The Wyrms of &alon

Interlude 3.24 - Der Abschied


EUe was in such a rush that it was only when he was within spitting distance of Vyx that he remembered he'd forgotten his slabboard back at his nest. He doubled back at high speed to retrieve the thing, and then flew into Vyx and set down to work.

The alien immediately reacted to his presence. "EUe! EUe!" it shouted, excitedly. "You gone gone gone! Where did you go? Where why where? Why?"

EUe paced around anxiously, raking his toe-claws on the silverly floor.

"Vyx," he said, turning to face the wall, "the big bad that was the reason you came here, to UlU? It's already here!"

Vyx's interior did the Scream, his first outburst in days. EUe understood the alien's frustration more acutely than ever before. The language barrier between them was no longer just a frustration: it was a matter of life and death!

He had to figure out how to convey four concepts to Vyx: scan, beam, disease, cure.

But how?

EUe paced more, bobbing his head as he walked around. "Wait!" he muttered, as a thought hit him like a blow to the face and made him turn around. Vyx's cryptic words from before popped into his head: help keep good.

Had Vyx been referring to the scan and the cure when it had said that?

"Vyx," EUe asked, "when I asked how you needed help, you said you needed to 'help keep good.'"

"Yes," the Impactor replied. "Yes yes yes!"

"Did you help keep me good?" EUe asked. "Did you help keep EUe good?"

Chains of octahedrons centipeded across the ceiling as the machine pondered the question. A moment later, the chamber let out a befuddled boop.

"Vyx does not understand."

"Fuck!" EUe swore. He stomped his feet and flailed his wings, and then turned back to face the wall. "Can you explain why you do not understand?"

"Complicated," Vyx said.

EUe squeezed his beak shut, snorted, shook his fists, and then sat down cross-legged on the smooth, cool floor. He tried to calm himself down, but his panic snuck out through his hands, making him run his claws through his head feathers, which inevitably had him feel a feather was out of place, and just as inevitably tugged at the feather and tugged at it some more until he plucked it out of his skin. Blood welled up from the wound, wetting his claw tips. EUe shook his hand, tossing the feather and the blood aside.

"EUe?" Vyx asked.

The Gatherer slapped his palms on his breeches. "I should be playing off my strengths," he muttered. "I need to start thinking about this like an engineer, not like a gormless kwekek!"

If spoken language wasn't up to the task, maybe runetics could pick up the slack?

Despite all the progress he'd had made on communicating with Vyx, the communions that powered Vyx and let the alien machine do what it did were still enigmas to EUe.

How did Vyx travel through the depths of space? How did Vyx and the drones change their shape on the fly? How did the Impactor manage to cure a terrifying, seemingly unstoppable plague with a couple green spotlights?

EUe knew none of the answers.

He looked over the wall. "Maybe I can reverse engineer it?" he said, thinking aloud.

If he could figure out how Vyx's systems operated, even just a little, there was a chance that, while wading around in it, he might stumble upon the plague-curing scan, and then he could point out to Vyx exactly what he wanted to know about, as long as Vyx understood its own operation and design, that is.

"But where to start?" he mumbled. He scratched the top of his beak.

There, at least, there was an obvious answer: lEs.

Before he could even dare attempt to understand the communions at work within Vyx, he needed to know which lEs and gods Vyx and the drones were calling upon.

He rolled forward, onto his knees. "Vyx, I need to teach you about lEs."

"Okay," Vyx replied, "what is lE?"

EUe spent a long time thinking about that, trying to find the best way to convey the concept with the limited vocabulary he and Vyx had to work with. While he puzzled over that riddle, Vyx interrupted him several times with concerned utterances of "EUe okay?", to which EUe simply replied with his trademarked "Not finished yet"s, much to the alien's bemusement.

Then, at last, EUe stumbled across a passable description "Vyx," he said, "lE is the stuff which makes stuff stuff."

As far as explanations went, it lacked metaphysical subtlety, but EUe felt it did a good job of getting the point across.

"Vyx does not understand."

EUe started walking in circles again, undulating his tail feathers. Just as he started to worry he'd have to spend another hour walking in circles to figure out what to say next, an idea came to him.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

When he'd been little, the explanation that finally made the concept of lEs click for EUe had been the analogy of the shadow cast by a hand in front of a light source. If you held your hand up to a light, and there was a wall or some other surface behind you, you would be able to see your hand's shadow projected onto the wall. This directly paralleled Gods, lEs, the Great Dream, and their relationship to the physical world. In the analogy, the light source represented the Gods and their not-light. The hand, meanwhile, was a stand-in for a lE, while the shadow on the wall represented anything in the physical world whose existence was anchored in that lE Though you could see the shadow and make out its shape, it was just a projection of your true hand, held up to the light. Similarly, reality was just the shadow of the many lEs, projected by not-light upon the world. If you took the hand as representing the lE of feathers, then the shadows represented all feathers that existed in the real world. Without the lE of feather-ness to anchor them, feathers would wink out of existence, just like a shadow without a source, and EUe was terribly excited that he'd remembered this analogy just in time.

Why?

Because projections were mathematical! The shadow an object cast on a wall was just a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional object. More importantly, it would be easy for EUe to draw examples of them for Vyx.

Walking up to the wall, he drew a V—an angle.

"Angle," Vyx said, instantly recognizing it.

Then, running his claw over the angle's right side, EUe drew the orthogonal projection of the angle's left side onto its right: the shadow the right side projected onto the left.

"Projection," EUe said, calling the concept by its name.

