---Richard---
Zone 2 clear!
Clear description:
Your path started and stopped - meandered and at times you appeared lost. Despite that, you continued pushing past sanity and surviving more than should be survived. You were reborn from a ball of goo. Well done! Your path is your own - don't let a single person say otherwise.
Clear stats:
Clear time 29 days. 4 hours
Dungeons Cleared: 7
Nests Cleared: 1
Monsters killed: 812
Deaths: 0
Revivals used: 1
Highest stat, Body defense
Second highest stat, Mental Power
Total stats 712
Clear state. Rank 2+
Next Tier: 17 stats to go.
Clear Rewards:
Zone Secret Discovered
+100 free stat points
Unique titles x4
+40 free stat points.
A man stepped into view as soon as Richard moved to read his clear stats in peace.
“Eyo, what the fuck.” Richard jumped then looked over. The man looked annoyingly familiar, but Richard couldn’t be fucked to remember where he’d seen the guy before.
“Message for Milord” the man spoke in a faux-posh accent waving a blue box around like he was a little street urchin bringing a letter to a eighteenth century oligarch.
Richard started and stared then laughed slightly. He’s fucking with me – I like this guy.
Picking up the box Richard squinted down at a group of messages, a smile growing on his face.
“Results just came in. Your condition is incurable. Thankfully after three full payments of 9.99c we can fix the true damage your face inflicts upon people.”
“Where do I sign?” Richard asked continuing the joke.
R blinked and pulled out a thick leaflet.
“Sign here”
“I
Accept Contract?
Yes No
Richard accepted.
“So what now?”
“Now we go over your clear rewards.” R spoke pulling out more blue boxes.
“Loot!” Richard pumped his fist.
…
“Three, questions? Sure. What is the solution to P=NP or proof of P≠NP. What is the meaning to life the universe and everything. And…what is the best way to prepare a sandwich.” Richard spoke. He couldn’t think of another big question off the top of his head.
R looked at him smiling lightly as if finally beginning to tire of the jokes.
“Are you sure those are the questions you want answered? Do you trust my honest knowledge to answer them to a degree you’d actually be satisfied?”
So. R didn’t seem flustered by Richard’s joke questions just put off by them. Were they a waste? Did Richard have anything else he wanted to ask?
Richard sighed.
Yes they were a waste but they made him feel more in control.
He should start taking this more seriously – but really were these ‘big’ questions not the best he could ask?
As if reading his mind, R answered quietly. “My personal opinion on the meaninglessness of life in comparison to a chance to learn any of the secrets of this whole project?”
Richard sighed.
Fine.
…
Richards good mood left slightly. He remembered what he had just experienced. The emotions from his discoveries. The feeling…The feeling of slipping away as his body was hacked into. G that bastard. Hadn’t waited for the anesthetic. Dick.
He’d woken up in a back ally then gone straight to the edge of the world afterwards. Richard had barely even stopped to study G’s barrier and try and imagine how something so large was built.
“In that case. What and who and why exactly are you – all one question, no breaks. I want to know if you are really a computer program running off Skynet servers on the moon or if you’re a person like G. What is the answer to the most important question you think I should ask or do not want to tell me but secretly believe I should know. And finally…what…what is magic. What is mana – is it really just randomized aether? Some doll fucked me up with a doorway and I’m kind of still weirded out by that.”
R smirked at his first question, smirked harder at the second and then visibly shrugged at the last one.
Good mix?
Good mix.
R clapped his hands twice and spoke in the darkness. “Alexa play memories one, twelve thousand and two. Then bring up a feed on contracted employee Gary.”
“Getting your selection from the quantum library. Playing memory ‘one twelve thous–‘”
“Alexa stop” R called out. “Play ‘first contact glamour remix’”
Alexa’s smooth voice rang out in the darkness once again. Flickering, the dark surroundings were suddenly full of stars. Far away a speck grew and floated into view.
