Introductory Labyrinthology, Lei Zhihao (E-162)

To understand the High Tiers, you have to understand the nature of the Heavens. Many scholars have laboured on the nature of the Heavens and Earth knowing of Earth, but once they had the existence of the Heavens at hand, many theories withered on the vine, and new ones blossomed. Many of those have already rotted on the ground, but that has not daunted the scholars, both in the Labyrinth and outside.

For many decades, the prevailing theory was of the Tower of the Heavens. The designation of zones, in tiers of increasing numbers, suggested a great house, of many rooms and many floors. One could enter from the Five Great Gilded Gates around the Tower, and attempt to climb the stairs.

Once the existence of many Divergences became known, the metaphor of the Tower became slowly obsolete. Some have clung to the idea of the Tower of Heavens because it has always offered the idea of the Throne of the Celestial Emperor. For, atop the Tower, must, of course, be the most important Room of all, and those who would climb that far would obtain the audience of the Celestial Emperor himself, and be granted illumination.

But the existence of the True History, and its Divergences, has been fertile soil and brought stronger ideas to life.

Consider the Fruit of Existence.

Imagine a great and grand sphere, the rind of Existence. Inside lies the immutable, powerful, unique presence of the Earth and its True History. Inside lies every man, woman, child, that has ever lived, or, depending on one’s perspective, will ever live. All of the Existence wrapped in a protective shell.

And then, there are pinpricks in the skin of the Fruit. Small openings, through which the juice of the Fruit comes out, in a large spray of droplets.

It has long been known, by counters and mappers, that each successive tier holds a bit more zones than the tier below. The connection between each zone may be arcanely distributed, but once you simply count the number of zones, it becomes inevitable to see that there are more at each tier, as it should as the distance from the sphere increases.

Thus comes out the metaphor of the fruit. Each Divergence sprays its meaning, in an expanding cone and parabolas falling back. The higher from the Fruit, the more room there is to expand.

Another fact that has made the idea of the Fruit wildly spread among the many scholars of Labyrinthology is that it has always been evident that, the further away from the origin of the Divergence one goes, the more the zone can differ from commonplace Earth. Strange creatures appear first, but then the skies change, the nature of geography change, and what should not exist becomes reality. Each zone is a droplet that carries meaning from the Fruit of Existence, and that meaning becomes more and more tenuous the further it travels.

This, of course, is a metaphor, intended for our human minds to make sense of the reality of the Labyrinth, and the Borderlands, the areas that surround each zone protected under its own surface tension, as reality breaks down slowly until there is little but the grey and unformed in the far distances. Each zone is a droplet of meaning, of History, not of matter.

Where does the Fruit and the Juice lead the scholar? Philosophers of the later Divergences have nourished the ideas, sometimes borrowing from the apparent reality of the Earth itself.

For some, the spray must end. At one level, the zones must start to starve of meaning, and the progression of the tiers end in a parched desert of existence.

For some, the uniqueness of the Fruit is not assured. After all, the skies above are replete with worlds that are similar to Earth, yet different. For those, there must be other Fruits, with their own unique, and distinct Existence, their sprays of a different meaning. And, at one point, our expanding sphere of tiers should touch theirs, in the same ways that various sprays interact more and more as the tiers increase. Instead of meeting Divergences, one should meet Strangeness.

Of course, you still find other, less accepted, ideas. For some, the sphere is inverted. Outside lies the real, and we are inside. The increasing number of zones at each tier is a symptom of increasing density as the droplets fall toward the centre. At one point, they insist, the tiers should commingle, and mix, the zones will become larger and denser, until, at the middle, sits the Last Zone, the highest of the tiers. Those scholars, one thinks, yearn for the simpler times of the Tower of the Heavens, and the promised reward at its top.

The latter traditions of philosophical discourse, the natural philosophy, teach us that the world itself must be the ultimate arbiter of philosophy. That the world itself infirm or confirms our philosophy. And thus, the great explorers are sought and should be treasured, for it is them who can bring back word of the High Tiers, and how the nature of these change, in accord or discord with the various theories.

Alas, for this humble scholar, this will surely wait. The first wave of the great explorers are too few and they are also starting to see the limits that (text censored for the Lower Tiers editions – refer to the original in Nexus libraries).

Thus, the next generation of the great explorers must be cultivated and carefully guided, so they do not make the errors of their predecessors who had no one to teach them of the many traps of the Labyrinth. And it is a great honour for many scholars to bring to them the accumulated wisdom of the centuries.

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Exercise 1: Address the problem of the unopened Gates and empty areas using the illusion of linear time implicit in the existence of True History. You may also use philosophical texts from post-1890 Divergences on the nature of a local time and the inherent possibilities of a mis-ordered causality if necessary.