Sphere Facility booting into existence…
…
Status Log: Event-X has occured.
Monoliths Compromised: 5,486
…
Automated Actions: Containment Zone Established
Area isolated, all contingencies in place.
…
Overall Sphere Status: 11% Dissonance
Rebooting…
That night I had nightmare about Old Pete and his leg and Papa saying “he’s a damn fool” and being served Old Pete’s steaming hot guts on a plate and Papa standing in the doorway lighting a cigarette, fire blazing white, and Papa saying “he’s a damn fool” and the fading of my yellow and Luce standing on the rocks and the waves crashing against the rocks and the wood breaking against the rocks and the broken bodies of the Raftmakers all strung up along the shore and the sound of the screams of the man stuck by the brambles and Luce sayin’ we’re going in and Papa standing in the doorway turning to me and saying “damn fool” and lighting a cigarette, fire blazing white.
Sometimes she sees me,
Staring into space,
“Where are you?” she asks.
I blink and I’m back. The TV is on. Some jingle is playing.
Her question makes me wonder and so my thoughts rush back along those neural paths, following the intangible threads of electricity that comprise my consciousness; where was I?
I know the simple answer, of course: I was in the Ulterkaad.
Forever I have walked this sullen desert of ashes.
There is sand beneath my shoes. The sand is grey. The sky above is grey. The clouds are grey. There is no sun or moon in this place, only a diffuse, insipid light that comes from nowhere and casts no shadows.
I am standing now on a ledge of lumpy black rocks and staring down at the Pit. Sand trickles past my ankles and I know it is not just sand but the microscopic remains of long-dead sea creatures, land creatures, civilisations.
Where am I?
The Pit drowns out all questions and all sounds. It is silent and massive and it is consuming the desert. It is consuming everything. I stand on the rocks and I watch the sand pour into the pit.
I can feel the pull of it, of course, it is an almost magnetic attraction, but the feeling does not concern me. I seem to have enough willpower to resist. But the sand has no willpower. Nor does the dead wood, or the rocks, or the ruins. Eventually, the Pit will claim them all.
“Where are you?” asks a voice from far away.
I do not remember accepting the role of the Craedus. In my youth I made many foolish pacts with devils and other powers besides. I cannot possibly remember them all.
The Craedus is the Last Man in Existence, or, The One Who Watches The End.
For all the time I have spent in this place, I have discerned one cosmic truth—there must always be an observer.
No tree ever falls in the forest. But here: everything falls. Everything except me.
I am standing at the End of Everything and I will watch it.
Note: The first part of this story was posted a month ago in the post Origin Stories. If you want to skip past that bit, click here.
It has become vogue in this day and age that before telling certain types of story you should first tell the origin story of each character who takes place in the narrative.
Starting in this way it becomes possible, perhaps, or easier—at least—to comprehend how a character “came to be a way”.
With this intention in mind, the characters begin somehow deconstructed into unformed lumps of clay or plasticine; lumpish babes in swaddling cloth.
And from these humble origins the characters become either great heroes, or villains, or sometimes neither, or sometimes both and rise up against adversity or break against it like a boat against rocks.
The story, in a way, becomes not a story about a thing but a story about a character. And we, the readers, are granted some insight into how that character was formed… how they became.
This is certainly a valid and sometimes necessary way to tell a story.
And yet… I wonder, what if we were to do away with that mode and instead chose to begin our story somewhere else. Perhaps right in its very centre, perhaps right at the critical moment at which their decisions begin to become relevant.
At such a moment of crisis—at that point of that critical mass—might we learn what we need to know about a character in a matter of moments, or seconds, or sentences?
This too would be an origin story, perhaps, but of a different nature than those which came before. No longer need we know from where exactly our characters came, or how they came to be; we are merely with them.
And in being with them, might we not come to a more immediate understanding of who that character is, not from the beginning, but a beginning.
The answer is of course we might start a story this way.
Continue reading →It has become vogue in this day and age that before telling certain types of story you should first tell the origin story of each character who takes place in the narrative.
Starting in this way it becomes possible, perhaps, or easier—at least—to comprehend how a character “came to be a way”.
With this intention in mind, the characters begin somehow deconstructed into unformed lumps of clay or plasticine; lumpish babes in swaddling cloth.
And from these humble origins the characters become either great heroes, or villains, or sometimes neither, or sometimes both and rise up against adversity or break against it like a boat against rocks.
The story, in a way, becomes not a story about a thing but a story about a character. And we, the readers, are granted some insight into how that character was formed… how they became.
This is certainly a valid and sometimes necessary way to tell a story.
