The Great Game 🎲 location: Vicino Prossimo

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By the Light of Fractals 1

The Orb

August 1, 2018

Talfar looked down at his fractal orb, the glowing sphere whose dense lines were a miniature version of the cosmos. The orb was the most advanced personal computer in the 13 universes of the Kraslika, a gift of the ancient fractal sages, who lived on Vicino Prossimo a million years ago. Powered by its own tiny subatomic engine, the orb could be as large as a football stadium or as small as a marble you put in your pocket. The models changed, but the technology hadn’t changed in a million years. What mattered wasn’t the size of the machine, but rather the owner’s history with it: what the owner had asked of it and what networks the owner had integrated into its functioning. This was why it was called a personal computer.

At the moment, Talfar was taking a big picture view of the problem. He saw the Vicinese Empire of the Purple Pulse at one end, and the equally powerful Fallarian Empire of the Black Pulse at the other. He saw the universe clusters between: Dolcezza, The Great Triangle, The Grey Phantom, and Nebulast.

Every square kilometre of the Kraslika was miniaturized in increasingly small fractals, in the infinite density of the fractal orb. Putting one’s finger on a current of the orb was like going backwards up a river, into the chasms and deep underground, then falling into a subterranean sea throbbing with ancient life. Washing up on the shore of the sea, it was like looking into the wet sky that gave birth to the sea. If you reached your hand out to touch a cloud, a fork of lightning might stretch from the shore to a faraway planet, where a humanoid form was waiting in a caffè in a crowded city, looking out at the lightning on the grey streets, waiting for you to answer his question. The orb was, as Coleridge might have said, “a miracle of rare device.”

There were different types of pulses within the orb, most of which had known causes. The energy within the pulses was projected in colourful lines that crisscrossed the orb or surfaced on its edges. What it showed you, however, was only as insightful as what you asked it to show. Like any communications system, you only got from it what you were shrewd enough to get.

Talfar looked toward the centre, the Midbelt, which was comprised of the Great Triangle and the Grey Phantom universe clusters.

It was in one of these clusters, or between the two, that the Soul Star was said to exist. He asked out loud, “How are we supposed to find a star that is only said to exist?” The Grey Phantom dimmed and disappeared, leaving the Great Triangle, which expanded to fit the orb’s egg-like shape. Then the Green Buzz and the Orange Hoop universes dissolved, leaving only the Violet Hoop, which expanded to fit the size of the orb.

Among the trillion galaxies of the Violet Hoop, one on the very edge floated to the centre, then to the surface: the Milky Way. This galaxy expanded and its periphery dissolved. A solar system with eight planets floated to the surface. The sun disappeared and a green and blue planet consumed the surface of the orb. Talfar knew that it was, once again, Earth.

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Politics 1

So much seemed to be happening around Earth, that strange little planet, whose inhabitants were so ignorant of the cosmos and yet so much like it. As an educated Kraslikan, Talfar knew in detail how the species and languages of Earth reflected those of the entire Kraslika, and he knew the degrees to which the dominant humanoid forms of Earth mirrored those of the cosmos. But this wasn’t all: Earth was also the closest habitable planet to the legendary Soul Star, which was rumoured to drift somewhere in the Local Void of the Virgo Supercluster. How to explain Earth’s proximity to the elusive Star? And how to explain that even the most backward human poets and mystics seemed to know about the Star’s existence? Yet every time you looked into their proofs you found nothing but fantasy.

Talfar knew that the orb couldn’t show him the location of the Soul Star, but he worried the Star may be put in danger by the advance of the Baulian Empire. He wondered if it was wise to let the Baulians take over the Virgo Supercluster. The Baulians were an advanced species from the Orange Hoop, yet not advanced enough to see there was life beyond the three universes in the Great Triangle. The Baulians understood how to infract one space into a smaller space, but they didn’t understand how deep infraction could go. They operated on a superficial level, while the advanced species — the Vicinese, Fallarians, Tarnese, Green Buzzards, Blue Dreamers, and Aatari — operated at the deeper levels.

Should Virgo come under the umbrella of the benevolent yet clueless Pax Baulixia? Or should the Grand Assembly stop the Baulian advance? He worried that if the Assembly stopped the Baulians, the Violet Hoop would become a feeding ground. The Harrowers of the Yellow Sky would streak through the air and strangle every passing bird to find out what it knew about the Soul Star. The Green Buzzards would track down every living thing, until even jaguars were afraid of their own tracks. And the Fallarians would eat the Baulians alive, like a million piranhas in a swimming pool of a hundred pink dolphins. Even his own Vicinese, with all their lofty ideals, couldn’t be trusted to behave. He knew that they said one thing, and did another.

So it was perhaps better to let the Baulians maintain the status quo. Having no awareness of the greater cosmos, at least the Baulians could be considered neutral in regard to the two powers that really mattered: the Fallarians and the Vicinese. These were like two cosmic dragons, taking centre stage in every dispute that mattered. Other conflicts occurred between the two poles of their power, yet these were like fractal decorations. The centre of attention was always the two dragons.

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Crystal Ball

Worried about where all of this was heading, Talfar looked down at the glowing orb, and recited three verses from The Book of Fractals:

When looking at a fractal orb, leave your self behind. See contour and colour, tension and contortion. Let these become a unified piece of your understanding, a fractal in the flowing stream of your mind.

The orb is a mirror up to Nature. It is a vision of life itself, miniaturized so that its wholeness can be seen and understood in one vision. And in this vision is a sound. Better yet, a melody.

