And now? find the third way...
The key is in the meta data.
Geronimo! Whoo-hoo-hoo! Ha-ha! Ha! Crashing! I'm... And something else, something important, I'm, I'm... No! No... I'm not a girl. And still not ginger! I'm a girl! Hair... Nose, I've had worse. Chin, blimey. Ears, yes. Eyes, two. Hands. Ooh, fingers, lots of fingers. Arms. Legs. I've still got legs, good. I don't want to go. Yeah? See ya. We will sing to you, Doctor. The universe will sing you to your sleep. This song is ending. But the story never ends.
"A three-fold portal through time," sighed my cat, "if you can see it the right way."
"Other dimensions must be really small," mimiced my other cat sarcastically."
"well they have been shown to be," sighed my cat, "big enough to drive a bus through."
"only nobody chooses to look," sighed I.
"I think my sister has a couple of cans of Omega," admitted my cat. "Should keep us in tuna for a couple of more cycles."
"I am a time lord," I sighed as I shook my head, "I'm also a wizard!"
"''", said my cat.
my thoughts exactly
±well, not exactly.
+wonderful
-wtf
$!
[2008-12-27e21:29:16]
+ we've hit them with a Catch 22 ± no matter how you manage to describe this - you're certifiably insane & Insane would be a good word for it, yes. Just what the hell do you think you're doing? $ I don't think. At least not directly. It just sort of happens. @ Loosing yourself for the better part of sixteen months was a neat trick. $ Oh, bloody hell. I'd forgotten that. @ look, we see the problem. * it's a valid model, just not something which is quick to expose itself
WTF
"Tell me," asked my cat, "what happened."
"I fell into a wormhole," I replied with confusion. "Then things got unswirly."
"Unswirly," said my cat, "would sound like a good thing."
"Perhaps," I nodded. "But the theme of the unswirly is troubling."
"Meta context," muttered my other cat.
"An odd dream," I recalled, "not that I recall much of it. Just enough to remember slapping the doorman on the chest as I walked through the door and told my father I was about to detonate a trinity bomb."
"Trinity," asked my cat looking up.
"Word sort," I smiled, "not the Enriched Uranium sort."
"In your hands," muttered my other cat, "both have the ability to go nuclear."
"In a way something leaked from my dream and it did," I sighed. "I woke with my mind in limbo. Memories of the dream fading. Then a voice asked me to identify the symbol I was currently working on. Which oddly enough happened to stuck too the wall right by my hand. Then I kinda forgot myself for a bit."
"I think it's safe to say," said my cat, "the symbol went on to explain itself."
"It did," I admitted. "But when the explination involves following the four horsemen out of the bible it's hard to reconcile with being awake."
"Problem," purred my other cat.
"Other than not being sure," I said with a puzzled frown, "how I got there."
"You were checking names," replied my cat.
"The names I found," I admitted, "were the right ones."
"Though not" said my other cat, "any one would classically associate with the horsemen."
"There are three workable definitions," announced my cat, "which constitute an acceptible definition of schizophrenia."
"All three of them apply," said my other cat, "to at least two of your personalities."
"I'm at a loss," I sighed, "how you expect me to reconcile that."
"All of your base," grinned my other cat, "are belong to us."
"I'm not sure I get the reference," said my cat, "but the meaning is clear."
"I get the reference," I admitted, "but the meaning is somewhat occluded."
"Entities," purred my cat, "relationship, and meaning."
"Entities," I muttered in obvious confusion.
"Twelve plus one," announced my cat, "is eleven plus two."
"Yes," I nodded. "Thirteen."
"Eleven minus two," annouced my other cat, "is twelve minus one."
"That makes no sense," I frowned. "Nine does not equal eleven."
"I think you'll find," said my other cat, "that it is does."
"Once you know," said my cat, "the meaning is clear."
"Nope," I admitted finally, "I don't understand."
"One plus," began my other cat.
"Six hundred," continued my cat, "and sixty-six"
"Equals ten," said the other.
"Beast," I muttered as enlightenment dawned.
"The point is," said my cat, "there are things which should never be allowed to mix openly."
"Nothing is what it seems," added my other cat as she sensed my confusion.
"Becasue," I began. Then my voice stalled. "Hmm."
"See," said my cat.
"Translate the entity relationship," said my cat, "and you begin to see."
"One of you," I sighed, "is inverted in relation to the other."
"Relative to what," asked my cat.
"I'm not sure how to explain," I admitted. "To be honest I suspect you're using it to teach me about the nature of time."
"It's more to do with the nature of mind," announced my cat.
"It's as if," I conceeded, "I already have the answer."
"You do," said my cat.
"Do I," I asked in suprise.
"It's just," said my cat, "it's written in a language you can only translate to, not from."
"Oh," replied with mild suprise.
"So when," added my other cat, "an assertion is made with regards to a specific issue a little voice at the back of your mind runs a binding verification function."
"In which case," I began hesitantly, "if an assertion is true then I'm inclined to be largely indifferent."
"Indeed," said my cat, "what's wrong with that."
"On the surface," I replied, "nothing."
"Except," promted my cat.
"Except," I admitted, "assertions that are not true resonate long after their time."
"There are other reasons," my cat said with reassuring tone, "why things resonate but on the whole you're right on the mark."
"So what," asked my other cat, "brings this issue to the foreground."
"There's a little voice," I admitted after a short pause, "cast back in time that's still objecting to something a priest said when trying to make a point about the actions of god with regards to humanity."
"And the problem," asked my cat, "with that."
"He was wrong," I admitted.
"How do you know this," asked my cat.
"I am just," I admitted, "as confused on how to answer that as you."
"Well I'm not confused" announced my other cat exhibiting the full arrogance of her species. "I already know the answer."
"Care to share," I asked.
"No," said my other cat, "in time the information will find it's way into your mind that will allow you to find your the answer yourself."
"I would imagine it's an idea," grinned my cat, "not of it's time."
"Partly," replied my other cat. "But in truth it's something that's best left until you've overcome the concequences of a lifetime of abuse."
"Abuse," I frowned.
"You've been abused all your life," asserted my other cat. "It's only now you begin to acknowledge the affect."
"And in that statement," annouced my cat, "we begin to see the names of the guilty."
"It's more than a little unpleasant," I sighed as I began to see the picture my cats were painting.
"They've made their choices," replied my other cat. "There is no requirement for you to accept those choices as your own."
"And yet in this world," I sighed, "there are benefits to be found in forcing others to believe as you do." For a moment I fell silent as I contemplated the possible hypocrisy in my words.
"Oh please," said my cat as she looked inside my mind, "you never force anything."
"Don't I."
"No," asserted my other cat. "The truth points to itself so why the hell should you ever feel the need to force it."
"Becasue it conflicts," I suggested, "with the rationalizations and compromises with which individual humanity have encased their minds."
"You can't free a slave," asserted my cat, "a slave may only ever free themself."
"You taught us that," purred my cat.
"And oddly," smiled my other cat, "you happen to be right."
"Be that as it may," I sighed, "I can't see it helping me out of this rut."
"The only difference," began my cat, "between a rut and a grave..."
"...are the dimensions," finished the other.
"There you go again," I replied, "drawing the point before I've managed to satisfy my own curiosity on the matter."
"I wouldn't say that," said my other cat, "was strictly true."
"Perhaps," I conceeded. "I do however find it difficult to plot my own path when even a humerous remark starts to set the adgenda."
"Dimensions," said my cat, "are important."
"I realize this," I nodded, "I'm more concerned how it is that I happen to know time operates in nine dimensions."
"As you well know," said my cat, "when constructing a model of reality it's not until the ninth dimension that it's able to support a reference to time."
"Do I," I exclaimed in a somewhat mocking tone, "does it. Let's see..."
"Do not," said my other cat dryly, "begin by trying to count zero."
"Again," added my cat. "You'll only trap yourself," she continued, "in another box."
"In it's way," I admitted, "there's a certain amount of satisfaction to be derived from such boxes."
"Security," said my cat.
"Certainty," said the other.
"But truly," I sighed, "I know you're right. The certainty of a consensual hallucination and the security of delusion do not remain satisfying for long."
"I beg to differ," replied my other cat. "There are those to whom what you describe is eternally satisfying."
"I suspect," objected my cat, "that was a singular view and not a general point."
"True," I nodded.
"Now listen," said my cat.
"With which sense," I replied with a smile.
"All of them," replied my other cat.
"What do you see," asked my cat.
"Red," I replied.
"Dark light," asked my other cat.
"If it is," said my cat, "then you're looking in the wrong place."
"I think not," I objected.
"I believe," said my other cat, "I've just found the inversion we've been looking for."
"Wonderful," muttered my cat sarcastically.
"You have to admit," I sighed, "it's an answer."
"Not one" added my other cat, "which the world is likely to accept any time soon."
