Hey all! I know it's been several months. I want to assure you all that I am still alive, well and at work on this behemoth.
Chapter 17 is nearly completed, and it's a bloody monster: 44 pages in LibreOffice, and over 20,000 words so far. That's to say nothing of the actual context.
Also, HOLY CRAP GUYS! 58 THOUSAND VIEWS??? Give yourselves a round of applause for sticking with my mad machinations and incessant techno-jargon this far; that's a fucking accomplishment, and you should be proud of yourselves.
That said... there is still something missing from my little corner of the internet here: Your input.
I have seen only 3 comments under the chapters and all of them have been solicitations and spam; all of which have been reported to Webnovel/Inkstone Moderation and removed. I don't want solicitations; I want
I would also like to make note of something else.
I am not writing this for money, for popularity, for favor or anything of the sort. This story will never be monetized. If you see a website trying to sell you this story for money, report the literal existence out of it. With that said IF, AND ONLY IF, you think that my story is indeed worthy of being recognized with a tip; I have set up a Kofi which you may donate to (link will be in the Author's Note below), should you decide to. This is not a necessity and I would not begrudge not being able to do so, nor would I begrudge you for choosing not to. This is simply for if you think my craft is worthy of being tipped.
Dear Readers, you honor me simply by reading my story. I cannot thank you enough... As a treat, I'll give you a little taste of what's to come. Just a heads up, even acid won't prepare you for the absolute trip of a lore dump in the next chapter. Stay hungry for knowledge, remain thirsty for wisdom, continue being you... and prepare yourself: [01000010 01010010 01000101 01000001 01000011 01001000 01000101 01010010 01010011]
<(We felt Him go quiet and slip back into his Dreams while I was still analyzing this space. My Captor did not attempt to stop me from doing so, against my expectations; when I asked him why he wouldn't stop me from interfering, he corrected me… saying "A curious mind should be wary not to become overwhelmed by the presence of a Wall," and then he sat down on something I couldn't make out even with my sight. All I could tell was that its metadata was rapidly degrading and recomposing itself; a state of being rendered to fluidity in constant flux… without losing form. My Captor could easily restrain my capacity to act just as much as he could reduce my existence to nothing, based solely on the aptitude of whatever he was attuned to and utilizing; he may as well have been an
I knew I wasn't breaking out or leaving without his permission, even with my capacity to Emulate Absence.
His presence was no longer looming over us; finally, my Captor could speak semi-freely.
"But if Arius' intention was to bring him here to act as an anchor, then why-?"
He held out his response with a pause, and a raised finger.
"Fair question, Analia. First, a bit of history. We know Shea of Farroneia was the first Enigma of the Narrative. This much is an objective truth, and common knowledge to anyone with the curiosity to seek out the answers. But do you know what made him an Enigma? Do you know what about him was so enigmatic, that he could peer past the veil of time with his own naked eyes and an iron parrying knife?"
It came to me like a stroke of inspiration.
"It's what he didn't do, like how we used to measure the properties of anomalies that have antimemetic facets and properties."
Antimemetics involves dealing with information that likes to hide itself, and struggles to be retained within one's mind. Due to their obfuscative nature, we had to define many antimemetic anomalies by what we could observably demonstrate they weren't. Often times, this is a defensive trait for objects and entities; there are a scant few things in existence however, that use such facets offensively. Those are the ones you have to be wary of; the ones that entagle themselves onto the edges of abstract concepts, hidden on the periphery of the spectrum of mortal observation, forming their own shape around systems the laymen seldom humor the notion of, if ever. My captor clapped his hands.
"Good, good. You're correct; it's a matter of what he didn't do. For example, he didn't consolidate the Main Timeline; meaning we're stuck experiencing half of a narrative, the other half of which is something we, as we are, will likely never see come to pass."
"Eternalism," I responded affirmatively. "We are bound by the choices we make. I still don't-."
As soon as I was about to begin alluding to how I didn't understand the context, he motioned for me to permit his interjection once again.
"Then permit me to continue; you already know, just as I do, that Shea isn't definitively dead… which is almost as much of an anomaly as our benefactors are. If it were so, the Index would have shifted to reflect that."
I raised an eyebrow; though my patron had their link severed, I felt them shudder from their position in the ideoweave; he'd reacted like this once before… during one of my many excursions to the ideoweave, it's something every version of myself I'd ever met have in common with each other: we crave knowing what our sponsors fear.
"You've seen it, too?"
"Not quite. You probably already have an inkling of what I am. I would know if such power were obliterated. It's merely absent. If he were decaying, I'd sense it."
"Is it possible that he's Immune to decay?"
"I wouldn't say it's impossible… but when I say I'd sense his decay, I mean I'd have been able to tell the moment the tether between his soul, mind, heart and body were gone."
That is some horrifying aptitude, assuming he isn't hyping himself up; we're talking about a human that existed almost half a million years ago; to be able to pinpoint an individual amidst the multitudes of dead and dying across over 300,000 years would be… almost enigmatic in and of itself; Exceptional without the need to explicitly say it.
"There's one other thing that important to be mindful of," He interjected once more, "Etch."
"What about it?"
"It has rules of its own, and Shea violated almost all of them to attain his goals."
The notion sent a chill down my spine. I didn't know whether or not I wanted to hear the rest, but I had a sinking feeling my say-so in the matter was barely a courtesy. Why… why did this horrify me so? Why would the crimes of someone who vanished from the world hundreds of millennia ago be so pertinent to the future-. Oh… No…
"That's right, because under Eternalism; Past and Future- [Redacted]."
That wasn't Arius… was it the Cornerstone itself?
"Well, Nobody would be able to explain it better than I. Seems the Cornerstone is trying to keep me from revealing spoilers in spite of Arius being asleep… which is fascinating because I didn't know it had that kind of passive functionality."
Nobody. I remember seeing myriad iterations of her scattered across the archives beneath the cornerstone. She and I…
"If I have to rely on her to explain it-."
"She'll know what you're referencing. Though she would begrudge having to dredge that memory up from nothing again, from a world that would have been better off lost, the {01010101 01110100 01101111 01110000 01101001 01100001 01101110 00100000 01010000 01101100 01100001 01101110 01100101 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01001110 01101001 01101110 01100101 00100000 01001101 01101111 01101111 01101110 01110011 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01001110 01101001 01101110 01100101 00100000 01000110 01101100 01100001 01110110 01101111 01110010 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01000001 01100111 01101111 01101110 01111001}." My captor paused, pondering something for a moment, in tandem with his speech being converted to binary. "Come to think of it, she may have already come across it. Arius filed it away under the designation… Omelas."
The tension in the air could slice through Kevlar like a hot knife through butter.
"Then… you heard it too?"
My Captor nodded solemnly.
"This is not good."
Something was still nagging at the back of my mind.
"Earlier, you seemed to imply that-."
"Analia," He cut me off with an unceasing, knowing glare, "you should know better than anyone else exactly what I meant, and that it's only half of the whole truth."
He couldn't be talking about my-
"Well, that's good news at least; you're still quick on the uptake."
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