Name/Pseudonym: {Stellaris}
Contact Info: https://twitter.com/theTabletopRPG / stellaris#1577
Ethereum Wallet Address: 0x24733487beE69F21d0B9c0B36703571FF1960D57
(I recommend having this playing in the background as you read: Clair de Lune (Extended) - YouTube)
The Gaia Hypothesis by Lovelock postulates that our planet is a living organism that regulates and maintains itself. This hypothesis paints all organic life as smaller components piecing together a larger whole.
Is the Earth alive?
This is a Lootverse Story about the Earth in an alternate universe verging on self-annihilation through a climate apocalypse or weapons of mass destruction fused with surrealism and cosmic horror. The context is set above. More than a story though, this is world lore for future stories more focused on characters and personalities.
I: ESOTERIC INSTRUCTIONS FOR LUCID DREAMS
Moments lapsed, the moment at hand, and moments forevermore.
Our lives are knit together with the strings of time. The fibers that bind us are fragile - nothing material or immaterial escapes impermanence. It is a constant in life.
It is easily forgotten.
Invoking lucidity in a dream is not as intricate as it may seem — the essential principle is presence of mind, which people train or attain in several ways. I do so through meditative awareness: by directing my attention to my bodily phenomena — blood flow, heartbeat, breath, and so on — and neutrally observing my thought stream.
It is put simplistically, but that is one way to maintain presence of mind to trick your brain into believing the body is asleep.
Have you ever experienced a true lucid dream?
It is a state beyond sleep paralysis, out-of-body experience, or dream awareness. You must strip away your flesh, blood, and spirit. Perception should fall apart, leaving you with phenomena inexplicable by the faculties with which your mind computes spatiotemporal realities.
Lucid dreams are common. Every living being that can dream experiences this at least once in their lives. In its inherent nature, it is not so alluring.
A true dream journey bathes your spirit in cleansing radiance and rinses away your psyche, calling upon the blank slate from whence you emerged—formless, limitless, and indistinguishable: our initial singularity.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Lucid dreams are real and attainable. They are documented phenomena that are testable and scientifically observable. You may want to read Stephen LaBerge’s work or dig around for information on Closed Eye Visions for starters. Tibetan Buddhists have practiced this for ages — to them, it was a spiritual process, known to the West as Dream Yoga.
Psychological phenomena are best described through narrative experience than deconstructed:
First Phase:
I lay myself to rest and seal my eyes. Before my eyes is a lightly saturated static haze—buzzing static, the visual noise we all see.
Thoughts arise, ebb, flow, and cease. I watch them ripple like little waves in a still ocean. Physical sensations come and go—both uneasy and pleasant feelings. I observe them patiently.
I direct my attention towards my body—my breath, heartbeat, and physical sensations. I am breathing in, I am breathing out, I think as I respire.
If I lose awareness and submit to the gentle stream of thoughts, I will fall asleep.
Second Phase
A soft luminous layer overlaps my visual field. The way it resonates lightly makes it appear as if I am passing through an infinite corridor with my eyes closed, as this brightness rhythmically enhances and wanes.
Sometimes, this cyclical mild radiance emanates from little resplendent spots in my visual plane.
I can still sense my body; but I can tell it is slowly falling asleep. I wait in the lazy darkness, patiently observing rhythms and sensations.
Third Phase
What happens next is abrupt. A gripping vibration shoots down my spine, and my bodily senses dissolve gradually, as if they are washed away. The soft lights grow more vibrant and colorful.
At this point, I know my body is asleep.
Lights and sparks entwine, seaming themselves into vivid patterns—similar to what you would see if you pressed your fingers against your eyes. It is almost as if I am floating, because I cannot sense my body, yet I can remember how my body feels.
I try to observe and acknowledge this cascade of phenomena lest I lose myself in the torrents and fall asleep.
Fourth Phase
The gradients and patterns converge into images. Blinking memories, miscellaneous objects, and frozen faces.
I feel an overflowing radiance in my body’s lieu, as if I am a shapeless synapse tethered to a greater nexus. I would feel reverberations, but it is impossible to determine where those feelings are.
It is as if the soul itself began crying out from the depths—no worldly substance or sensation can ever compare.
Fifth Phase
The lights and abounding sensations swell exponentially, coalescing into an incandescent amalgam. It grows and grows until it reaches a certain point—a singularity.
Flash. The barrier is broken.
