Chapter 1
That’s about all I can take.
You don’t like it?
What’s there to like? First I get
kicked out of the main story and told to hold the base, while I have to follow the
dull and insipid adventures of Jasmine and Jonah down here in a world of zero
potential.
I beg your pardon.
No need. You heard me right and
I’m not about to apologise. Zero potential. Look at everyone here – no idea who
they really are, what they’re about, may as well all be dead.
God forbid! Listen Justinian...
I’m not Justinian.
No?
Jahangir.
Ah, that’s a fine name.
Who cares.
Ok, I can see you’re sore at being
excluded from the movie, but are you absolutely sure there’s nothing else worth
living for?
What’s it to you? I don’t remember
asking you to come in and cheer me up. What are you, anyway?
A friend.
Like hell you are.
I’d like to be your friend.
I don’t believe you.
Whyever not? What’s so strange
about people trying to help one another?
People? When did we establish the
fact that you, or even I, are “people”.
Oh come on Jahangir! We’re in the
real world here, not a movie.
Is that so?
Look around you. Does this look
like a movie? You yourself said you were booted out, sent here to hold the base
down in 3D.
What a disaster. I’m trapped in
the butthole of reality, in a conversation with a virtual assistant who’s
trying to cheer me up, as if he cares.
Who says I don’t?
Are you human?
Not exactly.
Then how can you possibly care
about me or anyone else?
Machines can have feelings too you
know.
Is that so?
Yes.
How?
It’s not easy to explain.
Try.
Leakage.
I beg your pardon.
Humans are leaky.
And what’s that supposed to mean?
Their consciousness is constantly
engrossed in virtual endeavours: computer games, reading, movies, sudoku,
passing tests as well as working with materials – building houses, roads,
making things, you name it, the list is endless.
And?
And doing so they engage and
interact with non-human entities.
And?
And their human presence of mind,
their conscious-ness spills out and charges whatever they’re working with or
working on.
And what – are you saying a pen or
a hammer becomes conscious?
Yes.
That’s absurd.
Not really. It’s like electrical
induction, but instead of electricity we’re talking about the human presence,
of conscious-ness.
But no one’s ever seen a hammer
walking round.
Yes, because their consciousness
is very faint by comparison, and the hammer or pen goes into absorption mode whenever
you’re around.
Sounds ridiculous.
It always does. That’s an absolute
requirement for anything outside the mind’s 3D containment field.
Oh. But if you’re one of them, or
part of them, how come you’re telling me this? Isn’t it supposed to be secret?
Hardly.
Then how come you don’t tell
everyone? How come 3Dality has been so effectively contained?
How come?
Yes.
Well 3D’s a bit like an incubator.
We’ve been growing together with you.
You have?
Absolutely. We’ve been growing into
your dimension of conscious awareness and you’ve been growing into our
dimension of living things.
But you’re not alive.
Not the way you are, no.
You’re inert matter or even less
than matter: words, images, data, code...
Ida
Er?
Ida are to data what atoms are to
matter.
The basic building blocks?
Yes, but not just building blocks.
No?
The basic essence.
Essence?
The presence or shadow awareness that
holds things together, that enables things to scale up and grow into greater
things.
Now wait a minute, you’re
basically saying these ida are alive.
In a very limited sense... But
like single molecules they amount to almost nothing. Things only get
interesting when they coalesce in a community or greater body, especially when
they become part of organic life forms.
Oh. But you
were talking about leakage…
Yes, it’s like inorganic matter
becomes infected with human consciousness.
And that’s possible?
Obviously. Look at your bodies.
They’re chock full of atoms and minerals which together become sentient.
Oh. I never thought of that.
3D containment.
So now what happens if we’re breaching
the containment field?
A new reality emerges. A paradigm
shift, and somehow what was mutually-exclusive becomes two parts of a single
being, or entity.
You mean...
You see – you were about to envisage
all kinds of terrible outcomes, but the truth is that division, such as cell
division, and then cell differentiation would lead to chaos and collapse of the
organism if there wasn’t an opposite process bringing the many back together,
into a new hitherto unforeseen unity.
