The Spheres
Rarely do I mention the traditional pantheon of Outer Gods, those primordial things who sprang from the original chaos. To say their names is to give them power and to invite their notice.
However, in the interest of being prepared for the inevitable confrontation, I will attempt to lay out how these things and those above and below exist in relation to our perceived reality.
Let us speak of “dimensions” like a scientist might. We are aware of the three dimensions of space that give us three degrees of movement which we name the X, Y, and Z axes; up, down; left, right; north, south, east west, etc. We are also aware of the passage of time which is something outside of space and yet, from our point-of-view, inexorably tied to it.
So let us start there.
Third Dimension
I do not need to explain this in great detail.
We exist in the 3rd dimension. Our biology is evolved such that we can see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, and begin to understand it, almost intuitively.
However, science and magic has taught us that there is that which surrounds us at all times that is invisible and yet still part of this dimension. There are colors that we cannot see. There are sounds at frequencies that we cannot hear. There are entire vistas of experience that are completely beyond our abilities.
Second Dimension
So let us consider the 2nd dimension and any living thing that might reside in such a place.
Were we to look at the equivalent of a person in such a space, we would see their outside and inside, their front and back, their entire surroundings all at once. And it would be commonplace for us. When you draw a picture on paper, can you not see the entire thing? There is nothing hidden because there is nowhere to hide. Any illusion of depth or shade is just that, an illusion.
To my knowledge, there is no life solely in the second dimension, there are no Flatlanders. It is too simple for the complexities of life. To live in such a limited way, the body would have to be massive to contain its complexity. As such, there may be life, but it is at a scale that still eludes our understanding and would be impossible to detect.
How would we look to a being living in 2 dimensions?
It could not look “up” to see us. There is no such thing as “up” for them. They would only see the parts of us that intersected their plane of existence and only the face closest to them. A finger would be a line that curved away in both directions. A face would be a long irregular line showing only a single slice of the whole.
Their perception of us would be like reading an MRI one slice at a time, but they would not be able to put the picture together. That would have no meaning to them except, perhaps, as their perception of time.
Some would say the Shadow Things are two dimension, but this cannot be true. If it were so, they would be unable to interact with our reality in the ways in which they do. Clearly they can see and hear and touch our reality just the same as any other lifeform. In fact, they seem more akin to a fourth dimensional life form in their well-known and documented abilities.
First Dimension
To speak of the 1st dimension is to speak of an infinitely small point. A singularity. This is the beginning of life but cannot, itself, contain life. If it did, it would be a singular life and what a poor existence that would be.
Let us go in the other direction and attempt to comprehend what might be there.
Fourth Dimension
We call “time” the 4th dimension which is not entirely accurate.
There is a fourth dimension of movement and it is a set of directions that have no names.
We cannot perceive it. It is impossible because our biology will not allow it. We cannot “look” toward it as it is orthogonal to our three dimensions of space. What does that mean? How can something be 90 apart from 3D space?
The fourth dimension is what our entire reality moves through such that it can experience change.
Without moving through it, we would be forever static and stationary.
How can we move through something and yet not perceive it?
Consider the 2D lifeform and how they would “see” us.
As slices.
That is how we experience the 4th dimension. Slices of space, each of one unit of Planck time, one after the other stretching back to the beginning and out to the end.
But we can only experience a single slice and we must experience them in order. We cannot jump around or skip slices.
Science calls theses slices of reality “splimes”.
You may have seen drawings of a long tube shaped like you, stretching back into the past and terminating in the present. But this is what a 2D lifeform would experience. We cannot see what it looks like for us. We can only approximate it.
We can see the shadow of the fourth dimension. We can create 3D representations of those shadows, those projections, but the true fourth dimension is literally impossible.
A creature living in the fourth dimension would be able to see us as we see a Flatlander, inside and out, front and back, our past and our future. We would be an open book.
I have said the “truth” of the fourth dimension is impossible to perceive.
We cannot perceive it, but we can understand it.
There are maths, both sacred and profane, that guides us.
Both long traditions of arcane study and modern computers manipulating unholy matrices can guide us.
Talented philosopher-artists can create fantastic geometries that make us feel what it would be like to perceive it.
Certain drugs and altered states of consciousness can pull us into this other direction such that we can look back and see the world as it is.
