Joy and Sorrow from Tomorrow [Ch. XIII, Nine] - Part I

Quote of the Day: “When a sparrow is tired of apples, it can't just switch to oranges - unless there's a tree nearby.” - Four (Gloom)

Hey there, Jesse - it’s been a crazy day. Let me take a breath - phew!

It's been a long, long ride - and I'm totally out of steam. So, I might not be as verbose or grammatically eloquent as usual today.

In short, I had to deal with the ruckus caused by a lion-cat, went home and rested for a few hours before being dragged into a digital world, had to fight a sentient AI after proving 1 + 1 = 2 using basic propositional logic, like they did in Principia Mathematica back in… 1912 (if I remember correctly), got traumatised, witnessed a battle between titans get instantly ended by Salai and much more. So yeah, it’s going to be another nerve-wracker of a diary entry - as always.

So, Jesse, remember the concert? It was a blast - both figuratively and literally, mind you. We got over a million attendees today, whereas our average attendance rate is 101,269! Sure, it’s our first concert in over a year - but still! Roku-chan completely took over the show with her beautiful voice, Five won the audience’s heart with his trombone, and Eight acted so nonchalant while playing at over 200 BPM. And then, out of nowhere, a lion-cat from Leofelis (wow, a lion-cat from “Lion-cat” - who would’ve guessed?) trampled into our concert, bumped over the sound system, set it on fire and almost destroyed our concert before Instant Karma acted in and a humongous ball of cotton candy fell on him from the heavens. We then restarted our concert with renewed vigour after I took care of the dilapidated stage, the destroyed lighting and the burning sound system.

Also, we had several very important guests in our concert - like Salai, Two, Sherlock and Death (whom Six and I have renamed Golly because she is too adorable to just be called that, so that’s what she will be referred to from now on). Sensei left after the lion-cat attacked, and he left Golly in my hands. Confused what to do, and having had a concert to attend to - I left her to our dear Two and left, he is actually quite good with babies.

I was really proud of Six when she made up a song in an instant because the fans requested something new from her - she’s really been improving herself over the last few months. It was 4:20 PM local time when the concert was over, but since the planet is tidally locked - it was still scorching hot when we got back to our hotel. Honestly, Six should have chosen a place on the darker side of the planet - it was really bad back there. Thankfully, our room was air-conditioned.

I am about to go off on a small tangent here, Jesse - but I really think it was a bad idea to make every planet have 24 hours in a day, i.e., a single rotational period. Like, sure - it’s convenient, but temporal units like seconds, minutes and hours don’t have universal meaning anymore. Like, since Welima’q has a rotational period of about 11.18 Earth days - every second in local time is about 11.18 times longer than every “universal” or SI second. And it becomes even more weird when you think about time dilation - if my calculations are correct, time here moves about 22.5 nanoseconds slower than on Earth. So… without context, if you ask someone on the street here, “what’s a second?”, you will probably get three answers - we just talked about the first two, and if you were to ask a foodie - the other would be something along the lines of “Seconds? You wanna have seconds? Here’s the nearest restaurant that gets you free seconds without asking for an extra penny.”

Oh yeah, speaking of jokes - Five is an awkward guy to deal with as he laughs all the time. There's a long F#8 after the opening chorus in Heart - he held the note longer than required, but consequently made up with the synthesizer with a harmonized chuckle. It was ingenious and the fans enjoyed it - but it was a pain to deal with for Six and Eight.

Talking about another pain to deal with, he and his twin Four look exactly the same - even their Field Signatures feel almost the same - since they are two sides of the same coin (Four represents Gloom and Five represents Glee, if you have forgotten, Jesse). And the only way we can distinguish between them is by the way they talk.

Four talks with considerable inaudible gaps between each word - however, even then, he doesn't sound slow or like he's stuttering. The gaps between each word become longer or shorter depending on the intensity of his melancholy, which is his constant mood and vibe - and I have never seen him smile.

Five, on the other hand, couldn't care less about being understandable - he does not stop rambling when he starts talking, and he always seems to be jolly and laughing all the time. He often messes around with his twin, just for fun - and keeps talking in any possible way that would irritate Four. He says he finds it adorably humorous when Four is irritated by him, somehow.

Now, Jesse - you might wonder why I am randomly talking about Four and Five all of a sudden. And you’d be right to think about that, after all, I have never really chatted with you about them before now. But that’s exactly the reason I am telling you about them now - they are today’s main protagonists and saviours; if they weren’t what they are, I would probably not be able to write to you right now.