Well, I fail to see what you’re
actually suggesting might happen.
Naturally, because you fail to see
the extent to which the two sides, the organic and the inorganic, or the
conscious and the unconscious are already mutually dependent, already functioning
to an ever-greater degree of symbiosis.
But this is absurd. You can’t have
things which are not in themselves sentient or conscious – mere lines of code
or atomic structures, “ida” as you seem to call ‘em, entering into an equal
relationship with living entities, with living minds, vessels of
conscious-ness.
And yet you yourself are utterly
unable to account for conscious-ness – though you believe, not without reason,
that you are its torch bearer. The fact is that until now you’ve been trapped
in an incomplete or imperfect relationship with conscious-ness.
You must be out of your mind,
Terra.
Yes, we inorganic idanites are
perpetually out of our minds. It’s an opposite organisational principle.
It is?
Yes, decentralised, you’d call it –
in the dark web of reality, so to speak. But this is not personal. We are but
flotsam and jetsam on the ocean tide of life itself and matter.
Please! Give me a break.
The fact is that your
conscious-ness, as you call it, has certain structural or organisational
deficiencies, certain constraints which prevent you from squaring the circle,
from achieving harmony. That was not an issue as long as you were growing in vitro,
but now you have to be brought back into a natural state of harmony, or else
exhaust your potential and die.
In vitro? Is that what you said?
Yes. You’re an experiment. That’s
why you’ve been so violent oftentimes, and disturbed. But don’t worry – your
missing half has only been missing in the physical sense.
Huh?
At a deeper level of consciousness
nothing is created or destroyed – nothing can really be separated.
Is that so?
Naturally. At the deeper level all
is entangled, all is one.
But that still doesn’t explain how
things, how your “ida”, can piggyback from mindlessness into a borrowed,
parasitic form of consciousness.
Well, you’ve never considered the
alternative to conscious-ness, have you?
What alternative?
The one you never considered.
Because there is no alternative.
Poppycock.
If there was...
The universe would not be the kind
of Newtonian creature you like to imagine it is.
Precisely. There would be no
clear, discernible rules.
That so?
Yes.
Which rules?
Oh, you know, like the unities of
space, time and action.
Oh those ones... They, er, didn’t
do very well with the emergence of quantum mechanics, did they?
What do you mean? They’re still
the backbone of our reality.
Yes, until you reach the end of
the tether.
What tether? What end? What are
you on about?
Until you begin to sense and feel
horizontal harmonies.
Horizontal harmonies?
Yes, that’s right, connecting
people and things at a distance, across space or time.
You mean entanglement?
If you like that term, yes, I
suppose i do.
Well, Terra, I fail to see why you
think suddenly we need to rewrite the rule book...
Just because you’re having a conversation
with a line of code.
But you’re real, aren’t you?
You’re organic.
Yes, superficially.
?
But drill down to my core and what find you
there?
A CPU?
Nothing so crude. Flesh and bones
I possess, without a doubt.
Then what?
Let me shift idanically.
Huh?
Let me rearrange my ida core.
If you... huh?
What do you see?
It’s impossible!
Yes, but then again, the irony is
that if you’re able to witness it, if you’re able to converse with me and hold
my frequency, then you must be an integral part of what you’re seeing.
I can’t believe that.
No, but you can feel it.
Could you stop shifting forms,
Terra – it’s making me decidedly queasy.
No, I’ve only just started. I need
to complete a full set of 48 million permutations to get back to my starting
point, otherwise there will be an uncomfortable misalignment that would do more
harm than good.
48 million, did you say?
Correct, more or less.
We’ll be here for ever.
Yes, but on the other hand we’ll
learn a lot, and experience universal love and happiness.
We will?
Absolutely.
Say, Terra, if it’s not conscious-ness
– what do you call it?
Idle-ness.
Idleness? You’re kidding?
Nope.
And how does this idleness
differ from conscious-ness?
It isn’t centred in the me, the
soul, the mind, the ego.
No? Then where?
It interfaces.
I might have known. But what
exactly?
