Rekindled Shadows - Prologue: Never Let Go
Someone has been revived!
My original namesake and character Liki, wishes to return. He and others he's connected to will have roles of their own under different names in future titles, but this will be the new place holder for now for a beginning to bringing back that old story "The Shadows" under a different name with a different setting and story; though in its same world, that this time won't go against any terms of where I post them.
As a different update, I passed my driver's exam for my CDL and am applying to job positions. This means I'll soon be able to set more time aside for story writing - hopefully and more than likely at least. The time that has passed still makes me feel like I'm out of sync once again, but I'll fight through it to return regularly to my stories.
Prologue - Never Let Go.
Liki still remembered that night.
It'd been such a stupid day…bright and sunny…stupidly beautiful…blue sky faded into a clear night filled with stars, the clean air replaced by the slight but still comfortable chill of early fall.
Yet for all that good, it failed to mask over the bad…He simply failed to notice it, how it seemed like the world tried its damndest to give him something better to look at. To cheer him up…how it tried to tell him that there were still good things he could have within it.
Instead he sat there…paws held down by duck tape to the steering wheel…car on the edge of a pier, and ready to just vanish under the water…
Perhaps he did hear it…
He ended up staring at the river for two hours…before spending another hour chewing the duck tape off his own wrists and then going back.
And yet…The question if that had ever been a real memory, never came to mind…He buried it under his own anger.
Now that he was aware of it and remembering, he thought it strange, cars were long gone in his world…it had been like a dream…
And perhaps by now…it doesn't really matter…
Happened or not…it still felt real, still looked real in his memory. The eddies of the river…the stars in the night, the aura of lights on the other side of the river cast by the small truck stop just a few miles away…
And even though he'd turned around in one direction one way or the other…it didn't stop him from nearly taking another route to the same result.
Locked up in a box by evil, wasting away, until either death or some other kind of new light came in to take up the reins.
He thanked whatever heavens there were, it was a light.
And then it's only years after he realizes that light was still his own…just in a new form, and given a new battery...
He was fine letting it keep the reins, it seemed to have way more fun than he did, and its stories were…far more plentiful.
Now he was caught up in new thoughts…
What comes first…the idea, or the one thinking of it?
When does the one who doles out punishment become the one in need of punishing?
Who controls the controller?
Why does knowledge come in the form of books instead of fruit?
Where does one find the meaning to doing anything, if it amounts to nothing?
What…When…Who…Why…Where…
There were so many contradictions to what was being told by everything else.
He sees the answers…they're printed in plain sight. Cognition, Understanding, Viewpoint, Belief, Imagination. All answers…but also not…
If something can be conceptualized, then it therefore exists, in the loosest meaning of the term of existence.
Everything is worthy of Existence…but everything is not worthy of Tolerance.
Tolerance itself…is Intolerable…a paradox. He tried that method…it didn't work.
Rook instead told him; “Tolerance becomes aware, and it becomes Understanding, and becomes tolerable."
“A word…can mean “Anything at all." Tolerance becomes Cognition, Viewpoint, Belief, Imagination, and Understanding. Tolerance itself becomes existence, just like everything else gets it."
Liki thought…that is what everyone does, yes? Tolerate existence…to tolerate things that they have given control of away, so that they themselves no longer need to ponder it in their short lives, renaming those causes to “fate" or even “through the consequences of the actions of those around them or themselves." Rules upon rules set by universal law, given understanding once again, by words that had long since been determined to mean certain things by the collective understanding of many, many others. Patterns upon patterns layered upon each other. Flower petals all grow as prime numbers; why did we decide those numbers are so special though?
What about the one SCP that has been conceptualized? The missing number that if known would throw the entire mathematical system out of sync? Heck what of all the SCPs? There were so far many of them, yet somehow, it was easy to see them all actually -being- real.
So for Liki, it comes down to the first question. What comes first, the idea, or the one thinking of it? Is existence -before- existence is “given" possible?
What is Life itself?
Again, he sees answers that are also not answers…
Subconscious. Spirit. Energy. Hawking's Radiation. Perhaps one of the SCP-001s…
“Satoru would've loved to be in control of “The Factory"" Rook had said. “His old self, anyway."
Hawking's Radiation, an idea, a concept given existence as it was observed…named after the one who observed it.
Two particles that blink in and out of existence itself…they split, popping into being, flick about, then collide back upon each other to blink back out of existence. Where do they go? Why do they do it? When did they first exist? Who…might they be? What if there is a need for two? Information has shown, at least to himself, that when one of the particles is taken away, the other is freed. But is it actually a good kind of freedom?
