opnet [OpNet] Where am I?

[Guest]

Both actually. Believe me Wizard, our powers are incredibly similar. When I started to explore my abilities they were much like you described. I wanted something and *Poof* it was in my hand or close by. It did not matter that I knew nothing about engineering etc.

The creation of living organisms manifested while I was very young. When I felt threatened, I would subconciously create "monsters" to protect me. As I learned later in life, they are fully biological beings until their temporary quantum patterns runs its course.

The only reason my powers may seem different is that I have had more time to develope them. I truly came in to my own when I realized that with a proper understanding of various physical and theorectical disciplines, I could make my creations so much more real than imitating old t.v shows. using pure imagination to create you props is a fantastic way of doing things and will always keep people guessing, I just happen to be one of those people that has to know how everything works.

[Guest]

Actually Jager, if you brought up my name to most any Utopiate, you would get a very funny look. There are only a few in Utopia who know of or remember me (Pax being one of them) and none of them know of me in this current identity. I just like to make sure it stays that way.

[Jager]

If that is the case, I can just avoid the hassle and not endanger my friends. All I have to do is locate Sophia. She knows way too much about what is going on and who's who. She is one of the few people that weirds me out. Usually I am the one who recognizes people who don't know me, not the other way around.

[Wizard]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jager:
Look into an area were you have used a great deal of power. Don't use your powers near the area when your doing the search. Look for signs of quantum disruption, molecular decay and any signs of quantum pollution.

Jager have you ever been told your advice is dangerous?

Sorry. I didn't mean to snipe but it's been a discomforting day. Let me start at the beginning. I was somewhat confused by your observations and thought, forgive me, that you were far afield of the reality of my situation. Still, your advice was simple and I owed you at least the courtesy of investigating.

There is a place in the northwest where I had one of those dustups I mentioned before. It's been a few months but the area is relatively isolated and not a hotbed of nova activity. It seemed a good spot to begin.

I should note that my awareness of quantum is a fusion of senses and not simply an added dimension like suddenly seeing into the infra-red. For me it's a kind of music with color and texture. I'm sorry if that sounds cryptic but I don't know how else to describe it.

I had to focus deeply before I could perceive it, but there was a complexity in the background that shouldn't have been there. Not a jaring inconsistancy. More like... imagine you were at a concert auditorium listening to a lovely orchestral piece that you know intimately. You've listened to it on and off for years but this is the first time you've heard it live.

Imagine that in the midst of the piece, the woodwind section broke into a complex solo. The rest of the orchestra is in the dark as to where this is coming from but must adapt itself to the new addition.

As I deepened my concentration, I grew aware of that the "solo" was coming from a point very close to me while simultaneously I perceived it as far away. Rather like remembering that live concert years after it happens. It's in your head as you recall the experience but the memory is never quite the same as being part of the event.

I followed the thread as best I could but found it to be ephemeral, like trying to clutch at moonbeams. Finally, my awareness drifted and the quantum carried me rather than being directed.

There were patterns, Jager. All that is, all that might be, all that could yet be. Everything reduced to patterns and templates. Things I've created, things I could never have imagined in all their possible permutations. I saw worlds, Jager. Places that are not, some that even should not be. I saw terror in a handful of dust and a places where the air is filled with gold shing with guantum. A place, or rather places, where the patterns merge or fragment. Places where the earth is abarren wasteland. I saw this and I was lost. I can't hold the universe in my head as a whole but I've seen it. Words fail.

In the end, the music carried me. Carried me to a place where the smell of evergreen trees under a blue sky with a yellow sun is just so. The feel of a opnet phone in my hand. Where uncountable random occurances allow me to be born and live. Most importantly I think, the sensation of erupting. The texture of my mother's hair and the smell of eggs frying in the morning. My first love. Carving a city on the head of a pin.

That grassy field I started was covered in snow, pale blue flowers blooming when last I looked. The was a spike of granite emerging from the snow that wasn't there when I started. I can't tell you what it means but there you have it. I am so tired.

[Guest]

Correct me if I am wrong Jager, but it sounds like you have had an epiphany. I would be very careful about opening yourself to the totality of quantum reality that way in the future. Not only can it cause you serious personal difficulties, but you probably alerted every quantum sensing nova within a 15 kilometer radius to your whereabouts. Disturbances in the Quantum field like the one you caused do not go unnoticed.