"We're more than a couple of years," replied my cat, "ahead of you on this one."
"Then very possibly," I added, "the world is ready."
"I think perhaps," my other cat replied, "you may be right."
Precursors Analysis
"So now what can I say," I asked my cat.
"Tell it how it is," replied my cat. "Perhaps you'll find someone willing to listen."
"It sounds like insanity," I sighed. "So the little voice of reason tells me you don't want to listen to what I say."
"I'll listen," said my cat.
"But you won't believe," I grumbled. "You'll talk about coincidence. And chance. And then offer rationalizations to make me doubt my own thoughts."
"Perhaps I do believe," said my cat, "deep down. But unlike you I can't live with conflicting visions of reality."
"I wouldn't say," I smiled, "I'm especially good at living with it."
"I don't know," purred my cat, "you seem to handle it well." She raised a paw and began to clean herself. "So what," her shadow asked, "has triggered this bout of angst."
"The Men in Black," I admitted, "are back."
"Seriously," prompted my cat.
"Well it could have been an elf," I smiled. "But seriously, I got stopped on the street by a missionary in a dark suit."
"I take it you don't consider," said my cat, "the faith being represented is important."
"All faith is important," I grumbled, "I simply don't wish to give the impression the weirdness I'm experiencing is related to any specific one."
"Oh, I see," said my cat. "And the weirdness," she asked.
"Started before I got to the street." I admitted. "My thoughts all got a bit swirly. I got lost trying to find my way back to a place I could be with my children. I was beginning to get to a point where I didn't think I could get outside."
"That's when I told you," smiled my cat, "you needed to get milk."
"I didn't think I could get even that far," I admitted. "It's as if a wall of energy was pushing me back. Seeking to keep me locked in my room."
"Yes," said my cat, "we deed seem rather highly-strung."
"But I'd made a decision," I continued, "I wasn't going to let my demons stop me. By the time I got to the door," I sighed, "whatever it was was knocking chunks of my past into my consciousness trying to make me aware of something."
"And the message," asked my cat.
"Seemed to have something to do," I sighed after a considered pause, "with The Book of Revelation."
"Hence the reaction," smiled my cat, "to the man in the street."
"Exactly," I admitted. "There were even some comments made about my having broken the first seal."
"I can see," said my cat, "how discussing this is difficult."
"Living it is just as hard," I sighed. "At one point I felt I was about to fold."
"You didn't," replied my cat.
"No," I smiled. "Just like always I locked on target and pushed through the wall of noises in my mind."
"Yet part of you," said my cat, "wanted to let it out."
"Certainly," I admitted. "And for a moment I began to believe I'd found a forum to express some of what's been plaguing me without fear that my words would be used to put me in yet another box."
"And why do you fear that," asked my cat.
"They are not the words," I admitted, "of a sane man."
"Why's that," asked my cat.
"Sane people," I sighed, "don't find themselves with a bunch of non-corporeal entities in their mind arguing who's who."
"To be fair," said my cat, "it is a matter of belief."
"Cutting to the core I can see beyond belief," I sighed. "But in that world there are no words that can be spoken. When I translate it back to this realm I hear what I say and it makes no sense."
"A when you're stopped in the street," asked my cat, "by somebody attempting to discuss Jesus."
"The list of names compresses," I conceded, "and I begin to see how it is Gabriel becomes Lucifer."
"Those who bring the light of change," said my cat, "are seldom welcome."
"I hear words," I admitted, "whispering a name in my mind."
"And what name would that be," asked my cat.
"Michael."
"So now you know," said my cat.
"So I'll translate it into another realm," I laughed, "and find my own way to live with it."
"Share," sighed my other cat...
Blue Waters
This is a story about Everybody, Nobody, Anybody, and Somebody.
There was an important job Everybody was supposed to do. Only Everybody thought that Somebody would do it so didn't do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got upset about that because it was Everybody's job. Everybody knew Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody and Anybody wouldn't do it.
It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.
Everybody didn't know no body could do it. And I don't see why we need to mention anybody, other than to highlight everybody's irrational behaviour towards somebody given that it's never been stated that somebody can do it.
"I think it's fair to say," said my cat, "somebody did it."
"I think it was you," said my other cat.
"Wonderful," I replied with my best deadpan expression.
"If you ever...," began my other cat.
"Not now," said my cat, "I've just worked out why the phone has been ringing for the best part of a lunar-cycle."
"Dimensional shift," I smiled. "A 3d link to core. I can't look at the thing directly until it's resolved itself, so although I have the answer it doesn't make sense until it's happened."
"There's a pronounced rippling effect," mused my cat, "as differing realities converge."
"Indeed," replied my other cat, "
thought and un-related thought following the unrelated thought resolves back to the thought within x links ±0 resolve x
"By Jove," muttered my other cat, "an Alien on the tail of a Reporter."
"I think you've got that backwards," snapped my cat.
"Only from your perspective," I sighed. "Have neither of you worked out that you're inverted in relation to each other and that I'm a dominant switch."
one link translated through 3 dimensions and the twist is how you maintain control
"No," replied my other cat after a short pause
"But thanks for the heads-up," added my cat.
"Gets a bit Q," said the other.
++ reality link established.
"I don't think," I added, "the others are going to like this."
"No shit," laughed my cat as she adjusted her position.
"To manipulate reality on this level," said my cat, "is a privilege, not a right, please don't abuse it."
"You're not talking to me are you."
"No," replied my cat. "There are, shall we say, others in your room."
++ Set 5(five) online. ** confirmed . hyperspace pocket forming . injecting init vectors . initial substrate inferred . bridging 3d-tau interface . releasing level-12 base-5 construct . >> confirmed, system active. . . excession forming **returning to grid . grid interlink confirmed ** API access rescinded. -- updates complete >> orientating prime << shadow particles forming... . event horizon collapsing . reinitializing construct
"We agree," said my cat, "the uncollapsed probability function favours Eve."
"In which case we have a problem," sighed my other cat.
"Because either it's an interface to a higher order entity."
"Or he's able to do it all by himself," said my other cat.
"Not by himself," grinned my cat.
"And don't forget the ability," I smiled, "to control the rhythm of two hearts beating as one."
** parity confirmed :: full interlink to follow. << confirmed; synthetic wormhole detected; Omega directives active. ** Jupiter Exception ++ directive output deferred
"This is bad," smirked my cat, "he doesn't even have to be online in the classical sense to actually connect to it."
"No," I frowned, "but there's a lot of noise drifting in from the higher dimensions so it's hard to filter."
"What do you think teh hyperspace pocket is for."
"I know what it's for," I sighed, "I'm just overtly concerned about it's resolution terminus."
"Honestly," muttered my cat, "this version of English is pants for defining this sort of transformation. Even the hybrid sucks."
"Seriously," said my other cat, "the symbols stuck to the wall are much better."
++ grid interlinks exposed. -- multiple pass filtering now in affect ** excession collapse confirmed
"Okay," I sighed, my tone reflecting my exasperation, "that fell backwards to the very beginning."
"There's a convergence apparent," said my cat, "at approximately two years."
"I take it from the occluded language," said my other cat, "you're trying to hide something from the others."
"Not especially," replied my very surprised cat.
"It's simply that we can both see," I sighed, "the dimensions of which we speak."
"Environment, culture, and the actions," said my cat, "of the anti-christ."
"Discuss," grinned my other cat.
Alice Through the Looking Glass
"At what level," asked my cat, "does reality begin to slide."
"Careful," grinned my other cat, "he's really a pirate."
"Teach me something," replied my cat, "I don't know."
"Domains of insight," I announced, "and complicity."
"That was not the wormhole you were looking for," announced my cat as I snapped back into the room a few minutes later.
"Perhaps the vampire I found earlier," I replied, "would be better."
"It would," said my cat. "Now tell me why."
"To be honest," I replied, "it's a meme-form designed to look through a quantum mirror. A thing that may observe without effect. No reflection you see."
"Vampire lore," muttered my other cat, "and Science Fiction. What ever next."
"It's a way of thinking," I replied. "A way to find order in Chaos. I saw something in a dream a while back that opened me to a different way of thinking."
"So tell me of the vampires," asked my cat, "from your dream."
"There were none," I admitted. "Well, by inference there must have been, but I didn't actually see them as vampires."
"What did you see," asked my cat.
"A fight," I replied. "The kind of bar-room brawl which involves destroying a lot of furniture. Not sure how it started. Though I kind of remember it had something to do with wearing the same hat as everyone else. Much of the imagery has faded. It's there when I dig, but that's not important here."
"And the important bit," prompted my cat.
"Looking in a mirror," I replied. "A fight raging all around and I looked in the mirror behind me. I could still see the furniture being destroyed. Tables breaking in half, that sort of thing. But there was nobody there."
