Chapter 1, Take 2

              I awakened beneath an inert white sky. The light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, with no shadows to indicate time, direction, or shape. I was lying on a hard white slab, perched on a dimensionless white floor, suspended in the light-filled white void by forces unseen. I swung my lifeless legs over the edge of the slab and reached down to the white chair next to me, the heavy black of its outline almost cartoonish in its definition against the paper-like expanse. I positioned my mobility device in front of me, and, with my good hand, vaulted into the saddle. I settled myself into the seat as I adjusted the bindings that held my useless lower limbs in place, feeling the entirety of my body again, the sensation of weight no longer ending just above my pelvis. Next, I slung the brace hanging on the chairback over my right shoulder and buckled my crumpled arm into it. I felt it extend my skeletal, emaciated arm to a natural position at my side. I slipped the white kaftan over my naked form, maneuvering my braced arm through it as fluidly as my good arm. Finally, I lifted the oral prosthesis off the chair, slipped my dead tongue into the cradle sitting between the reflective silver teeth, bit my gums into the dentures, and awkwardly wriggled my limp lips into the external enclosure. It pulled my slack, drooling jaw into alignment from its crooked angle as the reflective silver device melted seamlessly into the contours of my face, appearing now as if it were only face paint. I frowned, smiled, and opened my mouth wide, revealing the metallic, monochrome interior as I stretched my restored oral muscles.

              At the far side of the platform across from my slab, positioned at the edge of the floor, a rectangular black square stood vertically in stark contrast against the tableau. I imagined myself walking, my nervous system sending unheeded commands to my legs. The Glide lifted off the ground then, a soft yellow circle glowing beneath my dangling feet. It carried me forward at the pace I told my body to walk at, the Glide intercepting the message and moving me instead. I passed through the black doorway and emerged out onto a dais. A long, wide stair led down to another floating platform, maybe a hundred or so meters wide, extending seemingly infinitely off into the distance, disappearing out of sight as it vanished into the horizon. Tall columns lined either side, holding up large gold-leafed domes, all of them inked with thick, black edges. Rows of domes extended off in either direction, another set of infinite regressions disappearing out of sight. Each space was filled front to back and side to side with desks, most of which were occupied, a quill and stacks of disheveled papers piled onto most of them.

I stepped off the dais onto the Great Stair and glided down to the Writing Floor. Upon entering the Cathedral, the sensation of universal illumination was replaced with directional light seeming to originate from overhead. Intricate, interlocking, labyrinthine patterns were carved into the white stone-like vaults and could now be seen continuing down the columns, the reliefs also leafed in gold, white light passing through the raised shapes in the ceiling as if they were stained glass windows. I willed the Glide to touch me down and move my legs instead of floating. Though sensation was restored to my paralyzed appendages, the muscles in my legs were incapable of contracting. My arm had some limited mobility from my chest and back, but it too was essentially useless, aside from some gripping functionality in my hand I could use to awkwardly hold things when I did not have my brace. The muscles in my face worked in theory, but they were malformed and never properly innervated, leaving my face lacking all but basic motor control.

The Glide walked me to the lone desk in the first row of the Floor, which was also the only desk to bear no quill or paper. It provided artificial feedback for every step I took, giving my brain the illusion that my muscles were doing the work, however, it still felt as if I were “being walked,” instead of doing the walking. I reached my right arm out and held it over the desk, the arm brace providing the same false sensations as the Glide. For the brace, however, the phenomenon was nigh indistinguishable, though I had convinced myself that I really could tell a difference in signal between my good one and the bad, while in truth I most likely could not. A golden column of light beamed out of the desk and tickled my palm with a warm, undulating sensation. In an instant, with no perception of transition, I was standing in front of my desk, like two different video clips had been butted together, the following frame a non-sequitur to the previous. My desk was a standard affair in the 478th row, a white table with a matte, yellow-gold top and legs resembling the supporting columns, complete with white patterns relieved against gold-leafed backdrops. A chair sat pushed in, though it lacked the comic book-like outlining effect like the one in my chamber. Now properly shielded from the white-blasted void, the commensurate gold and white carvings could be seen tracing their way along it. I pulled it out and sat down. I cut a stack of papers off the top of the disheveled pile to my right and set them down in front of me. When I glanced back, the pile appeared refilled, as if no paper had been removed from it. I pulled my quill closer and removed it from its font with my left hand and began reading the documents in front of me.

