Chapter 4: A Town Called Rockwood

Things had gotten quite exciting for Isaiah up to this point. He took it all in rather well with positive wistful-less-ness and an unparalleled apathy. Things had become really exhilarating indeed.

For a starters he died today.

Secondly he wasn’t really dead. That is to say he had in a way been born again.

I wish there was an easier way to explain how this is all possible. Really, if there was a way for the human brain to understand the workings of a logically insane place like the inter-universe, then there would only need to be one person to exist in all places at once and exclaim that they are god.

That or one could see it as magic.

If you thought the latter you might also be under the assumption magic is something of a joke. Physiological evolution over technology in the form of summoning particles in a particular order and consistently reproducing the same result contrary to common sense.

I’m saying it was absolutely absurd to an unimaginable level.

He had no more performed something as extravagantly complex as magic as he was prepared to show off. Demonstrating something as scientifically profound as well as a great many other subjects had never been one of his strong focuses in the short time he was stumbling aimlessly clueless on earth. He was lost in the whole mess of things yet produced nothing less than a miracle..

Not much is really known about Isaiah at this point. In summery nothing is known other than he’s just been kicking rocks for the last 7 years and also that he is last person to die in 7 years.

At the present moment he was chasing a mirage into the horizon of a brand new world before even knowing his own thought process. If Isaiah had any logic he might have stayed in the ashen forest (instead of going to Rockwood radio tower) continuing his ignorance. Luckily for him however, things like fear and pain had died along with his ‘body’, so he was not even slightly worried with what was to follow now.

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The town of Rockwood looked almost exactly not the same as before the last time Isaiah saw it.

Everything was green.

Everything was alive.

All of it seemed perfectly abnormal. The town that he had called his home for 2 days: Rockwood was a dust-covered, radio-blasted, sand kingdom had been slowly drying up and crumbling into forgotten history.

All of these buildings were fully intact with colors on their outsides. Bricks surrounded shimmering glass on every wall, reflecting the waving trees who were now scarce as he trailed off from the woodland. They had dug themselves into the rock-ground.

“You are wondering why the tree’s do not follow.”

Isaiah turns to see the sound.

“Now you are wondering if I am like them.”

He pondered this sound. It stayed and had a physical aspect to it. This was the strangest sound he’d heard yet, he almost understood it. The sound must be real. 

Once more,

“You must follow me before you go and fill your head with more useless things.”

It seemed to understand him in a way Isaiah barely understood himself. It left him standing there in contempt of silence.

Isaiah followed after the apparition once he escaped the voids of every empty thought that came to mind.

It was headed towards a building he’d never witnessed before. It was in the same direction as the setting sun where the twilight glowed brightest. The view was perplexing but he instantly knew it to be exactly that and was captivated for a moment before he realized it was the first time he'd ever seen this sun set.

Lovely as it all was nothing captured his attention more than this ghostly figures’ chase down long ways and past ‘S-T-O-P’s, around corners and all the way down every inch of the black ground until the sun had set past the hills and trees.

They gleamed with the brightness of contained grins as they began their sleep in the ground.

Darkness had been surprisingly boring where he was. Darkness on Earth *before/after*[1] had been an extravagantly surreal experience by comparison. Distant boreali, covered by gray-green reflections of toxins left in the atmosphere, danced behind the gaseous clouds creating lights and colors with no names but all majesty the like of which he was privileged to be one of the only witnesses. Isaiah never knew any of this, he only knew that he could walk at night if he so chose, and here he could not.

This was exactly like *before/before* in the house walking in circles. Clueless and ignorant to the world around him like the time he fell down the 22 steps of his birth place and broke his neck and lived.

He did nothing.

Just like *before/before*, it was quite boring.

He did not like the darkness very much and he got the feeling that the darkness was also not very fond of him.

For one: It was very cold. Everything felt cold in the darkness.

Isaiah himself, however, was not cold but was merely running out of things to think of now that the canvas in front of him was blank.

Another thing the darkness did was take his vision. This left his mind to even more extreme thinking on the subject of nothingness that encompassed him.

