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More than anything, I needed to know how long I’d been in this state, but there were so many other questions I had, many of which I couldn’t verbalize given the limits of my language.

I would start by figuring out what I was before, and I needed to mentally draft a blueprint to get to that answer as quickly and efficiently as possible. This was a necessary domino which needed to fall and eventually that would unveil a path forward.

My past was the key to my future.

The truth was, something about my natural state felt off to me.

Furthermore… natural state? Was this even natural? The fact that I was so intellectually feeble I couldn’t even manage to measure time until recently was also concerning…and even that, I winced… was due to a costly charity.

I scoffed at myself sadly.

I thought back onto Mister excitable with a small pang of guilt. That energetic, anxious mass had almost been completely absorbed by now. It was off-putting the way he was gone but still buried within myself. It was the only solution I could think of at the time, and after all… I suppose he was part of me to begin with?

But was I destined to become a graveyard for the most treasured parts of myself? Fuck that, there had to be a better way.

I’d gotten used to festering in my own confusion and ignorance… but that didn’t mean I enjoyed it.

My network ached with annoyance.

To start… The way I enforced an induction into myself had been instinctual. It’s just that it seemed the longer and harder I focused on things the more aggravated I was becoming… and the more I thought about my mechanism of absorption, the more it felt like I was going about things in the wrong way.

I was limiting myself in my ignorance and that had to stop.

…And secondarily… the absorption felt like innately knowing the answer to a difficult mathematical equation while not understanding how to prove your work. The answer was helpful in the short term but I knew as soon as something unexpected was thrown into that equation I’d be fucked. Until I knew for certain the mechanism by which I survived within this void, I’d be vulnerable.

“Worse than vulnerable” I hummed in a dull tone “ I could be a danger to everything around me and not even know it.” Now that was a terrifying thought. It was one thing to put yourself into the path of danger. It was quite another to drag others into it.

Yes… Ignorance was one thing, but knowing I was ignorant and doing nothing? Willful ignorance? That was folly.

Time to make a battle plan.

[https://i.imgur.com/5jOyBwC.png]

Making it a battleplan, it seemed… took me longer than I’d have liked. Luckily the aggravation, low-grade anger, and a sliver of curiosity fueled the planning process.

Also, with time as an ally my perception slowed to a crawl.

The decreased tempo of time was useful… specifically when meticulously planning something or examining my options. To be fair, I didn’t know if time itself slowed down or just my perception, but it did make detail oriented tasks far easier to cope with.

It had been a week since I decided to push my boundaries and all of the preparations were soon to be completed. In that week I’d gone over the situation in all its detail. Top to bottom and tendril to core, I was both intellectually and emotionally ready.

I had also spent time on background processes. Extending my reach into the firmest portions of the void while retracting my weakest connections closer to my core. I didn’t understand the exact mechanics behind why this worked, but it made it easier to focus… and the plan required perfect… unwavering, focus.

The plan was simple. Simple but risky.

There had been moments within my pre-awareness, half-sentient state where I’d examine large swaths of the network. During those times I’d notice discomfort, like I was being spread too thin. Strangely however, I would be able to trace back tendrils to their starting position in some cases. In others, I would be able to correctly ascertain their trajectory and even how parts of the void would react to my presence.

… the important part of that was the fact my network wasn’t physically present in either case. At one point I was guessing with perfect accuracy what would occur in a timeframe I hadn’t inhabited yet. In another… I had a perfect memory of things I hadn’t even been sentient for.

This meant nothing to me at the time, but with the concept of time running through me a lot had begun to make sense.

I called this, temporal translocation or… foresight, if you wanted to be spooky about it.

It didn’t just revolve around foretelling events that hadn’t occurred yet however, so foresight was a bit of a misnomer. That’s why I preferred the term temporal translocation. Eh… I’d come up with a different name for it eventually.

It was a rusty ability… a skill that I wasn’t even practiced in enough to gain one of those strange pop-ups explaining it.

Oh Speaking of which, now that my inner communication was clarified, my memory was also improved by the unfinished temporal ability. Although it was imperfect, I did remember a few moments where I’d seen some more of those odd windows.

They hadn’t been flashy enough for me to file the memory away in the moment, but I could recall them now.

During the Mister Excitable debacle I now remembered seeing those tinier windows and some detached aquamarine text appearing softly, then dissipating. They seemed to symbolize the gain of some sort of experience. A visual representation of gaining knowledge or a linear progression on some arbitrary journey.

When the experience had trickled into me it felt warm and cool at the same time… like a deep-seated thirst was being quenched.

Anyways… All of that told me a few important things and led me to an (admittedly shaky) conclusion.

I could already foresee several seconds of temporal space and going backwards was far easier. I was able to retrace my position within the void vividly, with scary accuracy. The margin for error was virtually nonexistent and I was able to see years into the time before my own sentience.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

I rolled some strange visuals over in my mind… a portion of myself was mentioning something about taking a polaroid in the womb. I didn’t understand the relevance or what a ‘womb’ was… but that's one of the things this exercise was meant to uncover.

The unpolished ability wasn’t just limited to my network either. Impressively, it included everything within sensory range of my ‘knowing’.

So if everything went well, the plan was to plunge into the depths of the past.

I didn’t know what this would do and I did have my reservations. I’d just begun to understand what time was and now I was fucking with it. The reason for this thorough fucking of time wasn’t recreational. It was due to the fact that in all cases where anything related to temporal expansion had been concerned, it had broadened my clarity of thought.

… and that was indispensable.

