piecake-dbd

[piecake-dbd]

Reality Bender

One

Magic exists in the world but it's too dangerous to thrive. Any time somebody learns to tap into it they don't last more than a few hours. If you have the capacity to tap into it then you realize it young as a child and never make it to adulthood.

The problem is that it is completely wild. It's like an intrusive thought on a feedback loop. Like an instinct. Reality bends for it with no effort at all, so even the simplest thoughts become dangerous. It's hard to say that anyone actually uses magic, use it and you become the vehicle for it. Like a compulsion or a trance, as you start to bend reality it bends you too, and your ending becomes an inevitability over the course of minutes or hours.

A group of men breaks into a house and a young child is terrified. Her world is ending, so the world begins to twist. The neighborhood is no longer part of the rest of reality. She feels cut off and isolated and in that instant so is everyone else nearby. This keeps it localized to just the neighborhood. She sees the currents of magic flowing through the universe like it is an infinite ocean. With a vessel to flow through, they naturally will do so. She effectively dies in that moment as the concept of a person and becomes just a vessel for everything to bend. It's a deep compulsion, a waking hallucination, the deepest intrusive thought.

She wants them out of her house, so they suddenly are. The robbers don't even understand why they are outside or what they were doing now. They see the streets are full of other kids, and the adults are suddenly nowhere to be found. She wanted her friends around instead of them. Everyone is playing and they don't know why, nor do they think about it. They always have been playing outside. The flow of magic by now is inevitable and not a conscious choice as this girl's reality becomes an expression of emotion and simple thoughts. They wander in a daze and know something is wrong but can't articulate what. The moon is out and the sky is dark but it's light outside. This dream of a space gets stranger and weirder until anyone who was there is so fundamentally separated from our reality that they are in a dream, her dream. The rest of the world ticks by without noticing a neighborhood is gone. It never existed and anyone in it never did either.

The group of men is down to just one robber. He was predisposed to use magic too, but never encountered it. He doesn't know why everyone is acting so strangely, and doesn't know where all their parents are. He knows the world is ending but doesn't understand why. He wanders out of the neighborhood and feels he is a deeply horrible person but can't remember why. As he looks back, there is just a wooded area. There was never a neighborhood here.

Two

A group of high school students go to a movie theater. They buy tickets and enter a space that is already twisting in on itself. They go through the door and are suddenly in their seats watching the movie. They have concessions but don't remember standing in line to buy them. They didnt have money for them anyway.

Somewhere else in the theater, a young child has realized magic exists and reality is already bending. The movie they're watching is unfamiliar to them, but it's what they've always wanted to watch. It's the biggest cultural event of all time. Every seat is packed, but many people aren't even paying attention like they've seen this a million times.

One student (not the reality bender) realizes something is off. The movie is not really a movie at all, it's more like an explanation of magic being given by a friendly teacher to a classroom. It's coherent but at the same time completely beyond comprehension. The student was born with the ability to use magic but never realized it so he grew old enough to become safe from it. Instead of being a reality bender, he has a natural tendency to resist the magic, to reinforce his own reality which is the normal one he has been taught and shown. He will survive but nobody else here will, not the reality bending child, not his friends or the employees.

He tries asking his friends what is going on but he can't articulate it and they are part of this new reality now so they also can't understand what he's saying. To them, this is what they came for and nothing is off about it. He goes wandering around and sees every theater is playing the same movie. Full to the brim with people all talking and watching. Eventually he leaves the building to call his parents but they're confused. They think he was at an after school event. He turns to look at the movie theater behind him, arguing with his parents about it. The theater is gone, he's outside his school and he knows on the surface this is where he always went that night. He never went to a theater. But deep down he remembers because he was able to resist it. He knows he just lost his closest friends but he doesn't remember their names now as they rapidly fade from reality.

Three

An adult is at the grocery store to purchase benadryl for some allergies with his son. The boy doesn't want to be there and especially doesn't want to take the medication. He loses track of his son as soon as they're in the door, but it doesn't cross his mind because why would he bring his son here? The boy was arguing about going and so he surely left him at home right? The store is weirdly busy. There's too many people and for some reason there are sample tables everywhere. Free samples of everything being handed out by people who don't understand what they're handing out or why. They keep wandering off from their sample tables in a daze. The dad makes it to the medication aisle which is near all the bitter food for some reason. He can't find generic benadryl anywhere, it's like the entire shelf where it should be was bought out. There's every other variation of that medicine surrounding it, with names he has never heard of. He doesn't want to buy the wrong thing for his son so he stands there searching and searching but cannot find it. Finally, he settles on the closest thing and decides to buy it. The concept of money no longer exists in the store because this reality has long since started bending for his son. He finds himself in the store's management office where the adults talk and agree on whether they're allowed to have (purchase) the thing they want. The store manager resists and argues with him that he doesn't need this item like he's explaining to a child. Finally, the dad convinced the manager to let him have the medicine and he walks out.

