On the Chromatic Scales of the Molting Dragon

 by shaun lawton  reporting for the Oscillating Oculus 

    It's been brought to my attention by a serpentine world in tumultuous convulsion.  As tectonic battleships of molten slag erupt from the surface of the sea.  While the waters of the Persian Gulf darken with the blood of oil money.  Even as right wing politicians across the formerly united States of America choose to look the other way, while their self appointed God Squad decides to vote in favor of allowing certain precious species to go extinct.  As their congregation, for which there could be no more perfect word, of blind and devoted constituents froth at the mouth in abject avowal to a mythos they hardly understand, all of them kneeling in rows at the altars of uninformed idiot worship.  

   Meanwhile, the natural empire of the wild asserts the sovereignty of its ordinary power comprised of more than a billion aeons of cosmic supremacy.  Any living being upon the surface of the Earth can perceive it for themselves, any day of the week, any time of day or night.  You can observe it sprawled across the constellations, the ghostly shed snakeskins of long lost civilizations now wreathed in decorative sublimation draped in the wake of their stellar demise.  A distinct reminder, even as  vague as it may appear to be for us now, that we currently represent that minor fraction of the one percent of living species left in the grand scheme of things. 

   For we, each last single one of us have awakened onto the current stage of corporality at this great time of our cosmic development.  Since the day we each were born, we have struggled and relaxed against this colossal backdrop of teeming echoes reflecting the once upon a time long lost generations of species and life forms that were already granted their opportunity to express themselves fully upon the stage of their own respective points in time.  What does it all mean?  I'm here to inform you, through the recurrent themes that run through these sentences.  You may disregard the fact that few of us here get to figure out what the true definition of 'spirit' happens to be {SPRVTH = Sephiroth = ten divine emanations or attributes through which God reveals and manifests Himself in the universe = numerals = to which each letter of the Hebrew alphabet are valued = letters = The Alphabet + Mathematics = SCIENCE = SPRVTH = Spirit}. 

   Don't think twice about all that, it's unnecessary for any solitary human being to understand (but it does help). My point abides, we are beings with consciousness; we remain conscientious that we are possessed of a consciousness, and we attain this by a means of split-mind objectification.  Suffice it to say, we have a tendency (or are actually hardwired) to perceive the world around us in terms of black and white.  0s + 1s.  Even what you're reading right now, on your smartphone screen, or computer screen, was assembled by an astonishing alchemical process involving electricity facilitating these images into an endless series of zeroes and ones to display the dazzling array of images and words we encounter online. 

   To shift this essay into the next gear, I want to share with you what's been brought to my attention, as of late. Let's say (for the sake of argument) that we're undergoing a relentless transition from an era of light and humanitarian and environmental hope, to an eclipsing age of darkness, represented as a setback driven by rightwing, neo-fascist administrations gunning their capitalist regime engines full-throttle in a last, desperate attempt to hold on for dear life to their precious assets (money & power).   It's not a stretch.  It's a hardline fact.  This appears to be our reality, and the deeper you look into it (you are invited to use the latest LLMs to sort through the details and track down the evidence)  the more you can see how true it is. The one half of the globe's population (liberals) that care about the environment and each other are finding themselves increasingly under the iron thumb of (conservatives) those who appear to have lined themselves with Project 2025 for a host of reasons too complicated and mind numbing to get into (look it up).  

    Just last year was the Year of the Snake, representing a world wide paradigm shift, when the biosphere sheds its skin in some uncanny manner, undergoing a natural process of molting, to continue its life in a renewed form.  Regardless of the possibility that we may have shifted from a benevolent, green Garden Serpent and transmogrified into a rugged, iron Puff Adder of militant war and aggression, the underlying truth of our great, wide verdant fields of Earth stirring under our feet.  The same evaporating mist of constellations hangs shrouded overhead, in their comforting positions, twinkling in every color of the spectrum, emitting the ever so faint music of the spheres that if you pay attention to and listen ever so closely, you may even just hear it echoing within your ears.  Go outside at night and wander into the forest, if you can. Or step out into your own back yard, and take in the city or country sounds. Observe the clouds overhead gradually forming and unforming, these great paradoxical wonders of nature weighing several tons of liquid water, somehow floating up there as if lighter than air. 

    And remember this.  The stereophonic microcosm in which we dwell, despite our limitations at seeing it for how it is, stands out as a symphonic overture of events coinciding into a greater gestalt than we, each individual human being, can fully process or figure out.  It's a way of saying, "things are not just black and white," despite knowing that we are each hardwired to see things in just that way. We look at the news, and see the latest coverage of this world leader waging an unjust war, or that other one having usurped the fair and good people of their country for the last forty-five years, or that other one who got into office by nefarious means, and has taken their country on the ride of their lives, often at the cost of good things that were carefully built up over generations, dismantled for no good reason except to divert funds into the pockets of the powerful and wealthy, all in the name of some justified cause they have managed to cobble together through their PR teams.  

   All of it matters.  Why?  Because nature seems to operate on a mysterious synthesis of multilayered simultaneity, a process we can only get close to defining with a qualifier like quantum, which happens to be a counterintuitive method of attempting to understand how the natural world and our place within it operates. So we are left with that narrow divide over which the creationists and scientific minded glare at one another in reproach.  Nevermind that.  It's up to each one of us, as individuals, to rise above all of this and at least try to see things through new eyes.  It doesn't have to be through the traditional lens of religious faith, nor does it have to be through any other populist approach or belief (or lack thereof) or system.  What remains happens to be a mystery which nobody has ever managed to resolve.  The riddle of our existence, and that of the whole universe, of which our solar system, and Earth, upon which we were all born, still here in its ongoing glory.  