In a blink, all becomes still yet again. This time, I am floating amid a permeating ocean of gentle white, expanding beyond horizons I cannot see past.
It is as if I can see in all directions, feel inside and out, and hear from all angles—and simultaneously, it is as if I cannot sense anything at all.
This is where imagination takes the helm—I can experience whatever I want.
II: THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Emerald Tablet is the gospel of the alchemists, with its first earliest iteration found buried in Arabian history, attributed to ancient Egypt. It is said the secret to the Philosopher’s Stone can be found within the scripture, and this pursuit was shared by many great minds in history, including Isaac Newton.
Although chemistry supersedes alchemy with its evolved paradigm, one cannot deny that the sense of purpose and divinity behind alchemy made science a lot more interesting back then.
Before I describe the present and delve into why my current dreams feel ominous, it is crucial to outline significant historical milestones that led to this present moment.
Our human quests for eternal life, deific power, perfect love, and boundless wealth led the ancients in power to pursue the Philosopher’s Stone — the alchemical zenith — trumpeted among alchemists as a catalyst for miracles and divine transmutations. Attaining this alchemical magnum opus was akin to attaining divinity. Its powers were only accessible to those who wield paramount power over our scarce resources.
Such a power violates fundamental laws of physics, biology, and chemistry — its promise to transmute baser elements into superior ones was inherently flawed, as it is impossible to create something out of nothing.
Still, the human spirit prides itself on perseverance.
The Ancient Lords of the Sixteen Orders, striving for dominance over their royal peers, led an allied endeavor to craft a perfect, flawless Philosopher’s Stone. Through experimentation with high-energy states and atomic deconstruction/reconstruction, it appeared as if the alchemical zenith was almost within their grasp.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Did you know? Nuclear transmutation is the natural process employed by nature to transmute base elements like hydrogen into “superior” elements. Nuclear physicists in the late 20th century did attempt to artificially recreate the process after Rutherford stumbled across the possibility some decades back. See: Aleklett et al., “Energy Dependence of 209Bi Fragmentation in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions” 1981.
It was imperfect and underwhelming, but the artificial nuclear transmutation process worked nonetheless.
Alas, reality is unforgiving.
It only appeared as if our Ancient Lords were verging on the abilities championed by the suns and celestial spirals. Humanity’s blatant rebellion against God — against the laws of nature — was met with immediate retribution.
Dangerous experimentation with our Universe’s fundamental layers cleaved a rift through space and time.
Not only did they unleash an artificial sun upon the terrestrial surface; but they had also torn an interstice through the fabric of reality. This cataclysm threw all universal constants into disorder as hyperdimensional energy poured in from these fragmented rifts.
The powers attained therefrom elevated the user’s abilities and longevity. New life slipped through the interdimensional cracks, taking morbidly familiar forms. Given enough time, they could become a natural part of our world.
In our vanity, we were under the impression that we finally achieved the magnum opus — the Philosopher’s Stone.
Little were we aware that we had invited entities of doom into our terrestrial home.
III: The Gaia Machine
AUTHOR’S NOTE: In the ancient times, various neurological disorders were thought to be caused by the moon, hence the origin of the word "lunatic."
The Moon is a symbolic element in many spiritual covenants and ancient philosophies. Its symbolism is also pronounced in esoteric doctrines like hermeticism, renaissance alchemy, and theosophy.
The Earth is alive.
It is not “life” as we know it. The planet’s capacity for conscious individuality is debatable; but its existence as a living entity is certain. The Earth’s food chain is interdependent on one another; a creature’s death often contributes to the ecosystem’s sustenance, fertilization, and/or longevity.
More than a lifeform, it is a biological machine. We can view human life in a kindred light — our bodily functions, thoughts, and behavioral patterns are automated and relative to circumstance.
Thus the ancient alchemical axiom: “as above, so below; as below, so above.”
This reality applies to the microcosm and macrocosm as well.
If the Earth is alive, then it logically follows that the Solar System, our galaxy, our local supercluster, and perhaps our universe itself is alive.
This means all entities that reside within dimensions beyond must also adhere to this standard of “consciousness”. Perhaps their awareness is so far beyond ours that even they cannot begin comprehending how we perceive the Universe with our limited faculties.
Given their unfeeling and impenetrable existence, it is apt to say these hyperdimensional entities are arbiters and mediators — the cogwheels and nodes — of the machine we call the Universe.
