[network] @Mnemosyne; text Day 122, after the obits;All return to nothing [open]

[bookofnope]

In the interest of professional gloating, I would like to record that weeks ago, Angel and I developed the theory that Norfinbury was created and powered by a vastly powerful entity, supernatural or extraterrestrial in origin, which was discovered and unwisely harnessed to human use, and is as much a prisoner here as we are. The admin being only a component. In light of new evidence, I believe the traditional saying is nyah nyah told you so.

It mentioned protocols and insisted they were important. You can all take it from here. I'm no good for this game anymore.

Comments

text @Enoch

[warriorscribe]

Why would you say that? I know it's been a long and disheartening time, but there is still strength in all of us.

[Says the man who, instead of looking for answers, is looking for his friend's killer.]

[bookofnope]

Strength in you. I can believe it. I am not you, Enoch.

[warriorscribe]

I'm flattered you believe in my strength. Please believe in your own. It's hard, at our age, we've seen so much, lived or quasi-lived through so much, but we can keep going.

I have felt hopeless before. My strength has waned before. And every time, I thought I was done, too. But every time, it has returned, and rarely without help.

[bookofnope]

It was never like this. Not like this. I know what you think about immortality... but I'm tried. I'm starving. I'm sick half the time. I don't want this.

[warriorscribe]

Nobody does. But continuing to try is how we will escape it. If we do nothing, we will fail, and every pair of eyes to watch, every mind to analyze, every pair of hands to experiment with is important.

[bookofnope]

Only important if success means anything.

[It's only a moment later that he truly realizes what he wrote, by which point it's too late to take it back.]

I'm sorry. That was unworthy of me. Whatever I have or do not have to lose, I know I am not alone here.

[warriorscribe]

We were all brought here from where we were. If you have nothing to return to where you came from, perhaps you will find something where someone else came from.

[That's all he can assume about success needing anything, especially with the conversation he had earlier.]

[bookofnope]

Perhaps if we understood the meaning of worlds. Not the metaphysics of it, the

[but why does he bother? It's only another search that might end just the same. He doesn't have the strength to do that again. He knows at much with certainty.]

[warriorscribe]

What do you mean?

[If they can find a way to return them home, surely there's some way to return people to other places? They all had to be brought here somehow...]

[bookofnope]

[He's stopped typing, but not stopped thinking. And that is not good. He lets it spill out into words, a kind of purging. Say it and make it someone else's problem, maybe. Anything but to let it stay in his mind and rot there.]

The infinite worlds hypothesis proposes that each of our choices, however minute, or however random, splits the timeline into multiple versions. Every toss of the coin falls both ways - head in one world, tail in another. Hence, every decision has happened in some world. If this is true, then somewhere out there is a version of Enoch who lived out his life as a mortal man. Somewhere is a world in which there is an answer to my questions.

Unless of course you place theology above physics, and assume that God is above all this. Holding every world in the palm of His hand.

[warriorscribe]

[It takes Enoch a long time to respond, almost an entire hour. He's been given a weighty subject to think about, but it helps that he actually has a starting point...]

Why are they mutually exclusive? The Archangel known among the host as God's own right hand holds sway over time and can travel through it freely. He rescues me from death by returning me to a point before it until I do not fail - by that theory, each of these failed attempts is a world in itself, correct?

But I doubt God would allow me to go missing like this. So perhaps you are right, because this world, at least, is beyond His sight.

> voice;

[bookofnope]

[By the time Enoch responds, Beckett's group is on the move again, and he can't quite juggle walking and typing. But he wants to answer, so his hoarse voice comes through, little emotion in it.]

Correct, unless the travelling destroys the divergent world by preventing all but a specific choice. What an interesting commentary on free will. [He doesn't sound interested. He sounds tired.]

But this could simply be another one of His trials for you. I understand he's fond of those.

voice

[warriorscribe]

Oh, Beckett, you sound terrible...

[He doesn't want him fussing, he knows that. But he can't keep the pity out of his voice. It's so much easier right now, feels so much better to ignore his own ugly, gnawingly painful anger, and focus on someone else's feelings and well-being.]

I'm afraid trials without cause don't sound like Him.

[They sound exactly like Him.]

And even if it did, He wouldn't send me without an Archangel to monitor my progress.

[bookofnope]

Really. I can't imagine why that might be.

[He's not even trying to deflect. He's just snarking on instinct, because there's nothing he can do, or Enoch can do. There's nothing anyone can do. So aiming the bitterness outwards is the only thing left.]

Perhaps the archangel is here and hidden from you. That would be just His style, too, if your God is anything like the one of my scripture. The ultimate trial is to find your own path. Hah. [He spits that harsh bark of not-laughter, and lowers the tablet so that it doesn't catch much of the ragged coughing that follows.]

[warriorscribe]

If the God of your scripture is the same as Biff's and House's and hands souls over to His enemy for eternity for their deeds, then they are nothing alike.

[Sore spot detected. (They are still alike even if this is a valid world difference).]

The Archangels never led me along before - they would warn me of immediate danger, but would not tell me where I should go or what I should do. Strange, isn't it, how they didn't need to be hidden to not be a hindrance to my free will.

[After a moment he seems to realize his tone and he noticeably quiets.]

...I'm sorry, Beckett. This place is wearing on us all, I think.

[bookofnope]

[It takes Beckett a moment to recover, and during that time he reflects. What if they are nothing alike? What if there exists, in some world, a limited, but truly loving God - who cannot always save from damnation, but does not deal it out? Does one balance the other? What does salvation mean, if there is no hell to be saved from?]