Now on to your experience. Some of what you experienced sounds like what I live with on a day to day basis. You sound like you had an episode of complete, imersive recall. Simply put you relived pieces of your own memories.

When you were describing you perception of patterns and templates, it sounds like a description of the collective unconcious. Perhaps that is why you are able to manifest things based on desire and not specific knowledge? Jager would you agree?

You had a wonderful experience Wizard. Cherish it, just please be careful.

[This message has been edited by Atwight (edited 05-12-2001).]

[Wizard]

Quote:

Originally posted by Atwight:
You had a wonderful experience Wizard. Cherish it, just please be careful.

It scared me near to death!

I'm still processing the experience but it didn't feel like memory. I had no clue as to what was happening moment to moment only the knowledge that it was somehow real. Real as opposed to coming from within my own mind. I may write up the entire experience later, rather than the summary I posted, but there were things that reacted to me. Dust that swirled around me. Snow melting on my clothing. A deer-like animal that bolted at my approach. A city with no people that felt, I don't know, alive?

It seemed more like a sudden knowledge of potentials translated into a perceivable reality.

I've tried to sleep, but I keeping tossing and wondering if it was real.

Someone once postulated the existance of an infinite number of universes, each potentially real. I think it was called the many worlds theory (creative mathematics does not translate to creative literary ability).

I've accepted assertions of parrallel universes as I've no way to disprove the teller, and it was a matter that had no effect on me personally. Now, I'm wondering if these questions are no longer academic but rather deeply personal.

[Jager]

Wizard, quantum goes through more than just space and time. It runs through the myriad possiblities of what might have been, could be, and the infinite futures.

I have been down that road, but I always turn away in fear. I can't let go to this reality that I now find myself in.

Congrats. I hope you know that you have a very long road ahead of you. I don't think your mind will let you rest with so much of the song waiting to be heard. One day, you might just be able to reveal it to the rest of us 'ground-pounders'. All that I ask is that you keep coming back to us for as long as you can.

Remember this as well; the quantum is neither good nor evil. It is both. Destruction and creation go hand in hand. The power can sing such a seductive song. Befriend it. Don't let it be your master or it will consume you. Be careful.

[Wizard]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jager:
Wizard, quantum goes through more than just space and time

You might have thought to mention this before, but thank you for bringing it up. Is this what you thought was going to happen?

Anyone with plans taking them near the area 35 miles due north of Crater Lake in Oregon, USA may want to postpone, at least for a couple of days. The background quantum harmonics are badly distorted and echoing heavily. Quantum is difficult to manipulate with any precision. I tried to construct a warp gate out of the area and ended up staring into deep space. Needless to say, I didn't use the gate and promptly deconstructed the artifact.

The initial distortion seems to have peaked but even from 40 miles away the quantum reverb is startlingly powerful. Not certain if it's important but I seem to have completely recharged my store of expended quantum in just a a little over an hour.

It appears as though a massive surge of quantum upwelled at ground zero and is gradually being assimilated into the environment. As soon as I can get far enough out of the reverb to construct a controllable warp gate, I'm going to put some distance between it and myself and try to determine how far the effect reached.

I haven't seen any signs of quantum pollution but I'm not certain if I'm looking for the right thing.

[Jager]

No, Wizard, that is not what I thought would happen. Your power and your perception of your power is greater than I thought it was.

Frankly, sending you there was akin to suspending strontium over a pail of water. Fortuneately, you had the mental strength to keep it together.

Your information on the site of your experiment is more disturbing. Could there be a pinpoint rupture in the space/time at or near ground zero? It seems like quantum is leaking into this reality. What really worries me is were it might be leaking from. Can you recall the star patterns from your deep space warp appature? Was it near space or even within the solar system? If not, them someone needs to go back there, locate the rupture and repair it. I would hate to think what the long term environmental effects of that high a quantum level would cause. Worse, if word of this got out, nova-wannabes would flock to the site hoping the increased levels might spark an eruption. I don't think I need to tell you just how bad several people erupting in close proximity would be. Let me know what you decide to do.

[Wizard]

Quote:

Jager stated:
No, Wizard, that is not what I thought would happen. Your power and your perception of your power is greater than I thought it was.

