Caion @ Archie

Hello! I’m not sure when you’re going to check the Linkpearl and I’m sure you’re busy with whatever is happening on the flip side of the Gate, but I wanted you to know that I love you, I miss you already, and that I can’t wait to see you again.

I love you too! I still wish you could have come with us, but I trust nobody’s hands more than yours to keep Samudra safe in our absence. One day we’ll walk the paths together without a care in all five worlds. I can’t wait for that day to arrive.

Archie!! It’s so good to hear from you.

I can’t wait for that day, either. Also, the perturbations in the gnosis that happened when you all left through that gate will keep us in the Academy busy until you get back! We don’t have any -useful- analysis yet but I think it’s given us some really valuable information concerning ‘liminal’ gnosis. If and when you get the chance to swing back around to Samudra I might ask someone to just pop back and forth through the gate a few times… I think we might be able to construct lenses and tools that would let us see that kind of gnosis like we can see the other five colours, and I for one would love the chance to just take a look around everywhere I could through one of those lenses!

That would be incredible! From what I understand of the perturbations of the gnosis, it sounds like liminal gnosis might be at least in part identifiable by the “ripples” it creates in other forms of gnosis in the area, is that right? I have the glasses you made for me with me, so I might be able to do some preliminary experiments next time I encounter something I know to be liminal. Being able to directly observe it through a lens would be quite the accomplishment, but with you and the gnosisology department of the Academy behind you, I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

My own research interests have been varied and scattered of late, but there are two things I keep returning to: studying the flora and fauna of each world, and assessing the implications of liminal gnosis and the existence of the Paths on our understanding of metaphysics. My pet project lately has concerned developing alternate theories of time, but that work is too fledgling for me to go into more detail yet. Please look forward to it! More immediately, I’m expanding my naturalism research to include materials science. Beast has proven so far to be a land of metal and stone, and some of the physical properties of the materials used in their construction techniques seem initially promising as inspiration for more gnosis-designs on Samudra. I’ll be bringing back plenty of sample materials to share!

Speaking of samples, have you been able to make good use of the quintessence sample I gave you when I first got back to Samudra? If I can propose an experiment: we observed that quintessence quickly sublimates into the dominant form of local gnosis when not kept tightly sealed. If the door we created is a consistent source of liminal gnosis, it may be interesting to see if quintessence will also sublimate into liminal gnosis. If so, it would provide further evidence that it’s the foundation of all existence, and if not, it would potentially indicate the existence of a yet-unknown source. If this needs to wait until we’re back to open the door, let me know and I’ll make sure we test it.

So far, for each world, there’s been some kind of threshold we’ve needed to cross before we were able to create a KGP to go back to the Obsidian Road. In Almachadta, it had to do with the Mask’s shrine, and in Samudra, we needed to go to the Septetrione. Once we identify and complete what needs to be done in Beast, I’ll be able to come back and visit before we go to our next destination. I don’t know how long it’ll be until that happens, but I know it’s getting closer by the day. I can’t wait.

Oh, that’s a very interesting experiment. I’ve figured out a way to separate out the vial of quintessence you gave me safely into multiple, smaller test vials! I’ll introduce one of them to the extant gate, and record its behaviour (or, more likely, I’ll deputise a Scholar to do so on my behalf, as much as I’d very much love to observe the experiment’s results with my own two eyes!), and then upon your return, run the experiment again while the gate is actively in use, and compare the results.

I also suspect I have discovered, unintentionally, and perhaps have always known without realising I knew it, how to manipulate and invoke liminal gnosis itself. Something the Awoken said to me once made me question certain assumptions I’d been making about my own capabilities; I now believe that in the course of my search for you - and in my desperation to comprehend and reach out beyond the last traces of you I could detect at the Geode, before your return - I invoked liminal gnosis in some significant capacity. It would explain certain discrepancies in my recorded data, at least! I’m trying to reproduce the phenomenon; it’s slow going so far but seems potentially promising.

Is KGP the correct terminology for what we’ve been calling the Rose Window Gate? What does it stand for?

You mentioned theories of time, and I have a question for you that might sound strange. I don’t want to occlude or preëmpt your theorising in any way, but the thought’s been gnawing at the back of my head since a conversation I had while the six of you were still here.

Do you think that an event in what we perceive to be the future could possibly be the cause of an event in what we perceive to be the past?

