Space
Ben and Cindre gain advice from a wise old mystic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BjHvwSvpOw
"You see there you are wrong, my dear child." He glowered at Indref, goading him to pay attention with the fire in his eyes. "You could not be further from the ultimate truth." "And what is that, old bird." "We are indeed, the center of the universe." Indref sighed, and rubbed his temples. This was nuts. "What the blazes are you babbling about." Dredaer shifted in his robes and pointed a gnarled talon at Ben, piercing the boy with his powerful gaze. "You there. Sapien." He said the labeling word slowly, like it was in another language to him. "You have the ace of dataetrica." The boy faltered. It somehow hurt to be seen by this massive owl. "Y-yes. Or so Indy says." The being rose, as if standing to attention. He narrowed his glaring eyes down upon Ben. For a moment he was silent. The room seemed to hush around them. "Listen to me, and listen well. "The room around you, it is as any room. Built by hands, and claws and paws, and with untouching telekenetica. But built, truly, with mind. An average room, wouldn't you say?" Ben nodded, spellbound by the avians eyes and his intoning voice. "If you were to square this room, multiply its volume by its volume again, you would achieve a size about that of all the rooms of this floor." He nodded again, feeling the numbers stream through his mind, like a memory. "Square the volume of this floor and you will reach the size of this building. An average building. Built by people. Built by mind." Indref shifted and wondered where this crap was going. He hated numbers. "If you continue in this manner, squared again, you will reach the volume of every building on this block. And soon, every room, in every building, in this city. And then, every city on this planet. Every space on the surface of this gem, that has been crafted by mind. Every homely space on this planet. Earth. Symbia." With the utterance of that word, Ben felt something stir in his mind. That presence, that hold of memory and thought, that was not his own but his to grasp. Numbers and symbols spun into his vision. He saw graphs and tables and lines of thought, too fast of his eyes to follow, but somehow he followed it anyway. He saw, tasted, smelled, felt what the owl was saying. His head began to swim. Dredaer continued. "If you persist at the exercise, you will reach a limit. The universe itself. It's darkened edges, where nothing is, or ever has been. A reach, a throw, a magnificent number no mind has ventured to truly grasp. The top of everything." Ben relaxed as the flurry of information boiled down to a single number, or rather a representation of one, two squared over and over again, a boggling digit that rolled into a single symbol. Ben didn't know what that meant. Indref sighed with frustration, "Look, we came here to-" "Silence!" The single word doubled them both back. The owl seemed to fill the room, haughty, imposing. He leaned forward, slowly, age straining his movements. He whispered, staring at Ben. "The universe is not out there, child. It is in here. In you, and I. And even him." He gestured at the now sulking winged rabbit. "If you where to ponder, what volume would it be, that if squared, would equal this room. That is the root of the volume, of this room. Not half, mind you. Half is nothing. Half is a mindless game of fools. The root, child. Like that of a tree, the trunk alone, from the whole tree, is the root of the size of the tree, the branches, the roots below, combined." The boy could only nod again, feeling another surge of thought that was not his own. "The root of the volume of this room is small. Like the inside of a small craft. Take the root of that, a cupboard. The root again, a box. Again, a cup. Again, a thimble. Again, a water drop. And so on, and on, until the true root of things. Atoms. Kwirks. And finally." "The entomnis," Ben blurted. "Yes. The things that are too small to be things, the power that is too small to register. The existence that is a thing and a power all the same. A means with no end. An end with no means. The smallest smallest small. The limit." Ben's vision filled to brimming with pure information, sizes, shapes, lines and reasoning, labels, detail. Again it slowed, and again it boiled down to a number that boggled Ben's mind. Two, to a minus power, enormous, he felt his grip on reality slip. He fell into the tiny, into the void that gaped between everything. The monumental distance and emptiness between anything and anything else. And as the number, that filled his entire mind, boiled down to three simple symbols, he suddenly realised what Dredaer had been trying to tell him all along. Two, to the power, of the negative, of that symbol. A symbol that he could not tear his eyes from, not really there anyhow, just his mind. His shaking, lost mind. He could not tear his mind from it. Ben gasped. "We are.." Indref stalked over and loomed over him, scowling. "What, what the hellfire, boy." "We are at the center of the universe." The great avian pulled back, his vicious beak somehow pulled into a smirk. He cackled, and it echoed around the room. Ben felt the sound ripple through the immense spaces within him, and out into the immense expanse of space itself.