BREAKER OF INFINITIES 4-143
Prim, after some time, began to grow tired of the road.
She had become accustomed to it, in the way that the shapes of her body fit its grooves and whorls in a kind of tired obedience. Her feet were hardened and calloused from years of walking. Since leaving her father’s house, she had done nothing but walk. Even though prim was very small and white, and had very small hands, she was not like the soft and tender-footed maidens with full stomachs that populated the crepuscular palaces of the outer realms at that time. She was wiry and dust-blown, and bent constantly towards the horizon.
On her travels, Prim had met many sages, warriors, and poets. She had traveled through many realms, and trod across the soil of many lands. Through it all she had summered with princes, taken refuge at countless hermitages, and even lived as an errant musician for a while, sleeping tucked into an attic in a many hued city, shored up with the intoxication of youth and the faint warmth of drifting and forgotten friendships.
And yet, all that was behind her. The road always pulled her back, making rapid past tense of everything, gobbling it up like a starving stray, and she was sick of seeing it. Her heart was glad to be free of the iron cage of her childhood, and yet it longed for a resting place, a nook in which to nestle until the soreness could drain from her body.
She began, then, to wonder where the road ended.
– Prim Masters the Road
So far, no demiurge managed to break Allison. Some tried and failed. But now, Allison is at her weakest.
She was defeated physically by Jagganoth. And mentally-speaking, she is at her lowest. She lost Cio, she has no idea what have become of her remaining friends, she just got blasted with the shape of the universe, and the only being she can talk to is Jadis, who is a self-proclaimed omniscient being (for good reasons). She is isolated, diminished, and in the hands of someone who can manipulate her easily (be it by malicious intent or because of “destiny”).
Jadis has the means and the opportunity to completely break mentally Allison, and to make her do whatever she wants.
Now you understand why I hate Jadis and this arc. All of It just makes me feel like Jadis keep manipulating and gaslighting Allison, mostly because I strongly suspect that she, willingly or not, pushes false – or flawed – interpretation of truth, and Allison’s trial is to break free of it. Y’nkow, book’s title being ‘Breaker of Infinities’ and all of that.
Well I’M enjoying this immensely, and I’m thoroughly on Team Jadis here. You’ve never made a decision, you’ve never had a “feeling,” you aren’t a “person,” you’re a meat machine that operates according to your biological programming and nothing else. There’s no soul, consciousness is a mistake of evolution and one that will correct itself sooner rather than later. You’ll watch your children be born into the same chains you were, if you’re the type of excrement-souled narcissistic sadist cruel enough to drag a new life screaming into existence on a famine-bound world.
Look around you, it’s already in its final stages. Maybe you’re the type who’ll abandon your revolting, trite optimism once societal entropy finally touches the capsule you’ve ensconsed yourself in. The death camps that are very assuredly coming will always need commandants, after all. You hate Jadis? You hate that she’s correct. I suspect the author does too, Allison has always felt like a desperate, desperate authorial attempt to refute the unspeakably ugly truths of the world, truths that he’s embodying with other characters he knows are the correct ones.
Love,
Chronically Unhappy Pete
P.S.- If anyone is of a mind to do so after reading this please crush my stinking, sepsis-riddled body with a great big hammer and free me from this wretched flesh prison, I will pay you for your service in money dollars
That’s hilarious.
Like you, I don’t get why everyone is mixing determinism with hopelessness and evil. It could well be that it all ends up idyllic–you don’t need to have a lack of physical boundaries or unlimited personal power for that to happen. Awareness of a mechanistic universe is not the same as despair or even unhappiness.
Edgy
It’ll work out to your satisfaction. No matter how you interpret them, Jadis’ truths are beside the point because they cannot be the focus of a satisfactory human narrative.
What is ajash?
“A fraud huh? Ok, howsabout you take a peek” aaaaaaaa “Yeah that’s what I thought. Shut up.”
Haha, it DOES rather amount to that… Allison needs to shut up more often, that’s for sure.
An interesting tale told thus far. I await what the future holds. Cynicism is terribly boring.
Cynicism implies she’s choosing to be cynical, she isn’t. You can’t be a cynic when the quantum superposition of every molecule that has, does, or will ever exist has been indelibly etched upon your brain with a radio knife. When the superstructure in which the material universe is embedded gets shoved into your head things like “personality traits” kind of get squashed out the other ear. She’s incapable of cynicism.
She’s incapable of much of anything, really.
You misunderstand. I was simply stating that I’m tired of cynical works in general. That was not a reflection on this story or the characters.
“Cynicism is terribly boring.”
Amazing. In four words you have completely summed up all of my issues with this arc. Cynicism is terribly boring.
A bad story can be a hilarious diversion. A great story can be life-changing. But a boring story? A story that no one feels any attachment to? A story where no one in the audience even bothers with a response?