This is not a comforting thought.

[Guest]

Be careful in your investigations Wizard. Utopia has sent a team out to investigate this disturbance, and they are not one of the cheery, PR teams. A Quantum Field disturbance of the magnitude you are describing is easily noticed and can be very dangerous as well. Remember, with Quantum Fields and raw Quantum Energy, anything is possible. The laws of physics may not apply the way you expect them to in such an anomaly. If my hands were not full at the moment, I would be there in an instant as it is not often phenomina like this manifests. Please keep us informed about your investigation.

[Wizard]

Understood. I hit a patch of road on my way down with no, as in zero, friction. Just barely had time to construct an armor shell before I hit the ground and slid half a mile. Time and perception seem to be a little odd.

That another thing. My constructs require a steady low stream of quantum to maintain manifestation but I'm still feeling charged. Either I picking up quantum as fast I use it or...

Hold on.

I just tried to get rid of the armor. I actually had to force it away instead of relinquishing the quantum flow. I wonder how long it would continue to manifest independently?

Got a casualty. A woman in T2M uniform. She's out cold, eyes shut, rapid eye jerks... I think she's in REM state.

Moving on.

Time and perception seem to be a little odd.

Hold on.

I just tried to get rid of the armor. I actually had to force it away instead of relinquishing the quantum flow. I wonder how long it would continue to manifest independently?

I have the strangest sensation of deja vu.

I just arrived back at the casualty. I moved past her heading north but now she's in my field of vision due north. Hmmmm...

Ah. I'm listening to the quantum. It's flowing out, around her and being reabsorbed. It's forming an eddy of energy here. Her eye movements aren't REM! It's the same three movements over and over. I don't want to get closer and check, the eddy strength is directly proportional to her location. I wonder what she tried to do? Teleport? Manipulate time? No way to tell. I'm trying to follow the flow around her movement away from her. It would be faster if my sense of quantum were just visual.

Whoa!

I just took a step and traveled at least three or four miles. Ground zero should be close. Got to go, I need to concentrate, the melody is very complex.

[Wizard]

Addendum:

The T2M woman is here as well. Same condition as when I saw her a few miles back. Eyes closed, repeating the same three movements with her eyes. The exact, I mean identical, position. I skirted the edge of her eddy and seem to be in a relatively stable zone. A golden glow is suffusing the air.

There's something...

Yeah, the melody here is alien. Kaleidoscopic colors with the texture of satin. It feels tense, strained. Where's the rest of the Utopians?

I can't feel the normal background Q. There's a thunderstorm where I should hear a whisper. There doesn't seem to be origin point. It's centered here but doesn't seem to be coming from anywhere. I don't hear the solo from before. I don't think it's a rupture.

The cacophony of reverb I heard further out must be the strains of energy splintering off from this mass and joining into the background Q. Where is it coming from?

Moving closer to the center, now.

[Jager]

Wizard, it could be a 'fissure' or tear and not just a pinpoint. It could be anchored in place or free-flowing. As the area gets bigger, the sweep effect will also increase. How far away are you from a populated area?

Were you able to sense the T2M's quantum aura? Is it locked? She might be a T/S anchor point, but the environment has bubbled her. Hook in a memory of her to come back to. I pray the eddies don't move her.

Definitely strong reverb going on here. Can you time the fluxuations off a non-event point? At what level is it changing?

Wizard, if you feel the need to pull back, do so. You may need to gather more support for this thing. I would say to be careful, but your already not doing that.

[Wizard]

Jager: Thanks, I wouldn't have figured out what she's doing on my own. Time. That's got to be the key to this event.

I can't find an origin point for the quantum because there isn't one. I don't think this was an upwelling of Q as I first thought. The ease of quantum manipulation I observed wasn't the application of raw power, it's more subtle than that.

I thought at first the high quantum was distorting time, but it's not. Rather, the reality here is teetering on a moment of time so short that all possibilities to be equally probable. I'm standing in a zone where anything imaginable is possible. It's as though the universe held it's breath while waiting to see what would happen next and is still holding it.

The T2Mer must have been trying to anchor the nonexistant surge and control it. They must have made the same mistake I made and been trying to stablize what they thought was a quantum surge.

