Fractured Infinities

Narrativium

       

No.  Tilt isn't the right word.  Convulse maybe, or writhe, but not tilt.

It's not just the world, either.  The space between the universes is ringing like a wet glass, vibrating at a pitch too high for any mortal ears to detect.  For a brief, disorienting moment, I can't feel the myriad fragments of myself in far-flung universes; it's as though they've been severed from me with a razor-sharp knife.

The pain is immediate and overpowering.

A hundred thousand qualia streak through my mind, ricocheting off the ends of the broken neural pathways and careening back on themselves to create an insane amalgamation of sensation.  I call it pain, but really it's chaos too complex for me to make any sense of.  I'm bombarded with a million distorted impressions of everything from searing heat to crushing despair, none of which belong in my neural net.  The waves clash and combine and separate as each shattered connection searches desperately for what it just lost.

Is this what mortals feel like when they lose a limb?  Phantom pain, illusory sensations blended with the real ones until there's no way to tell what's true and what's false?  If so, I am devoutly glad that I'm not mortal.

The multiverse ripples again, then flips inside out – or at least it feels that way.  Gravity inverts, sending the multiverse sea into a froth, and I'm trapped in the middle like a bug between two panes of glass.  Pressure surges and soars, and I lose yet more parts of myself.

I scream.

* * *

Imagine a world without any stories.

No, really.  Take a moment and try it.

It's hard, isn't it?  Mortals are shaped by stories, and use those stories in turn to shape their world.  Life without stories is like air without oxygen – practically inconceivable except in the most technical terms.  It's easier to explain what the color red looks like than to fully comprehend a world where the most basic tales do not exist – no origin stories, no creation stories, no fairy tales or nursery tales or folktales.  In a very real sense, there would be no culture at all in such a world.

Even the most basic warnings are conveyed in stories, for children listen to stories when they won't listen to anything else.  Every sapient race throughout the multiverse has its own version of the boogeyman, whether it's a giant wolf in the forest, an invisible being that lives underground, or a fiery creature in the sky.  Some are very real.  Others are only real in the imagination, but that's plenty real enough.  Does it matter whether the great sky-creature will actually eat you if you misbehave, so long as you believe that it will?   Either way, you're likely to change your behavior.

Of course, children are far more observant than most adults give them credit for.  The first time they misbehave and are not stolen away by the gremlins, adults had better be ready to explain why.  This doesn't mean the stories are ineffective, but it does mean that adults need a constant flow of them.

But what if you think it's cruel to terrify children into behaving properly?  Maybe you think there should be a better way to teach younglings the mores of their society, whether that's 'respect the elders' or 'don't poke the power crystal that controls the ship.'  As anyone who has tried to reason with a five-year-old knows, logic is not the answer; if you subscribe to this belief, there are parents around the world who would love to know your secret.  But that's beside the point.  Maybe you don't have a better option right now, but you still think deliberately scaring children is immoral.

You're almost certainly right.  But that's not what's going on.

See, stories don't teach people that there are monsters out there.  Children already know that, and they don't need a tale to reinforce that knowledge.  But that's not the point of stories.  Stories teach people that the monsters can be killed.