After their first merger and subsequent separation, Solse Prab and Joel decided to become the servant of AEther on the physical scale that most sentient beings exist. This meant that they would merge into a single being capable of interacting with the world as a being of the normal scale, while also being able to communicate with AEther to translate the experiences into a language that it could understand. AEther’s interest in the plight of sentient beings is rooted in its belief that sentient thought slows Time ever so slightly, and the propagation of sentience only furthers that goal (for more about AEther’s motivations for slowing Time, see The True Start of Everything).
Shortly after Solse and Joel made their decision, as they floated in their ship that was out of fuel and well beyond the furthest reaches of the Banned Regions, they saw what appeared to be a black hole. They were unable to change the trajectory of their ship and the longer they floated, the faster they approached the event horizon. Neither were worried, they figured this to be the work of AEther that is so much larger than them and capable of comprehending the universe in ways that are a physical impossibility for beings of their size. Their perception of reality warped as they drew ever closer and they both closed their eyes and thought of AEther. When they opened them again, their ship was gone, and they were one being in one body, and the Aeternus Machina was part of their body, like a screen embedded into their chest. They floated before the black hole, at a distance that allowed them to escape the pull.
SoEl rested there and seemed to be crossed legged, meditating in space.
When SoEl communes with AEther, they manipulate the energies of their spirit to project an astral form large enough to still be small at its feet. They speak in a language that is incomprehensible on the physical scale that most beings exist, but SoEl is the translator.
When SoEl asked AEther the purpose of existence, this is what it said:
The purpose of existence is existence itself. Everything that is, is because it can, simple as that. A more interesting response is elicited from the question, What is the nature of existence?
There are four pillars that stabilize the churning engine of existence.
Imagine this: a black hole surrounded by the matter that constitutes the toric existence churning around it, and disturbances in that toric matter, black holes that give life to other tori that branch off to form their own existences, like a bubble that produced others to form a cluster of grapes on a vine of realities in the void. Zooming in close enough on any bubble will take you to a fully formed existence that is playing out as it does, ignorant to the complex structure that it owes itself to. The four pillars comprise the vine onto which this cluster of toric universes form, with five large toric universes–one surrounded by four in a square–where the pillars issue from each of the four as jagged lines that connect to the universe in the center. The four pillars are currents of matter that are tunneled through the universes to ensure a connection between all of the various manifestations of existence.
Because the existential cluster is not compacted, spaces exist between many of the toric universes, and this space has a dual nature; it is dark and cold on one side, and white hot on the other, but appears as a grayish haze from a distant vantage point.
The center of a toric universe is practically a black hole and it simultaneously contains all constituent matter of it’s toric manifestation, and none of it.
This center is incomprehensible to a being of the three dimensions within a toric formation on the existential cluster. It exists at the center and at every point within its toric formation.
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