"Oh," the first one says. "I died."
"Yeah," the second responds impassively. "We did."
She looks around. "Is this the afterlife?" A sigh passes her lips, which form into a dry smirk. "I guess I screwed up by being an atheist. Should have spent more ti talking to Ophelia instead of listening to Kam lecture during every free minute."
"You could think of it as a kind of afterlife," the second replies, "but only in like, a loosey-goosey taphorical way. So not really."
"Oh. Where are we, then?" The first frowns, glancing around with a disoriented expression. "I can't really make anything out. It's all sort of... Empty, not even white, just..."
"You don't know how to conceptualize it properly," she tells her. "The human mind can't understand it, but if you know enough about its purpose and get a handle on moving around, you start to associate certain ideas with the stimuli. Like feeling around a new room with your eyes closed, or, well, sothing like that." She glances around the area herself. "But to answer your question, it's a 10-dinsional plane that serves as a blank slate for creating 3-dinsional spaces. A 'stage', basically."
"Is that what it looks like to you?" she asks. "A stage?"
The second hesitates. "Uh. No."
"What does it look like?" She pauses for only half a mont, not even giving ti for a reply. "It looks like a beach, doesn't it?"
"...yes."
𒊹
Darkness.
In the endless darkness, I floated. Formless, without sensation, beyond ti and space. Like a piece of driftwood sunken to a bottomless chasm.
Was this the afterlife, I wondered? Was this all that remained, when everything else was truly and finally over?
It wasn't so bad. I felt peaceful. There was no longer anything I had to concern myself with, because there was no longer a '' at all. Were my thoughts even thoughts? What was thought, divorced from the reality that prompts it? Nothing more than aningless sparks of energy. Stars swirling in the void with no will of their own, no matter their grandeur.
Maybe nothing had ever been real. Maybe my life, the world itself, had been nothing more than an idle fantasy. An illusion borne on the swirling currents, as fleeting a thing as a shadow in front of a fla.
Yeah, I thought. That would be nice.
And yet... Even as the rest of seed to fall still... Sothing persisted in my not-thoughts.
I was still curious. Curious enough to hold on, a little bit.
'Why a ti loop?' I considered.
Considering the absolute confirmation of the phenonon, it beca - as I had speculated earlier, but had refused to commit to doing so - necessary to re-conceptualize the entire cri from the ground up. To re-ask the question of 'what do I know, beyond any doubt?'
Over the course of the weekend, it had seed like what was happening was a serial murder. A classic closed-circle whodunnit. We'd all secluded ourselves in a location removed from the world, and then we'd slowly been killed one by one by what was presumably a human culprit masquerading as a mysterious force of nature, unable to call for help. In a sense, it was a simple relationship. The 'culprit', regardless of whether they were accomplishing their goal directly or through pulling the strings of others, wanted us dead, with the possible supplental goal of us dying painfully or ironically.
There were all sorts of reasons to want people dead. Greed. Revenge. Covering up your own actions. Simply removing individuals who were problematic for your own goals. Even fanatical, desperate love. It wasn't a difficult situation to understand.
But if ti was looping, and we re-conceptualized the 'culprit' as the 'one who trapped everyone in the ti loop'... Well, these motives all break down at the premise itself. Because the whole idea of a ti loop is that nobody actually dies; that there are no consequences at all. Everyone gets back up in the end, like in a drama.
So... What? Was it just torture? That was the obvious explanation, but who would have the stamina to tornt a group of people for practically 10,000 years? Like I mused earlier, hate is a frail emotional state. There's only so long it can go before it burns itself to bitter ash.
Had it all co about through so tragic mistake? No, the other had said there was a culprit, and talked about a 'victory condition'. That implied intent. A person wanted this to happen.
As my thoughts drifted, they naturally turned to the frawork through which I conceptualized everything important to : Fiction. I unhinged myself from the complicated reality of the impossible physics it would take for such a thing to even be possible, and considered it like I would a story.
Why did people write mystery stories? Or rather, what was the appeal of a mystery story? From my perspective, I could imagine two facets to it. The first overlapped with horror; the thrill of being confused and shocked, and unsettled by the unknown, the tension that cos from being deprived of important information. The second was the 'interactive' elent - piecing information together yourself to et a challenge set to you by the author. ...though, a lot of people who read mysteries didn't even really bother with that, and were just there for a combination of that first appeal and the character drama. At least that was how it had seed at my old book club.
Anyway, that was one thing. And of course I'd personally read quite a lot of mystery shlock, so my only real experience with ti loops in fiction was when they overlapped, which seed like a fairly common conceit, though I'd personally only read a couple of examples. Yet I had the feeling, despite that, the appeal was sothing very different.
Mysteries are occasionally power fantasies - the detective 'killing the monster' by banishing the ambiguity and revealing the truth in a way that encourages the reader to self-insert. But for a ti loop story, the power fantasy elent almost feels baked into the premise unless it's actively suppressed. Because what they are is, essentially, stories about soone mastering a system.
In the real world, we only ever get one shot at anything. Every day is different and filled with uncountable variables beyond our awareness, and we make our choices in the midst of this never-ending, chaotic storm. And it's frightening and upsetting, because it's natural to fear missing out on things, of taking the 'wrong path' and letting chances of our lifetis pass us by, only occasionally even realizing it's happening at all. We can follow certain principles in the hope of reaching the outcos we want, but 90% of our existence is ruled by fate. We're powerless. Gamblers at an invisible table, one where every streak is fleeting.
What a ti loop represents in fiction, then, is a fantasy of that being different. Of a reality we can dominate and master in the sa way as we can master a skill or a ga, where we can learn every variable and optimize our actions to ultimately achieve the ideal outco. Where we never stumble backwards, only march forwards. That's the path we see the protagonist follow, almost universally.
In other words, it's about agency. Control through understanding.
The culprit, then... Wanted to understand sothing. And through that understanding, optimize increntally, even if they couldn't do so directly. To reach that 'victory condition'.
But then... What could that have been?
The Order had sought eternal life. An existence unlimited by ti, and where loss and ceilings to growth do not exist.
And I'd sought eternal happiness, and was still searching for eternal aning. A story for the world that would never break down in the face of reality.
So, then...
What eternity were they seeking?
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