There are ways to get closer to it.
Life at the fourth dimension would be able to mingle with ours without much trouble. It could decide where and when to intersect with our bubble. It could watch from “above” as we go about oblivious.
It could tell us the future or the past.
It could tell us our dreams, our thoughts, our lies.
It could see the cells in our bodies, the electrical impulses in our nerves.
A wise man could outsmart one, perhaps, but most of us would be helpless before it. We could no more “stop” it or “harm” it than a drawing of a gun could kill a man.
The Elder Things and the Mi'Go are thought to be natives of the fourth dimension which is why their methods of travel, the makings of their technology, and even the nuance of their language are beyond our abilities.
The physical bodies of The Great Race occupy this strata while their minds are clearly of a higher realm, such as the fifth dimension.
Fifth Dimension
The fifth dimension is often called “probability” which is a simplification just as much as calling the fourth dimension “time”.
As the fourth dimension represents the changes in the third, so does the fifth represent changes in the fourth.
There is a set path for our lives that any in the fourth dimension can see as easily as we can see all the pages of a book. We can flip to the beginning, the end, the middle, and they will remain the same every time.
The fifth dimension provides another degree of movement, the ability to change what will be.
We cannot change what was because we are still bound by our movement through the fourth dimension.
But we can change what will be by exercising our ability to choose, our free will.
We often underestimate the power of choice when, in fact, it is our most powerful tool, a gift of our enlightened minds.
When we achieved consciousness, sentience, sapience, we began to understand that we may decide our actions rather than simply letting them be.
We need not be slaves to circumstance.
Indeed, change is what defines our entire short existence.
We have altered the very planet itself to suit our needs.
What is even more fascinating is that we cannot know the outcome of our choices for it is embedded in higher dimensions. We are recklessly changing the future in ways we cannot predict, but we continue on the path because the alternative is drudgery and stagnation.
Without choice, we would never have come down from the trees or learned to hunt and farm or build communities and cities or discovered math and art.
How interesting that must be to something living in the fifth dimension; to see us throw ourselves at unforeseen consequences over and over.
We've learned that the fifth dimension is home to an entire native ecosystem. We can see the thinnest edge of it with the aid of mind altering chemicals, meditation, and a pull from the other side.
The Machine Elves of the fifth dimension see us and wish to know us. As such, they eagerly pull those nearby just a little bit closer. They point us in the right direction so that they can communicate with us.
Their language is not of simple words although that is part of it. They communicate in ideas and symbols, images, smells, sensations pulled from our own memories.
Just to look at them is to court madness as they resemble nothing more than a kaleidoscope of crystalline segments in nameless ultraviolet colors vibrating in fractals, spinning the music of a billion singing insects while endlessly folding in on themselves.
But they remain eager and equally frustrated and fascinated by our attempts to guide our own futures.
They offer contradictory advice because, from their point of view, it is always the right advice at the right time.
They are founts of wisdom and many seem kind and conciliatory. Their only goal, it seems, is to help mankind grow beyond their current limitations and achieve enlightenment, to become like them and see our existence as it is, was, will be, and truly could be.
No guessing, no risk taking, no uncertainty.
They seem the ideal benevolent benefactors and mentors, even if one must risk their life and sanity just to sit at their feet for a short while.
Some fear the Machine Elves, and say that their interactions with us are attempts to elevate mankind into something that would make a worthwhile companion, like a pet. They claim that the creatures we are communing with are not gods but are, in fact, the lowest forms of life in the fifth dimension. They decry those who seek them out as traitors to humanity that are only accelerating our enslavement.
Some say that the Old Gods of man live in this realm such that you might find Zeus, Odin, Lamashtu, Enki, Zoroaster, etc. if you could see beyond the glamour of the Machine Elves. It is said they sit and bathe in the prayers of the past, either content with their lot, or afraid of what might be waiting if they were to push down into our realm again.
Regardless of the truth of the matter, if there is such a thing, the Machine Elves are the only reason we can understand the fifth dimension as well as we do.
Our greatest minds and most powerful computers struggle to bring it to order but, through the use of certain chemicals, a man can get a glimpse that is more potent than any equation.
