Aberrant: The Middle Children of History - Chasing Duality

[Netherworld]

A tingle at the base of my skull told me another was present. Where I was, when I was, were inconsequential questions from where I stood..or was it drift. None of that really mattered because all I felt was the skin-prickling sensation of another.

Maybe it was the lack of energy from my prolongued journey into the Nether-realms. It could simply be the calm placidity of this place playing with my imagination. It might even be that I was keen to the sensation of non-sensation, that opened me to this 'other'.

I should really start a bit further back.

Sometimes the world around us presents forms of such, that nature must reject them. Abhorrent designs inimical to what we know as creation, yet breathtakingly beautiful, if one is so inclined, and able, to see their existence in this plane. These shapes always come in twos- mirror images of one another. While identical twins, they occupy one place. Fascinating. It makes me wonder if others see such things as I, or if they willfully ignore them into non-existence. A denial of habit for simple mental self-preservation. At times I question my sanity when I behold that universe and it's 'designs'. It was a particlarly vivid episode that cause my next action.

In this instance, I saw things moving in and out of perceptual focus, like a movie projector running at slow speed with the gaps between the film creating a flickering of the images. I saw these 'images' and decided followed them into their realm. I guess I wanted to find a 'designer' of these images- a god, if you want to call it such a thing. I surmised that things like this, as in our world, had a designer, even if that designer is simply the universe.

Traversing the gap between realms is a relatively easy step and I did it frequently. In many ways, it was no different this time. What was different, was that my perceptual reference was keyed to the forms, the twins, I saw. This I hoped would allow me to track them as I passed into the shadow-realm. My body shivered slightly as I passed through the veil and into the murky ocean of shadows. The world changed from technicolor to monochrome.

There I saw them, skewed, yet similar to their counterparts in the real world. It promted me to wonder: What is real? Was not the world of shadows real? It had form- of a sorts; being a nightmarish mockery of everything it touched in the 'real world'. Forms elongated and shrank, moved and stalled, all seemingly at random. Yet I knew they were not random, it was that my frame of reference was gone. The solid matter they attached to was not visible, and as that matter moved, so did the dualities. I was simply looking at the same things from the other side.

Unlike the outside realm, things here were semi-opaque and my vision was only slightly obscured. The shapes moved aside and I passed through as if they were clouds. Not even sensation changed when passing through an object; everything had the same sensation- cold.

-more to come

[Netherworld]

Strangely, I did not feel alien to this environ. Yet even though I was technically an alien here, my many traverses to this place had accustomed my body and psyche to the cold and visually cacophonous landscape. And even though nothing had solidity of any kind , I sensed, mentally, that I passed through objects. A profound sensation as if each object seemed like a choice: as yes or no, a left or right, a decision between two outcomes. I understood that the dual shadows represented the culmination of one choice over the other- and both. It was a world ruled in the extreme by quantum mechanics. A normal mind would be torn asunder by the staggering array of dualities. Was mine? Did part of my mind fracture from the rest with one part insane and the other rational?

I felt it. I was sure that the presence was near me. So close that I experienced a slight niggling sensation akin to pins-and-needles that was most prevalent in my feet and ran up the length of my legs. I started to postulate if the entity was below me or if my body was simply reacting to its proximity. It felt like my legs were being sat upon. Despite the now physical sensations, I pressed on; adding to my frame of reference the 'Z' coordinate of the Cartesian plane. Even as I did so, I understood that 'up' and 'down' were only relative directions as all the din=mensions changed when my direction changed. Still, I saw nothing...yet...that 'thing' was still near. I could feel its presence.

In normal circumstances, in the normal universe composed of matter and space, holograms of what might have happened or what was happening at an instant in space-time was omnipresent. Sure I could turn such a way to see the universe off, but to me, it meant limiting my creative outlook of all things. I had thought that I could see them in this place like I do in the 'normal' universe, but my eyes and perceptions were overloaded by the chaotic ballet of shapes. Could this being exist in a plane reserved for thought? A place of thought-forms. Might I 'see' it by pushing thought outwards from my physical form? I had done that before too...or maybe it was a shadow simulacrum that had. Either way, I had accomplished that feat when I watched a tese fragment of conflict on a tropical beach at Elspeth's party. I should try it here.

As I sent forth my mind into the surrounding ether, I saw a movement- an arm, I think, 'down' and off to my left. If it was an arm, it was a twisted nightmare. A freakishly bent and elongated arm that reminded me on an Escher drawing which existed but couldn't exist. When I rotated my frame of reference, the shape seemed to pirouette away from me. Did it sense my presence and flee from view?

[Netherworld]

My heart was racing. What if this being was hostile? I briefly contemplated fleeing this place for the safety of the physical universe. Curiosity however, kept me rooted in this most strange, yet comforting of places. I had to know what it was, even if my life was in danger.

I turned again, hoping to see who it was. It spun away in an odd direction once again, giving me pause. It was definitely aware of my presence and I did not want it to take my actions as hostile. When I stood there contemplating, an idea came to me: What if I used the surrounding medium like a mirror. I should be able to watch it indirectly without moving. So I gathered the surrounding material and hardened it. Small swirls of shadow stuff collected, at my insistence, on the outside of the lens's surface. With some gentile nudging, the shadows spun against the surface, like a buffer, polishing the surface. After what seemed like months of exhausting work, the shadow-mirror was complete. I began to animate the stuff around it, moving it into position.

At first, I could see nothing. There was only the dark, chaos of the netherealm. Everywhere, the partner shapes swirled and battled one another, as if they were wrestlers clinching eachother in an eternal grip. They moved in and out of focus, blocking other shapes yet never interacting except where their objects met in normal space. Soon, a form came into focus: first the feet, then as I turned the mirror a little more, the midsection. Unlike the rest of the shadow plane, this being had color, even if it was sudued. And there was something familiar about the shape too.

To this day, I will never forget the life changing realization that I was subject to the same laws of the universe, even if I could break them with my own powers. Most of us, especially those of us who are of Homo Sapiens Novus, tend to dismiss the fact that we are small and weak and insignificant when it comes to the multiverse. For on that day, when the mirror came into focus; I saw myself, staring back at me in bewildement and wonder.