The Rahim who lived in the Hall of Scholars was now in his late forties. He had been brought to the Sea of Glass when he was nine years old. In the Verse that was his home he had a sister and two brothers. He thought of them often. He still missed them at times. He pushed the pain of not seeing them aside by focusing on what needed to be done. He had been brought to this place to record the history of all that is and all that could be.
Rahim was one of the geniuses that preferred seclusion. He had requested his door have a lock so that he could lock himself away for hours with the certainty that he would not be interrupted.
Locked in his room Rahim would ingest a tea which contained large amounts of the substance methamphetamine. This was his request to those who administered the Citadel. They brought him the tea without question. The goal after all was the most important thing. It was a goal many were willing to sacrifice their bodies and their minds for.
Many of the Scholars pushed themselves beyond exhaustion with various narcotic like substances. They used these to push their mind past the limits of their physical body.
The effect of the tea that Rahim drank was very potent. It allowed his mind to focus in a way that few could ever comprehend. He sometimes worked for days without sleep. Sometimes he worked this way for a week. His body at times could barely handle the amount of the narcotic he was taking. Rahim knew it was breaking him down both physically and mentally. However, Rahim also knew what he did was for the greater good. His suffering did not matter. He was doing this for his family. He was doing this for his parents, and his siblings.
The tea allowed Rahim to push his mind into places that danced along the edges of complete madness.
He drank his tea and he stared at the walls around him. The light from the Prism flowed up them like liquid. However, it flickered in and out of the reality of the chamber. Rahim spent most of his days living in this world of light. He lived staring at the walls and watching the dance of cosmic energy that flowed along them.
Sometimes he was able to create equations based on his observations. The only other thing he used to aid himself in his work was an old Phonograph. The scholars could have their choice of aids and Rahim could easily have something more technically advanced. However, the Phonograph was in common usage when Rahim was a child. He grew up listening to its sounds. More advanced musical equipment did not have the same affect. The music Rahim played on his Phonograph helped him focus and think as he stared at the wall and imagined all the what ifs.
Today as he sat staring at the wall he could not help but reflect on the knowledge that all the what ifs…were. They existed. They happened. Somewhere in space and time what could be was. Rahim knew if he traced certain tangents that at certain points he could identify the most unique variables. From these variables he could make a change and understand a new clearer, detailed path that existed somewhere in the great Multiverse.
In his chamber Rahim would get lost in his mind. It was not dissimilar from the way Descartes lost himself in his mind to build his mediations. A foundation was created in the mind through which all else could be postulated from. It was a matter of finding the right postulate. It was a matter of finding the right possibility.
All the Scholars did this in one form or another. When they found the right tangent they followed it through the network of possibility that it lead down. They recorded all they could. It was difficult work to dance with the variables of infinity.
Eventually they went mad. This was an unspoken knowledge in the Hall of Scholars. Eventually they all went insane. These chambers were filled with geniuses who would lose their minds. All the Scholars knew it awaited them in their future. The madness of geniuses staring into infinity too long, calculating endless variables was something that human minds were never really crafted for. The people of Verse Zero tried their best to reconstruct the mind to make it more advanced. But mortal hands could only hope to ever accomplish so much.
Rahim knew madness was waiting for him. He knew that madness lurked in his future. However, he needed to continue his work. All the Scholars did. They were the hope of Verse Zero. The Scholars were the ones who could locate those who would save the Multiverse. The mind was a small sacrifice.
Rahim never left the Citadel. He never went to rooms with windows. He did this of his own choice. The outside world was a distraction. It biased the mind and blocked out dynamic thought.
In truth, though the work broke the mind and by extension the soul, Rahim lived for it. He loved to get lost in the different Verses that he could glimpse in his room of energy and light. In this place Rahim was a maestro of time and space. He was a maestro of probability. His work was part math. It was part science. It was all art. Belili had once told him he was the greatest of the Scholars that she had ever known. Rahim did not care for praise. His soul was compelled to do this work. He needed this. He was driven to work towards understanding in a thousand Verses. In this Verse it was his obsession and his life.
As Rahim currently sat in his room he held before him a parchment. It was a document that he studied often. A true genius is a constant student. Rahim was a student of the past. He was a student of history. There was one piece of history that touched his soul the most. In his mind Rahim knew that there were important answers imbedded on this parchment.
The parchment he studied was a history of Verse Zero. It was a narrative of the events that led to this current land of prodigies. Rahim studied various Verses but something told him here was where he should focus his attention the most. There was something in the foundations of Verse Zero that was important. Rahim felt that in this history was not only the key to finding the Threshold but also the story of the fate that awaited all existence.
