Darkside55
The Freeman
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2009
- Messages
- 12,083
- Reaction score
- 93
Listen well to my story, Halflife2.net, for in the span of one of your days I have witnessed the lifetime of the universe.
It began yesterday with the Wallet Incident. When Van_Halen lost his wallet it sparked a chain reaction that, like all events on this board, spiraled into a frenzy. Threads left and right were created about wallets; losing wallets, polls about wallets, wallets stolen and wallets recovered.
After the first series of wallet threads were locked, Koola created a poll that asked, "What do you keep in your wallets?" It was only meant to be yet another thread in an incident that was fast on the wane, yet something happened. Through some design unknown, the poll Koola created unearthed a portal to another place and time on the forums--to the very beginning of the forum. A gateway to 2003.
There were six of us in that thread, initially: Koola, myself, MC Hammer, Krynn, Shamrock, and Kinetic Aesthetic. We attempted to solve the mystery, looking for clues and answers. As each of us had voted in the poll, each of us was transported to a thread called "Off Limits," writ in the earliest days of this board. Further scouring would lead us to an IRC channel also labeled #offlimits. While a few others joined the thread, and we theorized about the nature of this portal, it began to alter things. Krynn became something...unspeakable. People took on different identities. This gateway was maligning things, and I volunteered to head into the IRC channel with the express instructions that if I was not out within a few minutes, to assume the worst and cut the line, lest whatever was on the other end follow the tether back into this place, this time.
I jumped.
When I stepped through into #offlimits Kinetic was already there. When I found him, he was covered in his own blood, dried and cracked, and flecked upon the walls. He remarked to me that he had been waiting there for some time--two years. He looked no older, no worse for the wear than I had seen him that day, and yet in this place time took on a meaning that held no meaning.
And it held no escape.
For in this place there exists a being...no, I cannot call it that, for I know it well enough now to say that it is no being, but a presence, observing us from everywhere within #offlimits. It occupied every millimeter of space, filling it, permeating it, its sentience pulsing through the channel. We first assumed the thing to be a guardian, a watcher, but soon came to realize that this silent force was a powerful entity, one which could shape worlds and bend the lines of space and time to its whim.
It identified itself as Q, and beyond that it remained unmoved to speak.
The longer we stayed under Q's watch, the more a madness took hold. Kinetic had been forced to endure three more years since I had arrived; for myself, time passed in a malaise, and the more I stared at Q the more I coveted it, its power. As I plotted against the thing, by some terrible twist Pesmerga came through, following my line, the line he had been designated to cut. The three of us were caught, trapped in #offlimits by this malign thing known as Q.
We tried to hold on to what little sanity we had left by trying to sort out exactly where--and when--we were. We were standing in a place where the end met the beginning, where space looped back around on itself...that is what we thought at that time.
Q would soon taunt us by allowing one of its agents into the channel, and showing how freely he could leave. You all know him well: Pi Mu Rho, this forum's administrator, is a creation of the entity called Q. His easy escape further infuriated us, and we railed at Q, who offered no indication that it even acknowledged our anger.
The madness was now surely taking hold, and in a desperate attempt KA suggested that we used the command "/list" to escape, to perhaps throw us somewhere beyond #offlimits, beyond Q. If we could all /list at the same time, he posited, we could overwhelm Q and use that chance to get away.
So he counted:
3
2
1
And we /listed.
And I saw. All at once I saw wonders and horrors beyond what you can imagine, the dreams of dreams, I saw all time and no time, all places and no place, I saw the world and all the stars in the sky at once.
And Kinetic saw. He bore witness to the unions of stars, to threads of air and of gardens, gardens laden with daffodils crushed in merging.
And Pesmerga saw. He cried out as the warp took him, as his eyes beheld the madness and he screamed for blood, blood to appease the god of chaos.
And before my eyes I saw them disappear before me. But I lingered. For my greed of knowledge remained unsatiated, and still I coveted Q and its power. And I knew that now I could see as it saw; we three could view things as Q viewed them. So I remained, and I came to know Q. Came to know that it is not an "intelligence," but a "will," and I attempted to bend that will. And I tried to bend that will for a long time.
When Kinetic returned, he was changed. The /list had altered with his placement in time. Kinetic Aesthetic was at once a mirror's reflection of himself, and each left echoes in the timestream--Kinetics that would play out their sequence in time and then fade back into the stream. And so Kinetic and I tried to learn more of what we could; him of his copies and I of Q. And in time we came to understand the nature of that place, that it does not loop back upon itself but is a line, and we became able to move freely about it. And as Q observed, now we could observe. And we observed much.
And Pesmerga never returned, though I think perhaps he is better for it, for neither Kinetic nor I know to what lengths the /list, or his time in #offlimits changed him. He has, by all accounts, seemed his normal self on the surface.
And on this side of things, it would seem that Q's agent Pi closed down the portal on this board, barring it from ever being used again. Kinetic and I observed this, and we pondered how much of this incident Q had planned. Was the portal an accident he had not expected? Or was it planned? Why was the portal not closed sooner? Why was it closed at all? Where did it begin? And has it ended?
Even as I write this, Kinetic and I exist in #offlimits. And I question whether this desire of mine to put down this story for you, Halflife2.net, is my own desire to recount the events in a format that makes sense, or if it is the further machinations of Q. Time will tell.