One thought came to mind in all emptiness is his head. It was powerful and ground breaking for someone of his nature to come up with this. In fact the power his thought created a literal ripple in space just 12 inches in front of his shadow covered face.

Had he seen this, it would had been the most spectacular thing he’d ever observed up to that point. It would have to wait thought.

“This is called a church!”

It stood outside one of the buildings.

“Humans made these. There are many just like this one”

Its noises were starting to sound familiar.

“-But it is not real. None of this is. You have passed where the eye does not see and have rested in the land that no man but you and I may walk.”

Isaiah nodded. This felt wrong.

“You were only an infant the last we met. You talked a bit more then. I’m not surprised now that things have slowed down and become a bit … I suppose the word would be backwards. I knew one day you would see me here again.”

He stopped listening to the noises, it sounded like it made no sense even if he was able to understand any of the meanings.

“You will understand them one day, Isaiah.”

He recognized the last word and all of his attention was back on the being that was not quite all the way there.

“You will understand a great deal of some of these words. Even the one’s I’m speaking to you know may lay dormant in your memories after our meeting for eons. Some of them might be complex to to the point they could leave you agonizingly confused. That will pass in time.. For now listen so you may remember one day what I tell you now."

He was beginning to understand a little more each time the thing spoke at him. It was hard, there we’re so many different words, not just being said, but ones that weren’t being said. A barrage of words that wanted to come out, years of pent up words. He'd become embarrassed that he honestly knew nothing of what he was speaking. 

What are words?

“There will be time later for learning. You must follow me immediately.”

The apparition moved towards the opening of the arches with Isaiah walking closely as not to let this ‘thing’ out of his sight like the darkness.

“This is called a church, Isaiah, and you had better become familiar with one. There are a lot of them where you will be going. There will also be other constructs like political establishments, kingdoms of people deciding what is best for others if it benefits themselves.”

He came to the opening on the side of the Church. The massive doors blocked the way only moments later to be moved without touch by the strange word maker.

“All of them different in their own way, but in essence all of them are exactly the same. Humans are fascinated with things they don’t understand. You will soon find that the lack of understanding is a much more powerful tool than knowlage itself. It creates fear and causes pain that the humans find irresistible."

The hall was big.

The universe, of course, being much bigger, somehow felt smaller inside of this room. It was enough to make one confused about the interior size in comparison to the exterior size like how the earth floats in the void.

Isaiah was indifferent regardless of suddenly understanding this. It didn't help that there were no words to fit the thought but his mind exploded none the less with proof that the universe was indeed finite. He rattled backwards to the undetermined point at which his body had hit the ground, got back up, had an epiphany, came back to ‘reality’ and had enough time to lose his mind in an apathetic blunder before realizing he was still alive.

“You are confused again?”

It was all very confusing indeed. Isaiah nodded

“It would seem as though your temporal senses are starting to improve. Maybe faster than expected. There may be hope for you yet.”

He nodded once more. He had seen this done before by a strange thing that looked like him back on ‘Earth’.

“-What you saw was something called a TV Show. I’ll explain.”

Isaiah’s head continued to mimic this 'TV Show' as the geist spoke.

“Humans are or were particularly good at using words… something that is relatively new to you now. Another thing humans were fantastic at was dying. It’s nothing really, there used to be a whole bunch of humans so no one thought twice about it all. It wasn’t until time was introduced to words that their power truly came about in the form of something called Wisdom.

"This evolutionary development allowed humans to learn faster and teach better than the previous generations that couldn’t quite hack it. Imagine what 10 generations of humans could teach one with the power of Wisdom! The growth was exponential. Words became important and imagined their own worlds with the minds of every group that held onto it. It separated people and made them stronger at the same time. Every time humanity evolved, it became that much wiser but not without cost. Like all things, life takes just as much as it gets.

“Resources and space became scarcer as time moved on and so did their continued advance. After the first couple generations of these ape borne hominids, it became clear that communication through vocal patterns was the prime suspect for this leap in psychology that would otherwise keep them in purgatory just as their genetic cousins.

“With wisdom there was hope that they could transcend the world and become one with it, but the trials had only begun when the power of written word was created.

