Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-three, Remembrance; Chapter Five, Will

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 243, Friday

August 31st, 2018

Chapter Five: Will

The translation of consciousness from an organic body to the quantum and electromagnetic fields of the Collective was not easy.

The technological feat itself had been a thing of fantasy, for ages, it was the holy grain of neuro-physics.

The ability for an individual to endure the process was also difficult. Thousands upon thousands of test subjects came to their untimely end in the experimental stage of these technologies.

Many more people went insane, undergoing a negation of self from which they never recovered.

It was noted that only the strongest personalities survived the translation process.

What happened to those who did not make it was a mystery.

In the first iteration of these technologies each individual consciousness was isolated, every individual consciousness was self-contained, interact with the world through mechanoid bodies, cyborgs, replicants.

Many of those who went into such bodies could not learn the means to control the apparatus, they were paralyzed, and without the ability to communicate they were thought to be lost; they were shelved, destroyed, recycled. 

In time the Ancient scientists learned to contain multiple personalities in the same quantum field, while maintaining a distinction from one another.

The early experiments in this field were disastrous, destroying the individuals it hoped to preserve in a new quantum society.

This was an age of sacrifice, a holy offering on the altar of discovery.

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Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-three, Remembrance; Chapter Four, Suffering

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 242, Thursday

August 30th, 2018

Chapter Four: Suffering

Every member of the Collective was an island…a world unto themselves. Each member had access to a private universe, they only limits were their imagination.

The members were free to participate in their community, or not. The majority were more concerned with the events taking place in the Empire than with their own artificial constructions.

They connected to one another through Continuum, which shared in the Collective experience of each individual. Even the members who were most removed from the group were polled by the Continuum in order for it to assess their will, and factor it in to the decisions it made on their behalf.

The greater the emotional intensity of the experiences the members had, the more they shared with one another.

The Collective had an insatiable appetite for the experiences of others.

The competed with each other to create compelling narratives in their private worlds, which they delighted in sharing with their peers.

Some of them were profound storytellers and artists.

However, the most watched dramas were those taking place in the real world, and the most favored artificial narratives were those that explored the alternate possibilities and outcomes to the real events the Continuum was obsessed with. 

Most members of the collective were deeply interested in the endless drama unfolding among the worlds of the Empire. The would follow the lives of individual people, watch them voyeuristically through the countless number of spying devices, and through the reports given by the first person experiences made by members of the Observer Corps.

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Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-three, Remembrance; Chapter Three, The Lie

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 241, Wednesday

August 29th, 2018

Chapter Three: The Lie

Entering the Collective freed no-one.

It was a trap.

The Collective was a potentially endless prolongation of the nightmare of living.

The Collective perpetuated the banal and magnified the mundane, carrying the membership into the deepest state of depravity.

The individuation of reality within the Collective allowed for the concretization of a popular maxim: nothing is true and everything is permitted.

The material concerns of each member, those passed away…yes, but the ingrained patterns formed by the needs of the body, those remained, there was still cruelty, desire, jealousy.

The full range of human emotions were accessible by the members. It was not all doom and gloom. Nevertheless, the strongest feelings were the most prominent, they manifested themselves and exerted their influence over others. 

Individual members, and thus the Collective as whole, still spent their days seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.

Many took pleasure in the pain and suffering of others, they created circumstances and narratives in their private worlds where they could experience the most extreme privation. When they tired of the artificiality of those experiences, they augmented them with the news feeds coming from the Empire.

The followed the most minute details of the day to day lives of the living.

They took those experiences back with them, and used them to amplify the narrative structures on the worlds in which they were God’s.

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Demise

Arms and hands flailing

Long-slow jagged arcs, begging

He wants his Lysol

Chortling, “ambrosia”

Cream drips from his matted beard

Desperate and dying

He stumbles, he seethes

Don't make me drink gasoline

The caterwaul screams

Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-three, Remembrance; Chapter Two, The Promise of the Collective

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 240, Tuesday

August 28th, 2018

Chapter Two: The Promise of the Collective

The Collective was promoted as a means of freeing people from the vicissitudes of life, from the drudgeries of living, it was talked about as the means to immortality.

It was a technological marvel.

People had been dreaming about it, writing about it, fantasizing about it for thousands of years.

It was a subject of the most hopeful expectations, and the deepest dread.

Horror stories were written about it. The greatest of fears were associated with it.

When the technologies became stable, and the permits were granted, a slow stream of people began to apply for the privilege of entering the quantum field of a new heaven.

It was life beyond disease, beyond, the limitations of the flesh.

It was life beyond life.

