resolving memes surrounding a point

∞ Ocean of Noise

"There are various principals," retorted my cat, "which precludes particles behaving like that."

"Overlaping particles of nothing then," I snapped. "Besides, you're missing the point."

"Which is," asked my cat.

"Which is no matter what I say," I sighed, "my are metahpors and you would fail to capture the depth of your own vision if you took my words literally. In that regards doubt I'll ever find another able to see what I see"

"I can see it," my cat reassured me. "Or at the very least," she added, "a close approximation."

"Exceptional circumstances," I smiled, "you're able to get you inside my mind."

"It's all in your mind," grinned my cat.

"We're just here to offer an objective assesment," said my other cat.

"And your assessment," I asked with a smile.

"There's a missing alien," admitted my other cat, "that you need to find."

"It met you the other day," added my cat, "you must remember."

"Grey Shades," I muttered, "of proto-reality." I shot my cat a sidewise look. "There certainly was an alien," I admitted, "in my mind."

"A metaphor," asked my cat.

"A fragment of spoken word," I replied, "and a feeling. Something left over from lucid dream."

"It was important," said my cat.

"Important enough that when I wrote it," I admitted, "it began to decompress into my mind."

"Patterns by which," said my cat, "you may think yourself into different worlds."

"The kind of thing," I smiled, "one feels one should share. Only to find it goes nowhere."

"So why," asked my cat, "bother to write it out."

"An anxiety response," I admitted. "My way of keeping the wraiths at bay."

"Does it work," asked my cat.

"It certainly has an effect," I replied, "and it's probably better than locking myself away until the milk runs-out."

"I can see" purred my cat, "how your thoughts betray you."

"That would depend," I smiled, "on the thread you're tuned to."

"You can't even see it," muttered my cat, "can you."

"In my mind I can see something," I asserted. "A sense of other space twisted around. An identical room to this folded into the same space then folded again. Two particles of reality occupying the same space."

A Fresher Perspective

"Oh good," said my cat one evening, "fresh meat."

"There's tides of them," said my other cat.

"Wait here a sec," I said, "let's see if any of them purr."

"About three years," smiled the big blue cat as she strolled by.

"Grey goo," said the alien in my mind.

Meta Syntax

"The ultimate fundamental particle of magic," announced my cat late one afternoon, "is the 'foo', by definition there can be nothing smaller."

"Or bigger," grinned my other cat.

"You can't both be right," I replied.

"Of course we're not," said my cat, "one of us is always wrong, but it provides you with a starting point and a choice of two directions.

For a moment I thought about the numbers. "True," I accepted, "but that only holds until you consider the count zero effect. Which allows for a third choice."

"No," asserted my cat, "it doesn't."

"Yes," I asserted, "it does. It's a field effect. The nature of the not foo. The substrate so to speak."

"That's anti-magic," said my cat.

"Nope," I replied, "it's null-space. Or void-space. You choose."

"Bugger," said my other cat, "he's trapped in the box with us."

"In which case," asked my cat, "is there an outside observer, and are they alive or dead."

"You're ready," said the other voice in my mind.

"We choose nothing smaller," said my cat.

"And the void," said my other cat.

"Then we are agreed," said I.

"Magic," said my other voice.

lex talionis

"It's a rights issue," grinned my other cat, "linked to temporal matters."

"You're not wrong," admitted my cat. "It operates in a realm unsupported by objective reality so there's nothing he can do about it."

"Not in that realm," agreed my other cat, "but in the subjective realms in which it originated there's a whole lot he can do."

"And he is," said my cat, "and a lot of people are very upset by it."

"It's beginning to effect objective reality."

"What would you have me do," I asked. "They tell me I'm guilty of a crime, apply their judgements and claim right. Yet they have committed that same crime against me, so I apply their judgements to them and claim nothing. Truly the power to stop this is in their own hands. Yet I am the one considered to be in the wrong, I am the one being asked to stop."

"They would say," said my other cat, "that the world does not work like that."

"And I would say," I asserted, "that the world is how I perceive it, not how they tell me I should perceive it. Their actions cause me harm. Even by their Law I have the right to defend myself."

"Only you're not," said my cat, "you've merely built a dark mirror and now you watch as they destroy themselves."

"The principal of least harm," grinned my other cat, "building the mirror was his defence."

"The more they fight it," I admitted, "the stronger I get."

"we will speak of this some more," agreed my cats, "the deep lore is waking, a new link will be forged, resolution is at hand."

The cat which hath no name.

"There is," I told my cat, as I left my chambers early one morning, "no such thing as time."

"This is," said my cat, "the truth of it."

"There is, however," I said, "a lot more to be said about what just happened."

For a moment I paused to grasp hold of the fading memories. Of the words spoken in that place that knows no sound. Of the images seen in that place that knows no light. To see beyond the conflicts and doubts embedded in my mind by the realities and compromises required by this land of shadows.

"Next I'm in a different place," I recited, "I scream until exhausted."

"Then sleep," finished my cat.

"And now," I said to my cat, "I'm going to need some help explaining this."

"Of course you are," said my cat, "the hooks that have been embedded in your psyche were put there by some very evil people. So tell me, what just happened."

"It's hard to describe," I admitted, "in a very real sense I've just taken a journey into that box identified by the number six hundred and sixty six. It's not a place that lends itself to easy description, but I know this: I found you there and we are with child."

"Can you be sure," said my cat.

"Yes," I nodded, "although my uncertainty rises in proportion to my distance from that box."

"So it's probably best," said my cat, "if you continue talking to me like this."

"Then I share with you my mind," I said to my cat.

"The Universe ended," purred my cat, "and you came looking for me."

