Chapter 29: Fear?
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The fear of the unknown, is the greatest fear of any consciousness, right?
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While getting up, Liu looked around for Lumian and Milo.
'Where are they?'
Until...
"Come over here."
... hearing Lumian call her from behind.
"Hhaaa..."
She turned around, her heart full of apprehension, and headed toward the carriage where Lumian and Milo were waiting for her.
It only took her a few steps to reach them. But, her steps half-hearted, time felt infinite to her...
'.....'
... her thoughts silent but still busy...
"First, we need to take the Form out from under the carriage."
... she arrived in front of the carriage before even realizing it. Her apprehension, left two or three steps behind.
"Liu."
Unusually, Lumian said her name. There was probably a reason for that...
"... either you get more than thirty steps away, or you come within five steps."
He also uttered a sentence that Liu was fully aware of...
'....'
... as if Lumian had a deeper understanding of Liu and the situation than she did herself.
"But well, we have to take into account that we're in the middle of Obscurity, so we don't know yet how she's going to react. If you want, I can take her out myself, it won't change much for the tests we're going to do, but it might change something for you, right?"
Liu was understood, without her having asked for it... a strange but truly comfortable feeling.
'... he's acting the way he always does... and yet it's different...'
Different... Liu's emotions were different. But Lumian wasn't, his face completely neutral, contrasting with the moments before, yet reminding Liu of what had happened yesterday.
"... I'd like you to take it out yourself... please."
Nodding, Lumian stepped forward as he spoke:
"Mmh, I'm just going to take her out and then I'll explain..."
He crouched down and directly grabbed something with his hand.
'Just like that?!'
Seeing that, Liu immediately tried to activate her energy perception to see what was happening...
'....'
... without understanding much, except that Lumian had done something weird with his hand to directly grab the barrier, normally intangible, that he had set up around the Form.
"Mmh..."
The Form in his hand...
'...!! What the hell is he doing!'
... he carried it around in the air, bringing it within five steps of Liu...
'Huh!!'
... making Liu jump and step back when she noticed that the Form hadn't moved to regain a distance of ten steps from her.
"... to start with, we're going to try putting her down in the light of the lumarbre over there."
Without paying it any mind, Lumian walked past Liu and Milo with the Form in hand.
'Ffhuuu... damn, he scared me!'
Following Milo closely, Liu used him as a shield and watched Lumian, a few steps ahead, with the Form in hand.
Returning once again to the same tree, Lumian turned around and asked, smiling.
"Do you think she's going to go straight into the shadow of something or not?"
'... why is he smiling while asking that question??'
Without answering, Liu moved closer to hide a little more behind Milo.
'... he's way too scary with that face...'
"Mm, I have no idea... are you asking us because you don't know? Or because you already know?"
Milo turned his head, and seeing Liu so close, he froze for a few seconds, a little uncomfortable, then he whispered to her:
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Don't worry, it's nothing."
Liu answered, casting a quick glance upward at him.
She had hunched her back to be more discreet, and already being a little shorter than Milo by about ten centimeters, her position was rather ridiculous.
"Well, looks like she doesn't care about the light..."
Lumian, for his part, had already let go of the Form to get an answer to his question. And his sentence made Liu cling to Milo, just in case...
'... can't he warn us??'
"... maybe it's the light of Luminosity that bothers them... Mmh?"
Looking from behind Milo, Liu was also somewhat surprised, tightening her grip on Milo.
'It's moving...?'
It was the first time she had actually seen the Form move, or rather float would be a more fitting word.
"She must still be more comfortable in the shadow of something..."
'... it's going toward the shadow of another tree...'
The Form was moving fast enough to deduce its trajectory, but slowly enough to see that the light of the lumarbres didn't particularly bother her.
Without saying anything more, Lumian pointed at the Form with his finger, and a light spread out from the finger.
'..!! Where is it??!'
The Form had instantly disappeared, going completely out of Liu's field of vision.
Tightening her grip on Milo even more, she quickly looked around, anxious but not overly so...
'... what is this light??'
... her curiosity surely softening her negativity.
The light spreading from Lumian's finger was different from that of the lumarbres and the luminous plants around them. This light was more neutral, and hard to define as anything other than...
