Changes 3.6

Indescribable complexity. Untold potential. A sparkling spring of existence.

I lost myself for a time. Or maybe, the world lost me.

It didn't matter.

What was one world in the face of this?

There were so many worlds, far greater than anyone dared imagine. Countless Shangri-las, Edens, Everests, El Dorados. Paradises. Lost wonders, dreams made manifest, legends wrought into reality. A sea of wonders, a circle unending, a song unbroken. A self-recursive fractal of demesnes.

I knew every stone, every grain of sand, every leaf. Every whisper of wind, every clattering of rock, every clap of thunder. Every glimmering rainbow in each drop of dew.

A singularity of everything, known, unknown, and unknowable.

Unimaginable, in the universal law kind of sense.

Infinity.

I lost myself, or maybe the world lost me. It didn't matter.

-Shangri-La-

I saw the face of God, and knew it infinite.

Infinity was a pretty good poker player.

After all, they kept a straight face while mortals tried to comprehend it.

I had a royal flush, in hearts. The King stared at me, his dagger piercing his head.

There was a feeling. Like something wanted me to act. This hand was garbage anyway.

I folded, and pushed away from the table.

-Shangri-La-

A king, focused on one of many billions of precious stones in his collection. A vast cavern, walls of night sparkling in the light, cast by the fire of two entwined wyrms of gold and white. The king paid no attention to the mismatched pair, instead studying the endless facets of his collection.

The king overlooked his collection, gaining impressions of them all, but his attentions were mainly focused onto the one gem pinched between his fingers. It gleamed in the golden light, and under the magnification of his jeweler's eyepiece, he could see every feature, every flaw.

A glint of light rested on one point, reflected off the light from the gold dragon's fire. The king turned the sapphire, and the glint shifted to another microscopic facet. He looked closer, and within the glimmer, there was a scene.

Resting on the surface of the exquisite stone, amid a forest of tree-shaped stones, near a flowing river, a boy sat, slumped, on the ground. A woman, katana on her back, was shaking the boy, her cries too distant to make out for the king. Nearby, a door stood, leading nowhere. No, not nowhere… a building. Familiar.

A jolt, as the two serpents shifted, shaking the cavern in their immensity. The king almost fumbled the jewel, and when he had brought it back up, the facet had moved. The boy and woman and door were now floating in the ocean.

The boy would drown, like that. The king wanted to help, and so turned the jewel again. There, back on land.

Why did the king feel so relieved? This was but one stone of his immense collection.

If he brought it closer to the light, he would be able to see more, but something stopped him.

What was the door? Why so familiar?

He looked again, the sheen having shifted once more.

A field of bluish-purple grass, with ominous blood-red flowers as large as the figures.

The boy, lying prone, unresponsive.

The woman, frantic, shaking the child, slapping him. The katana disappeared, replaced by a holstered gun.

The king knew her.

I knew her.

-Shangri-La-

I woke up. Hannah was shaking me, shouting, but I couldn't quite pay attention to her words. She did calm down, though, after I remembered to open my eyes. I had vague impressions of a poker game, a treasure room, an endless garden. I was soaking wet, vaguely cold, distantly aware of the grass tickling my ears.

I was distracted from all of this; my jewels were all I could pay attention to at the moment.

I could tell what each one was, now. It was like they had a mental dossier attached, giving information, except the information was less words and more concepts of terrain and life and all sorts of little details, and I couldn't close them. I knew them all as if I had treasured them for years, and there were so very many of them.

In the center, this place, the place I once called the mesa world, but which had so much more than that, was so detailed it seemed to fill my vision. I could tell where we were, where other things were. On the surface, above the equator, us, surrounded by a shining point surrounded by a less bright circle.

My area was huge. I could guesstimate it was almost the size of the Rig again. Luckily, I hadn't spread my control elsewhere, not even over the door. I finally pushed it a bit aside, trying to focus in on Hannah. It was hard to focus on myself, but I sort of automatically began to sit up.

I felt really… dissociated from myself, like I wasn't really connected to my body. It reminded me of that floaty feeling I got sometimes; where, for a moment, everything would seem distant, detached; where it felt like everything I did was just something my body was doing, without conscious input. I felt like that, but even more so. Clenching my fingers showed that it wasn't delayed movement, but it was a weird sensation.