“Electricity was harnessed fast, just a little over 800 generations after the first words. It was with this that gave rise to the pinnacle of communication technology like the TV. The ability to not only send sound, but sight was tampering from a religious sense but god did they love TV.

“In these TV Shows, the humans would act out these stories in a lot of different ways. One of them was by using a device known as a TV and they had many other devices too. Radio, Internet and Cell Phones gave rise to even greater technologically advanced communication but it was really because of TV that the planet managed to get itself in the position it’s in now. Faster communication meant faster information and soon everyone was privileged with an ability to obtain information anywhere on earth. Communication had brought about peace for a short amount of time on earth. Nations fought alongside one another against their shared enemies bringing a true end to the meaning of boarders and property. Leading minds being born during this time gave anticipation and courage instead of war heroes who only brought home dead loved ones. No one starved. No one died alone. No one learned anything new. Art became the ultimate form of communication and became appreciated by almost everyone (the exclusion being artists, of course) again as pure expressionism instead of a monetary gain or competition.”

It fell silent a moment to see if Isiah was still awake.

He was and It started back up.

“The whole of humanity was nearly perfected as its ability to communicate with itself and began to find within themselves that a lot of minds spread around were better than separated one’s. All of these achievements and monuments to their beauty and nothing could stop the freedom that Television had provided years before the age of awareness. Like the bow and arrow it created a precipice for humanities limitations. And just like the bow and arrow, no one could stop its eventual corruption in the hand that controlled it.

“Times of peace must always be balanced with times of unrest, but I don’t expect your unstable mind to understand such complexities.”

Isaiah stared at the word maker in derstand[2].

“I see you have some work to do with humor.You completely missed my joke about artists. It matters little now of course since there are no more artists on Earth to hear your almost respectful silence.”

An image of the earth sprang from the air around them and bounced to a hover in front of them both and glowed radiantly like the being himself.

It was bleak and dry and covered in what looked like mostly green with not an inch of water. Isaiah knew that it was an earth instinctively, it was really the only piece of knowledge he’d attained during his travels there and he would not soon forget nor miss the planet of his supposed birth/death[3].

How did he know what it looked like from the outside?

“I wouldn’t want to be you either. Worry little, you won’t be going back there anytime soon, so it looks like you might have at least a small bit of luck.”

Isaiah did not feel a thing.

“You won’t feel a thing.”

He was engulfed in an invisible light sphere. There was more pain than he knew what to do with and almost felt something too.

The light sphere dissipated but not before relinquishing its hold on Isaiah and dropped him to the floor.

“That was a test. It looks as though your, now- what should we call it? We’ll call it a Spirit! Your Spirit is special and requires a bit of something extra. Think of it as I gave you part of myself. It might feel weird but it’s very important.

"I will also tell you this now; it is extremely vital that when you interact with humans, you listen to what they are saying and not just nod your empty head up and down like a carnival amusement. Now, nod your head up and down.”

These different words felt even stranger than when he first heard them in the meadow. He did as the strange thing asked and bobbed his head strangely.

“Now you’re getting it! Alright, stop nodding, it’s getting strange.”

Isaiah settled down.

“Okay, you aren’t going to like this next part”

This time the pain almost felt good. This was of course because the pain was so incredible that it came back around and had no other feeling to go to. Had he any knowledge of anatomical science, he’d had known that in his brain, in preparation of Birth/Death, had released a hefty load of euphoric chemicals that triggered every nerve receptor and pleasure center, causing euphoria close to dying and seeing his miserable life flash before his eyes and be thankful that it must be close to being over. Isaiah bobbed his head strangely.

It ended as quickly as it started.

“That was a bit of something else entirely. When your Spirit was sent here your body, well, simply there is no body. What I have done was change the vibrational status that connects your atoms into ‘existence’ in a dimensional space but you clearly have no clue what I’m talking about. 

"I said stop bobbing your head!”

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Isaiah listened to the Sage intently. It wasn’t that he said anything of importance up to that point in their time together, it was only that he had never heard anyone speak before.

It was brand new and he understood almost every word. Up until the non-sensible science gibber, he had followed very well for someone who’d just learned what language was and even then he had enjoyed the new-ness of it all inside of his little apathetic bubble.

