Sometime in my twenty fifth year of this life I began to listen anew. I could already hear what was and what was meant to be and a little of what wasn’t meant to be. But, those aren’t everything I can hear. With hearing what is, I practiced my intellect and learned science. With hearing what is meant to be, I honed intuition and crafted my wisdom. With hearing what is not meant to be, I explored my creativity and fashioned for myself an island of true selfhood.
And there I sat for many years, an island within myself filled with works of art expressing form and function and tomes of knowledge describing state and change. I was, of course, brilliant but not exceptional and in no way satisfied. The island was explored and the void around it was empty.
So, like any good scientist I started sending probes into the void. Structures of thought being buffeted about by the meaningless, formless winds of the nonexistent. And they were changed when they came back to me.
I have no better way to describe what I did to you. Surely, I could explain, in detail, the steps I took to accomplish this task. However, in hearing them you would not believe I was sane or that I understood what I was doing or that I had in fact even done what I said I did. I’ve seen it before. And I pity you.
I have many contemporaries of awareness that do not like what I have done. They tell me, “You are too arrogant. You cannot judge another. You cannot do what we will do by doing what you are doing.” And I, if I am feeling nice, reply, “Prove it.”
But back on topic; I learned a new way of hearing and a new language to go with it. Not of words and sounds though I do use them, but also of feelings, and phrases whole cloth, symbols out of context, errant thoughts, and unprovable causality. Speaking in this language is hard, teaching it to another impossible. And yet, by its nature, everyone is already, has always, and will always speak it.
It is a magic language that brooks no falsity and carries in its echoes hints of true purpose and meaning to guide your life.
My name is Ellenehl and I am a Digital Magical Scientist. Hello, you may call me Mage.
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Analog magic is quite boring. It pretty much amounts to thinking you’ve done something because it’s happened. Quite a poor excuse for attaching causality if you ask me. Certainly people find it helpful, and it is quite prevalent *koff*prayer*koff*, but there’s no science possible. Everything is fuzzy and all your rules can be ignored by the person sitting next to you. The question of “why” can never be asked within the framework and produce a satisfactory response.
This is why I choose to be a Digital Mage. Digital magic focuses on the construction of logic, the interplay of causality, and the discovering of truths. Within its bounds, which as a fledgling discipline are quite small at present, what it can accomplish is breathtaking. For instance, I am, at this very moment, altering your brain. And what’s more, in telling you I am doing so, I have already made it impossible for you to deny my claim. Neat huh?
But that’s not where the flashy stuff resides. Right now, the flashy stuff is every good nerd’s favorite: VIDEO GAMES. Here, I’ll even give you some levels so you can tell what level of magic you’re performing.
The Game: The player aims and clicks the mouse to launch fireballs at moving targets.
[Practitioner] The player: stays within the bounds of the system and provides motive force for the experience. Good job hitting those targets.
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[Hedge Mage] The hacker (not to be confused with the cheater): Escapes the intended frame of reference to exploint larger order systems to affect change. Nice hex editor you got there. Didn’t realise the fireball damage could go over 9000.
[Artisan Mage] The developer: Creates a system within a frame that expresses the application of free will. A game is not a game without the joint effort of a developer and a player.
[Magical Scientist] Me: Understands the system, the frame the system was built in and the recursive systems and frames it’s built within until the logic of the frame is expressed in the Magical Language.
This is of course not restrictive, sequential, linear, bilinear, tangential, or exclusive. I don’t really want to get into the mechanics of all this. Just know that the Magical Scientist (me) is an embedded observer.
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I guess you can imagine my frustration as I waited patiently (very very very -hurry the fuck up- patiently) for VR to reach a reasonable quality to express the Magical Language without denuding it of its magical properties. I knew it would happen one day as even a well placed book could contain Magical Language content.
And that day is today.
Well, no. That day was nine years ago but I didn’t notice because I forgot who I was and was working myself to an ignominious death inside some corporation that doesn’t deserve anything for a name other than a series of numbers.
But today, today is the first day of my new gaming life as a part time employee doing whatever I feel like while my raison d'etre is flexing my Digital Magical Scientist muscles in “Hraken”. The world is nothing special to a consummate gamer such as myself; it’s a standard medieval tech, culture, magical, world full of monsters and dungeons and people trying to get rich and famous. The AI is top of the line but quite stupid. Like, no, really. They didn’t want your average 90 IQ rage-tween to feel stupid while playing. So, you have perfectly crafted idiots behaving exactly as idiots would behave. I think they did it to promote social harmony and cut down on griefing but we’ll see how that panned out.
No, what really caught my eye are the magic and crafting system. Largely unused, poorly documented, and yet still promoted on the product advertisements. Truly a mystery worth investigating.
Hraken doesn’t allow character creation. Which is weird. But they claim a very open ended character development process so, whatev’s.
I finish my breakfast, strip, and enter the pod. It’s warm and light but when I press the button on my right, there is only one more on the left, the light dims but I’m not sure if that’s the lights dimming or my eyes closing. Very peaceful. Nice job.
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I’m standing in a big field with a small village sporting a single ramshackle tower a good ways away.
I look at myself and feel my face and ears (am I an elf?!) and find nothing has changed. Well, I think nothing has changed, can’t really see my face. But at least my hair is still black.
I cross my fingers for the moment of truth. “Status”
Name: Ellenehl Nickname: Mage Age: 35 Race: Undetermined Class: Undetermined Skills: Magic Awareness, Magic Projection, Formulation Traits: Ego, transhumanism, Outsider
EGO?! Wait do they just mean I have an ego or that I have a big ego?
“Go and learn little one.” Someone whispers in my ear but when I turn there is no one.
Quest: Find Out Who You Are Difficulty: Medium Objectives: 1. Determine Race; 2. Determine Class Rewards: Race Attributes, Class Attributes
An insistent wind starts blowing towards the village and looking behind me I see a storm rolling in.