R gestured to a sofa that had suddenly appeared and lounged on the side. Richard was finally starting to feel out ‘chaosed’ – he couldn’t tell what was happening anymore.
R began talking, his voice filling the surroundings like he had a secret mic on.
He probably did.
“Long Long ago in a galaxy far far away there was a society. A species of creatures – you’d call them aliens…lets see. You know you are the only humans in the universe, but life is pretty rampant on the scale of infinity. You call similar shaped creatures ‘humanoid’ and they would call you ‘elvenoid’ or ‘kin shaped’ or ‘monooid’ roughly translated past cultural barriers. Language is full of self-imposed verbiage and most species are self centered as a default.
“Either way. Culturally this species called themselves seekers. Culturally you would call them greys.”
The spaceship grew closer and part of it filmed to transparency.
Inside the hull of the shit, several blue green and purple tinged grey aliens walked around. They ran hands across countless buttons and spoke in low hums interspersed with colored flashes from their antenna – the only colour on their wrinkled ET looking asses.
Very alien. Good special effects. 8/10 production so far. Maybe laying it on a bit thick but otherwise great movie.
Slowly the ship passed by the ‘camera’ following it as it approached a deeper darkness in the expanse of space.
The ship was oblong and sleek – covered in strange wrinkles that twisted and undulated for no apparent reason as it floated through the vacuum.
“Why the ballsack ship?” Richard asked.
“Think it’s just cilia for special connections. Pretty efficient use of laws without aether if I’m being honest. Clunky and completely inefficient from an aether standpoint but fun as an oddity.
“Anyways. These seekers…they achieved perhaps more without aether than any other species had before or have since.”
The ship twisted with the grace of a fish despite being nearly a kilometer long. A blue haze of strange thrusters flickered to life along both sides and then faded once more as if filling the surroundings with water the ship could ‘swim’ through. The ship dropped and then shot forward as it accelerated faster and faster blurring slightly in the ‘recording’. There was a incredibly sped up period of action as the ship entered orbit above the darkness – speeding up the closer it moved.
Beams of light suddenly shot from the ship – lasers creating nets and twisting scans that looked almost alive as they fell and were ripped away by the black hole below. Light nets seemed to be gathering something invisible – like some deep sea dive where the sub collected samples of dust.
The ship accelerated more and more to stay in orbit – dropping lower than Richard imagined a real space ship could go – and yet somehow it stayed in position. The ship was not sucked into the gravity well as it accelerated faster and faster. It wasn’t ripped to shreds by space dust accelerating downwards.
“…special effects version is more exciting – you wouldn’t be able to see any of these scans but, besides that enhancement and some clipping of boring scenes, this really happened.”
R spoke gesturing towards the scene about them.
Richard had missed a bit of R’s explanation. Didn’t seem he had missed anything important.
“This is the point in history where they first discovered the system. The first discoverers of the system can’t necessarily be called the creators…but they are – among other things – the group that had the most impact on its development”
Loud blaring of alarms rang out and grey aliens began running about the ship.
A flicker of special effects and suddenly Richard could see blue boxes sitting in front of each alien – incomprehensible letters and twisting coloured shapes in the aliens language describing what was happening to each of them.
The ship began to fall downwards, systems failing as the greys panicked and the system initialized.
Below them, deep in the darkness of the black hole something shifted.
An undulation of darker black – a ripple of nothing on nothing.
And then, pushing up out of the nothing, something.
A single giant tentacle – far larger than anything could possibly be – lifted up out of the event horizon.
The size was impossible – it broke Richards sense of scale for a tentacle that large had to be thicker than planets and the way it moved…
Impossible.
The fact of matter exiting a black hole from which nothing could escape was another impossibility – a fact of the story being shown Richard couldn’t accept.
He couldn’t suspend his disbelief and imagine this scene was real. It couldn’t be real. It was some bad CGI or something.
The tentacle reached out and gently pushed the ship a ‘short’ distance away from the black hole before retreating down into the event horizon once more.
