Chapter 9
There were stone arches spaced out about every two kilometers of Path. Passing through one pushed a traveler twenty kilometers down the Path. The ‘gates’ worked both ways, sending one forwards or backwards along the Path. Part of their journey brought them close enough to one of the sides of the cavern; tunnels could be discerned, along with holes in the wall. Frittens were abundant here. They were climbing the walls, perched on rocks, venturing out and running back to holes. They fought each other. They hunted appropriate size game, usually in clusters- but it was less cooperative and more just competition for the prey. The size of the insects bothered Heather more than the dinosaurs. There were dragon flies as big as hawks. They could catch and carry away small Frittens.
“Are you a VIP?” Heather said.
“I am treated well,” Jon said.
“Why?” Heather asked.
“The new kid on the block,” Jon said.
“It’s more than that,” Heather said. She was silent. “You bribed that guard? I thought people were weary of generosity here?”
“That wasn’t generosity. That was an exchange,” Jon said. “Yes, it was a bribe. It’s not cool. But it indebted him to me. One day, he is going to have to pay that back.”
She stopped when Jon stopped. A rather fat Fritten was on the path. “Is it sleeping?”
Jon shook his head. “Wait here,” Jon said. He pulled out surgical gloves from his bag, put them on, and gently picked up the bloated, dead Fritten and carried it out into the grass and set it down by a lake. He removed the gloves as he headed for the path, careful not to touch the outside, but folding the two together. He tossed this to the ground. He was rubbing sanitizer on his hand as he came back on the Path.
“You littered?”
“Biodegradable. It’s likely to get eaten before it the grass takes it,” Jon said.
Heather screamed. Something from the lake emerged, grabbed the dead Fritten, and disappeared back into the lake. The thing that had emerged had some Fritten like attributes, except was clearly more adapted to an aquatic environment…. And bigger. Big enough to tackle a grown man.
“Please don’t scream,” Jon said.
“Sorry,” Heather said.
They continued walking. A shrew like creature emerged from the ground and began pulling the gloves down. Dragon flies dive bombed it, trying to catch it. They made it to the next gate, which was cluster of gates in a circle. Six paths branched out away from the cluster. He led them around the gates back to the gold path and continued without using the gate.
“Why?” Heather asked.
“We don’t want to use all the shortcuts,” Jon said.
“Why are you so preachy on some subjects, but when I ask you about you, it’s like pulling teeth to get answers?” Heather asked.
“Sorry for being preachy,” Jon said.
“Tell me about Loxy,” Heather said.
“It’s a nice day out. Wouldn’t you like to just walk and enjoy nature?” Jon asked.
“Nature can kill you,” Heather said.
“We are nature,” Jon said.
Heather sighed. There was a bottle water in her pack. She sipped from it, put it back. They walked, with little small talk. It was raining in a corner and rainbow grew out of the mist. They took pause to urinate. It was then Heather stepped off the path to pee in the grass that she discovered the Path rendered a person invisible. She stepped onto Path, Jon was there. She stepped off the Path, he wasn’t there. He was there, but not visible.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Heather asked.
“The cloaking tech won’t protect you from everything. It protects us from most of the insects. Some of the dinosaurs. We’re protected from other humans,” Jon said. “Also, you weren’t supposed to discover it like that. It’s a test of faith, followed by the realization you have some protection.”
“There are other humans in here?” Heather said.
“There are humans who walk the Path,” Jon said.
“Why?” Heather asked.
“For knowledge. For sport. For hunting,” Jon said.
“Do you hunt?” Heather said.
“Oh, no. I don’t even like to fish,” Jon said.
“You don’t strike me as the sports guy,” Heather said. “You weren’t interested in the Stars.”
“I love stars,” Jon said.
“Dallas Stars,” Heather said.
“Oh. Yeah. Well. I was interested in you,” Jon said.
“Still interested?” Heather said.
“I will always be interested in you,” Jon said.
“And yet, we don’t seem to get traction in us?” Heather said.