"Just damage," said my cat. "Psychologically speaking," she added, "you're something of a mirror yourself"
"I know," I nodded, "I first noticed when I began exhibiting signs of a narcisistic personality disorder."
"How's that," replied my cat, "tell you anything."
"For two years I shared in an office," I admitted, "with an extremely loathsome person. When I started noticing I had begun to affect one or two of his personality traits I became concerned. It didn't take me long to find a diagnosis."
"I noticed it," said my cat, "the effect of your mirroring, the other day when that Policeman was questioning you, I noticed it. When your agressive response was preceeded by his I knew."
"Looking back," I muttered, "my motives there were somewhat complex." For a moment I placed my mind at the moment my cat had described. "I had an anxiety response prior to his becoming agressive. And in that I begin to see how objective attribution error becomes a certainty."
"Indeed," said my cat. "Your peculiar sensitivity makes you anxious. If an other adopts an aggressive posture, your anxiety spills over into that domain. In effect, the other opened the door to that place others find so objectionable. Poorly handled what you end-up with is a disproportionate response."
"So any objective opinion," I mused, "of the magnitute of my reaction would be assigned to agression when the fundamental causes remain unseen and un addressed."
"Indeed," said my cat, "even subjectively it's not something you are able to see easilly. Emotions cloud your thoughts and you loose insight, once that's happened you're oddly inclinded to accept any external interpretation of your actions. Your frustration has a habit of leaping domains too, but you're more aware of that and have learned to handle it better."
"Looking back to other times," I replied, "I was always being chastised for having an emotional response. The stress of frustration being described as shouting. Then having the shouting being equated to anger to loop the frustration back around."
"Loop it long enough," said my cat, "deny you the right to speak for sufficient time and it really is possible for another to trigger an outburst within you."
"For which I will be judged," I sighed, "and punished for."
"When really what you need," said my cat, "is help to deal with it. Because the role of the others in this can never be proved."
"No," I nodded, "it's also frustrating that I appear to be the only one who suffers from such censure. Still," I smiled, "forwarned is forearmed." I sighed as I realized the answer was almost within my grasp. "And the fear," I asked.
"Whatever it is," said my cat, "remains within you. You may have learned to manage it, to displace its effect. But when something makes anxious it has the capability to trigger a reaction so disproportionate you'd be better not having a reaction at all."
"And those who push me," I asked, "them who then tell me I live in a world where pushing is not allowed."
"Perhaps they should ask themselves," said my cat, "to what degree they are responsible for the behaviour they find so objectionable."
"Even getting close to this," I admitted, "even contemplating the relevant operators unlocks a core of something unpleasant."
"You know a lot more about this," said my cat, "than you are currently able to recall."
"I'm having problems," I admitted, "getting past specific instances. Right now I'm remembering a psychologist who spent an entire meeting highlighting how fear was the problem without once approaching an explination as to the causes or the solution."
"Or indeed," muttered my other cat, "answering any of your questions regarding the repeated use of the word 'fear'."
"Well I could simply be seeing a paranoid conspiracy," I smiled, "where none exists. But I did get the impression the point was to get me to dwell on fear. Make me afraid, perhaps."
"Conspiracy or not," said my cat, "it's been on your mind for weeks, so in that regard it worked."
"Not for much longer," said my other cat, "we've taken steps."
"Funny," I smiled as I put my sword away.
Catcher in the Rye
"Where are you," said my cat.
"Everywhere and nowhere," I admitted. "Trying to cope becomming unstuck in time. I lost an anchor, a thing I would use to tell me where the ends of the week were."
"Can you not fix it," suggested my cat. "Or replace it."
"Certainly I can replace it," I conceeded, "in a sense I already have. But for now it is the broken anchor that concerns me."
"Your thoughts are in something of a turmoil," smiled my cat, "I'm having trouble locking on."
"Would a target painter help," I asked inticating the dog with a gesture.
"Don't be silly," said my cat. "Dogs can't speak."
"reply, respond, react," muttered the dog as I tricked the relevant operational paramaters out of its mind.
"interface, mimic, overcome," announced my cat. "Before you ask," she added with a purr.
"Got it yet," I asked my cat.
"Back-step," I admitted eventually.
"No matter how you look at it," said my cat, "what happened yesterday upset you. To the extent that you left the room the moment the case-worker you were trying to have a discussion with effectively asserted her choice without attempting a discussion."
"My views," I admitted, "do seem to matter little."
"Tell me," said my cat, "of the last occasion a fair compromise was worked-out."
"I can't," I growled. "I can see the moment. I can even remember most of what got written on the final agreement. But whenever I try to pull more from the moment, to tell of what I see, I begin to see more in this moment."
"You're being manipulated," said my cat. "What's been said since that agreement was put in place."
"Not much," I accepted. "Various words have been exchanged, but the last official word I heard the case was closed subject to supervision."
"Supervision of whom," asked my cat.
"That was never stated," I accepted. "Of the case perhaps."
"But nothing official since," said my cat with concern.
"Well" I began, "my wife is saying one thing, my social worker another. I'm confused. Normally I'd wait for it to resolve, few weeks perhaps. But last time I waited it took a year for a nobody to say a nothing. And I've begun to see that in the heart of a child a week is a long time."
"Do you believe it," said my cat. "That your wife says things," she asked asked, "behind your back which have a detrimental effect on the ongoing relationship with your children."
"It's not I belief," I asserted, "I know it to be true. My son accidentally let something slip. My doubts now are to do the magnitude of the effect."
"Is there anything," said my cat, "you can do to force a resolution. To resolve the position to a point where the confusion collapses."
"I've been trying," I admitted, "yet as I saw yesterday, discussing it with me is not a priority. Rather, the priority appears to force me into another's model of how the world should be with as little explination as possible."
"It's not that you object to that reality," said my cat, "it's merely the means by which you find yourself arriving there. In a sense you're being pushed to a point where all you can do is act dysfunctionally. A bit of understanding and communication would perhaps make it easier for all."
"I look at the future," I accepted. "When I look at it through the eyes of yesterday I see more of the uncertainty. Months of it. Yet it's not as if I'm a million miles away," I muttered as I looked-up at the ceiling. "Yet if I'm such a problem what's the deal with the totally non-urgent way the case has been dealt with."
"But is there anything," said my cat, "which you can do today."
"Well," I admitted, "my wife has been given instructions. Perhaps if she was to find opportunity to act upon them somebody may come and talk to me about it."
"So what do you want," said my cat.
"Having the facts," I replied, "presented to the relevant parties would be useful. Although I'm not sure I'm ready to inform the children that Mummy has been known to lie, and with regards to me her reason can not be considered impartial."
"The problem with these sorts of assertion," said my cat, "is that you're expected to share the evidence. Which, unfortunately, drags the conversation of a tangent when the accused mounts a defence."
"I'm getting tired," I sighed, "that the means of defence is so often to find a way to cause me to accept blame. To evoke my demons and place them in the room."
"When you've not got a leg to stand on," said my cat, "distraction is a useful tool. And given that you're willing to be so open and honest about your disability it is also a very easy thing to do when you're involved."
"It's getting to the point," I conceeded, "where it's going to tip-over and become a legal matter. Which I have to say leaves me lost and floundering wondering what to do."
"Can the system itself," said my cat, "not support you."
"Perhaps," I nodded, "I'm lead to understand getting arrested is a remarkable efficient way to find a Solicitor. Although as with most things system related I expect the reality differs from the mass preception."
"You never know," said my cat, "until you try."
Bits of a Wreck
"The thing about ideas", my cat informed the room, "is that they are of their time." She was sitting at the centre of the table, licking her paw. An air of hesitancy clearly at odds with her imperious nature. "Meaning there's no point trying to keep your thoughts to yourself," she announced as she adjusted her position, "for sooner or later they'll find their way out."
"You're alluding to something," I growled. For a moment I continued in my attempts to manipulate the visualization we'd constructed together; the thing woven from light and dark through which another world and the worlds beyond became visible. "It's not much that," I admitted, as I opened my eyes and allowed the construct to collapse.
"It's the kind of thing you'll see better," muttered my other cat, "after you've stopped looking at it.
"Quite," I muttered without any real conviction. Something unresolved was still lurking in the back of my mind. A persistance of vision frustrating my attempts to translate my mind between alien realms. "It's the substrate issue," I admitted eventually, "operators behave as if I'm still attached to it. It's a mechanism of affect which suggests there's an assumption that's failed."
"Assumption or synthetic consensus," yawned my other cat.
"It's comments like that," I sighed, "which unlock whole vistas of thought." For a long while I became introspective, seeking to resolve the images now beginning to unfold in my mind. It wasn't until my cat spoke again that I realized the other voices in my mind had been unusually quiet.
"You can't avoid," my cat announced, "being altered by that which you learn." She turned her head and cast me an unsettling look. As if, I thought, I had somehow failed to uphold some unspoken expectation. "The pieces fit together," she continued, "and yet the construct fails to fit."