Beings imbued — or resurrected — with these powers are called Hyperbeings or Adventurers.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: A key element ignored by thinkers and writers that contemplate higher dimensions is a higher dimensional entity’s understanding of those beneath them.
Take the Flatland experiment: the fourth dimension concept is introduced by having the reader imagine a world with only two axial dimensions. Flatlanders would only perceive the world in lines, sound, and feeling, thus rendering a third dimension incomprehensible to them; but we cannot perceive so easily what that must feel like in the first place either, let alone the fourth dimension!
The modern world frightens me because it is so carefree.
We are at the mercy of a false machine — a ruling instrument that plays its own tune in automation. Its innumerable eyes trail and surveil us at every junction, every interstice, and every passing moment. Even the Monarchs, with all their newfound might, are subject to the machine’s whims and fluctuations.
What frightens me is not the machine’s nature; but humanity’s response to it.
Many are scarcely aware at all that such entities — hyperdimensional ones — even exist, let alone rule our realms behind the veil. More sinisterly, those who do know have either accepted it, submitted to it, or even embraced it.
They tell us what to do, where to go, who to talk to, what to look for, what to eat, and what to desire.
They tell us how to live, and we are none the wiser under the mystifying illusion that we lead our lives with free will — that our lives are not led for us.
Yet we are the smaller constituents and they are the larger whole that we help comprise.
Even if it was analogous to disease or malignancy, does that not mean we are the anomalies — the cancer or disease — in their body?
Somehow, I cannot bring myself to accept that.
After all, our quest for the Philosopher’s Stone — for megalomaniacal power and wealth — and the experiments that ensued were what invited these unwanted beings into our lesser dimensional existence in the first place.
Do they even understand what it means to be lesser forms of life like ourselves?
Sir Isaac Newton’s translation of the Emerald Tablet is as follows:
I) Tis true without lying, certain & most true.
II) That wch is below is like that wch is above & that wch is above is like yt wch is below to do ye miracles of one only thing.
III) And as all things have been & arose from one by ye mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
IV) The Sun is its father, the moon its mother,
V) the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its nourse.
VI) The father of all perfection in ye whole world is here.
VII) Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.
VIII) Seperate thou ye earth from ye fire, ye subtile from the gross sweetly wth great indoustry.
IX) It ascends from ye earth to ye heaven & again it desends to ye earth and receives ye force of things superior & inferior.
X) By this means you shall have ye glory of ye whole world & thereby all obscurity shall fly from you.
XI) Its force is above all force. ffor it vanquishes every subtile thing & penetrates every solid thing.
XII) So was ye world created.
XIII) From this are & do come admirable adaptaions whereof ye means (Or process) is here in this.
XIV) Hence I am called Hermes Trismegist, having the three parts of ye philosophy of ye whole world.
XV) That wch I have said of ye operation of ye Sun is accomplished & ended.
(Dobbs 1988)
My dreams are bedeviled by celestial presences — or perhaps this unshakeable feeling that my mind is constantly being watched and read.
I was born into obscurity away from global strife. My people are impoverished and largely helpless against the domineering conquerors from lands beyond. Our islands are too small to yield any profit or resources, so, we are spared from the Monarchs’ wrath and lust for conquest as there is nothing to conquer.
Our indigenous people are too few to profitably enslave and our marine resources are not so valuable to rulers bent on conquest.
The New World ushered in by the advent of the false philosopher’s stone and its adherents — mortals that possess themselves with hyperdimensional energy, Lords and Ladies that command dominion over the realms manifold, and resurrected adventurers from the genesis epoch — spell a different fate for us.
Their heavy industrialization, military arms race, malicious expeditions, and economic warfare affect our lives as well.
Industrialization and pollution has diseased the Earth and weakened its defenses. With the rising sea, it is our little disconnected smudges of sand that the sea will devour first. With the artificial winter brought about by warlords unleashing the false Philosopher’s Stone — the Artificial Sun — upon their enemies will starve vulnerable communities like ourselves first.
We do not enjoy the luxury of choosing not to participate anymore.
Saving our little civilization from climate genocide — this is our adventure. Not all adventures are meant to have happy endings.
Who knows, though? Destiny is a capricious thing.
(I hereby waive all copyright and related or neighboring rights together with all associated claims and causes of action with respect to this work to the extent possible under the law.)
Please credit me for my work though…