The Great Game 🎲 Planet Kollarum

The Orb

~ the present ~

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Our minds are finite, and yet even in the circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can of that infinitude.

The algebraic method is our best approach to the expression of necessity, by reason of its reduction of accident to the ghostlike character of the real variable.

— Alfred North Whitehead

In his suite overlooking the city of Kollarum, Talfar shut the curtains and sat down in front of his coffee table. Floating six inches above the fragrant cedar tabletop was a translucent ellipsoid, tingling with tiny lights. The ellipsoid was commonly (and mistakenly) referred to as an orb. It was developed a million years ago by the sage Algotodo. In his Book of Fractals, Algotodo wrote,

The fractal orb is an extension of the self, yet it’s also a way to expand the self, which might be seen as the orb’s other half. Because it’s a personal computer, it’s able to serve as an interface between the self and the otherwise overwhelming variety of variables (or uncertainties) that affect our existence.

The patterns inside the orb changed moment to moment, depending on the data the orb received from outside, yet also depending on the physical and mental state of its other half. Heart rate, pupil dilation, blood sugar, body temperature, steadiness of hand, and brain-wave patterns were all taken into account and compared with previous physiological and mental states. A trillion algorithms negotiated between the internal chemistry of the other half and the local and cosmic environments around it.

The fractal orb was the most advanced personal computer in the 13 universes of the Kraslika. Powered by its own tiny subatomic engine, the orb could be as large as a football stadium or as small as a soy bean. What mattered wasn’t its size, but rather the other half’s history with it: what the other half had asked of it and what algorithms, networks, and data the other half had integrated into its operations. The information you got from the orb was only as insightful as what you asked it, what databanks you drew from, and what algorithms you activated. Like any communications system, you only got from it what you were shrewd enough to get.

Every fractal orb was impossible to hack. You’d need an exact copy of the other half to do that. But if you could hack it, it could tell you everything about the other half, and everything about all the secrets it kept to himself. Well, to itself and to the orb, which was in effect the other half of its self too. In this sense the orb was an expanded, geo-spatial half that held all the things the other half never knew or was liable to forget. It also held its most arcane, hidden, and improbable speculations. It held the permutations of how its dreams might work out, and it held disturbing scenarios of what would happen if they didn’t.

The trillion algorithms within the orb were controlled by a diamond stone, which lay at the orb’s very core. This stone was a tightly-knit algorithmic sequencer and integrator that aimed to create a state of equilibrium in its owner. It was a sort of personal Raja Yoga device, a portable Diamond Sutra that aimed to create a state of harmony in both the orb and in its other half’s relationship with the outside world. The Vicinese fractal orb thus differed from the Fallarian scatter orb, which aimed at novelty, departure, revolt, and tension.

Although today’s fractal orb had come a long way from Algotodo’s original design, it always kept its diamond core. In all fractal orbs, the objective, outer world of quadrants, quasars, quarters and quarks became contour lines. The subjective, inner world of quirks, qualms, quarrels, and questions became the inner variables that played a game of hide and seek between these lines.

The outward game of Vicinese life was full of diversity and tension, but the diamond stone rigged the understanding of this game in terms of harmony and integration. The result was a rather Buddhist view of “this fleeting world.” To the average Vicinese, and not just to Vicinese poets and mystics, reality was “A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, / A flash of lightning in a summer cloud, / A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.” Their favourite poets came up with even more obscure ideas, like these of Ungaretti:

È nei vivi la strada dei defunti, / siamo noi la fiumana d’ombre, / sono esse il grano che ci scoppia in sogno, / loro è la lontananza che ci resta …

In the living lies the road of the deceased, / and we are the river of shadows; / these are the grain that bursts in dream, / and theirs is the distance that remains in us …

Such thoughts made Fallarians laugh. In fact, they were one of the few things that made Knifestream, the most powerful Demon Priest, chuckle to himself, and blurt out, Was für Träumer, diese Vicinesen! Sie bilden sich immer ein, sie wären woanders! “What dreamers, these Vicinese! They always imagine they’re somewhere else!”

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Every part of the cosmos was miniaturized in the near-infinite density of the fractal orb. And yet the orb was’t just an accumulator of dry facts. It held theories, poetry, art, and emotional landscapes of history, culture, and belief. For instance, Talfar always thought of the orb as a miracle of rare device, a phrase from Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan.” He also worried about the tensions between the Vicinese and Fallarian empires, which could erupt any minute into another proxy war. Proxy wars could combine with proxy wars to create a general state of war. He was reminded of the line, mid this tumult Kubla heard from far / Ancestral voices prophesying war!

Talfar pressed his right index finger on the word war and nodded his head. The word war glowed in crimson script. The orb floated up from the table and wrapped itself around his head. His head was now literally in the clouds.