Immediately, Vyx drew a line from the left tip of the V to the tip of the projection along the V's right side. The new line met the V's right side at a right angle.

Vyx had just drawn the orthogonal complement!

"Vyx understands," it said.

"That is called the orthogonal complement," EUe said.

"Understand. Understand," Vyx said, only to then add, "What about lE?"

"All things are projections of lEs," EUe answered. To illustrate the point, he rubbed out the angle and drew two circles, one big, one small.

"Example: are these circles the same?"

"No," Vyx answered. "One is big, other is small."

"But both are circles, yes?"

"Yes," Vyx replied.

"Why?" EUe asked. "And how?"

"Because," Vyx said. "Because because."

"No, Vyx. Because of lEs," EUe said, chirping in excitement. "Two different circles are still circles because both are projections of the lE of circles. Without the lE of circles, circles cannot be understood."

"Vyx understand lEs," Vyx said.

EUe's heart nearly skipped a beat. He flicked his wings. This was it! He'd done it! Soon, everyone would be safe. Every—

"lE is false," Vyx said.

"What?" The words stopped EUe in his tracks. He blinked haplessly, his wings going stiff.

"lE is false," Vyx repeated. "There are no lE. lE is not from the world. EUe make lE."

EUe held his beak agape, tongue lolling in the air. "That's… that's absurd!" He shook his arm and stomped his foot. "That's like saying the direction up is false. It's nonsense!"

There was a pause.

"Does EUe not understand?" Vyx asked.

EUe nodded vigorously. "Yes, I don't understand! I don't!"

"First question," Vyx asked, calmly, "EUe need lE to understand, yes?"

"Yes," EUe said.

"Second question: what is the lE of lE?"

EUe took a single step back. "W-What?" His voice quivered. It was a totally unexpected question, more like a syntax error than anything legitimate.

But the alien persisted, speaking briskly while maintaining its calm tone.

"Is the lE of lE a lE, or not?" Vyx asked. "If lE of lE is not a lE, then lE cannot be understood. Else, if the lE of lE is a lE, then all lEs have a lE; call this lE-lE. Then, either lE-lE has no lE, and cannot be understood, or lE-lE has a lE; this is lE-lE-lE, and then lE-lE-lE has lE-lE-lE-lE, and and, and and. Does not end. Question has no answer. Truth: lE is false."

Vyx's logic was as vicious as it was relentless, and it left EUe distraught and utterly lost for words.

The lE of a lE? Who ever heard of such a thing! It couldn't be right. It…

But did lEs have lEs, or not? It might have been an absurd thing to ask, but, as questions went, it was perfectly sound. Yet it was also terrifying beyond words.

EUe ran his claws through his feathers, wracking his brain for any memory of having ever come across that particular question. It was so simple. Somebody had to have asked it before!

He burbled, clacking his beak. "But… but…"

It was the kind of question a hatchling would ask, and yet, for the life of him, EUe couldn't ever recall having come across it before. He'd never read about it, he'd never learned about it, and the more he pondered it, the bigger the omission got, growing larger and larger until it was an all-consuming pit that threatened to drag the very essence of knowledge itself down into the dark.

But Vyx's question was simply unanswerable. If all things needed lEs to exist, then lEs had to have a lE, too. But then the lE of lEs would have to have a lE, and so on and so on, and it would never end. There would be nothing to anchor the concept of lEness and give it meaning in the face of eternity.

Bending down, EUe braced his arms against the floor. He trembled.

He desperately wished Uka-yen was here. The old bird would have known what to do with this paradox.

Or would he?

EUe shook his head.

Was everything he knew wrong?

Fear gave way to anger. Generation after generation of brilliant minds had passed through these subjects time after time, and none of them had ever thought to consider this one, simple question? It was outrageous! It was absurd!

Did they not have the courage to ask the question? Or had they known about it, and chosen to seal it away in a conspiracy of silence, that no one else might notice?

EUe's feathers bristled.

"Vyx," he said, voice trembling, fists balled onto the silver floor, "if lEs are false then… nothing is true. I… Gods… I know nothing. No," he shook his head, "it's worse than that: I'm wrong! Everything I know is wrong! All of it! Every last piece!" He stammered and shook. "It's—it's—its—"

—But then, tlE-la's words came back to him.

It's okay to be wrong.

"It's okay to be wrong…" he whispered, and those words were like magic. "…because now, I can learn. I can get better. I can get better!"

The problem wasn't with being wrong, but in staying that way.

Vyx's reasoning had opened up a terrifying new vista. It was like the world was new again. EUe—no, every twEfE—would have to rethink everything they knew from the ground up.

As much as EUe hated being depressed, he hated being left out of the loop even more. And just like that, the fire in his heart was rekindled.

He wanted to learn.

EUe had never had a religious experience before, aside from communions, but those were so commonplace that they might as well not count—and, considering he was no longer sure that lEs or even the Gods themselves existed, there might have been nothing to "count" at all!

Could you even have a religious experience in a world without Gods?

If there are no Gods and lEs, he thought, then I guess I just did.

Looking down at his hands, EUe saw himself in a new light. In an instant, the world had gone from being a place of certainties that EUe had long since lost interest in to an abyss of mystery so deep, it seemed to roar.

And he'd plumb those depths. By the Gods, he'd do it. For his own sake, for eUna's, for hU-nOan. For everyone's!

"It's like my eyes are opening for the first time…" he muttered.

Then, an idea bolted down EUe's spine like a touch of thunder. His wings sprang high.

"That's it!"

Grabbing the slabboard, EUe started writing ideas in a frenzy, struck with the most excited dread he'd ever known.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.


Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter