“Come down here,” Marcus beckoned.
The Fabla obeyed.
When the Fabla returned to the two mortals, Marcus swung with a right hook, sending his fist into the fuzz. The Fabla naturally did not evade as Marcus connected. His whole body flew right through as he plopped belly down onto the cushioning soil.
A calm complacency, a sort of pacification where one struggled to leave the comfort of their futon on a chilly winter morning, hoping to stay for just ten more minutes, made Marcus slacken. Ten more minutes. Just a few more minutes. A few more minutes. So warm. So soft. But he was not happy. It became meaningless all the same. Floating in the darkness, this was the immortality he had dearly sought. Far away from everything, alone in the emptiness, nothing could touch him. Neither cold nor warm, neither suffering or indulging, neither yin nor yang, Marcus had let go of those friends in his heart. Was this beyond human?
On the other end, the Fabla momentarily assumed the silhouette of Marcus. “You know, the Fablas only come into contact with each other when we amalgamate.”
“Amalgamate?” BB asked.
“Universality dictates impermanence. Despite referring to ourselves as immortal in the sense of Nirvana, the universe which holds this concept will inevitably perish. We happen to be the same. At some point, our bodies malfunction. To preserve, we fuse with others to make anew.”
“Your kind is condemned to extinction?”
“Well, yes.”
Marcus pushed himself up, everything quivering from exhaustion. The Fabla expressed, “Thank you. I now understand.”
BB asked, “It was that easy?”
Marcus acknowledged, “Absolutely absurd.”
The Fabla gestured to the environment with its hands before reverting back to its original form. “Traces of Light can help one another understand each other for a bit. They are modicums of an individual’s truth. The Light of Unbounded Fervor can help unify strangers across the cosmos. Like the one each of you found, they are self-evident. Nirvana is a collection of Enlightenment. It isn’t the least bit astounding that Marcus and I instantly understood in that brief exchange.”
BB recalled the brazier of Light in the zone of disconnect.
Marcus seemed to read BB’s mind. “The Light from the brazier we gathered around would have been useless for understanding the Fablas. They are different from all of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“See for yourself.”
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BB violently whipped one of its appendages at the Fabla but missed. The Fabla, having understood at a subconscious level, dodged BB. Although the Fabla felt angry from BB’s act of aggression, it reasoned that it would have done the exact same if their roles were reversed.
It was Marcus’ turn to laugh. “Do you mind if I expose all the shenanigans the Fablas have been up to?”
The Fabla welcomed, “Not at all.”
BB humbly listened. Marcus narrated with clarity and love, as if he were talking not only to Emily and to the late Samuel, but to all those who were or could have been even if he had let go:
“Once upon a time there was a curious group of organisms known as the Fablas. They lived in their own world, and they lived peacefully. Being a place where there was never a lack of resources, they thrived in harmony. The Fablas, with much time to spare and a characteristic disposition independent of emotions, were naturally talented in divining the secrets of the universe which they inhabited.
They began with their own world and their own kind. From extensive study through introspection and correspondence with each other and their local environment, they quickly attained Enlightenment. To them, Enlightenment was maturation as to humans, adulthood. With Enlightenment for all, they constructed sanctuaries known as Nirvana which held these manifestations of their Enlightenment, nothing more as a form of energy.
Having achieved Nirvana, they seem to have reached their final goal as a species. So, built upon the premise of searching for the truth, the Enlightenment which they possess, they decided to look elsewhere. But where else to look than the deep expanse of space past their own?
They studied some more and discovered possibilities incomprehensible at initial glance. These possibilities were not limited to intelligent life forms foreign to them, but perhaps life outside their own peaked their interest the most.
To study these new forms of life, ideal samples would be best. Ideal, in this context, would be outliers. And in the context of humans among other creatures such as BB who experience emotions, individuals who possessed the strongest emotions were best.
In order to achieve this, they composed a series of tests which tested different aspects. These tests came in the form of places and things familiar to the intelligent life forms in question. Seeing that they had already constructed a Field Translator which had the ability to manipulate energy into any form, E=mc2 makes it such that the Fablas can reconstruct any environment they want by converting pure energy into physical matter. The Fablas, in this sense, were like immortal deities with unimaginable power.
Through the use of wormholes, they could send these tests through while also providing a gateway to their own world. For humans and others, when these tests appeared, we dubbed them the anomaly, for a lack of better understanding. But the humans and others were not alone in this regard. The Fabla, operating from their own framework, made this portal under the assumption that those who seeked to venture through it had the means to do so and were curious truth seekers as well.
A middle ground must be reached. Luckily for the Fablas, other forms of intelligent life possessed curiosity alongside emotions. So, even if the Light of Unbounded Fervor seemed to be a tool for some, for others, it seemed like a puzzle they wanted to solve simply because it was interesting. Those who saw it that way, while enduring the numerous tests, were the outliers the Fablas needed.
By then, the Fablas and the individuals they warmly invited were holding a friendly conversation, hoping to understand one another and their separate worlds. A world where change is constant due to scars in our genetics, a reminder of the fierce competition prompting continuous evolution in the past to the unstoppable flow of time. A world where everything remained constant because there was never a need for change.
To this end, new knowledge under the aura of Enlightenment had been produced between the intercourse of phanerons, of subjective realities clashing with one another. Though it was a foregone conclusion, obscured by the phaneron itself, that had led one to the other to begin with.”