#fiction
HC SVNT DRACONS 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 unknowingness 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.