Throw it in the trash with the others, it’s not even worth the effort of mocking.
i Actually agree with most of your points, but the fact that this arc may be boring doesn’t mean that the whole story is now boring-everything until now has been at the very least good, if not great, and this this arc being a bit boring doesn’t ruin that. and beside’s, who knows-maybe jadis is wrong, and even if she isent, maybe alison can defy fate and make her own path. who knows. i might be a fool for staying optimistic, but abbadon is a good writer, and i believe in him.
Look the cosmos is infinite timeless and full of things that can twist the mind of even the strongest.
But, you got toast and eggs.
It will be fine.
It’s not like this isn’t shit that most of us think about every day before bed anyway.
I’m not buying it chief. Nihilist fish lady is trying to keep Alison trapped in her bubble.
That’s one way to get someone to do your bidding. Convince them that your bidding is the only bidding there is.
Very good and informative article. Please continue to maintain it. I will follow you
-slaps comic- you can fit so many mental break downs in this baby
Where there is nothing, the opportunities to make something are endless.
When one looks for Destiny one will naturally see nothing. Search all possible realities for Fate and you will never find it. The eternal, terrible truth of existence is Choice.
A Choice that is Predetermined is still a Choice. If anything, it gives more weight to the Choice, for the simple fact that the only way you could have made the Choice you were inevitably going to make is by being you. All the little things about you build up and combine together. All your experiences, all those little manipulations and pieces of advice, how they influence you. They were also the results of someone’s Choice. And this all builds up to your own Choice. Fate and Destiny do not make Free Will any less Free, I find. It just means your Free Will and Choices simply become a part of Destiny.
Or in simpler terms- Choice is the Cause, and Destiny the Effect.
“Choice”
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
To be fair, I was struggling through my night meds making me very, very sleepy at the time, so I was not exactly explaining it well.
Jadis is attempting to break Alison. Even if she is offering truth, it is an attempt to break the bearer. She seeks to take away the only true path to change- hope. Without hope, there is no fight. Without hope, there is no point. Jadis seeks to dowse the flame of hope with cold, rushing, truth.
But it’s a lie. It’s all a lie. Mark my words. Everything that has happened also works if Jadis sees only her own future, as little as a few seconds into the future, or even if she simply has intelligence vast enough to guess the future more often than not.
Time will tell if Alison can break the chains of truth.
Is it just me or are all of the demiurges seeking some kind of equal?
Mottom wanted to name Allison as her “heir”
Mammon welcomes those who arrive in his vault as long as they are polite
Incubus partners with Jagganoth because the other demiurges don’t respect him
Gog-Agog just wants to be recognized as the force they are
Solomon held a tournament to see who could defeat him (more to prove he has no equal but close enough thematically in my book)
Even Jagganoth acknowledges a worthy combatant
And now Jadis shows Allison the full, horrifying scope of the multiverse, something only one other person has ever survived… so they can chat about it over brunch.
Seems like it’s lonely at the top and
All the demiurges have attempted to place Alison in a box of their own making. Heir, Apprentice, tackle dummy, worm food…
Jadis wants Alison to hold her own view that there is no worth of attempting to change the wheel
I saw nothing and it was scary as empty canvas and beautiful as another step
I have several questions
Every few thousand years or so, the Peace of the Wheel is shattered brilliantly enough to be seen even in the deepest recesses of the Void. That light has since dimmed, but such things usually come in bursts. I will not miss the next.
Oh phooey, she’s just having an existential crisis. She’s had… three of those since all of her friends died.
I was hoping for a Zaphod Beeblebrox moment; she’s just some gal, y’know?
This is a sensible reaction. Most of us have a chance of experiencing that in little bits across the years, and think on it at our own pace.
Allison, in the usual fashion, has been thrust into the deep end with no parachutes, safety belts or kiddie floats. And the only adult in the room seems content to let her learn to swim the hard way or drown trying.
I’m not even sure if the only adult in the room knows how to swim, herself.
I think I pointed out what was confusing in this arc. I think it make more sense if we removed the overt nihilism philosophy and have Jadis show that her goal is impossible. That ultimately even if she manages to overthrow/kill the demiurges it still wouldn’t result in a victory or something similar.
There are ghosts when reading this page, it’s scary, but very interesting, I will look forward to it every day.
The thing I find slightly confusing is… wasn’t Allison a philosophy major? This is somehow mindblowing to her? Did she not study any existentialism? Did not her own natural bent to thinking of such matters lead her to pick her major? Or, more likely, was she (as her early depiction indicated) an empty-headed “pretty little thing” who just picked something randomly because she wasn’t interested in medicine or law? That the notion of inherent valuelessness of “existence” is enough to blow her fuses to this extent is a little perplexing.