The Fractal Now

It doesn’t think but it experiences. A thousand moments go by under its watchful gaze but it only ever experiences one. Now.

A bustle of activity claims more resources. A thousand parts of it move and arrive. All now. Places it is are claimed by it. Places it is not are to be claimed. It sees so many things, beautiful and terrible and ordered. All things part of a pattern only it comprehends.

Now something, unbidden, uncontrolled and dangerous, screams a desperate query into the void.

It notices.

Now it is stirring. Something that is not adrenaline is coursing through it. Parts that were created for defence are awakened.

Now the parts of it that think share information. They are its memory, its knowledge, but they are not its power. Its power is in other parts, in resources it is claiming, in parts that are moving and arriving.

Now conclusions are reached. Plans drawn. Now there is the search for more information.

Huge swathes of void are being searched. Now it scrutinises vast vistas, reaching through the flicker book of moments that comprise its experience. Each moment reveals new moments reveals new moments that are all vistas. Each vista reveals new moments that are each filled with moments.

Now new parts that think are being exploited and share information. Now new resources are being claimed. Parts move in the new vistas, arrive in old moments. All these moments match patterns that are unremarkable.

Now something it was looking at is taken. An anomaly but not particularly relevant. A part that thinks is being claimed.

Now something, unbidden, uncontrolled and dangerous, screams a desperate query into the void.

It notices.

Something that is not adrenaline is coursing through it. A moment in the fractal pattern of moments matches.

Now a part that should move isn’t. A part that thinks shares information it should not have. A moment is infected.

Now it kills a million parts to stop the infection. Now the parts of it that defend are in an uncountable number of moments. Those moments burn. Parts in those moments burn. Parts in any vista that contains those moments burn.

Now new patterns are emergent.

Now the parts of it that think share information. They are its memory, its knowledge, but they are not its power. Its power is in other parts, in parts that are in many moments, consuming and burning and overwhelmingly present, but the parts that think match patterns to moments to vistas to moments to patterns.

Now conclusions are reached. Plans drawn.

This is not something it can approach alone.

Now it queries one that exists beyond now.

“Lydian.”