And yet… I wonder, what if we were to do away with that mode and instead chose to begin our story somewhere else. Perhaps right in its very centre, perhaps right at the critical moment at which their decisions begin to become relevant.
At such a moment of crisis—at that point of that critical mass—might we learn what we need to know about a character in a matter of moments, or seconds, or sentences?
This too would be an origin story, perhaps, but of a different nature than those which came before. No longer need we know from where exactly our characters came, or how they came to be; we are merely with them.
And in being with them, might we not come to a more immediate understanding of who that character is, not from the beginning, but a beginning.
The answer is of course we might start a story this way.
Here he is again, you can hear him coming. Not me–no, no–I am your fearless narrator, I am your friend. But he, well… you’re going to have to make up your own mind.
Jingle-jangle, that’s the sound he makes and a whoosh as the runners of his sled carve through the snow and there is another sound, like muffled thunder, the sound of hoof beats.
“Ho ho ho!” he cries into the night and his eyes twinkle. He is omniscient, this figure all-in-red, he sees all and so he does not need to be told.
And his rugged, majestic beasts convey his sleigh through the winter’s night, a night frozen both in temperature and time, for neither of these things affect him. He sees everything. He travels everywhere. His is an ancient and eldritch magic.
Beside him, resting on the bed of the sleigh, is a gigantic sack. And the sack moves as though living things are trapped inside it, clamouring to get out. It is a disconcerting sight, but do not worry, it is simply the contents of the sack wrestling against the limitations of Euclidean geometry.
What I am trying to say is, the sack is bigger on the inside and this causes it to behave in such a way that can make it appear like it is pulsing, at times, like a gigantic human heart.
“Ho, ho, ho!” the man repeats and he tugs on the reins indicating that his beasts of burden should slow. He has come to a house at the very edge of the forest, a house resting in the shadows of the trees.
And now he exits the sleigh, one heavy boot at a time. The sack he slings across his shoulder and he stomps towards the house. Crunch, crunch.
There is a carrot on a plate on the doorstep and the old man frowns at it and kicks it away. He enters the house between the cracks in the wood, through a process referred to in some realms as thinning. Then, inside, he is whole again. He is whole and he is fat and his feet stomp loudly on the floorboards.
There, a mug of mead has been left out for him. The candle beside it burns low, the pool of melted wax glows. The old man drinks the mead, but it is not to his taste. Besides there was barely any mead in the cup at all, what a pitiful offering.
In the corner of the room there stands a tree, and the tree at least, hewn fresh from the forest in its infancy is almost satisfactory to the man in red. He goes to the tree and he brushes his fingers through the needles of the foliage.
There is only one stocking this year, though last year this very same house had three. It is hung up beside the tree, hanging from a loose thread from a nail on the wall.
The old man reaches into the sack and a thousand tiny hands clasp and claw at him. He shakes them away and removes a large lump of coal. This he tosses against the wooden floor, where it comes to rest at the base of the tree.
And then the old man passes back through the walls. He thins himself and then climbs back atop his sleigh. For those asleep in the house, this is but one night, but for the man in red it is his ever-existence. For him it is always this night, or the next one, or the next one. His existence is bound to the rituals of this night and this season.
Tidings of joy.
“Ho, ho, ho!” the old man says and grasps the reins.
This post was originally published as “20122021“.
Nicholas approached the tree.
The wind felt the same; it smelt the same. Was it the same? Was he inhaling his own breath, exhaled thirty years ago?
Nicholas came beneath the shade of the tree and memories flickered all around him. Some would call them hallucinations, but he knows they are not real. A child cries out and the sound is swallowed by time.
These are the tulpa of memory and remembering; these are the ghosts of people yet living.
Nicholas touched the bark and it felt rough beneath his palm.
How many lifetimes have you lead, old friend? Nicholas thought. How many have I?
Deep within us are parts, perhaps, that existed then.
But I am no longer the same man.
And you are no longer the same tree.
Is there sadness in these realisations? If so, then who do we grieve for—the tree or the boy?
Or do we simply grieve for the past, an intangible slipping away?
Does the alchemist grieve for the lead that is transmuted into gold?
Hello again.
Perhaps this is the first time we’ve spoken like this, but probably not. Sit down with me, here on the sand, that’s right. Look around: do you like this desert I have created?
There are sand dunes all around us and that peculiar shade of twilight that hovers above the desert.
Would you like some tea?
I look up at the sky, perplexed, for although I can see the colour of it (and it is something more than seeing, I would even go so far as to say that I can feel this particular shade of blue) I do not know how to convey it to you in words. My sky, your sky, they are the same but different.
Do you like this desert you have created?