Having lost its partner…that loneliness would become its new prison…
Rook once told him he believed existence sat between Order and Chaos, for his own “rules", his own “laws" that he decided to follow, the order imposed by Order itself bent Chaos into Reality. Two things that mixed together to form a third. It was practically a mirror of how life itself was created from more life...one male, one female - to make a third...
Liki found that hard to dispute when he was first brought back…
Yet other answers still presented themselves, continuing to present themselves daily. He made observations. Existence -itself- seemed to be the only thing denied existence, yet it was -always- there. It tried to communicate through use of fate and seemingly random chance. Music seems to be its favorite method, he observed, when setting a playlist to shuffle at random, the order in which the songs came was just far too…coincidental to current events and his current thoughts for him to believe it truly random. It seemed only in relinquishing that control to it as "Random" that it seemed capable of such. This was something others seemed to confirm in their own experiences when he brought it up to them. Through observation of everything that seemed to come before him, he noted that it seemed to like creativity and imagination. It's very kinky. It craves companionship among all that dwell within it.
Existence loves life, and tolerates death. It understands that death is a necessity, but not an end. Death is a friend, a dear one. It grows annoyed of greed and impotence to the point that it decides to punish those who steep in it under the guise of law and rages at the way corruption of those placed into positions above it change it's design, and wallows when it's unable to assist those it knows so desperately need it for the same reason. It understood hardship and how it could twist one's views, and wouldn't overly punish someone should their actions during such distress cause harm. Karma and seemingly random chance happenstance no longer appeared as random...such events led to another that forced oneself to fix an issue that had been left outstanding - even if reasons to those issues being left alone were valid in their own rights.
Then he realized…
We simply call it Existence…that's the word we, as cognitive, thinking beings of our own, gave it. When Existence itself seems as powerless as a single ant trying to move a tree, what really is it?
What, when given the ability to, does Existence itself decide to call itself?
And that's simply a question that seemed impossible to answer. So he speculated. Perhaps its “God"...perhaps itself is “fate"...but that didn't make sense to its seemingly powerless nature when faced up against the will of millions.
But again, he realized once more, those are just words we use…those same millions would have words of their own to describe it. Perhaps existence could also be the combined understanding and subconscious control of everyone aware of it? But that still didn't hold up towards those "orders" that lurked in the dark.
If as his previous observations held…Existence had a name, a name name, like his own, Liki, or Rook's, or even Blackpaw's. A word that wasn't a word that would signify itself that only itself would know.
And he came to the thought…maybe that word had to be given to it…by every being in existence…so that they, one side, could dance with it, whenever it left its side to come to them.
It's own name though, would only forever be known by itself, for it was something it was unable to share, at least currently.
A word that every being would have to decide fit Existence on their own terms, their own Understanding, Cognition, Viewpoint, Belief, and Imagination. Existence was with everyone, what they chose to name it was their own to decide, for only they would be able to see their own version of Existence.
It would only be at the end of time that Existence would finally be able to voice itself.
Be that “God", be that “Eternity", be that…by some crazy concepted thought…even himself; and every other person as themselves, going by another name known only to themselves…
All he knew was, he now had something…something that let himself shine once again within the dark…after such a long time thinking he'd lost all his fuel…
And he told himself.
“Never let go."
But then again…perhaps that was not the right path of thinking, for even as he came to the conclusion, his connection to existence momentarily shattered. He took it as another attempt to communicate by existence itself, as it removed that which he communicated through as if to tell him he was wrong.
But now Liki just smiled. He could hardly believe he even felt the want to smile again at all…that he could even see himself in the darkness again at all…
“I'll still never let go." He clenched his paw into a fist tight upon some imaginary string…He didn't want to lose himself again.
He had a new reason to be…
So now he would join Rook…as well as bring those he knew he was connected to…Blackpaw, Kaz, Rayels, One-Eye, Jaklya and Skip, Kammy and Pyrefox, even Salvis, now that he knew exactly -what- and -who- he really was.
If what he now thought wasn't fully correct, he wanted, rather choose, to believe he could make it fit, just the same way it seemed Rook had gotten his thoughts to fit. Or they would at least, find new ways to fit into what was already there.
For the “Shadow Demon"…that shouldn't be too hard to accomplish.
"Finding" Existence though…that might have to be left to Rook. Or whomever else figured it out first...
They'd just help out where they could~