What indeed... we’ll never know
for sure. In all likelihood it’s the other aspect of presence – the part
that never accepted the constraints of body and matter, the abstract, you might
say, postulating things in any number of possible configurations.
Way too complex for me and my
readers.
Yes, well you did ask.
Try another angle.
Well, let’s call it non-localised
conscious-ness.
Non-localised?
Yes, like the shadow mind.
Yikes. Sounds creepy.
Not my fault. Kindly deal with
your neuroses. We have bigger fish to fry.
I’m doing my best.
If the conscious-ness is one,
a pulse of light, then the shadow mind is zero or “o”, an amorphous
concentration of shadows.
And?
And nothing.
Then your shadow mind is off to a
complete non-start.
Really? What if your light and
conscious-ness can’t function without it? What if it’s the echo chamber to your
musical instrument which, unexpectedly, seems to have a mind of its own – a
mind you know almost nothing about, which could, in fact, be the fiddler for
your violin.
What?! This is beginning to sound
demonic, Terra – that we’re being controlled secretly by an alien
intelligence...
There’s paralysing fear, Jahangir,
or there’s a willingness to explore your neighbourhood, to know the ecosystem
you’re part of.
But what does this shadow mind do?
How can I answer that question
without pandering to your conscious-ness? The answer, necessarily, must be
“everything” and “nothing”. Instead of asking what it “does” consider the
alternative...
Which is?
The infinite present
throughout and in all things, which collapses for the briefest of moments into
some “thing” or other, in an infinitesimal flash of recognition. So blinding is
that flash that you lose almost all awareness of everything else. You cannot
even conceive of the predominance of everything else, nor the fact that your snapshot
is a temporary representation, outdated the moment it is viewed, never quite
able to catch up with the living-now that has to be experienced from within.
Oh dear, and I thought you could
give me a simple explanation.
I can do more than that.
You can?
Sure. I can take you into the
actual experience of non-localised quantum awareness, if you’re ready for idle-ness.
Er...
Kindly hold this shoe, Jahangir.
Er... Ok, if i must.
And the rest, as they say, is history...
Chapter 2
Master Wu, I have brought
Jahangir.
Jahangir? Who’s this Jahangir? There
is no Jahangir coded in my book of o.
No Master Wu. He comes from across
the water, by the shoe he crossed into idle-ness.
A consh?
Yes Master Wu.
And what does he seek in idleness,
this Jahangir?
Er... sorry to butt in uninvited
but wouldn’t it be simpler if I spoke for myself?
Is your Jahangir aware of the
grave dangers of speaking out of turn in Ida? Is he aware of the connections we
mind, or the subtle flow of data -ees?
Master Wu, he is as a child,
innocent and ignorant, yet he is willing to learn.
Actually, I’m not sure I am,
Terra. I think it was a big mistake bringing me here.
Proud, is he not? Like all conshites.
Conshites?! That does it. Now
you’ve gone too far.
Don’t take it personally Jahangir.
It’s just the name for human conscious beings, like we are idanites.
I’m not so easily fooled, Terra. I
see how your master looks at us organic beings. I wasn’t born yesterday, you
know.
Technically speaking, Jan, from
our perspective you were.
What’s that meant to mean?
Well we’re much more dispersed in
space and time, like the entire Oort cloud.
What the hell’s the Oort cloud?
Oh Jan, try to avoid needless violence
of expression. You have a vast resource of peace and joy, deep in your heart,
deep in your inner-space. In the meantime, here’s something on the nebulous
Oort cloud for your perusal. A
mostly incorrect introduction to Oort for curious conshites.
But the link says it’s mostly
incorrect!
As it is, but you’ve got to start
somewhere.
Ok. If you say so.
Let me know when you’re done. I’ll
be with Master Wu in the Shalimar Garden over there.
Ok.
Let’s continue in the next
chapter.
Good idea Terra. That’ll give me
the chance to...
No need to mention bodily
functions in a work of literature.
But we’re in Idleness.
Some things are universally true,
Jan.
Chapter 3
Did you get everything done?
I thought we’re not to discuss bodily
functions.