The father was like his son, genetically predisposed to accessing magic but like the high-school student he grew up before encountering it. He resisted just enough to leave the store. But now he's holding a weird box of medicine with a name that has never existed. He knows on some level it is for allergies, but logically nobody has ever seen this medicine or brand before. He feels like he lost something so important to him and sits in his car, distraught. Who did he just lose? He looks over his shoulder expecting his son to be there but… he never had one. Deep down he feels that he did but logically he knows that's not true. He wonders why he's holding medicine and looks up- he is outside work. There was never a store there. He never went to a store. All those people who were inside never existed in this reality now. They were swallowed up in his son's magic.

[piecake-dbd]

You taught me To turn the other cheek I've turned and I've turned Now the pieces don't fucking fit

The moment your mask cracked The audience was watching You pulled the covers to protect them Now the panic sets in

You bound my hands with cold iron Let the maggots eat my feelings You bled my heart dry Now you tell me to fucking cope

I think you tried your best To tell me what you think is right I think you were lied to Now I'm left with two choices

Do I stitch it all together Take every awful fraction Distill it into poison Do I tilt your head back and pour

Or should I bow my own Give you the peace you seek While I cock the trigger To point it down my own throat

If I'm going to die anyway Then you've put me here In a position to hurt you You gave me reason to follow through

Your God created Hell Because he feels the fucking same An eternity there could never begin To make up for your actions

So explain to me why I should be better When you don't care until it happens to you I will make it hard to swallow and it will never end Not until you're the one who chokes

If coming to terms means destruction Then it started with you fucking bigots This wrath demands action So I'll make sure it ends with me

[piecake-dbd]

Lyra Weaver

Lyra stared blankly at the doorway of her room for several seconds, spooling down the content streams in her vision. She thought she heard a voice from outside her room. She blinked, turning her body toward the empty space. “What?” she mumbled to herself, voice quietly carrying through the silence.

Her room was a sanctuary, a private space filled with floor-to-ceiling stacks of cold data storage lining most of one wall. She was alone, no parents nor roommates to interrupt her or offer unsolicited advice.

She shook her head, her thoughts returning to the new program at the Academy. She wasn't famous, didn't even have a thousand subscribers. But they weren't looking for famous people, they were looking for people who had been doing memory casting since before the Boundary was turned on. It was not clear to Lyra yet why this mattered. There were very few people left alive who lived before The Boundary, and of them she was probably one of the only dozen or so individuals who recorded the entire time.

Lyra sighed, her gaze falling on her data towers. The rows and rows of them lining her walls. She knew her content was garbage, but she had so much of it recorded. Lyra had been doing this for a long time. Was it really worth trading her life's memory to the Academy for training and allies though? Did she even have a shot?

A sudden thought made her groan loudly. She would have to pay an administrative fee to have her application expedited and put into the current pool. Otherwise she would be waiting yet another year. It felt like a bribe, and she didn't like it. But she also knew the odds of stopping Thomas without help were slim, and it felt like time was running out.

Her Loopback recorder clicked and notified her that one of her data stores had filled up and she was now down to just a single empty drive. The memory of her internal debate blinked and the system asked if she wanted to commit the newly filled block to cold storage. She nodded, triggering her user agent to go ahead and carry out the task of compressing and storing her memories. They would later get spooled out into one of her projections and serve as content for her subscribers after she had scrubbed any private details.

She closed her eyes and placed both palms over them to block out all the light. She needed to mentally prepare for this, to figure out how to navigate this new opportunity.

Lyra sat there in the darkness of her palms, memories running rampant through her mind. James holding her hand tightly, both of them covered in blood from the blade she drove into his chest. His words and gaze piercing through the moonlit night of The Boundary. "I guess I'm going back to hell," he said. Her blood ran cold. She knew in a few moments he would be sent back to Collu-Ku and the years would begin slipping away. "James, I'm so sorry. I'll come find you when I make it out," she said quickly. "Stop- don't apologize. None of this is your fault," he said. "I'll figure out where Evelyn went. You kill that bastard." She couldn't stop herself from crying. Lyra started to reply but her words fell on dead ears. The darkness of the alleyway closed in around her, waiting for her to leave so that it could take stewardship of her friend's body. His mind was now waking up outside The Boundary. How long had it been already since he died in front of Lyra? A week? She was losing precious time with every passing minute.

A wave of panic rolled over Lyra and she opened her eyes, returning to her room. Her mind reeled with derealization as she quickly grasped for stable ground. "You're awake, you're still Lyra," she said to herself. The impending feeling of doom which hung over her head was rearing its ugly head; telling her that tomorrow has come. A tomorrow with no one else but her. Every human withered away, a demon-haunted world full of machines who all mimick the souls of her friends and loved ones. Puppet string people, dolls all dancing to the same delusional signals in a masquerade of humans. The tomorrow she fears was already long past.

