Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Losing My Insanity

Imagine for a moment that there is a light, a source of light, contained, finite, unchanging, and that there is only that. Imagine that is everything. Everything that was, is, and will be. Everything that could and could have, everything that wasn't and isn't and won't be as a comparison between the two. Call it what you want. Universe, multiverse, creation, existence, the name is irrelevant as long as the concept gets through your head. It's everything, for the time being. I know the example isn't perfect, but for now ignore the fact that there needs to be a somewhere where the light is, a space outside of it. That's an abstraction, this whole thing is, it's an imperfect representation because the real thing is much too complicated. Ignore the part that doesn't make sense, if I gave you the real deal nothing would.

So we've got our everything. Our creation, our existence. It's there, and it's kind of just there, all of time and space and matter and possibility and probability and whatever, all of it and it's not doing anything because it just is, and that's that. Now, again this is where I remind you that this is an imperfect metaphor. Imagine there are mirrors under the light, or around it or whatever. They're not actually mirrors of course and I know I just said everything is in the light, if you wanted to get really technical you'd have to distinguish between the underlying structure of reality and its population and we don't have time for that so just bear with me. You've got these mirrors, but they're special.

For one thing they don't really work like real mirrors. Even in the analogy. Light both passes through them and is reflected, sometimes to the same full degree. Other times it's separated, distorted, warped, fragmented, only partially reflected or allowed through. They do whatever they want, whatever you could possibly imagine, and more importantly they do all of it. Oh, and there's infinite numbers of them. Infinite possible reflections of our central reality spreading out in layers after layers, infinite levels of light being twisted and reinterpreted. I'm sure you already get where I'm going with this.

Now, there's an important bit to note here. There's a reason why I used light as an example. The reality, the full complete existence I described at the start, that's the light. It's not the source of light, it's the light itself. The light in the mirrors, the reflections and refractions and infinite splinters and shards, that's all the same light. It's all the same existence. If you want to cycle back to my earlier points, the mirrors themselves are part of the same structure as the source of light. There are more distant reflections, darker ones, ones warped further than others, but they are all the same light. Reality is light, and it is all of its reflections, all equally existence, none more real than any other.

So this is our universe now. Multiverse, reality, whatever. One single light spread through infinite variations all part of the same whole. A clear distinguishable central core and a clearly traceable hierarchy of layers, clear comparisons between different reflections, clear distances and levels and amounts of warping compared to the original, but all the same light. This is reality in its current form, past present and future. The why and how of this is a whole lot more complicated to get into, so for now we'll skip that. Still with me? I hope so, because this is the best example I have.

Now imagine you picked a spot on one of the mirrors. One spot in particular. Oh, before I forget, we won't talk about what happens when one of the mirrors cracks either for now. But I might explain that at some point. Anyway, the spot we were meaning to pick. Somewhere in a direction, there's no up or down or left or right or coordinates for now so I can't really give you its position without referencing some other point. We could do that, but not now. Just know it's in a direction. And, and this we can count, it's about twenty thousand and some layers away from the core. There's infinite other layers past it so all things considered it's not that far, and you wouldn't want to be fifteen thousand layers in this direction anyway since that place is really heavy on the warping.

This point we just seemingly arbitrarily picked? That's where you are. Well, assuming this isn't being experienced by someone other than the original recipient of this externalisation of information, in which case they probably wouldn't be there. But you, you're there. So is about everything you know, probably, unless you've been up to something really weird, and even then those things would still be close by. That's your reality. Your universe, your time and space, your everything. Pretty neat, right? Anyway, pretty great place all things considered. Lots of light but still a little shade, warped in what I'd actually consider to be a nice way. Great place all things considered. There's better, sure, there's also a lot worse out there. Infinitely worse, literally. That's not really what I'm

Comments

[Speckle]

I prefer the Infinite Field of Bubbles analogy myself, but yes, this tracks.

[Saix]

In retrospect, there's an awful lot of mirror imagery in this story even outside of talk of multiverses etc.