If consciousness actually exists as quantum perturbations rather than as a function of intelligence then their presence would be enough to cause both the best and worst to happen, fulfilling their own expectations.

I've been meditating and that seems to calm the storm of possibilities raging here me. I can't speak for anyone else in the area.

I'm moving to the center of the event. I'm not certain how to end this but I have a thought. It this is a manifestation of the Plank constant, and physics was long ago, then the answer has to be...

There someone in the center of the field. I moving closer. This is weird, it's me. I can see myself. I'm stretched out in the snow covered meadow. I look to be asleep but my breathing is ragged.

The quantum is clear here, the notes high and pure. Coming from the granite spire I observed when I last was here...

it's...

singing...

shining with pure...

Oh.

It's full of stars. It's the focus of the bubble.

[Wizard]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jager:
Were you able to sense the T2M's quantum aura?
Definitely strong reverb going on here. Can you time the fluxuations off a non-event point? At what level is it changing?

Her quantum aura was subsumed into the eddy of energy. Without knowing her I can't say if that's unusual for her. Atwight and I apparently display very similiar abilities for our methods are different and would probably look very different from an objective standpoint.

I'm not certain there is a non-event to time the flux off from. Here in the center it's... not quiet, but rather calm. That may be perceptual. I think the reverb is where the probabilities shear at the surface of the bubble. I could be completely off though, I've honed my talents for art not physics.

Is it possible for not living objects to manipulate quantum. There are two piles of extrememly fine powder around the spire. Atwight, any idea how large the Utopian team was? I think I can account for three.

The spire, isn't. I mean, it appears to be a spire visually but quantumly there is a constantly shifting melody of colors and textures emanating from a negative space the spire occupiest. I think it can be anything it wants to be. I'm not using any constructs here, it wouldn't harmonize well and I have no sense of the background Q only the singing from the spire. Whatever this thing is, it's not one of mine. Not intentionally anyway.

Unless someone has a better suggestion I'm going to try and examine it.

[Jager]

Wizard, try to find a resonance reflection of the spire; the inverse of it, if you will.

Does it exist, and what is it doing?

Don't disturb the dust if you can help it. They shouldn't be 'completely' dead, if you know what I mean. They chould exist is some of the remaining probabilities.

Wizard, I think it is possible that in mutliple probabilities, you came to that place and did the exact same thing. The spire could be you, or an expression of you. Do you feel like it has some hidden significance?

I don't know how resistant you are to temportal manipulations, but if you are, this might kill you.

[Wizard]

Quote:

Jager noted to a distraught Wizard:
Wizard, try to find a resonance reflection of the spire; the inverse of it, if you will. Does it exist, and what is it doing?

I'm listening but all I can sense is the song. No, theres something more, I...

Crap.

I started to fall into the quantum song again. The quantum surged up around me and then recessed when I didn't follow the thread. That would mean it's responsive to thought wouldn't it? Or maybe just responding to quantum potentials.

Quote:

Further from Jager
Don't disturb the dust if you can help it. They shouldn't be 'completely' dead, if you know what I mean. They chould exist is some of the remaining probabilities.

I'm staying away. I wish I knew what caused this. Interesting. There's not even a whisper of quantum in the dust. Just a sickly sweet scent. Cloying enough to make me want to gag.

Reminds me of...

Yeah, a nova I met a couple of years back. Real messed up kid, spikes growing out of his back, black fire spilling out of his eyes. Saw him get kicked out of the AMP Room on a Friday night and the memory stuck with me. Utter raving lunatic but there was this sense of wrongness to him. A sickening sweetness that seemed to pervade the whole room after awhile. This stuff is worse though. Like the taste in your mouth after an adrenaline surging nightmare distilled into something pure and wicked. It has no pattern like I've seen before. It sound broken and twisted.

Quote:

And more from Jager
I think it is possible that in mutliple probabilities, you came to that place and did the exact same thing. The spire could be you, or an expression of you. Do you feel like it has some hidden significance?.

There a sense of familiarity to it. I can't quite place it but I've felt this before. While I was probability tripping into the quantum? Memory flows like quicksilver where probability are concerned. Am I remembering what happened or what might happen?

Quote:

And a kind thought from Jager
I don't know how resistant you are to temportal manipulations, but if you are, this might kill you.

