"Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies" is a science-fiction short story by Australian writer Greg Egan, first published in Interzone #61 in July 1992.
Although the protagonist prefers to travel in between them through a post-apocaliptic world with damaged infrastructure to avoid being sucked in, and in particular experiences the ancient clash between science and religion or tugs to rationality, solipsism and nihilism, it only leads to the realization to also be stuck in a belief system that manifests itself as paths instead of stable locations.
[3] The short story was translated into Japanese (1996), Czech by Petr Kotrle, French by Francis Lustman (1999), Romanian by Mihai-Dan Pavelescu (1999), Russian (1999), Hungarian by József Békési (2000), Italian (2003), Spanish (2006), Polish by Iwona Michalowska-Gabrych (2007) and Chinese (2017).
[1][2] Egan, in an interview with Eidolon in 1993, said to "rather have the reader imagine his or her home town" and to "only go into settings in detail if they're exotic, like the city in 'Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies'".
[6] Russell Letson, writing in the Locus Magazine, stated that the short story "lies somewhere between a Borgesian fable and an old Galaxy-style comic inferno: a literalized metaphor worked out with science-fictional rigor".