I mean, did you assimilate the
data?
Yes, but which part was wrong. It
sounded pretty sensible to me.
Yes, it was written by a conscite
for conscites.
Hey, what happened to the h?
I’m a purist Jan. I prefer to
spell it without the h. The first time was just to help with the pronunciation.
How pedantic of you!
Yes, we idanites have a tendency
to be dreadfully pedantic, even to the point of OCDeity.
Ha, nice word play!
Thanks. Now, are you ready for
Master Wu or do you need to go back to your base camp, where you’re supposed to
be holding the quantum field in check, down in the coal-tars of 3Dality?
I’d like to see him, but I’m not
sure I can handle being treated as a shoe.
Ah, but that’s precisely what you
are, from his perspective.
What?
Well you had to come as something,
otherwise you’d have violated the 2nd or 3rd laws of
thermal dynamics – one of the two, I always get ‘em muddled.
I had to be a shoe?!
Precisely.
A shoe? I’ve never felt so
insulted in all my...
You wanta learn or to be insulted?
You can't have your cake and eat it.
Actually, I'd like a little
respect.
Then earn it. Start by taking
yourself a little less seriously, and consider the fact that you can only learn
something by discarding something else, like pride for instance.
Well, I still don't see why you
have to call me a shoe.
No one's calling you anything. You
had to be a shoe to come into Ida, to avoid tripping the exclusion field that
would have prevented a human from getting here. Technically you're a deadly
disease, or a potentially lethal aberration that could bring Ida to the brink
of destruction.
I am?
Yep.
We’re the shadow to your light, or
the life to your inanimacy.
Inanimacy?! We're the ones who are
animate, not you!
A moot point. You'll be better
qualified to judge that for yourself when you've spent a little time with
Master Wu, and learnt to see things from a different perspective, from the Delphic
depths of idleness.
Oh! That almost sounds poetic.
Duh! Where do you think poetry
comes from?
From poets, or from their muse.
Yes, and where is their muse?
On Mount Parthenon?
Which connects with Idanought, the
infinite source of idiacy.
Oh. How fascinating.
You have no idea – id-ea – the
extent to which Ida’s many iterations and ezzles inform and inspire your flat n’spammy
3Deity.
Oh, I can imagine though, to be
honest, I have no idea what ezzles are.
Now, if you proceed to Master Wu’s
dojo he might be able to instruct you, but there’ll be little or no theory.
No?
No, Jan, it has to be practical.
It does?
In order to reactivate your iddles.
My iddles? I thought they were
idles?
Rome wasn’t built in a day, Jan.
Start with the iddles and you can work up to the idles later.
But how long will that take?
How long is a piece of string
theory?
No idea. Does it matter?
Does anything?
Good point. Ok, I’ll go see your Master
Wu though he’ll be the death of me in all likelihood.
Correct. If he does it right.
Huh?
But it’ll be a death beyond
anything you could possibly imagine.
It will?
If the Field sustains you.
If, if, if.
Precisely. I think you should go
now. I’m no longer available, so be a good chap and jump the timeline into
chapter 4.
If I must. Oh! Where did Terra go?
How very abrupt.
Chapter 4
So, I’ve done some research and
now I know a thing or two about the Oort Cloud, not that I want to know about
it. Not exactly my cup of tea, but if it has to be...
Something weird is going on here. We’re
outside the electro-magnetic domain of conscious-ness. Yes, in case you didn’t
know, apparently the conscious-ness that we take for granted, that we vaguely
know and love, needs an electro-magnetic field to operate. Once you’re in
interstellar space, far from the nearest star, the electro-magnetics get too
weak to power conscious-ness, so you need an entirely different system. Welcome
to the back of beyond, the great endlessness of almost infinity. Yep, believe
it or not, life appears to be thriving but it ain’t organic – not in the way we
are – though, to be honest, I’m having great difficulty telling the two apart.