High in the mountains of Central Asia, he saw beneath him an epic battle. It could be the Pandavas moving in formation against the Kauravas on the distant plain. It could be Alexander crossing the Indus. Or Babar descending into Rajasthan. Or Kublai Khan and Ariq Böke, together, through the force of their common enmity, reducing the capital city of Karakoram to dust. Or it could be the French army firing their canons at the citadel in Madras, while six British warships sailed south from Calcutta. Talfar merely had to reach out and touch one of these scenarios to explore it further.

The orb knew what to offer him because it knew him. It knew he wasn’t interested in specific battles, but in the more general meaning of war. He turned his head and the orb swivelled 60, 120, 180 degrees. His back to the battle below, he followed a deep Romantic chasm upstream, to a source that plunged deep underground into a subterranean sea throbbing with ancient life. He looked up into the wet sky that gave birth to the oceans. He reached out his hand to touch a cloud, and a fork of lightning bolted his mind to a faraway planet. Thalphemera was waiting in the lobby of an office building in a crowded city. Her eyes were mesmerized by the reflection of the lightning on the grey streets. She waited for him to answer her call.

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Talfar kept the room dark and quiet, so that he could focus on the lines and shades in his fractal orb. He was trying to see an overall view of the big question: Should the Vicinese and Fallarian empires allow the Baulians to expand their empire? The Baulians already controlled the Orange Hoop universe, and were in the process of taking over the Violet Hoop:

Talfar saw his present location, on the twinkling blue planet of Kollarum, deep in the Aatari Lok universe. It was here that all the big questions were asked, and where all the big problems were debated and negotiated. It was a mere two stories above him, in the grand auditorium of the Matterhorn Conference Centre. In an hour, his friend Farenn was scheduled to speak to a crowd of 33,000 on the topic of Baulian takeover of the Milky Way. After Farenn’s speech, he would address the crowd. Their words would be beamed to every corner of the Kraslika.

Looking at the shimmering orb, the overall dynamic was obvious: from nord to sood, the violet clarity of the Vicinese Empire shifted into the purple obscurity of the Fallarian Empire. Order and Chaos, just as it ever was. And he saw the universe clusters between: Dolcezza, The Great Triangle, The Grey Phantom, and Nebulast.

Talfar zoomed out and looked again at the spherical shape of the Kraslika. He zoomed in toward the centre, the Midbelt, which was comprised of the Great Triangle and the Grey Phantom universe clusters.

It was in one of these clusters, or between the two, that the Soul Star was said to exist. Most believed that it was in the Local Void, not far from the Milky Way.

Talfar asked out loud, “How are we supposed to find a star that is only said to exist?” He then zoomed into the Violet Hoop universe, which expanded to fit the size of the orb.

He remembered the famous Diamond Verse, from The Book of Fractals:

The Soul Star rotates slowly, like a diamond sphere lit from within. 

We, the Seven, gave it neither visible colour nor noticeable weight. It is tiny, almost invisible. It will rotate for 5 billion years, ever more densely compressed by the infinite number of beings infracted in its infinite heart.

Silently, slowly, in time and beyond time, the Soul Star rotates in the silence of eternity.

Among the trillion galaxies of the Violet Hoop, one on the very edge floated to the centre, then to the surface: the Milky Way. This galaxy expanded and its periphery dissolved. A solar system with eight planets floated to the surface. The sun disappeared and a green and blue planet consumed the surface of the orb. It was, once again, Earth.

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So much happened around Earth, that strange little planet, whose inhabitants were so ignorant of the cosmos and yet so much like it. As an educated Vicinese, Talfar knew that the species and languages of Earth reflected those of the Kraslika. He knew the degree to which the dominant humanoid forms of Earth mirrored those of the cosmos. He also knew that the diverse life-forms on Earth mirrored those of the cosmos. A Vicinese schoolboy spoke an Italian that was more pure than that of Dante. An Elkbalam lady of the night slunk through the crowded back alleys like a jaguar in the Amazon.

Earth was also the closest inhabited planet to the legendary Soul Star, which was rumoured to drift somewhere in the Local Void of the Virgo Super Cluster. How to explain Earth’s proximity to the elusive Star? Yet even more mysterious, how to explain that even the most primitive human poets and mystics seemed to know about the Star’s existence?

… it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although [its] height be taken.

Yet every time Talfar looked into human descriptions of the Soul Star, he found nothing but fantasy. Shakespeare’s star to every wandering bark was probably not a Love Star or some magical star. It was almost certainly the Pole Star, known for ages as Polaris, Alpha Ursae Minoris, al-Judayy, and Dhruva. It only signified a fixed location because it was seen from the northern hemisphere of Shakespeare’s tiny planet.