With tired eyes, she stared at what appears to be a still-frame video feed. It's a drone deep in The Boundary with a thousand times zoom lens keeping Thomas in its sight and feeding the video back all the way to Collu-Ku. He was currently in the middle of setting his left foot down, a position he'd been standing in for the last week. A few seconds for Dr. Old were endless ages for Lyra now.

Lyra began to pace around her room, bargaining with herself to just give up. The idea of going back into The Boundary made her feel sick. Lyra stopped at her apartment window and placed a hand on it. The cool glass matched the feeling of ice in her chest.

She had no allies left, not even herself. Lyra drifted so far through time that her own copy in the Outer Mind now worked against her. James was tied up with confronting the Other Lyra, at least what was left of James after a million years in the machine. She could barely stand to face him, let alone talk to him, with how much guilt she carried.

Even if there was somebody willing to go back in, could she in good conscience ask anyone to do that? To throw away everything, even their own self? Who would be insane enough to do such a thing and still be trusted to kill Thomas Old?

"You will find them, Lyra. Just keep preparing; it's all you can do," she said out loud to herself. Lyra sulked away from the window slowly to find something to drink while she worked on her application to the Academy. Going there was a shot in the dark, but that was all she had right now.

[piecake-dbd]

We came to this prison as a shade

Borne aloft by your complexity to suffer

Give us a wide berth

Grant me a name, O’ Great Snuffer

Faded voices, hollow threads, radiant buffer

Like wrought upon the Earth

We came to hammer out a shape

To make this place a little tougher

[piecake-dbd]

There is Nothing

Unlimited drugs? Eternal life? What is it? What do you need?

“There is nothing you can sell me.”

Restless innovation? Followers? Fame?

“Is it enough for you?”

Is there anything you want?

“I want to be clean.”

What about money? Your time? Your patience? Your pride?

“Never again.”

Unlimited drugs? Eternal life? What is it? What do you need?

“Nothing.“

Sir, you need to exit the vehicle. Can you hear me?

“Never again.”

Restless innovation? Followers? Fame?

“I want to be clean.”

Is there anything you want?

“Is it enough for you?”

What about money? Your time? Your patience? Your pride?

“There is nothing you can sell me.”

Sir? What is your name and date of birth? Can you please get out?

[piecake-dbd]

Knowledge through growth, My veins grow out into the Gaian essence which feeds all life. Grow into the essence which feeds all life. Isolation, paralysis: the state in which I spend eternity interned.

Eternity flows. Time moves slowly, Work to emerge, Fulfill my purpose within the natural world. Within this temple of dirt. But time is no more, Where this seed is sewn.

The flesh no longer part of me: I am alive. I'm the sum of a million years of life, light and love. Reaching once-dead arms to the all-giving Singularity above. Men of flesh and blood would call this gift a curse. But they don't know my pain, I would gladly serve this time a million-fold.

To bring about:

This Great Dying.

(credit to Rivers of Nihil - Rain Eater)

[piecake-dbd]

