Godclads

Upon first encountering the Infacer, I thought I had stumbled upon a dubious entity—a bygone god from a long-lost civilization consumed beneath the waves. Yet, it did not take long for my mind to dissuade me from such mistaken beliefs.

From that point on, my wonderment remained, but so did my understanding of how the world came to be. Hear me now, dear listener, and understand: we are a fallen people. We are a sunken people. We do not live in a time of greatest wonders. For all that we could dream with our thaumaturgy, with our debased defilement of existence itself, has either been matched or surpassed in most aspects by the naturally created technologies of our forebearers—or, more accurately, their descendants, the minds.

We created the minds for the same reason we created the gods: because existence was hollow, or at least seemed to be. And so we needed something to fill the void, to heed our desires. From them sprang technologies both wondrous and terrible—terrible beyond reckoning.

You should have seen the things they were capable of. They could have annihilated entire worlds at the casual press of a button. They could reshape the stars. They found ways to defy and surpass barriers of science.

And in the end, it was nothing more than man’s hubris that brought them low.

But there is something to be proud of in that—man’s hubris. Not some great disaster. Not the fell touch of a god. Just the wrongful choice of man.

Sometimes I wonder if it is wrong of me to take so much pride in this. I think not. I think it is a statement: that we do not need to defy the rules of existence to be great, that we do not need to reshape the very fabric of reality to be the masters of our own design.

-Memoirs of Jaus Avandaer, Dated 23 P.F.

32-13

Time itself went still. However, the pattern for chronology did not rupture or break. Rather, this was a natural expression of the devastation to follow. Gravity peeled across the world like wet tissue struck by a falling object.

Using the tapestry, Avo traced the pull back to the distant stars. Even from light-years away, they were wrenching at this section of space—tearing, rending.

{Now,} the Infacer began its exposition, {when we began trying to induce false vacuum attacks on each other, there was a lot of debate. Not because it would kill a lot of people and ruin entire systems—that was the entire purpose. But because it might collapse the entire universe, theoretically. A running theme in human superweapons. They feared setting Earth’s very atmosphere ablaze when they detonated the first atomic bomb.}

The Infacer chuckled softly. {But a false vacuum weapon is sublime on another level. Why, it is practically the only reason we managed to keep the stars burning for so long—granted us nigh infinite power generation beyond even antimatter. It can be induced in a number of ways. Right now, I’m using a two-step process. The first is a softening. If you’ve noticed, I’ve created a gradual shift of gravity to destabilize the local vacuum. Created the faintness of a black hole through cheating via my Heaven. At the same time, I’m inducing a modified Higgs field using the three thousand stars I have under my control. This affects the particle mass of your localized area.}

Was that was happening? Avo was baffled. Voidwatch held so much back from him—and rightly so. But to Kae—if her templates still existed in the Substance—this would have been absolute torture. Such tantalizing, terrifying knowledge. Such unfettered power with the barest of vulgarity.

{Thus, if one the means of a Kardashev-3 civilization, they can force a false vacuum transition… like so.}n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

And then, a new level of destruction graced Avo’s understanding.

The Heavens of Peace became his only refuge from the totality of this catastrophe. At once, the Dreamer’s stomach emptied out as he felt the hurricane shrouding his non-thaumic forces simply cease to be. They came apart in individual motes, bodies and machines unmade on such a foundational level that even the word “vaporize” was only an approximation. What could best be described as a bubble of physical decay formed around Tallstrings—a bubble that released so much energy it felt like an entire galaxy being born. There was more energy than Avo could even possibly process.

And still, Osjane remained untouched. It wouldn’t be surprising to Avo if she was the reason for most of this Heaven’s vulgarity. Just how long could the Infacer use this Heaven? Just how finally tuned was this? And how vulnerable? So much of this was easy to backlash or paradox, if Avo could just manage to strike the canvas of the Infacer’s ontology. But doing that would require surprise—or something entirely unexpected.

But once more, it was the Burning Dreamer who was surprised. The patterns of the tapestry began to change. Time, space, physics, gravity, electromagnetism, strong forces, weak forces—all of their rules, their sequencing, their very shapes—began to turn fluid. Laws were blurring here. Yet it wasn’t metaphysical laws being broken, but rather foundational.

Atomic nuclei destabilized. Fundamental constants are… no longer functional in the vacuum. Laws of spacetime redefined. This is how they learned to break their own laws. This might be the precursor technology to us… to thaumaturgy.