Did this mean that humanity’s prettiest dreams — of a final Love that harmonizes all, of an Age of Aquarius in which the stars themselves usher in a New Golden Age — are only fantasies, only a rare beauty seen from one particular angle?

And yet the great legend of the Soul Star persisted. Astronomers had verified again and again that after a person died there was some sort of trajectory toward the Local Void. Some energy pattern that no one could identify or scan in any way, except for its initial trace. The myth of the Soul Star was unstoppable because the trajectory, the thin line that was almost unseeable, was irrefutable. And for hundreds of thousands of years astronomers asked, Why did the line vibrate when a giant star imploded or a star wall shifted trillions of gigaparsecs away?

Talfar knew the orb couldn’t show him the location of the Soul Star. And even though he didn’t know what the Star really meant, he worried that it might be put in danger by the advance of the Baulian Empire. The Matterhorn Conference at which he and Farenn were to speak in less than an hour had this as its central question: Was it wise to let the Baulians take over the Virgo Supercluster, given that it contained the Local Void and the Milky Way?

The Baulians were an advanced species from the Orange Hoop, yet not advanced enough to see there was life beyond the three universes in the Great Triangle. The Baulians understood how to infract one space into a smaller space, but they didn’t understand how deep infraction could go. They operated on a superficial level, while the advanced species — the Vicinese, Fallarians, Tarnese, Green Buzzards, Blue Dreamers, and Aatari — operated at the deeper levels. Most of these species couldn’t go any deeper than one meter to the power of minus 50, although the Vicinese and Fallarians however were rumoured to go as deep at minus 60.

The question Talfar couldn’t answer was, Should the Virgo Supercluster come under the umbrella of the benevolent yet clueless Pax Baulixia? Perhaps the Council ought to stop the Baulian advance. Yet if it did that, Virgo would become a feeding ground. The Harrowers of the Yellow Sky would streak through the air and strangle every passing bird to find out what it knew about the Soul Star. The Green Buzzards would track down every living thing, until even jaguars were afraid of their own tracks. And the Fallarians would eat the Baulians alive, like a million piranhas in a swimming pool of a hundred pink dolphins. Even his own Vicinese, with all their lofty ideals, couldn’t be trusted to behave. He knew that they said one thing and did another.

So it was perhaps better to let the Baulians maintain the status quo. Having no awareness of the greater cosmos, at least the Baulians could be considered neutral in regard to the two powers that really mattered: the Fallarians and the Vicinese. These were like two cosmic dragons, taking centre stage in every dispute that mattered. Other conflicts occurred between the two poles of their power, yet these were like fractal decorations. The centre of attention was always the two dragons.

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Worried about where all of this was heading, Talfar looked down at the glowing orb. He brought up to its surface several verses from The Book of Fractals, the ancient book of wisdom written by the early Vicinese sage Algotodo:

When looking at a fractal orb, leave your self behind. See contour and colour, tension and contortion. Let these become a unified piece of your understanding, a fractal in the flowing stream of your mind.

The orb is a mirror up to Nature. It is a vision of life itself, miniaturized so that its wholeness can be seen and understood in one vision. And in this vision is a sound. Better yet, a melody.

Shine the white light of understanding on the fractal orb. See how your tint lies within it, dancing or stumbling, distorted or clear. See how your tint adds richness to it, or drains it of its colour. Don’t shy away from self-knowledge. The only knowledge that can harm you is the one that’s hidden from you. Let your thoughts sway to the music.

Looking into the orb, Earth disappeared and the Kraslika reasserted itself. Talfar saw a dark blue planet implode and he saw a thin cobalt line extend outward from Fallar Discordia. He knew that this blue planet was Tarry Doom, the birthplace of his Aatari friend Qayam. It was a slave-planet in the Ataari Lok universe, a historical embarrassment on par with Auschwitz. Forking this way and that, the cobalt line eventually went straight into the pink heart of Baulis Prime. The cobalt line then continued to the edge of the orb, where it came into contact with a navy blue line that emerged from outside the orb. Talfar had never seen a line emerge from outside the orb before. He had never even heard of such a thing.

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The navy blue line confounded him. It also made him think of his first love, Thalphemera. 100 years ago she left Vicino Prossimo to discover the source of the energy signatures that traversed the Kraslika, from one end to the next. These navy blue and indigo streaks and pulses were more powerful, more densely infracted than any of the orange beams, cobalt tracers, or violet streaks that habitually crisscrossed the cosmos. The navy lines were within the Kraslika, yet they didn’t seem to come from the Kraslika. And yet there was no evidence of their coming from outside the Kraslika. They appeared on the Golden Hill on Vicino Prossimo and then disappeared from the Black Diamond on Fallar Prime. The navy pulses appeared to move the star walls between, and they seemed to affect much of what happened within organic matter everywhere in the cosmos. Some physicists called them monad blasts, because once they blasted into the Kraslika they seemed to be everywhere at once. Thalphemera said that it didn’t matter where her quest took her, she would find out where these pulses came from.