As I moved, she turned to me, hair hanging damply around her shoulders. "You're back, good. Are you okay?" I nodded a little, still distracted. "Good. Now, first off, never, ever do that without supervision. Secondly, you got lucky; I managed to grab your phone when you dumped us in the ocean, and your phone is waterproof.

"Thirdly; you and I are going to sit here, and you are going to tell me what the hell that was, because the past hour has been less of a dream and more of a nightmare."

An hour? I simultaneously felt as if it should be more and less time passed. Nevermind. I owed Hannah an explanation, and had to focus on that. I took the phone when it was offered, but a thought struck me as I reached to type. I gestured, and the water was sucked out of her clothes, then mine, and chairs rose from the ground. A part of me noted how quickly they came at my command, at least twice as fast as before.

Now dry and seated, I decided to push away the jewel. It was about then I realized something had changed.

I couldn't make it go away. Not entirely. I couldn't reject the pull from the jewels, only resist it, or let my power go away entirely. No more blind picks, but now I felt… removed from everything. Hard to focus on anything besides my power, the deeper I went. The worlds were just so interesting…

I remembered again why I was trying to reel it back. Needed to answer Hannah, needed a clear mind. I let the jewels recede out of view; my mind ceased to be distracted by information, and my focus returned as the room grew back around us.

The implications of my visions hit me again as my head cleared. I had just accidentally sort-of-comprehended infinity, and almost lost myself to it. I had just nearly killed us both, by accident, and without even realizing I was myself.

I had been gone. Out of commission, a vegetable, in an even worse way than I could have possibly thought.

I would have been comprehending infinity until I died of exposure, if not for Hannah.

I checked the time on my phone. 11:37, good. Late, but not too late.

This needed to be a group discussion.

I called Jessica, and put her on speaker once she picked up.

"Hello? Michael? What appears to be the problem?" Hannah was looking worried and confused again. I typed.

'I just had a power-related crisis.' "Oh. Phone kind of crisis, or face-to-face?" '2nd one, if you can.' "Sure. I'll head over in a bit, grab some coffee for me if you can?" I smiled. 'Sure. At Rig, Miss Militia joining us.' "I'll meet you in the lobby in thirty minutes. Get me a double expresso mocha latte, if you would. I'll go get ready now, see you in a bit, okay?" She hung up. I turned to Hannah.

'I'm so sorry, I didn't know it would be that bad.' 'That was Jessica Yamada, my therapist.' 'I really don't want,' 'to explain what just happened twice.' She nodded sympathetically, but when she spoke, her voice was quiet and forceful.

"Michael, I was worried about you. You weren't just unresponsive, you were changing the environment, and the look in your eyes… I was afraid, you understand? What you did was far from reckless, but it felt no better than that moment where you just took off after pissing off Lung."

She put a hand on my shoulder. "I just want you to know that I care about you."

I just sat there and took it. She was right on every front. Again, I had barely taken into account just how powerful I was, and how easily I could hurt or help others with it. After she finished, I typed two little words.

'I know.'

-Shangri-La-

After Jessica had received her coffee, we retired to a nearby room, and I filled it with a forest, setting up a basic campfire on the night side of the planet. It was a little distracting, having the jewels out, the information, but I needed a little distraction right now; still, I kept a tight rein on it, keeping the distraction as minimal as possible.

I had gone and fetched my costume and staff, donning the undersuit and left forearm so I could use its basic functions. I didn't bother with the mask.

I'd also grabbed chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers. Therapy food.

So, while we ate s'mores, I began to describe my powers in detail. How I always had these extra sensations, throughout the day, all the time. Hannah (she unmasked) had likened it to her weapon, its constant, reassuring presence.

'No. It's more like music, and a pull.' 'Elements make symphonies for me, and I dance along,' 'guiding them and commanding them,' 'bending them to my intentions.' 'But my worlds? They pull.' 'They invite, they entice, they draw the eye.' 'Normally, they only pull a little.' 'When I push them into reality…'

"It gets stronger, doesn't it? And when you let them pull you normally, it puts you in that state like we've been practicing the last few sessions," Hannah finished. "So tonight, you let it pull you while it was being used, because you hoped it would be helpful?"

I mean, when you say it like that…

"What happened tonight?" Jessica asked, looking to Hannah.

"Michael here was showing me some of his worlds, much like this. A few minutes into it, I got a bit emotional, and after that, he pulled out his phone. I could quote you word for word, if you'd like."

"Please."

While she did that, I made another s'more.