I wasn’t nearly intelligent enough to foresee the implications of what I was about to do, but I had precious few other options. I mean, what the hell else was I supposed to do? I could keep stumbling in the dark or I could use the tools afforded to me to illuminate a new path. Hopefully… a better path.

What I was hoping for was that I’d gain some answers to my most pertinent questions. I was blind until recently in many ways.

What was I? What am I… and what the hell am I capable of for starters. If I could answer those questions, then maybe I could figure out what the hell my purpose was in all of this.

So with all of that in mind I set this plan in motion.

With an intent and purpose I was until recently bereft of, I focused long and hard on the spindly network of ’knowing’.

It had spread long and far from the densest part of myself. How many years had I been seeping into the void surrounding me? It felt as if I was suddenly being hollowed out with hunger.

“Let’s do this…” I chimed, as I dug my proverbial heels in and narrowed my gaze.

Humming in a slowly oscillating pitch, I firmly exuded a vibration from my core into the distant tips of my network.

… Reaching out, I focused my attention broadly upon every portion of the ‘knowing’, slowly but consistently tightening that gaze.

> Domain Expanded… XP gained

At first, aside from the strange experience… nothing came of the stringent focus I was exacting on my network.

Temporal expansion was wholly different from material expansion. Normally it felt as if I were overtaking and consuming the void surrounding my comfortable network. It was give and take… a type of conversion. I’d exert pressure and will. It would give me the very flesh of the void. It was symbiotic.

Expansion when temporally enacted however… fought me for every inch.

Normally I’d sought the path of least resistance. Now however, with my entire network shuddering and every cell and sinew of my network straining, the exact opposite was true. I was seeking the sturdiest walls and darkest corners.

“Break… Just fucking break damn you…”

The void slid over my mass like stationary fabric creating friction as a form swam beneath it. It wasn’t long before that cloth was taut and restrictive. I felt as if I expanded further it would certainly tear… so I continued expanding. Not up or down, nor east or west. I expanded in an unmistakably taboo direction, divorced from reality.

Uncomfortable… was an understatement. It wasn’t the cloth that tore, it was myself. Like I was being stretched too thin and too far, far too fast… yet I persisted.

It wasn’t just my mass which was expanding either… new concepts and ideas rushed into me, making my consciousness ache.

Analogies came rushing through the less guarded portions of my network from some disparate plain, desperate to be translated. That wild-eyed foreign vernacular surged and sang, melding itself within the ‘knowing’. Those analogies, many of which I didn’t understand, were equating the sensations currently echoing through those pathways, to gleefully plunging your arms into a bath of liquid nitrogen.

Snaps and snarls of something angry flowed like water over my network. It shuddered and cracked like… electricity?

KhrrrRRCRzZzzz!...

I leaned into it… welcomed it.

In that moment I was both in pain and at the height of pleasure… in rebellion and servitude with myself and the void around me.

For just a moment. I was everything.

I had never attempted to be everywhere all at once… which was, in a way, what I was trying to do. In fact I hadn’t attempted this for a few reasons. Firstly, being fully mindful of every cell within oneself is like attempting to focus on every grain of sand in a desert.

Secondarily, and certainly not the least of my concerns with doing this is that it was, as feared… beyond excruciating. I didn’t doubt that liquid nitrogen analogy now… whatever it was, the tone of it was unpleasant and this… fuck this was unpleasant. The whiplash of experiences and the dichotomy of sensation was too much. I was going to break…

“Wait. Electricity and… a desert…?”

I quizzically tilted my network while gritting my now strained vibrations.

The way I was thinking had become less foggy even at the outset of this attempt. I could feel certain knowledge being retaken. It was being sifted slowly into my mind like sand in an hourglass being shunted unnaturally upward.

Time was the measurement of the rate of decay. It was order to the innately disorderly. It was a measure of matter and perception alike and was being made to materially manifest itself now... and it… it was beginning to reverse?

“If I could just…” My vibrations strained “...graaaasp the… FUCKING TAIL OF THIS THING!!!”

LORE OF THE FALLEN UNLOCKED!

“HoLy FuUuCkK!!” I felt something become ensnared by my network… It wasn’t a part of the ‘Knowing’ but it was at least for the moment Taaamed….ish?

An image flashed through my network of the face of some creature locked in a battle against g-force, its lips and cheeks wildly flapping against the torque of being hurtled forward.

That… wasn’t too far from reality… and If I didn’t know better, it felt as if I was strapped naked inside a wind tunnel full of razor wire and angry geese. The sheer pressure exerted over my network was intense. I was expanding so quickly now that everything seemed as if it was still.

I tore a fraction of my concentration away from the task at hand to look over the pop-up. It took a moment for the Full description to populate my field of vision, but I hungrily scanned over it.

DESCRIPTION!

Lore of the Fallen is a Chronomantic ability! Yes, that means time magic! Aren’t you impressed?

…Well don’t be! Cavemen feared thunder like those at the peak of human civilization feared free healthcare! The point is, scientific progress looks just like magic to morons. So don’t be a caveman about this!

I froze up… my proverbial lips flapping in the cosmic currents of time and space as I hurtled into the unknown. Did… the pop-ups develop a weird personality or was I just finally perceiving the full nuance of it’s communication?

BINGO. BANGO. BUCKO!

I could almost feel the cosmic winds whip around me in commiseration, signaling a solidarity of sorts. You know what? Fuck it.

I was awash, both senseless and overstimulated in a sea of nothingness. COOL.

The closest thing to an actual god I was aware of had a sarcastic attitude with a touch of a snarky demeanor to boot? AWESOME.

I simply. DID. NOT. GIVE… a single fuck anymore.

I had no more fucks a give.

Behold my land of fucks, for it is barren…

lol