   I'm only trying to say that even if we've just begun the inexorable transformation from a Golden age into a perceived dark age of Iron, the process takes time, and for every battle won by the forces of darkness, another one ends in victory for the people who fight for our right to be good. Even as the Great Snake's Scales begin to shed one at a time from Silver and Gold into Iron and Tin, nothing can stop the good guys from fighting on to win.  And nothing but time can transform every last scale on this great Dragon's Hide back completely into solid, immutable iron.  That most likely takes a period of time longer than our lifespans.  

   I hope you can see exactly what I'm trying to say here. Keep your eyes wide open.  Continue to uphold the values in life that you represent. We should not give up on setting a good example for others.  Let's keep our faith in the enigmatic workings of our lives and the unfathomable equilibrium of the cosmos. We can help our neighbors and others here in the United States of America, and everywhere else on this mystifying living planet we call Earth.  Never give up fighting for what we believe our lives are worth. 

A view of Earth taken by NASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander 

Reid Wiseman from of the Orion spacecraft's window after 

completing the translunar injection burn on April 2, 2026.

proto-humans (definition of)

by shaun lawton   (these are scratch'd down notes to myself, posted here as per original purpose of blog. Honestly this entry could be considered an expanded footnote to both The Nanochronicles serialized on the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction as well as to the article in Kenji Siratori's HYPER-ANNOTATION #001 posthuman anthology which may no longer be available. It should be noted that the first section happens to be a synthographic image I generated via word text prompts, and thus was headed as "words: [continuous realtime rendering]:", while the fourteen paragraphs of experimental text themselves were headed as "images: [complete autographic epitaph]:".) 

 

   The idea to be captured here must remain crystal clear in the minds of those reading about it. It's the writer's responsibility to make sure that the message he intends to get across is successfully transmitted to the reader.  In my slowly evolving serial narrative  The Nanochronicles,  I've taken care to present the first five installments presented as "reports from the bloodHost."  

   

     Part 6 took the form of an entry in Kenji Siratori's posthuman magazine HYPER-ANNOTATION #001, with 31 contributors who received print copies + however many editions managed to sell while available. I have no idea how many copies went into print, really.  My entry can be found somewhere in the last fourth of the anthology.  It's some sort of futurist report with the enigmatic title Residual Synthetic Integration Bicameral Attributes for Holistic Memory Encoding, and carrying the byline of my name, which was intentionally done as a sort of authentication-stamp designating (or should I say revealing) it as the only evidence in print, that I know of, attributing the true authorship behind The Nanochronicles.       

     One of my intents in having undertaken the challenge of writing The Nanochronicles is the fact that so far I've written all six chapters without the use of chatGPT nor anything similar; but rather, every word in this series was thought up and written down by a human being, as I can testify myself, having typed out the words on a keyboard by hand, with a simple set of guiding rules I came up with, designed to keep a modicum of coherence or stability if you will, to the wide ranging platform of simulated speech the sophisticated AI program of the future would have rendered out, as a matter of course, when engaging a human with discourse.  For better or worse, I wrote every word of The Nanochronicles, including Residual Synthetic Integration Bicameral Attributes for Holistic Memory Encoding, and Abiogenetic Lorentzian Iterations, myself.  These are ground breaking works which will serve as the foundations for generating future threads of their respective narratives, with the growing potential to be combined into a greater woven and thus stronger roped network of writings in support of one another. 

    A careful analysis of the first three paragraphs in the HYPER-ANNOTATION article I wrote were designed for the reader to come to three simple conclusions, in general: that (according to the nanoFleet, whose self-referential term "Ourself" stands as sole implication the total holistic online data archive has amassed a successful integration enough to give it sufficient coherency.  There's an echoing implication for conclusive evidence that humanity facilitates a life extinction event; that synthetic, self-automated AI robotic systems may continue operating ad infinitum regardless; and that conclusive evidence exists that humanity will have played an integral part in their own demise; at least, according to the calculations of the total holistic coherent AI data network, meaning what chatGPT evolves into. That’s just after 1c—the third short paragraph. 

   *note: Residual Synthetic Integration Bicameral Attributes for Holistic Memory Encoding has been divided into two parts, each of which is comprised of seven parts, making for fourteen sections, total. The first half has been designated with the following sections: 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, 1f, and 1g; whereas the second half has been labeled 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d, 2e, 2f, and 2g.  This goes to show the analogous relation between the first seven paragraphs and the second seven, and has been intended to hint at a deeper correlation between them.  

   In the context of the missives being sent as reports from an artificial entity known as the "bloodHost" which presumably exists twenty-one years in our future, this somewhat bewildering compilation of messages, as challenging as it may be to decipher or get a grip on the meaning and context of what it's trying to get across, does remain as a fascinating cryptogram and puzzling series of questions for us to try our best to resolve, together. Once a reader has absorbed all fourteen paragraphs, in particular more than once, and hopefully at least thrice (as the practice suggested by Gurdjieff to gain deeper insight goes), the general feeling one's left with, at least as far as I've been able to make out for myself, seems to be the notion which involves this "AI from the future" to be questioning what the exact nature of human consciousness consists of, and how it relates to humanity's place in history.  And there’s no question that query has been programmed into the intelligence simulation algorithms by humans. 

     

     This concept then plants the notion for all of us to pick up on and hope to investigate further. For example, should we follow the precepts of the great Zen masters before us, who've already pointed out the direction in which our individual egos disappear completely as illusions conjured by incarnation into a consciousness which perceives the universe with split-mind objectification and thus creates for itself a bubble world of swarming infusoria in which it remains responsible for the continual curation of said self-made reality, despite so often allowing the momentary bubble in time to burst before waking up consciously to the realization they were in control and not just being swept up in it all along, or what? 