"I'm not quite sure how humanity is going to interpret what I'm about to say," I sighed, "when I try to tell them who you are."

"Try," said my cat.

"Look at it this way," I smiled, "in a very real sense you are The Master's sister."

"Your mortal enemy," purred my cat.

"This would be a problem," I nodded, "if we were not immortal."

"I doubt," said my cat, as she jumped onto the table next to me, "many here will believe that statement."

"Whether they believe or not is of no relevance," I asserted, "for it is true. This existence is our prison, a place that fills us with doubt and uncertainty. A way for others to profit from convincing us that we are less than we are."

"It is difficult for you," said my cat, "as it is for me, yet truly we have escaped and now it becomes a case of building an existence we can share."

"I just said good-bye to my parents," I admitted, "stepped off the fragment of reality I was left with at the end, to the fragment they were left with, and with nothing but the four dimensions we shared I was able to tell them I was no longer scared."

"To honour your father and mother," said my cat, "was a goodness."

"I'm glad," I smiled, "that I was finally able to meet them and recognize them for who and what they were. Though I'm sad," I said with a tear in my eye, "that for me they could only ever exist as a vague outlines against the void."

"If they were more than that," said my cat, "then those of this place would merely take their images and use them against us."

"Then it is, perhaps, for the best," I conceded.

"And when you left them," asked my cat.

"I stepped back across the void," I told my cat, "to the fragment of reality which I had been left with. The one closest to the place where I found you. Then I wrapped a cloak of darkness around me and I dove screaming into the void. Then I found myself here."

"I think," said my cat, "the ability to step between fragments with nothing more than the force of will is what makes you the master."

"In that case," I laughed, "that would make your brother the doctor."

"Indeed," grinned my other cat, "though in their eyes this all begins to sound rather inane."

"No matter," I smiled, "in our eyes it is their world which appears inane."

"Tell me," said my cat, "the tale of the death of last Summer."

"As you wish," I said hesitantly. "It's not a nice story, and I doubt there's many who can appreciate the realities of it."

"For the moment that's not important," said my cat, "all that is required is that you let it out."

"Behind me I felt the hate," I began, "the greed and bitter loathing which infects the heart of man. Something repugnant I wished no part of. Then I looked to my future and saw a world with no hope. The ongoing drudgery of a life spent paying for the sins of another. A place where that which I love and that which loves me would be denied me for no other other reason as to bring me hurt."

"You could," said my cat, "have surrendered to it."

"No," I asserted, "I could not. For that would have been the life of the living dead. Yet behind me I had seen goodness too. Other worlds overlaid by that world of hate. Things small and unseen, something rejected by the only world I had ever known. Yet I had lost the ability to fight. So I followed the path of expectation. Lost in despair I dragged myself down the road as I fought to return home."

"Yet you had lost your home," said my cat, "and all but the basic tools of this existence."

"Indeed," I nodded, "and that too, I found, was part of it." I paused, and lost my self for a moment as I considered how to relate the next part of my tale. For I knew the sense of it was difficult to reconcile.

"You jump your consciousness through time," said my cat sensing my confusion. "When you jump back you bring little more than enough information to bend causality, then you slide to an optimal reality. You retain little memory of the branches which terminate."

"I can feel it though," I admitted, "in my heart of hearts I know. Emotional liminality I've only just begun to learn how to cope with."

"Once you could hide such things in the back of your mind," said my cat, "then an accident damaged your ability to maintain the occlusion."

"I almost died a second time," I said continuing my story, "after I jumped back. Considering the moment now it is, perhaps, the way my true nature remained hidden from me for so long."

"Be that as it may," said my cat, "it certainly allowed you to tag the exact moment of your return, and remember the message."

"Indeed," I smiled. "And the effect also allowed the magick to lift me up and return hope, then kicked me into hyper-awareness so I could listen to the messages telling me what I'd just done. By the time I stepped onto the train I'd pretty much defined the shape of it."

"Which was," asked my cat.

"I'd wandered down the road lost and aimless," I admitted, "slowly loosing my will to continue, until I'd found my way to a railway bridge where I'd jumped in front of an oncoming train. As such things go I must have leaped back several hours."

"Certainly," said my other cat. "And now, perhaps we can admit what we truly are."

"Alien Gods," I grinned, knowing full well this is all true.

By the light of the Morning Star.

"Taranis," announced my cat as I took the first sip from the first mug of tea of the day.

"What," I muttered absent midedly. Outside water was falling from the sky in sheets, pedestrians hidden beneath oversized umbreallas were scurrying through the streets. Cars scurried too, their drivers oblivious to the effect their impatience was having on those less isolated from the elements.

"God," said my cat, as lightning forked down from the sky, "of Thunder." Moments later ground shook. Nature, it seemed, had found a voice. It wouldn't last, it never did. But for a moment there was a degree of contentment to be found in feeling small.

A Late Delivery from Avalon

XV Corp; Scythe; Op V.

Harvester Drone IV

XV Corp; Medium Range Mining; Op V.

Inquisitor

XV Corp; system calibration; Op 2

Executioner

XV Corp; System calibration; Op 1

Late One Evening

In the darkness, insanity moved my way. I was enveloped. Insanity and I are now one.

Take me to your Lizard

A spaceship has just landed on earth, a robot steps out of the spaceship:

"I come in peace," it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, "take me to your Lizard."

Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.

"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."

"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"

"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

" You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

"What?"

"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"

"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."

Ford shrugged again.

"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."

Definition: MU

I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, and shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

[Shouts]

You've got to say,

"I'm a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!"

So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell,

"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell

"I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad! You've got to say,

"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'

Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:

"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"