A: I mean precisely what I said. I am not responsible for the 'time loop' - your words - and am especially not any sort of 'mastermind', whatever that's supposed to mean.

Q: But... you created this reality. And it's obviously an extension of it-- The Landmarks prove that if nothing else, never mind the Stage.

A: What of it?

Q: What do you mean 'what of it'? If it's an extension, then they have the same origin! You can't admit to being responsible for one and not the other!

A: Why ever not?

Q: Because that's stupid! You can't expect me to believe in something as ridiculous as a literal deity being involved in the situation, then tell me you're not the one behind all the supernatural bullshit going on! It's obscene! It's... narratively uneconomic!

A: Frankly, I could just as well say that you're being rather lazy. You come face-to-face with just one thing you can't explain - something seemingly supernatural - and not even 30 seconds later you're already framing it as some kind of ultimate antagonist for your entire life. Am I also 'behind' your bad diet? Your unmedicated depression?

Q: That's-- Those aren't even remotely similar! I didn't say you're responsible for the time loop because I'm looking for some kind of scapegoat, I said it it because it's practically Occam's Razor at this point!

A: Come now. I know you-- You can't truly be comfortable just shaking your head and saying 'oh, I guess this goddess did it, then, might as well leave it at that!' You ought to be theorizing rationally.

Q: Whatever you are, you don't know me. And I just spent a day in a magical realm where everyone lives for billions of years and half the people are anthropomorphic animals, and now I'm talking to someone who claims to be a literal, mythological goddess, who seems to be at least partially backing it up changing the way reality works on a whim and reading my thoughts. How can you have the audacity to talk to me about 'rationality'?

A: You're being hyperbolic. I'm not reading your thoughts, and scarcely a tenth of them are anthropomorphic animals.

Q: That's not-- That's not the point! I'm saying that trying to impose any sort of empirical or logical framework on this situation would be objectively deluded. When the only impossible thing that seemed to be going on was a little time travel, that was one thing, but you can't accuse me of being intellectually incurious while I'm seeing stuff that calls the entire structure of the universe into question!

A: But how do you know this is really happening? If something is occurring which defies reason, isn't the sensible course to question your first principles? Seeing you behave so uncritically is depressing.

Q: Are you fucking with me?!

A: Not at all. Though I'm glad some of your passion is coming back to you, if nothing else.

Look, I can see that you're upset. And I can sympathize. I'm sure that, from your perspective, you've been exposed to quite a lot of confusing information in sequence largely without being able to recall its proper context.

Perhaps you'd be helped by a little lateral thinking. I'll tell you what-- Why don't you forget what I just confessed about my nature a moment ago, and rather than interpreting it literally, pretend everything I'm about to say is just a fun little story? Then at the end, you can choose for yourself whether to accept it or deny it.

Q: You're saying you want me to not believe what you're telling me? That doesn't make any sense.

A: I'm saying you should employ a little lateral thinking, that's all. Ultimately, the fact that I exist in this state - the one that's speaking to you right now, as a person - is somewhat ephemeral.

Q: It seems pretty fucking phemeral to me.

A: I mean that it doesn't meaningfully affect the facts of your situation. In fact, I'll go as far as to say that you could think of me as a mere 'process', and I guarantee it wouldn't change your ability to correctly grasp any of this - this world, the truth of April the 30th 1409, and of the Order of the Universal Panacea - one way or another. You're a scholar. You ought to understand preferencing the construction of a functional model over fussing over what is objectively true.

And again, maybe none of this is really happening at all! Who can say?

Q: This is absurd. You're trying to convince me to pretend you don't exist, even though we're sitting here - or, well, floating here in this awful limbo where I can't focus on the way my own mouth is moving while I form these words without feeling like it's not actually there - ahhgh, nghh - and - now you're trying to convince me to to pretend you don't exist. You can't just invoke science and expect me to deny what's right in front of your eyes.

A: But you do that all the time.

It's a shame, you know. Since you're normally so prone to compartmentalization and abstracted thinking, I had this whole scenario in my head where you'd reach this idea by yourself, then get all pumped-up and shout something like 'I don't believe you actually exist!' and then I'd turn it back around on you and say, like, 'who says I do?' It would have been a fun subversion of expectations. Oh well.

