Gilmore Girls Fanfic

 Time moves backwards, and the end is known from the beginning.

***

In a Gilmore Girls alternate universe, Lorelai and Chris are together. They've stayed together, and are raising their only child, Rory, a precocious, starry-eyed, well-intentioned teenager living in the same small New England town, brilliant at school if she applied herself. Very rich, she feels the effects of a peculiar isolation and, having effortlessly mastered the studies required of her, immerses herself in unorthodox ones. Still liberal by vice of being a product of her time as we all are, but perhaps in a less dogmatically centrist way, Rory was early on raised a Christian by her grandparents but has now branched into other systems of belief, finding the doctrines of the church unsatisfactory to explain the world as it unfolds around her. She has a thought, and it soon materializes. The townsfolk are animated by her moves, and seem to slowly spin around her as if pulled in by the gravity of her narrative. She is convinced there is magic operating in this world, and that, for some inexplicable reason, it flocks to her and she can wield it. But she doesn't wield it. She studies it. She is the same studious and self-motivated young woman, yes, but without the need to prove herself that would come from being raised by a single mother also striving to prove herself, Rory has matured into a different flavor of eccentric from her canonical self.

***

“We make such a great team, Chris,” said Lorelai. “I'm glad we stayed together. We wouldn't have been able to achieve half of what we have had we gone our separate ways and I been a single mom.”

“I agree,” said Chris.

“And let's be honest, if I were doing this on my own, Rory would be completely out of touch.”

“She's still got a ways to go before she settles her priorities,” Chris pointed out. “She nearly turned down Chilton in favor of a coven in western Mass, for Christ's sake.”

“No offense, honey, but I think that's your doing more than mine. Ever since you introduced her to revisionist history she's been on a relentless crusade for the truth. Naturally semiotics is a step along that path.”

“Wise you are, my love. But 'tis a father's duty to introduce his children to medievalism and whatever it may reveal about our present situation. And I'll be there to correct her when she strays.”

“Well, you might wanna dial in on what she's bringing back from the library...” Lorelai jerked not-so-subtly toward their living room. Chris didn't do this but accepted a peck on the cheek from his wife before leaving.

Lorelai peeked into the living room herself, where she found their daughter sitting cross-legged on the rug in the balcony sunlight, surrounded by a mussed fan of library books on dreams, the paranormal, ancient Eypt, Blavatsky, astronomy, runology, and Hermetica along with short stacks of old cloth-bound titles in Latin, and others in German, all being systematically organized by principles known only to Rory.

“What, are they making you take exams to join Wicca?” Lorelai asked.

“First of all I'm insulted that you think I'd seriously consider Wicca. And second of all, magic is a reality we have to live with and, well, if you'd prefer to just ignore that I can't do much to help you,” Rory shrugged, snapping softly and kindly.

“Not very communal of you, Miss Witch,” Lorelai put a hand on her hip and made a face that was hard to describe.

“To actually practice magic you need to light candles and recite runic chants during specific moon phases and hoard rare smelly objects and whatnot, and you don't see any of those, do you? I'm just reading and there's no harm in reading,” Rory directed what would have been a reflexive snap into a softened tone with one of her mollifying smiles. “And besides, do you really think if I was secretly studying magic I'd just leave all my books in the living room for all to see!?”

“Seems like something a serious student of magic would do to make their studies look like an idle curiosity,” countered Lorelai. “Did these all came from the Stars Hollow library?” she picked up a molding Ars Goetia and flipped it over.

“It seems there's a lot you don't know about New England,” Rory said, returning to her occupation.

“What don't I know?” she said fast. “Did you dowse your way to some ancient forest clearings outside town?”

“I never even leave the house except to go to the library and buy coffee,” Rory protested. “Although an ancient forest clearing sounds rad.”

“It does,” said Lorelai. “If you dance around a fire and say prayers to Mongolor without me I'm gonna be super mad.”