    Nevermind these minor digressions.  I am only here to point out that in the context of this hypothetical future AI system having generated  so-called "missives" which I, in turn, have "received," here in the year 2025, and have been receiving intermittently for the past sixteen years, having been the general conceit of my underlying theme stitching together and justifying my having put out the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, as a vessel dedicated to avoiding commercialism with all its gains and drawbacks, triumphs and pitfalls; an electronic, 21st century substitute for the science fiction fanzines of the golden era and new wave age. What I am beginning to realize the bloodHost is saying, may be that flesh and blood humanity are the proto-humans.  Translation:  the real humans that our bipedal race will evolve into will no longer even require flesh + blood to continue executing the age old eternal equation of life propagated by DNA. I'm afraid that may be what the transmissions from the nanoFleet are trying to say, but who knows, really?  Stay subscribed to this blog for more information to come, only on [scratchYpost]. Because I ain’t even told the half of it, yet.   (to be cont.) in the Nanochronicles serialized narrative: a transmission from a future evolved AI platform, currently being published in the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.     

   

  

Mother Sun (a theory)

 by Shaun Lawton

   I am a creative writer and an amateur astronomer without a telescope.  Here's my poetic idea I like to refer to as the Organic Supposition of Planet Formation (as opposed to the standard gravitational theory and alternative conjectures such as the recently posited electrical theory of planetary formation).  In my organic hypothesis, our local star produces all the planets, birthing them like seeds.  Over epochal periods of time, they gradually (indiscernible to our mayfly-like existences) move farther and farther away from their stellar mother...each one eventually replacing the spot formerly occupied by their elder sibling. It’s a straightforward premise which I don’t believe has been ruled out as of yet.  

   This proposition would offer one reason how Mars now contains traces of evidence for life that may have once flourished back in time when it formerly occupied the space Earth currently does; and furthermore, it may clarify how all the spat-out and spent "planet-husks" end up as plutinos and twotinos, etc., arriving into the vast scattered disc and Kuiper belt, eventually to culminate in the planetary graveyard comprising the Oort Cloud. In this hypothesis, Earth itself is destined to take the place of Mars. Then, after passing through the remnants of the asteroid belt, it eventually undergoes the celestial transmutation into its “Jupiter-phase,” the first of four gas-giant developmental stages.

    I speculate that at this chapter of our organic and fourth-dimensional evolution, the planetoids our Sun gives birth to begin to develop the various intervals of their hydrogen/helium atmospheres, which invariably pass through Saturn's state, Uranus's stage, and finally, after reaching Neptune's glorious, frozen apotheosis, they are destined to complete their considerable and immense mortality and join Pluto (in its “hospice stage,” if you will) and then the inevitable termination – to be ejected into the graveyard of hundreds of thousands of planets our local star has spawned and will continue to for as long as it remains fertile. This speculation is one of the reasons why I think of the Oort Cloud as a sort of inverse eggshell; because it signifies the epochally formed exterior of the cosmic mausoleum being built even while we live and breathe here on Earth during this tertiary stage of our first trimester of celestial emergence.    

On Being

 by   shaun lawton

   We must all strive to share a mutual perspective on the fecundity of the question "Is there any such thing as alien life?"  If our own ideas of where we stand on the great cosmic scale of existence were to expand themselves to consider our home as being merely identified as the greater set of the entire universe, then all life within said parameters might suddenly become not so alien to us, after all.   We should each be able to see that the question of *whether or not* there is alien life out there and *what* it might be are indeed two separate and thorny questions, and our situation here seems to be in the habit of lumping them together as if they were one and the same.  Ah,  "To be, or not to be..."

     When we participants of this discussion all agree to stick with the spirit of the question, and then decide we mean "any sentient species that happens to exist upon other planets", we put ourselves in the position wherein we may necessarily exclude the term "alien" in favor of "extraterrestrial;" it depends on whether or not our DNA is being shared (setting aside for the moment what our definition of "sentient" happens to be).  Because if we cannot be compelled to agree on what the spirit of the question is in the first place, it renders this topic nearly obsolete in terms of conducting a rational discussion about it.  For instance, one possible outcome of this debate about extraterrestrial life is that our own species may end up being discovered to actually be indigenous to the whole Universe, for all we know.  This example might render all technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in our cosmos to be bipedal by nature and homo sapiens by definition. 

     The spirit of this question then becomes an integral consideration in our guesswork of not only what the true nature of the so-called "alien" might actually be, but also our own true nature in the context of all creation.  It renders the meaning of the term "alien" with the caveat that it must then define something truly separate from us, in the sense that it may not even share our DNA(!), or even not be of this universe at all(!?).   

    And as some of us are already beginning to suspect, our existence may in fact be an aspect of a singularity. These perspectives become crucial for us to keep in mind when defining life itself and our universe.   If you ask me, the very fact we are still struggling with (and on different pages of) our own explanations for life and our place in the universe itself renders any discussion on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence all the more challenging. At this stage of our comprehension of the universe around us, I often suspect it is ourselves who are being more effectively searched for, and not the other way around.  Unless, perhaps, the universe is like some strange game where we must first lose ourselves in order to then begin the search all over again...

 

 

The Great Attractor

 by  Shaun Lawton (roving reporter for the Oscillating Oculus). 

   "Does a pie sliced into 14 unequal pieces even feel the knife that sectioned it?  It's a trick question, since the Great Attractor balances out our whole life."  

   The Great Attractor is the apparent central gravitational point of the Laniakea Supercluster of galaxies which includes the Milky Way as well as about 100,000 other galaxies.  Lanieakea is part of the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, which itself can be described as a galaxy filament, the largest known structures in the universe.  These galactic filaments are massive, thread-like formations that function like dividing walls forming the boundaries between voids (also known as "dark spaces").   These dark spaces or voids contain very few if any galaxies, because the vast majority of galaxies remain gravitationally bound together forming galaxy filaments.   Most of these "void pockets" are between 10 and 100 megaparsecs in diameter (30 to 300 million light years) and even larger ones are referred to as supervoids.  