"…And he fell over, started seizing, and went unresponsive. The area around us started shifting, stuff growing and shifting like it was alive. Over the next hour, I kept trying to wake him, especially after the terrain stopped shifting.

"The only indicators he was alive were his breathing, heartbeat, and occasional shifts to entirely new terrain. At one point, we were dumped into an ocean, and I had to keep him afloat until the next shift. Eventually, he just came back, looking more like he was waking up from sleep than suffering from brain damage, made some chairs, then called you up."

"Well, that's quite an ordeal, and certainly makes me even more curious about what happened." She held up a hand before I could begin typing. "Hannah, I want to make a few things clear before we really begin.

"One, this is a therapy session, however impromptu. By staying, you are implicitly agreeing that Michael has a safe place here, free from judgement or ridicule, implicit or explicit.

"Two, Michael has a right to communicate. I will not interrupt him, nor cut him off, and will not tolerate you doing the same. If Michael is typing and you wish to interject, wait until he has finished and get his attention.

"Third, Michael is a member of your system, but anything said here is not under that jurisdiction. Unless anything he says leads me to believe he is a threat to himself or others, any information he shares is strictly confidential, not to be repeated outside this room without his explicit permission, even under direct orders. Anyone who punishes you for disobeying such an order may themselves be punished, thankfully. If you can't agree to those terms, I must ask you to leave."

Hannah took but a moment to decide. I typed.

'So, I said the jewels pull.' 'When I use my power, I can't really tell' 'where on a planet the area will be.' 'I figured if the normal pull showed me the worlds,' 'the stronger one would too.' They nodded. 'So I let it pull me in. What I didn't expect,' 'was for it to show me all of them at once.'

They listened, but I don't think that last sentence really hit them yet. I continued, 'I mean all of them. Infinite worlds.' There's the dawning comprehension.

I have to say, typing things out is easily the worst part of being mute. It takes way too long to describe anything, especially when it's concepts. I mean, just typing 'infinity' doesn't really capture the mind, unless you've seen the sheer depths of finite existence already.

A year ago, I had found out a fact after going to a concert, and seeing what a thousand people looked like. People are notoriously bad at comprehending scope of large numbers. A thousand people was huge; a thousand thousands was more, but it felt less more than it should. A thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand was a trillion, and at that point, it's just a word.

Infinity sounds like just another huge number like trillion, instead of so unfathomably unending that trillion was literally infinitely smaller than infinity. If they were to understand what had happened, they needed to, not comprehend it, but at least understand what it is to imagine infinity, then imagine being lost in that endless abyss of everything.

After that nightmare of description, there was the strange, dreamlike scene of a king in his treasure room, then finally the reconnection to myself. The little things I had noted, how my powers were improved, but I noted the world less, lost focus. What I had originally expected, or at least hoped for, but twisted to be simultaneously more dangerous and more enticing. After I had finished, Jessica was stoic, and Hannah looked lost in thought. Eventually, the former of my two listeners spoke up.

"I'm going to be honest, Michael. This story sounds crazy, even for a parahuman, even to me. And my job is literally to help parahumans deal with their mental health. I have to believe it; you're not someone who strikes me as being not of sound mind, not even after a story involving you playing poker with infinity."

She paused a bit, sighed. "I'm sorry, Michael; that was not something I, as your therapist, should have said." I waved it off. She was right; it sounded insane. "Thank you, but I'll still try to do better in the future. How do you feel, after all that?"

I considered it. I had been scared of so many things before, but honestly, they felt so small now. If my powers could throw anything worse my way, I'd welcome it. I understood infinity today, and my brain didn't melt to sludge. All my other problems… just seemed small. Easier to deal with.

'I feel different.' 'I'm not worried about anything right now.' I still had problems, but it was easy to let them go. For now, at least.

"And how do you feel about using your powers?"

That was harder. 'I need to be more careful with them.' 'But, I'm not as worried about them.' 'My powers are a part of me. I can accept that.'

"That's right. Your powers are here to stay, and by accepting that, you can really start to move on to a better mental state of health. I believe you've had a breakthrough tonight. You faced your fears, and when they fought back, you pushed past them, and came out of it a stronger, and hopefully happier, person. It's not an easy process, and I wouldn't have done it in a way even resembling this, but I'm proud of you."

Hannah just put an arm around my shoulder. I put another marshmallow on my skewer.

We sat around a campfire for just a bit longer, enjoying the peace.