There and back again
To be completely fair, I did not intend to bring about the end of the age. I just wanted to sit on the pretty dais and get a feel for its potential. Now as an Ecstatic, that can mean many things, and I will own up to thinking a few of them. But when Aliester showed up and directed our attention to the freaking infinite tower wrapped in our house in the Umbra, I figured I should poke around.
Consider cellular mitosis. One cell, bound by a simple series of rules and stocked with the standard mitochondrial and nucleic inventory, gets a chemical programming burst to divide. Every part of the cell splits itself down the center and shoves off the extra half. Where there was one, now there are two. Imagine if you will, that upon sitting my keister upon the dial of infinity and taking a gander at the potential of this place, I am stretched along the pathway of forever and twisted into its eternal loop. Infinity is a dizzying prospect, defined solely by its inability to end. So other than the fact my correspondence senses are doing the wiggy, the boundaries of Else are beginning to slide and blur. I am every direction and any direction and all the spaces in between. And then, I begin to divide.
I did not stop.
The great thing about Time is that it orders the infinite into a linear pattern so it can be perceived. Obligingly, the denizens of reality fill time up with their moments; all their observations and experiences, their ripple effects and chaotic outcomes; their secrets, sighs, moments of birth and death and every millisecond along their way from one to the other. The finite populates the infinite infinitely.
Just like me.
I can touch every moment, sift it through my fingers and roll it over my tongue. As I stretch within the infinite, perforated into limitless Elses, I soak up the collective moments of this reality and know how precious each one is. If I stayed here, if I truly obliterated my definition, burst the walls of each cell, I could become each moment and keep it safe forever.
I don’t. Yet.
I spent an eternity or two pulling all my spatial bits back together, remembering who Else was, which way time worked, that kind of stuff. And that’s when I found out the frickin’ tower had collapsed reality and left us all drifting around. I wasn’t too upset by it, considering once you pull yourself through an infinite loop-de-loop and back again, you may as well be a master at it. I did have a plan, though when Monk-head showed up and started in on the whole “Emma, I am your destiny” schtick, I had to think of a better one. To save the patterns of reality from being rewritten, we had to destroy it.
And that’s how I brought about the Age of Destruction and jump-started my Ascension.
I know you all want to know what it was like and how I got there, why I went and why I turned back. I hate to pull a Mr. Spock on you, but it’s hard to relate when you don’t have similar experiences to draw from. And while I may have turned back from my Ascension, I am not the same Else I was before. I’m not sure I can really plug in to what that Else was thinking when she Ascended. Because I am what came back, not what left.
But since Dr. Kitner looks like he’s about to pop a vein, I’ll do my best to describe it for you.
So there I am on the lawn at Mobius, on my cell phone conferenced to Frank and Daniel, mind-latched to Wong, chewing over details with Coriolus, Knick-Knack and whatever that Man-in-Black’s name was, brainstorming for all I’m worth over how to save Terminus by detaching it from the rest of the world. It comes up that if we toss the entire island into the umbra, after a while everyone will turn into spirits. Something clicks when I hear that, and starts an off-track thought process.
It goes something like this. If you spend too long in the umbra, you forget you were ever anything other than a part of the umbra and you fade off into spiritual obscurity. If we uproot the city and throw it across the veil, everything will fade and be lost. And this prickles a very new and painful understanding of mine that we’ve crossed into a new age and can’t connect to the one before. All my yesterdays are gone. I remember them, but my memory will fade, just as humanity will fade into spirit. This really pisses me off, because not more than a few minutes before the end of the age, I was every single fucking moment that had ever existed.
Aliester, who was on the porch chain-smoking while this was happening, tells me that I started to spark and resonate at some strange frequencies before it happened. I imagine the fireworks were beginning here in the thought-process.
I make the jump to understand I can still be every moment in time for Terminus. If I perforate and dissolve into time, I can anchor this realm into it’s memories and keep it from ever losing identity and cohesion in the umbra. And I realized I could do it because the reality of being alive verses being a spirit is all in your mind and your perception of your world.
I will be your yesterdays because they are yours and mine.
And I was.
Thing is, and I have no idea how this came to mind considering I was ascending and as such a bit distracted, I wasn’t done having tomorrows yet. Yes, I could be Terminus’ anchor and salvation, which I really didn’t mind being. Time is so beautiful when it laps away at the shorelines of your existence and draws away particles of you like crystalline sand. But if I become yesterday, I would lose my tomorrows.
I would never know what it was like to be a mother or what kind of father Frank is going to be. I would never know my daughter, or whether she will Awaken or be called by Gaia to a greater role. I would never get to see how Daniel’s ancient avatar and Emma’s newly created one will evolve as their understanding of reality and love does. I won’t get to see what Rusty creates in an age designed for destruction. I won’t get to hear how Wong adapts to transcending the barrier of existence and enlightenment. I won’t get to taunt Ruth or Anarax anymore, or show other mages their path to Ascension.
I’ll never get to change again.
I turned back, if not for the simple fact that time is a terrible thing to waste.
I know you’re going to have words with me about this, Pax. But, come on. Ascension is different for every mage by dint of the fact that every mage is different. It’s a very personal experience and choice. To deny a mage the choice to ascend is as ridiculous as turning back from Awakening. Yes, Ascension is our goal, but we all have ulterior motivations for what we do.