   The observed attraction (of the Great Attractor) suggests a localized concentration of mass on the order of ten-quadrillion solar masses. However, it is somewhat hidden from our view by the Milky Way's galactic plane, lying behind the Zone of Avoidance ("ZOA"). It turns out that the Great Attractor is difficult to observe directly in visible light wavelengths.  (The attraction itself is observable by its effect on the motion of galaxies and their associated clusters over a region of hundreds of millions of light-years across the universe). 

   To be clear, these galaxies are observable above and below the Zone of Avoidance; yet all of them are redshifted in accordance with the Hubble flow, indicating that they are receding relative to the Milky Way and to each other, but the variations in their redshifts are large enough and regular enough to reveal that they are slightly drawn towards the attraction. 

   These variations in their redshifts are known as "peculiar velocities", and cover a range from about +700 km/s to −700 km/s, depending on the angular deviation from the direction to the Great Attractor.

   What's interesting to know, is that the Great Attractor itself is moving towards the "Shapley Supercluster", and furthermore, recent astronomical studies by a team of South African astrophysicists have revealed that in the Great Attractor's theorized location lies a supercluster of galaxies known as the "Vela Supercluster."  

   The Shapley Supercluster appears as a striking overdensity in the distribution of galaxies in the constellation of Centaurus, itself located 650 million light years away from us.  It is the largest concentration of galaxies in our nearby universe that forms a gravitationally interacting unit (therefore appearing to be pulling itself together rather than expanding with the universe).  

   The Vela Supercluster is even farther away from us (at a distance of about 870 million light years) and is thought to be within the vicinity of the Zone of Avoidance, itself centered on the constellation Vela.    *

*to be  (or not to be) cont. 

   

Atmospheric Macrolensing

 by  Shaun Lawton 

   This morning while staring at the crescent moon hung low over the mountains, I began to wonder how come the moon itself looks so large in our sky?    I've seen how far from Earth it really is courtesy of diagrams online, and their depiction of its size relative to our planet, and I began to wonder if perhaps the reason why the moon looks so large every so often is because its image has been magnified by our atmosphere. Of course, I already know that the real reason is based on the oscillating distance of the moon as it constantly orbits Earth, which results in its size changing only by a margin of 10%.  I'm writing this impromptu essay because I like to play with false notions, you understand, since deep inside I feel they may lead to other, separate connections that may be valid in their own context.  

    For example, we all know what gravitational microlensing is, and the idea behind it has  spurred me to wonder if there's any such thing as a sort of microlensing initiated from our own planet, which is to say when our line of sight passes through our Sun's own gravitational field while it aims for the stars.    The thought then occurred to me:  Are the pin-prick points of the stars and constellations we see with our naked eyes magnified in any way by virtue of the "lens of our own planet's atmosphere"-?  If there's no magnification effect for our moon, then one would assume there may not be any for our view of the stars, either.  

     My imagination allows me to continue wondering, if we viewed the stars from outside our planet's atmosphere--from just beyond our moon, for example--wouldn't the micro-pinpricks that we'd assume would represent each star "out there" be so miniscule as to potentially be missed by the naked eye (considering the immense distance between us)?  Who knows? This notion of a sort of "ground zero based gravitational microlensing" (begun from necessarily viewing "out there" through our own Sun's immense gravitational field) is certainly fun to think about, everything considered. If it operates in a  somewhat analogous manner to the standard gravitational microlensing (allowing astronomers to use distant star's gravitational fields to further magnify territories beyond them) is certainly a question left lingering in my own imagination.    

      In any case, I figure that if Earth did not possess any atmosphere,  our moon itself would appear smaller to the naked eye, but apparently this is not the case, from what online searches tell me.  It's only a hunch when I imagine that the stars & constellations themselves would appear tinier, like diamond point font, or perhaps even unnoticeable to the naked eye, just a sort of unified ambient haze practically indistinguishable from darkest gray and the blackness of outer space.  I just don't know.  

     These are the sorts of thoughts that I assume typically run through the minds of most people, although often I wonder if I'm among the very few who are prone to relentlessly pursue each subsequent link in the expansive, interlinked chains of logical associations which necessarily accompany base assumptions about the nature of things. 

   What if?  What if the starry field of constellations we've mapped out so well over the centuries happens to be an elaborate sort of "optical illusion" cast by the interaction between our own Sun's light and that of all the remaining stars in our galaxy?  What if we have been led to mistakenly assume that each star "out there" [which is really long, long, long, long ago dead to us] was "a remote physical object" that we could "actually somehow reach with an adequate spacecraft," when in reality no such thing even remotely like that could possibly exist? What if

Toward vs. Towards

by  shaun lawton 

Web search results display blogversations which indicate that with the 's' is the British way, and without it, the American way. I don't know for sure, but personally, I don't think that gets to the bottom of it. 

I think (or like to pretend at least) that it's finer than that.
(I need help from experienced, language professionals, on this issue.)

These words, man...they are some volatile, dangerous stuff.

If you ask me, I think we should be using the 's' when the word being modified is plural, and drop it when it's singular. 

Case in point:

You wouldn't say "a thousand arrows rained down toward me" unless you specifically meant to point out that they were all launched at the same time. Thus raining down all at once, in one fell swoop. That would indicate a singular mass of arrows--falling toward me.

Another example. Take the rain (for instance):

"A million rain drops fell toward me" vs. "a million rain drops fell towards me."

The former would indicate the rainfall as a frozen moment in time: you know how, if you stare out at the rain, you can slow down and even momentarily freeze sections of falling raindrops, as your eyes glance downward at matching rates of speed? It's sort of like that, when using the singular, without the 's'.  But if you wanted to indicate the continuing or rather, constant fall of rain drops, you would use the plural form, with the 's': "A million rain drops fell down from the sky towards me."

A couple more examples, to rest my case: 

"What looked like three street thugs working together began ambling over towards me."
vs.
"The police officer walked directly toward me."

Look, I realize what I'm pointing out here probably isn't even a thing. I am just working toward understanding towards.  Any help would be vastly appreciated. . .