This type of conversation suits me, I must admit. I get to speak and you get to listen. I mean, you could get up and walk away I suppose, out across those dunes, but I doubt you would get very far. I doubt you would find anything. In fact, in time, I have a feeling you would find yourself back here, with me.
Firelight flickers between us, casting us in shades of bronze. Above, there are pale stars in that twilight sky.
Sip your tea now, there you go. Is it too strong? Too sweet? Is it not tea at all? It’s an idea at least, the idea of tea, the idea of a desert, the idea of a twilight sky.
See what I have built here? See all these sloping dunes? It is nothing. It is only sand and sky. Oh and there is you and I, of course. A campfire. A tin pot and two cups for the tea.
But there is nothing else; we are alone here. In fact, you are alone here, for what am I except some disembodied voice in your mind and perhaps not even that.
Grand ideas stood here once. Cities and civilisations arose out of the sand. Bedouins trekked across these dunes without ever getting lost. But all that is gone now, I have destroyed it. Or time destroyed it, I forget which.
There is so much buried beneath the sand.
Why did we bury it, why did I? The desert is beautiful, no doubt. But it is empty.
Now the desert waits.
Twilight fades and the sky begins to fill with stars and I offer you more tea. And the dunes turn to silver as the cold face of the moon peers above the horizon. Hello moon.
This post was originally published as “08112021“.
The Facility came wholly into being at the exact moment that Event-X occurred.
Such a sudden a violent discharge of creative energies threatened the tenous mind-fabric of the Host; such that a system was rapidly imagined into existence whereby these energies could be corralled and controlled.
A series of monoliths were arranged upon a dry lake, each standing as tall as three men above the surface of the soil and extending as deep again below it. The monoliths pulse with blue light and it is forbidden to lay bare skin against them.
At the centre of the monoliths stands the Facility, all grey concrete and glass and metal tubes. Watchtowers look out across the circular arrangement of the monoliths. Walkways and exterior stairs link the buildings together, of which there are at least one thousand.
There is a mostly-empty carpark beside the Facility. There are, perhaps, two or three cars parked there.
The staff inside the Facility are responsible for directing the flow of creative energies through the monoliths, such that no single one becomes overloaded or loses stability. Understanding the complex flows of these energies and the ways in which they interact with each other and within the monoliths is impossible
A central nervous system of computers, switch-boards and control panels assist the staff, providing to-the-moment information on the status of the monoliths. A variety of switches, dials and keyboards are used to calibrate the functional equipment that maintains them.
Due to its nature, Event-X is still occurring, is ever-occurring. Shockwaves of imagination ripple out from the monolith (now cracked), designated 11743. The building responsible for maintaining that monolith, which they call Building E, has always been sealed off.
The transient energies that escaped the monolith upon its rupture had to be redirected many times before the Facility was stabilised. It is confirmed that the structural integrity of at least 15 monoliths surrounding 11743 were compromised by Event-X, though in reality this number is much higher.
Upon achieving stability the Facility enters into a mode called Coherence. Gentle music plays from the elevators. There is the hum of electrical equipment and of air-conditioning. One member of staff, named Alonzo, repeatedly clicks his pen as he stares through a double-glazed window at a desert filled with monoliths.
Beyond the monoliths there rises the curved, insubstantial reflection of the Sphere. Activated through Coherence, the Sphere is a shield that contains both the monoliths and the Facility. It is not certain whether the Sphere exists to protect the monoliths from outside corruption, or to protect outside corruption from what is contained within the monoliths.
Nothing is supposed to exist beyond the Sphere, but it does. There is at least one wind-swept ghost town; at least one bar where an old man sits and drinks.
There is a single standing stone near the pond where the old man goes to fish.
The stone stands straight and still. It has collected moss in the indentations that the sun does not reach.
Who brought it here and how and why? These questions once preoccupied the old man; but now he wanders instead of wonders.
Up and down these gold-green hills he walks each day to the pond and casts his line into the placid water.
The water takes on the appearance of the sky and the hills, like a mirror into a painting that ripples gently. And when the fishing line disturbs the water it is like the flourish of a paintbrush.
The old man was someone else once; perhaps the stone was something else too.
And the fish too, with their rainbow-coloured scales.
The fish do not bite often and when they do the old man throws them back. When he does so, the reflected sky is disturbed for a moment—but only for a moment.
As the sun rolls down the hills, grass once green is turned to gold and the shadows of the old man and the standing stone grow longer.
The old man was someone else once, but he does not remember who. This thought does not disturb him, for now he wanders instead of wonders.
The standing stone does neither.
Michael Scott Hand