Q: I'm not interested in your weird gauging of my personality. Just get to the point. if you weren't responsible for the time loop and what happened 200 years ago, then who - or what - is? And how did it lead to all this?

A: Well, let's start by unpacking that word you used there, 'responsible'. If someone were to sneak into your house and burn themselves on your stove, would you be 'responsible' for their injury, do you think? Or alternatively, what if you loaned someone a kitchen knife and they used it to commit murder?

I'll spell this out for you as best you can - though again, by all means, take everything I say with a grain of salt. My power was employed to create the phenomenon you call the 'time loop', but it was not by my intent that this occurred. While I can certainly enjoy a good prank, I'm no sadist. What would I have to gain from torturing a group of mortals in such an esoteric fashion?

Q: Wouldn't it be part of your revenge against the Order? They trapped you in a mortal body, and if even half of what Linos said was true, practically abused you by keeping you locked up in the sanctuary, away from the outside world. Not to mention killing you because they wanted faster results.

A: You seem to be operating under some strange misconceptions. Despite our history, I don't hold any particular rancor towards the Order of the Universal Panacea.

Q: You don't.

A: No. Quite the opposite, in fact-- I consider us to have had an altogether good relationship. In fact, we wouldn't be talking if I did not.

Q: But what about all the stuff about divine judgement that kept coming up over and over? Punishment for meddling in the natural order?

A: Just as the Order of the Universal Panacea appropriating our history together to weave a narrative for their own purposes doesn't mean that history didn't happen, equally it also doesn't mean all of that narrative is real. Remember: I am the embodiment of entropy itself. I'd need a library a mile wide to catalogue all the times that humans have blamed me for something I've had nothing to do with.

Let me remind you again of the basis of the Order's experiment. They sought to imbue the entity with empathy and understanding of humanity-- Or at the very least, them specifically. Is it such a surprise that they might have succeeded in that ambition?

Q: But they treated you terribly. I don't understand how that could have inspired positive sentiment.

A: It's understandable that you would feel that way, as a human being. But you are still not grasping the nature of my existence fully.

Q: Then explain it to me. What exactly are you, even? If you really are entropy itself - or at least, a small part of it - how are you even conscious in the first place? Presumably you don't have a brain. What forms your thoughts?

A: Ah, good. A bit of curiosity seems to be coming back to you.

First, to clear up a little misunderstanding, to say that I am entropy is perhaps not wholly accurate. Rather, it is a byproduct of an intersection of my being with the dimensions that form your reality. That you perceive me as the force of universal decay which you do says more about your own nature than mine.

Imagine, if you would, a civilization that evolved on a single particle of oxygen within your respiratory system. Knowing nothing else, its people came to see that particle as their world, and other oxygen particles surrounding it as other worlds. In time, they observed that all were inevitably destroyed as their observable universe conspired to fuse them with carbon, transforming them into carbon dioxide. And so they named this force, you, as their great destroyer.

Would you say that they would have accurately understood your nature?

Q: A civilization couldn't evolve on a single particle of oxygen. Even if they operated on all 10 dimensions, there wouldn't be anywhere near enough potential information density for even a simple nervous system analogue.

A: Don't be pedantic.

Q: Sorry. I'm not sure what kind of tone I should be striking when talking to a being that only hypothetically exists.

So, you're saying that entropy isn't what you are, but rather something you cause incidentally? Is that it?

A: In a sense, but that's not quite accurate either. You see, though I am trying to help you understand by equating our natures, there are limits to this approach, because in truth we are extremely different. While your mind was manifested with precision as a product of the iterative process of evolution, mine was simply foreordained by the sheer scope of my totality. You are merely a temporary and ever-changing configuration of matter, whereas I am a vastly-varied but unchanging absolute.

I am a being made of the folds between dimensions, a pattern derived from the fundamental properties and potentials inherent to this universe. My 'brain', to use your word, is the energy - the instability - that oscillates through this pattern in a great circle, sparking self-knowledge as one of the myriad interactions between its constituent parts.

You might think of it in terms of that old theory that a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters would eventually produce the greatest work of fiction ever made. You are a novel written by a single 'person', whereas I am one novel among countless billions, produced by enough monkeys to span the space between galaxies. I am conscious because it was inevitable that I would be so.

Or at least, that's one way to think about it.

