BREAKER OF INFINITIES 4-144
Prim came to a part of the road that was well worn. The path split and furrowed into pleasant little runoff trails, that twisted and snaked their way through groves of gently rustling trees. The undergrowth was thick and green and warm with insects and flowers. Prim felt some of the tension drain from her body and she rested a while under a tree, feeling quite relaxed.
After a while, she took a short and refreshing nap, and awoke to the distant voices of travelers a short ways down the trail. When she went out to greet them, she saw them clothed in white, and their faces and features were quite nondescript, as though washed in the ocean a while.
“Hello sister,” said they, “Who are you?”
“I am called Prim, who was the slave of Hansa, and now slave of the road,” said Prim.
“You are in luck, sister,” said the white-clothed people. “This is the end of the road. You are free!”
Prim gazed past the travelers through the treetops to see a broad and verdant valley, spotted with the trim rooftops of innumerable houses, each sporting a neat little plume of smoke. It looked like a very nice place to be, and Prim’s heart burned with a certain kind of longing she had not felt in a long while.
“What is this place?” asked Prim.
The travelers looked at each other, as if it was an odd question. “This the valley of Eternal Life,” they said. Prim was taken aback, as Immortality was one of the Three Forbidden Punishments. Seeing her expression, the travelers laughed stupidly, as though they had stumbled across a small and confused child.
“Don’t be so shocked,” said one of the travelers,”it’s true! Nobody knows want, hunger, or sickness. Our days are spent tending our gardens, talking to our neighbors and families, and praising God, who has granted us this boon. Death does not touch us here. People are neither born, nor die in this land. Our needs are cared for and the land is pleasant and green. What else could we want?”
“You should join us, sister,” added one of the travelers, “as God is good, you will know nothing but happiness in this valley.”
“Can you leave?” said Prim, who had an expression like she had tasted something sour. The travelers looked at each other in confusion. “Of course not,” said they, “why would we want to? It is impossible to leave the valley.”
“What else do you get up to?” said Prim tentatively, “Other than praising god, tending to your gardens, and talking to your neighbors?”
The travelers were very confused indeed, and seemed to think this was a very odd question. “Are you happy?” added Prim, as if this would help.
“Yes, of course,” said the travelers, smiling blithely. The expression on their faces was hard to read, but to Prim their words came out like a warm paste. “You will know nothing but happiness in this valley.”
“This land is terribly cursed,” said Prim, and moved on.
It seems Yisun’s preferred pupils are constantly struggling, fighting, pushing, learning. The struggle is the big part, but learning is the better part. The struggle, the fight, learning from it, is the whole point to reality in K6BD. Jadis has failed miserably, exactly where Aesma finally learned.
Finally picked this up about two or so weeks ago and now I’m all caught up. Fantastic story with fantastic art and characters! But now I have to wait like the rest of you lot. T_T
I think Alison needs to imagine that Sisyphus is happy.
Plight of the Bikura, blissfully unchanging in ignorance forever.
Are you of the cruxiform? Will you submit to Eternity?
We have will. That is not in question. Is that will free? Certainly not in all respects. There are constraints. Were there not, there would be no reasons to have a will in the first place. Utter freedom from history or outside forces would result in an existence with no choices to make. Choice REQUIRES external factors.
More, it is impossible to perfectly know the parameters and outcomes of any given real world choice, much less the physical operations of mentation. If we have wills theoretically unfree, but indistinguishable from free in practice, who should care? In the words of William James, “A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.”
I really really hope Allison suplexes this nihilist loser through the table they are at. All this, “it all means nothing” crap is getting old. Gimme that over confident Allison that fucks up but constantly tries to better herself and the lives of people she cares about back.
Choice? I thought it was all predestined!!!
Omniscient but non-omnipotent characters seem like such a pain to write around. I can think of more than a few ways to poke holes in Jadis saying Allison chose to leave her normal life, like she chose to have Zoss and a bunch of angels Kool-aid man their way through the multiverse into her bedroom in page 3, but Jadis would also be fully aware of that and soldier on anyway because _it’s her role._
> no reason at all
striking without thought
Why struggle?
Because Allison’s Sorority sister, when suspecting that her housemate was in a bad place over her new boy, offered to make her tacos. And these would not be white-girl tacos, real tacos.
Because of the friendly bun-vendor in Throne, unperturbed by his very good customer using the adjacent Divine Corpse as exercise equipment, whose community she would help for the sake of Being There.
Because she once made an angel weep in realization of her eternal burden, and smiled and welcomed them with open arms in a rebirth of flesh and spirit.
Because fuck you, Demiurge. Just cause you gave up an Eon ago don’t make existence weird for the rest of us.
” And you know why?
Because life itself…
is filled with “no reason”. “
Let me get this straight- Jadis knows everything, and knows the result of everything, and knows there is no way to change it, whatsoever.
And yet, she’s trying to talk Alison out of fighting. Methinks I smell a trick.
Well, it is what she does.
True Royalty Chooses because to Choose is to Cut and True Royalty is a Blade.
When asked “Why did you save me?”, Jadis replied “It’s what I do”. But if one interprets the universe as deterministic, that could be the answer for why anyone does anything. But there is also another, more conventional answer to every “why”. For example, “Why did the man eat the apple?” “Because it’s what he does” vs “Because he was hungry”; “Why did the chicken cross the road?” “Because it’s what it does” vs “To get to the other side”.