Talfar strained his eyes trying to see where in the Kraslika Thalphemera might had gone. Was she in the orb at all? Amid all the lines and bleeps, fantastic tangents, explosions and implosions he didn’t see where she could possibly be. And if she was somewhere in the Kraslika, why hadn’t she contacted him?

No where among the bright or smouldering worlds could he see her crystal blue eyes or hear the sound of her crystal-clear voice. Switching the orb off, it shrank from the size of a watermelon to the size of a soy bean. Then a bright grain of sand. Then it appeared to disappear, but had in fact nestled behind Talfar’s right ear.

All he could think about was Thalphemera.

I would do anything for you
I would climb mountains
I would swim all the oceans blue

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Talfar remembered her standing beneath a fountain that descended from the Golden Hill, her ponytail swinging in the light. The Golden Palace of the Doge towered above them, with its intricate latticework, mixed with the green tendrils of the minifir trees. It was 140 years ago that they said a tearful goodbye to Farenn, who had lived under their cover for a decade, telling them things they could hardly believe, and showing them a way of being, of laughing and thriving, no matter what. But now Farenn had gone back to Fallar Discordia, and it was just the two of them again. But they couldn’t stop thinking about him. It seemed that he was a part of their psyches, that far-off Fallarian part that had been severed from their Vicinese selves over the last three billion years.

As a Fallarian, Farenn would have trouble getting through the checkpoints of the Vicinese Federation, and back to the Middle Belt. The Vicinese authorities had reason to be afraid of him, if only they knew who he was. But Farenn was discreet and the only people who knew his identity over the past decade were Talfar and Thalphemera. He may have had wings, but he knew how to hide them. He may have had claws, but he knew how to retract them. And he may have been tough, even ruthless in his own way, but they knew what was inside him. What they learned from their alien friend would keep them curious for centuries, and would direct the course of their lives. He was the darkest yet most luminescent man they’d ever met.

Thalphemera took Talfar’s hand in hers. They looked up at the solid, reassuring Golden Palace. They couldn’t help worrying that Farenn may not have made it through the checkpoints alive. They walked around the Golden Hill and along the glittering water. They walked two or three kilometres in complete silence. They walked out onto a lonely jetty, and stared for an hour at the gentle waves of the Purple Sea.

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Talfar also remembered saying goodbye to Thalphemera 40 years later. They were sitting on the deck of a long-distance freighter that was taking them into the soodern half of the Kraslika. Talfar and Thalphemera were both 100 years old, and had spent half of their lives together. In those green years they’d learned much about the universe and about each other. Now it was time for them to see what life was really like outside the peaceful bubble of Vicino Prossimo and the galaxies of the Federation. They had taken holidays, but they had never lived abroad. And they had never ventured beyond the soodern edges of the Blue Dream and the Pink Sea.

As they drifted by the galaxies of the Violet Hoop, they saw something glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. Thalphemera turned to Talfar and asked, “Do you think that in all these worlds, there’s such a thing as a soul?”

Earlier that week they’d hired a ship to take them slowly through the Local Void, in search of the elusive Soul Star. It was like looking for a whale in an ocean where the largest mammal was a dolphin. Like everyone else who travelled into that nothingness, they found nothing but empty space. She asked again, “Do you think there’s more than just matter, however perfectly arranged?”

Talfar couldn’t answer her question. She would have been disappointed if he even tried. Instead, he slid his fingers into hers. Together, they watched the far-away fireworks. They saw what appeared to be a supernova. It shook the sky like foil, gathering into a great golden sheet that lit up the dark. Their hearts felt like gold to airy thinness beat.

And then they thought about tomorrow, when the freighter would reach the perimeter of the Yellow Sky and they would go their separate ways.

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Shake your head girl / With your ponytail / Takes me right back / When you were young / Threw your precious gifts / Into the air / Watched them fall down / When you were young / Lift up your feet / And put them on the ground / You used to walk upon / When you were young

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Talfar brought up another verse from The Book of Fractals:

Shine a white beam on the orb’s colourful world, a microcosm in time, then let the beam continue on its path. A white line travelling in space across more fractals in time, through them, around them, across the Stream of Time itself into the Open Field.

He stared for a minute into an intense current of light. Emerging from the depths he saw the image of a fish flying up from a dark body of water. Then the fish disappeared, and all he saw was the water. From within the fractal he heard a sound emerging. It was a song from Earth: “The Age of Aquarius, Let the Sun Shine In.”

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Next: 💍 The Actress

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