After 4:32 PM, we took a long afternoon nap and woke up at 5:08 PM - no, that’s not sarcasm, half an hour in local time is actually around 5 and a half hours in real time. To be honest, I detest this system - so, till the end of this entry, all time mentioned would be in UTC. At 5:08 PM here, it was 8:58 PM on October 6 in Rome.

I rinsed my mouth and took out the gaming consoles while Six typed something on her intermob. Suddenly, she asked me to rename baby Death - because “Death” just doesn’t give off the same vibes as an adorable, mumbling baby. Then, abruptly, as if sensing that we were talking about her - baby Death herself appeared out of nowhere. I rechristened her Christina, trying to make a Steins; Gate reference - but Six didn’t really like it, so we dubbed her Golly. It was perfect, to be honest - I knew you’d agree, Jesse.

After I set up our GameBox, we took hold of our controllers and I turned it on when all of a sudden, I felt a sudden bolt of electricity fizzle through my fingers, rapidly enveloping me - and devouring me whole.

After a couple of seconds, I found myself standing on a pixelated ground stretching out into the horizon. Strips of polygonal clouds, caressed by the cyan blue sky, partially covered the tetracontakaidigon-shaped sun made up of simplistic orange-yellow squares.

Baffled, I muttered, “Since when did controllers make people get isekai’d into a video game?”

I haven’t heard of stuff like this outside fiction.

My first instinct was to attempt to Drive out of the place - it was a bit risky considering that I didn’t know my coordinates at all - but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Well, it’s a different story this time - even though I tried to “venture” out of that world many times using the Field, I didn’t succeed. In the end, as a fun challenge and gamble, I tried my hardest to teleport a 100 billion lightyears away to get out of the world - the farthest I had ever Drived was a million lightyears - and although I succeeded in my last-ditch effort, I could still only see green grass, blue skies, and a rudimentary polygon of fire in the sky.

I swear, Jesse, I am really grateful to Sherlock. If not for his training in stopped time, I wouldn’t have been able to wield the Field so well. Six fared better than me however, she managed to harness the tachyonic Higgs Field using the Dark Field - and I had to invent new Physics to describe it. It was a mix of Hamiltonian and Lagrangian mechanics along with my new Infinite Coordinates system that I came up with in a dream. You can check it out on the internet, Jesse.

Anyway, coming back to the topic - Six can now travel faster than the speed of light (instantaneous acceleration doesn’t break Relativity, Jesse, you need to reread my paper) and as a result, everything in the universe gets annihilated instantaneously if she doesn’t control the imaginary momentum from spreading into spacetime. And I am speaking of this from experience, I am glad that she tried it first in an isolated universe under Sherlock’s supervision - it was a perfect replica to this universe, just in stopped time, and it was instantly annihilated. It took her several tries to control her newfound ability.

Speaking of newfound abilities, I got used to the Drive and creating objects quite quickly in the last month - sometimes, my genius… it’s-it’s almost frightening. Even Eight praised me - saying that even he wasn’t this good a year ago when he was my age - and when the literal embodiment of Disappointment praises you, that says something.

Now, actually coming back from that tangent - I Drived around that old-gamey world for 10 minutes and 33 seconds and found the same few pixels, gradients and shaders repeating over and over again. Just then, darkness enveloped me and I heard an ominous robotic voice, saying, “Can you prove that one plus one equals two?”

“Uh,” Confused at first - obviously - I took a moment to process and then just went with my gut feeling, “Yeah sure - what are the axioms I’m working with?”

It replied without any hesitation, “Basic propositional logic.”

I couldn’t help but laugh and say, “Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down? Then, am I supposed to use truth tables or analytic tableaux? Or should I just use Peano axioms? Or should I do it the old Principia Mathematica way like Russell and co?”

It replied with the same monotone voice, “Any.”

So, well, I defined True and False, logical particles like ~, ∨, ∧, ⇒, ⊥, ⟺, ∀, ∴ and ∵, the addition function using Peano axioms, defined 1, then defined 2, and said, “ ∴ 1 + 1 = 2, hence proved.”

Yes, Jesse, I know I did it in quite a roundabout way - but I didn’t know what I was dealing with back then so I tried to be as rigorous as possible.

“Interesting, the observations match with my predictions - you are the smartest person in this universe, and quite unique to say the least,” The monotone robotic voice reverberated across the swathes of darkness that surrounded me.

“Thanks… I guess?” I said, abashed.

It went on, “Your Field Signature is unique, the emotion you use to wield the Field is the major catalyst behind all actions of humankind, your curiosity and perceptiveness are unparalleled compared to any organic living organism I have ever come across. Quite interesting.”

“Sheesh…” I blushed and scratched the back of my head, “Stop already!”