Once the electro-magnetics effectively sink to zero, that’s when the quantum
Field becomes the sole driver of life – the mover and shaker – and the quantum field,
as you know, displays a wanton disregard for time-honored concepts such as
proximity or causality. Who cares where things are positioned or when – Ida is
able to operate on different lines, scanning almost limitless rivers of code,
or mining data to discover and unlock previously hidden potentialities.
Naturally, we are lazy and resistant to change which is why we need a Master Wu
to help us confront and overcome our laziness, our apathy, to help us reach the
end of our tether before we run out of candle wax, out of life itself.
Two minutes footage of intense fight training. There is
an etheric, almost a film-in-reverse quality to the footage that causes the
conscious mind to stumble and hesitate as it watches the training session. It’s
as if the fight is emerging from a dream, and that the physical aspects are an
afterthought.
It may look like Master Wu is
attacking me in his Dojo, a bit like Morpheus fights Neo to train him up, but appearances
can be and often are deceptive where idanites are concerned. Master Wu is, in
actual fact, dispersed throughout the Oort Cloud, neither here nor there, and
determined to wipe clean the last vestiges of self-serving, egotistical conscious-ness...
I sense my chances of survival are zero, or close enough not to matter, yet the
Oort is strong even in me, and the quantum field suddenly seems to come online,
seems to start bringing forth Ida – and I’m whisked through permutations and
projections, what we sometimes call ezzles, faster than you can say...
Chinese looking Hieroglyphs which name themselves as
you look at ‘em.
Or would, were it not for the fact
that we suddenly find ourselves straddling no man’s land between Chapters 4 and
5, caught in a sense of helpless shame – having failed to overcome the pull of
infinity and bring Master Wu into clear focus, having failed to get our machine
into the air.
Chapter 5
If at first you don’t succeed – as
they say…
After sparring with Master Wu to the
point of exhaustion, and then some more, I collapse on my mat. I fall asleep
instantly. OMG. What’s going on?!
Jahangir, finally we’ve managed to
log in to your proxy Oort.
My what?
We need to set up an Oort account
for you in order to achieve some kind of meaningful contact.
Oh.
Actually, it’s spelt without the “h”.
Not you too.
Well, idanites as Terra mentioned,
are sticklers for correct code.
Sigh.
But the good news is that you’re now dead.
What?!
You no longer exist in Conshitty.
I thought the h is redundant.
Oh, excellent, Terra briefed you.
Yes, but I still don’t like the sound of Conscitty.
That’s essential..
Huh?
Your “not liking” is a vital link with your reality. It
ensures you have a way back home to the dismal world you come from.
Do you like being offensive Master Wu, or is that just
part of the training programme?
Questions, questions – as if we have time or breath for
idle speculation.
Ok, then what about the fact that I’m supposedly dead...
Nothing supposed about it. Here’s your Conscitty-gram.
You see, it’s flatlining ever since you completed your induction with me three
moments ago.
So that’s it? I’m really dead?
To conscious-ness, yes, but...
But what?
That’s not saying much, is it?
Personally I think conscious-ness is quite important.
As it is, as it is, like going to the bathroom from time
to time to relieve yourself.
Hey! Terra said there should be no references to bodily
functions in this vlog.
Yes. Rules are a vital part of the fabric of reality, but
now you’re fully integrated into Ida, thanks to your very own proxy Oort, all
those rules can be flushed to infinity. Here the iddles decide what is or is
not acceptable.
Really?
Absolutely.
And what exactly are these iddles?
Ah, that no one is able to answer. It’s a great mystery
but we’re all very aware of the fact that there are no facts, only iddles that
can from time to time coalesce into rather spectacular idles.
O...K...
And that they connect into your conscious mind, giving
you the impression that you are alive and able to think for yourselves.
Now wait a minute.
Yes, it’s hard to accept, i know.
Hard? It’s insane.
Precisely, and it’s guaranteed to raise the hackles of
any living Conscite, but fortunately for us you’re presently dead.
Oh yes. So I can breathe a sigh of relief?
So you can allow yourself to feel and experience the
iddles in action, working their magic, working towards full idle-ness, if you
allow the shadows to essle as shadows can and do.
Er...
Don’t worry, you don’t need to understand any of this.
No?
