Alycia nods slowly as Summer expounds, seemingly focused on loosening the root ball of the ornamental grass just the appropriate amount. Balancing variables like soil type, plant species, watering expectations, and the techniques of the eighteen YouTube videos she went through last night after Leslie made the request (though what counts as a “track emergency” remains unclear) is relatively straightforward, even with the inherent variability of how this particular specimen was grown and cared for. She doesn’t even twitch (visibly) when Summer references her time at Jason’s.
“So soul as an emergent property of experience and self, a product of growth and being.” After Summer scoops in some plant food, she sets the plant down firmly. Its top perfectly aligns with the bed’s surface. “That’s an understandable hypothesis, given your origin. It begs the question of continued immaterial existence or presence after ‘death,’ but --”
She sits back on the edge of the driveway, still watching the grass, as Summer pours more water from the watering can onto the new planting. “I deal with perspective a lot in my life. Understanding the broader view, spatially. Seeing things all around me, other than the linear view that most people have – and that serves them reasonably well, to be sure. So I tend to think of these matters in the same way: dimensionally, if you will.”
Alycia doesn’t get up, but she gestures broadly, continuing to look at the grass. “Those things of the spirit, the soul, are simply a different existential axis. It’s not dualism; body and spirit, material and immaterial, are not separate things, just different – aspects, if you will, bound together as much as space and time are, convenient to reference separately, but incapable of being without one another. Multidimensional, as far as that goes, not simply lines intersecting but volumes or higher order dimensional constructs. Our reality, our selves, are liminal manifestations of that intersection. Bodily existence is brief, but matter is neither created nor destroyed, so in truth it goes on. Spiritual existence may show greater continuity, as a working hypothesis, but even if it consists of reactions that bind and separate, give form and then decay in their own fashion, the constituents of the spiritual axis can be neither created nor destroyed, either.”
She shoots Summer a crooked grin. “But I believe there’s capital-P Purpose behind it all, too. Not to mention something identifiable as morality, and justice.” A shrug. “Throw enough meta-reality axes, and you can solve for any problem, even if it looks like a cheat. All metaphysics is ultimately personal, even if that makes you look like a romantic.”
author: *** Dave H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6836607