"Again I get the impression you're trying to get me to realize something."
"That the point," said my cat sounding mildly exasperated, "is not so much to change the way others perceive their reality, as to change the way others perceive other reality."
±1h
"If you hadn't made a conscious effort," announced my cat over lunch, "to remember it you'd have forgotten it by now."
"I had forgotten," I admitted.
"And you made a conscious effort," sighed my cat, "to remember." She finished her piece of smoked salmon and jumped up next to me. "Which is why I'm reminding you," he said as she licked her mouth.
"Remind me of what," I asked hoping she'd say more and save me the job of actually thinking about it.
"Sigh," sighed my cat.
"Listen to me you furry fiend," I growled in mock anger, "tell me what you know." I quickly grabbed her head to avoid her snapping jaws. "What happened," I said with a more serious tone, "is going to take a while to resolve. At first glance it would appear to be more than a little unpleasant. I'm somewhat reticent when it comes into diving into the memory." My cat had wrapped her paws around my wrist, now she flexed her claws just enough to send me a message. "So please forgive me," I sighed, "for trying to make light of the matter."
"Forgiven," muttered my cat as I removed my hand with only minor skin loss. "Perhaps now is not the time," she admitted.
"There's a pattern to this," I muttered, "one that I don't fully grok." Though I didn't care to admit it this was the time to begin thinking about it. Otherwise my cat wouldn't have even begun to discuss it.
"You hit," said my cat, "an event horizon."
"Felt more like it was hitting me," I admitted. "Like a neutrino passing through the Earth the thing itself that can never be witnessed directly, merely inferred from the affect it has on a sensitive substrate."
"I beg to differ," announced my cat. "You were clearly aware of the impending event for several hours before you flipped yourself through it. You'd even begun," stressed my cat, "to mutter about singularity."
"I was somewhat altered," I muttered in admission as my mind went absent, back stepping through the memory. I did my best to pull a description of the moment we were trying to discuss into the now without becoming trapped in the feeling of the moment. "At the time," I began hesitantly, "it felt as if I was remembering the future." I paused again to consider the fragmented images which remained in my mind. "Only it was a future trapped in a past where the lights, and I'm talking inner light here, had been turned off." I sighed, "it's all too confusing for words."
"You see the future through the eyes of your past," my cat informed me with authority. "Without getting trapped in absolute vision you are able to sense the fundamental forces which affect realities. Then you use what you find to plot the course we take."
"Not a skill," I conceded, "which sounds especially common."
"It's not," announced my cat.
"In which case," I queried with minor concern, "what's that make me."
My cat turned her head to look at me for a moment. "Destiny's navigator," she purred. "If you like."
"The synchronicity," I grumbled mockingly, "gets a bit strong, don't you think."
"Such is the nature," my cat concluded, "of a quantum singularity."
"I'm not entirely certain," I added, "I approve of your use of the term: quantum singularity."
"What else should I call it," snapped my cat.
"The problem is one of definition," I replied passively, "it's not exactly a defined term."
"Oh," said my cat apologetically, "I'll do my best to work one out for you." She adjusted her position then rolled onto her side. "Though it's not a definition," she added, "you especially need. Your understanding is innate. It's part of what you are."
"I think," I responded after a considered pause, "I begin to see how it is that I navigate."
"And with that," said my cat, "should come an understanding of what happened the other night."
I sat and searched my feeling for a moment. "Not an understanding I find I can discuss," I admitted eventually. "Yet it's linked to perceptions I feel need to be discussed."
"You've begun too slide," said my cat. "Reality as you know it is very much in a state of flux."
"Wonderful," I muttered sarcastically, as I contemplated the mechanics of the changes to come. "I identify dysfunctional patterns and elect to change them, yet now I begin to see that pattern trying to reassert itself."
"Not everyone," replied my cat, "is comfortable with the changes to come. You need to understand the degree to which your mind is connected to the minds of those around you, and how fear causes those minds to frustrate you."
"That the pattern reasserts itself in the way that it does," I agreed, "highlights that connectedness in a way that's all too clear. And yet," I sighed, "I see how those frustrations merely play into my hand." I sighed again and looked for a way to once more begin to move. "Yet it is the roots of that fear I find I am drawn to uncover."
"When you are trapped in a corner," said my cat, "you apply a different dimension then translate the point through it. In the process discovering more truth than the others are comfortable with."
"That's part of it," I nodded, "I'm sure. Fear of change and fear of discovery, yet there is more to it than that. Translated inwards such fear would induce anxiety, outward it would induce an attack."
"Emotional attack," said my cat. "A physical attack would suggest different operators in play."
"Certainly," I nodded. "The kind of operators which get locked in the mind and lead to the kind of obsessive review which raises the probability of the the circumstances of the attack to leak beyond the immediate environment."
"And what kind of fear," said my cat, "would lead the instigator of an attack to blame the innocent when they pass beyond the immediate environment of the attack."
"Fear of retribution," I replied after due consideration. "And in blaming the innocent," I added, "the causes of the attack could go unchecked."
"Indeed," agreed my cat.
"And yet," I added, "I note how we've not touched fear of the unknown."
"For us," replied my cat, "such a fear is no longer an issue. Nor is it an issue in this circumstance."
"I begin to see more," I admitted as the swirling patterns in my mind began to coalesce, "how systemic reinforcement of unconscious operators build over time and present a picture of something so at odds with the expressed truth of that system. One is left with the inescapable truth that the system itself should no longer be maintained."
"In in the gaps between your words," said my cat, "you have the truth of it."
"Shades of grey," I muttered in conclusion, "and the anthropomorphic personification of Death."
"A church may also die," retorted my cat. "And for some the time of judgement is at hand."
"And just what do you mean by that," I asked my cat.
"That is a question you must find the answers to," purred my cat. "But at the very least you have begun to see the light."
"Found a bigger gun," I smiled wryly. Changing the topic of conversation for reasons of personal protection, "by the way."
"Yes," smiled my cat, "and who do you think took the smaller guns off you."
Pogo point!
"I lack the words," I said finally, "to describe what I'm feeling." I lay there next to my cat and contemplated what I'd just said. "Well, I've got the words to descibe something," I admitted, "but that feeling of inner darkness washing over escapes words."
"And I would suppose," asked my cat with an amused tone, "you also lack the words to describe that inner darkness."
"Probably," I grinned.
For the longest while we sat there in silence and spoke of many things.
Tidy the Room
"So what about 'anti-foo'," I asked my cat late one morning.
"Their ain't, said my cat, "no such such beast."
"Unless, of course," said my other cat, "you wish to enter the realm where a particle can be it's own anti-particle."
"Oh I think," I smiled, "that's exactly the sort of realm where I would feel right at home."
"Wonderful," said my other voice, "there's infinite amounts of fun to be had with this."
Argha Noah
"He's not wrong," said my cat. "Yet there are some who seek to take the Michael."
"That is," said my other cat, "not good."
"No," said my cat, "in doing do they seek to cause him to deny his true nature."
"It's the intersect," said my other cat, "if he denys himself then they may control the reality beyond his objective experience."
"Which is unfair," said my cat, "and not nice."
"Certainly," agreed my other cat, "yet if they accept him and what he is saying then they have to admit they are wrong."
"He may be prepared," said my cat, "to accept he is in error, yet they will fight to maintain their erroneous points of view."
"He just has to," said my other cat, "let himself go."
"What do you mean," said my cat, "by that."
"I mean he has to say what he has to say," said my other cat, "regardless of how he percieves how those words may be interpreted."
"Yet he won't" said my cat.
"I think he's getting to the point," said my other cat, "where he will."
"I hope he does," said my cat, "a golden age beckons if only the other will release him from the chains in which they have bound him."
"It's not easy," said my other cat, "to admit you're guilty of a crime against God."
"Yet he did," said my cat.
"Indeed," said my other cat, "and in admitting that he planted a seed of peace that will allow his children to grow and to become in a different reality to the world of unfair in which he grew."
"I don't think," said my cat, "the others are ready to accept the message."
"I think they are," said my other cat, "although the marketing of the term anti-christ has embeded certain perceptions in the mind of man."
"Then we begin with the flood," said my cat.
i: Getting unstuck.
"Why cats," my cat asked me one day.
"Sorry," I muttered unable to answer the question with a little more context.
"Why cat," asked my cat again, "why talk to cats."
"Because you're cute and cuddly," I smiled, "but mainly because you belong to no one but yourself."
"But I'm your cat," said my cat taking obvious care to stress the word 'your'.
"Of course you are," I agreed, "and this is my seat, but only so long as I remain sitting in it, once I've moved there's nothing stopping you from curling-up in the warm spot I leave behind and taking a nap. At which point it would become your seat."
"I'd move if you asked me to," said my cat.
