Cloud.exe has restarted. Cloud.exe is running.
The closer Gestas got to the modern day in his monologues, the less focused he became. As a result, much of the following is more conversation than anything.
On Identity
It was around 1850 that I first met, uh.. Hades?
Fossil-Type HADES, the dead man.
That's him. We're quite a pair-- the dead man and the dying man. He's not one for conversation, though. Everyone else was, around that time. There was this big East War going on, and now all of a sudden everyone in Europe's got to have their opinion on it. And of course, with technology being the way it was at the time-- hell, the way it still is-- everyone's opinion now had the capability to spread. That's a funny thing about information, isn't it? When technology evolves, information spreads.
How are you feeling?
I've already had my fifth health examination for the day, doc. You have the results, don't you? Can't you let a fading voice sing?
Go on.
Maybe I want to ramble, y'know? Maybe my time here in captivity-- my apologies, under examination-- has helped me meditate on certain subjects.
Such as?
You know. Things like identity, the circle of life, stuff that was in vogue throughout all history but that people seem to associate much more heavily with the discussions and books of the time. The 1850s, I mean. Not sure why that is.
My opinion is that we associate such subjects with that general time because, due to the development of technology, we have more records from that time than before.
Yeah, but that's just your opinion, see what I mean? Everyone wants an opinion. Everyone has an opinion. An opinion is like one of the many types of building-block behind an identity. And, like, my memory may be spotty but I seem to recall around that time period was when I started to really understand-- or believe-- that "what I am" is an identity.
You are an identity?
A recurring identity throughout history, yeah. Maybe all of my brothers and sisters are also identities too, ones that pop up among people until they die, at which point we inexplicably pass on through a medium science hasn't properly figured out how to observe yet-- the medium of culture, thought, influence.
But that would imply that one's identity is what kills them.
Not necessarily. Everyone dies. I should know, right? I've only done it a few billion times by now. So maybe it's not the identity, it's not me, that kills the body; maybe it's people like you who have taken that assumption and ran with it, accepting all evidence through a heavy and evolving filter of confirmation bias, I'm talking pure processed bullshit. Take a look at your own results. Every cell in my body, what's different about them from the cells in your own body?
According to the results and the equipment, nothing.
Nothing, that's right. So maybe that's a suggestion of a crooked theory, do you get me? Am I making sense or am I just a raving lunatic who wants to hear his own voice before he kicks the bucket?
So what you're saying is that you think you are only correlated with the advanced rates of mortality in the bodies you inhabit and not the direct cause.
No. What? No, look doc, what I'm saying is that my body isn't dying any faster than yours; it only looks that way because some armchair Fossilosophist came up with the total whackjob hypothesis and you guys took him at his word because you're too scared to outright say anything is definite when it has to do with us "eldritch" folk.
I don't believe I am a parasite or some virus that invades a human host. I believe I am the culmination of a vast web of complex ideas and understandings that anybody is capable of coming to terms with, and due to humanity's life rate-- we've got longevity as a species, not individually-- it just so happens that the average person who reaches this big web of ideas and accepts it as part of their beliefs, their identity, their personality, tends to on average be not too far from death.
Does that make sense?
You believe you are human.
I believe I'm an identity. A self-aware identity.
And what does this have to do with meeting Fossil-Type HADES during the... Crimean War?
That's all correlation. Maybe not. Maybe there's a thread to it all. Hey, maybe Hades planted these thoughts in my head and I'm only remembering them because the thought of him triggered it. Who knows?
Bottom line is that war was mean.
Fragmented
The results of today's examination suggest we don't have long. Do you still want to work on your memoirs?
I'd may as well finish what I started. Where was I? The East War? Right.
There was a lot of death then, which I suppose is a bit of a redundant thing to say, so I got around. The rotary press was the hot new thing, allowing me to catch up on a lot of overdue reading and.. aw, shit. Do you mind another topic-jump?
I'm obliged to have no opinion on the matter, Gestas. It's your blog.
I'm just thinking about that press. I remember reading something in the last century-ish about how the book might have popularized, or helped establish in our cultural minds, the notion of individuality. Or -ism. Something. It was the printing press, most notably during the industrial revolution so we're talking specifically the rotary press and other steam-powered things like that, it was this newfound convenient ability to produce upwards of thousands of books that were absolutely identical thanks to the wonders of machines, that paradoxically spread this idea that each person has a right to their own thoughts.
Where is the paradox in that?
