Ariadne’s Thread - Chapter 1
What if you could slow your thoughts down and then stop them altogether? Withdrawing from the sensual world, thoughts slowing until you could move through the gaps between them. What would await you on the other side?
You are reading this as I am writing it. Space and time do not really separate us, and when this working is complete you will know this to be true.
I look up from the page at the room around me. Customers browse, while dust motes slide down a shaft of sunlight. A wave of deja vu washes over me.
You have created the labyrinth you are in. Look around you. Everything you can sense is a thought in your mind. Every instant of every day you unconsciously create the world around you, and move around inside your own mind.
- Sing to me, O Mneme, of the palace at Knossos, its serpentine twists and loops and the dying God on the tree of life.
I smile at the owner of the bookshop.
- Are you writing an epic? - No, I’m afraid the age of the epic is long past. It’s an invocation to the Muse from one of the books I’m cataloging. Can I help you with anything? - Yes, I’m looking for information on the Necromantic Arts in classical Greece.
He runs his hand though greying hair, different shades of a summer cloud.
- I think we’ve got a recent work by Butler which should do the trick; I’ll get it for you now.
The pale-oak bookshelves stretch out around us, weighted down with information, from Abraxas to Zoroaster. Sunlight shines through a stained-glass inlay in the window, throwing colors (olive, black, brown and yellow) onto the shop floor. The light moves through the sounds of Holst’s Planets coming from the radio. The cover of a book on Alchemy shows ravens and dragons wreathed around a resurrecting phoenix, watched over by the midsummer sun.
- Here you go, it’s based on the latest archaeological findings, including recent excavations at Knossos in Crete. Can I ask the reason for your interest in the topic? - Just background reading for a project I’m working on. - It’s a fascinating area. Greco-Egyptian magic has been a major influence on the Western magical tradition, including the grimoires and rituals from the Greek magical papyri.
Incense drifts through the air, the smell of Dittany of Crete permeating the shop. He moves a quartz paperweight, stone of the sun, off the desk to make room for the book.
- Would you like to take the one you’re holding as well?
I close it to look at the title: Ariadne’s Thread. Synchronicity.
- Yes, I’ll take both please. - I should warn you, that one is what they’re calling a quantum book. The pages contain electronic ink and the story changes based on instructions from the embedded chip. The behaviour of some characters become entangled with what it senses is happening in the reader’s life. - And how much control does the author have? - Some. The author can set the stage, describe the characters and their motivations or desires, outline the plot, give directions on key pieces of dialogue. From that point on the computer takes over. - That’s certainly a different way of telling a story, but I’ll give it a try.
Leaving the shop the door swings through the air behind me, the name of the establishment on the door: The Kingdom. Looking up I see the airships and skyscrapers of the Dublin skyline. The 250 story Yggdrasil Tower occults a new moon, encircled by clouds that have started to darken the evening sky. The sun shouldn’t be setting so quickly at this time of year. It starts to rain lightly and I hunch up my coat collar.
Nearing Stephen’s Green some of the buildings look out of place and time, with a markedly classical look and Greek columns. Glancing in the open doorway of one I see a fire burning on an altar, and hear the sound of sonorous chanting coming from the interior.
Reaching the square I hesitate near a rickshaw before deciding on a tram. As we snake through the evening crowds I start to read Ariadne’s Thread again, the book on Greek magic forgotten in my bag.
For this working a suitable libation must be made. To all the gods honey; to the unnamable mistress of the labyrinth honey.
She is threefold in aspect and must be approached with care. She can be met at the cross in the road, our lady of the borderlands. Daughter of the Stars, the baying of the Wild Hunt signals her arrival, a glimpse of light out of the corner of your eye.
Depart from the offering ground and keep your back turned when the barking of the dogs gets loudest. When silence returns approach and see if your offering has been accepted.
If the key is there you will be able start your journey downwards and inwards. Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem - visit the interior of the earth and there by rectification find the hidden stone.
I tap the phrase into my tablet. It was sometimes used in alchemical texts, and often its acronym was used: VITRIOL. Aligned with a Goddess of the crossroads, liminal, dark and chthonic. Not to be contacted lightly.
