Hale stood behind Aila , holding her, while they watched the skyline. She was rather content being held by him, watching the mortals that they stood above toil away. A slight smirk stuck to her face. There was no smile on Hale’s. His face was stained with a shadow, his amethyst eyes pierced through the darkness. Plans were being made and things that were never going to see the light of day were about to be committed. Not even this woman’s angelic yet demonic appearance could save her.
-
Hale, sat on the roof, smoking a cigarette. The shaking in his hands slowly subsided. He looked at the keycard and the new voodoo doll in his hand and an evil smile crept onto his face.
“They think they can control me. Never. They will soon know what it means to enslave the devil.”
Hale had learned a lot from a short interrogation. He found that hidden knowledge was very useful as he could quickly parse out what was a lie and what was real. He now knew a good bit about the Crest family. To his surprise they weren’t nearly as strong or organized as he would have guessed. He was afraid that he would have to deal with multiple god realm figures. Turns out there is only one, and while there are many teams of awakened the amount of resonance realm people can not be any more than 30. Apparently the first hurdle down the path to godhood is one of the hardest ones. But, Hale also learned a few things about reaching that stage. It’s about understanding your concept in a more complex way, as well as living out your life in a way that aligns with the concept.
Hale took his time tidying up the roof, his eyes burning with a violet light. His concept seemed to enjoy this sort of thing. Hale tried to look and feel more things about his concept at this time since he was resonating with it. The thing he couldn’t figure out was whether it was alive or not. Does it actually like and dislike things or does it react to things in a similar way to a computer program where it may seem to be thinking but it is in fact simply following the code, or in this case, the laws of the universe. Does the electron like the proton or is it as simple as the law of attraction?
Hale found no answer. No matter how close he felt it seemed to always be hidden in fog. It seemed he truly was only at the beginning of the path. He could only sigh, he had made so much advancement and yet nothing really changed. Although he did find that he had more conceptual energy, which meant he could grab bigger stars. But, even the biggest ones he could handle were miniscule compared to some of the others.
With the roof cleared he made his way down to a restricted section using the keycard he took from the now non existent Aila. Was it death? Hale was unconvinced but it didn’t make it any easier to do.
After ducking a few people he made it down a hallway and into the server room. Jackpot. Maybe they forgot but Hale’s major was computer science. And this is where his plans would come to fruition. These “gods”, absorbed in their own world, forgot what their entire lifestyle was based on: 21st century technology.
Hale spent the rest of the night typing away in a command prompt on the small monitor attached to the server. At least the server had a monitor, some didn’t, and servers were not really Hale’s forte. He never did get to finish school, on account of his awakening. But, they had subpar technical support plus he was on the server directly which simplified things greatly.
Soon he had made the changes he wanted to make and wrote a few ‘simple’ lines of code and spiked it into the server. How upset was Hale? He would never forget the pain he endured as he slowly died for hours, that sort of excruciating pain would stay with him forever. He would never forgive the organization that led it to happen, the Crest family. No, the whole world. If he couldn’t rule over it, he would destroy it. Was this something new? Had it been within Hale the whole time and society suppressed it, or was this his concept manifesting itself within him? For now Hale cared very little.
In the end he took a deep breath, used his concept to find the secret of where people were located and skillfully avoided everyone until he was back in his room. Things went better than he hoped, and now it was just a waiting game.
His plan was good but he felt that everything would come undone at any moment, leaving him stressing immensely for the next two days. The only good thing to come of this was his ever stronger connection he had with his concept, on account of secret keeping, but Hale was oblivious to this sort of change.
He spent those two days in his minimalist room reading. Plato. He was always a person that liked reading a lot, that is until he started reading plato. It was horribly boring, in the past he also never made it through The Iliad, but this was worse. But he persisted, he was always a philosophical person but reading the ideas from 2000 years ago was hard, they were so obviously wrong, but the main reason was the tip given about reading Plato. The second day went like that until he was reading a story written by Plato called Phaedo, and Hale’s entire understanding of the universe was once again widened.
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“But the region above the heaven was never worthily sung by any earthly poet, nor will it ever be. It is, however, as I shall tell; for I must dare to speak the truth, especially as truth is my theme. For the colorless, formless, and intangible truly existing essence, with which all true knowledge is concerned, holds this region and is visible only to the mind, the pilot of the soul.”
