367. Ruins of the strong, 7

(Rose)

It took much longer time than he expected, but Mushio taught us how to use the computer.

It's a device even more surreal in powers than anything I've ever read or seen.

I understood the typewriter part. Even the abacus tool that just calculates instantly.

Videos, sound and pictures that was something else.

Musics. Colours. Insights into a world now gone.

There was an encyclopaedia, and an incredibly large album of pictures, videos and musics.

We confirmed to Mushio what he couldn't believe. I don't blame him.

We came from a different time, when these machines did not exist yet. We came from a time that was almost like the middle ages or Antiquity to him.

It was strange to us as well. Our language, English, wasn't ruling over an empire anymore, for a simple start.

We saw on the computer glimpses of what we missed, but saw remnants of along our journey here and there.

We saw how these planes with wings attached to the lower part of the body, oddly, were flying.

And rockets heading into space.

The moon.

Mars.

Space.

Maps of the world with unbelievable accuracy. Universal translators.

The wonders kept coming one after another uninterrupted, as we quickly skipped over the main lines of the world's history we missed since the twentieth century.

Some wars, then the computer revolution by the next century. Rapid changes. Some other wars, then shifts in politics, centuries later.

Some wars, then the rise of a city state.

Bigger wars again, leading to the collapse of some parts of the world. A century of dark ages. And then a new renaissance begun.

And shortly after, everything ended.

The white day was not the result of human weaponry as some might have thought. The last years before the end, the times were globally peaceful it seemed.

The world population had shrunk a lot after a rapid expansion, leaving more and more empty cities over the centuries.

Following the computer revolution between the 20th and 21st centuries, the world went through its biggest changes for Bleue and I. Because we could hardly relate to such technologies invented then.

Had we woken up only a century after our time, we might have felt more estranged than we were in our today's time. At least at first. We could have learnt surely, while the countries and languages around us would have still essentially been the same.

We saw diagrams and pictures of space, and the distances between Earth and the other planets, and astral bodies.

Even only the moon, it was just insane. Mars and Venus were beyond insane.

Saturn and Neptune looked amazingly beautiful. Jupiter is gorgeous.

We saw more smaller planets we didn't know about beyond there even.

We saw the size and real nature of the milky way, and of the known universe...

It blew our mind.

We needed a break after seeing that.

Mushio was laughing happily.

I was broken. The doors were broken.

~

The universe was a concept that more or less extended itself at something like Atlas's globe for me.

Atlas carrying the sky, a sphere surrounding the Earth.

That's technically still is true, but...

That's to me how I perceived the universe; though I knew stars were distant suns. I just couldn't see it.

Now I've seen it. My head is in pain, trying to comprehend it. It really hurts.

Earth, the world, reality, is just a grain of sand on a beach. Not even a rock.

Just one grain, somewhere lost in something that is at a scale we just can't relate to.

I've seen a glimpse of the universe true size, on a computer.

My jaw had dropped.

No daiûas could ever do that in any tale.

Even the gods were lost behind, on the single grain of sand we know.

My eyes can see maybe at a hundred kilometres if it's something big on the horizon, on the good days. 400 000 km for the moon. 1.4 million kilometres for the sun.

So far away, light itself is delayed to reach us for a few minutes.

The nearest galaxy I learn is 10 million of millions of kilometres away.

Light itself becomes too slow for us, somehow.

It's beyond my understanding already.

And the finishing blow, the sights beyond this galaxy.

That there are at least millions of millions galaxies all around us...

My brain just went blank in pain.

Humanity has been able to see that far away.

It's so far beyond my sweet demons, and even beyond the old gods powers, that it's just ridiculous.

If knowledge is power, then we were as gods and even so far beyond we ridiculed even the concept of god.

It's funny to have a glimpse at the real extent of the universe, and to get lost in there, and then to return to your nature, your body, and your wide, immense yet so ridiculously small world.

~

We learnt about the existence and even subsistence of a data network for computers.

Like a radio link between every machine, creating a cobweb on which all data and information can be shared and travel.

I knew satellites were part of that network. I thought it was all gone.

Mushio said I was wrong, it still existed.

And he had an access to this digital world that overlapped our own.

Like ours though, it was now mostly a void wasteland, with occasional monsters.

Glitches and viruses of electrical nature still were running around randomly, wandering, evolving even.

More importantly however, there were still some survivors across the globe with access or maintenance power over it.

There was another world of pure information in superposition to our own we couldn't see. It was one from computers, instead of daiûas. Two different immaterial realities actually coexisted over the material one. The one of electricity in computers, and the one of T.I.

The one of T.I. directly interacts with ours, while the one of information technologies, I.T, only interacts with computers able to link with the network. Or what's left of it today at least.

There's a lot more than we thought that is left and still functioning to this day.

Though it requires good antennas to get an open link, so our computer cannot do that.

Our previous boat that had a computer built in was looking for a connection to that network I recall. Hopelessly and unsuccessfully.

Humanity has successfully created a united invisible world. I knew it would eventually go toward peaceful unity.

As we will with the other species arising. And the numerical electrical ones as well if we can invite them.

Mushio went back to the encyclopaedia saved on the computer, to show us about complex numbers, trigonometry and nuclear physics with more pictures.

At that time, Bleue looked at me intensely. It was the time for me to make a painful choice.

Remain in the world I sort of know and certainly love, or work to opening and crossing over the doors of knowledge. Going beyond, again...

I've been through so many doors of reality already, I could just be a drug addict. I wonder if I could find opium somewhere further east?

Joke aside, though a part of me is quite reluctant and scared, another recognises the situation for what it really is.

A guide djinn is there offering me his hand, to journey slowly across a swamp of difficult knowledge I would never go through on my own.

In the end, there's no end to knowledge probably, but I will see and understand reality to a different scale than I ever could on my little own. It's a scary pact, but I accept it.

I will learn about fundamental physics.

~