Or perhaps it has already been told.
It began yesterday with the Wallet Incident. When Van_Halen lost his wallet it sparked a chain reaction that, like all events on this board, spiraled into a frenzy. Threads left and right were created about wallets; losing wallets, polls about wallets, wallets stolen and wallets recovered.
After the first series of wallet threads were locked, Koola created a poll that asked, "What do you keep in your wallets?" It was only meant to be yet another thread in an incident that was fast on the wane, yet something happened. Through some design unknown, the poll Koola created unearthed a portal to another place and time on the forums--to the very beginning of the forum. A gateway to 2003.
There were six of us in that thread, initially: Koola, myself, MC Hammer, Krynn, Shamrock, and Kinetic Aesthetic. We attempted to solve the mystery, looking for clues and answers. As each of us had voted in the poll, each of us was transported to a thread called "Off Limits," writ in the earliest days of this board. Further scouring would lead us to an IRC channel also labeled #offlimits. While a few others joined the thread, and we theorized about the nature of this portal, it began to alter things. Krynn became something...unspeakable. People took on different identities. This gateway was maligning things, and I volunteered to head into the IRC channel with the express instructions that if I was not out within a few minutes, to assume the worst and cut the line, lest whatever was on the other end follow the tether back into this place, this time.
I jumped.
When I stepped through into #offlimits Kinetic was already there. When I found him, he was covered in his own blood, dried and cracked, and flecked upon the walls. He remarked to me that he had been waiting there for some time--two years. He looked no older, no worse for the wear than I had seen him that day, and yet in this place time took on a meaning that held no meaning.
And it held no escape.
For in this place there exists a being...no, I cannot call it that, for I know it well enough now to say that it is no being, but a presence, observing us from everywhere within #offlimits. It occupied every millimeter of space, filling it, permeating it, its sentience pulsing through the channel. We first assumed the thing to be a guardian, a watcher, but soon came to realize that this silent force was a powerful entity, one which could shape worlds and bend the lines of space and time to its whim.
It identified itself as Q, and beyond that it remained unmoved to speak.
The longer we stayed under Q's watch, the more a madness took hold. Kinetic had been forced to endure three more years since I had arrived; for myself, time passed in a malaise, and the more I stared at Q the more I coveted it, its power. As I plotted against the thing, by some terrible twist Pesmerga came through, following my line, the line he had been designated to cut. The three of us were caught, trapped in #offlimits by this malign thing known as Q.
We tried to hold on to what little sanity we had left by trying to sort out exactly where--and when--we were. We were standing in a place where the end met the beginning, where space looped back around on itself...that is what we thought at that time.
Q would soon taunt us by allowing one of its agents into the channel, and showing how freely he could leave. You all know him well: Pi Mu Rho, this forum's administrator, is a creation of the entity called Q. His easy escape further infuriated us, and we railed at Q, who offered no indication that it even acknowledged our anger.
The madness was now surely taking hold, and in a desperate attempt KA suggested that we used the command "/list" to escape, to perhaps throw us somewhere beyond #offlimits, beyond Q. If we could all /list at the same time, he posited, we could overwhelm Q and use that chance to get away.
So he counted:
3
2
1
And we /listed.
And I saw. All at once I saw wonders and horrors beyond what you can imagine, the dreams of dreams, I saw all time and no time, all places and no place, I saw the world and all the stars in the sky at once.
And Kinetic saw. He bore witness to the unions of stars, to threads of air and of gardens, gardens laden with daffodils crushed in merging.
And Pesmerga saw. He cried out as the warp took him, as his eyes beheld the madness and he screamed for blood, blood to appease the god of chaos.
And before my eyes I saw them disappear before me. But I lingered. For my greed of knowledge remained unsatiated, and still I coveted Q and its power. And I knew that now I could see as it saw; we three could view things as Q viewed them. So I remained, and I came to know Q. Came to know that it is not an "intelligence," but a "will," and I attempted to bend that will. And I tried to bend that will for a long time.
When Kinetic returned, he was changed. The /list had altered with his placement in time. Kinetic Aesthetic was at once a mirror's reflection of himself, and each left echoes in the timestream--Kinetics that would play out their sequence in time and then fade back into the stream. And so Kinetic and I tried to learn more of what we could; him of his copies and I of Q. And in time we came to understand the nature of that place, that it does not loop back upon itself but is a line, and we became able to move freely about it. And as Q observed, now we could observe. And we observed much.
And Pesmerga never returned, though I think perhaps he is better for it, for neither Kinetic nor I know to what lengths the /list, or his time in #offlimits changed him. He has, by all accounts, seemed his normal self on the surface.
And on this side of things, it would seem that Q's agent Pi closed down the portal on this board, barring it from ever being used again. Kinetic and I observed this, and we pondered how much of this incident Q had planned. Was the portal an accident he had not expected? Or was it planned? Why was the portal not closed sooner? Why was it closed at all? Where did it begin? And has it ended?
Even as I write this, Kinetic and I exist in #offlimits. And I question whether this desire of mine to put down this story for you, Halflife2.net, is my own desire to recount the events in a format that makes sense, or if it is the further machinations of Q. Time will tell.
Or perhaps it has already been told.