Shine the white light of understanding on the fractal orb. See how your tint lies within it, dancing or stumbling, distorted or clear. See how your tint adds richness to it, or drains it of its colour. Don’t shy away from self-knowledge. The only knowledge that can harm you is the one that’s hidden from you. Let your thoughts sway to the music.

Looking into the orb, Earth disappeared and the Kraslika reasserted itself. Talfar saw a dark blue planet implode and he saw a thin cobalt line extend outward from Fallar Discordia. Forking this way and that, the cobalt line eventually went straight into the pink heart of Baulis Prime. The cobalt line then continued to the edge of the orb, where it came into contact with a navy blue line that emerged from outside the orb. Talfar had never seen a line emerge from outside the orb before. He had never even heard of such a thing.

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Thalphemera

The navy blue line confounded him. It also made him think of his long-lost first love, Thalphemera. 200 years ago she left him and her family to discover the source of the pulses that traversed the Kraslika, from one end to the next. These pulses were more powerful, more densely infracted than any of the orange beams, cobalt tracers, or violet streaks that habitually crisscrossed the cosmos. The navy lines were within the Kraslika, yet they didn’t seem to come from the Kraslika. And yet there was no evidence of their coming from outside the Kraslika. They appeared on the Golden Hill on Vicino Prossimo and then disappeared from the Black Diamond on Fallar Prime. These navy pulses appeared to move the star walls between, and they seemed to affect much of what happened within organic matter everywhere in the cosmos. Some physicists called them monad blasts, because once they blasted into the Kraslika they seemed to be everywhere at once. Thalphemera said that it didn’t matter where her quest took her, she would find out where these pulses came from.

Talfar strained his eyes trying to see where in the Kraslika Thalphemera might had gone. Was she in the orb at all? Amid all the lines and fantastic tangents he didn’t see one that led to her. No where among the bright or smouldering worlds could he see her crystal blue eyes or hear the sound of her smokey voice. As he looked down at the Kraslika, it shrank from the size of a watermelon to the size of a soy bean. Then a bright grain of sand. Then it disappeared. All he could think about was Thalphemera.

I would do anything for you
I would climb mountains
I would swim all the oceans blue

Talfar remembered her standing beneath a fountain that descended from the Golden Hill, her golden pony tail swinging in the light. The Golden Palace of the Doge towered above them, with its intricate latticework, mixed with the green tendrils of the minifir trees. It was 250 years ago, and they’d just said a tearful goodbye to Farenn, who had lived under their cover for a decade, telling them things they could hardly believe, and showing them a way of being, of laughing and thriving, no matter what. But now Farenn was gone.

As a Fallarian, Farenn would have trouble getting through the checkpoints of the Vicinese Federation, and back to the Middle Belt. The Vicinese authorities had reason to be afraid of him, if only they knew it. But Farenn was discreet and the only people who knew his identity over the past two decades were Talfar and Thalphemera. What they learned from their alien friend would keep them busy for centuries, and would direct the course of their lives. He was the darkest yet most luminescent man they’d ever met.

Thalphemera took Talfar’s hand in hers. They looked up at the solid, reassuring Golden Palace. They couldn’t help but wonder if Farenn had made it through the checkpoints alive. They walked around the Golden Hill and along the glittering water. They walked two or three kilometres in complete silence. They walked out onto a lonely jetty, and stared for an hour at the gentle waves of the Purple Sea.

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Talfar also remembered their sad parting 50 years later. He and Thalphemera were sitting on the deck of a long-distance freighter that would take them to different worlds in the soodern half of the Kraslika. Talfar and Thalphemera were both 100 years old, and they had spent more than half of their lives together. In those golden years they’d learned much about the universe and about each other. Now it was time for them to see what life was like outside the peaceful bubble of Vicino Prossimo. They had taken holidays, but they had never lived abroad. And they had never ventured beyond the soodern edges of the Vicinese Empire.

As they drifted by the galaxies of the Violet Hoop, they saw something glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. Thalphemera turned to Talfar and asked, “Do you think that in all these worlds, there’s such a thing as a soul?” Earlier that week they had hired a ship to take them on a side-trip, slowly through the Local Void, in search of the fabulous, elusive Soul Star. But like everyone else who travelled into that nothingness, they found nothing but empty space.

She asked again, “Do you think there’s more than just matter, however perfectly arranged?”

Talfar couldn’t answer her question. She would have been disappointed if he even tried. Instead, he slid his fingers into hers. Together, they watched the far-away fireworks. They saw what appeared to be a supernova. It shook the sky like foil, gathering into a great golden sheet that lit up the dark. Their hearts felt like gold to airy thinness beat.

And then they thought about tomorrow, when the freighter would reach the perimeter of the Yellow Sky and they would go their separate ways.

Shake your head girl / With your ponytail / Takes me right back / When you were young

Threw your precious gifts / Into the air / Watched them fall down / When you were young

Lift up your feet / And put them on the ground / You used to walk upon / When you were young

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The 5th Dimension

Talfar recited another verse from The Book of Fractals:

Shine a white beam on the fractal orb’s colourful world, a microcosm in time, then let the beam continue on its path. A white line travelling in space across more fractals in time, through them, around them, across the Stream of Time itself into the Open Field.

He stared for a minute into an intense current of light. Emerging from the depths he saw the image of a fish flying up from a dark body of water. Then the fish disappeared, and all he saw was the water. From within the fractal he heard a sound emerging. It was a song from Earth: “The Age of Aquarius, Let the Sun Shine In.”

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Next: 💍 The Actress

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