Topic: The Deification Function: Transformation

Finn · Date: 2011-05-04 10:43 EST

By the time they get back to the theater Avy has to guide him along - he's waited too long, and the Burning is in its final stages. It's all he can do to keep the light inside contained - once it breaks free there is little more he can do but wait for the process to complete, and to do so in open sight is a taboo that only one immortal being has broken.

It's not as bad as it sounds. As it begins, the transformation is...uncomfortable, in an abstract way. The body feels the pain, but for the essence inside, the sensation is gloriously joyous.

He barely registers the transition from outside to inside, vaguely discerns being guided by her firm strong hands into the shower. He had always been the protector, the guardian, the 'insurance policy' of mankind, as she'd once teasingly said. Strength and power have always his to wield. She has been the nurturer, the mother, the lover throughout the ages.

Memories that have been vague recollections until now flood in on him, and among them is her face. Not the one she wears now, nor the one she was wearing until just days ago, but her Face, her true visage. As the water cascades over him steam rises over his vision, then clears again for a single moment to find her standing near, watching.

Their eyes meet, a smile touches his lips, and those words fall from his lips, not in the Irish lilt over gravel that had been his voice for centuries, but rather with golden, thunderous music.

"I love you, my White Lady..."

It's the final realization this shell will experience. An instant later the form of Finnegan Seamus O'Connor begins to glow from within and is consumed by a fiercely burning flare of light too bright for any mortal to lay eyes on.

Finn · Date: 2011-05-04 17:20 EST

There are several immutable laws of existence that nothing is able to completely defy, from the smallest elementary particles to the entirety of the universe.

1. Everything changes, from the time of its creation to its final end.

2. All bodies begin existence in a mortal form. Once this form expires, the energy contained within it is removed and recycled to be used elsewhere. Any experiences and memories are erased in this process.

3. A given body, from creation to its end, holds a finite amount of energy. Under normal circumstances, there are built-in universal limitations to how much energy a given body can contain and govern without destroying itself. This system of constraints can best be explained by mortal concepts such as mathematics, science, and physics, in which constants such as formulae, theories and laws are constructed to explain the forces which govern the known universe.

4. The Deification Function, which only a mind that has evolved beyond mortal constraints into higher orders of thought can comprehend to the degree necessary to manipulate it, which explains that the linear concepts governing the forces of the universe are not constants, but rather relative in nature. This law is subject to the preceding three in that it may alter but not completely disobey them.

(It is important to note here that one may read the preceding statement and still not understand the Function to a degree sufficient to manipulate it, as this is an explanation in the simplest terms that can be managed. The Function has consequences that expand beyond the capacity of a being to comprehend in a mortal form - thus a mortal may have the Function completely written out in front of them (were such a thing possible) and still not be able to use it effectively.)

- from The Journals of Prometheus

From here, he can see it all.

This place is nowhere, void, the flip side of the veil, call it what you wish. A day here encompasses perhaps a couple dozen seconds in the dimension that mortal bodies govern. But from here, he can see it all, the everlasting web of life and events that have led to this moment from one side, and looking to the other the infinity that is the future with its myriad of branches leading ever on.

As always he feels it first - that temptation to remain here, a siren call of the universe - to give in, to let the process continue as it should according to the laws laid out.

A leftover remnant of the cycle that every being must obey eventually, just like every other law. No matter how powerful a being, no matter how many iterations of the equation they experience, every being changes. The cycle continues.

The universe wastes nothing, in the end - the final law of existence.

As always, two things pull him from that call, a last immutable part of his own equation, left over from his first iteration as a mortal. There is no way of reckoning the period in which that happened, save only to say that it came before.

He feels the pull and pulse of life in the place where part of his essence exists, blazing blindingly white-hot to look at (and yet not generating any heat), waiting to reform, the formula merely awaiting his input into the equation.

More than that, he feels her, the one who has, in the end, made this life so much more tolerable. Without her, with only those of mortal bearing to look after, he might eventually, in the fullness of time, elect to allow that final iteration, to return to the Prime Equation and be dispersed.

But for her.

Down through the ages, the lover, the heartbreaker, the friend, the wife, the plaything, the fighter, the nemesis, all of this and more they had been to each other. But ultimately in her nature she would be the Mother, and he would be the Father for all time.

And so it is that he turns away from that final temptation, and setting memories aside, he begins to work.

Finn · Date: 2011-05-25 18:20 EST

As always it fascinates him, this process. He feels a part of himself, the fraction of his essence he'd sent to help the one that thinks of himself as the Playboy, in his quest to save...her.

His own creation. He'd purposely forgotten, along with so many other things.

The time has come for things to change. For too long he has moved through the shadows of the world, keeping himself hidden, iteration after iteration, and yet ever the hero, ever the protector, the guiding force, the champion of man.

He is content with that role, but the time has come for certain memories, certain things to take their rightful place once more. Before anything, before he had been the champion, he had been the teacher, the one that offered the secrets of the gods to man, so that they might rise above their station and take their place among the stars.

The glory days, the golden days.

He is one being, but as ever determined. There is only so much he can do.

But then, he's always been the one to influence in the small ways, the little things. Pulling a cat from a tree here, putting out a fire there. Occasionally there were times he created his own myths, but always they remained small...localized. Folklore told to children in isolated places that might become known, but never widespread.

Bringing his attention back to the abstract, glyph-like figure before him, the sparkling, pulsating equation before him that is the shell he has inhabited for centuries, whose time and energy has been spent. It was a good shell, one of his finest, strong, capable, and yet with its own humanity in the imperfections.

With a small tinge of sadness, he at last lets it go, watching as the energy of its form disperses, to be recycled, used elsewhere.

Nothing wasted.

Carefully he begins again. A taller base, this time, to match and perhaps just a slight bit overbear his Willow. Power, speed, strength and toughness built in, the qualities that give him the ability to watch over and protect as always he has, since before time could be measured. Next the equation is fortified, the shell strengthened to hold an essence far more powerful than any mortal being is meant to contain.

This one, too, will expire, in time. But it will hold what he wants to remain once the process is complete for many centuries to come.

Youthful features, with hints of the shell that came before, little things that add a familiarity of face and stature, perfections and imperfections to blend in with man, to keep himself a face among the crowd, no better or worse than any of man's number.

He becomes immersed in the equation now, his figurative self leaping amidst sparking connections and esoteric functions, muting the immutable, adding little things here and there, challenges to overcome, flaws, strengths, movements, and last but not least.

Memory.

It's the final piece, the catalyst, the spark that brings life to the shell. And this time, there must be more than ever there has been before, lifetime upon lifetime of one love, one lost and found over and over again, no matter how they changed. Never could one escape the other - they were, no matter the lives they chose, a pair ever drawn to the other, as inexorable as gravity, as irresistible as death, as eternal as light.

And finally, one more piece, a purpose, a return to a much older iteration, a life that had been long and difficult, but not without its rewards.

Finally, it's finished. There won't be much longer to wait, now - only as long as the 'download' of his essence into this newer, stronger shell with new life suffusing it will take.