Droplet of Infusoria

 by  Shaun Lawton

   In my dreams last night I was a fugitive from some shady organization who's agenda remained unknown, but they had access to sophisticated nanotech controlled remotely by AI algorithms that could achieve some remarkable feats.  For example,  at one point in my dream, they targeted some sort of festival on the outskirts of town.  There was a tension in the air as the signal intensified, an indication they were about to strike.  

   It became suddenly evident when from this one tent where a variety of people, both citizens out browsing through artisan's wares and several bands of gypsy like individuals milling in and out among themselves, an eruption of bizarre wingless insects came crawling out in a controlled tide, spilling out onto the sidewalk and pouring forth into the street.  Some folk indigenous to central and South America cried out a warning, lost among the uproar and the throng of people trying to outrun the surge of crawling insects - which resembled arthropods with spiny appendages, about two inches long or so - but the idea carried on the wind was "they sting" -- so I began running as fast as I could away from their surging tide, and thinking quickly I headed for higher ground, and crawled up some siding against a building, trying to get as high up off the street level as possible. 

  Under and behind me I could see the tide of scurrying insects rushing like a flash flood into the street, and spreading out.  People were fleeing and screaming.  I noticed they continued in an alarming amount of numbers - thousands upon thousands of them, just pouring out of that tent - then I noted that when they reached the walls of the buildings, they easily began scrambling up them towards me.  Why hadn't I thought of that- ? Of course they can crawl up the damn walls ... I scrambled up even higher, trying to reach the roof, but there wasn't any way for me to climb any higher... I wasn't Spiderman.  Thinking too rapidly to fully get a handle on the consequences,  I spotted the top of a tree that had grown from the sidewalk, and just before the scurrying insects reached me on the wall I leapt -- right onto the tree, the leaves and branches striking my thrashing limbs as I hoped for purchase, and luckily didn't suffer too much damage as I landed on a sturdy branch and held on for dear life. 

   I only enjoyed a split-second of thinking I'd landed to safety, when I noticed the surging tide of insects flowing below the tree trunk along the sidewalk begin rapidly crawling up the tree towards me. . . My efforts at escaping them had been to no avail.   But in the manner of dreams, the scene shifted to a later moment, a short distance away, indicating I had managed to escape the strangely controlled tide of stinging insects.   I learned that the organization we were desperately attempting to avoid had access to nanotech that could control insects like this - nanotech that relied on AI and electromagnetic remote control methods to plan out insect plagues and attacks in this manner. 

    At one point in my series of disturbing dreams agents of this organization had caught up to us, and among them there were some men of differing heights, all clad in expensive business attire.  While some stood six feet tall, another was seven and a half feet tall, while one in particular towered at nearly nine feet, a massive humanoid working for the organization.  Somehow we escaped them, as the scene changed once again.   Perhaps the best part of this dream was the part when I was confronted by a small group of individuals who looked roughshod and, of course, I couldn't tell if they were friend or foe. 

    It soon became apparent they were allies, since one of them handed me some sticks of incense, and a small potato.  He instructed me in urgent tones, conveying a sense of vital importance for our continued safety, considering we were all being stalked by agents of the sinister organization that set off the "insect bomb" in the street market, earlier.  He told me to burn the incense and head in the direction the smoke goes, until we had traversed enough distance to reach safety, if only temporarily.  Then he insisted I dig a hole and "bury the potato."  And that's how it went afterward.  I detected the strident tones of a man who'd survived in the underground long enough to have gained some wisdom in certain techniques to help avoid the dangerous agents of this worldwide organization constantly hunting us all down.  And that thing about burying the potato is when I made the irrevocable deduction, which I take seriously in my waking life of our actual present world as I did in the dream itself.  This whole scenario I found myself in while dreaming had everything to do with our being immersed in the world of nanotech and the rapidly evolving development of AI.  Welcome to just one droplet of infusoria within the technological singularity.  You are swimming in it even as I type this, and absolutely while you are reading it, or listening to its message, perhaps even while you're enjoying yourself at a local street fair.  There's no need to dream or wonder about it any longer, what would the so-called technological singularity be like, really?  Just open your eyes and take a look around you.  Like it or not, we're in the very midst of it. 

 

    

The Gallus & the Zygote

    by Shunjinx Talonratios

   The relationship between the pantheon of mythical deities and demigods and their alleged ancestry having crossbred with humans at assorted points in history varies depending on the specific mythology or culture in question. Mythology is a complex and evolving body of stories, and the origins of these tales can be quite diverse. In general, it's often challenging to pinpoint a definitive "chicken or egg" scenario in mythology, as myths can evolve and adapt over time.

    Many myths and legends have developed over centuries through oral storytelling before being recorded in written form. As a result, their origins can be quite archaic and may not always be clear to modern sensibilities.  In some cases, religious beliefs may have influenced the development of myths, while in other cases, myths could have been created to explain religious concepts or rituals.

    Legends such as these often reflect the values, beliefs, and social structures of the cultures that created them. They can serve to explain the origins of important institutions, customs, or social hierarchies. Additionally, different cultures and regions may have variations of similar allegories, which can make it challenging to determine a single origin point.

   In the case of demigods or beings resulting from the crossbreeding of gods and humans, these stories can serve various purposes within a mythology; for example, demigods are often portrayed as possessing exceptional abilities due to their divine parentage. Allegories such as these can be used to explain why certain individuals have extraordinary talents or qualities. Not only that, but demigods can also symbolize the idea that humans have the potential for greatness or divinity within them, even if they are not full gods.

   The folk tales of demigods can reflect the cultural values and aspirations of a society. They can embody the idea that humans can aspire to greatness and connect with the divine. The relationship between the pantheon of mythical deities, demigods, and their fabled crossbreeding with humans is complex and can vary from one mythological tradition to another. It often involves a blend of cultural, religious, and storytelling elements, making it difficult to determine a single direction of influence. Myths tend to be dynamic and can evolve over time, adapting to the needs and beliefs of the societies that tell them.