The Mystic talked at greater and greater lengths about the importance of these words and how they would be important for him to learn about this new place he was going to. He spoke at really great lengths of the place he would be going to in general.

It was not-Earth. Rather, New Earth had been made, in relative terms, relatively close to where old earth had been. In fact, New Earth had been made exactly in the same spot that Old Earth had been made as well as the same time in which it existed.

The difference was not in where or when the earth was. It was the earth in every way except for one thing. Everything about its orbit around the gaseous ball of light 93 million or so miles towards the center. Its orbital rotation was reverse.

It mattered little.  Isaiah had learned something in all of this talking that created an underwhelming reaction. He was not alone.

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“And now that I have your complete attention I suppose that you’ll have to be given your proper name now considering that Isaiah person also no longer exists.”

He felt diminished a little but showed none of it.

“It’s regrettable yes. After the impact you’re body sort of became, well, non-operational. You’re better off really, this one is much better and you won’t be subjected to the same horrors that were on that sorry excuse for an experiment.

“That unbearable loneliness must had felt even worse than alone. I am after all the first being you’ve ever come into contact with and I am very sorry for that fact. You see, you are much more important to the universe than you think.

“The truth of it all is there is this universe which exists for the sole purpose of harboring your awakening. You went to sleep a long time ago, Zero, and I have been searching for you.

“No I don’t believe we do know each other. In fact you would not even know who I was if you had your memory. Whatever you did must had created quite the conundrum for you to end up there of all places without any identity. You also ended, or started, up here which makes even my brain hurt thinking about it.”

Isaiah looked down at his hand.

“Your teller.”

He held a golden pocket watch securely in his grasp. If he’d had it the whole time, he was now just realizing. This was the thing he’d thrown it in the Forest of Ash.

“You are not mistaken.”

The Golden watch he had hurled at the sun to only crash down from gravity and walked away from. A useless, broken trinket and he had it here, where even his body could not go.

“It is important to you regardless if you do not understand its true function. You think it is broken and you tossed it away out of anger and here it is guiding you without your knowledge.

“You’re particularly quiet now even after having learned how to speak even without saying a single word. Would you like to know your name?”

Isaiah held the time teller with whelming coldness that only an empty void would muster confidence approaching.

“You are angry now, Zero. It’s because you understand something now that you never could alone but you don’t even remember the words I’ve spoken to bring you here. You have come far, yes, but still understand little. I know your thoughts, and I have seen inside of you beyond what you can see in yourself and that’s what makes you angriest of all. Even now my words have become poison to you.”

Isaiah began to feel empty.

“You have become troublesome, Zero, now that you believe in your own logic. I have shown you what possession is and you have grown to hate me in your own way.”

No one said anything now for some time.

The tormentor finally spoke a last time while raising his arms.

“Maybe it will always be like that after all. Unlike you I was granted with everything there is to know, however, I did not know anything myself until you came here. You see, Zero, I know this would all happen and I knew every word I was going to say to you. And it’s by the twisting of destiny that this all happened this way because you are the first being I have ever met”, and sent Isaiah away in a flash of molecular re-allocation.

[1] Before/After: A term to describe a laps of time that is inconsistent to all time lines. When referring to ‘word/word’ explanations, it should be taken literally in this sense, it refers to where Isaiah was before his current location, but after the incident on earth. Conversely, ‘After/Before’ refers to a moment of present value but in past tense. There is no way to describe the future tense of this phrase for one does not exist in a foreword moving time direction. After/After and Before/Before refers to distant tenses from the present usually involving before character development or after character destruction and Present/Etc. will be continually examined.

*Language*: Spoken in a language that cannot be heard or understood in 3rd dimensional syntax.

[2] Derstand: Ignorantly, to misunderstand; without any understanding.

[3] This is happening all the time to Life in All/Time. In All/Time it is very complex to differentiate one living organism that will eventually decay to another one that lived almost a billion years before hand. Birth/Death is the conceptual time by which you can be sure that life in the Nth Dimension exists and should always be accompanied by quickly forgetting its existence, much like the universe does with life.