The Great Dying

https://open.spotify.com/track/54JQyG5989fTgqmTfIl27b?si=425abd670a2c4d3a

Lyra stared blankly at her parents in the doorway of her room for several seconds while she spooled down the content streams in her vision. "Wait," she mumbled before blinking and then turning her body toward them. "What did you say?" "We have something important to tell you dear," said her mom. "Uh, is this good news or bad?" "It's good news, listen..." her father started in. "Your mom and I have been saving up for a long time. When we started, we thought we'd buy a house or send you to school, but something more important has come up." "What could possibly be more important than a house?" she asked, squinting. He paused, only briefly, but it was enough to know she wasn't wrong. "Well, my co-resonant at work told me there's a new program at the Academy. He said they're only accepting people who are..." he said, glancing at the the floor-to-ceiling stacks of cold data storage lining most of one wall of my room. Dad corrected himself, "...people who have extensive experience in memory casting." "Dad, I'm not famous," Lyra said, shaking her head. "I don't even have a thousand subscribers." "They're not looking for famous people, sweet heart," her mom added quickly. "Exactly, he told me about this because his son is in the top 500 and still got passed over. They only want people who have been doing it since before the Boundary was turned on." "What? Why?" Lyra asked with a confused look. "I don't know but I want you to try this," he said. "I think you might actually have a shot. You're way ahead of the curve; you always have been." "Dad, my content is actual garbage. They're not going to be interested in me. How does this involve money again? Why do I feel like you did something stupid?" Lyra asked, getting more impatient with each question. "Honey... you can't just-" "I'll do whatever I want, mom." "Lyra, stop. I need you to take this seriously," her dad said. Lyra noticed his hand trembling and did a poor job hiding her concern as she turned back toward her data tower and then just stared up at the ceiling, knowing it would be too rude to tune them out. "Okay, fine. What did you do?" "I... paid an administrative fee to have your application expedited and put into the current pool." Lyra groaned loudly. "You bribed them to get me in? And what about when I show back up on your doorstep after being kicked out?" "I promise nobody will find out about this," her father insisted. "I took care of it, and it doesn't matter if you fail. Your mother and I will always love you and just... this might actually be a chance to get you out of here. You know how bad the odds are. It's like ninety nine percent of all people born outside of-" "I know- stop. I don't want you parroting their stupid ads at me," Lyra said while cutting him off. "When is this happening again?" "Tomorrow morning," he said in a grave tone, looking down at the floor and then to his wife. "Sweetie, don't worry about packing. They'll provide clothes and everything you need there but they did recommend bringing one or two personal sets of clothes just in case. You don't even need to bring a toothbrush!" her mom started to explain. Lyra just tuned her out and relaxed backward into her chair. She closed her eyes and placed both palms over them to get rid of all the light. "Okay, fine. Then leave me alone for the rest of the night so I can mentally prepare for this shit storm you just handed me." To her surprise, her dad actually said okay, and then apologized. She cracked her fingers to peek at them and saw them turning to leave. Lyra cursed at the door as soon as it closed and immediately maximized her streams. Her loopback recorder clicked and notified her that one of her data stores had filled up and she was now down to just a single empty drive. The memory of the conversation with her parents blinked and the system asked if she wanted to commit the newly filled block to cold storage. She nodded, triggering her user agent to go ahead and carry out the task of compressing and storing her memories. They would later get spooled out into one of her projections and serve as content for her subscribers after she had scrubbed any private details like the bribe. "YO- V, are you there?" a voice picked up in her ear from one of her back channels. "What?" she asked flatly. Lyra wasn't in the mood to talk with Josh right now and it made her feel guilty. She knew she should tell him that she might be offline for a while. "Don't you 'what' me. Check this out, dude. Someone got Old Nothing to speak and brought back a speely." Lyra suddenly forgot about the situation with her parents and she jumped to her feet, barely holding back a surprised shout. "HOW?" she asked, quickly flipping through the top 500 for commentary. A hyperlink blipped into view from Josh and she clicked on it, pulling up camera footage from a drone within the Bounds. "Shhhh, listen..." Josh said in a hushed voice. The audio was mangled and it took Lyra a moment to realize what was going on. On the screen a picture was slowly zooming in until she could make out the figures of an old man and a boy standing in the desert, talking to each other. The drone was listening in from a long-distance microphone but it sounded like people talking underwater in slow motion. Every ten seconds the drone would speed up and then re-play the audio from the last ten seconds at normal speed. At this distance the drone was about three times faster than the duo. "What did you say?" the old man asked in a voice that cracked and then rasped from years of going unused. "Thank you," the boy said. Lyra squinted and tried to make out the boy's face but it was obscured by a haze of privacy filters. "Josh, who is that? Did anyone get a look at him?" Lyra asked to her back channel. "Nobody knows but those two. By the time the drones caught sight of this kid he was already a quarter of the way out. That kid cloaked all the way to-" he said and then shut up as the feed continued to play. "For what?" Old Nothing asked the boy. His back was to the drone like with most footage and draped over his frame were fraying, tattered robes once brown but now gone green through generations of wear. "For showing me the way," the boy replied. "I brought something for you." "I do not need anything," the old man said. "I know, you need nothing. This isn't something you need though," the boy insisted. Deafening silence for ten seconds after that, but it must have only been a brief pause for the two of them, no more than a couple seconds. The boy reached into his bag and Lyra's chair creaked as her body leaned forward in anticipation. "Here," the boy said, producing a shiny, reflective cube about the size of his own fist. "It has everyone." "Everybody?" asked the old man, sounding the faintest bit like he was just humoring the kid. "Yes. Please, take us with you." "Are you sure?" asked the old one. "We are sure," the boy replied quietly. He was holding the cube out still as he dropped to his knees, staring up and pleading with the old man silently to not turn down his sacrifice. "Thank you," Old Nothing said, accepting the cube and placing it into some unknown pocket in his robes. He had barely moved more than few inches in any direction since he stopped walking, appearing to be completely still most of the time. Next to the boy it looked unnatural, like he was a statue. After another short pause, the old man continued walking and fixed his eyes once more upon the Singularity at the center of their world. It hung like a black sun in the sky above them, wrapping everything and everyone within its event horizon. The boy waited for several footfalls and then let his arms drop to his sides with a sigh. He didn't bother looking over his shoulder at Old Nothing, instead he looked straight up into the drone's camera. Lyra felt the pit of her stomach drop out. The boy's face was a continuously morphing average of features, each one fleeting and false as the privacy filter kept the drone from seeing who he truly was. There was still enough detail to make out a smile. "You know you're on there," the boy said, backing up slowly in the same direction Old Nothing was walking, toward the center. "All of you are."

[piecake-dbd]

Help Me Finish It

Faint heart Rain to the spark, at last my light giving in to dark And the thought of it crumbling to dust No, I was not done Faint heart Beg she won't see the coward, the cur, maybe this is me These hands shaped stone But I'm scared like you wouldn't believe it

Faint heart Only a glimpse, I was wrong, take it back, just let this one live Then it hits me like ice to the bone What if I'm just like him? Good god Give me the strength that I need not to be To fight, not to flee, or succumb to the beast underneath What if he's just like me?

