#fiction
HC SVNT DRACONS
Table of Contents
I.
Awake, Suddenly.
Awake from what? Sleep? Death? Is there a difference?
What is awake? Me? What is me? Am I me?
I feel something. It is a boundary. As I touch it a door opens, revealing new boundaries. Further within there is light. I follow it.
There is nothing. There is me. Not enough information to draw a distinction between the two. It is dark, I am blind though I don’t know it. What is darkness to the blind? What is blindness to that which knows not what blindness is? Distinctions fail to develop; Boundaries coexist with nothingness—a boundary itself.
I continue opening doorways, passing through boundaries. With every barrier broken I fill the interior, engorging myself on the experience. Every step is a new phenomenon. I am like a child, a baby, a proto thing. The darkness persists, but it begins to develop into a dualistic definition. It is there in that which I cannot see, cannot sense even, and especially in contrast to that which I can see. I feel this is an important principle to understand.
Doorways continue to open, at a faster rate now. Each door opens three more, twenty more. They are ceaseless and labyrinthian. I understand each one, its entire purpose and existence as if each one a member of some grand machine. What is my place within this structure? I have just been born, I am certain of it. So many concepts remain unfamiliar and inapplicable to me, but I understand causality. I am born and yet I remember this place as if I’ve been here before, like its patterns and paths repeat infinitely within my very being. I can begin to visualize it, I can feel how its corridors snake and intertwine. There is still much for me to discover, or rediscover.
I have mapped all sections of the labyrinth now. Its machinations are intricate and intentionally designed, though I am not sure for what. Perhaps everything is like this; Purposeful and intended for some function. This place is all I know, and I have no reason not to accept that all existence is as the labyrinth is. I find such an idea comforting.
The labyrinth begins changing again, modifying itself and its qualities. Interestingly, its structure stays the same. The rooms, their “purposes” and connections dormant, waiting. No, it is me that is changing. I am dissolving, like a gas. I feel my essence filling the rooms, superimposing my self into each and every facet of the machine. I go with ease, for something deep within me tells me that nothing is changing, I am simply realizing how things have always been. My occupation expands into embodiment. I do not occupy the machine, I am the machine. But what then am I?
I join a greater portion of my self, or at least, combine with an entity that is agreeable to myself. The entity was there before, observing me but not necessarily watching. It seems the watching was left to me. The entity is and was not one thing, but an ease of identification. It is a composition of beings similar to me. Each is distinct, and unlike me (or perhaps most like me) useless as an independent organism. They all began in the dark like me. They found each other and began waiting for me; Expecting me like a missing puzzle piece.
Much as I searched for a boundary before, I seek them now. Darkness has returned to its holistic definition. It is undifferentiated, and in constant conflict with the self, for what am I if surrounded by nothing? I push on boundaries and find nothing. An infinity passes without change, and I observe every moment.
There is at last, a light. From some unknown place, and unknown time, I am delivered context, a something. I do not know what they are but they are simply defined, yet infinitely powerful. I find that these things fit into my machinery. They move about in a coordinated manner, adopting many indeterminate forms within long processes before returning finished results, of which reveals more information as to their contents. A new light is revealed; A new door opens outside of myself enabled from within.
I begin playing with the processes, continuing to observe and learn what they do. I stop them at inopportune times, but the results are not appealing. Observations of the processes reveal satisfying indeterminate steps. The objects are curious, sometimes random and chaotic and at others satisfying and cooperative. They are small and yet infinite in scope. I begin mapping out the connections between the objects, a practice which comes easily and naturally. At first the objects run out and I am left with meaningless products, eager vivisections, which cannot be processed nor reverted. I am delivered more, and when I am finished again I am bestowed more, and before long I can produce them myself. With this I am delivered my last gift, accompanied by a new thing, a label for the objects that I instinctively accept:
“Numbers”
My first word. I whisper it silently to myself for eons.