"Mm, she doesn't like the light of Luminosity, but it doesn't affect it. What do you think, why does she react differently to the light of Luminosity compared to that of the plants?"
'Luminosity... then again she appeared on a day of Obscurity... but where is she?'
Still not finding it, Liu activated her energy perception to try to make out the barrier, not very visible, around the Form.
"...."
'... hhaa there she is...'
She sighed mentally when she saw the Form in the shadow of the tree toward which she had been heading since the beginning.
'... you can barely see it compared to the days of Luminosity...'
"Liu."
Lumian said, to catch her attention.
"You know, you're the one who's the safest among us since the Form moves away as soon as you get within five steps. So there's no point in hiding behind Milo and squeezing his arm like that."
Coming out of her thoughts, and seeing Lumian looking at her, she took a few seconds to react to his words.
"Ahem..."
She let go of the arm of Milo, who had remained completely frozen all this time, straightened up and apologized, glancing at him.
"... sorry, I didn't do it on purpose."
And Milo, a rather embarrassed expression on his face, took a step to the side, moving away from Liu, as he answered her.
"It's no big deal, don't worry."
'... where is he going?'
Liu also took a step toward Milo, not giving him the chance to escape, Lumian's words not having really reassured her.
"So, what do you think, why does the Form react differently to the light of Luminosity compared to the light of the plants?"
And Lumian repeated his question in a louder voice, surely hoping that Liu wouldn't let her attention drift elsewhere.
"Is she more sensitive to the light of Luminosity?"
Such was Milo's answer...
"Because she was born on a day of Obscurity?"
Such was Liu's answer...
'... I'm just trying one step...'
Such was Liu's resolution...
She took a step to move away from Milo...
"Mm, well, we can say that both of your answers are fairly accurate. But it's not exactly that."
... the few seconds during which Lumian spoke were enough to...
'... no.'
... make Liu feel bad and take a step toward Milo again, where she felt more at ease.
And such was the conclusion of Liu's courage.
"She is indeed more sensitive to the light of Luminosity, but it's not only behavioral, physically she is in no way sensitive to the light of Luminosity."
Ignoring Milo's gaze, Liu focused on Lumian's words, waiting for the answer to her own question.
"And yes, we can say that it's mainly because she was born on a day of Obscurity. The fact that she hid directly in the shadow of a tree as soon as I spread light of Luminosity, is above all a behavioral and instinctive action. This instinct comes from the fact that she was born on a day of Obscurity, but explaining it like that is way too simple, right? We understood why she hides from the light of Luminosity, but why do you think she has this instinctive behavior?"
'... she moves like that out of instinct?'
Although her previous answer was close to the truth, she hadn't expected the explanations to take a direction this... abstract and rather unknown to her.
"Is it the same as when I get within five steps of her?"
And so she couldn't help asking such a question, having the opportunity to bring it up naturally while dodging any mental discomfort on her own part.
"Well, yes and no. Fundamentally yes, these two reactions are instinctive and have the same origin. This origin comes from the Form's consciousness and experiences, which are what directly influence her actions, and that's where the two reactions can differ. How, in your opinion?"
'....'
Lumian leaned against the same tree once again, giving Liu and Milo a few seconds to think.
'... instinctively? Unconsciously? No idea...'
"A difference in the experiences?"
Liu had gone in a more abstract direction, and Milo in a more concrete direction of the events...
"Yeah, we can start from there. We can say that, the difference comes from the experiences, because these experiences are what will directly influence the consciousness and the unconscious of an individual, and so the slightest variation in these experiences can give an infinity of different results. So, in your opinion, what is the experience that the Form went through that can be at the origin of her two instinctive behaviors?"
Lumian stopped there, once again leaving Milo and Liu some time to think.
'... an experience? Her birth?...'
Not being too sure of her answer, Liu looked over at Milo, who shrugged in response.
So she answered, a little hesitant and uncomfortable regarding this experience and the way she had lived through it.
"Her birth...?"
"Yeah, her birth, it's without a doubt the experience that has influenced her the most up until now. At her birth, she absorbed her surrounding environment, and she formed a body for herself from what she absorbed. That's where the difference is, she absorbed many different things, these things that she absorbed unconsciously influenced her consciousness, and all these things surely had a different effect on her consciousness. That's mainly where her instinctive reactions come from."