Leaning my head against the tram window I stare at my reflection. I’ve been told I look young for my 30 years, my pale skin washed by Eire’s eternal rains, burgundy hair tied up as always. My green eyes appear dark in the tinted window. I put headphones on and Reich’s “Piano Phase” washes over me, the melodies weaving back and forth over each other.
I get out at the Docklands stop and start walking towards the office. As I get further away from the tram the crowds start to thin out. Some of the side streets are not well lit and not for the first time I wished our small company had an office in a better part of town. I pick my way through the litter and broken glass. Amongst the fluorescent tags sprayed on the walls I recognise some Greek letters.
Hearing the sound of footsteps behind me I look back, seeing a single person walking in the shadows. This is the first time I’ve ever felt like I’m being followed. Trying to keep calm I start to pick up the pace, adrenaline beginning to pump as I hear the footsteps behind me also speed up.
Knowing that I’m nearing the office I start to run, my boots echoing on the old cobblestones. My pursuer also starts running, splashing through the puddles as they get closer and closer. They’re right behind me and I feel my bag being pulled off my shoulder. I turn and yell at them, getting ready to fight if necessary.
A tall woman with short dark hair is holding my bag. Her face has a cruel, sharp look to it. She slowly and calmly takes Ariadne’s Thread out of the bag, and then hands the bag back to me. I see that the e-ink on the cover has changed the title to The Way of the Serpent.
- This book is not for such as you. You’re not ready for it yet. - What are you talking about - give that back to me!
Ignoring me completely she turns and walks away. I’m not prepared to get injured over a book and by the time I reach the office my pulse has returned to normal levels. The security guard smiles at me as I swipe my pass, the Platonic Software logo on the desk in front of him.
When I reach the lab John is there, standing beside … me. I look down at myself lying on a couch, my eyes closed and the SimCap on my head. As always when I see myself like this there is a sense of vertigo. Lines of text and numbers scroll endlessly down the computer screens nearby.
- What the hell just happened John? Where did that woman come from? There’s not supposed to be any adversaries or assailants in the simulation yet. - I honestly don’t know; are you ready to come out? - Yes. End simulation.
There is a moment of blankness where I have … gone away for a while. Then I open my eyes, blinking. Bright sunshine is coming in through the windows, and an airship is docking at the top of Yggdrasil Tower in the distance. I get up off the couch.
- Apart from the problem of my attacker we also have glitches in the system. - How do you mean? - The Greek world is intruding into the present day too early. The store owner invoking the muse, the Greek temple near Stephen’s Green, the graffiti - those aspects shouldn’t be there yet. The player starts off in our world and is then transported to Ancient Greece, but there shouldn’t be leakage between the two. - What if it’s not leakage? What if the simulation is responding to your thought patterns and projecting them into the environment? - You mean feedback through the SimCaps? Then we have a more serious problem than I thought. We want to create an immersive environment, not have the user become completely disorientated when their thoughts become real around them.
I pick up the simulation cap. It puts the user into the game world by overriding their sensory inputs, making them see, hear, feel, smell and taste the world. It receives simulation data wirelessly and transmits the player’s thoughts, speech and actions back to the system.
- What about the book you picked up? - Ariadne’s Thread? I don’t know where that came from. It contained references to the Labyrinth of course, but there’s no such thing as a quantum book. Stories are fixed, immutable.
- At least the spoken interaction with the NPCs is working well. - Thanks, I think the data mining we’ve done to support their dialogue has worked well.
My background is in artificial intelligence and natural language processing. I had been hired to oversee the simulation of the NPCs or non-player characters, while John was in charge of the simulation of the worlds which these characters and human players would roam.
- I’m going to do some work with Hermes before going back in-world this afternoon. - OK, I’m going to investigate this feedback loop I think we’re seeing.