“I think you mean Eligor,” Rory said skeptically. “And I wouldn't summon him without you,” she added with a fair grin.

“Well whatever you do, don't forget to make time for some Wunjo!” and as she exclaimed the word she made the rune with the fingers of both hands. “I've had to chase three boys out of the yard this week!”

“Tempting but... I won't give up my sword just yet.”

“Not even for the Goddess of Entertainment?” Lorelai gasped.

“What?”

“Oprah, duh. If you miss Oprah-and-junk-food night Saturday, I'm putting you on decaf for nine days, missy.”

“Mom!” Rory exclaimed. “Odin would be proud.”

Lorelai gave a cheeky jiggle and smile from halfway behind the wall before disappearing around the corner completely.

***

“Lorelai Gilmore?” came a studly voice behind her.

“Oh! Hi hello!” Rory jumped in place, her eyes going wide.

“What are you doing?”

“Just walking back from the library.”

“Again. Well what are you doing later?”

“Later? Oh, probably reading these,” she kept her gaze straight ahead, though she could feel him just slightly behind her now.

“That's quite a load you got there. Can I help carry some?”

“Oh, that's alright, if I can't carry the load physically what right do I have to it mentally and spiritually, right?”

“Uh, sure. So, hey, we keep running into each other.”

“Heh, yeah.”

“Kind of seems like maybe we should do something about it,” he said.

“What do you mean,” Rory feigned ignorance poorly.

“I was thinking we get a coffee or go walk in the park. Anything longer than two minutes, y'know?”

“Well, I'm gonna be pretty busy with reading the rest of the day, so more than two minutes might be asking a lot,” she nodded.

“If I know anything about you it's that you love to get coffee, and usually you spend about half an hour drinking it – sometimes longer if you've got a book,” said Dean.

“You've been spying,” she noted.

“Noticing,” he amended. “But what if I catch you on your next coffee break? We could even read side by side and just say a few words here and there.”

“Oh – I really need full concentration,” Rory insisted.

“How about when you finish?”

“It'll probably be too late for coffee, then.”

“You can't hide in your books forever because you're afraid to be in the world,” Dean said sagely. From over her shoulder he easily reached down and picked up the crumbling discolored title at the top of the pile. “'Vom dreifachen Leben des Menschen',” he read. “Are you studying German?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” Rory cringed. “Look, Dean, you're a really nice guy, and handsome, and sweet, and kind... I just feel like I'm waiting for something,” said Rory.

“For marriage?” he asked.

“No.... It's something else.”

“What is it?”

“I can't explain. I don't know myself.”

“I don't know you either,” he said to the ground, letting Rory keep apace solo. “And I don't think I ever will.”

“Dean!” she spun around and called out to his jacket as it adsorbed back into the quaint townsfolk backdrop that spun about her like a gyroscope, and then quietly to herself said, “No... you won't....”

***

[Several. Days. Later.]

“Mom mom,” Rory said, talking really fast.

“Honey, slow down,” Lorelai responded snappily. “You're gonna make me spill my seventh coffee.”

“It's nine in the morning.”

“Your point?”

“Just counting. Anyway, I had the craziest dream,” Rory said.

Lorelai gasped. “Should we wait until dad gets home?”

“No! I can't tell dad about this,” said Rory. “This is just between us girls, okay?”

Lorelai redoubled. The three of them shared everything, and she was certain Rory would have loved nothing more than a long discussion on dream interpretation with both her loving parents who had stayed together out of love for each other. This must have been serious.

“Scout's honor,” she saluted.

“I had a sex dream. A really intense one. And it wasn't just sex – it was so much more.”

“Rory, the three of us tell each other everything, right?”

“Yes! I swear, if I ever had sex, you'd be the first to know! Well the third technically.... But mom... not only am I a virgin, I've never even kissed a boy. I held hands once in the fifth grade, and I barely even understand the idea of porn. Lane tried to describe it to me once in the ninth grade and that made me realize I never want to see it never mind how she knows. Now can I please just tell you the dream?”