Machines making waves of identical books, identically printed, identically type-set, identical in every way, and hundreds of them, convincing humanity that we are all individual. Subconsciously. Because books are now a thing that anyone can have, right? You can have your copy. You don't have to share it collectively with your nearest scriptorium so monks can slowly copy out the information by hand. The days of the scriptorium died, giving birth to the days of industry, to the days where nothing is personalized but it's because of that that mankind's individualism can flourish. Isn't that a little funny to you?
This sounds like media philosophy.
Hey, yeah, that's it. Something in the 1960s, '70s, that's where I read this from. Because at that time, with the rise in electronic media, the book was dying and being replaced with a new form of collective media-- television, radio, movie theatres, everything was being broadcast now so the average person couldn't have their own copy, couldn't use media to help them feel like an individual quite as much as in the past.
And then came the internet.
Tell me about it. The internet wasn't even a thing back then, was it? Am I thinking of the '60s?
Do you want to just skip ahead in your narrative to those decades? Would that be easier for you?
Are you kidding? And miss both World Wars? Miss the Spanish Civil War? Miss the Anti-French Resistance?
..having said that, I can't say that I recall any of those wars. I thought I did, but thinking back, I just remember reading about them.
Really? You were none of the bodies that fought in any of those conflicts?
I wouldn't say that. Just that, when I try to remember anything between 1880 and 1960, I.. huh.
You draw a blank?
No. I.. just remember dying. The occasional thought or image. A lot of blood in the outskirts of those years, but the further and further in I get, it's... god, this is gonna bug me for hours, I just know it.
"The annihilation of the atom," was it?
Nuclear fission?
Something like that. That's at the core of this blind spot, or near it. There was a lot of development in, uh.. nuclear shit around that time, wasn't there?
Do you think you have a strong connection or reaction to nuclear physics?
If I'm gonna stick with my beliefs, I'll have to say I think we all have a strong reaction to nuclear physics. We learned a lot about life's real building blocks, but I can't help but imagine we learned a lot about our imaginary building blocks too. And it's all connected.
What are?
The micro sciences and thought. I think. More than just atomic bombs were dropped, and I guess I spent more time dying than living, and I mean me dying, dying in identity.
Recent Goals
My knowledge of the Genera, as it exists today, started before you guys had gone public. I believe it was yours, the paper that circulated? The one about Fossil particles and Rainbow Gravity?
That was my work, yes.
We were impressed. You preached some pretty radical things, even for the late 2000's.
I did no preaching. I only discussed the results of an experiment I was fortunate enough to get the chance to conduct.
Call it what you want. But the Genera wouldn't exist without your findings.
This institution was already in place well before they took me on, and the open discussion of unnatural beings such as your classification was already becoming widespread. My credit, which still I dispute, is merely in using some numbers to link a few fields together.
You provided the basis for a unified theory, doc. A unified theory of everything, of all things.
Regardless. This was your view at the time, so your interest in the Topography Genera Center was directly proportionate to your interest in me?
You could say that. We had some.. shall we say, managerial disagreements that I am not at liberty to discuss.
"We" being you and an unspecified number of other Fossils?
"We" being a group I founded along with she, the bleeding woman of my dreams. There are some others, yes, but it is mostly me and her, infiltrating the ranks in order to settle some disputes with your higher-ups.
I'm afraid you're losing me again.
We called ourselves the Family Territory. We were so underground in this place that I bet you anything this post will be the first time anyone has consciously heard the name.
And.. I'm sorry, what was your goal, again?
I told you. To infiltrate the ranks and settle some disputes. This was what some call a "covert-op." Shrouded in secrecy, as our way of offering a critique on the way this business is run.
What about the "bleeding woman of--" you mean the figure from your earliest memory?
I do.
You found her in the end?
Fascinating choice of words. Not entirely inappropriate, either. Yeah, I found her. I can tell you of that memory another time. For now, before this body passes, I want to finish answering your question. I feel like I owe you.
We, the blood-letting strix and I, have been trying to get into the Genera for years now. Some deep mistake inside this place needs to be corrected. Some disseminating factor needs to be familiarized.
You need to learn about the Night Owl, Doctor.
I thought Striga was the Night Owl?
Of course not. That was our little red herring, a family joke. We made it all up. Enough of it.
Welcome to the Familia Territorio. Welcome to familiar territory.
...so you and Striga--
She is my mother, my sister, my daughter. She is the body and I am the spirit.
What do you want?
What does everyone want? Existence. Life.
And you think the Genera will give it to you?
No, we think you will.
Not an hour later, I was informed that Gestas's body has died. He could take anyone next. I am not safe.