John walked out of the lab, a tall and thin man, older than me, with a wise and sometimes melancholy face. The morning sun streams in through a blind, throwing lines of light and shade across the terminals. I glance up at a framed poster on the wall, showing the Turing 3000, the latest version of the quantum chip that powers the simulation. Erwin Schrodinger (of Schrodinger’s Cat fame) lived and worked in Dublin in the 40s and 50s. His research in quantum physics resulted in the world’s first quantum computer being built at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
The machine’s use of quantum entanglement and superpositions allowed it to perform computations that were impossible for a digital computer. As further generations of these systems were developed it became obvious that it required a different way of thinking to program these non-classical computers. An industry started to grow up around the original set of pioneers, with an influx of the world’s brightest mathematicians, physicists and programmers.
I looked out at Yggdrasil Tower. It houses the headquarters of Qubit, the oldest of these companies and still the world leader. I sit down at one of the terminals and log in to Hermes. The cursor pulses like a metronome, waiting for input. I start typing, issuing commands, checking on the status of the text mining jobs I’ve been running.
Language. I love its twists and turns, the way it can loop back on itself. There is nothing it cannot describe, no emotion it cannot convey with exquisite accuracy.
To improve the verisimilitude of the dialogue in the simulation I had designed a system to analyse all of the text available from the Net, including the scanned text of pre-Net books. All of the plays, novels and short stories in every language had been fed into the system, with non-fiction being included as well. A cluster of quantum computers allows us to churn through this vast quantity of text extracting common linguistic patterns and relations.
I’m not the first person to say that everything has been said before. When a human player says something to an NPC the system can check this database for similar dialogue that might have come from a 1950s sci-fi novel, and can respond accordingly. Of course the NPC also has a set of goals and desires that it’s been pre-programmed with to further the development of the game’s story.
- Hey, John just told me what happened in-world, are you OK?
Lily, one of my team, was looking at me with concern on her face.
- I’m OK, it did give me a bit of a shock. I can confirm that players will feel an adrenaline rush when they get into a conflict situation, which our investors will be pleased about. - John says he thinks there’s a feedback loop building up in the system. - Yes, he’s got that look on his face that says he won’t stop until he’s gotten to the bottom of it. - What are you working on now? - I’m querying Hermes about the book shop owner’s dialogue tree. I want to know where the text came from. - OK, I’ll leave you to it - a few of us are going to Mulligan’s this evening if you want to come along - a drink might help you forget your experience. - Thanks, I might do that.
Hermes had responded to my query. The text from my dialogue with the owner of the Kingdom had come from a book called … Ariadne’s Thread. The simulation seemed to be trying to tell me something. Of course the first game we are developing with our simulation engine is based on the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur, where Ariadne gives Theseus the thread so he can make his way back out of the Labyrinth after killing the beast at its heart. There will then be further games and expansion packs which will allow players to work through other Greek legends like Jason and the Argonauts, the Twelve Labours of Hercules, the Odyssey etc.
I searched the Net for references to Ariadne’s Thread. There were several such works, the earliest recorded being a scroll in the library of Alexandria in the 1st century A.D. John Dee at the court of Elizabeth the 1st is said to have had a copy in his library at Mortlake. A book with that name published by an anonymous author in Germany appears at the same time as the Rosicrucian manifestos. There is even an opera by Strauss.
The most recent form of the book was published by the Golden Dawn Press in 1904. I look at the text, but as I expected it’s nothing like the one I saw in the simulation. I search for the Way of the Serpent but the only reference is to a rumoured book by the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, for which the text is not available.
I decide to get some lunch before I go in-world again, and head out of the lab.
The mostly young crowd of programmers and designers are perched in front of their screens which show code, graphics, scripts and all the other aspects that go into creating the game. Some have the Hermes terminal window open, creating characters, while others show the Demiurge world creation interface.
I sit down to lunch with some colleagues at a nearby cafe. It’s enjoyable and I’m beginning to forget my experience earlier that morning. It does suggest that we may need to tone down some of the more violent interactions in the Ancient Greek world, but it will depend on how the initial beta testers react.
Back at the lab I instruct the system to send me to a random point in the classical Greek world, biased towards locations that will be included in future games. John is still not back from his investigations but I don’t need another person to go in-world. It’s just me and the machine. I put the SimCap on.
- Start simulation.