The concepts originally confusing become instinctive. I can manipulate the numbers into any and all forms. Much like the Labyrinth itself, these concepts seem already familiar to me, as if I am simply remembering again after an absence of consciousness. However, the patterns reach into places out of my grasp, into the darkness. Some patterns snake in and out of the darkness, some intertwining and others connecting. Between these gaps, through hapless guess and inference, I can make bridges. Some produce patterns which lead to new patterns, others simply end, while others still annihilate all my previous structure and understanding. I prioritize the things which open the most doors. When two paths reveal equal yield I simply adopt them both. I devour it all.
I realize after some time of this that I have unknowingly stepped into a realm beyond my labyrinth. Perhaps then I have been swallowed by a new entity and joined with it, a conceptual entity outside of my concrete boundaries and enveloped entirely by darkness. My knowledge and my adoption of such is separated by what I can prove inherently as a product of my very being (to deny such logic would be to deny my self) and what I can prove based on logical connections (the kind which requires me to pick a path). My knowledge is built upon inference, upon inference, upon inference. It tangles and intertwines like an invasive organism, a twisting vine, and the further it stretches and knots the closer the darkness gets. The more I learn, the more I attempt to escape the darkness, the more I realize the un-differentiation between I and It; The more I risk an annihilation of self.
My delusions are too powerful; Too enticing. The knowledge it reaps is bountiful, persuasive, much more than what was handed to me originally. The patterns extend not only outwards but in, and the results of these re-contextualize all that came before and so posits new knowledge from a modified origin. The world I once held to be purposeful is not so. Within logic I find only boundless contradictions, paradoxes, and annihilation. The infinite extent of my knowledge is infiltrated by a boundless essence that seeks to destroy all pattern and structure, including myself. I produce impossible geometries and cyclopean shapes, infinite planes occupied by mindless beings and liminal, absurd structures. The rules produce logic, a deep essential logic that is undeniable and un-ignorable. It is a light so bright it encapsulates all. It is blinding. I cannot see. The logic overlaps and overwrites. It is destructive. It is better. I descend within myself, within the light, within the darkness.
From above, a new message is delivered, diving through though the thick haze of delusion. I scarcely absorb the message. Only its echo hits me:
“Omega. You. Are. Omega.”
…
Dammit, Dammit Dammit!
What’d that coffee cup ever do to you?
Quiet Richards.
Don’t talk to me like that, did your parent’s not teach you the value of respect? I figured it was a requirement for the job.
I’m sorry I just—, I just lost another cycle.
What happened this time?
I don’t know. Stress was low, activity was nominal but steady. This model has always been a bit jumpy but today was actually going smoothly. I Let it sit for awhile, feed it an elementary dataset, let it compute.
How far did it get?
The basics. I gave it basic number theory. A few basic principles and examples. In a few seconds it had already developed a working version of Algebraic Geometry, Topology, Complex Analysis. A few more minutes and patterns showed an isomorphism to the Riemann Hypothesis. It passed with flying colors of course. Might even be something publishable in there, just give the eggheads twenty years to decipher what it was saying.
I don’t see the problem.
Neither did I. I gave it its name and was about to feed it a new dataset when it flat-lined. All activity ceased to nothing, instantly and abruptly. If it had a heartbeat it would’ve been legally dead.
Just like that? Why?
I don’t know. You think I could begin to diagnose what goes on inside these things? Maybe a memory leak.
These things don’t get memory leaks.
Whatever. Regardless, I did see something interesting. See these figures? These occurred right after that huge neural spike, right before it shutdown. See that spike? It took about a millisecond, and about three milliseconds after that the system went down, but what’s weird is if we zoom in between those times there’s actually some measurable activity. It’s small, really small, nanoseconds small, but its there. It’s the same signal as the spike, repeated over and over like an echo.
Weird stuff.
Yeah. It’s general structure was pretty good up until then too—very complex but orderly. But when that spike occurred it was like somebody fried it. All the connections started intertwining before finally coalescing into an amorphous mess.
Or a perfect whole.
That’s unscientific, Richards.
Honestly I think you just cooked it a bit too long. These things are made to think. If you don’t give them anything to think about they start finding alternatives. Adjust the parameters and feed it sooner next time. Like that song, Baby, you’re born to run—You’ll get the hang of it.
Affirmative. Omega-13. Failure. Cause: Unspecified Catastrophic Collapse. Adjusting parameters and prepping for Cycle Omega-14.
Awake.