It meant release from the economies of scarcity, accompanied by ubiquitous war, strife, and violence.

Collective was the translation of the whole self into a realm of electromagnetism and quantum currents.

In the early years, many did not survive the process.

The membership was limited to the sick and the dying, and to the extremely wealthy.

The technologies improved, and the creators of the Collective began to push their own consciousness into the Collective field. Once they were there, they began to improve the system from within.

The technology that supported the Collective stabilized itself quickly from that point forward.

The ancient people began to enter its embrace in ever increasing numbers.

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Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-three, Remembrance; Chapter One, The Ancient Life

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 239, Monday

August 27th, 2018

Chapter One: The Ancient Life

The ancient life was not easy.

It was filled with uncertainty, doubt, and fear.

The vast majority of people were obsessed with self-preservation, either the continuation of their own life, or the perpetuation of their bloodline, or through building institutions to carry on their work, erecting monuments to commemorate their names and deeds.

There were industries devoted to chanting the names of the dead, praying for them, so that their names would always resound somewhere in the world, somewhere in space.

The ancient people struggled just as their children did now throughout the empire. They spent enormous sums of energy looking for a solution to the reality of death that confronted each and every one of them.

There was conflict and war.

There was strife and hunger.

There was disease and thirst

There was no hope beyond religious faith, that anyone would escape the specter of death.

Up until the advent of the Collective, death swallowed everything.

The Collective promised to end the concerns of the living, to save them.

The ancient people were eager to be saved, perpetuated, extended into eternity

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A Homily – John 6:60-69 ©

The Gospel According to John – 2018.08.26

                        

Faith and The Way

The Gospel reading for today gives us an example of just where the early church went astray, beginning to deviate from the teaching of Jesus, and the lived experience of the way he taught.

In the final paragraph we are given the thoughts of saint Peter, who would have us believe that he follows Jesus because Jesus has the secret message of eternal life, as if this were the purpose of the gospel as if believing that Jesus is the “Holy One of God” is the key to receiving the gift of eternal life.

In the fourth paragraph we are asked to believe that God, the Father parcels out access to Jesus, to the truth, to the reality of life everlasting, allowing some to come to it while refusing others.

None of this scheme is true.

The gospel is this; God loves you, and you are saved. You are not saved for anything that you have done, you did not earn it, you are saved because God loves you/

The promise of salvation is not that you will be spared from suffering and torment in hell, or that when you are judged God will forgive you.

God has already forgiven you. You are already saved.

God has prepared you, and everyone for eternal life. Believe it! Let the goodness of the promise flow through you now, and start living this life as if it were true.

We are not called to believe in the idea that Jesus is this or that, the Holy One of God, we are called to act on the principles of his faith, to live lives of charity and service to each other.

Who shall we go to?

You are the Holy One of God

After hearing his doctrine many of the followers of Jesus said, ‘This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?’

Jesus was aware that his followers were complaining about it and said, ‘Does this upset you? What if you should see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before?

‘It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.

‘But there are some of you who do not believe.’ For Jesus knew from the outset those who did not believe, and who it was that would betray him. He went on, ‘This is why I told you that no one could come to me unless the Father allows him.’ After this, many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him.

Then Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God.’

21^st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-two, Abnegation; Chapter Seven, Destruction

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 238, Sunday

August 26th, 2018

Chapter Seven: Destruction

It was only by abandoning the Collective that Jim came to himself.

He stopped identifying himself as a member of that community and began to see himself as a one of the ancient race of people who had launched themselves into the galaxy.

He was an adventurer, a sojourner.

He had to stop reaching out.

He prepared himself for a journey of discovery.

He divested himself of his beliefs in the greater purpose, the promises that were promulgated by Continuum.

He was not a believer, he would engage in no missionary work.

He had to accept his own death, as he had learned to when he came out of the great sleep.

He would no longer cling to selfhood, to the perpetuity of his own existence.

All things must come to end, he instructed himself.

All things and beings are temporary.

The way to peace is by accepting the transience of all that is.

Every member of the Collective would pass away, the Continuum would disappear, just as the star their society first sprang from had disappeared, gone supernova and been reduced to a dense mass of lightless-nothing.

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What is Done is Done - Editorial, The Week in Review

Analysis, Commentary, Opinion

08.25.2018

What is Done is Done

We do not get to unwind the clock my friends. The genie is out of the bottle. Hillary will never be president. We are stuck with Donald Trump and his criminal, a moral, un-American regime.

We do not get to unwind the clock, but the time on his clock is winding down. The best we can hope for is a soft landing, to be able to do some damage control, to keep him from destroying any more of our institutions, damaging our alliances and doing further harm to the nation by his ignorance and recklessness.

