I'KOSMAE: a Multiverse in the Balance. Prolog: "...some by doom", a non-binary Multiverse revealed

Prolog: Some by Dint Some by Doom

“Everything that was once directly lived has receded into a representation.” 

—Guy Debord

 Ambros Rothakis awoke, in slow stages. At first he could not move: he wondered why and what that meant.

He began to twist and turn, feeling confined. He grunted in frustration and nearly cried out in panic. Then he realized where he was, and why he was restrained.

He wriggled his left hand out of the patch pocket on his pants and pulled the velcro’d flap loose on the other side. He untied his ankles.

Then he sat up and stretched, pushing the sleeping bag down around his waist. He put his legs into full lotus and meditated for a short time, then dragged himself all the way out of the bag and began a more concentrated stretching routine.

As he finished that, he began to shake his head hard, occasionally hard enough to hurt some. He thought: ‘I keep seeing things outta the corner of my...’

Then he realized: ‘I’m still tripping a little.’

He pondered his memories of the trip: ‘Normally, I’d have at least some experience of “ego dissolution” when Shrooming.’ That puzzled him, and alarmed him somewhat: ‘Seeing things, particularly my own thought processes, without the veils of the ego...that’s a large part of the point of using this sporoid.’

He got out his little stove and heated water for tea. The distortions of his peripheral vision that seemed to almost be meaningful bothered him some, but he could ignore them..

‘But I’d best not head home until I’m all the way straight,’ he thought.

He packed everything up, strapping up his rucksack and setting the rolled tent and sleeping bag beside it.

He climbed slowly and carefully down the ladder to the mucky ground below: ‘Right. I camped at Nail and Claw, across the ‘street’ from Sparrow’s booth.’

He looked around, merely observing the things he could see. He touched his MPS and called up a virtual image of the Country Fair site in that Timeline. He pondered: ‘...Alcatraz semi-Quiet...a Skolo for promising recruits from various Timelines who want to join the Commonwealth military...and now a Diplomatic Deme outpost, too, all at the old prison at Alcatraz, hence the Line’s name...colonies of refugees and POWs in various places around the planet...’

He spoke aloud for the first time since he’d wakened: “I need to go for a hike, to walk this last bit of illusion off.”

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