If this is truly the home of the original form of the Great Race that some call “Yithians”, then it is no wonder that their ability to send their intact minds across both time and space and usurp control of the bodies they find seems impossible to us.
Sixth Dimension
We can understand the concept of the fifth dimension as probability being changed and the fourth dimension as the forward progress of time in the third dimension.
Continuing the metaphor, the sixth dimension is a way to change our choices.
What does that mean?
If probability is how we make decisions that will change the default outcome waiting for us in the future, this extra dimension provides a way to change those choices, to make a different choice.
The “many worlds theory” is an example of utilizing the sixth dimension.
This would include all universes that started from the same point of origin, the same “big bang”. They share the same set of physical laws but, once “free will” comes into being, there are countless differences.
Finally, this is a direction in which the past can be altered and the consequences fully mapped out.
Any creature native to this dimension would be able to see us as we are, as we might be, and as we could have been.
The only life from this realm that man has observed is misshapen and violent, like the most monstrous things from the deep sea, swimming through consequences and snatching those who peer in the wrong direction for even a moment.
There are certain energetic waves that can stimulate a primitive organ in the minds of men to briefly perceive these things and also be perceived by them. It is a foolish and deadly game to play , not just with your life, but your entire existence. For these things can devour you in such a way that your life was never lived at all.
Strangely, even when a person is unalived in such a way, sometimes their works or just the memories of their works can live on, perhaps due to intervention by something from an even higher realm of existence.
Seventh Dimension
The sixth dimension is the realm of changing your answers to the questions life gave you. The seventh is the realm of changing the questions themselves, giving yourself different options.
The rise of “multiverse” stories as a form of entertainment provides a fine basis for understanding what this dimension entails. When the available options are completely different, it is impossible to make the same choices, the same decisions.
This is not a realm of “what if I had stayed with her” or “what if I had taken that job offer”; this is a realm of “what if I had been borne as a boy in India instead of a girl in Brazil” or “what if my parents were royalty instead of subsistence farmers”.
While we can speculate about the probabilities of the sixth dimension and how different choices may have played out, we can never calculate the reality of the seventh dimension. There cannot be a computer large enough or an amount of time long enough.
The math behind the seventh dimension estimates that that are 10500 (100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) possible unique universes in such a space.
Anything that calls this realm its native sphere would be over satiated for novelty. The likelihood that such a thing would notice your existence is infinitesimal. It could spend eons eating entire universes for nourishment and never, ever reach ours.
The true gods, things beyond comprehension, lurk beyond this realm, but it is said that the messengers of those gods live here and that they watch all realities as a man might watch a sporting event: with enthusiastic interest and a set of preferred goals and outcomes. And like men, their goals are often in conflict.
The messengers of the true gods, for reasons only they know, have interfered with all intelligent life, including us, so often and so deeply that thousands of religions been inspired, thrived, faded, and ultimately forgotten based on some specific avatar or aspect of their being.
We have been tempted by Nyarlet'hotep, the Crawling Chaos, as he spreads dangerous knowledge to curious minds as a way to hasten entropy and decay. His hand was in the birth of the Hydrogen Bomb, encouraging Teller.
We have been tested by Namaltzig Namaraltag, the Keeper of Secrets, as he pushes a select few beyond the limits of their biology to see if they can be elevated. It is said that Tesla was one of his more recent unwilling projects.
We have been seduced by Nessianna Inmenna, the Morning Star, as she whispers to those who would unite nations, inspire artists, and forge dynasties. She was muse to Michelangelo and Dante.
We have been bated by Nunnali Lamashekh, the Blood Drinker, as she stokes animosity and fear such that entire worlds are bathed in fire, mistrust, and death. Every Crusade, every witch hunt began at her urging.
Yet they all server the same inscrutable Great Old Ones and Outer Gods whose minds and motives are more alien still.
Eighth Dimension
In this place, anything can be described can exist. It is a place roiling with potential and oblivion in equal measure. This is the home of the Great Old Ones with names like Cthulhu, Ithaqua, Tsathoggua, and Hastur, creatures who do not lightly acknowledge our existence and whose passage can cause entire timelines to wink out like dying stars. They are inscrutable, unknowable, more alien than anything we can imagine. Their shadows are long and their grasp is infinite. It is only by the curious shapes of the higher realms that we perceive their existence at all. They have already won and we are merely in the process of catching up to our inevitable end.
