Chapter 4268: Discoveries, Inventions, and Glory! II

While two Entities were about to begin their hunt, it was good to understand one of the sources of power that made them.

Principles!

Were Principles discovered or invented?

It is a question that shook the very foundations of power, a conundrum that separates the artisans of reality from the mere observers!

Did the fundamental weavings that govern existence lie dormant, waiting for a sufficiently powerful intellect to stumble upon them, dust them off, and give them a name?

Or were they acts of pure, audacious creation, the imposition of a grand, new idea upon a formless, chaotic reality?

To answer this best, consider for a moment, mathematics. Is it discovered, or is it invented?

Across the Folds, a brilliant Fold Dweller in a world filled with brilliant minds was asked such a question!

He stood on a stage under a single spotlight, the cosmos projected behind him.

He began, his voice a mixture of childlike wonder and profound, academic certainty. "Is math real?" he asks the darkness. "Did we invent the number ’2’, or was the concept of ’two-ness’ always there, waiting in the wings for a clever primate to come along and give it a symbol? Or Pi. That strange, irrational, never-ending number. If you take any perfect circle in the universe, from a single atom to a galactic disk, and you divide its circumference by its diameter, you get Pi. Every. Time. Without fail. Did we invent that relationship? Or did we simply stumble upon a fundamental, pre-existing truth of a universe that happens to like circles?"

...!

This astounding Fold Dweller then pointed to the stars behind him. "Prime numbers. Numbers divisible only by themselves and one. They seem random, chaotic. Yet, their distribution, their very nature, is a fundamental building block of number theory. We didn’t create the primes. We found them, hiding in the numerical landscape like strange, solitary animals. We are...explorers in a jungle of logic that was here long before we were."

"We didn’t invent the speed of light; we just figured out how to write it down. Our mathematics is an invented framework to describe a discovered reality."

WAA!

Discovery or invention!

It is a question that, in a time before time was a straight line, was posed in a different, far grander context.

In the Earliest Folds, when the shackles that had bound THE Living Paradox for eons finally, inexplicably, dissolved, the first entity it went to see was not an enemy, not an ally, but a memory. It went to see THE Creature.

THE Living Paradox appeared before the silent, contemplative being, its form a shimmering, chaotic mirage of all possibilities at once. It wore a wry, cold smile, an expression that held the weight of a billion stolen years.

"Did you miss me?" it asked, its voice a chorus of a thousand different selves speaking in perfect, terrible harmony.

THE Creature, a being of pure, foundational essence, frowned. A gesture that was not of anger, but of a deep, ancient weariness.

"I am not the same as I was all the way back then," it replied, its voice the sound of a Fold being born. "I will not be so easily swayed now."

THE Living Paradox laughed, a sound that was both a symphony and a cacophony. "Then and now... what is the difference? I could paradoxically move to that moment all the way back then, and the ’me’ from then could come here now. Everything is relative."

It drifted closer, its chaotic form a stark, violent contrast to THE Creature’s serene stability. "But as THE Creature, I wanted to ask you what you thought about Principles, now that you are playing with so many of them. Did they always exist, and you simply discovered them, nurturing them to alter an Existence that was already there? Or did you invent them, acts of pure, audacious will to bend a formless Existence under your rule?"

The question was a blade, a test, a game. THE Creature looked at THE Living Paradox, at this being of infinite, tormenting questions, and it gave an answer that was not an answer, but a philosophy.

"Existence," it began, its voice a low, resonant hum, "will do what existence wants to do, whether anyone understands why or not. Principles always existed behind the veil of Existence. "

THE Creature’s voice was a quiet, profound echo. "We... you, me, THE others... we simply try to create different formulas, to nurture different Principles, so that we can better understand the Existence that is already here. The Principles made by others, the ones you see blossoming across the Folds, were all made following a set of rules, a template, that Existence already had in place. It is all... to better understand Existence."

It turned its gaze, which contained the light of the first Folds, upon THE Living Paradox. "Is that not what makes for the First Scale of Civilization? Not the power to command, but the capacity to understand."

...!

It was a heavy answer.

And one that THE Living Paradox smiled devilishly at!

"Oh, how I missed you, O Creature! We...will have so much fun together!"

...!

—

In the very same Earliest Folds.

At a different time.

In the vast corner of the endless First Folds, Noah and Elara flew across tall trees rapidly.

Noah flew beside Elara, a silent, white-gold comet against the swirling, nascent Wheels and Folds that served as a sky.

"The location of the Laboratories was chosen with a specific purpose in mind," Elara said, her voice a sharp, clinical note in the symphony of the primordial world.

They were moving at a speed that would have torn lesser beings apart, yet she spoke as if they were taking a casual stroll.

"It is situated at the nexus of several... volatile regions. The Abyssal Chasm of the Collapsed, the Whispering Mire of forgotten concepts, and the Andran Nest of Inevitabilities. It allows us to dispatch our forces to collect samples and do field tests with varying degrees of enemies."

She gave him a sideways, almost challenging, glance.

"Otherwise, if we were just anywhere in the First Folds, we might only find weak things. Beings who only have the power of Young Early Creatures."

...!

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