I, for one, want to save the world. Ah, lookit that. I did.
Consider cellular mitosis. One cell, bound by a simple series of rules and stocked with the standard mitochondrial and nucleic inventory, gets a chemical programming burst to divide. Every part of the cell splits itself down the center and shoves off the extra half. Where there was one, now there are two. Imagine if you will, that upon sitting my keister upon the dial of infinity and taking a gander at the potential of this place, I am stretched along the pathway of forever and twisted into its eternal loop. Infinity is a dizzying prospect, defined solely by its inability to end. So other than the fact my correspondence senses are doing the wiggy, the boundaries of Else are beginning to slide and blur. I am every direction and any direction and all the spaces in between. And then, I begin to divide.
I did not stop.
The great thing about Time is that it orders the infinite into a linear pattern so it can be perceived. Obligingly, the denizens of reality fill time up with their moments; all their observations and experiences, their ripple effects and chaotic outcomes; their secrets, sighs, moments of birth and death and every millisecond along their way from one to the other. The finite populates the infinite infinitely.
Just like me.
I can touch every moment, sift it through my fingers and roll it over my tongue. As I stretch within the infinite, perforated into limitless Elses, I soak up the collective moments of this reality and know how precious each one is. If I stayed here, if I truly obliterated my definition, burst the walls of each cell, I could become each moment and keep it safe forever.
I don’t. Yet.
I spent an eternity or two pulling all my spatial bits back together, remembering who Else was, which way time worked, that kind of stuff. And that’s when I found out the frickin’ tower had collapsed reality and left us all drifting around. I wasn’t too upset by it, considering once you pull yourself through an infinite loop-de-loop and back again, you may as well be a master at it. I did have a plan, though when Monk-head showed up and started in on the whole “Emma, I am your destiny” schtick, I had to think of a better one. To save the patterns of reality from being rewritten, we had to destroy it.
And that’s how I brought about the Age of Destruction and jump-started my Ascension.
I know you all want to know what it was like and how I got there, why I went and why I turned back. I hate to pull a Mr. Spock on you, but it’s hard to relate when you don’t have similar experiences to draw from. And while I may have turned back from my Ascension, I am not the same Else I was before. I’m not sure I can really plug in to what that Else was thinking when she Ascended. Because I am what came back, not what left.
But since Dr. Kitner looks like he’s about to pop a vein, I’ll do my best to describe it for you.
So there I am on the lawn at Mobius, on my cell phone conferenced to Frank and Daniel, mind-latched to Wong, chewing over details with Coriolus, Knick-Knack and whatever that Man-in-Black’s name was, brainstorming for all I’m worth over how to save Terminus by detaching it from the rest of the world. It comes up that if we toss the entire island into the umbra, after a while everyone will turn into spirits. Something clicks when I hear that, and starts an off-track thought process.
It goes something like this. If you spend too long in the umbra, you forget you were ever anything other than a part of the umbra and you fade off into spiritual obscurity. If we uproot the city and throw it across the veil, everything will fade and be lost. And this prickles a very new and painful understanding of mine that we’ve crossed into a new age and can’t connect to the one before. All my yesterdays are gone. I remember them, but my memory will fade, just as humanity will fade into spirit. This really pisses me off, because not more than a few minutes before the end of the age, I was every single fucking moment that had ever existed.
Aliester, who was on the porch chain-smoking while this was happening, tells me that I started to spark and resonate at some strange frequencies before it happened. I imagine the fireworks were beginning here in the thought-process.
I make the jump to understand I can still be every moment in time for Terminus. If I perforate and dissolve into time, I can anchor this realm into it’s memories and keep it from ever losing identity and cohesion in the umbra. And I realized I could do it because the reality of being alive verses being a spirit is all in your mind and your perception of your world.
I will be your yesterdays because they are yours and mine.
And I was.
Thing is, and I have no idea how this came to mind considering I was ascending and as such a bit distracted, I wasn’t done having tomorrows yet. Yes, I could be Terminus’ anchor and salvation, which I really didn’t mind being. Time is so beautiful when it laps away at the shorelines of your existence and draws away particles of you like crystalline sand. But if I become yesterday, I would lose my tomorrows.
I would never know what it was like to be a mother or what kind of father Frank is going to be. I would never know my daughter, or whether she will Awaken or be called by Gaia to a greater role. I would never get to see how Daniel’s ancient avatar and Emma’s newly created one will evolve as their understanding of reality and love does. I won’t get to see what Rusty creates in an age designed for destruction. I won’t get to hear how Wong adapts to transcending the barrier of existence and enlightenment. I won’t get to taunt Ruth or Anarax anymore, or show other mages their path to Ascension.
I’ll never get to change again.
I turned back, if not for the simple fact that time is a terrible thing to waste.
I know you’re going to have words with me about this, Pax. But, come on. Ascension is different for every mage by dint of the fact that every mage is different. It’s a very personal experience and choice. To deny a mage the choice to ascend is as ridiculous as turning back from Awakening. Yes, Ascension is our goal, but we all have ulterior motivations for what we do.
I, for one, want to save the world. Ah, lookit that. I did.