Choose the path of eternal suffering.
Jadis, bearer of the word gaslight.
Your machine is broken.
Nothing has shape, and so we must shape everything.
I have seen that existence is empty, and so I choose to fill it.
I choose the path of hope. My road is defiance and love.
I have seen that the wheel spins in a vacuum, flying sparks that sputter into the wet blackness of nothing only to choke and die and be replaced by countless more meaningless sparks, and so I choose the shape of everything that there is.
I choose the wheel. I choose my chains. I choose to love them. I serve the wheel for as long as my spark suffers to see it. More will suffer after me.
Aaaand I’m caught up.
…
Fuck.
There is no point in anything, because the point has never been inside things.
There is no reason in anything, because reason has never been a thing.
Nothing matters to the Multiverse, because it is not the Multiverse that cares.
If you want a point, if you want a reason, if you want something to care for…
All of it will have to come from You, and only You.
Cut down Confusion, Doubt, and Apathy, Al-Yisun.
Cut down Nihilism and Pessimism, both trying to drag you down.
Cut down Determinism, Fate, and, why not, Free Will, too.
They were never the point, the reason, nor, in the end, what truly mattered.
The Great Enemy is the one called “I.”
Jadis sees all possible futures, and all possible outcomes. She said so herself.
It seems multiple outcomes, then, are possible. Jadis seeks to learn why someone would choose one outcome over another. She has chosen a path that seems to avoid personal suffering: in the face of the enormity of a universe that is chess after every possible game has been computed, where her victories or defeats have no greater meaning and her suffering is real, she has decided, it seems, not to play, to simply encase herself in ice and run out the clock.
It’s a little sad…but it’s also a little noble. Nobody wants to play chess against the computer that knows every possible game. It’s not fun for anybody. Sitting it out might be the right thing to do.
She lies. She saved Allison for a reason. She has some amount of motivation. Like all the other immortals, she is desperate for a solution and unable to move due to her inertia.
This is going to read like a long winded bitch fest, and unfortunately there’s no way of getting around that, because this is a fun comic to read, and the lore bits after are really well done, and perhaps even my favorite parts, especially the stories about Prim.
This story about Prim feels like a transparent dig at Christianity, made with a limited understanding of it.
First, Christianity is a religion of freedom, and the early adopters were people subjugated by Rome forced to pay the costs of misery that it takes to keep an empire running via their hard work, exorbitant taxes, and even slavery. Who wouldn’t want to at least hear about, and maybe even hope for a life where they could finally escape that? Even praising God for eternity wouldn’t be considered a burden then since many aspects of life had religious obligations attached to them already regardless of your nationality, so that was a natural thing to expect, especially since it was He who provided the reprieve.
Second, Christianity didn’t start as a religion really anyway. Again, religion was part of life after all. Instead it was a worldview shift. It’s the origin of most of our -in the West(-ish)- ideals about equality, freedom, justice, prosperity, etc. No one is going to argue that the Church, whatever form it takes, fails to live up to those ideals and when given power has even been the oppressor at many points throughout history. It strives and learns though, and who hasn’t experienced hurting themselves and others while trying to be or become a better person?
Third and last, the end where the people who live in the Valley are cursed because they experience nothing but their valley, their gardens, and conversations with their friends sounds like pure conjecture. Studies have shown that as a person gets older their values shift, spending time with family and friends becomes a much higher priority, and there can even be regret over not having done more to nurture those relationships when they were younger. Doing things that are meaningful, and provide purpose becomes a higher level priority too when circumstances permit. Speaking of that, studies have also shown that people tend to be at their most satisfied with life in general when they are challenged to achieve things that are inside their ability to accomplish, but aren’t too easy or guaranteed to succeed. Other studies have shown that there’s a plateau effect on the amount of happiness that people can get out of any one thing or person.
So this is my chance for speculation: The Valley, or Heaven, is not as stagnant and docile as it’s being portrayed here. With immortality and the easing of suffering it becomes possible to focus on the things that really matter, namely the people in our lives and what we want to do with our own. To be able to be permanently happy requires healthy relationships, being challenged by the things we set out to do, and doing new things. To get it any other way would require a fundamental shift away from being human. If all of creation is God’s, it also stands to reason that “the Valley” isn’t limited in size to one cozy spot nestled between the mountains and instead it’s the size of the universe. There’s also a long standing Christian tradition in the belief that God is not done creating. He rested on the 7th day, He didn’t stop and let things start to unfold without interference. So it follows that on top of the relationship needs of humans being met via immortality, so too would the needs for novelty and challenges be fulfilled that come along with being an immortal human. The only two things removed from the human experience are suffering and death, and while that may be hard to imagine, we all do it when we get our hopes up, or mourn the loss of the people we love. What’s so bad about an eternity like that?
According to the teachings of the New Sage, disciple of the Dream King, the response to the question of why you keep fighting, even knowing that it’s pointless to do so, is, “Because I choose to.”
To be is to do. No further answer is required.
Interesting choice of words.
“Why have you CHOSEN…”
The shape of reality is predefined. She chose what she chose because she was supposed to. Jadis knows this already.
If nothing truly matters, if all choices truly are pointless, then why call them into question at all?
Very interesting choice of words, indeed.