Self-Experiment

Alone with nothing to lose, Randell made up his mind. Life would not be worth living if he could not figure out the mystery calling to him from inside the crystal. It was worth the sacrifice...all he had was his own life. And his mind.

The love of his wife had gone. The respect of his peers... stripped. His children had forgotten him. This work was all he had. It was everything. What damage he would endure in the process of finding the truth, it would be worth it. And whatever accolades would be gained from his discoveries, he would welcome them. He deserved it all.

Recoiling at the thought with fake humility he said to himself, "I give it up to God."

The Experiment

At the Institute, our best scientists performed an experiment on the minds of 7 children, training them to interact with one another in their dreams. Slowly acclimated to that weightless space, conforming the Imaginary to whatever was in their imaginations, the children were slowly being prepared.

Deep within the bowels of the Institute lay a secret, and one day the seven would be the only ones on our planet who would lay claim to understanding it.

House at Dream's Edge

Say there was a civilization that existed in a dreamed up place.. Now imagine a house at the very edge of the dream, beyond which nothing else could exist. What kind of a man would live in this house? Could you imagine him using that telescope there to examine the state of the known universe? What if the dreamer was a child? As he grew older and let go of his dreams, would that universe and that house begin to decay?

(More) Robots

Robots are apparently a big deal in this story. and its only the prologue. Now, instead of a Crystal planet in the middle of some dark nebula, we are now on Mars where a terraforming operation using "Robots" is in effect. This is supposed to be after our astronauts have been mentally 'zapped' by the hyper-intelligent 'crystal' (as pictured way down below), after foolishly trying to cut off a sample (which people exploring planets would probably do)...

Robots & Crystals

So the idea here was that there is a planet made out of these crystals that were actually intelligent in some strange way. So strange that if you went near them, they would amplify your thoughts and cause some kind of aneurysm. But it didnt make sense that these guys would be on this planet. And I dont want to deal with warp speeds and shit. Then I thought it would be cool if they had some connection with, like, the Big Bang.

As you might have experienced, its a headache wrapping your head around this stuff... But I still might. This was the initial idea to the one you see below....

Hi!

The first men on Mars were actually more well known for being the first to come into contact with a documented other-dimensional intelligence. Being the first living things it had seen for a billion years, it attempted to tell them the story of its existence in the multi-layered language it was accustomed to.

It ended up frying their brains until they were in a coma from which they would never wake. But it was a start.

The being was sent back to Earth, buried deep underground, and studied. So begins our story.