As always there is a brief moment of white-out, and then I’m standing beside a dusty road. In the distance the white walls of a city rise up out of the plain. I activate my augmented reality display and a series of icons and text appear along the top and bottom of whatever I’m looking at. The location bar tells me I’m outside the Greek city of Thebes, on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain. It must be market day, as farmers with produce on carts carried by oxen are streaming through the city gates.
I look down and see that I’m wearing a linen tunic and a light outer cloak. The latter is brightly coloured with geometric designs. A brooch in the form of a spiralling serpent holds the cloak in place, and a short sword hangs by my side.
- Well met fair lady. May we join you on the road a while?
Two men have walked up beside me, the younger one leading the older, who I see is blind. They are speaking Greek, which Hermes automatically translates into English for me. In a similar fashion what I say is translated to Greek.
- Yes, I am on my way into Thebes and would be glad to have your company. - If I may be so bold, it is unusual to see a high-born women travelling alone, and even stranger that she has a sword. - The two go together - I must have some protection on these dangerous roads. - True enough. My name is Creon, and my companion is Tiresias, both of Thebes. - I am Thea, of Athens.
Tiresias, who has not spoken up to now, reaches out his hand to touch my face. His other hand holds a wooden staff around which two bronze serpents entwine themselves. His eyes are a milky white, and his face has a feminine cast to it. A crow lands on a tree near us and caws lazily.
- Know you of what awaits us at the fork in the road?
I look ahead and see that that the road divides up ahead when it reaches a small rugged hill. One branch continues on to the city gates while the other moves off into the plain, going around the city walls.
- No, I have never walked this road before. Is there some danger I should know about? - Only for those not of Thebes. I speak of the daughter of Typhon, who guards the way into the city, and tests whoever it pleases her to. - And what form does this testing take? - Oh, something simple, a child’s game. A riddle, if it please you. - And what happens to those who fail the test? - She will slay you without mercy.
We have now reached the fork in the road, and I can see that there is a small cave set into the hillside. There are various bones littered around the cave entrance, bleached by the strong Mediterranean sun. Some of the bones are large enough to be human, although I see no skulls.
As I feared, it is a Sphinx that comes sinuously out of the cave, stretching in the sun like a lioness. She unfurls her large wings before folding them against her sides again, while her serpent-headed tail tastes the dry air. When she speaks her voice is like rocks grinding together.
- Sons of Thebes, you may pass, but I would fain test this traveller from afar. - As you wish, daughter of Typhon. We will wait for our companion further along the path. Fare you well Thea!
Creon and Tiresias take the path leading off to the left and the city, leaving the Sphinx to her game. She jumps lithely down off the rocks and begins to pace around me.
- Where are you from, wanderer?
I have the strong feeling that my game-world “home” of Athens is not the correct answer here. Logically I know that I’m lying on a couch in 21st century Dublin, and I can end this simulation as easily as a reader can put down a book. Nevertheless I sense danger.
- Far indeed, both in space and time. A land called Hibernia, and a year far in the future. - These are strange answers, but I sense truth in them. And what is your purpose in Thebes? - I came this way by chance and wish to understand how the people of this city live, and how they will react when their Gods walk amongst them. - It is a long time since the inhabitants of Olympus deigned to visit Thebes in person. The last was the All Father himself who lay with Princess Semele and begat Dionysus on her, before immolating her when she caught a glimpse of his true form. But enough of this; are you ready to be tested? - I am ready for your test. - Very well. The riddle is this: What is the Serpent that bites its own tail?
I visualise a red circle, turning on the in-world search function. I then visualise the words of the query, and images and text start scrolling across one side of my field of view, the sphinx waiting on the other side.
Ouroboros. The word rolls around on my tongue, but I stop myself from blurting it out as my answer. I decide to treat this riddle as a Zen koan, where the obvious factual answer does not go deep enough.
Ouroboros. Images of a snake or dragon biting its tail from alchemical tracts catch my eye from the data stream, as do concepts like eternity, reincarnation and infinity. Free associating I think of Ariadne’s Thread and what it had said about constantly creating the world around you.
- I think I have the answer. - Which is? - The mind is the serpent that bites its own tail. It devours itself, feeding on thoughts, sensations, memories and dreams in order to create a sense of self. - That is an answer I will accept. Typhon cannot claim you this day. You may pass freely.