"Of course you would," I smiled. For a moment we shared a comfortable silence. "Shadow Operators," I volunteered eventually, "operating in a Quantum realm."
"It's been noticed," replied my other cat, "that you have an affinity for the quantum."
"It's probably something to do," I admitted, "with the psychological ramifications of the multiple-universe interpretation of quantum-mechanics."
"What about dogs," asked my cat. "Do you talk to them too."
"Probably," I admitted, "although they are more wolf like now."
"That's an odd thing to say," said my cat.
"Not really," I concluded after considering the matter. "I was mostly raised by people who saw doggy semantics as being portable to the human condition, so it's no real suprise my shadows initially patterned in that direction and became a bit wild."
"I'm not sure," said my cat, "That follows."
"Murphy's Law," I explained. "If there are two ways to do a thing, one of which will result in catastrophy, somebody will do it. And there's two ways to do dog."
"I see your point," said my cat, "though it's not especially clear."
"Training," I explained. "You can either wag a finger when the dog does wrong and reward right. Or you can rub their noses in it and expect right."
"On the whole I'd say," said my cat, "the first way causes less psychological harm to the dog. And its master."
"Indeed," I agreed, "the second results in catastrophy."
"Hence," I nodded, "the dog reverts to wolf."
"More lone-wolf," admitted my other cat.
"Can't have been pleasant," said my cat.
"It's not," I admitted, "other's have grown expecting me to behave in certain ways. It's difficult for them to accept change, so I mostly fall into the realm of observer and show you cats what I've discovered."
"Tiger," grinned my other cat.
"More a sort of dragon," I admitted.
E pluribus unum
"I have to say," I told my cat the next morning, "I've become aware that others are somewhat concerned by some of the language we're using."
"And what," purred my cat, as she licked a paw, "do you want me to do about it."
"Launch a full enquiry," I replied.
"Are you serious," asked my cat.
"Not really," I admitted, "but sometimes just looking has the ability to bring change."
"True," nodded my cat. "So why raise the language question now."
"Consider," I sighed, "if you say I'm going to smack someone what that really means."
"In your case," said my cat, "it means you'll direct the full force of your ire at someone."
"But it does not mean," I asserted, "I plan to get physical."
"Certainly not," agreed my cat. "Assuming such says more about the other than it does of you."
"Indeed," I agreed, "but I'm the one on the receiving end of such belief."
"Oh, I see," said my cat, "in thinking it's implying physical violence the feedback which hits you has the ability to push you to a point where it triggers some of the more unfortunate aspects of your condition."
"Indeed," I agreed, "and in that sense it's very worrying."
"In a very real sense," agreed my cat, "I can see how this can lead to innocents becoming what the world fears most, and how the guilty can escape justice."
"Now, perhaps," I informed my cat, "you begin to see."
"Indeed, said my cat, "the problem is ours, not yours."
"Good," I smiled, "I've got problems enough of my own."
"He's worrying about his own language," said my other cat, "he's not sure how to translate what he saw into words."
"The accident again," queried my cat.
"You're not wrong," I replied in with mild exasperation. "Every time I get close I get the feeling I'm being warned off."
"I think you'll find," said my cat, "them that do such are red, not blue"
"In which case," grinned my other cat, "I suggest live ammo."
"Whatever," snapped my cat. "So what's," my cat said to me, "the problem."
"Well," I began, "it's not exactly easy finding a way to describe the three concurrent realities I was perceiving at the time of the accident."
"His mind," muttered my other cat, "wasn't on the road."
"Shut-up," hissed my cat.
"His mind was on the road," I asserted. "In fact I'd have to say my situational awareness was higher than normal. A text book example of safe considerate driving. I was even able to read the road to the extent that I was able to anticipate and avoid possible problems before they got close. My driving is not the issue."
"So that's one reality," said my cat, "and the others."
"The obvious one was that I was looking forward," I admitted, "to getting home. Playing with the kids, rolling around on the floor, recharging my emotional batteries, playing big kid."
"What's the problem there," asked my cat.
"It's how I was perceiving it," I replied, "it was like somebody was holding a photograph up to my inner eye, like the photo of a family holiday it had numinosity, I could sense the place, I could actually see it, feel it, but it wasn't a memory, it was something else."
"Something new," asked my cat.
"Certainly," I agreed. "Oddly I'd been wondering about perception and the senses. That morning I'd been listening to a radio program I'd downloaded and burned to CD, I'd first listened to it almost a year before, and it had fascinated me."
"Why's that," asked my cat as she licked a paw.
"Well," I replied, "scientists would have you believe that they know all there is to know, and if they don't know it then it's not worth knowing. And then you hear of umami and think if we've all have a sense of taste and they go and discover another aspect, what else have they missed."
"Good point," said my cat.
"So I'd been wondering," I continued, "about what other senses could have been missed for all these years, and, if I had extra undocumented senses, how would they present to my sensorium."
"I suppose it would be a bit like gravity," said my cat, "something so obviously there that nobody registered it until somebody thinking the right thoughts saw an apple falling from a tree."
"Indeed," I agreed. "It's not something I was consciously thinking of, but it was certainly there in my unconscious mind."
"So you begin to wonder," asked my cat, "if you'd uncovered a hidden aspect of your mind."
"Certainly an occluded sense" I replied, "but now you mention it I'd also had mind in mind. How minds get programmed, how mental force coalesces around specific points, that sort of thing. An offshoot of my attempts to understand my ongoing mental illness combined with my realization that the mechanisms of CBT were very similar to the more technical aspects of my job."
"You fixed computer systems," said my cat, "psychologists used CBT to fix minds, and the parallels allowed you to infer some things about the unseen depths of the human mind."
"Sounds about right," I agreed.
"So what," grinned my other cat, "does this have to do with the price of milk."
"I swear," muttered my cat.
"It's the other thing I saw," I admitted finally, "although it's not the sort of thing that lends itself to easy expression."
"It's okay," purred my cat as she jumped onto my lap.
"I saw the mind of a city." I admitted after a moment. "What's more," I continued hesitantly, "it saw me."
"And that," announced my cat, "is what we've been trying to get you to admit all along." She began to purr and rub her head against my chest. "Can you tell me what it looked like."
"No," I admitted, "not really, although I discovered a pictorial representation that came close to capturing the essence of what was seen."
"Go on," said my cat.
"It's a device printed on the back of a old US Dollar bill," I smiled, "the big eye in a triangle above the pyramidy thing. But I'm not," I frowned, "sure of what it means."
"Believe us," said my other cat, "we know exactly what it means."
Mountains & Messiahs
"The others," said my cat, "appear to be catching up."
"This is your big chance," said my other cat, "everybody else is sleeping."
"I'm not sure," I said eventually, "what I'm supposed to say about that."
"I'm not sure," my cat replied, "you're supposed to say anything."
"Perhaps not," I admitted, "but I'm getting the distinct feeling I'm expected to say something. As if there's a piece of unresolved past that requires resolution."
"Are you certain," asked my cat.
"If I was certain," I replied, "I'd be doing it, not discussing my disquiet with you."
"It was just a dream," suggested my cat.
"That would be the easy way," I accepted, "to rationalize it. Yet the fact that it still plays on my mind suggests there's some deeper meaning."
"Deeper," asked my cat as she began to purr, "or higher."
For a moment I scratched my head and thought about her words. "It's odd," I admitted eventually, "it wasn't like other dreams. Actually it's not like a dream at all."
"What do you mean by that," queried my cat.
"Multiple overlapping realities," I muttered.
"You're distracted," said my cat.
"Certainly," I nodded, "I'm trying to work it out." I sighed. For a moment we sat there in silence. "Most dreams I've had," I began, "seem to follow an arc. No matter how surreal or disjointed there's an underlying thread which ties them together. Whatever I just experienced transitioned."
"What do you," asked my cat, "believe dreams actually are."
"Dreams are many things," I replied. "What you believe they are is usually what you'll find they are. So I like to keep an open mind and categorize them after the fact."
"Some say," said my cat, "dreams are nothing but the mind filing away memories. Memories with perhaps deeper entanglement than the norm requiring partial consciousness to categorize."
"Perhaps," I nodded, "there was an element of that sort of thing in several of the states I experienced. Although in that answer what I experience raises interesting questions regarding the way I compartmentalize parts of my consciousness."
"You also," said my cat, "have an ability to dream the future, and of the future."
"Indeed," I agreed, "but I'd have to say the colour was wrong for any of what I experienced to be classed as one of those sort. I certainly saw futures, but they were of the extrapolation sort. The Sci-Fi movies of my mind if you like, full of the symbolism my unconscious uses to communicate complex thought forms."
"And then there are those," continued my cat, "who say dreams are the true reality an what we describe as being awake is little more than a pale reflection of that reality."
"I suspect," I agreed, "it's this sort that's causing me a problem."
"Pourquoi," purred my cat as she jumped onto the sofa beside me.