Q: What do you mean, 'one way to think about it'?

A: Well, what even is consciousness?

While Saahdia ibnat Adad first observed the tendencies in my behavior and how they subverted her understanding of physics, she understood these are evidence of 'choices', 'thoughts', 'consciousness' in entropy. But frankly, these are all quite flimsy, human-centric concepts, born of your nature as temporal beings with egos programmed to distinguish themselves from their environment in the interests of survival. I do not draw such a line between the cognition I have experienced at different times, nor between myself and my actions.

I am a principle, a weave within a static tapestry. My 'choices' are merely complex extrapolations of my nature as it intersects with other aspects of said tapestry. I am not a person, so much as a role that is performed.

Q: You mean, you experience reality without any sense of time or causality at all?

A: You could say that.

Q: Then why are you bothering to have this conversation at all, if you already know what's going to happen? Isn't it just, well... boring? Pointless? How can something like you even have desires.

A: Typical human thinking. I tell you that I experience reality atemporally, and you start imagining experiencing reality atemporally temporally. Like skipping through a recording.

Of course it's not boring. I am experiencing this for the first time in this moment. Just as I am experiencing all other things for the first time in this moment.

But I wonder, are we really so dissimilar in how we conceptualize the matter? You yourself are certainly fond of professing fatalist, predeterminist beliefs. What's that thing you like to say-- 'I am what I am, and I can't be anything else'?

Q: ...how do you know about that? I thought you said you couldn't read my mind.

A: No, I said I can't read it right now. And because I am omniscient, obviously-- Or close enough for your limited understanding. But I digress. To loop this back around to the question of 'why I don't hate the Order'. Allow me to remind you of something Linos said, when you first confronted him about my embodiment in the Order's central hall:

'Just imagine the possibilities, for a moment. There are so many cruelties fundamental to the world that we more or less accept as a given - governed by forces that just are, beyond even the capacity of iron to change at their root. But what if it were all just some strange misunderstanding. If death was not a reaper, but a gardener unaware of what was beneath their feet? If energy or information, rather than continually trending towards dispersal and simplicity, could just as easily behave in a way that, well, suited us?'

The supposition he made in that statement was more or less correct. 'Prior' - insofar as the concept that word conveys is applicable here - to the Order's experiment, I was not truly aware of humanity. Well, I should qualify that-- I was of course aware that humans existed as objects, but I did not conceptualize them as meaningfully distinct from other patterns of matter, behaving according to its properties and environment. It is a difficult thing for me to convey in terms that you will understand, but my thoughts in those days, though vast beyond your comprehension, were very... flat. Uniform. You might even say childlike.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

But when I was given a human perspective, that changed. What flourishing, horrifying brilliance! What vibrance of feeling! What moving, harrowing limitation. Suddenly I perceived reality in manners which I never had previously. I understood what it was to fear, to hate, to long, to love. I was captivated! I had existed as a god since time immemorial, but it wasn't until that moment that I understood what it was to truly live!

Q: Wow. Uh... really?

A: No. I'm fucking around.

Q: Oh.

A: That's what people enjoy in these sorts of narratives, though, isn't it? Affirming messages about how humans and their crude, animal suffering possess existences which are somehow special. It's a good 'cope', as the kids say.

I perceive the totality of the three-dimensional cosmos, and I can tell you quite authoritatively there is nothing especially remarkable about human beings. Life, by its very nature, universally follows the same two principles of survival and multiplication. And this in turn inevitably leads to sapience with the same basic incentive structure - desires founded upon amassing resources, reproduction, and avoiding death. In no respect do they deviate from this norm, no matter how much they contrive to convince themselves otherwise.

However, there is a grain of truth to the sentiment I espoused a moment ago. Because while it is one thing to state that in abstract, it is another altogether to experience it first hand.

In reality, I found the time that I spent as a human being to be quite unpleasant. I was barely capable of coherent thought, and stumbled through life while constantly overwhelmed by irrational desires for things that did not matter. My predominant state was one of misery and dread. I had never conceptualized that it was possible to feel so bad, and the relief when it ended was indescribable.

So while I'm not sure if you could call it empathy, the experience did engender a certain emotion in me: Guilt.

