On the Third Day, Boulder (barrier)
VI.ii. The Roasting Spit, Communal Hot Tub Time Machine
Communal Hot Tub Time Machine
‘(Yoo-hoo.)’
‘(Baah-baah.)’
“Donkey! You’re here — I can’t believe it! Yet this is no time for games…”
“My dear Baba, you are safe! Can you hear my voice? Come to me!”
Too true. They are underwater, and the pool is draining rapidly; they don’t remember re-materializing exactly, but they now know that they are subject to the physical environment again, they feel as though they’ve just taken a lungful of oxygen and are holding their breath, aware that they are submerged in dark hostile waters and need to find a way out. They’re extremities are bungling apparitions of themselves, making little headway in their quadruplicate trails against the whorl that is whipping them about and tugging them down. The pressure increases as they careen toward the outlet drain while their experiences of their own body distends and profusely lengthens as if taffy in the tentacles of an obdurate octopus. Folding in and outside of themselves, they discombobulate { Is Bob the universe Bob here? } — { No, I’ve never read it. } — { The work itself overexerts that pun. } — { In the end, is Bob the book? Is it the artifact of his universal experiences? } — { I believe Bob is just a guy. } — { Oh, that’s too bad. } — { Unless it’s all allegorical. } — { What’s the point of any of it then, if everything is just allegorical? } — { Touchy, touchy! }
“Aaargh! Jesus God help me! Mama it hurts!”
“Aargh! Help! I’m being torn apart!”
Upon experiencing grave pain, the brain sends out its alert first in the form of a loud scream (we can talk about alternatives in the footnotes if you want, for example, when a larynx is being crushed and is non-utile.), and then redirects awareness to afford you the opportunity to distract yourself from some of the physical misery, which most humans first use to communicate their best understanding of their circumstance, in the hopes that compatriots can run logical routines to provide salve or solution to the problem. Alert nearby entities that something in your experience demands attention, and then explain it as best you can.
Being reminded that a lot of processing goes into the best-estimate, and not necessarily the primary, assessment of the situation requires a deeper discussion time was not allocated for, so some of the further information will be compressed, and you can access this information on your own outside the lesson, if you so choose.
Keeping in mind that the executive functions are reliant on the cursor of attention, the capacity to focus, by limiting prospective feasible imagination scenarios to their essential elements, those essential elements being learned abstraction maps or genetic instinct, being the self, the environment, and the aggressor, even in the cases where the aggressor is an internal body part like a congestive heart, or environmental, like a hot cinder from a blaze. First off, the entire simulation is reduced to two-dimensions, as if seeing something, not situated in three-dimensional imagination-space as if walking or feeling your way around. That is a huge reduction in perceptual cost, so you’ve already gained the capacity to think through one solution on average 1/100th the time to actually execute that solution. The typical human brain can run through three such possible solutions in a second when in a state of shocked heightened awareness.
So then it’s easier to talk about the simpler Self-Environment-Aggressor possibilities model — yes, referred to as the “S.E.A. of Possibilities” Model; you will run through a sequential internal film of possibilities, quasi-subconsciously ranking them in a shorthand manner based on a conjunction of genetic disposition, or instinct in this context, previous traumas, and learned logical models. Coincidentally, the three-per-second returns, and while the second may be arbitrary, the number of projections is not. It can be said that humans chose the second in its current instantiation as the universal unit not primarily because of heart rate, sixty beats per minute not actually being particularly average to meaningful precision, but because the brain goes through a refresh cycle — to the degree that the resting pulse of humans is sixty beats per minute is average, it’s due to this brain cycle theta pulse. It might be interesting to note that these calculations hold up for the time scales of Musica Universalis, or Harmonic Convergence of the Celestial Spheres or Cosmic Cycle, does put human consciousness as theta-emanations from the conscious mind at an exceptionally justly-tuned interval, when compared to celestial cycles all the way down to the wavelengths of light or sound, based on the Planck interval, although the mathematics are not confident that it persists all the way down to the quantum level. { The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle! Now I understand it! } — { I do hope you’re chiding. } Digressions aside, the experience of time, the amount of information a human brain can process per quantized interval is generally uniform within the species, with standard deviance of under ten percent. { Gee, I hope I do well on my SAT’s. } — { Wait, til you get to the A-levels! Jumper’s paradise. } — { Can you imagine that? Plummeting to your death of your own accord? I know most people who attempt it are drunk, } — { It’s a wonderful, wonderful life. } — { so maybe there is an element of death defiance, the yearning for exhilaration that could not be emulated or simulated. The ecstasy of falling commingling with the abject terror that you know you will forever cease to be in the physical fireworks of your demise. Like if you really merely want to die, then gulp some sleeping pills. Though it’s all absurd. Mental anguish is a fiction of perspective, where the dramatic irony of your isolated torment is going to be played like Romeo and Juliet, or Goethe’s Sorrows, or Branch Davidians, on the greatest stage for others’ applause. Don’t you understand, I’ll applaud you anyway. You’re struggles do not need to be comparatively epic in order to be informative or enlightened, they only need to be yours, and genuine and true. So long as you continue to strive towards betterment, as rocky and tumultuous as that uncharted journey might become, I… } — { Wait, who the fuck do you think you are, and how much are they paying you? }
You might say, without over-indulgence, that humans were built at the right clock speed to accomplish great things. The arc of evolution, from primate to hominid to homo sapiens, was growing the brain into the ability to run at this harmonic frequency, and once it started thinking at that rate, it wasn’t going to stop. Just like when you begin to start thinking your consciousness into computers when their processing speed reaches a Planck level faster than the human, it won’t stop.