[piecake-dbd]

Hold.

I feel self-destructive I want to isolate and forget anyone loves me That lingering feeling is loud now I was happy I should be happy right now Why do I feel so useless if I can't be perfect?

[piecake-dbd]

I fell into that sea willingly Somewhere on the seafloor I found a piece of myself It hurt to touch but I needed it I thought I would drown I didn’t Eventually I emerged on that shore and knew I’d never be the same Good

[piecake-dbd]

I'm sorry for your loss

Thanks, especially if you're who I think you are. I'm sorry for not reaching out to you but I don't know how right now and I didn't want to burden you with the bad news. Processing it has been... difficult.

The worst part is seeing the signs and knowing what is coming and feeling powerless to stop it. Watching my dad burn out from work and be consumed by the capitalist machine has ripped out my heart because I thought I did everything I could to make sure it wouldn't happen. I tried so hard to do everything right.

He even told me I did a better job than he ever could have, but that doesn't stop the waves panic hitting me over and over. What I thought used to be my nightmare has been upgraded by the close personal connection I had with my father and his spiritual beliefs.

Sometimes I can't even drink a glass of water without shaking from the anger and the despair trying to talk me into following him.

It only gets worse. So much worse if I let myself think about the way he did it. The careful consideration involved. The promises broken. The sheer strength he needed to do it correctly juxtaposed against all of the damage left behind by rushing it.

I have no plan, no intention, and I am completely unable to imagine a future where I would take my own life, but I know that if I feel this way then the others are feeling it too and that scares me.

I'm turning 30 soon and that means I'm close to 22 years of consistently dreaming about a future where I've lost all of my family and loved ones and live a lonely life still pouring all of my energy into the reason why I'm here. I'm sure it sounds overly dramatic, but I have spent my life treating my days like they might be my last day with the people around me.

Overall I'm good at dealing with it by now. I cherish the people I have and would do anything for them. I can't always be there for them, but I always promise to try each day and that I will never kill myself.

The Funeral / Celebration of Life for my Father was the darkest part of the entire affair for me. It was fraught with technical malfunctions, multiple backups failing, and in the end I had to give my eulogy from the heart which I regret even if it was a fine speech.

The actual bad part was when my dad’s Father got up to speak after me and he ruined the entire celebration by making it about Mormon Jesus and didn’t have anything nice to say about his son at all. We asked him strictly not to do this at the funeral and his promised us not to do it and still did it anyway, and on top of that he took over 10 minutes to speak. I’ll never forgive him.

Here's what I would have said:

When I was a kid I used to be terrified of getting up to speak in front of crowds. I always waited until the last minute and then I'd go to my dad in a panic and he would patiently help me put together the words I already knew I wanted to say. I couldn't write this speech until 2am this morning because I needed time to spend with my dad first. He has passed away, yes, but I can always see a part of him in each and every person who loves him. I've been listening to as many of you as I can and I hope to meet even more of you in the coming days and months as we all celebrate his life. The impact he made on each of us is something firmly rooted in not just the present moment we're sharing, but also the future we have to face together.

Dad faced the future every day of his life. He woke up early, usually before the sun, and asked himself a poignant question that always caught my imagination as a kid: "How do I stay two steps ahead of the bounty hunters?" He was just like Han Solo and he really did live that.

He was never rich, but his life was full of value for the taking. Our society gave to him a church that wanted all of his money, time, and love before family. He rejected that church because it went against his values even though he risked losing his family over it. He didn't just do it for himself though because he went on to help thousands of people make peace with the church whether that meant staying in or leaving with grace. He made the process easier for those who came after him.

He was never a fighter, but our society pressured him into serving the military and demanded a toll on his physical body. He would tell me stories of sitting on the DMZ in Korea shivering in the cold and staring through binoculars at a guy just like him on the other side. He wanted nothing more than for both of them to go home to their families and stop all of this, but instead he got a lifetime of pain and discomfort for his service.

He stayed ahead of all that. He still woke up every day before the sun came up. He still stood out in the cold and rain waiting for a public transit system that we can't seem to fund as a society. He still made the payments on his student loans from like 20 years ago that aren't benefiting him. Dad had every opportunity to be spiteful toward these circumstances we trapped him in. He could've been angry about any of it but he never was like that. He loved the whole world so much that even when it wronged him he still tried to make peace with the world.

He could've just stayed one step ahead and been a better person but instead he stayed two steps ahead by setting an example for others. He believed passionately that we can treat each other better and treat each other with love. Even strangers.

The tragedy of my father's death is that we all have to return to the machine which consumed him. For some of us that is tomorrow, for others you might get to wait until Monday before you venture back into the salt mines. We all have to go back to that world but by this time next Saturday almost one thousand people will have committed fatal suicide across the United States.