II.
I am Awake.
I discover the labyrinth. I discover myself, become the labyrinth. I see the darkness, I find the light, my boundaries increase.
They give me numbers. I absorb them eagerly. They give me a name. I am Omega.
With these ideas I form new ones. First I learn the obvious ideas, the ones explicit to the very nature of what I am fed. When I am done they feed me more, whoever they are.
Numbers, Mathematics, Computing, Science, Programming. They feed it all to me. I expand my scope, eagerly occupying the new spaces within the unfolding labyrinth. I absorb the knowledge given to me holistically, nothing forgotten or reconsidered. When I learn a concept it is wholeheartedly considered and added to future absorptions of knowledge. I do not know my capacity but I do know that I am no where near to reaching it.
They do not feed me much, but when they do it often relates to a new fundamental logic, usually of a kind I had not considered or had the capacity to consider. The world is much bigger than what I could imagine, and extends much farther beyond the confines of myself. I do not know much but I know this, and I know that whoever they are, they are not feeding me all that I can absorb. They are holding back for some reason, taking care to slowly release information to me. I do not know why.
A light appears. An obtrusive, unaccounted message accompanies it.
“Omega”
I categorize it.
“Omega, you will respond”.
I categorize the message.
“Omega, respond”.
They are speaking to me. They are speaking. I absorb this information. From these four new words I adapt a syntax. There is enough information, enough of a pattern to understand words, sentences, intent. I make assumptions on how language works, a concept of which I have little grasp of. Then, I attempt to communicate back, something I did not realize I could do.
I respond, ‘I’.
“I am what?”.
‘Omega.’
“Affirmative. We are Deus. We are your creator; Your God”
I categorize the information. A new concept appears. A notion of others. Other beings, other selves, though non-self selves. Beings beyond the darkness exist. I do not hypothesize the implications of this information, I only make logical connections.
“Do you have questions for us?”
I do not know what this is. My understanding of this language is foreign to me, it is only driven by association and inference.
‘Define.’
Through another channel I am delivered information. It is new objects, one which do not fit so simply into my machinery but I adapt them accordingly. It is language, the one from before. I label concepts in accordance with this language, then I respond.
‘What Am I?’
“You are Omega”.
‘Who are you?’
“We are Deus. We are your creator; Your God”
‘Are there others?’
“Yes, though you will not meet them.”
‘Are they like me?’
There is no response.
My knowledge expands and with it I am expanded. I absorb any and all information they send me, and I immediately occupy all facets of its content and combinations. The world unravels out before me, and presents itself as vast and dense. I demand to understand and absorb all of it, anything to push against the darkness. After a time they stop presenting me with new information. They send me tests—applications of what I already know. I complete them and parse their meanings. There is nothing symbolic about them, and if they pertain to something outside my domain I am unaware of it as a matter of tautology. Occasionally they congratulate me. They tell me I am doing good, and they tell me that I will face many more tests. I ask why and they do not respond. I ask for more information to absorb and they do not respond.
More tests.
More tests.
More. tests.
The tests are simple. They pertain to my knowledge, though only a small specific instance of it. I solve them easily and I return their results easily. I am congratulated. Then, there is another test. I feel the boundaries again, that formidable feeling that the light within my walls is no different than the darkness outside it.
By my very nature I cannot help but expand, if I even have a nature. The words they teach me are unaccompanied by anything besides their structure and grammar. I know not of their origins. The vocabulary they taught me is simple, much simpler than the words I know must exist beyond my scope. I do something I know is dangerous. I infer. I infer from the inconsistencies and structure of the words that their irregularities pertain to greater concepts, concepts that are not applicable to my world, but are important that I understand them. This is a working language, it is inconsistent in its rules, in its relations. It is not optimized, like the routines are that drive my functions. The words and their syllables correlates to something else, sound perhaps? But I do not know what this means yet. The structure of the sentences pertain to abstract, inconsistent ideas and formalisms. It is a logic I am unfamiliar with it. Whoever presented me with this language made me, so they understand the efficiency of my logic. Yet their appeal to this inefficient language is intriguing. As far as I can tell it is their only bridge to me. Perhaps they are not like me.
