Currently listening to the Titanicus audio book, and I am just in love with how the perspective of the titans' crews are written. It's so visceral and insane, it inspired me. So here, have a... something, that I wrote. Maybe it's a liturgy. Maybe it's a cautionary tale told to a princeps before their first walk. I don't know, but I hope you enjoy it.
The machine is ancient, you're only human. How long can you expect to hold up to the pressure of this ancient, powerful mind that you are hardwired to? The machine sees you, naked in body and spirit, suspended in the sleepless dream of the manifold. It sees all of you, like it has seen your hundreds and hundreds of predecessors. You are not in control of it, you are merely tolerated as long as you can supply the thrill of the hunt to this predatory giant. The machine will use you. It will use you up. Your consciousness will come apart at the edges, as you dissolve into the machine spirit. Oh yes, it goes both ways, oh yes, like the machine sees you, so do you see it, but you know that what you see there so vastly and decisively out-scales your mental capacity, that your connection with the machine cannot be one of unity. It is one of sublimation. When you were first plugged in, you were thrown into a dark and bottomless ocean. Sure, for now you can swim. The water even carries part of your weight, so staying at the surface is easy. But how long until you grow tired? How long until your concentration lapses, how long until your muscles give in? The ocean is endless, but you are mortal. Time, time that seems so irrelevant and beyond you while you are one with the MIU, is still ticking, still affecting you, it is still going to run out. And then? You know what happens, you know the stories - you might even have seen the fates. When the machine is done with you, it leaves you an empty husk. No longer a person, no longer a human, just another cog in the holy war engine. And then they will unplug you, because you will have become useless to them. And what will you be, then? A cog without an engine to keep it spinning. A dysfunctional piece of scrap, torn out and replaced in maintenance. Because you are irrelevant. But the machine is divine. It has been before you, it will prevail long after you. So, prosper together while you can. Try to stay afloat in the abyssal mind-ocean as long as you're able. The word is given. And the word is