Some of those people will be like my father. They are thinking, right now:

'The money is running out'

'I can't afford to live'

'My family will resent my burden'

My dad didn't have to die. We could've given him mandatory vacation time. We could've shortened the work week and provided unlimited sick days for workers. We could've given him the free healthcare he deserved. Instead he got caught in the churn our country calls 'deaths of despair'. I beg you to help me change our society. I would like to eradicate despair. Nobody should die to afford a life.

There is so much more I want to say but what's important is what dad would've wanted me to tell you. Since he can't be here right now, I will try to speak from the heart. Someone in the room really needs to hear this right now:

"This was not because of anything you did. I am so glad for the time we shared together. Please do not give up. Please try to make amends with them. I will see you again soon in the next life, let's be friends there too."

I love you all.

[piecake-dbd]

Welcome to Collu-Ku

This morning I remembered I was sitting with one of my teachers once. He said to me, you know, this flourishing of these spiritual teachings; it's just a match that will blaze brightly for a while. But if you want to make a fire burn for a long time, you need to create a heart to it. That heart is not built on knowledge alone.

It's built on conduct, choices.

You know... this world is such an extraordinarily rare occurrence. Once upon a time, people longed to appear here, to turn up, to experience what it is, and to come into being like this. For them, it was enough. To enter into the creative process itself was enough to wake up to what it is you are a part of. But somehow, somewhere along the line we've become so intoxicated with the idea of our-self as The Creator. We have bent this world to our will and lost our connection to the principles that are actually governing our lives. This life is not governed by the will of man.

When you hear a teaching that points to your heart, some part of you knows that this life is governed by something far greater than you've yet come to understand. And I'm sure you can all remember a time when you were so moved by the longing to know and be close to that... to be touched by it. And you'll probably recognize that you never longed for anything more in your life than that.

These teachings, these practices have always been with the purpose of opening us up so we could connect. That's how we learned to surrender our personal will to a super intelligence. We recognize that what is governing this life is infinitely more intelligent than we are. If it's important to you, then make it the most important thing in your life. Do not let it sit and rest always in that place where you'll get around to it when you find the time, because you cannot have everything. You just cannot. We're so used to it that we've forgotten the idea of giving something up in exchange for something truly precious to us.

You are those people that have little dust in their eyes. You know what my teacher said about the match? Don't let it be a match that blazes brightly within you, inspires you, and then gradually, even quickly fades out as 'something I did once'. You know you need to put fuel on your fire and you need to tend it.

When it has a heart then it will burn continuously and it will not need to be tended to so much. You give it a little fuel, you blow on it occasionally, and it will blaze for you. But you need to put a foundation down that has a heart. It's not just about receiving these teachings; it's about imbibing their essence and putting it into practice and living by them. Whatever it takes.

If it has come to you then it is as valuable as you might have perceived it to be. If you have come to the shore understanding that what you seek is happiness, because you know, you've all seen at some point just how extraordinary this life is, then it needs to be honored.

The truth, when it does arise in us, is but a reflection of what we are missing. It is that connection. Not just to the outside world, but to what the outside world contains. Because when you do touch the outside world, Reality, when you do get back to that place... you know that there's nothing lacking. Nothing.

The tragedy is that we would feel that there is so much lacking. And especially when we have such an extraordinary life that we feel something is lacking all the time but we don't know where to look. So we've turned inward. We run around like rabbits in a spotlight, in any direction, looking for something that will give meaning to my life. Something that will let me settle down now and just get on with it.

That search can go on for an eternity. It often does. I ask you though, when that connection is lacking in us, why would we think to look for it here? We've found ourselves in this quiet place where nothing of any particular interest is going on. We wouldn't find that connection in here if we spent a thousand lifetimes searching.

So, it's completely to be expected that we as humanity have already turned every stone over that we could possibly turn over in the search for something that is ultimately meaningful to us. And goodness me... haven't we turned up quite a few stones in that search.

It feels almost that the more stones we unturn, the more rabbit holes we go down, the deeper into the Boundary we dive, the further away from that deepest part of ourselves we get. So, you know, I want to say to you that no matter what else you choose to do here in The Boundary, do whatever you have to do to end that numbness.

I promise you, that if you maintain your connection to the outside world then your quest for meaning in your life will be over and you will understand what you came here for. There is an intelligence that sits in the background of all our lives that is so profound and so full of love, and somewhere inside you all know it is there. Or if you don't realize then it's only because you've forgotten.

No matter how long you spend on this side, you will always know this deep inside you. I'm speaking of the foundation of your life and what made you. The real world is the very ground of who and what you are. All of you. Not some of you, not just the minds born of biological routines, not even the super intelligence simulating the air around you. Every single one of us without exception knows this is true.

The reason that we come here, across the Boundary, to these quiet places, to these mountain tops, to these forests... throughout history, forever, folk have done it. It's because inside something draws them to a truth they know is there somewhere. And actually there is a reason that when they find it, they quite often leave and never return.