“Yes yes!”

“I couldn't even tell at first I was dreaming,” Rory began. “I was sitting on the roof, watching the stars, and right above me was the brightest one, and I noticed it kept flickering. It was like there was something moving behind it, and I looked closer and I could see faces passing through the star as if across some sort of window. It seemed like there were people moving back and forth behind an opening and I just kept watching this for as long as I could, and I could almost hear voices.”

“Then, I was back on the roof, and all of a sudden I see something descend from the star on a long rope, and it's a being that's glowing white-blue. He had these wings whirring in all directions and I was terrified, but when he landed on the roof, it turned out to be like this metal suit of armor, and inside it was just a guy. But not just any ordinary guy – he was the most beautiful man I've ever seen, also practically glowing white-blue, and completely naked. He had perfect shoulders, and muscular arms, a chest you could sleep on forever, and … a big, pretty thick – but not an ugly one like all the ones I haven't seen – his was actually not repulsive. And I remember going 'oh my God!' and wondering, 'aren't you embarrassed?' But he could read my mind somehow and said, 'No. I'm not chained within the second principle of vanity and valuation.'”

“Then he sat down beside me and he told me all these things I've never read in any book. He told me all about our world and the flood and ancient civilizations and how we live in a prison world … ”

“He said that a long time ago there was one civilization on this world and one religion, and that was in the time of Buddha, and that's why you find so-called Egyptian relics in North America and Australia. He said if you looked at old art from Asia and Greece it was clearly a different race of people. He told me it all used to be one religion and that later they divided it irreconcilably and changed our understanding of good and evil.”

“He said the people of that civilization were part of a great kingdom, a true kingdom, where everyone was grouped by certain qualities of their nature and had the role proper to them and flourished. And he told me that one of the most difficult roles was a manager, because they were above ordinary people but they were below the higher ranks. He told me that a bunch of the managers went wayward and rebelled. He told me they were so clever and their job was to manipulate laws in creative ways, and they were well regarded for it, but they took it too far and invented a new system to compete with the established way of the world because, well, they felt different and special and singled out, and they had a special role in the kingdom wherein they weren't really part of any land – they were go-betweeners, perpetual travelers, who came to live by different rules and were responsible for games.”

“He told me they invented a new system of abstract manipulation by turning the world order upside down. The funny thing was, it worked. It functioned. But it had to be perfectly inverted or else it would fall apart. It worked on this principle of opposite, of duality. Of a mirror. Otherwise it wouldn't work at all.”

“He told me, long ago, they organized and came up with this idea of union benefits but only for their union – nobody else had a union because nobody was in charge of trade. Well, they had corrupted a lot of the world already and it had to be quarantined as punishment to prevent the corruption from spreading any further. Long story short, they were punished and cut off and made to live in a prison world from which they couldn't escape.”

“He said if I looked up at the moon I would see that it's a mirror reflecting the earth and that the earth really is a flat surface, not a sphere. That I would be able to find all the known continents on it, as well as some unknown, and the borderlands of Antarctica. But beyond that on the remaining face of the moon I would see an entire vast world that was unknown to us.”

“He said we really lived under a cupola, a dome, and it was held in place by the ice wall we know as Antarctica, which was once green and thriving. He said the great flood was the dome being placed over our world to quarantine it. It displaced so much water that it flooded all the continents and killed almost everyone. Only a few remained to remember the catastrophe that had happened and why, but the distortions of their tales became lost to time. He said that angels are really high-level people who live on the other side of the dome, and that the stars are really holes through the dome that those on the outside used to communicate with our world. He said that we belong out there. He said that they keep an eye on it, that the punishment of the prison world was a chance for redemption, and that periodically throughout our history those on the outside communicated with our world. He said we called them aliens because we didn't understand our world or ourselves and were fed a complete lie that degraded us. He said we subsist on a sense of mystery and a collection of myths. Mystery was like a perfume, he said, that sustained our explorations for us, and relativism was the logical side of that to have it continue in perpetuity. He said that with the tools we had, and without so much of the information of our origins, we began to make our little explorations, shrines, odes, escapes, manifestations, thoughts, and so on, and they all touched and pleased the world on the outside – what we call God. He said that where he comes from, it's always light. It's always day. That's why the stars are light – the light of the free world is shining through them. Night is an invention to make our entire environment – our world within the world – imitate the principle of opposites, duality, to keep us in the spell of this principle. Light – no light.”