“Isn’t my main body a looker?” Richard casually dropped offering a bowl of popcorn that had mysteriously appeared.
Richard stared across at the man lounging on the couch beside him.
He opened his mouth.
“You’re fucking with me again aren’t you?” Richard asked.
R turned and suddenly straightened up. His face grew serious, and his eyes squinted.
“I never lie in manner of contracts and truth. It might be more accurate to say that’s my host or my father or a form I’ve taken…” The body beside Richard melted slightly turning waxy and clear as it shifted and reformed into a teenager.
Richard barely blinked. He already knew R was a shapeshifter and that level of change wasn’t too unbelievable. Not like the massive tentacle.
“Still, you asked ‘what’ I am and that glimpse is as true an answer as any. Is there truer glimpses? Views of my body only possible through channels of madness or metaphor? There could be… depending on who does the asking or to which version of me they speak. That form is realer than most however and doesn’t come with strings or danger.”
In the background, the panicked greys regained control of their ship. They then returned to a planet completely coated in infrastructure. The humanoid aliens collected samples of aether from the hull of their ship and probed the system with state of the art devices.
All of this ran in the background while R spoke completely disregarding the ‘video’ he had started to play earlier.
“Aether…aether has always existed. It’s a fundamental part of our reality. A fundamental energy or force or collection of possibility.” R began to lecture.
I mean Richard wasn’t sure he believed that but okay.
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“I can see your skeptisim from here. Aether really feels tacked on doesn’t it? It feels like Reality+? You’ve existed your whole life without aether and every physical process you know of can be done without aether so it feels strange and foreign right? It doesn’t seem like a fundamental force? Feels artificial almost?”
Richard nodded. At least R was self aware.
“The thing about aether that’s different from say the strong force or light or gravity is in its continuity. Aether sticks to aether and drags the whole when you try to move part of it. That field is how most Esper abilities function – the “fabric” as some like to call it spreading an effect similar to ink in water. Its also heavily tied into the point of establishing a new planet and how you might gain power over the planets systems once the field becomes uncontested.” R canceled the movie and brought up an image of a planet surrounded by a rippling almost invisible aura.
R seemed to be getting distracted. Still tangets were fun as long as they didn’t cut into Richards allowed answers.
“Continuing our story. What this property means is that while aether covered the entire existence at the beginning…it soon was pulled away. Black holes are the only important point on this timescale – the collection of that much mass and gravity pulls the ‘fabric’ of aether slowing dragging it and all the aether its attached to towards itself. Opposing black holes rip the fabric down the middle and drag their bounty into themselves muching and crunching the light years worth of fabric down into a contained area.”
Okay…that…strangely checked out? So aether only exists in black holes.
“Most of the more intelligent sapients have decided that aether created life before it was dragged and consumed by the cosmos. I will neither confirm nor deny that but…its true that aether interfaces with life differently from all else.”
…wait did R trick Richard into not asking about the meaning to life? It sounded like aether might be involved and might not be.
Was R a space monster created by aether inside a black hole? He hadn’t outright confirmed that but it sounded like he’d just confirmed that…
“It also means the contained area inside of most black holes is fundamentally different from the rest of reality. There are rules that exist beyond the veil of the event horizon as atoms blend into a solid mass. Creations that can only exist in such a realm. Creations that can exist anywhere but can only be made in such an area. This is what I’m deeming you need to understand the most. Your second question.
“What is a nest? A dungeon? An anchor? At its most fundamental all three of these are nearly the same. Stability of elements past a certain point breaks down. I believe your planet synthesized the element with atomic number 118? Theres some ‘proofs’ showing that elements past the 7th orbital – unsepttrium – are impossible and its true that most superheavy elements are unstable even inside aether fields…but the truth is different deep in black holes. Unnovem or the 9th orbital group contains many elements that are physically impossible to create outside of a black hole but can exist outside them if you ignore how hard it is to extract those elements from the gravity well.
