Irregular Pulse

all this, and this again.

~

(Twelve growths.)
Twelve is a nice and round number. Not too hard for Mid to wrap its head around. Twelve growths is easy-made down into four groups of three, three groups of four. Easy enough to spread apart the labor in its mind so it doesn't think too hard about it. Most species in the universe litter the effort of their body throughout many growths but Mid needs to cluster it, needs to rewire how motivation works in its brain.

This is a soft leather boat from its childhood; sails across sea of ethanol and the worry never stops. There is no downtime in the fear that it'll sink and kill Mid and its family, so Mid lives for cyclical months in unending fear, unending weakness. When they land, that's the end. That's the same way Mid needs to think about twelve solid growths of work, Harbinger sector, employers it doesn't recognize but needs something from.

Good species for work. Mostly a cultural thing: how many of this generation have had to migrate constantly around their origin planet, lived in this fear, lived in this exhaustion? They can store up a dozen growths of mental energy or more, and expend energy, never take it in. They get born with enough to last, and that's enough to last, and that anxiety lasts until their last movement, until they just cease in place and die. So Mid is going to have to work twelve growths and maybe last long enough afterwards in complete stillness to be satisfied with its accomplishment, with what it's earned.

That's what Mid says to itself at the start of twelve growths of work and it's easy to hold onto that belief. It'll eventually become eleven growths, it thinks, then ten, nine, eight. It's going to hit benchmarks. It's going to hold itself up to its own scrutiny and improve. The work will make me a better person. But not only that, it's going to be worth its time.

Mid was young, liked to create. Low tide at the low islands of home, when the ceramic of its body wasn't being corroded by the rain, things would wash up from other dead things, crashed ships who had tried to-- whatever reason they'd come, it didn't matter, the storms tore them apart and things would wash up, baubles and half-broken machinery, small enough for Mid to manipulate and prance around and assign names. Built up a world in a tiny hovel room, evacuated all other furniture and made room just for characters in a world better than its own. Family slowly wasted away without hope of leaving. Mid would have, too, but the obsession and lack of anything more worthwhile made it focus inward.

These were wisps of real people living real lives, from tales it'd heard from visitors who hadn't crashed. Some represented parts of Mid-- emotional spats or bursts, brought form as matted, broken dolls, or sections of piping. Strange things happen when so much mental energy is put forth into simulating the lives of other people. Mid erased itself and saw only a fiction filled with people, and this collapsed- physically- as its house was destroyed, its toys burned, and its family exterminated. The weather had gotten to them, and the battered Mid was the only survivor.

It left home. Wasn't simple-- had to steal a ship. No foreseeable future, but a mind filled with unrequited ideas and the realization they'd die alongside it, were something to happen. A growth spent searching for some answer, and Mid found it-- Common Space was filled with miracles and terrors capable of fulfilling what it thought was impossible. Harbinger Space, a subset, had its own miracle. They could create universes. They could recreate the one Mid imagined for its characters, all its impossibilities and machinations, simulated with more accuracy than could be imagined-- and there would be a foreseeable gateway for them to escape as half-formed 'ghosts'. Finally, all of it would be worth something.

Twelve growths of work. Task suitable to its species, something monotonous, something requiring immense endurance and unending diligence. Harbingers largely didn't believe in automated labor, so Mid slipped in like a part would fit into a machine. On paper. Twelve growths of work ahead. Easy.

Easy enough to handle. Easy enough to live through. Easy enough.

(Twelve growths.)

~

But there was no living through it.

And when Mid died, it had not achieved a single thing in its drained, empty life. And when Mid died, all it had left were memories. All it had left was the possibilities it once had, and that it now never could have. How could one see Mid and not think that it was the embodiment of entropy, the gently steeping slope into snow, the perfect portrait of a life unlived and a dead body now clutching desperately towards its old body?

All Mid ever had were memories.

And in a moment, Mid was only memories again.

How could one see Mid and not think that it was a deity, like all the others? A being with all its possibility from the very beginning? Given one extra chance, it would use this possibility correctly.

Its only wish was to dismantle that single inescapable contraption-- entropy. To plug its leaks. To culminate all that was existence and save all else from its own fate, its own dead end, its downward spiral.

And in a moment, Mid was Memoria.

~

- Excerpts, The Anatomy of an Ascendant, Lexicore #968