Well, let's not do that then! No, my abilities are mainly quantum constructs and an awareness of the quantum fields. Temporal manipulation is a bit out of my normal routine. I'm not certain what you have in mind.

[Jager]

Wizard, get out of the area. The longer you stay in the effect, the looser your hold on reality becomes. Back out and we can try this from another angle.

[Wizard]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jager:
Wizard, get out of the area. The longer you stay in the effect, the looser your hold on reality becomes. Back out and we can try this from another angle.

I'm stuck. There it sits singing to me and I don't know what it is. I can hear 2, no three discordant swathes being cut through the song, in bound to this meadow and I know others are coming. Carrying quantum. I'm caught in the smallest possible interval of duration and yet I've run out of time. The irony is not lost on me.

This strikes me as a particularly bad time to learn caution. If I'm wrong then my problems are over. If even a small portion of what I surmise, or what you and Atwight hint at, are correct then we might not survive this. What would Divis Mal or Pax do with a source of pure quantum. What would Geryon? What would Utopia? I find I trust none of them enough to explore the answer.

It's been a good run. Two or three ideas have crossed my mind but nothing that would allow me to manipulate this thing safely. So I'll do what I do best of all. Clear my thoughts, and let the reality speak to me of possibilities. A moment captured in marble. The music of color.

[Wizard]

An Allegory:

"Show me," I whisper and open myself to the song. And it does. In a roar of silken gold flecked with scarlet cinnimon. It washes through over me and through and...

I

am

no

more

I remember.

Gelatinous reality wraps me, traps me, binds me. The pungent aroma of cordite and the electric copper taste of blood in my mouth. A woman, a girl really, dies screaming in that moment with the stink of another's sweat choking her. The screams will draw silently in the years to come. She died at that moment nonetheless.

The cyclop's empty eye of steel shifts to regard me. It glowers, I fancy, heat shimmer visible on the barrel tip in a trick of florescence and chill winter air. With a snarl of thunder the sightless eye belches smoke. Death flies on sonic wings. My cry dies stillborne, a cold stone dropped into the black pool of uncaring reality.

Eruption.

The pool cannot abide my anguish and angrily vomits back that cold heavy parcel, and with it a gift. "This is unprecedented," it angrily fumes. "Take this and be satisfied." A pattern fills my mind and brushes aside my tears and fears. I command and the universe wheels like a maddened dervish, wrapping me in steel's soft embrace.

It is impressive, I can tell. The cyclop's eye belches angrily. Then again. It roars it's fury but I stand resolved. Bits of metal kiss this shell that protects me before dropping to cold stone, passion spent.

The cyclop's eye looks earthward then falls amid a clatter. I see now the scavengers that sought their gain at a lifes expense. The still dark pool resists but I force my way into it's depth feeling for what I need.

I find it.

The universe wheels again. With stolen fire I bring conceptual weapons to deadly reality and with that reality I hold quantum potential. I waver. Colors assault my ears and an ugly stench clouds my vision. From far away I hear animals screaming in terror.

,,

Aberrant. Freak. Nova.

A whispered litany of sound devoid of meaning. My weapon disolves in a wash of evergreen and blue. I have no taste for it. There is power in this steel shell, and I call upon it. Flesh and sinew meets rippling metal and is the worse for it.

Moster. Marvel. Portent.

There is pain. The suffering, to an animal, will seem unending. They will live. I am shown fear in a handful of dust and I share the experience. There are other possibilities, some better some worse, but this is reality. Time collapses and then telescopes to the future.

I

Am.

I stand in snow covered meadow weeping. I had no name for this emotion years ago and will not name it now.

"Show me," I whisper.

And it does. Permutations and variations on a theme. I've held a gun and been shot. My daughter dies and I am childless. I am a widower. I avenge. I forgive. I am forgiven. I am reviled. I live. I die. I am.

A cold wind blows across the meadow. The first breeze I've felt in the ages I've stood here dying. Dead. Alive. Nonexistant.

"Show me," I whisper and it does.

I see tainted monstrosities snatching for power. Dying, quantum feeding the infinite potential of the spire. Shining avatars of light reaching with quantum might and being struck down for their hubris. Again, their quantum fuels the spire. I see those that resorted to trickery. Deceit. Playing the odds only to have them collapse in a cascade of failed possibilities. There came those armed with the best of reasons and those with the worst. In the end there is only me.