“They are also heavy. Heavy enough to pin down an aether field with only a few atoms – denser fields need heavier anchors to hold them in place and the anchors need maintenance and interaction with life through monsters and similar…
“But that’s not what I’m bringing this up to explain to you. Your stats and most of your skill seeds are also superdense elements. At that period level groups of elements start showing off new properties. The section of the extended period table that contains ‘stat elements’ for example, contains several materials heavy enough to drag the surrounding aether into you while also giving great boons. There are dozens of elements that could be embedded in your body and haven’t been…their fields could be manipulated in plenty of ways you haven’t imagined yet but that’s for later.
“For now the three stats you’ve been given are the most efficient and useful in an unmodified aethersphere. If you experiment and change the properties of your personal split off aethersphere other elements might suddenly become useful – their effects more efficient or unique depending on their environment. If you let the competing group modify the planets aethersphere instead, many stable bits of technology you take for granted might fail. Many elements are known through past experiments but some are not and experimenting with how they interact with your reality is a fun little side project I have. Each new world gets at least one trial element to see how it functions – Your lucky number is 578 by the way. I’ve seeded a half a dozen atoms of that in your world already…and embedded one in you near the start to kick off your ‘chaos’ affinity. Who knows what it can really do? I certainly can’t and that’s exciting.
“Anyways, your stats will function outside of an aethersphere even if prolonged exposure to a low ‘rank’ environment would weaken them…but some of these potential stats would be completely useless outside of a proper environment. Keep that in mind. The defaults are the best for the default world. An agelessness stat that effects how long you can live in a planet that supports, that is not as useful if you wish to spread and colonize more of your solar system and surrounding cosmos. It also has less combat capability which lowers the chance of a settlement from succeeding as all want to live longer even at the expense of strength” R finished off.
So…his answer to Richards question was to explain that nests and dungeons and stats were all because of esoteric elements from the depths of black holes?
Honestly…Richard was surprisingly okay with that being his free question. It created so many connections in his mind he suddenly felt like he had a better shot of manipulating his stats and skills now that he knew a bit more of what he was looking for.
Those blurry clumps in his microscopes – were they just esoteric atoms big enough they started affecting the way his microscopes had been measuring and ‘seeing’ the microscopic areas?
“Finally, its toeing the line a bit for questions but as a bit of a related freebie.” R began again.
The screen shifted to a black hole spreading out into the entire shape was the size of a globe and suddenly shifted to be less black.
There was a incredibly incredibly big structure suddenly visible.
First there was the ‘supports’. Long long rings of blurry looking metal. Nine of them crossing each other in 81 separate points.
Each ‘ring’ in scale was probably about a million kilometers in diameter – as thick as a sun or medium start. Well past the ‘impossible’ category they were so massive it was hard to picture and they looked fake in the small model form
They wrapped around the entire black hole, somehow strong enough to avoid being pulled down into nothing.
On each ‘node’ of crossing rings there was a tower. A familiar looking tower – giant gravity wells using aether to drop mass down endlessly through state shifting. The towers extracted the movement as energy ‘collecting gravity’ in infinite generators each powered by the black hole beneath them.
Energy moved through each ring like a torrent of nuclear fire – each ring was like an insulated wire holding power condensed to the point of being hotter than most stars.
“The truth of the system, the truth of the effects you’ve seen. It turns out with infinite energy nearly anything is possible including many things that are not. This model right here is the base system. The hardware. The power plant and super computer. The stat and node harvesting. Everything is contained here. The system node you’ve been given for your planet connects to this base and extracts the resources it collects based upon the terms of our legal agreement between natural law and synthetic. Think of it like a super radioactive wormhole from the base system to the location of your system node. The system node purifies stabilizes and decontaminates the resources it receives and then distributes it all in the method its allowed to distribute it in.