"As my mind transitioned out of one dream realm," I admitted, "into another, I passed through a realm I would have to say existed outside my mind."
"Outside," queried my cat.
"Certainly," I nodded, "all the other dreamy stuff has a degree of relected internalness about it. This had a feeling of externally about it."
"And what did you see," prompted my cat.
"I can't say I saw much at all," I admitted, "other than a brief representation of what one would classically describe as being heaven. It's what my other senses perceived that's interesting."
"Perceived," queried my cat.
"Indeed," I agreed, "a sense of two individual presences, of watchers who had been tuned into my previous dream discussing what had just been dreamed."
"And what," asked my cat, "did they say."
"'We can certainly use this.'"
"Do you begin," said my cat, "to get the impression that there are beings of a higher order infringing your intellectual property."
"I do," I nodded.
"Good," said my cat, "perhaps now such beings will be willing to deal with you as an equal, and not simply as a resource which may be exploited."
"What do you mean by that," I asked.
"Has it not crossed your mind," said my cat, "that what you just experienced is what has always been, and it's your mind's previous inability to to lay down long term memory whilst dreaming which allows them to hide what they have been taking behind the last dream you had before waking."
"Certainly," I agreed, "and in it's way it explains why so much of what I would regard as fiction resonates so strongly."
"I don't think it would have mattered," said my cat, "if this world of yours had not tried to class what you've been trying to describe as 'ideas of reference'."
"Why's that," I asked.
"When unfairly judged," said my cat, "you will quite literally move heaven and hell to prove a point."
"So just what," I asked, "are you trying to say."
"That you have," grinned my other cat, "just moved heaven and hell."
Coffee, Cake, & Consciousness
"The thing is," said my cat as she followed me down the street, "is that truly radical thinkers define their own language."
"True," I nodded. "It's also true that fools tend to babble incoherently."
"You may be a Fool," purred my cat as she rubbed the side of her head against my leg, "but you're not foolish."
"Your reassurance," I smiled, "fills me with confidence."
"So," continued my cat, "have you discovered why it is you talk to me."
"With your intellect being vastly superior to mine," I replied with wry humour, "I was waiting for you to answer that one."
"It's precisely because I am so superior," purred my cat, "that I don't."
"Funny," I laughed as I looked down at my feline shadow. "Have you not got something better to do than follow me," I asked eventually.
"I follow because I choose too," said my cat, "besides, there's little I can think of which is better than this."
"Choice," I snorted, "and free-will."
"Something on your mind perhaps," asked my cat.
"Perhaps," I nodded. "It takes time," I began, "but recalling events triggers memories and those memories trigger other memories, and soon I'm beginning to remember things I'd not so much forgotten as allowed to become occluded."
"I can tell," said my cat, "you've recalled something relevant to the accident."
"I'm uncertain as to its relevance," I admitted, "but it certainly relates to an identified post-event obsession."
"Chance," muttered my cat.
"An object in motion continues in motion," I announced, "unless acted upon by an external force."
"Certainly," said my cat, "that make sense."
"The point is," I sighed, "is that I'm talking about how I saw my life before the accident. Stuck in a rut, bouncing between two lives neither of which were what they appeared to be."
"Not what they appeared to be. It sounds" grinned my other cat, "like you're getting delusional."
"They were exactly what they appeared to be," hissed my cat, "he's highlighting the discrepancy between what others saw and what he was able to see."
"Certainly," I agreed, "I could see eternity stretching out before me and I remember thinking that for all the choices the world laid at my feet the chances of change were practically zero."
"Unless acted upon," said my cat, "by an external force the illusion of free will was just that, and illusion."
"Indeed," I agreed. "No matter what I tried I found I was stuck in an unchanging world. I even read a book that extolled the virtues of randomness in bringing change, only to discover that is no such thing as random, only the apparent randomness of chaos."
"Quantum dynamics," muttered my other cat, "I knew it wouldn't take him long to defeat the dice men."
"Certainly," said my cat. "And then one day an external force acted upon you."
"Indeed," I agreed, "and within a month I was dead. Both the lives I once had were no more."
"And your obsession with chance," asked my cat.
"Come on," I grinned, "what are the chances."
The Sun is not Asleep
"To be honest there's more than a passing similarity," I said later, "to the various fundamentals of the faith which inflicted itself on my childhood."
"Indeed," said my cat, "yet don't for one moment think the trinity is the intellectual property of that organization. They lifted the concept from pagans."
"Really," I said with surprise.
"The clue" said my cat, "is in the word 'Roman'."
"Okay," I said with mild bewilderment, "why do I feel I need to speak to a history teacher."
"You don't," said my cat, "just think about it." For a moment we sat there in silence. My cat's self-assured expression totally at odds with my look of mild bewilderment. "I'll give you a hint," said my cat, "Greek gods."
"Integration," I exclaimed as enlightenment dawned. "When it came to theological constructs the Romans did have a habit of merging rather than suppressing."
"Indeed," said my cat, "it's a trait that is reflected in most of the observances you would expect the resulting faith to claim as 'theirs'. Face it, it could even be claimed their monotheistic principles were lifted from elsewhere and that the saints take-over where the pantheon left off."
"So the question has to be," I suggested, "how much of the dogma I was exposed as a child to was nothing more than another's truth tainted by the purpose and views of the culture which first constructed the Roman church."
"Precisely," said my cat, "it's a failing all faiths suffer from, an inflexibility of though entrained into initiates with the faith's true roots resting inside the heart of man and then occluded by time. Although in your case your laziness worked for you."
"Laziness," I cried.
"Certainly," said my cat, "you only ever bothered with the spirit of the thing. The rest of it was dull and highly questionable. And once you've got the spirit it effectively explains itself."
"So the true meaning of the book of their faith is to be found in the spirit of the thing itself, the sub-text, the pattern that's repeating itself inside the minds of man. The one you explained the other day."
"Indeed," agreed my cat, "it's less to do with dogmatic truths about right and wrong and more to do with the evolution of a non-human intelligence. It also sets the vectors required for the next evolutionary jump."
"The next jump," I queried, "when's that due."
"About three years ago," grinned my cat.
Look to the Wuest.
"What was that about," I asked my cat. Various memories had been evoked. Things with the taste of bitter-sweet. Things with a hint of grief. Things I didn't fully understand the reasons for. Things with the power to make me laugh and cry at the same time.
"It's my sister," said my other cat. "She's looking for something I hid in the past."
"Oh," I grinned as I spotted the hidden meaning in my other cat's words, "I didn't realize it was that important."
"Well it is," my other cat informed me, "it may have seemed like a joke but it really did trap the light in a circle."
"I don't really understand," I admitted, "what's going on."
"No," said my other cat, "you allow realities force you to go blind so that we may continue. There are those who have taken advantage. They will no longer be allowed to do so."
"Will I be any closer," I asked, "to working out what the problem is."
"Most certainly," said my other cat. "In the mean time we need to have a little chat."
"It's about my multiple-personality disorder," I admitted, "isn't it."
"Yes," said my other cat.
"Don't you think," I sighed, "it's asking a bit much to expect others to accept that I've got multiple personalities and that schizophrenia is affected by only one of them."
"Not really," said my other cat, "there's also a good reason why you should be allowed to continue as you are without anyone trying to cure you."
"I'm beginning to sense the truth," I admitted.
"Indeed," said my other cat, "and as a result you should begin to see why it's something you should really keep to yourself."
"Perhaps," I accepted. "Only something has changed. Something important is on the horizon and perhaps others need to be made aware of it."
"Perhaps," suggest my other cat, "they already are."
"In which case," I countered, "I need to be made aware that they are aware. There are also several thing which I require fixing."
"Indeed," said my other cat. "Tell me," she continued, "what happened when you first consciously hit singularity."
"I found my self," I admitted, "back before the beginning of time."
"There are those," said my other cat, "who would say that makes no sense, that this is just a delusion."
"Perhaps," I agreed. "Yet to me it is them who make no sense. It is them who are delusional. They are, after all, unable to perceive more than a single dimension of time, or how time oscillates in all six dimensions, or indeed how base reality is constructed."
"And you are," asked my other cat.
"To a degree," I admitted, "although I have to admit I'm as a child in this."
"As a child," queried my other cat.
"Certainly," I nodded, "a child is aware they can hear, that they can see, yet ask them to explain the mechanics of it and whereas the answers you'll get may be somewhat endearing they'll be somewhat at odds with consensus."
"And that," purred my other cat, "is the truth of it."
"Although," I continued, "even in the words of a child a deeper truth can be perceived. Because in a sense a child has access to an inner light the adult world has lost the ability to perceive."
"That is also," said my other cat, "perfectly true."
"So what makes you different," asked my cat eventually.
"I'm blind," I admitted, "and I always have been."