"Why?"

Uncountable potentials examined and judged.

"I don't understand?"

Uncounted potentials coming together in one instant. Removed from the strictures of native reality, each chosen course of action eliminating one set of variable while simultaneously introducing another set. Only one subset potential chose to see beyond itself. To know that which is beyond itself. Not perfect, sometimes savage, but with potential.

"I am... special?"

Amusment.

Infinite potentials examined, judged, eliminated but only of a given set. Infinite sets of potentials simultaneously being reviewed, choices eliminating one set of variables while introducing replacement variables. I am of a single set of potentials winnowed to a lone subset. An infinite class of other potentials remains to be reviewed.

"But the other... potentials aren't me."

I sense the peppermint strains of amusement. If not me then who? Did I understand?

"Again, why?"

In a time which came before, there were beings of elemental powers and emotions. Striding across space and time these titans were monstrous in ability and inhuman in outlook. It was a time of chaos and the titans ruled all. Those that chose produced offspring and those offspring grew in power and until one defied his forebears. The war was brutal. Atrocities were committed, horrors unleashed. When it was over the offspring stood weakened but triumphant.

The most destructive and mad of the titans were imprisoned. Only imprisoned as such power as they were cannot be destroyed only held. Rejoicing, the offspring held sway over all and sought their own interests. In time they too had offspring of a sort.

And so the cycle repeated itself until the second generation realized they were, in kind, no better or worse than the titans that came before. Indeed, the titans had not, in their youth, been the monstrous creatures they would later become. To break the cycle the second generation chose to allow their offspring to achieve a measure of the abilities they themselves possessed. They at least had the presence of mind, or at least the caution, not to share their power initially. Instead they allowed their offspring to grow before attaining the power. Afterwards, as the third generation came into their legacy, the second generation departed to allow their children a time to develop their own interests and for themselves to develop beyond the evolutionary imperitives that were their own legacy. It was hoped that the return of the second generation would mark the reunion of equals.

"So how did it come out?"

Again, amusement.

I am thinking of perceptions and potentials. "Everyone meets a spire?"

Of a sort. Choices are made in back alleys and boardrooms. In the light of day and the darkness of night. I am given to understand that naked perception such as this event is not usual, yet neither is it unique. The are other circumstances of which I cannot conceive. The concepts are blanks to me.

"Someday we build a better world?"

I see again the monstrous titans that lay imprisoned. There could not be a better world built on that misery. Unity cannot consist of the elimination of that which is undesired. If the monster cannot be reconciled then it lies hidden waiting to rise again.

"Then," I begin. The spire is gone. Beneath my feet snow is melting and the breeze blows strongly from the South carrying the scent of water from Crater Lake. My doppleganger is gone, as is the piles of dust. Unfruitful potential returned to improbability?

Or hallucination triggered by quantum overload. I hear the background quantum singing, slightly off-key but the colors are returning to normal, and...

Three quantum sources moving to my position. Crap.

That's the problem with the world today. No respect for an epiphany.

I reach into the quantum potential and find the pattern I'm looking for. A well thought wish to the quantum genie and an onyx gate shimmers into existence. I'm through it and miles away before my pursuers finish yelling for me to halt.

[Jager]

They have taken the girl, Marcy LaSalle, to the Seattle Rashoud facility. Apparently, her psyche has been shattered. Of the other two 'investigators', there was no sign. The Quantum disturbance has completely vanished in the area. They can't even get a temporal trace of it. Fortuneately, the only evidence that another person was ever there were momentary visual sightings, but no sign of his/her quantum signiture could be located.

Take a long nap and call someone in the morning.

[Jordan]

Man, that was some trip! My head is still spinnin' and I wasn't even there! Reading that was like dropping a couple of hits of acid......I think I need to go lie down for a while........

[Jager]

Wizard, how are you holding it together, today?

[Wizard]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" fa

[Wizard]

Concerned, Jager asked:

Wizard, how are you holding it together, today?

[Jager]

Amen.

[Guest]

Welcome to the next level Wizard. It doesn't get any easier from here, Good Luck.