Reality: Time, Space and Existence

Dear reader, please note that this essay was found inside a waterlogged journal. What you read here is but the mere fragments of a rough draft attempting to discern the unusual properties of time in the Prime Nexus. Or, rather, a poor scribe's attempt at translating another's work. It is likely that key pieces have been lost amidst the damaged pages and any mistranslations.

Ybis is merely a speck within the universe. Nestled in the Bionia Zone, we pay very little attention to the small amount of time we occupy. It is not for the lack of appreciation - humans are designed to experience life to its fullest, and if we spend that time preoccupied with the weight of our own insignificance, then it would negate the human experience. This drives us to measure the theoretical realities (such as time, souls and existence) in comparison to our own existence. We operate hoping that our small sliver of time isn’t as insignificant as it truly is and arrive at the wrong conclusions about existence.

To fully understand existence we must start first with time. Time exists in three distinct forms simultaneously. Firstly, there are multiple timelines, which I refer to as Branches. These stem from the prime timeline (the likeliest timeline) and create their own timelines adjacent to the prime timeline. The farther from the likelihood of the prime timeline, the further their branches are. 

Branching Linear Time (BLT) exists as a consistent, never-ending progression. It is a straight line that develops branches when a choice is made, with the most likely choice being the primary branch. You have a distinct past, present and future, which share no overlap besides memories. 

The next concept is Branching Circular Time (BCT). This functions very similarly to BLT. However, rather than continuing indefinitely in a straight line, it curls together to form a circle. Like BLT, it also has a primary branch; from that, new branches form to create adjacent circles. This creates a cylindrical-like structure sprouting from the sides of the prime branch. Since time is a circle for BCT, everything is connected. The future is the past, present and future because it simultaneously has, is, and will happen. Just as one moves their hand: you have the instances where your hand wasn’t moving, your hand is moving, and your hand did move, but to you, that motion has blurred together and is only fully registered when the motion is over. Registering that motion requires you to perceive every point of time simultaneously.

This brings us to our final concept of Everything and Nothing All At Once (ENAAO). All of time exists at the same time. Picture it like this: the universe is a singular painting. Everything exists all at once; everything that has ever happened ever will happen, and ever is happening is happening right now. We are only experiencing what our minds can comprehend, which is to say, we are experiencing a translation of ENAAO into a perceivable form.  You can then turn that painting on its side, and suddenly it becomes the linear progression of time. You can bend the painting until it forms a circle. You can turn the painting over, and it becomes nothing. This is ENAAO; time is the painting, and we are a speck within it. We must think of the universe when we think of time. If we think of time as the linear concept we experience on Earth, this concept will become too fickle to grasp. Instead, if we think of the grand scope of the universe and how insignificant we are in the entire scheme of time, it becomes easier to grasp that everything is happening all at once. Like flipping the painting upside down, we must flip it right side up and peer into it. Anything could be happening at the moment. There is no scene from Earth within the painting. There is only a planet amongst trillions of others. Everything is happening all at once. 

This leads us to souls. Each corporeal vessel is inhabited by a soul, from plants to animals to humans, and all of these souls are the same. There is no distinction between souls; there is only a distinction between vessels. This distinction is our ability to interpret and interact with our environment and how we process that sensory information. A cat cannot speak our languages, even when spoken to. However, a cat can understand (to an extent) us. They can respond to our emotional state, tone of voice and body language. Plants also grow better when given positive encouragement and treated kindly. This is our souls communicating with one another, demonstrating that we are vastly more interconnected than we initially assume. The connection between souls goes farther back than the ability to communicate. Souls are fragments of a larger, collective soul called a Soul Well that splinter to create new souls, eventually returning to the collective soul when the corporeal body is dead. These splinters gather data, which is shared amongst the Soul Well. However, when a soul splinters off, it takes only a fragment of data from the Soul Well, as it cannot store the entire collection. This shared data results in phenomena such as deja vu and soulmates. The feeling of deja vu is the collective data your soul carries from countless lifetimes across different branches of time. The familiarity of soulmates comes from two souls sharing the same data, and this is why you can have multiple soulmates, as multiple souls can share the same data. It is purely a statistical improbability to encounter someone sharing that data. 

Vessels are merely a way for our souls to interact with the universe. If souls did not exist, vessels would be left with base instincts yet no measurable intelligence. There would be no motivation beyond survival that would drive vessels to interact with our environment. If vessels did not exist, souls would be stuck without a way to interact with the universe. They would be above to observe the universe to an undefinable extent, yet they would be unable to influence or change it. There would be no viable way to gather data. Therefore, souls and vessels coexist, benefiting from each other's existence. 

The Soul Well exists outside on another plane of reality. Meaning it has its own laws of reality, time and existence. It can have fragments in every timeline simultaneously, learning and gathering data. While it can send fragments there and receive them back, souls within our reality function according to our laws of reality. They experience pain, hunger, thirst, longing and euphoria so long as they are part of vessels. 

The next stage is to tackle the concept of a multiverse. Branches play a key role in a multiverse. The multiverse as a whole is ENAAO; everything exists all at once, simultaneously, across all parallel realities. Those break down into the BCT with a “prime” reality, simply the most likely reality and reality across all parallel realities. Then, finally, each individual parallel reality is BLT, which has its own branching timeline and sequence of events. However, unlike timelines, it is difficult for souls to pass between parallel realities. Each parallel reality has its own Soul Well, which acts as a barrier between realities to prevent cross-contamination. A new soul fragment dying in the wrong reality would return to that reality’s Soul Well and contaminate it with irrelevant data which has the potential to muddle and misconstrue data pertaining to that reality with data from its own reality. 

Which brings us to the creation of the multiverse itself. If we assume that time is both BCT and ENAAO then the multiverse created itself. If all our actions in the future influence the past and all our actions in the past influence the future, then we can logically deduce that whether the multiverse was created in the past or the future, the multiverse created itself. One moment it did not exist, and the next it did and simultaneously did not. It would be illogical to assume that a God-like entity created the multiverse as that would suggest that there was something before the BCT and ENAAO. Instead, it is logical to deduce that because nothing created the multiverse it both exists and does not. Therefore, we do not and do exist.