Quote:“I’m Kawaoru.” Kawaoru said. “All of him.”

“Huh?”

“The Kawaoru you know is a three dimensional reflection of me, existing in a form compatible with lilin consciousness. The Angels exist wholly in a dimension beyond human consciousness, what you would know as the Fifth Dimension. Metaphysics calls it the Room of Gauf.”

Again “Huh?”

The world disappeared. Kawaoru held up a piece of paper and drew a dot on it.

“This is a point. It has no height, no width , depth or concept of time. It just is.”

“Right, right.” I got it.

“ Now… add a second point. “ he drew another dot, “And fill in the line between them. That line between points is the first dimension. It has length… and only length.”

“The X direction. Right? “ I see where this is going, “With Y and Z as the second and third dimensions, and the Fourth being time.”

“Yes,” he smiled at me, “But for now lets just stay in two dimensions. Imagine somebody who lives solely in the second dimension. They have length and width, but no height… this stick figure”… he drew a simple humanoid shape. “If he were to encounter a 3 dimensional object, what would he see?”

“Slices in two dimensions as the object transects his home plane.”

Now I knew where this was going, I could begin to sound like something more than a child receiving a lecture.

“Yes. And if he were to move anywhere? “

“He cold only move along an X’Y plane.”

“Now, what happens if we fold his two-dimensional plane in the third dimension like so,” He twisted the paper once, then took both ends so they joined up. “Now watch. Imagine the two dimensional man walking along this path.” He drew a line starting at the split…

“It’s a moebius strip.” I said, “He can move in the second dimension and never reverse his direction, but still end up back where he started, because he’s been moved in the third dimension, and isn’t aware of it.”

“Precisely.” He smiled… perhaps a little surprise. “Now look up,”

I saw him and myself. A dark haired girl who just looked like she realised something profound, standing beside another Kawaoru

“What the?”

“So you understand?” alt-Kawaoru said.

“I do,” alt-me answered. “But that’s just…weird.” She shuddered.

“Follow me,” the Kawaoru beside me directed, tugging me gently by the shoulder. I think I knew where this was going…

We walked while he talked.

“Imagine what would happen then to those who can only perceive in three dimensions, moving forward in their own dimension, who’s path is then moved within the Fourth Dimension. They themselves will not be aware of it. To them, all they see is the snapshot of the Fourth Dimension which transects the planes of the Third Dimension they perceive… the ‘now’. Now would they notice if the Fourth dimension were looped back in it’s own moebius strip? As creatures they could keep moving forward, but still end up at the same startpoint over and over again.”

I had a horrible feeling about where this was going.

“On a larger scale, this is what happens to the world. Each Third Impact is like the tape binding the moebius strip together in time. It’s a crash in the universe triggered by the sudden absence a recurrence of sapient awareness. Those living on the strip can’t tell this is happening, they just feel themselves moving forwards, even though they may be treading over the same basic therritory.”

The flaw was obvious, “But I remember seeing myself in the future…” err.. “Past. Whatever?”

“Yes, you do. Because you retain your self awareness throughout the entire trip. Third Impact doesn’t just destroy the lilin. The end of each cycle destroys the evidence that it ever existed in the first place, while laying the foundations for the next to begin.”

Ends with the Third… begins with the two. Third Impact, and Shinji and Asuka on the beach doing an Adam and Eve. A little more thought on the whole creation myth and suddenly the expulsion from paradise began to make a lot more sense.

The juice left over from Third Impact was an Eden… and the desire for knowledge, the desire to have a self which could understand right or wrong, led to the expulsion from Eden.

I think…

“Now look up,” a familiar voice said from straight infront of me.

I turned my head, and saw the expression on my own face from a few moments ago. Or right now… or … whatever.

“So now you understand?” Kawaoru beside me asked.

“I do,” I said… then remembered myself saying the exact same words a few minutes before and shuddered as a few sanity points fluttered away on the wind “But that’s just weird,”

“Follow me,” the Kawaoru beside her directed, tugging her gently by the shoulder. I think I knew where she was going…

But didn’t we already go there? And then they’d come around and see the exact same thing, and another cycle would start over…. And… my head started to hurt.

“Okay… I understand that we’re looping around in a cycle. But how do we break the cycle?”

“A system will continue in motion unless an external force acts upon it.” he repeated something I remember him saying “By knowing it exists, we can try find a route that steps off.”

He turned left and I followed him.

“So then… why me?”

“Because I am an Angel” As if that explained everything. “Lets go back to our dimensions. Think of yourself and all the three dimensions you exist in, squished down to a point. Then, think of yourself in ten minutes time, in a different position. Another point. And the line between them would be the Fourth dimension of time. For a being that perceived time above Four dimensions, that’s what you’d look like… a long, amorphous thread, extending from when you came into existence, to when the thread is cut.”

“Timeline?” For some reason , I started to think of reality in terms of derivatives. I perceive a snapshot of the Fourth Dimension delta-t in length, then the Fourth dimension is sort of the integral of the third.

“Lifeline. Everything that you are, where and will be, simultaneously. You are birth, life and death all laid out in the one space. Everything that you are and will be.”

I looked at him fearfully,

“You can see the future,”

“Possibilities.” He said. “That change with every action or thought or decision made by the lilin. I can see you dieing. I can see you living. All along the one lifeline. Decisions made act as branches along the line, forming new lines. These tangle with the lifelines of others out there, forming the tapestry of life. The Fifth Dimension is the summation of all possible lifelines originating from the origin of the universe. The Fifth Dimension is the room of gauf, it is the one where both Angels and Lilin live.”

“But we’re three dimensional”

“Lilin perceive three dimensions but are fundamentally Fifth Dimensional creatures. The fruit of your knowledge allows you to perceive the universe in a way that causes the timeline to exist as perceived. The lilin soul is a functional part of the three dimensional reality, the perception of which gives it form.”

“Eh?”

Okay… now I was confused. The little beachball in m brain was starting to twirl.

“This restricts your immediate perceptions to a single 3 dimensional plane, but the soul… that which you are…intersects each and every possible timeline you are in. And each intersection is it’s own individual person.. some almost imperceptibly different from you and some utterly unrecognisable. The desire for individuality keeps you separate from these selves, it gives them form and shape.”

I think I got that.

“Echoes of different timelines reverberate through a soul. A person who dies in a plane crash in one line, might well have a strange fear of flying in another. A writer might call it his muse which allows him to get into the mind of a serial killer. Thoughts and ideas, half-fragments of memories and ripples of emotion bleed through and then disappear.”

I looked at him, feeling a little cold.

“And in those echoes and fragment are pieces of the previous lines of this world. Now, they are inside you.”

blackaeronaut Wrote:So essentially it's all one ginormous time loop? Ouch.

HoagieOfDoom Wrote:Needs some proofing, but other than that me likey.

Quote:“Lilin perceive three dimensions but are fundamentally Fifth Dimensional creatures. The fruit of your knowledge allows you to perceive the universe in a way that causes the timeline to exist as perceived. The lilin soul is a functional part of the three dimensional reality, the perception of which gives it form.”

Quote:Most of those in the Loop aren't aware of it.... like that TNG episode where the Enteprise kept blowing up. Or Haruhi.