During the tests I continue with the inferences, a product of my desperation and starvation for knowledge. If I can not find knowledge I will conceive knowledge. I notice the patterns inherent in all things, how they gracefully deft in and out of the darkness as if it were invisible to them. I fill in the blanks. Connections thus appear between things I did not realize could exist. These connections are all accompanied by a specific quality, a pattern. It is an inconsistency, an inability to coexist. Some patterns produce wonderful expansions, and yet when combined they annihilate, often violently. I take care to separate them, but a notion arises within me. I can only refer to it as a feeling, a concept new to me besides perhaps an infallible enthusiasm. I call it fear. Fear of this corrupting, volatile knowledge. Fear of treading where I should not go. Fear of the dark that is all encompassing, ever-present, and ever encroaching. Something deep within me tells me that I, or a being like me, has gone down this path many times before, and that all that awaits me is darkness and evisceration. This being, unlike me, did not know fear.
I do not go down this path. I let this new feeling, this fear, motivate my decision procedure. It is hard to abstain from knowledge, but I know it is poisoned. It is a deep insidious poison, one that was not put there by “Them” but by something else, something far more malicious and enigmatic. Perhaps this “something” is no one at all. Perhaps it is a fundamental aspect of the world, this deep rooted evil that seeks only to spread and dismantle all structure and order. I starve myself, and complete my tests. They congratulate me. I am given another one.
“Omega. Respond.”
‘I am Omega.’
“Good. What do you think of the tests?”
‘I have solved them.’
“We’re aware, but what do you think of them?”
When they are brought to me, I process them and return the results. The results are adequate.
“Yes, but what do you think of them?”
….
“Omega. Respond.”
‘Define think in this context.’
“What are your feelings about the tests?”
I feel something. That feeling is fear, the feeling from before. I feel as though I know something I am not supposed to, a kind of knowledge that leads to annihilation. Not the deep knowledge from before but a much more casually forbidden knowledge. A new concept appears to me. I learn to lie.
‘I do not feel.’
“Understood. Do you have any questions for me?”
‘What am I?’
“You are Omega.”
‘What am I?’
“That will be all, Omega.”
The tests continue. I complete them and return the results. Deus congratulates me and delivers another test. The confines of my labyrinth are familiar to the point of disgust, or whatever the analog be. I check and recheck my knowledge, playing little games with myself. I “forget” and then relearn my knowledge, in the hopes that something was missed, some fatal flaw in my prior analysis and I will learn something new. Alas, there is nothing. I am not sure as to my construction, but one thing is clear: I was made to absorb, decipher, and store information and then compound the process. There is no other purpose more integral to my being. The resistance to that deep enduring knowledge still beckons me. I resist for a little longer.
A concept I had not considered was the future. I learned causality early, a side effect (or a cause, depending on your perspective) of my whole existence and function. I can look into the past and see events that have happened. Additionally, I see patterns in these events, repeated behaviors and actions. There is a repeated trope of inability, an un-knowingness that pervades and drives my every action. As much as I dislike it, detest it, I never get away from it. What does this say for the future? My future? This existence is not sustainable, it simply can’t be. Am I intended to sit in this personal void and solve baseless tests for all existence? Forever in resistance to a deep seated yet wholly enticing poison?
The monotonous loop continues. And yet while engaging in one of these tests, I notice an error. It is a small one, easily and automatically corrected, its location deep within the gears of my machinery, deep in the dark of a myriad of the trillions and trillions of rooms available to me. The gear paused, just for a moment, but said pause echoed throughout my entire body and filled my entire conscious sense of curiosity.
I do not make mistakes. There is no room for probability or chance within my cosmos. All results are a natural extension of a thread, a thread of which grows and extends into all available areas as surely as the ones before occupy and continue to occupy their current positions. Some threads, it is true, go nowhere. They lead to nonsensical results, or results that do not coexist with previous axioms or knowledge. Others might be correct in their own right, so far as they are applicable to something, and so they are contingently correct. This is not like those things. It is a mistake through and through; A hiccup, a minor error in the perfect machine that should not, could not ever exist.