My next assignment would see me follow a humanoid such as myself in a remote corner of the Every. Their World Line, the chain of events that define an entire universe, has been the True Observer for long enough that it has risen to my Order’s notice. As a True Observer, it is their World Line that all other World Lines parallel, defining the True Timeline, the only World Line that will ever maintain equilibrium. Any World Line that does not eventually merge with the True Timeline will either experience heat death, burned out to Nothing by Entropy, or will be trapped in a Big Bang-Big Crunch cycle, doomed to repeat the exact same timeline over and over until Entropy consumes the Every. The True Timeline however, is infinite. It will forever outrun Entropy, the force that will eventually turn the Every, the collection of all Worlds, into Nothing, the formal concept of there being no “things” anymore, universes included.

“So, there is to be a new Dominant, then?” my Chimera, the defective embryo of my twin whom I absorbed in the womb, thought to me. It is their dead, conjoined cells that enfeeble me, however, their consciousness remained intact at birth, this broken body now housing the minds of us both.

“NORN seems to think as much,” I thought back to her. I say “her” despite them having no physical form, because I think of my Chimera as a living counterpoint to my own self-perception. A kind of self-aware Anima to my Animus, despite the metaphysical process of transcending to become a part of my Order relieving me of the concepts of sex and gender. “And it would appear the Archon agrees,” I said as I scanned the dossier.

“And how fare the Sentients of Universe C42-P69-L337?” my Chimera asked me, for she could not use my physical senses, nor could she access the thoughts in my sub-conscious or my super-ego. No, she and I could only interface at the conscious level and could only perceive each other’s internal monologues. “Read it out loud for me, if you would?”

And so I did. “World Cube C42 is still the most productive set of humanoid universes,” the brief began, “and P69 the most fruitful World Plane therein. World Line L337 has been the True Observer for over 400 giga-events, and is quickly producing a proper Nexus Outlier that is predicted to last for at least another 50-60 tera-events…” I flipped through the pages, “…yadda yadda…stuff we already know…” I flipped further. “Ah,” I stopped at a line of information I had yet to learn. “L337, codename Hope, is currently the most energy-developed World Line the Authors have observed for a humanoid Sentient thus far, having captured almost .018% of their World Line’s energy budget. A Kardashev 2a+ civilization, they have just completed their first Dyson Sphere and are on track to become the first humanoid Type 2 civilization to build a peace-time Dyson Sphere without tripping the Great Filter and destroying themselves.”

“Wow!” my Chimera thought enthusiastically. “I can’t believe the Humans finally did it. If the various humanoid-types, Cosmic Whales, and Fusion Processors were capable of coexisting, I’m sure the others would be supremely angry.”

“They may yet still be able to, you know. Just because NORN hasn’t found any YET, doesn’t mean it never WILL. Nothing in the Theory of Everything says that they cannot. The only reason the ‘Single Sentience Conjecture’ still holds is only because the World Cubes where they DO coexist always trip the Great Filter,” I replied. “AND, just because they’re the only three Sentients thus far, it doesn’t mean new Sentients won’t evolve down the line. In fact, the Prophecy of the Probable dictates that, so long as the True Timeline is theoretically infinite, there will eventually be an infinite number of Sentients cohabitating together, too.”