I also have had brief flashes with liminal gnosis, typically when searching with desperation or trying to extend beyond my limits. I typically have had a hard time trying to deliberately invoke it, but I think some of my companions may have a better grasp of it than I do. Next time I get the chance, I’ll see if they have any tips to share that may send you down the right path.

Honestly, I think the Rose Window Gate is a far prettier term and I would love to keep using it! But yes, KGP is the terminology we’ve adopted internally, at least for now. It stands for Kinder, Gentler Path, in opposition to an alternate term, Strange Path. My understanding of it all is still very preliminary, and Aurelius has been the one most hands-on with them so far, but my present understanding is that Strange Paths are possibly naturally occurring paths from each World to the Obsidian Road, which serves as something of a liminal crossroad. (As a side note, I have a working theory that the Obsidian Road may in fact be a world unto itseld governed by liminal gnosis, though much work will need to be done for me to even design an experiment to test that hypothesis.) Strange Paths on their own can be chaotic, disorienting, exhausting, and unpredictable - we believe this is how Tasna got to Beast. However, some individuals are able to overlay a Kinder, Gentler Path onto the Strange Paths, making them much easier and more comfortable to traverse. So far, only the six of us travelling together seem to have this ability, though there may be others (and Aurelius was the pioneer of this technique).

To answer your question on the subject of time, I trust that I can share these early ideas with you without fear of being beaten to publication! The short answer is that yes, I believe it may be possible.

Here’s the direction I’m thinking in so far: historically, we’ve considered time as a line. It goes infinitely in both directions but only moves in one - the past is thought of as settled and concrete, while the future is infinitely unknowable. Instead, I’m beginning to question whether time is more like a block of tofu. (Yes, I am indeed hungry, but go with me, here.) This block of tofu contains infinite possibilities for past, present, and future, and our perception of time is like a blade, tracing a line through these possibilities, carving the tofu block such that we see the surface of the cut piece and assume that’s all there is or could be. That which we call time travel may thus be possible by one who knows how to reposition the knife, and cruicially, making a slice does not destroy the rest of the tofu, making it theoretically possible to use time travel to create results which would otherwise appear counterfactual in the original timeline. It’s still very much uncertain how accurate this theory may be, but I believe liminal gnosis, quintessence, and/or Strange Paths/Kinder, Gentler Paths may hold the secrets to wiggle the knife, if even by only the tiniest degree.

What in particular made you consider this possibility?

Wolf and Salme had a conversation with me before you all left for the Septentrione, wherein he described having delved into the -Song- of Samudra itself via esoteric means, and encountering there a noöplankton, of all things, which was resonating with the essence of what Wolf had evidenced reason to believe was Zosimos himself. He said that he experienced a moment of– I hope I’m correctly recalling his exact words– “As if the distance between aeon and instant had collapsed, as if all of time was happening in one moment.” It made me think of the sense in which noöplankton seem to be experiencing an Eternal Now with no memory, or distinction between two points in time, and…

…well, there’s always been teachings about the River Without Water as a metaphor for time. That we’re -in- the River’s current and can only face forward, but that were you to stand on the riverbanks, you could see it in its entirety. (And the more I think about this in light of that I know I’ve never seen a river, but you have, now…)

That, from our immersed perspective, were we to be caught in the wake of a ship or a creature of the river, from our perspective, it would appear as though the wake is something happening now, caused by something outside of our capacity to perceive on account of existing downstream - further along the River.

I’m thinking of the experiments performed by Scholars Eutrochia and Rhea, wherein two apertures were connected via a mechanism which they could not, at the time, adequately explain or replicate which seemed to immediately transmit gnosis from one aperture to the other; they developed conclusive evidence that, in the presence of sufficient pellucid gnosis, gnosis was emitted from the target aperture before it was supplied to the source. In the source of trying to verify their experimental results, they supplied the artifact with power beyond its operating parameters, and it was destroyed, and so it’s been a peculiar and unsettling footnote in our understanding of the world, but it suggests certain counterintuitive things about the nature of time.

Wolf had, at a certain point, the look in his eyes of a man who had suddenly advanced a hypothesis within his own mind that was not ready for presentation to the Academy. I wonder if he’d be willing to discuss his theories with me here, because I have thoughts of my own, disorganised and distracted by duties as they may be, and I think that they comport with your own, my love. I have not even a vague concept of how these properties might be usefully exploited but they are exhilarating to consider in even an abstract and theoretical sense!

I am reliably informed that you are going to be engaging in a cooking competition? Please, tell me everything! This sounds amazing.