“I have noticed, but it’s not from a lack of wanting. We’re not quite engaged in the ‘distancer pursuer dance.’ We’re actually kind to each other, and respectful of boundaries,” Jon said. He smiled faintly. “I like our dialogue. I can imagine long walks and conversations with you.”
“And other things?” Heather asked.
“I always imagine other things,” Jon assured her.
“Tell me about Loxy,” Heather said.
“She’s special,” Jon said.
“Clearly. The ideal woman?” Jon said.
Jon seemed distant. He frowned. “I don’t know how to tell you about her without telling you more about me. I have not lived well on Earth. I spent most of my life recovering from unnecessary injuries. I have underperformed in multiple domains, and the ones I excelled in helped in my recovery but they are not external measures that might reflect how far I have advanced. For instant, I have always worked, but I have never gotten ahead, or had higher than minimum wage. And not from a lack of intelligence or a lack of effort. I have always been praised for my work ethic. I am known to be outspoken about things…”
“So, you’re not a team player?” Heather asked.
“I am the best team player ever. I will do anything for the team,” Jon said. “I will sacrifice myself for the team. You tell me to do something stupid, I will point out how that is stupid, and then you say, ‘I am the boss, I want this done,’ I say okay, and I do it. I am not making sense. Sorry.”
“Do you have an example?” Heather asked.
“Not that I want to share,” Jon said. “Chances are I am on the autism spectrum. I am disturbed by too much noise or light. I have been diagnosed with Hyperacusis. I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, which was useful for explaining why it took me ten years to get my undergrad accomplished. I was diagnosed with maladaptive daydreaming, but when you consider ASD, it might just be a version of autistic fantasy…”
“What’s that?” Heather asked.
“A defense mechanism that uses daydreaming and fantastical thinking as a method for coping with stress,” Jon said. “I go places in my mind that are as real to me as any place you have been in real life.”
“That sounds nice, actually,” Heather said.
“It can be,” Jon said. “There are places I can go that are not very nice. I have not always been nice to people. Some of that was self defense. Some of that was just selfishness. I have unpaid debts to people, society. From the perspective of Seeker, we scripted those events, but I now, on this side of the veil, I wish I had not been the bearer of those lessons. Not just because I find myself the recipient of the lesson, but because I think there might have been a better way to teach and learn. Vicariously is a valid path to maturity.”
“I am confused,” Heather said. “You have hurt people in real life, or in fantasy.”
“In both,” Jon said.
“Your fantasies are nightmares?”
“Eventually, even in your mind, you confront darkness,” Jon said.
“How is this daydreaming thing bad? No one real gets hurt?”
“I am real,” Jon said.
“Yeah, but…”
“What you do to people in your dreams and fantasies, you do to you,” Jon said. “First level of lesson. Second level, what you do to others, you do to you. What we do affects reality, the future, God, and they in turn influence us.”
“Fantasy would seem preferable to hurting others in real life,” Heather said.
“There is some dangers of not wanting to attend to present real world demands in favor of alternative realities,” Jon said. “Too much withdraw from others, harms others. We benefit others when we are genuine and present. The benefit to fantasy is you mature faster than your peers. You’re creativity goes through the roof. Your ability to avoid drama goes up. The cons are, you tend to be lonelier, and isolated- not just from self-isolating, but others just can’t relate. Being unable to relate likely increases the urge to engage this modality, and the more you increase it, the less likely you are to relate with people, at least on a superficial level. People don’t like serious people. They need serious people, especially when they’re doctors or counselors, but for just hanging out with, not so much. Tesla had this condition. Einstein had this condition. They were not well liked in school and they were dismissed at every turn- even when they showed aptitude. Einstein got a break and his world flipped because he gave the world something useful. He got that useful thing while daydreaming on a boat. Tesla gave the world more useful things than any other inventor, but because he was trying to liberate the world, not make a buck off it, he died in obscurity. People who day dream are not well liked, and most people are not permitted to dream long enough to make it useful. Society has tended to hate shamans and witches for similar reasons.”