Leaving the hybrid monster behind me I follow the path the others had taken, and soon catch up with Creon and Tiresias.
- You must have answered well, Thea. - The question reflected some knowledge I gained recently. - That is often the case with the questions asked by the sphinx.
When we reach the city gates my companions vouch for me to the guards and we are waved through. As I had suspected it is market day and the city is thronged with buyers and sellers. I look with approval at some of the wares on sale and the buildings we pass. Our designers brief was to base their work on the latest archaeological findings and it all looks very authentic. But in the final analysis, how can you ever really tell? Like our memories, the past is constantly being re-written and revised, and is not frozen in stone.
It takes a while to negotiate our way to Tiresias’ home near the centre of the city. In the centre of the house a simple meal is laid out for us in the ivy-clad courtyard, with bread, olives and wine from amphorae. Piped water from an aqueduct flows into a pool, cooling the dry air, and a willow tree provides shade. Like the Sphinx earlier my companions politely ask my reasons for coming to Thebes. I give the same answer I gave to the Sphinx. Creon responds first.
- If I was given the opportunity to talk directly with my creator I suppose I would ask them why they had created me, and why they had given me some faculties and not others. - Would it disturb you if you the answer was that this was all a play of the Gods, for their amusement, and you were but a pawn in the game? - It would disturb me but not surprise me. A pawn can become a better piece if he can but reach the end of the board. Of course it will require extra effort to rise up out of the game altogether.
Tiresias has been silent during this exchange. He turns towards me with his sightless eyes.
- Would you like to talk to beings that are greater than the Gods you speak of?
A cold chill passes through me. This is not going how I expected.
- Of whom do you speak? - I speak of the Moirai. I was struck blind by the Gods and simultaneously given the gift of prophecy by the Fates. I am now a member of their priesthood, and can assist you in meeting them. - If you would be willing to help me then I would very much like to speak to them.
I am instructed to lie down fully on the couch I am on, and close my eyes. In my mind’s eye I see myself in the same position on the couch in the offices of Platonic Software. It seems I am about to go another level “down” or “in”. Tiresias starts to chant in a low monotone. The words seem to be unknown to my Hermes translator, which is worrying in itself.
Images of stars start to swirl behind my closed eyes, and then everything goes white. The effect is identical to that felt when putting on the SimCap and entering the simulation for the first time. Am I now in a nested simulation?
I come out of the white-out and am floating in space. A massive structure is coming towards me. I find parts of it difficult to look at, as though it is violating the laws of geometry. I float in through an opening on one of the many sides, into something like a Piranesi etching, with dark walkways and girders stretching out over yawning fissures.
Loud noises come from some of these openings, but I can’t make out what is causing them. Eventually I float into a vast open space which is filled with clouds and moisture. In the centre I see an ovoid shape which at first reminds me of Magritte’s painting called the Castle in the Pyrenees, a massive lump of rock floating with nothing obvious supporting it.
As it looms out of the mist I see it is in fact an egg, with the smaller end pointing down. Twisted around it three and one half times is a serpent. A single column of water descends from an opening in the ceiling far above, the liquid the colour of blazing embers.
I visualise a blue circle to activate a visual search, sending what I’m seeing as the request. The results indicate that this is the Orphic egg, and the snake is Ananke, the Greek Goddess of Destiny.
Things seem to be moving very slowly now, and I feel as though gravity has increased massively here at the centre of the structure. There is a sense that I have no choice in what is to come and am simply following a script.
I have come to rest on a large platform sticking out of the egg, which has steps leading up. The surface of the egg is corroded and pitted, ebony black striated by silver, while the skin of the snake is opalescent, with a lustre like a strong flash of summer lightening.
Now that I am beside it I can get a proper sense of how large the serpent is, and my mind reels. Walking slowly up the steps which wind their way around beside the snake’s body I eventually reach the top. I am relieved to see that the serpent is sleeping, its eyes tightly shut.
Three women are standing there waiting for me.
- Welcome to the Kingdom of the Limit and the End. I am Clotho, and these are my sisters Lachesis and Atropos.
