TINC-erbell
Usenet was a massive network where students across the globe, accessing from their college accounts, could log onto discussion groups known as newsgroups, each centered around a specific topic. And the topics could get pretty specific. There were seven or eight primary hierarchies which split off into sub hierarchies, and each of those split off into sub-sub hierarchies, and detail could get more and more granular from there, and like-minded people could find each other and revel in their common interests fairly easily. Monitoring it all (or most) was a group of system operative administrators known as the Cabal, who had technically officially disbanded and staunchly denied their own existence whenever the subject was brought up. There Is No Cabal, they said. It was a joke, a catch-22: by denying its existence, they avowed knowledge of it. It was the closest thing anybody came to taking themselves seriously.
And there was a Cabal. Not Usenet's Backbone Cabal, pertinent as that was, but the Kabbalah Cabal, the inner echelons of Jewish mystics, a few key members of which Moone had managed to track down via Usenet newsgroups. The terrible Pogroms throughout European history, massacring the Jews and chasing them away into ghettos, had only allowed intergroup unification to grow, had allowed sectors of the Cabal to get close and band together and rediscover the old ways. The Golem of Prague was a perfect example of this and how this functioned in society: from what he had seen, Moone was pretty sure this story was non-fiction, though maybe the chatter he had witnessed regarding the story was only referencing it symbolically; Moone didn't know.
It was a trend throughout history, though, and that trend was itself the history of magic and the occult.Like-minded people getting together, by force or by technology-facilitated choice, they could create their own worlds. And use them either to fly. Or to drown.
pontifex on the golem of prague
"What is the truth of the golem of prague?"
Pontifex smiled a thin-lipped smile, a blissful content twinkle in his countenance. "I believe it's true. Me, personally, I believe."
Moone wiped away something from his brow with a stroke of his thumb. "But you don't know? Is it, some, matter of historical conjecture, or...?"
"It's a matter of faith."
This was not, of course, the clear-cut answer that Moone hoped to receive regarding the matter, but it was at least clear-cut in telling him a thing or two about the way Pontifex saw the world. This was not going to be some story where a stuffy uptight gentleman was persuaded to see magic in the world again by a bright young waif entering his life and leaving just as unexpectedly as they came. There was magic in the world, and magic was the problem.
moone on time travel
"You're thinking two-dimensionally, now. Or, three-dimensionally. Or whatever. When time is four dimensions."
And so Moone attempted to explain time travel to him. "Let's say you have a bowling ball. Not a bowling ball. A billiard ball. That billiard ball gets launched by a future version of itself, through a wormhole. Now, if you take this piece of paper, and fold it, it can fit a billiard ball through. Alright? Only its being stricken by itself can either force it into the past in the first place, or sorry the future I mean, it goes into the future which is by this point the past, so no I was right the first time, it goes into the past and causes a loop! Because it struck itself into there!
"Or, it could do that or, or, it could rather, strike itself back into the past! It was the one that caused the time travel in the first place.
"Actually, come to think of it, it could be a bowling ball. The pins represent, butterflies and stuff. Yes, I think a bowling ball is better. Better than a billiard ball."
The Pontifex, who had managed to understand every word of Moone's rambling incoherent mess of an explanation, stood transfixed.
Except for one thing. "You said past twice."
"Did I? The future, I mean. Dammit. It comes from the future and strikes its present self into the past. Which was the past, that allowed the future to come through."
"No, I got all that, I mean, you, you said it could strike itself into the past, or it could strike itself into the past? It could do one thing, or it could do that same one thing, that part didn't make sense."
"Um, yes, it could prevent itself from doing that, is the third alternative. Second. Second alternative. And you just have, two bowling balls, or billiard balls, or one of each, sure, one of each, just, existing, in the same time, at the same time, one of them having come out of a future that it prevented itself from having, and keeping the second copy there still in the subjective present, because it knocked itself out of the way of the time vortex it would have otherwise entered.
"And it's like, what? Paradox!
"So yes it's really very simple."
Pontifex nodded, thoughtfully frowning. "How would there be one of each? There are two bowling balls, but one of them is a billiard ball?"
"No. It's a metaph-... I misspoke, you're right, there's no way that's possible."
"Or maybe," said the Pontifex, working out the physics of the energy requirements of time travel, "the bowling ball gets bigger. It starts out as a billiard ball, but goes into the past which is smaller, where it is by this point a bowling ball, colliding with the smaller, still billiard-sized version of itself. The further into the past you go, the more effect you have on the present, because more causality is allowed to play out. Or is the future version the billiard ball, attempting to strike a bowling ball but needing great force to change the inertia? And the further into the past you go, the less likely you are to change the future, not more, because the timeline smooths itself out."