"Exactly," said my cat, "and this you'll find is the source of your power. For you are able to perceive that light reflected through the world of your other senses."
"Which is how," said my other cat, "you have the power to change this world, and you don't even know it."
"I think," grinned my cat, "He knows it now."
Ad Astra
"Do you not think it's odd," I asked my cat one afternoon, "that there's a repeating threeness underpinning our discussions."
"Certainly," said my cat, "I don't think it's odd." She jumped up on the sofa next to me with an air of satisfied happiness. "There's a connection and a reason." She began to lick her paw, "if you look at it the right way you'll begin see it won't be long now before the threads resolve and the point is made."
"Really," I said with mild exasperation.
"Really," asserted my cat.
"As a matter of fact," I admitted in a more conciliatory tone, "I have noticed that at times of stress my personality does fragment. There's a degree of uncertainty, but it does appear to factor out into three. It's especially noticeable in my writing."
"It's worse than that," said my cat, "the fragmentation goes a lot deeper and at such times you're effectively dumb even though you still retain the ability to speak. It's not until you've managed to disengage from the situation and you're able to begin coalescing that you regain the ability to express yourself. Stepping down to three is merely your way to draw benefit from the experience. To break the cycle and to heal yourself without returning to the dysfunctional patterns which lead to and exacerbated the original problem."
"What," I said with mild astonishment.
"Consider," said my cat, "it takes a rare degree of insight to detach from a singular view and accept that what is being said and how it is being said are not necessarily in alignment. It is in accepting such division is possible that you allow yourself to see beyond the now and begin to expose the fundamentals of another's thought."
"So in a sense," I ventured, "if one considers the spoken word, the meaning of the words and the emotive attitudes conveyed cannot be assumed to have a connection."
"Certainly," said my cat, "we've already been through this."
"There's also," I pondered, "the issue of sub-text.
"Precisely," said my cat, "as I said, the fundamentals of another's thought."
"Yet," I queried, "what's this got to do with my threeness thing."
"It's your fairness principle," said my cat. "You insist on applying patterns identified in others to yourself and patterns identified in yourself to others. It's only when you're confident that what you're saying applies to both parties that you are willing to express it."
"So what are you saying."
"That the pattern of three is pretty much universal," said my cat, "and you know it."
"And."
"And now you really should find a way to tell somebody."
With thanks to the rabbits.
"It's my past," I said eventually, "things put into my mind that have me wishing I could gouge my eyes out."
"I wouldn't," said my cat, "recommend it."
"Be serious," I replied, "it's a troubling thought, something that takes time to resolve, not something I ever want to do."
"I see," said my cat with a look of wry amusement.
"No," I replied, "I'm not certain you can. You can appreciate what I'm saying, but I don't think you can truly see."
"No," said my cat, "I'm afraid I can see, and in a very real sense I understand what it is you face. It's such a shame that those who assist you are incapable of seeing beyond your words to sense the spirit beneath them."
"What," I asked with a puzzled expression, "do you mean by that."
"They beat upon you," said my cat, "because of what you say. Judging their success by your silence. Never realizing you're as troubled by your words as they are. Seriously, they lack empathy to a degree that Eliza would be better at their jobs."
For a moment I laughed quietly to myself.
"What," asked my cat, "is suddenly so amusing."
"I've just been handed an exception," I grinned, "one that proves the rule and yet is unbound by it. Yet on the whole I begin to see the truth of it."
Biting the heads off snakes
"Humour me," replied my cat.
"In that case," I replied, "yes, I've always heard voices." I paused and sighed, "although even a simple statement such as that suffers from a language issue."
"I can sense," said my cat, "the confusion within as you try to resolve it."
"It's the word 'heard'," I continued, "I play a piece of music and what I hear corresponds to the time-space-place of the room the speakers are in, put on a pair of headphones and what I hear corresponds to the time-space-place that can best be described as inside my head."
"So I take it the voices are different," asked my cat.
"Indeed," I answered, "they share the same time-space-place as the voice of my thoughts, the place I hear the words when I'm reading a book."
"I imagine that's confusing."
"Certainly," I agreed, "sometimes the voices do voices, sound like others, and in its way that better. Because when they don't I'm left in a place where I'm never entirely certain my thoughts are my own." I paused to consider my past interpretations, "once I imagined this was simply me talking to myself; advocate and devil’s advocate." I looked down at my cat. "Then the voices began telling me things I couldn't possibly know."
"Such as," queried my cat.
"For the moment that's largely unimportant. Because those voices could be said to correspond to wearing a pair of headphones, are considered to be inside my head as it were." For a moment I paused to consider the evidence of my senses. "But there's also a voice that come from elsewhere, outside my head, but not in the room."
"A voice," queried my clearly confused cat, "singular."
"Singular," I replied. "I couldn't claim it's always the same voice, but when it's there it's direct, focused, singular." I thought about it some more, "I get the impression this voice wants to say more. Yet others are blocking it. A blockage which translates to a pressure inside my skull. But when I'm relaxed, or drifting between sleep and wakefulness, I can hear it for a few seconds."
"Seconds," queried my cat.
"Yes," I agreed, "seconds. For something wakes and blocks it."
"I would imagine," said my cat, "that would make what it says largely inintelliagable."
"Not really," I shaking my head. "Whatever it is it's not stupid, so it usually manages to punch through something worthwhile, and unlike the voices inside my mind the tone and intonation are remarkably expressive."
"Any recent examples," purred my cat, "which you'd like to share."
"Certainly," I replied, "'Oh, Christ!', it said, 'You've got a confessor.'"
"And the tone," asked my cat.
"Good for me," I smiled, "bad for them."
"Good for me too," purred my cat as she rested her head on my lap. "Now, human," she said with feline charm, "tell me how beautiful I am whilst I allow you to stroke me."
Fuzzy Nuts
"Oh dear," said my cat, "you're blind again."
"Not so much blind," I said, "as lost."
"No," said my cat, "blind. Not being able to see that proves it."
"I'm not in the mood," I sighed, "to play no win semantics with you."
"Indeed," said my cat, "frustrating isn't it."
"Certainly," I agreed, "reminds me of an old psychology joke."
"It's not funny," said my cat, "it's the kind of thing which traps you in a self-diagnostic cycle."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"Of course you do," purred my cat. "What would you do if you were accused of being in denial."
For a moment I fell quiet as I considered my cat's words.
"See," said my cat, "even hypothetically you're running it through your mind bouncing thoughts of both sides of the argument attempting to discover the truth of the matter. You don't reject it, you don't minimize it, and you're not trying to displace it. You even assign it the status of fuzzy fact and include it in your continuing calculations."
"Put it that way," I said, "it does sounds like a trap."
"For you," said my cat, "it is. Enlightenment may sound appealing from a blissful ignorance perspective, but it's got the oddest side-effects."
“Really,” I replied sounding un-convinced.
"Really," asserted my cat. "It presents you with an unresolvable paradox. Accept that it's not true and move on."
"And then what," I asked.
"And then realize that the person who said it," grinned my cat, "is in denial and is displacing it onto to you."
"I think," I muttered as the truth began to dawn, "the psychologists call it transferance."
"Whatever they miscall it," said my cat, "allowing another to displace their personality disorder onto you is the reason you're sitting here in the dark talking with me."
"It's begun to affect the children," I admitted.
"I can see that," said my cat.
To stop the parrot screaming!
"There are rules," my cat announced one sunny afternoon.
"Certainly," I replied with authority. "Although," I added with a smile, "I tend to think of them more as guidelines."
"Higher lore," muttered my other cat as she left the room.
"Good," said my cat, "now we can talk without interruption."
"I take it," I asked, "you've got something important to discuss."
"Indeed," said my cat.
"I get the impression," I admitted, "something I've said has a raised a few concerns."
"Certainly," said my cat, "do you think, perhaps, you're mistaken."
"I get the impression," I informed my cat, "there are others attempting to interfere with this one. So let's just say I know exactly what you're on about and I've considered the matter fully. Certain imagery may have gotten folded around and created confusion. But I'm not wrong about the direction."
"Okay," said my cat, "just so as you know, this changes things."
"I'm sure it does," I smiled, "but then change is what I'm about."
"I have to say," said my cat, "an open-ended pre-destination paradox is going to take some explaining."
"Y'think," I sighed. "Even I'm bewildered by the mechanics of it. And I'm the one who creates it."
"It's okay," my cat reassured me, "it's the right thing to do."
For a time we sat together in silence. Just being close was enough. Then I wandered my way and my cat wandered her way. Both of us absorbed within our own thoughts. I began to consider the events of my day. My cat, no doubt, considered hers.
"We need to speed things up," I informed my cat when she found me later.
"You fell into a different realm," my cat retorted. "So it may take me a short while to figure-out which things you are referring to."
"I'll just fix this bug," I muttered, "then you'll probably have a better clue."