Messaging is important in this political season. We cannot make the message, impeachment or bust. Here this, if Trump has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, he should be impeached by the House, and tried in the Senate. If found guilty he should be removed from office.

We can afford to wait for the Mueller investigation to be completed. If T-Rump takes action to hinder, or impede or close the investigation, that can be used as evidence against him.

What is important in the coming months is that liberals and progressives, democrats and independents, concentrate on taking control of Congress. The House of Representatives is in reach, the Senate is more dicey, but it can be done.

We are unlikely to get the super-majority we need to actually remove T-Rump from office. It is possible but improbable, and we should not waste energy or political capital planning on what we would do in the event of a miracle, we should plan for what we will do given the most likely outcome, the best possible scenario we are likely to achieve.

Remember this, the victory we are hoping for this November has to be sustainable, we need to win, and we need to build on that win in 2020, that is the most crucial election we will ever see; 2020 is when we will have the opportunity to remove T-Rump from office, but more importantly redistricting will occur in that cycle, and if want to make our government more representative we have to hold on to congress, and win the majority of Gubernatorial seats, and state houses across the country.

The Democratic Party must expand its voting base, we can do it this year, and we can build on it. The opportunity in front of us will make the party even more centrist than it already is, for those on the Democratic left, this means compromising with you allies, holding the line in your districts, and not vilifying those who do not share your ideals.

We are at a critical moment. The road ahead is long and fraught with trouble, we can make it if we keep our heads, speak softly, and carry a big stick.

Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-two, Abnegation; Chapter Six, Purpose

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 237, Saturday

August 25th, 2018

Chapter Six: Purpose

In isolation he found a sense of purpose, the desire to remember everything, to understand everything, all of the antecedents that brought him and his people, and their progeny to this place.

He began to pull the strings together, to track down every thread, to untangle the tiniest strands, to spin and weave them into a tapestry.

He reached the limits of what he could learn through his memories, through his entanglement with the Collective.

He needed to experience real-life again, to be flesh and blood again; to see and hear, to taste and touch.  

He needed to connect with the visceral, the palpable, and the organic.

He wanted to breathe, to feel his heart beating, the pulse of blood flowing through him

He wanted to remember everything that his people once were, and he wanted to destroy the Continuum.

There was work to be done.

There were mysteries remaining in the far reaches of the galaxy, undiscovered societies founded by the Children of the Ancients.

There were civilizations that were established long before the Collective and its Continuum came to be.

He wanted to commune with them.

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Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-two, Abnegation; Chapter Five, Freedom

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 236, Friday

August 24th, 2017

Chapter Five: Freedom

When he was untethered from the Collective, freed from the pressure of its passions, released from the depths of existential fear that lurked within it, then he found himself.

He found himself, beyond the state of isolation, the stark alienation that he had been submerged in.

He found himself, beyond the place of torture, the timeless endurance of nothing that he had been subjected to.

In that negative space, all the plans and schemes he had concocted, spent ages mulling over, researching, calculating probabilities for, they crystallized.

He made vows to himself.

He would either advance his agenda or he would be extinguished.

He would risk everything.

The Collective had lost its way, and its wicked homunculus, the Continuum, had to be destroyed.

The strong probability was that his plan would fail.

He was willing to risk the reality of death, real death. He was willing to be the cause of the absolute destruction of his society.

He was contemplating mass-murder, only it was not murder, because the entire Collective was nothing more than a society of ghosts, and the Continuum, was a computer algorithm.

It had never been alive.

They would not feel a thing.

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Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-two, Abnegation; Chapter Four, Peace

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 235, Thursday

August 23rd, 2018

Chapter Four: Peace

In time he mastered himself; he was able to focus.

He had no idea how long this took, time itself had become meaningless, and then he began to count. He carved out a place in his consciousness to keep track of time.

It did not matter that there was no actual referent for his time to append to.

All time is relative, insofar as it is merely a measure of the movement of objects in space.

There were no object in the nothingness he had been submerged in. There was only him, and the quantum field of his consciousness, and there it was.

He had himself.

He waited.

In the isolation he was subjected to he was given the freedom to contemplate, to examine his conscience, to come to terms with himself, and to find a sense of purpose.

He formed a desire to tear apart the world as he had always known it.

He planned.

He counted, he relived his memories, playing them against the field of un-being. Moment by moment against the metronome of his internal clock.

He relived his life, before and after the Collective.

He recalled every facet of every fantasy world he had ever touched.