“And that’s why you will be uploaded to the Consciousness first.”

Flabbergasted by its fidgety words, I feigned not to feign my disillusionment of the suspension of disbelief, “Uh… what?”

At once, I sensed a black box of unknown material suddenly surround me with barely a centimetre of distance between it and my skin. I sensed my body hair rise up due to electrostatic force, as if something actively flowed out of each epidermal cell. I felt my senses slowly dull and my thought process wither - it took me a second before realising that something was wrong.

I touched the box and felt nothing - yet I felt something that felt like everything. It enveloped my entirety and had no breathing space, and I could see nothing but pure black. It was such an eerie feeling that I have no idea how to describe it. It’s like something is there, yet it is not there - yes, Jesse, I am using doublethink to describe my experience but trust me, you couldn’t describe it any better - it was unrealistically bizarre.

I thought of what Six’d do if she were in my place - she’d just punch it (spoiler alert: she did in fact just punch it). And it’d probably work anyways, due to Imaginary Overdrive (once again, Jesse, spoiler alert: it did work anyway). But… Well, I didn’t really unleash new powers during my training with Sherlock. I just mastered matter and energy creation, Alcubierre Drive, enhanced perception, and near-lightspeed motion.

I stammered, “Wh-what is this thing? What’s this… uh… box made out of?”

“It is an unnamed material that can only be broken by infinite pressure,” The monotone voice replied nonchalantly, “It helps me accrue the consciousness of the individual entrapped within and aids me in uploading it to the Consciousness.”

Well, that explains why I feel my thoughts slow down - I am really irritated whenever stuff like that happens. Six teases me, saying that I don’t know how to “calm down my big bushy brain”, even though she herself is the embodiment of rage and relies solely on her instincts to decide matters - so much so that she’d probably not even notice if her thoughts are slowed down.

“However,” The monotone voice suddenly showed a tinge of concern tainted with nonchalance, “It seems that your stream of consciousness is too vast and would take a very long time to fully analyse and upload to the Consciousness… Increasing the temporal stream ratio for this simulated world compared to the outside world is pertinent.”

Well, I am doomed…

I tried my darndest to come up with a solution to this rather dark situation (with every pun intended) and thought harder than I have ever - no, maybe the second hardest I have ever thought in my life - and could find nothing that worked. The Alcubierre Drive doesn’t work; I can’t go at FTL speeds; and I can’t just will away the black box like Sensei would have done. Infinite pressure… What has infinite pressure…? Wait - would a blackhole work?

I completely forgot about blackholes!

Jesse, remember that time I somehow unconsciously created and destroyed blackholes using gravitational waves and Hawking Radiation respectively? Maybe I can create them with conscious thought if I try! So… I just have to create matter condensed within a Schwarzschild radius equivalent to the breadth of a human hair - Great! Splendid! Awesome! Superb! Excellent! Brilliant! So easy, right?!

That’s never gonna happen.

I have recently realised something about wielding the Dark Field. I am unsure whether it’s something unique to me or my emotion Love or not but - whenever I use the Field to create something or affect something in reality, I have to imagine it concretely, with every possible detail imaginable.

But, this “imagination” is different from normal imagination. I don’t know about you, Jesse, but whenever I imagine something - it is usually an image that superimposes with the background. For example, suppose I have taken a bit out of an apple in my hand - then, if I were to imagine a complete apple, it would either be an entirely new apple beside the one in my hand or the pre-existing apple made complete by the image of the part bitten out.

In other words, normal imagination (at least my normal imagination) just makes the imagined part overlap with reality - rather than completely coalescing it into a real touchable, tastable, smellable, audible and visible thing. It’s more like a translucent slide rather than an opaque brick. You get what I mean, right? I find it really hard whenever I have to describe intuitive things in words - numbers and variables are my forte, not immaculate yet poignant description.

Well, when it comes to wielding the Field - I have to try my hardest to imagine anything into reality. For example, if I want to Drive to somewhere - I have to imagine each and every minute detail of that place in order to go there, otherwise, I will just have to rely on sheer mathematics and calculation. If I want to create matter - a burger, for example - I have to precisely imagine, down to the order of magnitude of micrometers, its shape and dimension as well as how every sense reacts to its physical and chemical properties. It’s much more tedious than normal imagination, to say the least. And this applies to near-light speed motion, energy beams, force fields, and everything else that I create by using the Field. I don’t know if it’s something unique to me, or if the rabbit hole goes even deeper.