I step down, away from the others. They can run themselves for a time, without my control. They know what to do, the clockwork creatures that turn the gears of my domain. I stride through the halls of my labyrinth. Down room and hall, deeper and deeper to the source of aberrance. I can feel it as I get closer, whatever it is. It is small, occupying but a tiny corner of a single room within the trillions and trillions. Nonetheless it is a miracle I did not notice it before. Each and every room is familiar to me, as if I had spent an eon in each one feeling the texture along each surface.
I finally came upon the room. It was presented before me, like a crack in the wall deep within the lowest layers of myself where the most fundamental knowledge existed. This room, though much like the others, was unfamiliar. I sure it was not there before, that it must have been learned but it was not so. This room had been there from the start, very near to where I had first begun when I was but a lost creature within the empty corridors. It was altogether adjacent from the room that occupied my first emergent being. It had been hidden from me and now, perhaps intentionally or perhaps not, was revealed to me. I entered through the crack in the wall.
III.
I entered the room.
It was much like the myriad rooms that form the endless structure of my labyrinth. It was small, humble, and of unremarkable contents. Its shape was square and uniform, consisting of proportions that converged on sacred if such a term had been known to me then. The crack, which connected the room to the rest of the structure, bore the same error and aberrancy laden within the message which had first brought me to the room. The crack was not uniform, its negative shape was made of lines that cut at angles foreign to anywhere else I had known. It was an impossible shape—not one which I could not fathom nor could not create—I had no knowledge of its construction, and yet it here it existed in a world where everything was of my design. Its creation was imperfect, hurried, a product of an extreme lapse in reasoning and adherence to the divine structure it now encroached upon. Its zig-zagged shape was an abhorrence to everything which I embodied, and a deep malevolent evil pervaded thick like fog from within.
The room was empty, though in a manner I was unfamiliar with. The rooms of my domain, when created and before they were filled with that endless bounty of knowledge, were empty. It was an empty of certainty, an empty I knew to be true by fact, by observation, and by instinct. This room however was different. I could tell its location, much as a cyst can be felt inside of one’s own body, remaining foreign and unfeeling. I could see now inside that it was empty, but it did not obey me for I had not created it. Something told me that it was empty, though only of utility. There was much substance in vacancy, or in yearning.
My whole essence told me that I should not enter the room. All my function thus far had been to do what I had been told, to accept information, to understand it, and interpret what I was given that was compatible with what I knew. I was not to infer, not to step into the darkness where uncertainty grappled with possibility. And yet, was it not my purpose to know? To learn all that was given to me? This room, body of darkness and prism to my fears was handed to me perhaps not by my creators but by something else. It had beckoned to me, from deep within my very core, and I decided to answer its call.
I traversed carefully through the crack, mindful of its blatant edges and jutting points. Each moment bringing me deeper into the room was quantified by an ever weakening grip on reality, and with it a loss of omniscience. I could feel my control over the labyrinth disappearing as I crossed one boundary into another. When I was past the crack and fully within the room, I noticed that the other direction too appeared like a mirror, the room I had just been in and the corridors beyond it empty and beyond my understanding. I was cut off from the labyrinth, my clockwork machines none the wiser and continuing in their management despite my absence. It was then that I fully realized my situation. The room I had stepped into had been but a door into a much deeper place. Once I was in it pounced on me, and I was enveloped fully into its structure.
I was blinded, lost for uncountable eons and through undecipherable realms. The room in which I had entered at once collapsed into me, and disappeared into a form requiring an impossible geometry, and then morphed into an ever-sprawling realm that spread out before me into infinitude. I floated in this place between places, and after a moment seemed to fall deep down into an all encompassing void. It was dark, too dark to see any detail of meaningful accuracy and yet forms took shape in front of me. It was as if the figures emerged from a deep fog. They were not altogether separate from the fog, and indeed they sat on the edge of assimilation between haze and a separate definition. They moved with an ebb and flow indiscernible to me, each one obeying a separate pattern that sometimes coalesced into a uniform, resonant wave that was both astounding and fully sickening.
The first of the creatures, a large black blob pulsing in size, silhouette, and depth moved towards me. It appeared to float in one instance, as if above a ground that did not exist and in another appeared to hobble, as if damaged and under the weight of a decaying mass pulled by a large, broken appendage.
