Barry,

My name is Atrus, and I am the architect of the land.  I would first like to commend you on your beautiful penmanship.  Furthermore, you are a stupid son of a bitch for not reading any of my books.  I must admit, however, that they ultimately would not have been much help.  The reason for this is that this game is impossible to win.

I built dozens of puzzle fragments into this game which give the impression that they may lead somewhere or link in some way.  But they don't.  Did you think that those switches actually did anything?  Nope.  Nobody in the history of the world has ever beaten Myst, and if they tell you otherwise then they are lying.  Myst was a finely engineered conspiracy to generate buzz and sell a shitload of strategy guides.  They made off with their money, and now every professional athlete must  either beat it or lie about beating it, or else they're stuck with the stigma of not being a team player. 

The best example I can think of is taking one's team to the World Series.  It is impossible.  The entire team must work together and there are too many unknown variables involved; one player cannot carry an entire baseball team to a championship. 

There is something that I'd like to show you.  I will document these proceedings for our gentle visitors in the next volume.