THE BLACKLIGHT // DEVELOPER CONSOLE

SOURCE LOADED: Earthbound Backtrack (Alarm Call)…

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INPUT

Reality appears almost immediately.

The freeing sensation wears off.

The wants remain.

The needs remain.

The desires remain.

“People are still here.”

Then:

“Against all available evidence, I still want to know them.”

Reality, at first, is something returned to.

Later, it becomes something that has to be supplied.

Before that can happen, another habit has to be confronted.

“I have also spent enough time thinking about what everybody else might be doing wrong.

That’s the easy part.”

Then:

“It is easy to have ideas.

It is easy to sound intelligent while explaining them.

It is even easier to mistake having enough good ideas for knowing what the hell you are doing.”

Easy.

Easy.

Even easier.

The progression reduces the value of analysis precisely while demonstrating considerable ability to analyze.

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MECHANISM

The system begins by examining the difference between understanding and participation.

Having ideas about people is easy.

Explaining people is easy.

Mistaking explanation for competence may be easiest of all.

Then comes the limit:

“none of that creates a relationship with another person.”

Thought has reached the boundary of what thought can accomplish by itself.

“At some point, someone has to stop being a concept.

So do I.”

That second sentence changes the direction.

Other people have been examined through profiles, photographs, expectations, fantasies, contradictions, wants, and mistakes.

Now the person doing the examining has to survive the same transition.

From concept to person.

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VARIABLES

The system changes when the observer becomes part of what is being observed.

The next admission divides the confusion instead of assigning it.

“Some of that confusion belongs to them.

Some of it is mine.”

Then:

“Fine.

Let’s backtrack.”

What follows initially sounds settled.

“I’m here with the intent to find what I’m seeking.

Period.”

The Period lasts one sentence.

“But intent is everywhere.”

Good intentions.

Bad intentions.

Romantic intentions.

Sexual intentions.

Very serious intentions.

The more examples accumulate, the less impressive intent becomes.

Then comes the distinction:

“Intent tells someone what I say I want to happen.

It doesn’t tell them what I’m actually like when I’m standing in front of them.”

Intent belongs to the description.

Presence tests the description.

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CONDITIONS

The system behaves differently when another person introduces evidence imagination cannot provide.

That changes the questions worth asking.

“What am I looking for?”

Then:

“What am I capable of giving?”

“What would I need from them?”

“Which parts of myself are flexible?”

“Which parts are not?”

The first question asks about desire.

The others ask whether the person carrying that desire can actually participate in what they want.

Wanting something is only the beginning of the information.

Another person can add information too.

Sometimes you discover something you did not know you wanted.

Sometimes they bring out something previously unknown.

Sometimes, according to the joke, they uncover something that probably should have stayed in storage.

The important part is that contact creates evidence that imagination could not provide beforehand.

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DEBUG LOG

Detected: Analysis can describe relationships without creating them.

Updated: Intent was separated from actual presence.

Flagged: A self-concept remains incomplete until another person encounters it.

Reclassified: Reality became something offered to another person, not merely something discovered after fantasy fails.

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CURRENT STATE

The moment you willingly let someone inside your mind, the concept of you becomes a little more complicated.

Immediately:

“Not because they get to decide who you are.

Because now someone else gets to have an opinion.”

Then:

“Yours.

Theirs.

Who you think you are.

Who they actually meet.”

Followed by:

“Those people are not always the same person.”

The second account does not replace the first.

It makes the first no longer solitary.

There is now the person understood from within and the person encountered by somebody else.

Sometimes those descriptions match.

Sometimes another person meets something the self-description did not contain.

That makes the earlier concept problem apply in both directions.

Other people can remain names, pictures, messages, and possibilities.

The person speaking can remain an idea too.

Eventually, another sentence answers what has to replace that idea.

“I can write another hundred clever things about attraction, trust, fantasy, desire…”

But something more useful has to be offered.

“Myself.”

Then:

“Just enough reality to give another person something more substantial than an idea of me.”

Reality has returned.

At the opening, reality was what remained after the freeing feeling disappeared.

Now reality is something owed to another person.

Not a final definition.

Not a promise of permanent identity.

Just something more substantial than presentation.

Then the questions change again.

“So, who am I?”

Immediately:

“A better question:

Who could I be to you?”

The first question can be answered privately.

The second cannot.

But could allows almost anything to be imagined.

So another question follows:

“Who am I prepared to be?”

That is narrower.

Could asks about possibility.

Prepared asks what can actually be carried into the relationship.

Then:

“What can I actually offer once the clever language runs out?”

The intelligence being demonstrated has become something the language no longer completely trusts.

Eventually, words have to produce evidence.

Then comes the question that changes who gets to answer:

“What happens after someone answers?”

Until then, most of the questions can still be worked on alone.

This one requires another person.

An open door does not mean they enter.

Entering does not mean they remain.

Eventually, “whoever is standing on the other side has to meet the person who has been doing all this talking.”

Not the intent.

Not the theory.

Not the possible self.

The person.

Then:

“Perhaps, Companionship?

Perhaps something else.”

The destination remains uncertain.

That uncertainty fits what has changed.

The opening returns to reality because fantasy has worn off.

By the end, reality is what another person has to be given before anything imagined between them can find out whether it exists.

Before asking what another person could become to you, decide what you are actually prepared to become available as to them.

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SOURCE UNCHANGED.

READER STATE UPDATED.

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