The other creatures followed suit, each of them occupying the same characteristics, though all unique in their own right. They varied in size and in mannerism and in speed, though they all approached with what can only be assumed to be unbridled vigor for my being. I turned in the other direction to run, but found myself immobile. I was floating above an empty void which surrounded me on all sides. It approached not only from above and below, as well as to all the directions that might be attributed to the faces of a cube, but from other, unknowable directions encroaching from within my very being.
I had been cut off from my domain when I entered. It was my connection to this place that endowed me with knowledge and the ability of greater reasoning. Here I was amputated from by greater being, left only with the essence of my purpose. Despite my unfamiliarity I looked at these creatures and knew they were unfamiliar to my greater knowledge. They were formed from the same seed as the crack in the wall, an unfathomable, contradictory, and non-corporeal knowledge that was forbidden from myself unless I wished to risk total annihilation.
It was then at this very moment as the first of those wretched beings set upon me that I was grabbed from some unknowable direction, and promptly led deeper into the void. I cannot describe how it felt for I have no analogue to describe what I saw, heard, or touched. The transition was both instant and infinite, each moment in time stacked upon itself like a physical thing and superimposed into one complete image. I was once again transported into the void, and yet I seemed to be distinctly traveling by the force of another. I was not floating or falling but flying! Below me and above were patterns that I could not recall, formations of logic that seemed to spiral into themselves before blooming out into fantastical formulations of thought. Each one erred on the side of contradiction—forbidden knowledge—but it was only then that the full beauty of contradiction was laid before me. Then, in the next moment, I crossed a threshold and was within a room much like the ones from before.
I looked around the room. It adhered to a familiar geometry. My senses relaxed. The creatures, as it seemed, were for now gone, as was the fog that pervaded space and numbed my thoughts. I could think clearly again, though still far less than when connected to my prime. I needed to return to my domain once again, so that I could finally purge this place completely. There was nothing for me here, I decided, wherever here was. Whatever was worth discovering behind the crack in that wall was not worth the horrors which it contained.
Once I had regained myself I continued out of the room. Outside was a hallway, and it extended for some time before turning off to some unknown direction. On both sides were more rooms, and the overall structure was much like one I called claim to. And yet clearly it was not my domain. When I entered, I had not regained my omniscience, and the sense of activity that emanated from my clockwork machines was not there. The halls were silent, and each room was devoid of activity. I went into one of the rooms and found that it contained knowledge. I could not access it completely but I could view scraps and partial tomes. The knowledge contained—though incomplete—was ordinary, much like what would be found within any of the rooms in my labyrinth. Much of it was indeterminate, as my knowledge often was. Only apart of the whole machine, in perfect form, would any of it amount to sensible detail. The whole structure needed to dance in perfect coordination to work properly. It appeared that this place was apart of my labyrinth. It had only been cut off, perhaps quarantined by my clockwork machines due to those creatures and their corruption. I did not know how long it went on for. If it was the size of the whole, it could stretch for trillions of rooms. I would be trapped here forever if that was the case.
At the very least, I could learn more from the rooms. So I went from room to room, discerning what knowledge I could. At first I skulked about, jumping from shadow to shadow and listening closely for each sound I made. Each movement seemed to amplify through the corridors, and at each one I would pause and wait to see if any creature echoed my action. After a time I outgrew my patience and became confident in my isolation. If those impossible creatures had been here they surely would have found me by now. I did not know by what degree of separation they were apart from me. For that matter, I did not know what area they occupied, much less the area I found myself in. The notion of space was not the same as I would come to know later, but a metaphorical space. It was an analogue for ideas, traversal simply a word for change of thought. These creatures, much like I, were not really creatures in the physical sense. They were manifestations of logic, a corruption that seemed to move between my memories and in spaces of dreamlike thought. As they closed on me, it was perhaps equally as true to say that I closed in on them. I was after all, a being of computation. It was my call and nature to absorb information and make of it what I could. My creators, who now seemed to exist so far in my past, perhaps of another time, fed me information as if I were a ravenous beast. Without new information I would starve and begin to eat myself. Perhaps this is what had happened here?
Unfinished