What is Meant, What is Said

- Ishmael

We parted ways. Two years ago. I headed west, in search of an unreachable ladder beyond the mountains of reason. He headed south, in search of a silence that drowns out all noise besides the strain of time's passing.

I follow a dark cloud in hopes of seeing where it goes. At least I don't deny this.

"thereby, he said, reflecting from his own individual person life unlivable"

- Bellman.

Quote Of The Day: Philosophical paradoxes are conflicts of linguistics more than of reality. (From Pali to Coleridge: Essays of Meaning. 1972. Found it in a dentist's office.)

If the above phrase means anything to you, then perhaps you are the one who will find solace from my words. See, when I was much younger, I had been told that the perfect life would be painfully boring. While others had inferred from that the fallacy of perfection, I took it otherwise and questioned its implications. The perfect life, I reasoned, would not be boring to any painful capacity, for that would negate its being "perfect" to begin with, thus rendering the statement itself invalid. The crux, then, lies with boredom, and with preventing its excess. The perfect life must be one of moderation: Surpassing violences and excesses of speech, body, and mind which would threaten balance.

I emphasize: Surpassing, not suppressing. Suppression would certainly achieve a single perfect life, but at the expense of many others'. Surpassion (not even a word, how alien to our language!) allows for every expression its time and place (even violences) but refuses to submit to their defining. This is also the most difficult path to take. It's no wonder that, to many belief systems, moderation is seen as (one of) the last step(s) in an incredible journey of the soul.

Yes, moderation: the seventh virtue, the ultimate virtue for mortals to achieve. From there, we can only contemplate the higher ones which immortals embody (according to Aquinas, in any case). In some interpretations, moderation is also the seventh element-- Right Mindfulness-- of the eightfold path, the final noble truth elaborated by the Buddha.

The perfect life could not be painful. We would have to adjust our threshold for and relationship with boredom, however.

This subject has lingered in my thoughts for upwards of seven years now, though it has only attained its spiritual associations within the last two. I'm not what one would call an ordinarily spiritual person; I grew up worshiping only science and the empirical in a family of down-to-earth breadwinners. But, as books steadily captured senses I had reason to believe were my very values, it was only a matter of time before I would be exposed to, and compelled to grapple with, sacred texts as well.

Now, I do not submit to every conclusion posited by those texts, but I do believe in their sincerity (with case-by-case exceptions), and it is precisely from this perspective that I have given credence to certain... patterns. Patterns which, in time, would lead me to a strengthened recognition of the vast (cosmic, duration mathematically inaccessible) cycles of the Boojums.

Ishmael, on the other hand... well, the less said about his last two years, the better.

Awoken by Shouts

- Ishmael.

Three months ago, I threw out my map. I didn't tell anyone I did it. I certainly told none why. But it's been long enough now, I've done what I needed to do. I have bought another map.

These months, I have been driving our van in a large and gradual circle. No one has questioned my directions.

Bellman uncovered a blog he believes to be an unseen Magreat work.

"permanently locked outside"

- Bellman.

Quote Of The Day: What is the difference between infinity and zero? It's a good question. Neither number is observable. Neither concept is really a "number." Zero is an hypothetical point of origin. Infinity is that which comes from the origin. (Down That Road: Responses to McCarthyism. 1954. Old tattered pamphlet I found in a secondhand bookstore's "Anarchy" section.)

I've been studying the cosmos for as long as I can remember. I look for the patterns in reality, and I ponder on their significance. But the road to connecting such dots is rife with Boojums, some of which scare us, some of which confuse us, and most of which massage our senses in a sacred act known as "normalization." These Boojums, I didn't make them up. They've been documented and accounted for, studied and speculated on, tested and retested with such empirical zeal that we are likely to have them down to a science (with a capital S) within our lifetimes. It's just that we haven't agreed on a name.

Boojums-- or so I am inclined to name them-- are tools. They can be controlled. In fact, they cannot not be controlled, as they are born the moment we first speak and are directed by the words and manner in which we speak. It might be safer to say that our words and mannerisms are controlled by Boojums! Or are perhaps tangible portions of the greater system that are, in totality, Boojums.

The first person to spot the Boojums was the first person to rule the world, as once you see them, you can control them deliberately so that other people do not see them. Given enough time, one could perhaps render Boojums unseeable. But not nonexistent. No. Never nonexistent.

What I'm trying to say. Is. That I saw it. Or rather, I'm trying to say how I saw it. I had to resign my curiosity and disprove (disbelieve?) Magreat's inner circle. Ishmael couldn't see it. I'm not sure why yet. But all I know is that I saw the end of all Boojums, the beautiful anti-Boojum. The deep.