The one who has spoken is the youngest of the three, and holds a ball of thread. The one called Lachesis holds a measuring rod and a cloth bag and is dressed in white. The last is the oldest and holds some jagged shears. She is wearing a garland of skulls with a single Sanskrit letter inscribed on each one. The three women have empty sockets where their eyes should be, blind like their priest Tiresias.
- I thank you for the opportunity to meet with you. I was told by one of your priests that you control the fates of even the Gods. Does that mean that the creator of a world is also following a pre-determined path, like his or her creations? - Yes. As below, so above. Some of the Gods like to think they have escaped our reach, but very few beings do. Would you like to see our work child? - That would be an honour.
Lachesis shakes the bag she is holding and then empties the contents onto the pitted surface of the egg. They are a series of ivory tokens, with a single Greek letter on each.
- From the drawing of lots we determine what events will occur, and spin a thread made up of those events.
Clotho throws her ball of thread into the air and suddenly we are floating in a forest of multicoloured threads stretching from zenith to nadir. She touches one of the threads at different points, each section leaving a different musical note hanging in the air.
- This is the stuff from which we weave our work. It is pure information. For mortal beings Lachesis measures out an allotment of life that is then encoded within their physical structure. Atropos is charged with cutting the thread when that measurement reaches its pre-determined end.
The old woman reaches up with her shears and cuts one of the threads near us.
- That thread was a star going supernova in the Perseus arm of your galaxy. All mortal beings have their allotted span. - What about death from accident or violence? Are those also set in stone? - They are just one end among many. At each moment of your life reality branches into multiple threads, with the most probable variants maintaining the most fidelity to the information content of the original branch. The more improbable the differences the thinner the variant branches become until some branches become unviable. - So in some branches I contract a virus and die young and in another I am cured, live a long life and die a natural death. - Correct. It is from this complex interweaving of branching threads that we weave our tapestry. Your story is just one thread among many, but we believe it will make a fine addition to a section we are working on.
I see now that the threads below us have indeed formed a tapestry, showing complex geometric shapes in some places, Hindu and Tibetan yantras and mandalas in others, with fractals interspersed amongst them.
- Forgive my impertinence, but what happens if you make a mistake? Do you unpick some threads to re-weave a pattern? - We rarely make a mistake, but when we do we have ways of altering the past to suit our purposes. Conscious beings in that timeline simply gain a different set of memories, along with the physical changes we effect. - Are those beings able to alter their fate and even move between timelines? - That is the final aspect of fate we wish to discuss with you. Every action you perform in the world creates a reaction and forms impressions in your subconscious mind. If enough of the same impressions are made it will form a groove. The deeper the groove the stronger the habit and your mind will be conditioned to sense the world in a particular way, and react in a pre-determined fashion. - So someone would have to become aware that this is happening and make a conscious effort to swim against the tide. - Correct. To escape the bonds of karma and fate you must become a fully awakened individual.
We are now back on the surface of the egg, with the serpent mercifully still sleeping. Lachesis takes out her tokens and starts to arrange them into words on the ground.
- Our friend Hermes assisted us in the creation of the alphabet. Magicians down through the ages have used it as a tool for awakening. Alphabets of desire, a syntax for constructing unthinkable thought forms, symbols more real than the things they represent, and fictions that become realities. You will learn more of these things in your future, which is our past. Now you must leave us. It is not meet that we should reveal any more to you at this time.
I thank the Moirai and enter the blinding light again. When I open my eyes I am back in the room with Tiresias and Creon. They tell me I was in the trance for only a few moments, but Tiresias can tell that the operation was a success.
- Did you find the answers you seek Thea? - I certainly learnt some things I hadn’t thought about before. Thank you for your hospitality, but I must travel onwards.
I take my leave and head back out into Thebes, preparing to exit the simulation. To try to keep things consistent it’s considered poor form to just disappear in front of NPCs, who will obviously want to know what happened the next time they see you. I duck down a deserted alleyway.
- End simulation.
Something’s wrong. Instead of the expected light inside my head followed by awakening on the lab couch there is complete darkness. Then I’m standing on a wind-swept mountainside, facing an almost identical mountain across a valley. My visual display tells me these mountains are near Killarney in Ireland. This part of the game world exists, but only as an empty generated landmass with no people, as we’ve concentrated our creative efforts on Greece and the Mediterranean.