"...Maybe..."
"That's two models there. Assuming that the time loop does cause itself to happen. Which it doesn't need to; there's no paradox there at all. It doesn't matter that the bowling ball comes out of nowhere, because that's already in the past, and part of the timeline, regardless of whether it would cause itself to do that or not. It doesn't need to cause itself to go into the past, because it was already there."
"But it would need to cause..."
"No, now you're the one thinking two-dimensionally. If it already happened, it doesn't need to cause itself in the future, because the cause already exists in the past in the form of the effect."
"I... it's... urgh..."
It was Pontifex who lectured Moone on the subject of time travel from this point out.
pontifex on truth
"Everyone religion has truth, but that doesn't mean the need to syncretize them all into one. We take out of each religion the truth that it has, but keep it in context as part of its overall belief system, not mash it together with unrelated beliefs, or conflate two superficially similar beliefs that hold completely different roles in their respective religions."
"So you're saying believe everything." It made sense. In a world where magic was apparently shaped by what people saw into it and believed about it, that would in a sense make all myths true and equally valid.
"Not. at. all," said Pontifex pointedly. "The mechanism of the universe is Truth, and not Error. That's precisely why we need to hold on to what we do believe, but take Truth from where we find it. To believe everything is to throw Truth by the wayside, to live in Error. To take all Truth as it is, as it is wherever we find it, is to hold it as the highest standard. Which it is."
Moone was confused, somewhat, by this line of thinking, wasn't sure if he himself believed it, but certainly believed that Pontifex certainly believed it. As for his own opinions on the matter. The whole line of thinking was fraught with problems. Where would the objective view of truth come from, that the Pontifex'd recognize it when he saw it? Things that make sense aren't necessarily true; if that were the case, nobody would be wrong. Right?
"The Buddhist Eightfold path, a tenant of a religion I do not adhere to, is a perfect way of gauging other religion's holds on Truth. Right Understanding, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Effort, Right Livelihood, Right Mindfulness, Right samadhi, or, Unification. Satanists have right intention, but wrong understanding. Agnostics have right mindfulness, right intention, but wrong unification. It's easy. And kind of fun...! Make a game of who's right about what."
"Buddhists are right about everything?"
"..."
man pontifex is a major hippie pt 1
"The air, the sky, the power of prayer. Your frequency of being, and my frequency of being. Align the frequencies, and miracles are possible."
Miracles? You're literally a magical wizard werewolf chaplain, what does miracle mean to you. Moone thought, but didn't say it aloud. The existence of magic kind of puts the existence of miracles in a weird negative zone. Was it magic that just, didn't adhere to other magics?
Why was it so difficult to speak up around the Pontifex? It wouldn't have required that much more effort to flap his meat hole in the shapes of the neurons he thought, but he didn't expend that effort, didn't even try. Why not. Because his ideas were so spacy and out-there that there would be no place to even start if Moone were to disabuse him of any of his notions?
Or was it because he suspected that the Pontifex was right, and the problem was in Moone's own way of thinking?
man pontifex is a major hippie pt 2
"We were communists, setting up a system that all could benefit from equally, because we were godless, and believed in the forces of evolution. You were a Christian nation, believing that God created everybody, so you set up a system where everyone struggled to survive, and only the best could prosper, crushing all else under their feet.
"But in the end, our society gets swept by the wayside, and yours lives on. It looks like God really was on your side, eh?"
Moone grew distinctly uncomfortable by this line of thinking. A lot of the Pontifex made him uncomfortable. The way he spoke, like he knew all Moone's secrets. The way his eyes always seemed to shift around, though whenever Moone tried to catch them at it, it was more a sort of dance than anything suspicious. His melancholy moods, volatile attitude, the hungry look on his face when they discussed Moone's bane. The man didn't even tuck in his shirt.
"Yeah, but capitalism invented like cheeseburgers and stuff. Did a communist ever invent a cheeseburger? Have you ever had a cheeseburger?"
Pontifex said nothing; he never had had a cheeseburger before. And I almost wasn't going to bring that up, because that reason would make it seem like it's setting up for a running gag or a later payoff where he gets his hands on a cheeseburger and enjoys it or doesn't or whatever, when in reality this is going to be the last you're going to hear of that.
man pontifex is a major hippie pt 3
"It's working. love is solving everything. it's not through hate that we can heal."
Moone pondered this. "Then why don't you love me?"
The Pontifex, surprisingly, did not waste any time in formulating an answer. "Because I hate myself. And am incapable of loving you. Being whole enough to love you."
And it was Moone's turn in coming up with an answer to that one. An answer he already had, inside his soul. "So what if I love you first?"
Smell of boggy hurricane water. Fetid. Smelling of dead things.
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