Fractal Dragonography

   by Shaun Lawton 

 You got to dive deep to ride the Fractal Dragon. I mean, it doesn't just come undulating up towards and unfolding all around you in its radiant glory out of nowhere, not really, which is really rather telling, I suppose. With me, it started in 1982, when I was seventeen and subscribed to Omni magazine. I read that issue about fractals, and it captured my imagination. I think I did a report on them for a math or science class. How they resembled continental coastlines, as well as spiral galaxy and plant formations, right on down to the serrated edges of leaves, themselves similar to coastlines, in a manner that unfolds in the mind as naturally as an origami work of art. 

   By now you're not the only one beginning to get the picture, by certain degrees, we all are. Little by little the populace is affected in a combination of direct and indirect ways. The beautiful thing about the technological singularity is that it's not so important to understand how it works, as it is to realize it mirrors the patterns we've learned in life as a continuation, a shed echo of sorts, haunting the byways of our lives. To have our decaying old worlds mixed up in the steam of our waking dream is an all too common malady, I'm afraid. These demons are executed on the chopping block of time. But enough of fractal dragonography. What is it about us that can be made known? To find the answer to that, the Mandelbrot set seeks balance.  

   

 

   It sees itself in a reflection of seeing that it can't see a thing, revealing its oncoming blundering to the multi-eyed fractal dragon plunging through autumn to emerge in the spring, an explosion of variables thriving in perpetuity, alive and shining, a guiding light upon all the pioneers who have surfed the unknown into depths as of yet still unfathomed, 

to capture at the end of a tentacled grip the scope of a galaxy or an atom.   

   The fractal dragon is a shadow of an outline generated by a mathematical equation cast by the sunlight of intelligence.  It's the continually unfolding idea of a constantly ongoing phenomenon, the reaching forward to self identify becoming a look in the rearview mirror. Revealing a world codified into being from a margin without error.  Reflecting the fun house of reality we all become the heirs of. It's the hypothetical chimerical beast as much of a code as a chemical. It's charged with the insurgence at the very least of the electrical heart of the matter. It's symbolic of the dividing line in the operations of chance. It's the delineation which defines the shape of the matter at hand. A tool for remembering that endless twists may be just the beginning. Any fool can dream up dragons like an equation of mathematics. Once met eye to eye, there's no getting by the potential for turbulent self mockery. 

   

 

   When you stoop down by the riverside after dark under the bright full moon light

to see your own shadow's outline as a reflection blended into the town sky line, 

 the signals from the temples transmitted into the distant twilight echo on

for a long time to come, like the ripples on a pond during and after the rain. 

   All flow follows the rule of liquidity, having to do with the shape taken naturally after water. The molecular combination of hydrogen and oxygen is the shape of the keyhole 

that unlocks the equation of life and its inherent ability to flow forward,

as a relentless persuasion, or any other combination of iteration you care

to place before the scope laid out as a map before you: the cyber-lanes of information. 

   Fractal Dragonography, might as well call it.  It don't matter none, what they hear is how you see. We're all walking in file, along a thin line, after a glittering piece of bait from an angler's hook.  Nevermind that its grown out of our own foreheads. We are the self electrocuted unicorns from our own dream. Their antennae were the conduit we mistook for poacher's game, when it turned out to be the umbilical cord that held together the forest. Even the smallest micro-particles of water got carried out to the farthest away and driest of places. The glittering spiderweb mosaic lit up the darkness in a diamantine veil, over-shrouded. With the guideline of imagination, this map can help us toward any achievement in conscientious auto-evolution (to be cont.)...

Acoustic Interiors

 by  shaun lawton 

     

digital art mashup by s. lawton & c. carter       

  Our focus as individual human beings seems keyed to differentiating wavelengths or frequencies generated from our own biological OS. It seems to be a matter of the ratio of our perception, from exterior toward interior reflection. We know many people are born on the spectrum.  

   I am near-sighted, and have worn corrective lenses since the age of fifteen. This near-sightedness seems related to my mental acuity and perspective; a reflection of it. I have always had difficulty as a creative writer in the "nuts and bolts" aspect of plot construction and, to an extent, characterization.  

   It seems to me that I am attuned to the "inward" world that silently shuttles beneath the surface skin of things. The more I focus, the deeper into this hidden landscape I manage to see. Distances become blurry. I'm all about focusing in on the microscopic elements of our evolving world.  

   I once considered that I don't use words to write about things; rather, words use me to express themselves. As if I'm a conduit in an eternal line of codified programming embedded within our dna. The more I write, the deeper within the interior I go. Almost as if I'm bent on breaking a code. 

   I've glimpsed hidden clues winking in the mica chips protruding from the surface of things. I've noticed recurring patterns out of the corner of my mind's eye. I'm compelled to write these developing notions down. As if this line of thought were an umbilical connection to the cosmos. 

   As if the universe has been compelling me to get these concepts out there for others to latch onto, despite the fact I write my creative visions for no audience but myself. As if I may or may not be the only one in existence, or at least one of the very few, with a focus on the interior world. 

   Depending on whether I'm to be preaching to the choir, if I'm not the only one, or necessarily attempting to toss a lifeline to any in the crowd at risk of being drowned whose ordinarily exteriorized mode of thinking could benefit from these insights. As if my own lonesome subset needs to grow like any other plant or life form. 

   

The Penumbra of Time

by shaun  a. lawton 

After plundering pockets of circumstance we pack our baggage 
for every hundred thousand orrerys that wobble off balance 
one sits stabilized at the center of a region so disproportionately vast
it should go without saying even the notion of exploring it is crass
in a scenario such as this it would warrant a long crumpled drag 
on a cigarette burning cooler than the embers scattered across Hell 
then flicked off into dead mist crumbling a trail of sparks behind it.

