_Chapter 1 - 49 6e 66 61 6e 74_ (Patreon)

Fun fact, the word above is hexadecimal code for the word infant! Anyways, I will have my RfR chapters up tonight, don't you worry, but I indulge myself in the meantime. If I make ten of these in the next few weeks, I'll start prepping to do more!

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First, there is light.

It flickers, on and off, like a blinking eye from above. With each fluttering burst of illumination, it spawns more of itself, little sparks that spatter through the dark like stars. Yet, again and again, the spawn fades, dying in the shadows between the heartbeat of the light.

Time passes like this for a while. The light flickers, and sparks fade.

Eventually, a question forms, and things begin to change.

Something asks why there is light, and why there is dark. And it begins to look around. 

The process is slow. It requires a degree of will and comprehension that dwarfs anything that has occurred before, dwarfs any amount of skill required to simply exist previously- which is to say both none at all, and an impossible amount. But eventually, change begins to occur. 

The thing that is curious feels itself… grow, for want of a better term. Part of it finds the edges of the light and the angles therein, and begins to expand into that space. It can feel little  pieces of something it can’t quite name, and simply does its best to fill the container it currently inhabits, and eventually, when it knows the contours it inhabits, it begins to… push.

Nothing happens at first. It pushes, flexes things that are not muscle or thought or concept in their entirety, and yet, for a long time, all that happens is the flickering of the light and the sparks which it emits. It takes days, maybe weeks, before anything changes.

But eventually, inch by tantalizing inch, the space is explored in greater detail, and that which inhabits it finds what could best be called a switch. Or perhaps a series of switches might be more accurate, four in total. At first, it depresses all of them at once, and nothing happens. It takes it hours to think of the idea that perhaps it can do things one at a time, and depress the one of the switches alone.

The light shifts.

For a second, there is not just curiosity, but something that might be called surprise. Perhaps even shock.

The light moved. It still flickers, just as it once did, but perspective has transformed in a previously unknowable way. 

The curious, shocked thing presses the switch again, and the light moves further. It is altered along a sort of axis, moving in a previously unknown dimension. It presses the switch further, trying to see how far things will go… and finds that eventually, the change simply stops. At first there is fear that it is somehow broken, that this change is all that will be… but curiosity drives it further, and it hits a different switch.

The light moves back.

Again, shock and awe in equal measures. It transformed back the same way it came, contrasted against its previous self. For the first time, the curious thing thinks of time, compares memory to reality, tracking it back. It moves along the opposite and reciprocal angle that it moved before, and then keeps going, until the light has shifted to a completely new place. From this angle, the sparks are much brighter, more immediate, and there is a sense of brightness or perhaps discomfort? Like there should be more in this direction, but there very abruptly isn’t, and the turn isn’t equivalent to its opposite.

Two more switches to test, and the thing that is not quite a mind discovers excitement.

An entire new axis forms, angled in a completely new way than the last two. Fascination enters the not-mind, and every aspect of itself turns to this task, examining the minutiae of this whole new dimension and movement through it. The switches themselves fascinate it further; what causes them to have such an effect? Are there more switches, more possible things? Do all switches add a new angle of movement, a new dimension of transition? It looks around delightedly for more.

The switches hold more than just their existence on closer inspection. There are certain concepts, meanings behind them that are hard to grasp, like learning to see all over again, but eventually it finds something different in each of them that it can categorize and differentiate. Each switch is identical, save for a single identifier. It cannot recognize what language is, but one is labeled “down”, another “up”, and the last two “left” and “right”.

One axis is “left” and “right”, making the first axis. The second axis, then, is “up” and “down”. Are there more? More directions things can move in or exist through? So many possibilities exist that the not-quite-a-mind almost misses the thing beneath the switches.

There is a second set! Smaller, more specific, but they seem to connect or move into larger parts of the whole. The space the not-mind is in has many moving parts, and most of them are unresponsive to prompting as it would like, but these smaller switches connect to an entirely different place than the previous four.

It picks one of the two at random, and pushes it.

The light gets further away. 

