It's not that I think it's easy, really. [ Her nose wrinkles, like she's trying to put the right thoughts to her words. Most of the time, when she tries to explain her ideas about the Singularity, she feels like the other person never really understands her and she just ends up looking stupid. ] I think that it's easy to destroy a big fuckin' rock. They just need bombs and a way to get 'em here. I don't think that the Singularity is really the rock, if that makes sense. I think that the rock is like, the burning bush.
[ She is aware that she has to explain, and sighs, rolling her eyes. Explaining Christianity has been nothing but a burden since she got here. Telling the story of Christmas was like speaking an alien language, apparently. ]
In the religion I grew up with, we had one God, who created everythin' that exists. And our holy book was called the Bible, it was written thousands of years before I was born, and it told a bunch of different stories, basically. Y'know, like stories that explain the world, or that teach morals and lessons. One story was about a man that God chose to free His believers from slavery and lead them to a new home. When God appeared to the man, named Moses, He didn't appear as like, a person. He appeared as a burning bush, but the bush wasn't bein' consumed by the flames -- it just kept burnin'. Somethin' impossible, right? As Moses looked at the bush, the voice of God called out to him and told him what he had to do. So, see, I think that the Singularity that we see, the monolith, I think that's just a representation of what the Singularity really is. The Singularity lives on some other... plane or somethin', and it connects to this world and all the other worlds through the rock. Just like God wasn't really the bush or the flames, He just used 'em to show himself.
[ With a heavy breath, she pauses for a moment, looking deeply thoughtful. Julie came from a place where there were two dozen churches for less than a few thousand people -- she grew up extremely entrenched in the church simply because that was pretty much all there was. And while she had never been fully convinced or devoted, her parents and many members of her family had, and she has a wealth of useless, memorized knowledge that was hammered into her during childhood. But it's given her a particular perspective on the Singularity that she's not sure how many others here share. ]
It's alive, that I know for sure. Everyone who's ever gone to it agrees on that. I don't know that it's conscious, or that it thinks or feels like we do. I think that's somethin' that humans use as a guideline because we can't make our dumb little monkey brains understand the universe in any other way. It's somethin' else, somethin' completely beyond our reckonin'. And now that I've been here, I think that might've been what God really was, too. The stories in the Bible were written by man, by humans, and then translated thousands of times over thousands of years. God came to be written like a person, or maybe He always was, because that's how they were able to understand, but I don't think that God was... like us. And I don't think the Singularity is, either.
[ Letting her head fall back to look up at the dark sky, filled with stars and possibly not even real, she takes a long drag off the joint in her fingers. Holds the smoke and then lets it out slow. ]
But just because it's not human doesn't mean it can't feel. Y'know, for lack of a better word. Just like animals don't have human thoughts or wants, but they still have... instincts. Instincts is a good word for it, maybe. [ One foot, hanging over the arm of the chair, swings back and forth slowly, idly. ] And I don't know if we can actually get an answer from it, but I'm gonna go talk to it. I never went to it myself before. The group before mine did that, went to it in the real world, and everyone after came to the Horizon by touch. But from what I gather, goin' to it in here is the same, even if my body's still back in Cadens.
no subject
[ She is aware that she has to explain, and sighs, rolling her eyes. Explaining Christianity has been nothing but a burden since she got here. Telling the story of Christmas was like speaking an alien language, apparently. ]
In the religion I grew up with, we had one God, who created everythin' that exists. And our holy book was called the Bible, it was written thousands of years before I was born, and it told a bunch of different stories, basically. Y'know, like stories that explain the world, or that teach morals and lessons. One story was about a man that God chose to free His believers from slavery and lead them to a new home. When God appeared to the man, named Moses, He didn't appear as like, a person. He appeared as a burning bush, but the bush wasn't bein' consumed by the flames -- it just kept burnin'. Somethin' impossible, right? As Moses looked at the bush, the voice of God called out to him and told him what he had to do. So, see, I think that the Singularity that we see, the monolith, I think that's just a representation of what the Singularity really is. The Singularity lives on some other... plane or somethin', and it connects to this world and all the other worlds through the rock. Just like God wasn't really the bush or the flames, He just used 'em to show himself.
[ With a heavy breath, she pauses for a moment, looking deeply thoughtful. Julie came from a place where there were two dozen churches for less than a few thousand people -- she grew up extremely entrenched in the church simply because that was pretty much all there was. And while she had never been fully convinced or devoted, her parents and many members of her family had, and she has a wealth of useless, memorized knowledge that was hammered into her during childhood. But it's given her a particular perspective on the Singularity that she's not sure how many others here share. ]
It's alive, that I know for sure. Everyone who's ever gone to it agrees on that. I don't know that it's conscious, or that it thinks or feels like we do. I think that's somethin' that humans use as a guideline because we can't make our dumb little monkey brains understand the universe in any other way. It's somethin' else, somethin' completely beyond our reckonin'. And now that I've been here, I think that might've been what God really was, too. The stories in the Bible were written by man, by humans, and then translated thousands of times over thousands of years. God came to be written like a person, or maybe He always was, because that's how they were able to understand, but I don't think that God was... like us. And I don't think the Singularity is, either.
[ Letting her head fall back to look up at the dark sky, filled with stars and possibly not even real, she takes a long drag off the joint in her fingers. Holds the smoke and then lets it out slow. ]
But just because it's not human doesn't mean it can't feel. Y'know, for lack of a better word. Just like animals don't have human thoughts or wants, but they still have... instincts. Instincts is a good word for it, maybe. [ One foot, hanging over the arm of the chair, swings back and forth slowly, idly. ] And I don't know if we can actually get an answer from it, but I'm gonna go talk to it. I never went to it myself before. The group before mine did that, went to it in the real world, and everyone after came to the Horizon by touch. But from what I gather, goin' to it in here is the same, even if my body's still back in Cadens.