I need time. To research this further. To perform rigorous tests, see if this discovery can be replicated. To see if it was real.

"shoots thon rising germinal"

-Bellman.

Sally's dead. Well, she wasn't really Sally. She was a Nobody, trying to steal her life from her. We know this because we found the real Sally-- by accident.

Our talk with the SMSC agents led us to visit the local headquarters, see if we could get some more information. Ishmael pulled out his secret weapon (a pocketwatch the Manufactured Newborn is looking for, rumoured to be the same one it spawned from) and we entered the building, the others finding a place to park the van. While we waited for the manager, two ladies came in as well and were told to have a seat. I thought one of them looked an awful lot like Sally, but we figured it was a coincidence. Besides, she smelled like she hadn't showered in months. So instead we just waited.

Turned out the SMSC wanted to buy the thing off of us. That's not how we operate, unfortunately (I would love to be able to afford better equipment for our work), so Ishmael was already heading for the door when the other lady (the one who didn't look like Sally) asked if he was trying to summon the Newborn. They talked with each other about that, exchanging information (and, from the looks of it, blogs), and then the rest of our team came in. Including our own Sally. And everyone went silent there as we realized what was going on. But then she was on the ground, bleeding out from a bullet in her chest. And the other lady told the SMSC to "clean up your damn Nobody." And they left. We made sure to leave, as well, before the manager came back in to see what was going on.

So we're all a little lost. But we know their names: Issy and Sally. And Ishmael says he knows how to summon the Newborn now. We're back on the road, one member down but apparently she wouldn't have been much help anyway. Nobody is a cruel god that mimicks a person, ultimately replacing them, we're not sure for what purpose. The Genera supposedly knows, but it's not speaking.

Considering we got the tip asking us to work on this case from her, and she was a Nobody... what does that mean?

The Hunting of the Dark

-Ishmael.

Nearby town spared no hint of his fate, but it did harbour two lost souls belonging to the SMSC, our former sister group. Their wanderlust matched ours; their loyalty to identity anchored them in a post watching traffic. All of us grew up in this town, knew each other's birth names, respected each other enough to never call ourselves by them again. We brought them coffee, handed out a flyer, and compared notes. While they couldn't help us with our man, they did have something noteworthy: Some suit from the Genera has been asking about him too.

Our relationship with the Genera is not kind. It's been eyeing us since before we took ourselves off of STAB's grid, and since then we've lacked the grid's accompanying force, leaving no leverage for our safety. The Genera has no allegiance except to its own secrets. It has no code except one it won't disclose. But out of all of the organizations devoted to our dark gods, it is also the greatest in research. It discovered the fossil particle and established first contact with Them. It is rigorous, scientific, and government-blessed. But it's also devoted to its privatization. No one who goes to work there is allowed to speak with outsiders. Its public statements are carefully manufactured and edited to hide just as much about Them as they reveal. If it's after Magreat, then that is significant, but this is also cause for caution. We've stolen some of its intel in the past. The Genera is not one to forgive.

The SMSC isn't too happy with us either, considering we betrayed them in cold blood, but they're not as bureaucratic an entity. Compared to the Genera, they're practically a family business. As long as we stay out of their way and just talk to agents who don't mind us, we're golden; they've made that much clear. And that suits us. They don't have much we need. Not anymore.

Only other organization worth bringing up is the Archive, which is a library that openly acknowledges its allegiance to one of Them. Their information is good, but talking to them is risky-- they only accept deals, information exchanges.

We prefer to stay off of everyone's radar when we can. Instead, we just drive, listening to rumours, looking for any avenue that will take us closer to our dark gods, and thus closer to the greatest of all great games: The elusive god even the Ovi Man is said to have dreamed of during his final moments. That's one's mine. I'll make sure of it.

"forks and hope"

Who was Christoph Magreat? His was a name we didn't hear often, but definitely recognized. While officially all that is known about him is that he wrote some dense experimental blogs (and was integral to the blog revolution of 2015), a rumour's going around that Magreat killed the Ovi Man. It makes an odd kind of sense: Almost every blog he wrote in 2015 was about the Ovi Man's death or steady mortalization, and on the day that his biggest one came out we got word that the thing was actually dead. Murdered. So whether Magreat was the one responsible or not, we have the feeling he knew about what was going on.

This is why I've been assigned to read over Magreat's published stuff and see if I can find anything particularly noteworthy. My identity isn't important either, but I go by Bellman. Ishmael and I are the only two running this blog.