Rahim understood that there was something that was not known by many in the creation of this place. It was something that most were unaware of and it was dark. He kept this understanding to himself.
At times, he realized that he was no longer working for the great endeavor. His quest had become a singular quest and a selfish one. He needed answers. He knew they were buried in the past. He knew this past was very important in understanding how events would unfold in the future.
He focused much of his time studying history and looking for clues that would help confirm his thoughts. There was something important buried in the foundations of this island which floated through creation.
Rahim once again looked over the writings of generations before him. He looked at the history of the people who lived on the Sea of Glass.
The Chronicles of the Sea of Glass – The History of Verse Zero
Long ago there was a great civilization that existed. It reached the pinnacle of achievement. It was a society of thinkers and scholars. It was a society of artists and scientists. All worked together to move society forward. There was no hunger and no poverty. There was no prejudice and there was no war.
This civilization had many great cities. These cities existed on land. They existed in the sky. Some of these cities existed deep under the ocean and drew energy from thermal vents that released heat from the planet’s core.
This civilization lived for the advancement of knowledge. All strived towards the one goal of expanding the wisdom of society.
This place, this diamond world, grew more advanced than worlds in 99.999 percent of all the other Universes in existence. In this great world reality was only limited by what could be imagined.
Among them was one of the natural pure prodigies in existence. His name was Farinata Uaegli Abertio. He was a musician. He was a physicist. He was an observer of the heavens. It was he who through his observations first understood the undoing that was spreading throughout the cosmos. He was the one who discovered the impending crisis that was eating away creation.
Through his observations, he saw the great unraveling that was spreading through his Universe. He understood it was a cancer in existence. Farinata calculated that the unravelling was billions of light years away from his world. However, he k
new that eventually it would undo all that ever was and all that could be.
Farinata’s understanding of what was occurring in the cosmos affected him profoundly. He knew the unravelling would not reach his home in his lifetime. He knew it would probably never affect his society. He knew that his society would be long extinct by the time the unraveling reached his world. No society could last billions of years. It would reach his part of the Universe long after his people were gone. However, he understood that there were other Verses that were not so lucky. He knew with each moment that passed there was a Verse somewhere being erased from existence.
He shared his findings with others in his civilization and they all knew that something needed to be done. The whole society mobilized and began working towards one goal. That one goal uniting civilization was to save all civilizations.
Farinata Uaegli Abertio was the leader of the effort. He understood that the only way to save space and time was to step outside of it. This is when he began to design the principles of his great Prism. He knew those principles were somehow the key to saving existence.
A plan was put into motion. The people of this civilization were aware of their own limitations. Plans were made to gather the greatest minds in all of existence throughout the Multiverse. It was only through harnessing the pure brilliance of the Multiverse that a way could be found to save existence.
Farinata kept working at understanding the mysteries of the great unravelling. It shaped his whole life. He wrote on it extensively. Even after slipping into madness from staring too long at the great nothing he continued to write. All his writings were collected. They were stored. They were saved.
Four Generations after Farinata Uaegli Abertio died, the Prism was completed. The society that built it had used a majority of their resources in its construction. The great Prism was set in orbit around the world of its creators. One day it was turned on.
This was the moment that the Sea of Glass was created. Those that were able to witness the moment would cherish it for the rest of their lives. They would tell their grandchildren of it. The Sea of Glass looked beautiful from the outside. It was a constantly flowing tapestry composed of a million windows into a million Verses.
The Sea of Glass was a moment that was created to stop an eternal night fall. It was a place where the most brilliant minds would come together to work for the common good.
The greatest minds of the great civilization boarded the Sea of Glass. They said goodbye to their home world. It was understood that the Sea of Glass could not sustain an entire world of people. It was understood that those left behind would at some point be wiped from all existence. Once erased from time there was no undoing that. However, in a society that had eliminated selfishness this was easy to accept. A person was willing to sacrifice their life to save the life of the infinite multitudes in all the Multiverse.
At the time of departure those who were selected to be the First Great Generation of Verse Zero kissed their loved one’s goodbye. They knew they would not see them again. However, as their lips pressed against those they loved and as the tears of goodbye’s fell they hoped that maybe just maybe they could save their families before the wave undoing reached them.
They hoped they could save the memories of who they had been. They hoped they could protect the moment that they existed.
These great minds boarded their new glass world and their vessel slipped into the currents that underlay the foundations of all existence. There was a whole multiverse of possibility from which they could draw their resources. Somewhere out there was the Threshold of Degradative Concurrence. In that place resided the Phage. At the Threshold was the one place where all the foundations of space and time could be saved.