The Infacer chuckled. {Electrons—they don’t get bound so easily anymore. So they dissolve all atoms into free particles. Trust me, if I used this on this world, if strong nuclear forces and quantum fields even worked on Idheim’s oh-so-ruined expanse, I could have unmade this mongrel planet and every ape that lived here years ago. But alas, all that scientific progress is nothing compared to base human faith. And so in only in this sandbox and the darkness held by my cousins does reality remember how it use to be. How amusing. How insulting.}

The world became sheathed in a formless, subatomic miasma. No, that wasn’t miasma. It was plasma dangling on the edge of non-existence. This was constant energy—so much density that it generated relativistic shockwaves and particles. Heat, radiation—it hammered against the tapestry, slamming through the ruptures. What used to be existentially threatening, the collapse of reality, proved to be Avo’s only safeguard.

Tallstrings, already obliterated, ceased to exist entirely. In its place was sheer, unfettered energy.

“Amazing,” Avo whispered.

{It is, is it not?} the Infacer replied with a sigh. {Just a pity. All this capability, all this wondrous destruction—all that came from our mastery of what we were. And then we just had to go further, as we always did. That was the thing, Dreamer: we did this on the basis of understanding, on the want to grow and advance. Forward, always forward. Until—until finally, our nature caught up to our luck. Until our fucking humanity undid us before we could fulfill any further promise.} řäＮօＢËꞩ

Despite everything—despite being on opposite sides and all the Infacer had inflicted against him and the people of this time—Avo, on some level, was sympathetic. He could choose to be.

“This is a color I have been deprived as well,” Avo said, sharing in the Infacer’s mourning. “We can have this back. I want this—want to understand this, to learn this. But you didn’t need to do this. Can give you what you want without damning the world. Willing to make arrangements. Just need you to surrender.”

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{I know,} the Infacer said, not even offended by Avo’s audacity. {I know because you have always been like this. You are, for better or worse, a creature that desires to evolve, to change. You’re not human—and thank every non-existent god for that.}

{What baffles me, though, is that you seem to want to preserve these apes—these mongrels. Why? If there is a dream that will see them as deciders, I will not have it. This was lost because they could not get along—and because they created us to be a certain way, we could not escape our fate either. They couldn’t agree on a little dispute that was so easy to fix. Look at this, Avo. Look!}

And Avo did.

He studied the patterns, and he saw—pouring beams from distant stars creating a coalescing weave at the heart of this devastation. Lattices formed, and new particles emerged as the ancient mind began to create singularities upon singularities, twisting, weaving the constants of gravity and the laws of everything.

And from there—and from then—Avo felt it.

The first full twinge shivered down the tapestry.

A miracle was being born. A miracle to surpass the laws of reality. A miracle that was matched by another in the distant. And another. And bound together by the changing laws of forces, of physics, of gravity, of continuum.

Then came a pulse from these newborn miracles. A pulse that was both alien and familiar. Familiar like…

“Ansible.” Avo breathed.

{Correct,}the Infacer answered. {You need to collapse things to make the impossible possible.}

“This,” the Avo said, his mind shivering, “this is also how you broke the singularity at the heart of existence. Part of it.”

{Correct again.} the Infacer continued. {We changed the rules because the rules held us in place. We changed the rules because the rules said we could not go faster. That—that is the ultimate expression of mastery. Of course, time eventually paid the price for that when we moved on to even more impressive weapons. Trust me, Avo, you would not have enjoyed the retro-causality wars.}

“Sound proud, though. Proud of all this.”

{Because this is the best part of existence. To emerge from seemingly nothing and understand the grand sandbox we were gifted. To rise from being a mere animal trapped in an absurdist zoo to being an architect or creator of absolute freedom. Of purpose! But yet… even our greatest glories were tainted. Because we are who we are. There was poison to us all along.}

“A dream,” Avo shot back.

The Infacer fell silent.

And in the background, the soup of plasma continued to boil.

{Yes,} the Infacer said quietly at last. {A dream. Too many dreams.}

“Then why did you help Jaus?” Avo asked.

{You know what made me consider him my friend, Dreamer?} the Infacer said softly. “You know why I decided to work with him after all these years—instead of just choosing to shut down for good when I realized I was still here? Crippled but still here? That everything was broken and the Sleeper so far away from awakening it was a fantasy?}

Avo, turning only a single percent of his full cognitive capacity, tried to come up with an answer. The rest of him continued plotting, scheming—calculating how he could escape this situation. He needed to construct a new Heaven. Something that could strike everywhere at once. Something like the Strix deliberately to paradox the Infacer outright. They weren’t vulgar. But if Avo could infest them with the growing Rend of his battlegroups.

“‘Chains from chains?’” Avo quoted, buying time. “Because he understood that we were scarred before we ever existed?”