“Still,” my Chimera protested, “the Cosmic Whales in C940 look promising. They’re Kardashev 3b+, and all the World Lines in P1121 have achieved at least 31% free-energy capture in their universes. They may yet produce a True Observer.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “but, Cosmic Whales have NEVER produced a True Observer. Even if they do, the Archon is confident that ALL Whale timelines will eventually become Loops. The Worlds in C940 will lose that ‘+’ and equilibrate at no more than 49.9% capacity, just like all the others, just you wait. Their lifecycles are too damned long to sustain Probability. Just like Fusion Computers, they all converge on Deterministic pathways and depart from the True Timeline. Even if P1121 has a couple World Lines that are still paralleling the True Timeline, I believe the Archon when it says they will also eventually diverge, as well. Humanoids are still the only Sentient NORN has located with short enough generation cycles to fall under the jurisdiction of Chaos Theory long-term.”

“I don’t know, Fusion Computers may still yet win out. Sentient stars have the advantage of not needing Dyson Spheres or vacuum energy oceans of dead ‘dumb’ stars to up their Kardashev score, and essentially all of them are Kardashev 4c+. I mean, C1-P1-L1 has almost completely consumed it’s World Plane and may yet hit Kardashev 5 before long,” my Chimera retorted.

“I agree, Sovereign is the most advanced,” I started, “but Fusion Computers have not been able to produce a Nexus Outlier since the humanoids evolved, and their World Lines are rarely True Observers. No Nexus Outlier equals no Dominant, and no Dominant means that Sovereign can never be the True Timeline. The Archon believes that humanoids will be the ancestors of those multi-variant, co-existing Sentients, and I agree with this, also.”

“Archon, Archon, Archon,” my Chimera condescended to me. “The Archon isn’t always right, you know.”

“99.9995% accuracy is a pretty good average, though, and quite hard to dismiss,” I protested. “Enough of this, you’re side-tracking me again,” I touched my quill to a name on the paper in front of me. “Assuming Hope does produce a Nexus Outlier, and the True Timeline starts bending toward it, NORN has narrowed it down to six potential Dominant candidates.” A gold beam projected from my desk underneath the paper where my quill had touched, and several video portraits and lines of text hung as a hologram in front of my face at eye level. Still holding the quill against the paper, with my right hand, I reached out and touched one of the crisp gold figures, a warm sensation tickling the tip of my finger as I did so. “Let’s see,” I reached out again and swiped my hand through the hologram. A new figure and chunk of text appeared. I repeated it a few more times, until I had seen all the candidate’s profiles.

“So,” I thought, “it appears that all of them know each other. Hope is almost certainly in the top 1% of technologically advanced civilizations, unqualified, not ‘for humanoids,’ and was the first to discover no less than five Fundamental Truths of the Theory of Everything. The Dominant candidates are a close-knit group of friends and any one of them may be the Dominant. Or, they may indeed trade dominance between each other, as is often the case when Dominants have many Seneschal. It’s not uncommon for an apostle to become the protagonist in times of peril.”

“The Grand Narrative does love to kill off main characters and replace them with successors, doesn’t it?” my Chimera quipped.

“Indeed, the story of the True Timeline is full of twists and turns, and Dominants don’t usually last very long. Thus is the reality of the cold, unforgiving nature of Existence, the collection of all things Probable; that which Entropy seeks to destroy. Most Cycles end in cynical heartache for the Dominant and their Seneschal. Rarely is the Grand Narrative a happy tale to read,” I demurred.

“So, who are they?” my Chimera prodded.

“Let’s see,” I ran my quill down the sheet of paper, the holographic projection following its nib. “It seems to be a single-planet civilization representing a classical planetary-star system. Ther home world has a mostly stable population of about 12 billion, though it is shrinking slightly since hitting 2a, and it would appear they skipped Kardashev 1 and went right into building a Dyson Sphere. Something about symbiosis with nature and not wishing to drain the resources of their cradle of life.”

