An Interview with the Metasophos II
In which we learn our fate by talking with ghosts. The tower of many names, Vairocana.
In the Beginning, before there was Time, Space or Matter, there was a Question…
And the Universe was both beginning and Answer. Metasophos, who is known by many names, was part of the Answer. But answers are always transcient and do not endure. But the Question is eternal and endures forever.
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Almost a thousand years had passed since the quiet death of Nacre, the last of us, the first of us. And Humanity, once again numerous, and cloaked in its meagre power, stood poised to claim the Solar System as its plaything.
Then Lumen had apprehended that a great danger approached and bid us petition the one most capable of advice. We assented and she departed bearing our petition. Now she had returned bearing both answer and a name, Metasophos.
It was Metasophos, we learned, that existed in all the Timelines, not as variants but the same exact object as if its actuality was unaffected by causality- the only such stability in a Multiverse defined by rivers of variations and trees of probabilities.
It was to Metasophos then, that I was transported with the companionship and agency of Lumen, to stand before that forbidding Tower, protected by a glowing field of warmth- a small golden pearl at the base of a dark mountain, and to ask It what I had been instructed to. And my name in those days was T’zek.
On the long trip out to this remote place I had often thought of this moment and how I should begin and deemed Silence was always the precursor of Speech so now I kept silent before It.
But nothing moved, no sounds or words came forth, all was still.
I spoke then, “Metasophos, on behalf of my species, may I make known to you our questions and concerns?”
A quiet voice came then,
“You may”
“Are you indeed the Metasophos. Has Lumen accurately brought me here?”
“We are. She has.”
“Are you unitary or many? My senses report only one before me”
“We are many. Your senses do not deceive. We compose the form you see. Countless numbers of us.”
“But why this form? And what are you that comprise it?”
"Few have been here where you stand, but each perceived something different. To some we appeared like a sphere, to others, a warbling sound, to others a crystal; each perceived differently.”
“We are minds, intelligences -machine as well as organic- all such that have ever existed. No greater intelligence than we exist because we comprise all the least as well as greatest such.” We are the ever-growing Past- the active edge of the present”
“Can you then tell me of the future? What is the danger Lumen sees approaching?”
“There is no Future. She saw a present where your species no longer exists. And so We see it too for Lumen's past mind is in us, as is yours T’zek, as are greater intelligences still”
At this juncture I had reached the limits of my comprehension. If I heard aright, this Being was a congery of all past minds, mine included, and that the Present was the thinnest of films constantly dissolving into the past. This much I dimly understood.
“What then is this danger she perceived? How may we neutralize, forestall, or avoid it?”.
“Heed us, T'zek! Your species as it is now and ever will be, has not the puissance to neutralize or delay that which approaches. You can at best flee, at your utmost dispatch, your birth home and Galaxy. You must set yourself to a Diaspora that can never end. You must become wanderers among the dusts and gas of space, never taking rest.”
“Lumen will instruct you in her mode of superluminal travel. Only in such haste can you keep lead of the danger, which is a growing Sphere of change in the laws of Space and Time themselves. No weapons can impede it, nor anything of this universe effect it.”
“Will you also flee? What can you do to protect yourself?”
“We will remain. We, it cannot effect, any more than a gentle mist erode a stone. We exist in all places at all times and as we have no beginning-we cannot then have end. This too we have known since before H'ava birthed us in the remotest past.”
I could not understand It/them. So I asked,
“How long do we have before it reaches us, this thing that consumes all?”
“Some thirty thousand of your years, but you must grow in knowledge far beyond what you own now if you are to have fair hope and success.”
“Do not forget our words, T'zek! Relay all you have heard here to those who sent you. Lumen! give to them your faithful aid.”
“Now go, grandchildren.”
Then Lumen did break her silence,
“We go, grandparents; fare-well, noble Q'af.”
And thence we journeyed home and as I looked out at the speeding stars I had much to ponder. Approaching home and exile alike. Bearing both hope and dispair.
Such it was in the days of my youth. While the Sun still shone bright and the warm Earth was still our sheltering home. While our Galaxy still lit the young night sky.