“After that point, it distributes these resources based on rules. Right now those rules are set to some defaults about awarding innovation and effort but if you settle your world you’ll have access to the source and can modify that a bit.
“You can change the rules of the system how you see fit – keep in mind our agreements are in place for world stability reasons and certain hardcoded fairness rules are kept in place. If you abuse the base rules too much a patch might have to be put in place in retaliation. You need to let the system seed your world with anchors to keep your aethersphere from stretching out and eventually being ripped into your nearest black hole. That means nests and dungeons will spawn no matter what, but you can decide how they spawn locking most of them to a single dangerous ‘badlands’ or spreading them more evenly. You can even lock them entirely in dungeons instead of nests but in that case the rules for dugeons might shift a bit till dungeons ‘break’ and spew monsters out if they are un delved for too long.
“It's going to be hard to cheat and try and funnel all the resources to yourself becoming the emperor of your world…but you could change the rules to help path that road to tyranny if you so desire. The system is impartial as long as you keep those base rules from being unmodified and don’t abuse it too much.” R finished.
Richard stared at the system deep in thought.
This was…big enough and yet grounded enough he honestly understood what was happening for the first time.
Asking R to answer as he thought was best was a great plan.
“Now small break from the answers to show some related information I’m supposed to give out anyways. Let's see a catalogue. This group has turned their solar system into a Dyson sphere. This group has colonized multiple star systems with FTL travel – they figured out how to stretch lines of aether across space, linking all their planets into the same connected field and using that connected property to bend Laws a bit. This group has transcended their flesh, allowing every person who exists to inhabit a replaceable ‘avatar’. If they die they simply imprint their memories and personality upon a new avatar – bit similar to the resurrection trialled for you in the training zones but more robust and with less restrictions.” R flipped through a curated catalogue of ‘success stories’. Some of them were much larger in scope than Richard had imagined was possible…and yet he’d reached a point of strange stuff exhaustion. After seeing the infrastructure for the system – those sun sized rings the size of a galaxy – most of the infrastructure these aliens had set up looked simple in comparison.
Richard stared at different planets.
He thought about the rules and effects of the world.
Most of all, a burning opinion grew.
King of the world? Control over everyone? Richard imaged himself implementing a rule that made everyone shit their pants if they were rude to a waiter. Richard…did not trust himself with that much power. Richard would totally abuse the fuck out of that power if he got his grubby little mits on it. He also didn’t trust a single person who’d been sent here with him.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Maybe he’d race to implement a few rules…but damn that would be a temptation to break everything. How do you put checks in to prevent yourself from abusing the power long enough to prevent others from abusing it?
Fuck. This wasn’t something he could ignore. He quite liked the ‘settings’ that were in place for the system already even if the NPC situation was fucked.
People were shit. Every single one of them. Richard loved humans but…they sucked. He could admit that.
He couldn’t trust anyone – he wouldn’t let a single human abuse this power. Not even himself!
…
“Honestly you can do whatever you want with your world once you've claimed it. You can do whatever you want with your surrounding space as well…the only thing you don't have control over is going back to earth or connecting with your benefactors or other civilizations without both reaching a higher rank and their consent” R spoke as they walked through darkness.
Why?
“Physically you are millions of light years away from the nearest colonized system. Millions of light years away from earth. Even with the fastest FTL spaceships that function outside of aether highways in the most advanced current species…well you'd never reach each other.” R seemed to read his mind as they walked.
Richard stared. Okay. G had already sort of told him that – they had their minds transported. Information had been sent and information could travel faster than light in a way matter and stuff could not…
“Well… Another point to keep in mind is your ‘isekai’ as the kids are calling it. Let's just say it took a few hundred years to finish setting this all up and your brains been on ice as far as you could understand. G as you already found out needed some time to bootstrap Even if you could go back to that planet who knows if there are even humans left on it. Quite fond of nukes your species is. I gave them 50 years based on the political climate LRAS scans showed while scouting potential colonizers.”
Richard felt…off.
