze.

What you can see is a 50x50 section, and you can move this window around. Use the arrows or enter values for X and Y.

This maze is big. In fact, its width and height are both 100,000,000,000,000,000,000, or hundred quintillion or a hundred billion billion or 10²⁰. Also there are more mazes, and you can pick your favorite by just entering its number to the World box. The size is chosen arbitrarily, it could be higher if we wanted to. At this size, it really does not matter, and this is basically the point.

The point is that you should not try to solve it. You should not even try to turn the path on and follow the red line to anywhere significantly off the origin. Or, for example, don't try to locate the red line somewhere in the middle. All of these are entirely hopeless.

What you should do is trying to understand how big it is. It is futile, you can't understand it, no human can. But trying builds character. In our time, we need to deal with truly huge systems that the mind can't comprehend. We live in a society composed of eight billion smartasses doing their own thing. We build multi kilometer long bridges, ten story tall machines, space ships you can fit your house in. We understand the universe now. We understand how big the Earth is, and how small it is compared to even the Solar System, which is in turn tiny compared to larger, still relatively tiny structures. We understand the biosphere and the process of evolution, the interaction of millions of species spanning billions of years. One might feel the urge to hide under the bed, because the universe is so big, we feel we might fell into it, and get lost forever. The fear of the infinity is best combated by meditating on it.

As we get used to the thought of practical infinity, we might start to focus on more important things. The nuisance, the mundane loses its grip on our psyche. We turn our attention to bigger things, more relevant things that are still minuscule on the grand stage of the universe, but are overwhelmingly huge to us. There is no other way to the future than through things that are overwhelmingly huge.

Thus, this is how you play this game. Set yourself a task, similar to those mentioned above, and after familiarizing yourself with it, playing around in the maze to get the feeling of it. Then try to contemplate or calculate how long would it take to actually do it. What would it take. How much progress you can actually make, compared to even the most modest goals. Don't answer the question, indulge in it.

One more final footnote. Please don't write a script that tries to download the maze. As we discussed, it is futile, you don't have neither the time, nor the disk space necessary. But I'm actually paying for the bandwidth and the CPU. So no scripts please. Thank you!