It wears. [His voice is quiet. He remembers their nighttime talk, and the answers he never got - the answers Enoch couldn't give.] I thought that, once you were aware of the divine will, to deviate from it would be... that is a test, the worst test of all, to know that there is a right path, but that you will not know even if you have chosen it, not until the end.

[warriorscribe]

[There is a reason the stories will remember him as a priest even in his own world where he was a farmer prior to Heaven. When asked about this core concept of his faith, when it is challenged and confronted, not with the sarcasm of one who won't hear otherwise, but one who might want to, what comes from his lips is patient and calm, a tone of guidance.]

God has a plan, this I am sure of, but...I think it's larger than any single one of us. Our own movements, unless He deems otherwise, don't matter. I have been many places, and have seen many things. Many cultures, many ways of clothing oneself, of preparing food, of caring for family, of seeing to the dead. Many ways of defining truth, evil, justice, and love. The Archangels never had any damning comment unless the Fallen Angels had something to do with any of it.

What man does belongs to man, to his own life. The only task God has given us is to take care of our home. Our tests, unless God has intervened with His own hand, are only against ourselves.

[bookofnope]

And you find that a comfort? [There is still no sarcasm. Beckett asks his questions openly. He thirsts for this, as much and more than as he thirsts for blood, compelled by a nature he no longer truly possesses. He wonders, if he closes his eyes and tries a comforting lie on for size, could he hear Anatole’s voice through Enoch’s. Could he receive guidance when he no longer knows if a path even exists for him, for his kind, anymore? Does guidance come to all who seek, or only to the worthy?]

But there is a right path. A path in which you do not fail and die. Your movements do matter. [A hint of bitterness steals back into his voice. He shakes his head.] Forgive me, I know you will say it’s a burden. But free will seems a worse one, if there’s no real meaning to it.

[warriorscribe]

Because mine is one instance where God has directly intervened. But, even so... The only thing that defines "right" is that I survive. My imminent death is the only condition in which Lucifel is permitted to turn back time.

[He doesn't think twice about giving the angel's name, so caught up in the discussion itself he forgets how uncomfortable the name made Clayton.]

The meaning in free will is that it can be whatever its owner wants it to be. That is anything but a burden, in my mind. The purpose of free will is that it is ours, and should never be taken away.

[bookofnope]

And yet he has a plan. You said so yourself. Your survival is "right" because there is a reason for it. I doubt He makes such exception simply because He thinks you have pretty eyes -

[As attempts at levity go, this one is doomed from the start, which is why perhaps it's a good thing that he stops, startled, before he can take it any further.]

I'm sorry, did you say Lucifer?

[Not quite. But close enough. He cannot imagine Enoch has not run across someone who's been taken aback before, after this long in Norfinbury.]

[warriorscribe]

[He's about to comment on that, himself, when Beckett responds to his friend's name.]

Lucifel. [Surprisingly, he hasn't had much of an issue beyond Clayton's initial reaction, partially because of said reaction and partially because it simply never came up.] That's his name in the original tongue. It does live on in "Lucifer" and "Helel", though, so you are...somewhat right.

[And then there's Phosphorous, which has no ties to the original version of the name whatsoever, it just happens to be the closest translation. Oh, Babel, you made things so complicated. Lucifel somehow keeps straight all the names he earned when Babel split the common tongue asunder, and Enoch has no idea how he does it. The gift of tongues has limited use when it comes to proper names.

Anyway, they are talking about his best friend; he can't help but smile brightly even given the situation.]

The highest of Archangels, called God's own right hand by the others. His sense of humor takes some adjusting to, but it's the strongest friendship I've ever had.

[bookofnope]

[Beckett could name another thing or two that takes some adjusting to, right now. Perhaps he shouldn't be reacting much - this isn't such a great revelation on top of everything else Enoch has said since he'd known him. The least of them, in the greater scheme of things - Beckett wouldn't consider himself much of a scholar if he didn't have vast knowledge of the complexity and contradictions in the figure of the Devil. Sometimes it's simply the way Enoch says these things, his sheer obliviousness. There's a kind of stunning perspective in it. It's almost humbling.

And almost innocent. He doesn't quite want to say what he's going to say next, but he is a doubter. He can hardly say anything else, though he speaks a little haltingly.]

You'll have to pardon me for asking, but - you are aware of the meaning that the names you've mentioned would invoke to modern humans. In a number of worlds, at least.

[warriorscribe]

Ah...not entirely? Clayton seemed a little disturbed by it, but he never explained why, and it has come up with no one else.

Honestly, I don't know what to make of it.

[He sounds a little tentative, himself, hearing Beckett's tone. He's never heard him hesitate like that. That's the tone of someone bearing bad news.]

[bookofnope]

[It's not a good moment, as awkward silence stretches between them. But he's started and now he'd better finish. Enoch is too sharp to lie to. And God knows where else he might go for his answers if he didn't get them now, and what shape they might take.]

In the Christian tradition of the world as I know it, the name Lucifer is often identified with the Devil. [His voice takes on a detached lecturing tone. This is, after all, just theology.] A term with a complex lineage, possibly derived from misappropriation of the Latin translation of certain Hebrew Biblical phrases - from the term Helel, as it happens. Essentially apocryphal, but very well entrenched, along with the image of the Devil as highest of the angels cast down to Earth - or hell - after a war in heaven. Of course, the Christian origin makes this is all long past your time.

[warriorscribe]

...Does everyone else live in worlds where the stories are bound and determined to make everyone good out to be monsters?

[He is confused by this. Extremely confused. First God willingly giving up souls to demons for punishments they couldn't have known about, and now the highest of the Archangels cast out?]

Lucifel is prideful, but he is the most loyal angel I know.