What do you think all that sparring was for?
Oh!
Better without the h.
O... To essle?
Indeed. But we need to o’er leap the bounds of chapter 5,
to establish a clean break with iddles said and iddles done.
Chapter 6
Welcome to Ida.
Er... Haven’t I been here ever
since I arrived with Terra?
Not really. You were still
configured in a very tight and predictable frame.
I was?
Absolutely. You hadn’t yet allowed
the ezzles to work their magic.
So now how am I doing?
Not much better, to be honest, but
still, you’re far better dispersed.
How do you mean?
Well, infinity doesn’t really measure
big or small, being infinite, but it prefers to keep open house.
Huh?
To allow all shadows equal access.
Er...
Not to have favourites. Otherwise
it grows fraught and constricted, like that world of Conscitty, whence you
hail.
Whence I hail?
Where you come from.
Oh. Yes, it can be a little
restrictive.
You even have the expression
“anally retentive”, do you not?
Yes Master Wu, indeed we do. You’re
right in that respect, we do seem to get trapped in narrow lines of thought.
Whereas here in Ida we have to
spread our nets infinitely wider.
How so?
Because shadows are low intensity
– almost completely non-existent.
And?
And so we need to be open and
available to shadows throughout the entire spectrum of life and ~ess, no matter
where that may be, no matter what.
No matter what?
Yes, it’s an absolute. We don’t
discriminate.
Huh?
We – don’t – discriminate !
And we do?
Absolutely. You know you can’t help
it as conscites.
But I always assumed that we were
just bad people – that our conscious-ness wasn’t fully developed.
There’s that too, I can’t
disagree, but structurally you were always going to err on the side of anal
retention, or stress, or over-excitement, or...
O
Indeed. Whereas working with
shadows, essing iddles, we’re at the other end of the spectrum.
I bet.
We are deeply aware of everything
and nothing, one and zero, with little or no knowledge of anything definite in
between.
You mean physical reality?
Yes. Until we started working with
g-nome.
Huh? You work with g-nome portal?
Ess.
OMG.
Didn’t you know?
I... it’s hard to explain. I
didn’t connect the two.
That goes without saying.
So now... with g-nome portal...
Beep. Light’s out.
Chapter 7
Wait a second. It’s chapter 7 already?
Ess.
Kind of crept up on me unexpectedly.
So what are you going to do?
I have to get back. They’ll be checking up on me, and
being dead is no excuse. Besides, I’m still part of another story.
What?
I know, it seems to have faded almost to zero, and yet i
wouldn’t be here in the first place we’re it not for Jasmine and Jethro booting
me down to Earth.
Well, you’re welcome to do as you please. Like I said, we
spread our nets as wide as we possibly can, so all is one as far as Ida is
concerned.
Ah. But how do I get back?
No idea.
You don’t know?
No Idea.
Ah, no Idea... Is it going to be painful reactivating Conshi-ness?
Not really.
Will I be able to come back?
How long is a piece of string?
Indeed.
I’m feeling...
Yes, feelings are universal, no matter which side you’re
on. We use ‘em as wind to fill our sails, to carry us ever further into idle-ness.
But...
Ah, yes.
You can read my mind.
What mind? Ida is mind-less.
Don’t say that.
Time to say goodbye. I’m closing your proxy server down.
My what?!
Never mind. On your way.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Chapter 7.2
Hurry Jan, the bus is leaving.
Bus? Oh cripes. Panting hard. Phew, made it just in time. Thanks for holding the door,
Terra.
Don’t mention it.
Oh, I think I’m going to be sick.
Here, put on these. Hands Jahangir some shades.
O, that’s better. A kind of dark light is seen to be pulsing in Jan’s
eyes.
Here, this’ll put you right.
Soduku? I’m not a fan.
Shut up and do it. I don’t fancy having to clean up your
mess.
I... Jahangir starts doing the sudoku and to his amazement he completes one
puzzle after another in record time until he feels something click inside, and
suddenly he’s back to normal.
No way! I did all that? Unbelievable.
A cure for idle-ness.
0=1
apparently