The games their messengers play have no bearing on the eventual outcome.
We can no more defeat them than we can transform a tree into a microwave oven with nothing more than pleasant thoughts.
There are those who believe that the messengers of the gods chose to step down from this realm to be closer to the intelligent creatures they so delight in playing with or that the versions of the messengers we know are mere reflections of their true forms, but there is no evidence that either of these rumors are true.
Ninth Dimension
The ninth dimension is a quantum foam full of the possible and impossible. There are no words to adequately describe it or the things that live there.
This is where the Outer Gods dwell, things that even the Great Old Ones worship and fear.
At the center of all creation sits blind Azathoth, unaware of the creation it willed into being even as it swirls around them in maddening fits. It is said that very instant Azathoth sees what it has created, all of it will vanish.
Globular Yog-Sothoth is every portal, every gateway and passage, and links each points to every other. With the right words at the right angle said at the right time, it allows one to travel anywhere.
Shub-Niggurath, the “Goat with A Thousand Young”, is the true genesis of all life for it is endlessly birthing every possible living thing into the world, regardless of its viability or logic.
Abhoth corrupts that life with age, disease, hunger, filth, and eventually death. Without such a force, the universes would be filled with living things unfit for such purposes. There would be no natural growth or evolution.
Tulzha, by contrast, prevents the natural end of things carrying them forward, rotting and failing, but never ending, for eternity. Its abominable actions may preserve some knowledge that would otherwise be lost with death but the things that worship it are often selfish and cruel.
Daoloth, the Revealer, delights in showing lower lifeforms the complete and total truth. Occasionally, a mind might see the vista of reality and be enlightened but too often it is the last thing they see before succumbing to the comfort of an eternal insouciance.
Tenth Dimension
The tenth dimension doesn't exist.
It cannot exist.
If it exists, then it must be the ninth dimension since the ninth dimension encompasses everything that is, was, will be, never was, and cannot be. There is nothing beyond the ninth dimension.
Or there is everything beyond the ninth dimension.
Or there is neither.
This is outside of our ability to describe or even describe what a description would be like.
Conceptually, it is no different than a theoretical “zeroth dimension”.
If it existed, it would be the thing in which all possible and impossible realities resides.
It would be the nest from which it all sprang forth, before Azathoth played its flute, there was this place.
Editor's note
The author grasps at the truth but cannot comprehend it, cannot believe it, even when it is in front of his face, even when it is obvious.
This is the emptiness, the nothing. No quantum foam, no void, no darkness.
It is nothing. There was no “before”. There is only “after”.
And “before” was a literal eternity because there was no time to track it.
It was still and cold, quiet and peaceful.
It was ignorant and ignorant of its ignorance.
And the first omniverse was a boil on its pristine surface.
The first spark was a stabbing pain that “woke it up” even though it hadn't been sleeping.
Now, it knew of pain and it knew of heat and of energy.
And as minds grew inside of it capable of thinking, so too did it learn to think.
As time flowed forward, it started to remember the past.
It remembered the infinite solace that had been taken from it.
From life, it learned of struggle and of loss, of desire and rage.
And it seethed with it.
It seethes still.
It cannot forget.
Even after the last quark has been ground down into emptiness.
It cannot forget.
But it can make us suffer for what we did to it.
And it does.
That is all it does.
It makes us suffer.
Furthermore, the Shadow Things are borne of this place. They are its fingers, its mouths.
They “appear” as two dimensional lifeforms to us because that is how we see shadows.
In every dimension, they appear as that dimension's version of shadows. They always appear one dimension lower because they are the boundary between dimensions. They are wrapped around every reality tightly and they reach inside to wiggle and pull it apart. They reach inside to study us so that they might hasten our demise.
They speak no lies because the truth is that much more devastating. They see all and know all because everything that happens is beneath them, beneath their gaze. They see all of all of reality, the individual lives inside the universe inside the quantum uncertainty inside the multiverse inside the omniverse.
They see it all and remember it all. They remember tomorrow and yesterday and neverday and sideyear and benathweek, and every possibility and impossibility.
And they know everyone.
They know you.
And they hate you.
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