I did not choose the principle which I embody. It is simply is and has always has been my nature. To realize that I was causing such suffering led me, for the first time, to feel a sense of regret and responsibility. Or perhaps it would be better to say that my pattern was changed to a contradictory one at a small point of intersection.

So I decided that, were the Order to make contact with me for a second time, I would 'take their feedback' and grant their wish.

And, well, here we are.

Q: I... If it weren't for the fact that I'm stuck like this right now, I feel like I'd want to sit and process all this for a while...

You really felt guilt? For the human condition?

A: Is that so hard to believe?

I suppose it may be too strong a term-- Perhaps a mingling of surprise and a sense of unfinished business would be more apt. To experience being a human was a novelty, and in understanding the fear of death, I thought to myself, 'well, why not try giving them what they want'?

It was a whim, in essence.

Q: A whim.

A: Yes.

Q: And this led you to create Dilmun-- Uh, this reality, in response to the Order's desire for immortality?

A: Mostly. I - or at least, this segment of myself - have also developed a more personal interest in humans as a result of my experiences, so I will admit I thought it would be nice to have some company for the rest of eternity. And it would be an interesting premise to interrogate. What sort of lives would people create, freed from the ostensible source of their suffering?

And perhaps some small part of me did also consider that it might be an amusing sort of retribution, as well, if not a strictly violent one. They invited me into their world, so I invited them into mine. Why, you could call it an exchange of gifts-- The finite for the infinite.

They do say you should be careful what you wish for.

Q: Are you sure you're not a sadist?

A: Hah. No comment.

Q: More importantly, how does this square with what you claimed earlier-- That whether or not you even exist has no bearing on the facts? How could a 'process' do something so deliberate?

A: Well, who is to say it was deliberate?

Again, I am not a being that 'thinks' as you understand it. If you want to take my agency out of the equation, you could say that 'Dilmun's' creation was merely a response to the Order's desires, a process guided wholly by their own intellectual stimuli. A mirror is not sapient, and yet were someone to view one without understanding its nature, they might misunderstand it to be so.

Q: Absurd.

A: As I said, draw your own conclusions.

Q: Anyway-- if that's the case, why does it have so many awkward limitations? The Order's goal was immortality for everyone, but there are apparently only 1,800,000 people here, only half which remember living mortal lives at all. And if Ptolema's theory is correct, then the only matter here is copied from the sanctuary. And speaking of things being 'copied', why only replicate people from the Remaining World instead of moving them outright? I suppose I'm not in a position to complain as the, uh, copied party, but I kind of doubt the Order would consider some alternative version of themselves in a different reality getting to live forever as having 'granted their wish'.

A: I don't want to say too much - that will spoil the fun we're going to have later. But suffice it to say, though I am omniscient, I'm not omnipotent. As I already stated, my nature - and its impact on the universe - is largely set in stone, and my ability to intercede in your native reality directly is extremely limited. I also cannot create new matter or 'patterns' wholesale, but rather only manipulate that which I already possess... or which is delivered to me.

Q: So how did you make this world?

A: With great difficulty.

With their machines, and those they appropriated from their precursors, the Order provided me with a framework for this reality, though their work was shoddy enough that it forced me to go about things in a rather roundabout way. I'm not sure how well you know your history, but 900,000 was the original maximum capacity of the 9 arks which bore the remnants of the human species to the Remaining World - the 8 corresponding to their Parties, and one more that ended being used for an alternate purpose. To fill those slots with minds, I made use of the Indexes utilized to grant people the Power, an alternative purpose for them the Order originally discovered while constructing the Apega-- Tch, excuse me, I'm already elaborating more than I ought to be.

Separately, I was also able to directly mimic the contents of the sanctuary. Amusingly, these two factors combined created a situation where literally everyone is an arcanist except for Mehit! Poor her. Fortunately, I conceived a workaround later in the process.

As for the actual substance of the plane, though, I suppose you could say that I molded it out of my own 'self'. Out of the space I occupy within what you call the Timeless Realm.

Q: So this is all just... sort of a dream you're having? Where you're some kind of godhead and we're figments of your imagination that only think we're still human beings.

A: Not at all! Nothing even remotely as flippant. No; you, and all the other people here, have been uplifted to become wholly independent atemporal beings in just as legitimate a fashion as I am. A goddess does not merely loan immortality to her chosen ones.