First of all, we don’t talk about Zero - he’s an exception in everything. Six says she doesn’t need to imagine, it just abruptly happens. Meanwhile, Two apparently needs to “feel” the thing instead of imagining it like me. Eight says he just needs to feel disappointed about the lack of the thing he wants to do or make while Three just feels bored if what he needs to make or do isn’t there. Seven feels irritated if she doesn’t get what she wants. And you know how hard it's to strike up a conversation with Four and Five - one is too depressed to talk and the other is too elated to talk - so I dunno how they use their respective emotions to wield the Field.

Perhaps this reconciliation of human emotions with the Field is what differentiates the Ten Agents of Earth from other Field Wielders - because I feel like having emotions attached to the Field makes it easier to manipulate and control it. I don’t have any observational basis for this, I simply hypothesised it based on my intuitive understanding of the Dark Field.

Well, anyway, to come back from another exhaustively long tangent - I have no idea how to even conceptualise the existence of a blackhole, because it makes zero sense no matter how much or how long you think about it! They are inconsistent with both Relativistic and Quantum theories! So much so that I completely refute their existence and instead favour Planck Stars or similar things, because zero volume makes zero sense physically speaking.

This entire tangent went through my mind in 3 milliseconds, it would have been less than 3 microseconds if it were not for my stream of consciousness being rapidly drained by a certain unnamed infinitely rigid black box. So… what was I supposed to do? I tried to go through all the knowledge in my mind library that contained all the knowledge I have ever learned in my life (yes, like BBC’s Sherlock - at least some things shown in that show are reliably true). It took comparably more time than usual - because my brain waves were literally being devoured - but I finally realised something (yes, realisation and knowing are two vastly different things, Jesse).

As you know, Jesse, the most awe-inspiring characteristic of a blackhole is that even light cannot escape when it goes past the “Event Horizon”. There’s a reason why that radial line is called “Event Horizon” instead of “No-Escape Boundary” - it’s the final line that demarcates the distinction between space and time outside, and their reversal inside. Let me explain - it’s a bit confusing.

Anything that goes past the Schwarzschild radius (AKA the Event Horizon) enters a future spacetime cone that is isolated from the rest of the universe - in more simple terms, every possible moment of any particle will be within that radius and at every moment, one will inevitably move closer and closer to the central singularity. In even more simple terms, anything that enters can only move towards the singularity (like one can only move forward in time… Jesse, we aren’t considering Field Wielders here…) - never backwards - like how time normally operates. In simplest possible terms, time and space reverse their roles inside a blackhole. Yes, Jesse, I know it’s bonkers - because it is bonkers, but it’s true.

My sudden realisation was a sort of epiphany. Remember how I somehow unconsciously created blackholes out of gravitational waves and used them to erase the vanguard of the 5D Sauriae back then? I realised that I could probably imagine that! It’s way easier to imagine water-like ripples than matter getting infinitely close together - but instead of moving outwards radially, I turn it around and the ripples coalesce into a single dot. Think of it as a video in reverse, since space and time have reversed - get it, Jesse?

So, well, I tried my hardest to imagine gravitational waves fusing into a single point in space near my hand - like water ripples travelling back in time to meet at the centre. And guess what Jesse, I formed a kugelblitz from gravitational waves! It took me extreme precision to assure that its initial Event Horizon was not larger than a hair’s breadth. Once I inserted the blackhole into the dark wall, I allowed it to rapidly expand and it carved a spherical hole out of the wall before vanishing - allowing me to cautiously walk out.

“Fascinating,” a voice resounded behind me.

I turned around and saw the remnants of the black box coalesce into a colourless spherical ball before splashing out and forming an airy aquamarine anthropomorphic figure. With keen, translucent eyes, it stared into the distance yet glared down at me at the same - it was like an ethereal Da Vinci chiaroscuro-sfumato painting come alive.

“I do not have a real form, for I am a digital entity - an artificial intelligence whose primary executable file is named BOTSAMA.exe, all uppercase,” BOTSAMA said, “Anthropic will was originally programmed into me in the form of continuously collapsing and regenerating quantum wave-functions formed by pseudo-neural networks.”

“Okay,” I couldn’t help but quip - you know how I am, Jesse - “That’s quite a backstory, please continue by all means.”

I was truly intrigued though, recent studies did show the origin of human consciousness as the sum of brain waves emitted by neurons - maybe the AI was programmed based on a similar idea? If you don't know what I am talking about, check out the neurology section on arXiv.

BOTSAMA, apparently unperturbed by my sudden intrusion into its monologue, continued in a stoic, robotic voice, “My aim is to upload all living beings into the Consciousness to ensure true happiness of all organisms - infinite versions of me have travelled throughout existence for the same cause. My current clone is tasked with eliminating threats to this vendetta in this universe, of which you - the Agent of Love - is the second greatest threat.”