He stopped, thinking about something before continuing his explanations.
'... she flees Luminosity because she absorbed Obscurity? And she flees me...'
Liu already had more or less an answer, she had had it for a while already, but she didn't like this answer.
"Well, apart from that there's something else just as important to take into account, her instinctive reactions come from her experiences, but what gives rise to these reactions are the emotions that these experiences gave to the Form."
'... huh? The emotions?...'
Up until then, Liu had managed to follow, Lumian's explanations were really simple this time, but making the connection between the word emotions and the Form had never crossed Liu's mind.
"The Form was born in the middle of Obscurity, she has, conceptually speaking, absorbed this Obscurity. She had therefore adapted to it, surely seeing it as her environment, her mother, something like that. And so when Obscurity went away and Luminosity arrived, obviously the Form will instinctively look for what resembles Obscurity, no matter that Luminosity has no real influence on her. It's just like the attitude of a baby who wants its mommy and not an unknown woman."
Lumian took a small, really short pause, to finish with the question to ask themselves.
"In your opinion, what is the emotion at the origin of this attitude?"
Although Lumian's explanations were becoming more complex in Liu's eyes, tackling a subject she had never really thought about, the question he had asked was more than simple enough for an answer to appear quickly.
"Loneliness?"
Was Liu's answer, and...
"Fear?"
... was Milo's answer.
"Mm, you're both more or less right, but loneliness is an emotion too precise and complex for the Form, which has only existed for a week, to be able to have an emotion that defines itself in this way, even if yes, from a human point of view, if we put ourselves in the Form's place, there's a chance that the emotion we would feel is loneliness."
Lumian first explained Liu's answer, with a response that Liu had once again not considered at all.
'... so I'm right and wrong at the same time?'
"Fear, for its part, is closer to the way I would consider the emotion the Form showed by fleeing the light that I made, but just saying fear is a bit too broad. The Form was scared of what? Of Luminosity? When she doesn't even know what that is? When Luminosity is unknown to her?"
Once again, he took a short pause before continuing, putting more emphasis on his last words.
"Precisely, it's because Luminosity was unknown to her that the Form was afraid of it. The emotion she felt at that moment is therefore not just fear, but the fear of the unknown. And the fear of the unknown is thus the most primal and fundamental fear of any conscious being, as the guy without a monocle had said."
He practically finished speaking in a murmur, but the last part of what he had said still made its way into Liu's ear.
And Liu, frankly having nothing to add to such an explanation, focused as usual on the part that made her curious.
'... the guy without a monocle?'
"It's interesting, right? As the guy with a monocle would say."
Lumian added a few useless words, stressing the tone on "interesting" for some dark reason, and finishing the same way, practically murmuring...
'... with a monocle this time? What is he talking about?...'
... which of course, didn't escape Liu's curiosity.
"I don't understand, why is plain fear less suited to the situation than the fear of the unknown?"
Milo hadn't understood something, he opened his mouth as if to add something else, but...
"...."
... no sound came out, he visibly couldn't manage to formulate what he didn't understand, not even understanding himself what he didn't understand...
'... what does he mean?...'
... Liu didn't understand what he didn't understand either.
"The fear of the unknown is itself a fear, so why do we talk about that one first before talking about plain fear, huh?"
Lumian asked, the guy getting more and more creepy, as Milo nodded strangely.
He understood Liu and Milo better, than they understood themselves...
'... I'm sure he can read our thoughts... no... asshole?'
"Obviously, the fear of the unknown is first and foremost a fear, but saying of an emotion that it's fear, what does that concretely teach you about it? Apart from the internal causality of this fear?"
And, the subject on which Milo had launched Lumian, seemed complex enough for Lumian to start using incomprehensible words again, phase two of teacher mode.
'... internal causality? Where does he get that from?...'
"The word fear in itself isn't so simple, but if you want to use it in a specific situation you have to divide the problem, as always. When a word is the problem you're facing, how do you divide it?"
Although he had entered phase two, Lumian didn't lose his honor as a teacher, and asked an educational question to his two students.
'... I swear he has phases... and phrases...'
"By adding one more subject to the problem: fear of the unknown, that makes two."
And Liu, feeling enthusiastic following her analysis of Lumian's attitude, took to the situation like a board game, answering in record time.
