Contents
5.6 DARKNESS
Overview
After the Stranger is taken by related constructs, the Mind turns to what it left behind: a tendril leading to a crystal harboring unexpectedly swift thoughts. The Mind recovers the tendril, brings it home, and summons its Otherlikes, signaling a pivotal shift toward understanding this confined intelligence.
Summary
After constructs akin in make to the Stranger arrive and bear the Stranger into the sky, the Mind is left disoriented, sensing the loss without fully grasping its implications. The Mind’s flying bodies return with resources and perspective, refocusing it on what remains: a slow-moving object the Stranger had tracked and the long tendril the Stranger chewed into.
The Mind investigates the tendril, finding familiar substances arranged in unfamiliar ways. Within this elongated prison, the Mind senses thoughts that should be dull but instead race, suggesting an intelligence or accelerated cognition confined within the structure.
Tracing the tendril to its source, the Mind retrieves it and carries it home for deeper study. The Mind alerts its Otherlikes to the discovery in the desert. Narrowing its thoughts, the Mind explores the interior of a crystal linked to the tendril, recognizing the beginning of a transformative era, though, as it notes, its ages always start in darkness.
Who Appears
- The MindNarrator; investigates the tendril, detects swift thoughts in a crystal, retrieves it, and alerts Otherlikes.
- The StrangerPreviously tracked the slow thing and chewed the tendril; taken into the sky by related constructs.
- ConstructsEntities similar in make to the Stranger that arrive and carry the Stranger away.
- OtherlikesOther selves of the Mind; summoned to attend to the desert discovery.