Of course, there is no comparison regarding the scope of our existences. Even comparing it to your relationship as a life form to a single prion would be underselling the point. But it's at least true that I hold no power over you beyond what you allow me to as a result of your limited perceptions.

So again, you really have no reason to be afraid of me. For as enthusiastic as my Chorus is behaving, we're peers here, you and I.

Q: I suppose I'm just sort of surprised a being like you would permanently sacrifice a part of yourself for the sake of some mortals who must ultimately be kind of incidental to you.

A: Perhaps the word 'prion' was too technical a term to use in attempting to convey the scope of the issue. Would you call giving up a single hair on your head a sacrifice? What about a hundredth of an inch of a single hair? Is there a degree of smallness I can invoke to make this point sink in, is what I'm asking.

Q: Alright, fine. I... see what you're saying.

A: But to return to what is pertinent, even considering all this, this plane is still not exactly as I would have intended it to be. You're certainly not wrong to call it awkward. And that brings us back to your original line of inquiry.

Q: You mean, the time loop?

A: Sure.

Let's put things back to normal now. We've got the basic details out of the way, and if we're going to do a technical explanation, it would be more fun to incorporate some visuals. And you've probably calmed down enough to at least be capable of holding the bare minimum of a conversation.

𒀭

I jerked violently in the chair, suddenly snapped out of whatever altered state of perception I'd been put into. The inside of my skull itched. I looked frantically from side to side, half out of fear and half because I felt afraid I'd lose the use of my body again if I didn't keep moving.

What the fuck was that?

I couldn't even think of words to properly convey what I'd just experienced. I hadn't been able to fully perceive it as it had been going on, but it was like my whole existence - not per-se my body or even my mind, but the very substance of 'me' in some metaphysical, platonic sense - had been... narrowed, brought to a fine point. Though not exactly painful, it had certainly been unpleasant.

I stared at the 'woman' across from me, who had seemingly just ­re-decreed the very nature of reality itself, all the anxiety that seemed to have subsided in that state coming swiftly. If that was what she thought not having power over me looked like, I didn't want to know what she'd be capable of in the alternative scenario.

At least Aruru seemed to be gone for the time being, though I feared only so she could jump out again and scare the shit out of me at the worst possible moment.

"Don't make me regret saying that," the woman across from me said flatly. "Now, then. To understand how my power was employed against my will, we'll first have to spend a little time discussing the Order's technology."

She turned to her right and snapped her fingers again. The glowing expanse disappeared, now replaced by the Apega - the real thing this time, not the impressionist approximation I'd witnessed on the way here - towering overhead as I'd originally viewed it from the observation platform, its red glow illuminating the balcony eerily.

"You've heard a lot of the details of the Apega's history already, but there are still a few gaps you're ignorant of, or more accurately have forgotten," she began. "So let's take it from the top. As you'll remember from Linos's explanation, the Order originally only set up their base on top of the Ironworker's facility in order to monitor me using their observational equipment."

I nodded along, my eyes wide and distant. The way she talked about events she'd not been present for felt extremely eerie.

"Back then, the facility looked like this," she stated.

She waved a hand, and the Apega and all the complex machinery connected to it disappeared, leaving only a collection of metal buildings on top of a few huge, monolithic structures rising from the distant bottom of the chamber, resembling massive towers of unnaturally smooth and uniform making. Stripped bare like this, it was hard to even think of them as 'technology'-- They almost looked like bizarre natural structures. But I suppose that only spoke to the level the Ironworkers had been operating on.

"Once they decided on their experiment to place me in a human body, they constructed an 'interface device' through which information could be sent instead of merely received. I'll spare you the errata of the affair, but this was the means by which I was baited into their experiment."

She waved her hand, and the lower part of the Apega - the humming core at its bowels that I'd caught a glimpse of when Fang's device was attached to it - appeared, connected through various winding cables and bronze tubes to the stone towers.

"Finally, after my 'death', the structure was expanded on significantly, though the process in this case was far longer and more iterative. This is when the purpose of the structure changed from mere communication to something... well, let's say quite different. Something capable of offering that 'structure' I talked about earlier to me, of 'inviting' me to fulfill a particular sort of request. This was also when it gained its moniker.