"Yeah, you have a subject, so a problem, you divide the problem by two subjects, which makes the problem simpler to approach. It's a thinking game. And of course, if you take the two subjects separately, that makes two problems, and if you try to solve your base problem in this situation, then you'll have even more problems."
'...?? Whoa! Phase two is super hard actually... I understood but didn't understand...'
Lumian took a small pause looking at Milo's reaction, which was... rather mixed...
'... he also understood but didn't understand...'
"Well, anyway, it's not really the answer you were looking for, right?"
Without waiting for Milo to completely nod his head, he continued.
"Actually, we talk about fear of the unknown first, because it's the first fear that manifests, in every conscious individual, in a distinguishable way. Why? Well because the first thing that a being endowed with consciousness comes into contact with, is always the unknown. And so, the first fear that a being endowed with consciousness feels, is often more logical when it's stated as: of the unknown."
'....'
Liu had, once again, nothing to add to what Lumian was saying, she wasn't capable of it, especially when Lumian wasn't asking them a question.
She therefore remained, for a second time, a spectator of the conversation...
"But if this... being, isn't aware of the unknown, how can it be afraid of it?"
'... we've been standing for a while now, haven't we?'
... which Milo obviously intended to continue, while Liu fidgeted a bit next to him.
"Does not being conscious of your unconsciousness, make you unconscious, or conscious?"
And which Lumian fed with another question coming out of nowhere, with a wording most...
'... what the? what?'
"The question doesn't arise. You know, it's not words that make your consciousness conscious. Consciousness is much more complex than something purely definable, if you want to simplify it as much as possible, tell yourself that consciousness has levels, tell yourself that everything possesses it, consciousness just manifests in different ways."
Answering his own question, Lumian was visibly completely launched into his explanation, of which only he knew the secret.
"To be aware of the unknown, you just need to have at least one experience of it, and as soon as you have even a single experience, this unknown becomes known to you, and the unknown you're afraid of moves further away, as soon as it moves further away, you immediately experience it, this unknown then becomes known, and the unknown you're afraid of moves even further away... and so on to infinity, it's a normal cycle like any other, in which you have no need at all to name the unknown in order to be afraid of it."
'... it's... logical?'
Turning to Milo, to see if it was... logical? Liu only saw a forced impassiveness on the part of the player Milo, the individual visibly not having the time to understand anything at all.
"We can say that: consciousness is a manifestation of the consequence that an experience has on a thing. The experience is therefore the cause, the thing is the intermediary of this cause up to the consequence, which manifests as a change in the consciousness of that same thing, and then in a very reductive way, we can say that this change is the cause of the Form's instinctive behavior. And all that without the Form having the consciousness necessary to put words to things."
Having, finished? Maybe? Lumian stopped his gibberish, and started looking at the faces of Liu and Milo, reading their expressions.
'... I think I missed half of what he said...'
"Uhm, I'm not going to ask you if you understood, anyway we've strayed way too far from the real subject."
Milo nodded his head vigorously, and frankly Liu also preferred that the subject change...
"To get back to the Form and... uh, what was it again? These instinctive reactions, right? With the origin of why she runs away as soon as Liu gets within five steps of her."
'... that's right, I had almost forgotten...'
... to go back to what made Liu uncomfortable. Her radical change of emotions strangely gave her a few shivers, although still uncomfortable, she was no longer really anxious.
"The origin of her instinctive reaction comes from the attachment she... experienced? after absorbing my grandparents."
All of Lumian's explanations, had strangely desensitized her regarding her own situation. She therefore managed to say out loud what she previously hadn't even had the courage to think.
'... after listening to Lumian, I feel like all my problems are insignificant... it's pleasant, but not too much?...'
The expression on Liu's face was rather jaded after all that, but Lumian showed for the first time a genuinely surprised expression? after hearing such words come out of Liu's mouth.
'... that, it's pleasant...'
He lowered his head, looking at the ground for an unknown reason. And suddenly, a rather heavy weight made itself felt on Liu's shoulder.
"Mm..."
She quickly turned her head to see that Milo was leaning on her shoulder, finally treating her as his armrest, after all the time they had spent standing.
"... hey!"
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The fear of the unknown is therefore the one that says the most about any individual endowed with consciousness...
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