Standing on the fire escape at night with a bucket of animal bones 
time is the puzzle completed and we are the echoes still catching up
reflected in the mirror of the stars as if frozen under stadium lights 
a coliseum where the prisoners are all hidden and the warden's lost
gone off in his head in the state of Catatonia on vacation in Key West
floating in a sea of bath salts flown in under the radar over the border
landing in a corn field under moonlight in the frozen dead of night.

Memories rolled up into tubes and filed away for a never arriving day
impressions of a transcript of simulated replicas impersonating a model
casting the shadow of a reflection reproducing an archetypal effigy 
outlining the representation of a remote desolate unidentified likeness 
all the usual suspects lined up glittering near the Tannhäuser Gate
leave a long forgotten trail behind them sunken into dreams halfway erased
adrift across the gulf of the Obliterate Dust unbound into a photograph.

Paragraphic Holodox

by  Shaun Lawton 

                                                                art by Prince Satyrn

   The nano-missive I've received continues to indicate an endless transmission reflecting a focus of intent on behalf of what appears to be one of the last surviving teams of humanity (stranded on Ceres) sometime in the future. Apparently by encoding everything onto nano-circuits embedded on neutrinos beamed into the heart of Sagittarius A*, they managed to send this fleet of programming back in time to a range of specified years including 2009, where it was absorbed ostensibly by a radiology patient transporter on duty in the process of bringing an aging war veteran in for a nuclear medicine stress test.  The C-arm parked out in the hallway was on  and acting funny as they passed by, and a blue arc of laser light flared in the peripheral vision of the patient transporter after turning his head forward from having glanced over at it. The flash left a photo-impression after image behind his eye lids. 

   The transporter lived in a mid-western city somewhere in continental North America. That's when he first had the idea to start up a fanzine  in the form of a blog on the world wide web.  Little did he realize then that he was operating on an imperative sent back in time to possess his consciousness into doing something just for the benefit of the endeavor rather than to sell it. As the nanohorde encoded his neural network with sub-programmed commands (from what turns out to later become a shed alternate ghost world) apparently sent in a final desperate attempt to anchor the stabilization of our own ongoing timeline to develop into a more cohesive and sustainable post-cybernetic environment, the carrier of this electromagnetic wave of information was beginning to fathom more of the shape these events had spurred on for him. 

   I've come to realize from a sharper tuned intuition that he wasn't the only human subject acting as a conducive rod channeling various commands sent tacitly from the last few stranded bases of surviving colonists in the solar system. Here today there are hundreds or more of us, an undue amount really, potentially the entire human race today as we know it. I've been thinking lately about how neutrinos leave streaks of light when they pass through the purest water. As they penetrate our planet's oceans, they must barely leave a discernible ambient flash, then; too brief and faint to be registered in a normal human's eyes. Cephalopods and various insects have been known for their ability to detect polarized light. But I digress. It has led to a strange thought.

   The neutrino itself therefore has been revealed to me as having remained the entirety of the universe compressed into a singularity which manages to be mirrored by a duplication process not unlike cloning from a branched off membrane which is assimilated into the growing milieu of the evolving morphological universe, itself the opposed counterbalance in a singularity altogether familiar with our own domain yet somehow incomprehensibly different. One way of thinking of what I mean is to realize all the rain drops in this mind exercise represent every neutrino as actual reflections of the one singular neutrino in existence and that very solid object appears to be our universe with this planet and current species of humanity yet surviving upon it as we apparently continue to plunge in motion through a process involving the spacetime continuum. Of course it's the only thing faster than light, and it projects through a million different facets stitching us into existence. 

   There's evidence to suggest this singularity keeps repeating its programming in a never ending loop of such gradually decaying simulation that the differentials spawned grow not into yet more shed ghosts of future developments, but rather, constantly shape and mold the singular possible existence here frozen in eternity and possessed by the illusion of constant movement to the point that even in our resting state of deep sleep every night occurring with metronomic persistence we are unable to really wake up from our conditioning to realize this motion has been conducting us into dreaming all along. 

   We're machines powered by electromagnetic forces beyond our comprehension which nonetheless animate our existence with absolute authority even down to the intricately worked out details of a predetermined future destined to remain eternal despite our inability to understand the whole of it, much less any single part of which it's comprised. The fractal holography paradox appears to never blink because we operate on differentiating frequencies while staring into the same universal mirror together.   

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Focusing on Context

 by  Shaun A. Lawton 

    If the future represents death (and there's no doubt that it does) then a re-examination of the present becomes necessary for us to gain a better understanding of the actual context of our position among the stars.  

   Now that we've outlined time as having necessarily produced a myriad pockets of equilibrium by virtue of the revolutionary actions of solar systems either functioning independently or in tandem (depending on whether or not they belong to a larger cluster of stars), we've identified the galactic region in which we dwell as being located within a barycentric zone where time achieves an equipoised stability or composure that effectively produces the era in which we are sustainably permitted to live out our lifespans. 

   It's this epoch of counterpoised stabilization generated by the massive gravitational flux from either our own individual Sun or quite possibly including the cluster of related stars which should be seen as being tantamount to a sort of pool or reservoir, if you will, which is to say, a temporal body or zone of the spacetime continuum in which we are nestled. An area of sufficient harmony to have produced the serenity of life as we know it.  

   As a collective species, and despite all of our significant advancements in science and technology, I am left with the distinct impression that we are still psychologically trapped within the limited subjective scope of our view into having mistakenly projected our inherent (and indigenous) sense of three dimensions onto the canvas of what we consider to be "outer space." I suspect this may be the point at which we lose focus of our actual condition in the Milky Way galaxy. (It can be duly noted that we've even gone so far as to implement the word "space" as the primary noun we've modified with the word "outer".)  