“So, it’s helpful, and not helpful?”
“It can be the best therapy, or take you further into hell,” Jon said. “It’s like narrative therapy in way. Probably daydreaming therapy. Or, to use Carl Jung’s term, ‘active imagination.’ The ‘Red Book’ was his journey into his subconscious. I have gone where he has gone. Napoleon Hill’s ‘the invisible counselor technique,’ seems to me to be a version of the same thing. Its Jung’s active imagination, engaged in a particular way. Hill invited known personalities to interact with him in a mental state and had extraordinary experiences. It didn’t matter to him if it was his brain running personality algorithms to derive at answers his personality wouldn’t normally arrive at, or maybe the possibility of the spirits of these personalities talking to him through the collective unconscious. If he got answers that worked, he went with it. He got answers that worked. The brain doesn’t care if its fiction or reality- it will give you what you ask for. Your personality has limitations that your brain doesn’t have. Change the personality filter, you change the algorithm and get different answers. People with two or more languages tend to be able to solve more problems because they have multiple maps.
“But more on the invisible friend thing. If you meditate on an imagined object long enough, you can experience that object as if it was manifest in your reality. Hill hallucinated his counselors. Jung hallucinated demons, and a friend he called Philemon. You can hallucinate the object you meditate on. You can hallucinate people you think about. You see with your brain not your eyes. You see with your memory more often than you see with the occipital lobes- that’s proven in fMRI studies. You can make imaginary friend and engage them with such intensity, they become real to you. They respond to you. Not just you telling you, not just pretend, but they become autonomous. They function and engage you in waking reality, just like dream characters interact with your when in REM sleep. The Tibetan Monks have a practice called Tulpamancy. They make objects or entities manifest to work through spiritual challenges, and then dissolve them. Loxy Isadora Bliss is a tulpa.”
Heather didn’t know what to say, but she looked like she was listening, and wanting to ask questions.
“I did this. I created Loxy Isadora Bliss because I had tremendous needs to end my loneliness. I desired kind, intellectual reciprocity of interaction, like Carl Roger’s unconditional regards on steroids. I wanted to love and be loved. I gave Loxy so much attention and energy, she manifested into my life,” Jon said.
Heather stopped their progress. “You created an invisible friend.”
“That’s the easiest way to understand what I am telling you,” Jon said.
“There is a harder way?”
“Yeah, you’re just peeking into the rabbit hole, Alice. You have not ventured inside yet,” Jon said.
“How can this get weirder?”
“I didn’t create Loxy. I am not that Jon. I am Jon. I am here, but not here. I am there, but not there,” Jon said. “I started the process of creating a tulpa, and Loxy moved into my heart, she told me her name- and she introduced me to a multiplicity of realities where she and I have been engaging each other across a vast landscape of planets and situations… She was real before I even discovered that I could make a tulpa.”
“I am seriously confused,” Jon said.
“Oh, good, then you’re paying attention,” Jon said.
“Are you saying you’re a dream character, just a person in fiction?”
Jon shrugged.
“That would make me the same thing. I am not a character in someone’s story. I am me,” Heather said.
“You’re a character in your own story. You have a running narrative that defines your reality,” Jon said.
“That’s not the same,” Heather said.
“What do you know about quantum computers?” Jon asked. She looked at him crossly. “I am not changing the subject. Roll with it.”
“They are as advanced of regular computers as light bulbs from candles,” Heather said.
“Nice,” Jon said. “And how does quantum computers relate to the many worlds theory?”
Heather frowned. “Well, it doesn’t. Just because it has the potential holding ones and zeros in ambiguous states doesn’t mean all positional realities are actually there.”