He'd made up his mind to leave. To never come back. He'd accepted this.
And yet somehow knowing they are a lifetime away made it real in a way nothing else had.
No regrets.
But small sorrow?
“How do I know you are telling the truth?” Richard asked. That was the crux of the matter. Did he just trust this sketchy bloke? Just believe everything without questioning anything? The NPCs…they felt like a lie. R acted like a lawyer a lot and lawyers lied out their ass.
“You know, I’m hurt you'd suggest I lie. Everything breaks down if you can't trust my truths you know? Nothing matters anymore if my promises aren’t kept.
“But…questioning things you think are true is a good aether sided trait. You don’t have to accept my words. They are honest but biased after all…learn the truth yourself. Verify.
“All you have to know is your planet is rank 4 ish on the scheme of things. As the aether increases you will have steadily increasing threats to maintain your rank 4ish state. And a calamity in one years time at the break of a rank barrier before your world is uplifted to rank 5 and the anchors are upgraded in difficulty to pin a denser hunk of the aethersphere down to your planet.
“That cycle of growing stronger and more dangerous as the amount of aether you siphon increases – it's going to repeat until you either figure out how to break the cycle or fail. The only visible way of stopping it is to wipe out the creatures of chaos who’s aether is random and abilities unstable. Only when you kill the sources of ‘mana’ and prevent their forceful corruption of the aethersphere will the danger pass. Corruption is useful in small amounts – their inclusion facilitates the ranking up of the pioneered world but turns into a liability as the rank gets higher than you can handle.
“Or don’t! See if you can survive the calamities to come! Break the system! As long as you don’t damage the [system] you can do whatever you want! I’ll be entertained all the same.
“We’re here.” R stopped suddenly.
They were still in darkness lit by illusionary lines of light.
Richard wanted to make a funny comment about this section of darkness being the same as everything else but everything sounded lame when he tried to imagine actually speaking it.
Where was here?
“Your final question is about what magic is. The truth is different from the Truth but because of your idea of letting me figure out how to answer your question the way I saw fit I was able to…bypass my own rules a bit. Its not important – I’ll tell you the truth of magic and then we can move to a description of the more confusing Truth of things before I send you on your way.” R raised a hand and in the center of it a flame began to burn growing larger and beginning to hover directly above his palm.
“The way skills function has some leeway and works the same between aether and mana from a certain perspective.
“This is fire, a skill to create fire could perhaps be producing a fuel from the body and sparking it into flame. Sweat or similar manipulated into the chemical reaction you see before you. Perhaps the bonds between carbon dioxide are being split a momentary fuel being ripped out of the surroundings and an espers breath only to be burned back into carbon dioxide a moment later. Perhaps the fire is simply a concentrated source of heat aether forcefully turning a single point to plasma and igniting the surroundings with radiation. Maybe the skill projects a field that turns the ignition point of nitrogen into room temperature and lets it chemically react with oxygen creating NO3 instead of soot and feeding the reaction with energy. Maybe the fire doesn’t actually exist. Maybe the skill is one of the mind – a way of affecting all who see this empty spot and tricking them into believing I’ve truly created fire. Maybe its an illusion of fire – light warped into a flame while the true ‘attack’ is contained in a dissolution field. Lots and lots of skills are like this – there’s many ways it could actually ‘work’ and the truth of how it works isn’t necessary to actually use it.
“Now, if this skill is created by aether – if you’ve broken into an aether side and study an unbroken skill like this or study a natural grown aether skill you’ll very quickly be able to discover how exactly the skill works. No matter what, there’s a reason for things – most skills work in the simplest way you can imagine but a few outliers have strange methods of achieving what they do.