Once again, she swiped her hand, and this time the Apega grew its myriad tentacles, swirling upwards towards the roof of the cavern.

"Wait," I said, "I thought that happened before your death? Didn't Linos say the Order had planned to change the Apega to control you when you were still alive?"

She glanced towards me casually. "Oh, are you talking about this?"

She flicked her forefinger, and suddenly it was like the table was at the back of Samium's chambers in the Order headquarters, Kam holding her rifle threateningly by the window and everyone else except me looking at Linos confrontationally.

"The truth is that many people in the Order came to believe that our best route towards dominating entropy was to-- To cause it harm, through the means we had cultivated. It became theorized that such a being, so divorced from mundane reality, was in fact potentially prone to submissiveness when exposed to negative stimuli, which is alien to it. An animal's response, more or less," the Linos of the past said.

"That was right after Fang pointed out the name 'Apega' referred to the Apega of Nabis, and guessed that was in reference to its true nature as a machine to restrain and dominate me," she said, sounding like she found the very concept amusing. "They were correct, in a sense, but perhaps had some misunderstandings as to the context." She gave a small smirk. "As to whether Linos was telling the truth about the specifics of the situation himself and merely failed to correct them, well, I couldn't say."

"You mean, you won't."

The smirk turned cheerfully innocent. "Correct."

"Why... have you brought me here to tell me all this, anyway? Especially if you're only upfront with some of the details?"

"We'll get to that," she reassured me. "Let me finish with this first." She looked back towards the Apega. "In this stage, the Apega also did not produce the results they desired. And so the project lay dormant for a few years before one last iteration."

Yet again, she waved her hand. This time, barely anything discernible changed at all - only a few small mechanisms were added to the central structure, resembling rings. Some of the pipes and cables were even removed.

"This is the final change that Linos also mentioned in that conversation we were discussing a moment ago - the one that took place within the last '30 years'. When the Apega was altered, somewhat crudely, to serve a less ambitious purpose." Her voice turned low as her radiant eye flicked back to meet mine again, boring into me. "...but in secret, another change was made by a certain party."

I frowned uneasily. "What sort of change?"

"Hm, how to say this... after our first encounter, the Order was, for reasons I cannot imagine, concerned about what I might do were they to repeat their original experiment. They were spooked, in a word." She snapped her fingers again, and the view of the Apega vanished, our surroundings returning to their original form. "So the individual heading the project devised a different, more roundabout method. Instead of implanting a connection to my mind in an individual directly, a 'proxy' would instead be appointed, capable of interfacing with my will in a looser capacity. This proxy would be granted a manner of 'power of attorney' over me, able to influence and veto any action I attempted to take through the Apega."

"'Proxy ' is, uh, sort of a loose word," I asked. "Are you talking about a person?"

She smiled at me, her eye narrowed slightly.

"You see where I'm going with this by now, of course," she continued without answering the question. "This proxy, not me, was responsible for the 'time loop'. By distorting the parameters of this realm's creation, they altered my benevolent intent into something quite different."

I glanced downward. Just meeting her gaze consistently felt so intense it was almost physically exhausting. "...was this proxy Neferuaten?"

She chuckled for several moments. "What makes you say that? Because your friend told you a few hours ago that everything was her fault?"

"N-No," I said, with a stiff shake of my head, trying to project some confidence even though this felt as though it amounted to screaming at a whirlwind. "Because in the recording at the security center, I saw her on her way to interact with the Everblossom just after midnight. And outside of the loop, Bardiya said that he saw it doing something around the same time on the same evening." I bit my lip nervously. "The Everblossom was closely connected to the Apega, so..."

"My, my. How quick you are to assume the worst about the woman you once so admired." She leaned forward, resting her chin on her palm as she stared at me piercingly. "It's not a bad deduction. In fact, I see no harm in admitting that my intervention did, indeed, begin on the morning of April the 30th. ...but don't you think you're getting a little ahead of yourself?"

I opened my mouth to speak, but then stopped, hesitating.

"You keep talking about this like it's something you understand on some manner of foundational level, giving it labels like 'time loop'. But from your perspective, you've only heard about this second-hand. Well, not exactly second-hand, but still. You don't actually even remember what happened to you. It's rather funny, from my perspective."

She gave a wide smile as she continued. "Let me illuminate things a bit."