“Well, I would argue the opposite. There is an infinite series of worlds, an infinite you, and an infinite me and everyone, and all reality frames are being mapped out. Technically, they’ve all been mapped out. Do you know about the double slit experiment? Well, there is a reason our brains are divided into hemispheres. It’s the double slit. The universe is not out there, coming into us. The universe is projected through us. We gravitate towards the frequencies that aligns with our necessary pathway. Change the frequency, you change the world. Change the frequency, you leave this place and go somewhere else. You can step through the interference patterns of reality like Tom Hanks walking on toy piano. You can walk through rainbows and be elsewhere.”
Heather stopped him with a hand gesture. “So no free will.”
“How did you get there?”
“It’s all mapped out already? Roll with it,” Heather said.
Jon laughed. “Free will is not exercised too much on our level. We are not human beings. We are multidimensional beings, and we have our hands in a million physical realities, sometimes even simultaneously. This is the very definition of quantum computing. We are the culmination of quantum computing simulation systems. The brain is a quantum computer, in tandem with all of reality, and all the other beings that are presently plugged into this reality. It is a consensus reality. The matrix is a great Meme, but you can’t stop at that. We live in a sand box and nursery for developing mature souls.”
“Are you sure you’re not a Scientologist?”
“I am telling you this for free, does that sound like them?” Jon asked. “Don’t think about what I said. Don’t be convinced. Don’t try to argue it. You put in a box that Jon said this. Others have said it. Now that you’ve been exposed, you’re going to find others saying variations of this. After a while, you get so many boxes of variations of this, things will just make sense. And, when you’re ready, just explore the outer edges. Don’t go jumping off the deep end like I did.”
“Don’t make a tulpa?” Heather asked.
“There are some things that can’t be undone,” Jon said. He began walking again.
“So,” Heather said, walking again as Jon began walking. “I am competing against a ghost.”
“It is not a competition,” Jon said. “Not only would Loxy be happy if we hooked up, she is encouraging it.”
“Why?” Heather asked.
“We advance through relationships. Every person that has ever come into your life has either taught you something, or given you something,” Jon said.
“Every relationship I have had has given me hell,” Heather said.
“Serial abusive relationships?” Jon asked. Her nod was subtle. “Then the gift was opportunity. You are engaging similar kinds of people because a part of you wants to learn not to engage those sorts of people.”
Heather stopped and pushed Jon. He came back on the path. “You think I like being abused.”
“I am not saying you’re doing it consciously,” Jon said. “Re-enactment is a real psychological, clinical term- and all humans engage this to some degree, but people who were victimized or traumatized tend to keep putting themselves into situations where they are likely to be victimized. Maybe the first time was bad luck. The subsequent times, many blame themselves for putting themselves in bad situations, or for going back. People almost always go back.”
“Re-enactment,” Heather said.
“We all do it to some degree. We tend to love others the way we most wanted to be loved. What we missed out on, we try to give that to others. If you do that, you will likely feel empty because people don’t always love us in the same way we demonstrate love. Ever heard the saying, a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime?” Jon asked. “That’s a version of re-enactment.”
Heather started walking briskly. Jon mirrored her speed.
“I am not going back to him,” Heather said.
“Who does he remind you of? Your dad or your mom?”
Heather stopped. She just stared at him.
“People tend to pick partners who resemble the parent they had the most problems with growing up,” Jon said. “And if there was an absent parent, they tend to hook up with people with attachment disorders that are likely to mirror patterns of abandonment in the family of origin. Who was beating you as a kid?”
Heather shed tears and began walking. Jon walked with her.
निर्मित
The grass to either side of the path was getting taller. It was a grain bearing plant and reptilian herbivores moved across the plain like buffalo. There was a gate ahead, a stone arch with irregular sides. Closer to the gate the grass was almost hip high. Jon brought them to a stop.
“Look at your shoes,” Jon told her.
Heather looked to him and saw him looking at his shoes. “What?”
“Do it,” Jon said.
Heather did so.
“Use your peripheral to scan the area to the right of the gate. Tell me what you see,” Jon said. Jon took her arm. “Don’t stare. Scan, look at your feet.”
There was a creature sitting in the grass. It was darker than the grass, but not by much. It appeared to be chewing on a bone. There was evidence of a dead Fritten in front of it.