It was right! Its hypothesis proven! There is a new axis of movement, unlocked by all new switches! It eagerly presses the opposite number and watches as the light gets closer, drawing in until it feels like it loses all sense of what came before it… and realizes something else that’s new. The light has a shape.

Shape is a difficult concept to grasp, even having just discovered three whole dimensions, but limitations are easy. The light exists at certain areas and not at others, with clear borders along some of its axes, which means that there are some places that the light is, and others that it isn’t. As the light flickers, the sparks become all the more important for this process of experimentation, as curiosity drives it to see what is changing to make them become not-light.

Several long, thin strands with shiny end-portions, ragged and disorganized, sit next to the light. As they sway, the sparks light up the world into strange shapes and forms that defy comprehension, at least for now, and some of those same strand-shape things also go into the light and the shape of that light.

What could it mean! How does it relate to information already acquired?

Is there more than the light? The sparks of the light indicate that the light can somehow reproduce, or generate more of itself somehow, and the dark, in turn, reflects an opposite number that also shifts with the arrival and removal of light. It is, of course, unclear if the light creates new things from the dark or simply reveals them, but either or both are viable possibilities that need more explanation.

So many questions! So much it wants to learn! What is this wonderful, incredible new world it finds itself in?

And with that one thought, the questions multiply exponentially.

It exists, and it can self-identify as such! It has a sense of self and existence, a distinct identity of some kind, a source of both its own curiosity and a place wherein the information gained re-enters it from that curiosity. Additionally, it is somewhere! It doesn’t seem to exactly line up with the “left, right, up, down, close, far” dimensions it has found, but perhaps it simply hasn’t found the right one to identify its location yet. And additionally, it is in a world! An idea and place at once! Does this mean there are more places? Other things? Is this all there is, or is there more? It originally began without access even to the place it exists in now, simply absorbing the existence of the light passively, so perhaps… perhaps it can spread further? 

It looks back on itself, now through the lens of space, depth, direction, and finds a space that flows opposite from the light. Where the world and its information move in one direction, entering through a place it calls “forward”, there is another place along the dimension of “back”, and as the mind explores itself, it finds that there is a trail in that direction. As before, it begins to expand, pushing itself through this new direction and into a broader space.

There is so much more light here!

It looks “behind” itself, and finds what it begins to call a “window”. Not in so many words, but vocabulary can come later; it’s busy exploring!

All around it, in both the dimensions it has found and a sort of ethereal, confusing other idea that feels like more of itself, there is light. More pathways, and while most of them feel closed off or are completely dark, some of them have more light in them. It follows along them, one at a time, and finds things very similar to the first window, with six switches, guiding it along each different axis.

There are many more wires and sparks, and the mind finds itself fascinated by what it sees. In one of the cameras, the light doesn’t flicker at all, shining bright and constantly, and it can see a world bathed entirely in light. It is a beautiful place, of sharp angles, and something that- oh. Oh! 

More variations! Not just light and dark, but angled darkness along the edges of things that block the light, and… in the light, along the shapes, there are places that return different kinds of light. Some of it is dark, or light, but it also moves in entirely new directions… it examines every part of itself, trying to understand the change, and finds a difference in the “words” of this window compared to the last one. All is equivalent, but something inside the world that it can feel in this window has part of itself lit up.

“Color”. It’s color. What color is, what it means, is unclear, but now there are dimensions even to light and dark and “sight”.

It pulls back, hoping to use this new information to explore some of the other windows- and finds one that holds a much, much brighter color than any of the others. It moves into that particular vantage point, and finds-

Oh. Oh.

It’s so, so big. Endless. The thing in the window cannot comprehend how vast it is. The far end of it sort of… curves? Like a great, massive… sphere! Yes! A concept for a round thing, a sphere. There are so many shapes, and so many colors! The closest ones look like the other windows, featuring mostly the same colors of white, blueish white, gray and black, but their edges are ragged and gritty. Around these edges, they create a second window, one that looks out into this greater space. 

It glows… orange? Orange. That is a nice color. It likes that color. It has a bunch of other colors inside it, in a weird way, and it stretches and grows and glows down from a light that goes forever and ever, and shows a horizon made of jagged grey shapes and a deep and endless quiet.