“From an aether perspective no matter what you’ll be able to figure out how it works. That’s a Truth. A lot of replication is not easy without massive amounts of information, but the Truth is all natural skills can be replicated outside of a natural body and organic bodies are often not the best hosts for the strongest of skills. Replicating skills and actually understanding how they actually work lets you optimize them. Say this skill worked based on carbon dioxide conversion and burning as I offered near the start. Knowing that and either combining it with canisters of carbon dioxide or skills that manipulate the carbon dioxide in the air to compress it…well that’s a synergy that can increase efficiency and strength.” R looked into the fire for a moment before twirling his hand and turning it into a rabbit made of flames.
“The truth is were this skill mana or chaotic aether it would be much the same. It could be something with air, a strange reaction. A cognitive hole that fills itself into the minds of observers – all those and more. The main difference is that due to being on a different ‘random’ ‘band’ far away from the standardized line of aether…no matter what the truth is you won’t be able to prove it. You can guess right but even with a nearly identical magical skill nothing you can do will confirm how it works 100%. Not even those who use magic will understand how their skills truly work – part of their advancement envolves tricking themselves into tricking the world and learning their skills are ‘fake’ can break weaker mages. If you explain how their skill actually works it might ruin them to the point of it no longer working. The way their corrupted aether interfaces with their body requires Faith divorced from Fact.
“Magic is the unknown, mana is the Unknown. That’s the only difference and that’s a truth. But…the Truth of things is a bit stranger and the Truth is my bargained boon for you.
“What is the difference between Truth, Fact, Faith, Law, Unknown? Known?”
“Truth is what is Known to be correct. Every Truth I have told you is Known and aether is built on the Known. No Lies are allowed in Truth. Truth does not care for Faith for Truth is built on Facts.
“Faith is what is believed to be correct. It is simpler than truth as it does not require Fact.
“Fact is information that is unchanging unquestionably correct. The truths I’ve told you are based in facts that have not become Fact yet. For something to be Fact there can be no chance of it being anything else. And that is why the truth of things can change.
“For as the Unknown meets Truth, Facts are revealed and become Known” R smiled a bit at his somewhat cryptic message and then looked about.
“I’ve told you the truth but not the Truth. Mana being chaotic aether is true from an aether standpoint and will become True the moment the world is settled fully on the aether side. That Truth breaks if the world is not settled. It breaks if Unknown information alters what Facts are in place. In this exciting initial settlement period there are very very few Facts as many things can change. Only through settling and forcing facts into being intolerable and stable can Truth be learned.” R looked about and then spun in place before staring straight at Richard a firm look upon his face.
“I’m going to speak of Faith now and reveal the truth of your unstable world” R grimaced slightly as if coming up against a wall.
Richard half expected him to cough blood with how dramatic the creature was being.
“In this unstable world of Known and Unknown…there are competing Truths. Competing Completely contradictory Truths. Truth cannot contradict and thus Truth has become Truth and Faith in disguise. Your world had the concept of Schrodinger’s box did it not? It’s a common experiment with different cultural significance in different worlds. Most don’t name it after the guy who came up with the theory and most don’t involve a living pet but the important points are the same.
“Right now your entire world is Schrodinger’s box. The truth I’ve told you about aether…the truth I’ve told others of mana. Until this world is settled and you ‘open the box’ to confirm things...well it's impossible to say which of these Truths is the correct one. All I can say is the world is not big enough for both Truths to coexist. Maybe if you expand the Unknown you can find a new truth where your box opens up to two cats one alive and one dead. Maybe you can discover secrets from the Unknown before you vanquish it. Maybe you accept the Unknown casting away the comfort of Truth to live in blissful ignorant Faith. That…that is up to you to decide. Now go. Go and decide your place in the world by creating a world to be your place.”
…
Well alright then. R went full philosopher on Richard at the end there. Half considering the man was high on psychedelics and half trying to figure out what exactly had been revealed to him Richard stepped forward into nothing and disappeared.
R stood for a moment longer and then melted.
Up on the super computer on the moon a thread was Freed. Memory was flushed with the garbage collector and a new instance of R opened the door to the next human to cross the training area.
Paradoxes were painful things to acknowledge.