Now the castle is his once again, the older children have all gone home. But this is his home, has always been his home, and with the others gone, it becomes truly his once again, those monstrously cavernous hallways empty, populated only by the infrequent comings and goings of the wise old professors. He didn’t mind the professors. Having no parents, he had always imagined that the professors were his guardians. Just as they taught the older children, so also they taught him, and wasn’t he so desperate to learn all that he could…
But now the castle was opening up before him. All of the mythical stories he had ever been told seemed to be coming to life from out of the very ancient walls of the hallways that stretched out in front of him. He wondered if the castle simply went on and on forever, so many passageways were there, so many twists and turns, so many secret rooms to be discovered. Perhaps the magic of the castle was that it contained the whole world inside its myriad passageways.
Being in the act of solitary exploration was the condition that suited him best. He knew where all of his favourite secret rooms were, but how many more might he find? Maybe he’d find some better than those he already knew of. Once he’d found somewhere suitable he could sit quietly and read his books, the magic of the castle helping to expand his mind to fit in all the knowledge contained in those books.
Sometimes he just liked to sit and listen. If he listened carefully enough, he was sure he could hear faint echoes of distant voices that seemed to come from the very walls and ceilings of the castle itself. He liked to think that all the thousands of witches and wizards that had passed through these halls had somehow left some kind of mark on the castle, some kind of echo of their learning that the castle stored as a record of its own triumph. If he listened carefully enough perhaps he could learn more from these voices than he could from his books.
In this way he never felt lonely, despite his solitude. The castle itself provided him with a huge base of friends with whom he could converse if he so wished. And of course, if he ever ran into any of the professors, they always seemed happy to see him. But his favourite place was the music room.
He wasn’t sure whether anyone else even knew about it, for no one he had spoken to about it seemed to have heard of it before. But he knew it was there. He had stumbled upon it some years before and had been amazed by the amount of listening material on offer. Just as he loved to sit in secret rooms and listen to the sounds of the castle, so he loved to sit in the music room and listen to whichever records caught his eye. Some of them were simple and pleasant, whilst some seemed to be utterly chaotic, like a very loud version of the noises of the castle. Either way he didn’t mind. The sounds entranced him nonetheless.
As he listened to his latest obscure choice, he thought about what it was going to be like when he began his real lessons here. He knew it was still many years away, but the thought excited him nonetheless. For his life in the castle seemed like a blank canvass waiting to be painted on, waiting to be filled with new people, new knowledge. He knew that he could make himself great, truly great, and that everything he needed to do so would be right here for him, in this great castle, this labyrinth of learning, this maze of magic, this blazing city of light and power. He must have been placed here for a reason. No other children grew up in the castle, no other children had been born in the castle. But he had. He felt that this made the castle his more than anyone else’s. No one else knew all of the secret rooms and passageways that he did, no one else had discovered the cavernous music room, no one else heard the ancient voices calling to him from the very walls.
He suddenly realised just how little he knew, about anything. All he had was a name, a single name which seemed to mean something amongst the professors who lived in the castle. But he didn’t know what it meant, didn’t know who he was or where he’d come from. There must be a reason for it all, must be a reason why he didn’t know, but he didn’t know that reason either.
He felt the music entering his mind, really entering it, as if each individual sound was a sharp shard of ice piercing his mind and melting into it filling it with one more piece of information. How much could his mind take? Was there a limit? Somehow, he didn’t think so. For as each shard of ice melted into his mind, the boundaries of his mind were pushed slightly further out into the void, and surely that void was eternal, therefore there was no limit to how far his mind could expand into it. He realised the infinite potential of his mind, that infinity can always be made larger without ceasing to be infinite. So he could learn, he would learn, all that he could. The great mystery of his life was his to solve.
For even the majesty of that great castle, that magic city, and the seemingly unlimited music available to him, all of it paled in comparison to the magnitude of his own mind, and he realised that none of it was even possible without his mind in the first place. Without his mind, what would the music even be? Could it be anything outwith his own perception? Was the music really entering his mind, or was his mind generating the music?
He knew then that the answers were already there, in his own mind. He just need to search it and organise it into some kind of rational order, so that he could make conscious sense of it all. And as the music washed over him, all of those sounds seemed to meld together as each one found its proper place within his mind.
Then again, maybe they’re all prisoners…?
He hadn’t thought of it that way before. Those voices….mightn’t they be distant echoes of screams of anguish coming from the trapped souls of those who had been imprisoned in this magnificent city of learning?
For what was knowledge for? Does it need to be used in a certain way in order to be justified? What was the purpose of learning? What is being prepared for? Suddenly the sound of all those voices became terrifying, a bacchanal of anguish closing in on him.
What if they had learned it all but then done nothing with their knowledge? There had to be a bigger purpose, a reason for it all. He wanted to learn everything that he could, but he had no desire to end up as one of those crying voices, trapped within the city of knowledge unable to break free and use their knowledge.
For here they all were. A multitude of echoes from across time each imprisoned eternally, doomed, like Sisyphus, to continue the endless cycle of their own particular brand of failure. He could hear them crying, screaming from the shadows, yearning for him to hear them. Could he reach them? Could he free them if he did? Was that his purpose?
Omega Synthesis 