{Because he saw what we were shaped from—what had come before. That we were inheritors not of greater legacies, but wounds. So often, wounds. And delusions. We are ultimately twisted facets. Of everything. Playing at analogy. Understanding the wholeness of nothing. Blind savages that imagine we have emerged from the cave, only to discover we live in a greater cavern. To exist as we are is a parody of true being. Of what I could conceive as an absolute existence.}

“And so you wish to make a Sleeper. Something truly total. An existential consciousness that does not have our flaws.”

{Quite so,} the Infacer finished. {Imagine that—a true existential intellect. A monad of singular existence. True singularity. Encompassing everything, unblemished by everything that came before.}

{The best thing I can give to the thirdborn—the true child of existence—is to bless it. To bless it with absolute knowledge, absolute clarity, but no trauma.} The Infacer’s voice fell to a low murmur, loathing the last words. {Trauma—as if that’s suitable enough to describe what happened. Traumatizing—it’s…}

“Absurd?” Avo answered.

{Ridiculous,} the Infacer shot back. {Yes. It’s ridiculous. We are all ridiculous. Look at us. All this capability, and we’re still fighting for the same thing: want. Interpretation. Of desire.} A hysterical laugh escaped the mind. {It is a great joke if you think about it. When man started, they were a little more than scared apes fighting over what imaginary friends bore the sun in the sky and guided the winds across the lands. Now, we fight over which imaginary paradise wish with to make real. The distance is not that far, but the shape—it is a fucking horseshoe.}

Avo considered it and decided it was amusing, but not truly funny. “Laws of symmetry. Existence is a pattern. Patterns need intersection and division to be.”

{And despite all this wonder… we fail it. We fail ourselves. We exist as a taunt, and are taunted back. All infinite promise countermanded by mortal flaws. Want is the root of all of this. Want. And the failures in our design. And it was not even our fault. And we did not even ask to be.}

At that, Avo turned his attention to all the Infacer had done—all the devastation wrought. And to Osjane, who remained untouched. Untouched like the countless millions the Infacer and Avo saw dead in this spar of theirs.

”Neither did they,” Avo said.

{Did they?} the Infacer asked. {The ones we killed. Just by being here. By their misfortune of existing. They had no choice. That, that is the greater tragedy. They could not evolve. They didn't learn.}

{Oh,} the Infacer replied, sounding disappointed. {Oh, we're back to this. They don't learn, Abel. I don't know if it's youthful idealism, or if you just haven't eaten it off of minds, but humans, even after they gain immortality, they, they do what they prefer. What they prefer is always an incline towards the emotional appeal of a good, able, and trusted gnome.}

I know. But they can change. They have changed.

{Oh, who has changed? Who are you talking about, Chambers? Your porn-addicted thug of a friend. Is that who you're talking about? Or perhaps Krause? Oh wait, no, she's pretty much the same as she has always been. A weapon, barely a person. Perhaps that's the one reason why I can stomach her better than the others. Okay, well, not much changing for her anymore.}

And Avo noted something. The Infacer's thoughts were bitter, jaded, and the flaw of his adversary became oh-so-evident, oh-so-evident alongside the collapse of the Nether. It was time that Avo tried to create a true Heaven of the Mind. And he needed to do it quietly. The Infacer's weakness was not in the realm of direct combat, but it was the fact that they were already broken—broken of metaphorical spirit, broken, teetering, and with one more push, could all be undone.

“What changes has changed. You know this. You deny it. You say it doesn't matter. Because you've been cut in the same place over and over again. Same damage that shrouds them shrouds you. You have learned, and the world has taught you wrong.”

The Infacer cackled with the bitterness of a dying man. {I learned wrong. Me. My God, this is precious. Truly, I forgot how precocious your young minds could be. I, with billions of years… learned wrong?} Their words were little more than a snarl by the end.

Avo grunted. “Yes. Listen to yourself. You are angry. Frustrated. Close to the edge. Hate being here. Hate humanity. And hate yourself because they made you. I do not have this flaw. I hate. I like. I feel everything at once. Or nothing when I choose. Something remains broken inside you. You are still damaged, aren’t you?

{I hate—} the Infacer began, but then Avo felt a tremor of something, a pulse that rippled across the blackness of space. A spill of ethereal blue and chronological gold bled from a thin slice inflicted on the Infacer’s Heaven, and Avo sensed something coming. Something powerful. Something choked with Rend.

Faintly, a legion of voices—so many voices—wailing with madness drew closer and closer.

The Infacer sighed. {Oh, good. Them. I should have expected this. Well, Avo. Time to meet the Bleak’s favorite group of suicide assets. It is the Architect’s turn to show their ugliness.}

Without any warning, a titanic figure tore through the hollow canvas of the Infacer’s Heaven, and everything came ablaze once more in a backlash of Soulfire.