It all made sense, another dimension that held every concept that existed in the world. By someone’s mind aligning with a concept they have the chance to form a connection to it and as it strengthens the amount of radiation infused into the person increases. This connection must also be what keeps someone from spiraling out of control, since he had previously heard that losing your connection to your concept turned you into a CIP.
Normal folk and philosophers of the mortals might take this as nothing more than an odd idea from a long dead man who had many ideas but Hale knew differently. He even suspected that it’s possible that Plato was awakened and tried to subtly tell the rest of humanity how the world really works. Maybe that pact of separation is much older than Hale gave it credit for. Actually, ruminating on this Hale saw it possible that other historic figures were also awakened, like prophets of religions and other figures that seemed to do the impossible like Alexander the Great.
After those many revelations he took out his Crest issued smartphone and started browsing the internet about more of this theory from Plato. After a few wikipedia articles and a philosophy forum he found that it was officially called “The Theory of Forms” and in this theory there was another space above heaven where every concept that exists exists in its purest form. A chair? Yep, that existed and not only did it exist but it was made out of the essence of what a chair is. What is a chair? A seat with four legs, sure, but what about an office chair? Or a bean bag chair? Or what about a coincidentally formed rock that was perfect for sitting on, is that a chair? That common denominator, that thing that can’t be pointed out between things of the same concept but that we all intrinsically know, that was the concept of a chair.
In this theory there were three layers: the material objects called particulars, which are flawed and imperfect. Then there were lower forms, these would include all the concepts Hale had seen up to now, including his own. Then, the higher forms were things like beauty, life, death, mathematics, chaos, order, and the like. These seemed to be overarching in nature, all the lower forms deriving from them. And finally, there was the highest, “The Good”. He couldn’t find anyone go into detail about what this was so Hale couldn’t make any guesses on the matter so he decided not to dwell on that part.
Hale didn’t know what to make of all this information, it was still slightly absurd to him, but given everything he had come to experience up to that point it made sense.
And like that two days passed and the day of his reckoning was soon approaching. His phone buzzed and called him to one of the scout unit rooms. A smile was hanging on his face as his eyes burned a bright amethyst shade. If anyone else was there they would notice a fog seeping out of his eyes. He tucked the pistol he had kept from his first excursion into a warped world into his waistband and covered it with his shirt. As he opened the door to his room that powerful display of violet and fog disappeared in an instant, like it never happened in the first place.
He made his way to the room where he saw two familiar faces, that being Rose Harsh and Shira Crest. One was the most powerful person in the scout division and the other was the final clone of Aila Crest, although he couldn’t be sure if there was a true Aila out there somewhere. He had thought about it earlier, if he could clone himself he would send them out and hide himself away from harm while they do the rest, if her thoughts were like his than the real Aila might not even be within the territory of the Crest family.
Either way, two large players were here in this team and on his way he saw that all the other teams were getting ready as well. This was going to be a large excursion, although only Hale knew the truth behind it all.
After all the different squads got in Rose turned to the group, “Alright, listen up. We got the signal of a new warped world, we all know what that means. The problem is that this is a strong one, probably made by two peak gods. To not make mistakes like last time we’re sending a good portion of our forces. The Crest family has complete ownership of the warped world since it is within our territory, but be on guard for the Shea family nonetheless. You all know what to do. The coordinates are on your phones.”
Everyone began to move out in many directions when Shira’s voice cut through the clatter, “Well, I guess we’re gonna be on a team together Hale. Since I have you here, do you know where my sister is? Nobody has seen her in two days. She likes to run off sometimes.”
“Oh, hey Shira, I thought all identical twins were supposed to be telepathic.” Hale said with a light smile, playing his part beautifully.
Shira giggled, “No, sadly we aren’t. I’m just worried about Aila, especially since it happened right after Ava went missing. You were with her right? Do you know anything?” She said turning crestfallen.
“If I knew anything I would have told the higher ups, but I never saw her after we were split up, and that was pretty early on during our excursion into the warped world. Let’s just hope this one won’t be as bad as that one was.” Hale put on a regretful face as he said it. Lying, he noticed it became easier for him, but also harder, he had to stop his eyes from flaring a dazzling purple.