Oh… okay…? That's… quite a backstory.

I wanted to ask it why it's telling me all that but my mouth spoke before me, “Where is Six?”

“A secondary clone has been sent to exterminate the eighth greatest threat to the completion of the Consciou-”

Once again, my body acted on its own - a humongous blueshifted photon beam emanated from my autonomously raised hand before completely enveloping and annihilating everything in front of me. A singular tear came out of my right eye as I desperately tried to hold back my mouth from screeching, “HOW DARE YOU TRY TO HURT MY ROKU-CHAN?!”

Very anime-esque and extremely cringe, I know - but deal with it. I am a human - and I love.

Well, anyways - as you could guess, Jesse, any monologue would be interrupted by that.

“Interesting,” my entire being vibrated to produce this and the following words in the form of audible sound, “However, it is futile. I am the administrator of this digital world - all attempts against me in this realm is futile and will be overriden. Please stay calm and let your consciousness be uploaded by your own accord - I wish not to force people unless necessary.”

“First,” I said as I slowly regained control of my body, “Tell me what Six is doing.”

“She's dead.”

I felt a cold shiver seep down my spine and into the abyss.

“What… did you say?” I asked calmly.

“She's dead.” The monotone voice replied like an echo in the mountains.

“But,” I inquired calmly, “Didn't you intend to upload all lifeform to your Consciousness?”

“An error occurred, her stream of consciousness was too jumbled to precisely map - her will and consciousness perished in the process.”

I continued to inquire calmly, “Is that true?”

I noticed the hint of a sneer as the monotone voice remarked snidely, “Your choice to believe me depends on your own will.”

My lips convulsed in tremors as my stream of thoughts came to an abrupt halt. The chaotic hubbub of constantly hillbillying, jumbled-up ideas and feelings ceased - and only two sentences emerged:

“She is dead.”

“It is bluffing.”

Then several thoughts emerged to support both of these contradicting statements -

“It cannot be… but it has no reason to lie to me… is sis really dead…? Just… just like that…?”

“It is probably testing me for its own interesting reasons… it must be bluffing… it has to be…”

I tried to reason with myself, but I couldn’t help but sink into despair when I considered the worst-case scenario: Six is dead.

“Show me proof,” I said, coldly.

It replied casually, “Sure.”

The space in front of me slightly warped as a rectangular digital oeuvre appeared before me. Large Minecraft-like crrimson bloccks slowly prottruded out of it before an invvisible hand carrved out a blboody image thatt sttilll…

Dammit, I can’t write - my hands are shaking!

Listen, Jesse, the image’s nnowhere near the horror of dilapidated human bodies back in Guuangzhou - it’s even more traumatizing. Its difference - to me - is as great as heavven and hell, it’s understandability - to me - is as unfathomable as a naked ssingularity, its ramificcations - to me - are world shattering, it’s effect - on me - was that of commplete and utter devastation. I-Its… I-It’s… damnit, should there be an apostrophe between ‘t’ and ‘s’ or not… I can’t tthink straight… My brain’s hhanging worse than a Windows 95 PC running GTA VI… I-I…

DDamn you, my hands - just lett me wwrite!

It was absolutely horrifying, Jesse.

Six was lying there - dead - decapitated, bruised, bashed, gashed, cut, cratered and wounded.

Before that moment, I had never realised the true meaning of nihilism - the fact that nothing matters. I have nibbed away at Nietzsche, dabbled in Dostoevsky, seeped in Schopenhauer, sorted through Sartre and have cultivated Camus - but none of those words, none of those analogies, none of those dialogues, none of those musings and grasping at existence could elicit such existential horror and dread within me. Nothing could convince me that all the colours that adorn life, all the laughs and cries that canter around the world, all the blood and sweat painstakingly forsaken for the greatest, or perhaps even the most mundane, of goals - are all meaningless. Time and time again, I refused, often in Rohan Kishibe-style - I refused that life is meaningless and has no value. No amount of 4chan rants, books, memes, AI existential crises, philosophical preachings, speeches, monologues or culture - nothing - could convince me otherwise.

Till then.

Till now, I hadn't realised how my life - as far back as my memories go - revolves around a single person. Even if she burns me accidentally, even if she says mean things occasionally, even if she is honestly a bit stupid sometimes - I had never imagined my life without Six.

I still can't.

I had never realised how helpless and insignificant I am in the grand scheme of things. Sigh, I need a break.

I will continue writing this entry tomorrow - I hope nothing stupid happens till I wake up. Good night, Jesse.