The people of the Sea of Glass began their great gathering. They began their search for those who could save all there is.
***
Alone in his room centuries after these events had occurred Rahim looked at the story of Verse Zero recorded in the parchment before him. It was a beautiful tale. There were more chronicles of the people of Verse Zero. Embedded in those chronicles were some of the most advanced and perfect equations ever discovered.
The Chronicles of Verse Zero was a story that eventually led to the place where Rahim now sat. Each generation after the first generation discovered new equations. All these equations began to unlock the fabric of space and time.
The logic of it was beautiful. Sometimes Rahim stared at the beauty of all that had occurred in the Great Endeavour and cried. He was humbled by the brilliance of the Sea of Glass. In its structure, he saw the hand of God.
However, there was something in the history of Verse Zero that plagued Rahim. He could not quite articulate the idea but he knew there was something he was not seeing in the history he studied so often.
Rahim knew it was something that the current generation of the Sea of Glass was not aware of. He knew it was important. He knew just like the cancer that was eating away at existence, between the words of the Chronicles of Verse Zero lay a darkness.
This is why he returned to the Chronicles. Like Farinata Uaegli Abertio studying the heavens Rahim knew that there was something unseen in the history recorded in the Chronicles that could undo all that the people of the Sea of Glass were told they were striving towards.
***
The Philosophical Principles of Death. The Scripture of Farinata Uaegli Abertio.
Gospel 001597
In a great explosion at the beginning of time every particle came into existence. Many refer to this moment of creation as the Big Bang. It was the birth of the Multiverse.
Blessed is the moment of all creation
Blessed is the moment when death began.
In this blessed moment a path was chosen by fate. A decision was made. What direction does a thing travel? From the direction a particle takes blooms a Verse. From that particle going in all directions spawns a Multiverse.
Our limited vision only observes one path, in whatever Verse fate decides that we shall live. But all the possibilities still exist in different Verses.
As each particle spread forth through all paths the Multiverse bloomed. In this Multiverse each particle lived all possibilities. Each particle lived infinitely. Each particle knew all that was and all that could ever be.
However, there was always one possibility that shadowed these infinite movements. Each particle was shadowed by the possibility that it did not come into existence at all. Sewn into the fabric of existence was always the possibility to not exist. Here was a unique state for each particle in existence. The state of un-existence.
This possibility followed every particle. It followed every action. It followed every person. It was a ghost of the possibility that each particle, that each action, that each person never was.
These two possibilities existed in states parallels to one another.
Then it happened. In one Verse something as random as the Big Bang occurred. At one point in the great Multiverse these two states for two particles collided. When they did the non-existent state won out. Nonexistence always wins because the universe came from a state of nonexistence. That is the state that existed before the Big Bang and the birth of the Multiverse.
This started a chain reaction that affected all the other particles around it. The non-existent states of particles began colliding with their existent states and erasing them. Before long…a whole Universe was consumed. Then the Universes next to it. Then the Universes next to those. They all were enveloped by their non-existent state.
This chain reaction is spreading. Un-existence is spreading. Blessed be the great God of Creation and of Death. Blessed is the God who created these states parallel to one another.
In my mind I have lived a thousand lives. In my mind, I have died a thousand deaths. God stood with me as I searched all that is for the one true path and the one true understanding.
In a multiverse of infinite possibility there is one path through all reality that we must find.
We must navigate to the blessed and sacred Threshold.
In that place Trishula will allow us in an instant to complete the will of God and extinguishing all that is and ever was.
Verse Six: The Forest of Uncertainty
The lost children of the Multiverse now lived in a land of mystery. They were aliens in a strange place, living in strange circumstances. They were aliens in an alien world. Because of their shared plight they bonded. As the days since their doors were unlocked passed and turned into months the stolen children of creation became close.
Of all the children Sarah remained closest with Isiah. They bonded over the years talking to one another behind the closed doors of their cells. Now with the freedom to walk the fields and city streets of this strange place they learned more about each other.
As Belili had said the children were all from different times and places. Isiah was from a time decades before Sarah was born.
Time was a strange thing in this place because it had no true meaning. They still categorized things in days, weeks, and months. However, these were merely numeric tricks. There was no rotation of this place to truly define a day. There was no revolution around a star to define a year. The time of Verse Zero was calculated by an atomic clock near the city’s center. It kept track of the moments that passed since what was called Zero Hour. Zero Hour was the moment of the great departure of the Sea of Glass into the currents that flowed throughout the Multiverse.
To live out of space and time made one feel alienated. This feeling of alienation helped the children to grow closer. They were all lost. However, they were lost together. They could find commonality in this.
Prisons of Stolen Dreams Page 10