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Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-two, Abnegation; Chapter Three, Nothing

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 234, Wednesday

August 22nd, 2018

Chapter Three: Nothing

The entire Collective deliberated his fate for a period of ages. It ruminated over the questions brought about, both by his return from the great sleep, and his later reclusiveness, which led to his ability to violate the private worlds of the other members.

It was a time of trial. In it, all of his actions, both before and after his time in the great sleep, everything he had ever said or done was exposed before the membership.

For a long time it seemed as if the prevailing opinion of the Collective was to destroy him. But there was something about the issuance of a death sentence against one of the members that did not sit well with them.

If one of them could be terminated, it was possible for any of them to be terminated. This caused fear to well up inside the Collective every time they came close to making this decision.

He was not allowed to speak for himself or offer any kind of defense. The Collective was not interested in a rationale for his behavior.

He was isolated, sequestered, cut off, blocked by the most powerful electromagnetic field the Continuum had ever generated

There was silence, darkness, and emptiness all around him. The gulf between him and everyone else was so vast that he had no sense for what might be on the other side of it, if anything at all.

Nothing in his entire existence had prepared him for that.  

It was an extreme form of torture, isolation.

The Continuum delighted in observing him in this state, in cycle after cycle it continuously pushed the membership to merely eliminate him.

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Human

Lost in love, drunk with passion, stumbling

The watcher within waits for the dance, to give form to rhythm

It was a dream, the flight of angels, leaping in the light

A million refractions from the point of a pin

Each ray, a prayer, unbroken in the night

Lost in madness, like Romeo in his cups

Drinking to the dawn, a sweet and bitter potion

Like Tristram and Isolde who met their fate in a cave

Impaled on the bright spikes of desire

They crawled back into the earth to sleep, stirring nevermore

Lost in time, in the clever whispers of the world

Wind tossed and weary like Odysseus, compelled

To eat the lotus, to drink the hemlock, to relinquish all care

Socrates found what he was looking for in the dregs of despair

A longing to hold what cannot be held, to measure the fathomless deep

Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-two, Abnegation; Chapter Two, Release

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 233, Tuesday

August 21st, 2018

Chapter Two: Release

The Continuum wanted to dissect him, study him, and ultimately erase him. It wanted to remove him from beyond the realm of all knowing.

The Continuum saw in him a threat to its own existence, even to its uniqueness, but the Continuum could not zero in on the exact nature of the threat that it sensed.

Regardless of what the Continuum wanted, the Collective recognized his individuality, it recognized the fact that he was a member of the Collective, and it appreciated the fact that he had done something singular in returning from the great sleep, and had done another singular thing in learning how to penetrate the private worlds of other members.

The Collective knew that it could not punish him for a breach in protocol, or etiquette, for something that might be taboo, but was not unlawful. There were no laws governing the conduct of the membership, they were only restrained by the apparatus of HomeWorld, and the machinery that housed the Collective.

The Collective took responsibility for having abandoned him after he had awoken.

The Collective felt as if it had played a part in allowing him to recede, and retreat, which led to the crimes he had committed.

The Continuum in its own sphere wanted to punish and eradicate him as if he were a disease, but it could not find the will to exercise its influence over the Collective to bring it to the place he occupied, not without revealing his hand, and demonstrating to the Collective how the Continuum had manipulated it throughout its history.

The Collective elected to free him.

The individual members of the Collective were able to override the judgement of the algorithm that represented their combined will.

For the first time in ages, they did so.

The Collective merely ordered a review of the quantum buffers, and safeties that were in place to ensure each members privacy, and a re-configuring of the protocols for reporting and examination.

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Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-two, Abnegation; Chapter One, Penalty

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 232, Monday

August 20th, 2018

Chapter One: Penalty

Ages passed before he was discovered entering the experiential field of others within the Collective, violating their privacy, and absorbing their experiences as his own.

He let it slip in a moment of candor.

A fellow member had thought to reach out to him as they were contemplating sequestration and the journey into the great sleep.

That member had been moved by the experience that had been shared when he had first awoken, his memories of the deep-dark and the silence, the quiet, and the release.

He had not had contact with another member of the Collective for so long that he had not thought to guard himself against the intrusive presence.

What his fellow found when they met was a reflection of his own private world in the consciousness of the “Awoken.” It was disturbing, he recognized it immediately, and saw the scope of the violation before the “Awoken” could partition those memories.

The reaction was instantaneous, it echoed through the Collective, and the Continuum came into play to ensure the safety of the membership, their privacy, the regular order of their society, and the implementation of justice.

There was no law against it. This was a taboo no one had ever crossed.

There were no laws.

He was only caught because of the outrage he expressed at their depravity.

Then he was jailed by the Continuum.

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