“What is it? A gorilla?” Heather asked.
“A reptilian,” Jon said. “Namid’s species. It’s an adolescent.”
“So, it’s safe?” Heather said.
“No,” Jon said. “Showing teeth will be seen as an act of aggression. It will kill you. If you make eye contact with it, it will kill you. Are you menstruating?”
Her eyes went to his face, fierce. “That’s totally inappropriate…”
“If you’re menstruating, it will kill you,” Jon said.
“Seriously?”
“May I ask Eos to measure your hormone levels?” Jon asked.
“She can do that?”
“I can,” Eos explained. “And, Jon, she is not projecting sufficient levels of hormones that would activate him.”
“Activate him?”
“Estrus cycle. The males can only mate when a female gives the appropriate chemical signatures that it is receptive,” Eos explained. “Human females can trigger the male during their cycle.”
“So, it would try to fuck me, not kill me?” Heather said.
“No, it will kill you. You will trigger it to engage, but you will never make it reach threshold to cease engagement because you lack the biological responses that says the goal has been accomplished,” Jon said. “That, and, well, it will kill you.”
“I think she is safe to proceed, Jon,” Eos said. “You on the other hand, are projecting higher levels of testosterone than your base line. It’s sufficiently high you could trigger an aggressive response even without making eye contact.”
Heather looked at Jon amused. Jon seemed to be gritting his teeth.
“So, why is it up?” Jon asked.
“Situational. You’re in environment that requires you to be more alert, aggressively so, with the looming threat of combat. I suspect, though, it’s due to the immediate proximity to a love interest, and your desire to protect her,” Eos said.
“Blue balls much?” Heather said.
“You are not a love interest,” Jon said.
“You love rescuing people. You rescued her,” Eos said. “She is a love interest.”
“I am not Keanu Reeves. I am not trying to disarm this bomb. She is not Sandra Bullock. I am not trying to get her off the bus and…” Jon said.
“Speed dating?” Heather said.
“Recommendations?” Jon asked.
“You need time alone to knock one out?” Heather asked.
“No,” Jon said. “Eos?”
“You want help?” Heather asked.
“No,” Jon said. “Eos?”
“You may have to venture off the Path and go around,” Heather said.
Jon’s measure of the wandering herbivore found that prospect unsettling.
“Can’t we just talk to it?”
“Not at this stage of development,” Jon said. Heather gave him a look that said she wanted more. “This species has five stages of development. The males of the species, in this phase, are extremely territorial. They will fight, sometimes to the death if another male tries to occupy its sphere of influence, or doesn’t retreat. They are still wild animals.”
“Five stages?” Heather asked.
“They hatch from eggs as Frittens,” Jon said. “They adapt to the environment they gravitate towards. Some become aquatic. Some adapt to deserts, some forests, and some, like our friend there, grasslands. The males spread out. The females travel in packs.”
“He’s eating a Fritten,” Heather said.
“Heather, they’re not human. It is wilder at this stage than it was as a Fritten,” Jon said.
“Well, don’t they care? Don’t the adults try to civilize them?”
“Nature civilizes them,” Jon said. “You can’t make the world safe. They have to survive this. If you put them in a padded room, they don’t mature. They stay infantile forever. You get stronger through exposure to appropriate levels of adversity, too much makes them crazy, too little they never mature. You mature through exposure. If you never experience death, you are not likely to handle a significant death well when it does finally happen. Everyone eventually experiences death. Experiencing death too young can mess with your brain. Experiencing it too late, messes with your brain. There is an ideal place, even for death. Whether its muscles, or brains, or emotional-spiritual attributes, you’re either maintaining, building, or loosing. We become ascended being not from the virtue of being good, but by having become mature.”
“It seems barbaric,” Heather said.