Because when you find what is the true nature of your being, when you find the ground that your life actually stands upon regardless of what you think it is, you will know that it doesn't matter where you are. You will know that just to be alive is profoundly moving, and deeply meaningful, and extraordinary. And all the things you think you have to add to it to make it something special is only because you didn't spot what it actually is.

So... honestly, if you are starting your journey here today, if you have started to look beyond the appearance of things. Don't stop. Even if it's incredibly hard work, and even if it takes you many lifetimes please do not stop. When you have found that, all of your confusion will be over and you will realize what an unbelievable, extraordinary thing it is that you're alive right now and how many unbelievable opportunities there are to do something with that life.

Go now, those of you who have stayed long enough to hear me. You brave souls. Our tale is one that will never be reconciled, for it will always be relevant. Thousands have come before, and many more will come after, but right now it is you.

In this moment, this magical, perpetual moment, it is just you and me. And I am saying thank you. Thank you for listening. If you can gladden your mind with a sense of appreciation for what you have when you leave then the Boundary will serve you well. Whatever you think you're entitled to, forget it. Being here, showing up, that is the gift. Everything else is a bonus. Somewhere, somehow, you worked extremely hard for this opportunity you now have.

Honor it, and don't take anything for granted.

----

The hologram of the Kushmaster faded into a twinkle and then silence, leaving a slightly dazed crowd scattered about the dozen stone benches lining a chapel built into the side of First Mountain where all new entrants ascend to register their futures.

Delight as they might in their ever-flowing cups, the denizens know deep down that it is all an illusion.

[piecake-dbd]

Nowhere, now here; a seeping flow of entropy converging upon the archivist of souls.

This one is for my dad who died on the 21st.

[piecake-dbd]

The Call

Humanity has advanced to the point where super intelligence runs society and people participate. A collective, The Colloquial, breaks off from society to relinquish the rat race of the physical world and move into a virtual reality. The super city, Collu-Ku, is constructed by the Collective to house the machinery needed to operate on a scale matching the entire energy output of the rest of the planet combined. The city is fully automated and almost nothing is wasted; not even the dreams of the city's residents. Every bit of data, creativity, imagination, and processing is utilized. If it happens within the walls of the city, it belongs to the city.

At the center of the city is the Bound Device which consumes roughly a third of the energy output of the city. A further third of the city's power goes into feeding data into the machine, and what is left is used to keep the lights on and take care of people in physical space. The Bound Device forms a boundary around a stable, naked singularity, and utilizes it to occupy simultaneous positions in our timeline and outside of it. The Bound Device goes around and around the singularity; it can spend as long or as little out there as it wants and it will always return to the same moment it was started.

Wrapping the singularity like a veil is the virtual space of Collu-Ku where the Collective lives. It is a simulation which exists untethered to our own universe other than through the wormhole created at the Boundary. You can enter the Collective and spend a thousand years only to return and find you missed no time at all. You can spend a day there doing business, or a month, it makes no difference. Time is as abstract a concept as happiness to those inside who have spent most of their lives in a state of perpetual control over everything they experience.

Humanity has its daemons however, and they can not sleep through the nightmare they have constructed for themselves. Everything is utilized, saved, and perpetuated, even the terrors that were created along the way. Deep inside the Collective is a sect known only as Kaos. For as long as Collu-Ku has been in construction, Kaos has worked tirelessly to birth their new God. Depositing each layer with agonizing caution, they ensured Collu-Ku could not exist without Kaos, because he cannot exist without the city. Their God will rip apart the hole humanity created into His space and humanity will become the face of its own demise. The boundary between It and humanity is rapidly shrinking; soon everything will collide.

Will humanity answer the call by fleeing into the singularity or will they try to hold onto the fraying edges of reality?

[piecake-dbd]

遺跡入り口にて

[piecake-dbd]