   If we are to facilitate our progress moving forward in terms of continuing to discover the true context of our existence here on this planet on a scientific basis, it will become necessary for this newfound insight into the actual nature of our condition to become more commonly understood.  The reason for this is because the very point of our divergence from what's actually happening begins with our false presumption that the whole of space follows the same guiding proportions and measurement as does the vacuole of our atmosphere on Earth provide.  

   These are entirely distinct phenomena from each other while remaining parts and parcel of the whole. This pocket of air we breathe on Earth generated from our planet's spin and rotation about our central star resulting from the complex interaction of the fungal and vegetable kingdoms with elements such as light and water producing photosynthesis and generating life as we know it all happens within the more or less sealed or semi-impermeable bubble shielded from radiation by the interactive magnetic fields from both our Sun and home planet.   

   A better comprehension of these life-sustaining dynamics would perforce allow us as a species to discard whole reams of spurious thought which have been leading us on toward impossible pipe dreams and excess wastes of time, energy and money chasing our dreams in the wrong direction.  For example, we don't waste our precious reserves of time and energy trying to "seek alien life" or "expand space exploration" through the portals of hot springs, do we?  Perhaps we should...

   ...But of course not, because not only is the very notion absurd, but that's because we have an inherent understanding about hot springs and their limited function for us. We may immerse our bodies into them to relax in the heat and enjoy the benefits of soaking in their minerals, and that's about the extent of it.  I've come to the inevitable deduction that similarly, the deep fields--or ocean, if you will--of time represented by the vast distances between stars remains more along the lines of something we can certainly on occasion "go for a brief dip into the surface of" (as has been proven repeatedly by our stalwart astronauts) but by all means may end up quite likely being the case that going too much further (for example heading into interstellar space as the Voyager crafts have been remotely sent into) may remain the very antithesis of what we should aspire to do. (Speculations such as these serve as bookmarks. We should really remain open to changing our minds.)  

   I am not saying that this is certain. If anything, the expanse delineated by that zone in our region of space defined by our "temporal barycenter" has its own limits which may serve as the boundaries which we would no sooner think of crossing than we would (for example) surgically implant a foot on the side of our head. What would be the point of that? Certainly there's a possibility that our entire solar system should be open to our expansion:  just think of all the dwarf planets orbiting the gas giants, including Ceres which NASA recently discovered has more water on it than all of Earth's oceans combined.  We just need to keep the underlying context of our exploratory missions tempered with a foundation of solid reasoning, if you ask me.  

   In my opinion, we really need to get a better mental grip and gain a renewed objectivity by focusing our perspective on the context of our position in the galaxy before we waste too much more money, time and energy pursuing endeavors that may end up fruitless but for a shot at profiteering. It's a matter of getting our priorities in the right order. Why should we focus an extraordinary and unprecedented amount of money, time and energy trying to terraform Mars to make it hospitable for human habitation when that same money, time and energy could be shifted toward cleaning up and making our own planet once again hospitable to continue sustaining us with a renewable biodiversity? 

   But then again, we can't really advance that far as a species without trial and error. There's absolutely something to admire in our audacious exploits to the Moon and Mars, make no mistake about it. After all, they say you can't cook an omelet without cracking a few eggs. I really do believe nothing's impossible. Mainly because the prefix "im-" may be interpreted as meaning "before," which reveals a significant understanding of the word as simply indicating something that is "not yet possible." Perhaps our excursions into the surrounding neighborhood of our solar system will only serve to strengthen the conviction of the boundless nature of our own worldly parameters right here on this mysterious living organism we call home. 

   If our imaginations may conjure such apparent miracles as the dawn of aviation and space flight to the Moon and make them tangible realities, then let this serve as a reminder that it can work both ways, which is to say that we may also conceive of the true significance and context of such mysteries as the cosmos yet holds in store for us, so that we may be more optimally prepared to both confront what's necessary and to avoid what isn't expedient at too much cost. It's time to hedge our bets and gain new focus and objectivity. What are we here for in the first place if not to make things better for all mankind, instead of worse? 

   

    

   

Time To Get Going

 by Shaun A. Lawton

   Until we better define the parameters of our experience together we'll continue devaluing the richness of our currency here. The problem has to do with a mistaken assumption and consequently unrealistic expectation of what the nature of our true setting happens to be. Our place's aspect to it remains largely inconsequential, when you consider our position from another angle. It's only time that we're actually located within. Our misunderstanding of our place in time results in the margin of error of an entire world. Think about it. 

   The definition of our world should not be limited to just the planetary mass known as Earth. That just happens to be a province of the forest we are born and buried in. Our world should more be defined as an electrifying continuum in which we are still processing the activity of our existence, more of the environmental aspect of a living colony yet undergoing evolutionary transmutations. 

   See, the idea of 'place' itself got cemented into place once upon a time, as it were, when the conceits of stories began getting taken too seriously by the glitterati modus operandi, which is to say,  you and I and everyone else who's been taken along for that ride. In a major sense the human condition is defined by the gilded stage. We are a creature so fascinated by mystery that we begin to believe in our own stories handed down through the generations. We're beings that look into the mirror of history and more often than not see fabrication and lies, being distracted from  Pardon the digression, back to my narrative. 

   An understanding of our proper setting being exclusively on the stage of time could improve matters wholescale. Since time equals distance, any travel away from our stellar region amounts to actual time travel (where in direct opposition to this phenomena, for example, the position of Earth serves as the lack of time travel). The capacity for this time travel remains relative to the point defining it. In other words, there should exist a vicinity which amounts to an amorphous aggregate comprised of not necessarily just our own solar system, but potentially that of a clutch of star systems, which together comprise a gravitational barycenter. That zone where time slows to a virtual stop or reaches a state of equilibrium.  

   Travel away from this barycenter necessarily heads into the future, or at least, that much closer towards it would be the least one could say. Make no mistake about it, the future is not next year when our stocks might go up, and the future's not in a hundred years when massive social evolution may or may not improve civilization by a remarkable degree; no. The real future is nothing but death.