“As opposed to what we do? Not all kids get fed. It doesn’t matter that they’re kids. People get real upset feeding other people’s kids because they think the parents are getting off Scott free of their duties, and start nonsense complaints like, ‘no one helps me pay my bills,’ or ‘they should not have sex.’ Not all kids get an education. Same philosophy about feeding other people’s kids drives anti education, with people who don’t have kids mad that they pay school taxes, when reality is you pay school taxes or prison taxes. Not all kids get a stable environment. And when people don’t excel, people put the onus on the individual to overcome,” Jon said. “Then you get the fucks who try to profit off the parentless kids. No one is really training people to be foster parents, not to deal with some of the PTSD and abandonment issues that many have. And then you have the other people who just want to put troubled kids in jail, because there is money in that, too. Interestingly, when we discuss this through our own personal experiences, we always equate our own inadequacies to being circumstantial- if only we had had more time or more resources or more people caring about us, but we never apply this thinking is true for others; they’re just bad. That’s human, and we can stand to refine our system, but this, this has been functional for hundreds of millions of years. It’s been refined as far as it’s going to get. And I am being preachy.”
“A little. Thank you,” Heather said. “So, what do we do?”
“I don’t…”
“You have another problem,” Eos said. Using augmenting tech, she highlighted another creature in the area, walking head low to the ground, the tip of its tail just barely coming over the wheat. Its tail resembled the wheat. It seemed to be angling towards the reptilian.
“A raptor?” Heather asked.
“Dromaeosauroides,” Eos said.
Jon removed his Torch.
“You’re going to kill it?!” Heather asked.
“If I am lucky,” Jon said.
“There’s got to be another way,” Heather said. “Teleport us.”
“I don’t always get to choose where I land. And right now, it would be seen as a cheat. We’re on the Path. This is a metaphor for life. Sometimes you get eaten,” Jon said.
“That creature is sentient,” Heather said.
“Many creatures are,” Jon said. “Dolphins. Gorillas. Dromaeosauroides maybe. That tree by the gate, definitely.”
“So, we need another way,” Heather said.
Jon frowned. Studying the terrain with augmentation was easy enough without violating social etiquette of the local dominant species. A second Dromaeosauroides was now visible through augmented sight. There was likely a third. They were females, as they hunted similar to lions- the females hunted, the alpha male held his territory and shared in the kills brought back.
“Okay,” Jon said. “Get ready to run.”
“You said never run…”
Jon stepped off the path, igniting his Torch. The loudness of the report sent creatures flying out of the grass. Herbivores looked. Dromaeosauroides jumped straight up, startled response. The adolescent Fritten, known as a Frite, stood. One of the Dromeosauroides charged it.
“Go!” Jon said.
Jon charged the Frite, arriving just as the second Dromaeosauroide started to engage. The golden blade cut through it with little resistance. The Frite was down, pinned by one Dromaeosauroide, its head held at bay by the Frite’s muscular arms. The second was still biting it, and seemed to not notice that its head was severed. Its body ran back into the field of grain. The Frite roared, its eyes met Jon’s eyes. It did not let go of the Dromaeosauroide. It was twisting the head, trying to roll to the ground to keep from having its neck broken. A third came out of the grass sideways, making a beeline for the Frite and Jon charged it. It changed its angle of attack and came straight at Jon. Jon dived rolled into the ground. The Dromaeosauroide’s head followed, the body out of balance at this speed started the tumble, and met the Torch’s blade. Its head rolled one way and the body fell forwards and came to a stop. Circling back to the gate was an issue because of the Frite wrestling the Dromaeosauroide. Jon drew close enough to severe the tail of the Dromaeosauroide engaging the Frite. The wound was cauterized; it was not likely to die from the loss of the tail, even without the cauterization, but it was now unbalanced and hurting, and gripped by a Frite. It’s urgency to disengage brought it to panic.
Jon deactivated his torch and backed towards the gate. Heather was waiting for Jon. She took his arm, watching the Frite. The Frite was watching them as they backed under the arch. They didn’t see the fourth Dromaeosauroide charging them. They ‘disappeared.’ The fourth didn’t travel with them, but passed through the gateway to find itself being attacked by a Frite.