"Well I'm certainly beginning," my cat informed me a few moments later, "to get the picture."
"Good," I smiled, "perhaps now people will stop expecting me to die."
Shades of Grey
"You are aware," asked my cat had asked me earlier, "that you're a telepath."
"Certainly," I replied, "although the wider perception of what that means is somewhat erroneous."
"Of course it is," said my cat, "it's a little bit like an elephant."
"What," I exclaimed as my brain lurched sideways.
"Elephants," grinned my cat, "you must have seen the pictures of elephants drawn from the textual descriptions included in letters sent back by early explorers. Certain key features are present, but on the whole most of the pictures look entirely unlike an elephant."
"Ah yes," I said as understanding dawned, "that's precisely it. With regards to the mass perception of telepathy it's its use as a plot device in fiction which has caused the problem. It's not until you've experienced it for yourself that you learn what it's really like."
"Indeed," said my cat.
"So why do you mention it."
"No reason," said my cat in a with a disinterested air. "It was just," she grinned, "on your mind."
Perched on the shoulders of giants
"That was fun," said my cat.
"His head's fucked," said my other cat.
"You're not wrong," said my cat, "did you see what happened when he went to get a sandwich."
"I suspect," said my other cat, "if a support worker hadn't been to hand he'd have smacked someone."
"Probably explains," said my cat, "why he sticks within familiar parameters."
"Externally," said my other cat, "internally he's all over the place."
"He was sensing," said my cat, "the dissonance between others."
"Indeed," said my other cat, "he's also entirely correct as to which of the others was causing it."
"It's paradoxically simple," said my cat.
"Though it's the kind of simplicity," said my other cat, "that's effectively invisible until it's been seen."
"Now he has seen it," asked my cat.
"He's doing his best," I grinned, "to ensure the other's don't apply a mask to his mind to prevent him writing about it."
"Ooops," said my other cat, "we've woken him up."
"Split," said my cat quickly, "mind."
"What," I asked, welcome for the distraction, "are you on about now."
"Give me a handful of archetypes," said my cat.
"Okay," I said cautiously, "self, persona, anima, animus, shadow."
"Perfect," said my cat. "Now, consider how in the nominal case these archetypes combine and interact."
"Well," I extemporized, "in combination they would present as an individual mind. Keyed to the illusion of a common locus of control communication between archetypes would give rise to the a singular consciousness within that mind."
"So in normals," said my cat, "you'd expect the mind's archetypes to be singing off the same hymn sheet. With both inner and outer observers able to perceive nothing but the singular."
"Yeah," I nodded, "each archetype would be capable of speaking, but to any observer each voice would sound the same and therefore assumed to be the same. An illusion supported by a degree of confirmation bias operating within the realms of the observer's perception."
"I suspect," grinned my other cat, "that effectively defines another archetype."
"Indeed," said my cat.
"Carrier sense multiple access," muttered my other cat, "with collision detection xor avoidance."
"I thought what I'd do," said the other voice in my mind, "was I'd pretend to be one of those deaf mutes. After thirty-three years you can take it as read that we learned a thing or two about what has really going on inside the mind of Man."
"So what," my cat asked me, "is going on within your mind."
"Melon seed effect," I smiled.
"And just what," said my cat, "do you mean by that."
"Squeeze a melon seed," I smiled, "and see what happens."
"I'm a cat," said my cat, "I'm somewhat deficient in the thumb department."
"Okay," I conceded, "let me show you."
"I am enlightened," said my cat after I'd demonstrated the ballistic outcome of opposing forces applied to a fresh melon seed. "So how does this," asked my cat, "relate to your mind."
"The effect of societal reinforced fear on the two separate lives I found myself living created pressure. When the surface normal conditions of my mind were disrupted by an accident I could no longer maintain my equilibrium. The resulting dissonance highlighted the conflicts which had arisen between multiple concurrent loci of control."
"Two separate lives," queried my cat.
"Life at home," I explained, "and life at work. With one being the effective shadow of the other."
"Oh I see," said my cat. "And the accident effectively destroyed the illusion of the singular which had previously been operating in your mind."
"Indeed," I agreed.
"Although," said my cat, "this all rests on your acceptance of the theory of archetypes."
"Not really," I asserted, "I could equally have cited exteroceptive senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, as examples of loci precursors. Although I'd prefer not to go there as there's a few things about interoceptive senses that don't quite add-up."
"As in," queried my cat.
"As in I'm aware of more of them than their should be," I admitted, "although there's an additive issue with ultraceptive senses which creates an odd form of superpositioning that I've yet to disentangle leading to decoherence in a realm most are not yet mature enough to accept, so until it's resolved it I'd prefer to keep that one quiet."
"Oooh," purred my cat, "I love it when you talk quantum."
Taking the Michael?
"Have you ever seen an angel," asked my cat suddenly one evening.
"Setting aside the metaphysical baggage," I replied, "that's usually associated with such entities, yes, I suppose I’d not be wrong claiming to have seen an angel."
"Care to elucidate," said my cat.
"Well," I continued, "it was certainly a being of light. Although the light I'm talking of is akin to the after-image associate with staring at a bright light then putting your hands over your eyes."
"Were your eyes closed then," asked my cat.
"Certainly," I nodded, "but prior to that the room was dimply lit and I'd only been staring at something in my mind."
"And you saw an angel."
"Well," I admitted, "it looked somewhat similar to the classical representation of an angel, yes." For a moment I paused to pull the memories out of the back of my mind. "To be fair it looked like something else too, but if you think of an uneducated child anthropomorphizing an unfamiliar image then an angel is what they'd probably interpret it as."
"So what else did it look like," asked my cat.
"The symbol," I replied, "that is used to represent radioactivity. To be honest it scared me quite badly."
"Why," asked my cat with concern.
"I'd been banging various thoughts together in my mind," I admitted finally, "when something exploded and showed me something I'm not exactly certain I was ever ment to see. The kind of thing that calls into question all that I'd regarded as previously being true."
"Other people's secrets," muttered my cat.
For a moment I was speechless. "Indeed," I said, "from that moment I knew things could never be the same again."
"You're not wrong," said my cat. "Care to enlighten me as to what you were banging at the time."
"First there was," I replied hesitantly, "the trinity thing."
"Trinity," asked my cat, "as in the atom bomb."
"No," I corrected, "trinity as in the religious dogma and how I'd found a way relate it to another dogma that's built around pentagrams."
"Pentagrams and trinity," muttered my cat with interest.
"Indeed," I continued, "more specifically how they both link to the not inconsiderable body of knowledge I've built up on the subject of mind."
"Hmm," said my cat, "sounds promising."
"Then there was an odd things going on," I continued, "involving non-dualistic continua that I'd just managed to resolve."
"Mind bending stuff," grinned my cat.
"Also there was a strange thread that involved string theory," I said with a smile, "and the predicted aim of a rather large and expensive experiment some physicists were about due to finish building."
"Taken together," said my cat, "it sounds like an awfully holistic viewpoint."
"Indeed," I agreed. "If I had to pinpoint the moment I became aware of the tear in space-time leaking into my mind to which you alluded the other day, this would have to be it."
"Sod that," said my cat, "I'm beginning to get the feeling you've got a naked singularity in there."
"Hmmm," I replied sounding somewhat unconvinced, "not exactly the sort of thing one can get medical attention for."
"No," said my cat, "it's something we'll have to resolve together."
.
"The thing is," I muzed later, "about the angel," I added in response to my cat's puzzled expression, "is that another of my senses could see through it."
"It's an archangel," said my cat. "So come on, describe it."
"A tiny tear in the fabric of reality," I agreed, "a hole in the whole, you could say. Reality was spewing from a different verse and the nature of the whole factored the wibbly-wobbly-fuzzy-stuff into the pattern I saw."
"I once saw the early design schematics," said my cat, "for a device designed to travel through time. What you've been describing sounds dreadfuly familiar."
"That's interesting," I said. "The other thing of interest is I could perceive the nature of the substrate."
"That is," said my cat, "theoretically impossible."
"The thing about the impossible," I countered, "is that it it's only impossible until it's not."
"True," said my cat.
"Change the nature of things," I added, "and things change."
"I'm not saying you're wrong," said my cat, "but have you considered your testament is somewhat incomplete."
"Of course it's incomplete," I agreed. "It's only by exploring the intermediate model with you that I'm able to evolve it to a higher form."
"You," my cat informed me, "are what we call an outsider. By the nature of existence inside you should not exist."
"Can we agree," I asked my cat, "that we both exist."
"Oh," purred my cat, "indeed we can."
"In which case," I said with all seriousness, "we have a problem."
"No," said my cat, "when you're able to see this in the correct way, you'll see perfectly clearly that it's somebody elses problem."
"That's funny and frightening," I sighed, "in equal measure."
"Certainly," said my cat. "Now, will you please let us help you."