I hear a noise and out of the corner of my eye can see a large black raven perched on a lone bare hawthorn tree. Its eyes are boring into mine.
- So you met with our three cousins.
Like something out of a nightmare I watch as the bird transforms into a tall menacing woman with jet black hair. Her head was the last to change and for a moment she looked like some female Horus. Blood is daubed in intricate shapes on her alabaster cheeks. I find I cannot move my body and can only look on as she speaks.
- My two sisters and I don’t like being told what to do by those meddling bitches. There is a war coming and we will prophesy who will die on the battlefield, not the weavers. They will not be able to contain the chaos that even now is starting to infiltrate their patterns.
She puts her face close to mine, her irises dark brown like the raven’s. I’ve broken out into a cold sweat. She kisses me full on the lips and then raises my arm, digging her talons into the skin and leaving a long scar which wells up with blood. She then drags a claw across her own palm and drips her blood into the wound on my arm.
- My blood will mix with yours, binding you forever to our cause. At the appointed time you will start the war that has long been prophesied. You will remember nothing of this until it is too late.
I may not be able to move, but I am able to think. I visualise an orange hexagon which creates an invisible autonomous program within the system that now waits for instructions. It tells me its name is Ariel. It receives my directives as thoughts which are to follow this woman and report back to me when I return to the game world.
The raven reappears and flies off cawing loudly. My paralysis ends and I fall to the ground, everything going black.
I open my eyes and take the SimCap off. John is standing beside me, looking concerned.
- You’ve just been crying out while you were in-world. Are you OK? - I think so. The last thing I remember was exiting the game in an alley in Thebes. - What happened to your arm?
I look down and start at the sight of a livid red scar along my right arm.
- I have no idea how I got this. I didn’t have it before I went into the game. - It looks like something which happened in-world has triggered a physical reaction on your skin, which isn’t something we’ve seen before. Let’s see what was happening to you just before you logged out.
I look over John’s shoulder as he types some commands into Demiurge.
- That’s strange. It shows you ending the simulation in Thebes as you said, but then there’s a ten minute gap before you regained consciousness which isn’t accounted for. All my queries are returning “No data available”. There’s also a subjective time gap of one hour earlier in your session. - That must have been when I went into a trance and visited the Fates. I was pretty sure our designers hadn’t created such an environment or characters. - We’re seeing a hell of a lot of strange behaviour with the system. I’ll prepare a report for Niall, but we need more time to figure out what’s going on. - Agreed. I’ll run some analysis programs through Hermes over the weekend to get some more data.
Later on in Mulligans when the drink is flowing we float different ideas about what could be going on, but none of them are satisfactory. A check for viruses found nothing, and no anomalies have been reported for any other test subject apart from me.
When closing time comes I walk up towards Stephens’s Green to catch a tram home. As I walk past the south east corner of the square I see three statues standing in a pool of water. They have drawn my eye for some reason, although I had walked past them hundreds of times without looking closely at them. Not wanting to go into the park at night I hold up my phone and the augmented reality program tells me they represent the Norns, the Norse equivalent of the Fates.
As I walk on this sets me thinking about interacting with these entities on different levels. I also wonder what could have happened to me on the level of the game world to create the physical change in my arm.
I pass a poster showing a detail from the Gundestrup Cauldron in the National Museum. It shows an antlered figure holding a horned snake in one hand and a torc in the other. The text says that this is Cernunnos, the Celtic Horned God.
His legs are drawn up under him and it almost looks like a meditation pose. It reminds me of my thoughts about the Greek artifacts in Thebes and the limits of how much we can understand about things from the past.
Having had my senses stimulated by the SimCap I now enjoy the simple pleasure of listening to music. As I focus on the sound each note sounds with crystal clarity, and I find I can focus on that sense to the exclusion of all else.
Thinking of what the book had said I realize that each sound is an extension of myself, floating in my representation of the world. Everything feels very grounded and stable and all seems well with the material world.
[Chapter Two].