So three scenarios are drawn, ranked, and the first decision is made: which one of these, or none? To be honest, none of the three are generally that drastically different from one another, they often have something to do with directional movement or removing something from the physical body or trying to specify someone you might know is nearby to give convey more information to. If the idea has a strong map to a functional instinct, like fight vs flight, and is logically feasible, or believed to be feasible, it passes muster, and the plan is executed as best the person is able, still dedicated processing power to next steps based on possible outcomes of the initial scenario. If nothing suits, the brain will go into a secondary review for another cycle of the same. And then one more, each time, executive functioning getting the lion’s share of the processing for its simulation, which unfortunately is experienced as anxiety. If after the third cycle of review, no conscious mental solution has proofed, conscious attention is greatly stripped of its processing energy and re-routed to physical responses, which are often equally insufficient. One will see flailing, gasping, struggling and more incoherent shrieking as the manifestations of this stage of the model.
So long as the entity survives the threat, the sheer volume of biochemical agents doused on the brain, the neural pathways will virtually concretize, so whatever success pattern was embarked, it will promote higher rankings in the future. Additionally, the logical frame will be continually updated, as there will be a desire on your own part to discuss this incident, and no, this formation of desire will not be included, as it is extraneous to circumstances depicted at this time. It is presumed that none of the entities involved will be capable of generating meaningful dominant patterns as they are too far in the hypothetical subconscious. As you will see, aspects of the experience will be retained, but not at a direct recollection level. The experience frame will be so drastically altered by the time of “recuperation” that these events cannot be seen as genuine, even by the entity that is genuinely experiencing them. Also, an additional topic, the text you’re engaged with being the primary source for all ensuing actions, anyhow. { Would they have preferred the Cliff Notes version, if those are still a thing? } — { It would be curious and perplexing how an external agent would go about summarizing any of this. How far in are we? } — { I’m guessing about four percent? It’s the sort of book that starts to get really good around page eleven-hundred and six, so don’t despair! }
Others will be curious about your situation and how you remedied the turmoil, both to have something pertinent and interesting to impart to members of its close circle of acquaintances, and in case there is information they can derive from it that might map to a quandary in their own life, or potential similar-to-near-identical circumstance in their own future. It is rarely understood the degree to which the message and content itself is warped and approximated in the mind map of the recipient: it is an active process to reconstruct an imagination plot of what is attempting to be conveyed imprecisely. So each variant of “wisdom” that has been imparted or shared as a survival-linked success scenario is a unique and varied experience, not innately less or more pertinent that the source material, but contributory, and that is its value to the knowledgebase of the species.
They connect with something in their desperate thrashing of over-generous limbs and digits; it is thin and oily, but solid. They are unaware of whether they are touching their own bodies or something else. But instinct demands they grab on, even if only to drag it inexorably down to its own perilous fate at the bottom of the ocean.
‘(Grab hold, Milo, we will weather this together! Fate speaks in directions, and tugs us thither, so thither shall we go!)’
‘(Baah-baah. Baah-k. Ba-baah-k.)’
“No, Donkey! I can’t hold my breath much longer!”
“If we must go, then together we must go. Moments are precious.”
Trying to clutch the slick oil proves difficult, but external pressures enfold them upon one another, until they are eating the consciousness of the beasts, swelling as one with angular momentum, and collapsing under the weight of layers of existence, decohering, boundaries unclear — a distinct unpleasantness akin to nausea or incessant hyperactivity.
[“I’m here, baby.”]
“Phantasmannie?”
“Pippi?”
[“I’ve got you now, I just had to find you.”]
They can suddenly breath, with a latitudinal collection of lungs and tracheas pumping in concert.
“I can feel you, I can breathe! I love you so much…”
“Pippi! I can breathe again!”
[“Are you okay?”]
“I’m good, I think. Where are we?”
“I’m fine, I’m okay, Where are we?”
[“That’s a relief. You have the creature with you?”]
“I think so, yes. I think so, yes.”
[“Yes. It’s almost time now for my magic.”]
“What do wyoeu need to do?”
[“Tell me your name.”]
“WMielmoi”
[“Your true name.”]
“MiWielomi”
[“Tell me your true name.”]
“Moilmew.”
[“Good. Now tell me your true name.”]
As they speak, she casts her spell.
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