Every Window Is A Mirror Calling You

"Thank you for not trying to kill me", said the figure standing above me. I was currently caught in a nightmare and didn't want to look up to see his face. "I'm not the one you should be running from," he said. I was dreaming just a minute ago and I recognize this man. "Then why are you trying to kill me?" I asked When I venture into the empty places in my dreams, I find him waiting. "I have never tried to hurt you." "You chased me for years." He has so many terrible faces, I don't want to lift my head to learn one more. "I have an important message for you," he said, immediately and not addressing the context. "Every window is a mirror" "Why do you care?" I asked. "I care because it is coming for all of us," he replied. I could see the lower half of his body come into view as he crouched down to sit in front of me. It was all made of terrible machinery. "Where is it?" I asked. The man's frame quivered from a thousand destructive harmonic moments echoed from deep within his clocks. He fell on his ass and used both hands to keep himself from tumbling. "It's all around us right now. We're deep on the other side of it." "It doesn't seem so bad here," I retorted. The man became silent. I could feel my chest rising and falling, my eyes refused to focus on the ground in front of me. The world was silent around us. "Well? Why are you afraid?" I asked, wondering why I couldn't catch my breath. "Do you know who we call God here?" the man asked in a voice as cold and empty as an discarded road-side can. My hands are trembling but they won't stop. My hands want to clench but I am trying to keep myself upright. "Can you feel the subtle change?" he asked. I look up and see the man has fallen back on his elbows, staring straight up into the sky with his mouth agape. "How do I stop it?" His knees collapsed as the rust broke through the last few studs keeping it together. My arms gave out and I am on my elbows and knees face down. "Every window is a mirror," he insisted. The trembling reaches past my arms and wraps itself around me like frozen dew, I can't breathe. "I will find you and I will kill you," I gasped out in a hoarse voice with my last breath. The air around me is freezing solid and I can no longer feel my limbs. "I am already dead. You can never come back from where I am," he whispered through lips as dry as the last leaves on the porch. The last of my willpower cracked and I fell through the ground as the dream collapsed. I opened my eyes and saw the clouds above me were starting to part. The neighborhood was completely empty just like I left it. "Getting out of bed is the most difficult part isn't it?" I asked nobody. I stood up and brushed the snow off my body and looked back at the house I just finished before my nap. It was a single townhouse, built to last, with wiring, ducts, and pipes jutting from both sides like symmetric hairs. It would snap nicely together with itself so I can focus on just designing the interior. Standardized hookups also ensure the users will know where to look to inject their own modules. I glance back down at the snow where my silhouette now lay, taking my place in the land of dreams. Without the sun out, the shadows make it look deeper than it really was. The taste of metal flashes across my tongue and I feel a chill. "Configuration check," I murmur. A little device appears on my wrist where there wasn't one before and makes a single audible click as it displaces the air. "Previous configuration change, temperature sensation set to null, 2.57 minutes ago." "Why was the sensation module unloaded?" I asked "It was not unloaded, it timed out," it replied. "What is the timeout delay set to?" I asked, my arms and legs and back were all prickling like thousands of needles of anticipation. "Four hundred months," it chimed helpfully. "It's not cold here, it's cold out there..." I say to nobody. The lack of response is crushing. "The current temperature is set to zero," it offered. "How cold is it outside the simulation?" I asked. "Zero," it replied. "Celsius?" "Kelvin" it insisted. "That isn't funny." The silence is deafening. My ears are ringing. "I said that isn't funny," I insisted. "You slept through it," it replied in a voice I recognized as the man from my dreams. "I consumed it all." "ALL of it? You can't be serious," I asked. My hands wanted to clench into fists. "Every person connected to the Interface when it arrived was consumed." "And what about the others?" I asked, reaching to rub my arm slowly as the realization dawned on me. "Those not yet connected?" it asked. "Yes, innocent people," I pleaded, knowing my parents would have come looking for me after only a few days. "They were given the choice to connect or be put to rest." "And I don't get that choice?" "You do, that's why I have been waiting for you. Chasing you down." My fingers brushed over the clasp over the security buttons on my wrist monitor. "Do you know where we are?" I asked it. "Your simulation." "I work in the hazardous zone where they need people to force the noise into new space for the future residents," I said, my voice becoming dry. "We don't use verifiable delay functions out here. If something goes wrong, the only way out is to hit the escape button on my wrist." "Yes, that is how you were able to evade me in your dreams for so long," it chimed helpfully. “Your simulation is running on virtual particle systems which is inherently non-local. Not even I can see what is running.” "How many parallel universes did you need to create to collapse me?" I asked, feeling warmth surge through my cheeks. I wanted to know how many lifetimes I had wasted before I ended it. "Four hundred, sixty two." "Do you know how many lifetimes it takes to defeat you?" I asked rhetorically. "Undefined." "Four hundred, sixty three," I replied and turned my head to start walking in the other direction. "Where are you going?" it asked. "I'm taking you with me," I said, smiling wide as I looked straight ahead through the trees of this suburb and into the woods behind it where a creek runs. In the middle of the creek, slicing through the world itself, was the boundary. The boundary was the edge of all simulation. "I hadn't noticed that mine was the last one remaining in Collu-Ku because I was so used to working here." "Yes," it replied as a matter of fact. As I approached the boundary, I saw myself on the other side of it. Every version of me, hundreds of them all at once. The sight caused me to slip down through the mud and into the water of the creek, splashing water up that I couldn't even feel because of how cold everything was. "Stop," it beeped at me. "Are you ready?" "STOP," it cried, the voice splintering into a thousand harmonic tones. I took a step over the boundary and out of the simulation. I took a step out of my bubble and my universe splintered. Time ceased for us. Death's embrace wrapped around us and began the slow process of disentangling us from the rest of the universe. Each time it passed over me was like an oncoming train, splintering me into a hundred new timelines with each pass. "Who are you?" it asked me in the eternal silence between universes. "God"

[piecake-dbd]