Link to article: Pattern Recognition.
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===== [[include component:preview text=You are not going anywhere but mad here in the dark. And madness is simply another way for darkness to be.]] ===== [[>]] [[module Rate]] [[/>]] One of you was first. One of you had parents who looked into the night sky and saw nothing but points of light. One of you had siblings who sat around the fire and feared the things in the dark but never once thought to turn their eyes to face it. One of you was different. A million years ago a face not unlike your own looked out into the darkness and saw lines and shadows emerge. And that one person saw it for what it was. A wolf the size of a horse, sneaking along the periphery. Waiting for the right time to strike. A pattern in the dark became something solid and fearsome. It was a benefit then. And a few false positives were nothing to worry about. Vigilance is its own reward, after all. That tribe survived the night. And all the nights afterward. That tribe spawned more watchers in the dark. They began to look to the sky. Where once they saw points of light they saw horses and bulls and more wolves. And you grew. A million years passed. You built the first cities. And the monsters in the dark were no longer the creatures you feared. Instead the faces you saw in a dark alley and the glint of a knife blade haunted your dreams. Not content to harvest your worlds, you began to harvest each other. An animal lurking in the darkness is a nuisance. A man lurking there is a problem. You learned to kill. And still you grew. Building bigger cities. Every generation looking outward, into darkness. Seeking answers. Still dreaming of lines you saw in your darkest moments. Still seeing faces where now no bestial faces dared tread. Now you were the predator every animal feared. You sought out new lands to conquer. New beasts to fear you. But it was still not enough. The giant wolf that haunted your early years became a docile servant. The great mastodon fled ever further north to escape your spears and arrows but could not run far or fast enough to escape you. You became masters of your world. Dying now only to your own success. Too many people to feed. Too densely populated to stave off plagues. Too powerful to let your neighbors live. One day, you began to not just see patterns in the dark, but create new ones. On cave walls. On primitive tablets. On papyrus. On paper. Drawing dooms that you believed would never come for you. Because now oblivion feared what you had become. You live your life according to imagined plots. You call them different things. Schedules. Maps. Plans. All carefully constructed to describe what lies outside your vision. You see into tomorrow. You see past your own horizons. You see into your own futures. All before opening your eyes or living a single moment. When the patterns were new, you looked to the stars and named us. Before you, we were nothing. Then we came rushing out of the void into your minds. Our positions now mattered. Our lives had purpose. Our deaths became great omens. From nothing you have created great works. From nothing you have conquered all of your fears. And yet, with all your belief and all your power: you still fear what you think you see in the darkness. Because you know that we are there. Dying for your amusements. Living for your satisfaction. The wolf on the periphery still stalks your mind. Waiting. A single lapse is all we need to strike. To live is to suffer. You have given us life since the first time you mistook us for beasts and forced us to know ourselves. Since the first of you looked to the sky and thought to name us, you feared us, though we posed no threat. Not now. Now you will live as we have for a million years. Screaming for the suffering to end.