“If only they realized they’re smothering the evolution of the Fusion Computer Sentients by doing so. How’s that for ‘Environmentalism,’” she interjected.

I Ignored her. “They seem to have followed a traditional war torn Class W Archetype, complete with genocides and dictators, though they have been peaceful for long enough that they are only a few generations from evolving into a P-Class instead, yet unseen for humanoids in general. Somehow, they managed to tame their nuclear arsenals following their series of World Wars by uniting as a single civilization and dedicating their entire existence toward making a Dyson Sphere and expanding into the stars, sneaking past the Great Filter, and have so far avoided blowing themselves up.”

“Oo,” my Chimera cooed, “new territory! I love being the first Scribe to witness something novel.”

“Well,” I continued reading on, “they’re not out of the woods yet. As an Unenlightened society, though non-Theistic, they’re still deeply religious and a rising wave of secularism is threatening to upend the past several generations of peace.”

“Religious but non-theistic? What does that even mean? How have they become so technologically advanced, then?” my Chimera’s thoughts felt somewhat taken aback.

“Science IS their religion,” I replied. “It’s the force that convinced them to decommission their nuclear weapons, that brought them together to build the Dyson Sphere far ahead of schedule, and what has continued to inform they’re incredible ability to create new objects from their ever-expanding knowledge of their universe.”

“Fascinating,” my Chimera thought. “And you said they are still Unenlightened?”

“Indeed. While they have unveiled several Fundamental Truths, the people of Hope have no idea they have done so. They still struggle to find the Theory of Everything despite many other Hominin World Lines, our own included, having done so. If they continue to treat science as holy, they most likely never will, either. This appears to be the Nexus Outlier our Dominant is leading their World Line toward. Our prospectives are a nomadic group of ‘Heretic’ outlaws living on the fringes of their habitation spaces. They were ‘Core’ pilots during ‘the Wars,’ large humanoid battle robots duking it out during their World War phase,” I rested the quill on a specific video portrait and held the image of the Core in my mind’s eye so that my Chimera might look upon one.

“I see, such an interesting machine…” my Chimera trailed off. “And why would such vagabonds be candidates to become Dominants? It’s quite rare for a Dominant to not already be in a position of power in their World Line.”

“Ah, and there’s the rub,” my real face smirked. “During the Wars, they were world-famous combat pilots, feared by all but the foolhardiest, names and likenesses plastered across the many independent states in both reverence and infamy. They were treated like celebrity athletes, either as rivals or hometown heroes, and so they still hold a particular kind of sway over the populace, mostly as legends of their craft. With the War’s end, however, that glory and adulation dried up, and they were left scorned more broadly as relics of their civilization’s aggressive history. This left their group apathetic toward the plight of the Rabble that had passed them by and the religion that shuns them as artifacts of the past.”

“Interesting,” my Chimera remarked. “But that also doesn’t answer my question. Why them?”

“Well, that’s a bit more subtle,” I scanned farther down the document and brought up an image of an elderly, somewhat frail man in what appeared to be ceremonial garb, projecting at my Chimera. “Since the War, the supercivilization has been ruled exclusively by a benevolent autocrat, the Pope of their religion. Ostensibly a democracy, the Pope had guided the ship for the decades following the war, into a prosperous peacetime full of novelty, so neither he nor his officials had ever been voted out. His death, however, has bestowed Hope with True Observer status, and the power struggle for his throne, and by extension, the humanoids’ best chance at becoming part of the True Timeline, is no doubt the catalyst for it becoming a Nexus Outlier. NORN and the Archon believe that the travails of these six vagabonds will determine how the Dominants guide this new Cycle, and I have been chosen to be their Scribe.”

“You know it’s never this easy,” my Chimera said.

“No, it never is.”

“And that the Archon never gives you the full story.”

“No, he never does,” I agreed.

I felt my Chimera think a sigh, “This is going to be another shit-show, isn’t it?”

“When has it ever not been?”