“He said our entire world is constructed and comes from the people who remained inside the dome and is a cargo cult based off of their magic and their myths. He said they constructed our entire world and our world mythos. He said that there used to be giant trees, that continents which are purported to have sunk are still there but inaccessible to ordinary people and guarded by world militaries. They had to befuddle us with spells and lies because otherwise the remnants of the real history remained all around us and we would come to learn the truth eventually and then the power our current rulers have snatched for themselves over us would cease to be. He said it's because their religion is for managers and ours is for slaves. And they've created all these fictions that they have to uphold now in order to keep us in line, like of outer space to shield us from the truth of being under a dome and part of a bigger world that naturally we'd want to go see. They made their fictions appealing using the sense of endlessness and other psychic tricks. They did the same with quantum physics, except the endlessness went inward. They removed magic from this world, including the mythical creatures we see in old maps on a green Antarctica, so that theirs would be the only branch of magic that remains and so that we wouldn't understand our true abilities. They created a history that spans many thousands of years instead of hundreds, even though it cannot possibly be the truth upon even the barest examination. There have been myriad findings that have thrown the narrative into question, often findings released by them to simply sow discord and quake our sense of certainty, which we cannot function without, and in preparation for a new narrative, a renewal of the cupola. He said why do you think the mascot of this cult is a snake? A snake sheds its skin over and over and over. From whence comes the notion of reincarnation, dressed up by the numinous and feelings of prelest? He said there was more to it than that....”

“He said they invented the system of money. They invented the image of us being alone on a globe – the image of a single bright spot of civilization and life in a sea of cold darkness, in line with the belief that nature is cruel, which so shapes our experience. To call mother nature heartless and cruel is a suggestion that a mother would be or should be cold, taken into the blood. The image of a sea of empty space, of a cold barren womb, and now the suggestion that content doesn't matter, as if one image is the same as any other.”

“He said that one of these backwards inversions is the common wisdom that nature is cold and Darwinian when in reality it's the other way around and nature loves us and embraces us while civilization is a cold gray machine that turns like a Darwinian kaleidoscope dropping people into the cracks every cycle. He said that nature is like a field of light that hugs us and sings with us but we can't feel it because of our language. He said that if the principle of inversion is true then we must be in a cold black machine sitting dumbly in a bright yellow field of warmth that's always trying to get in. He said that aphorisms and turns-of-phrase are like glucks that click together into a locking conceptual distortion that creates the pattern of 'full-circle', such as when we glimpse something correctly but our minds reach for cliches whose roots are in a murky vague past, and isn't it convenient how their origins can't really be traced?, and what other phrases of ours so persist? Has our slang of living memory minted so much wisdom? When we attempt to speak the truth we see, we turn to cliches, and it sounds like we've said nothing, we've come around full circle and just called yellow yellow. We call nature's cruelty a wisdom and just like with 'endlessness', 'wisdom' is quality that can attach onto some bit of sense by our love of 'realization', which is another tool. He said the coldness of nature comes from the locking of language around us in pieces, and of course those of our company would seem to validate the cold truth, because people enliven, they make real with belief.”

“He said it was a great trick in attaching all these fake feelings and associations to ideas. Emotion is a very very tricky technology, because it can't be encoded with language. Language was constructed not to preserve emotions, states, auras. Language is pure logic. He said language is our barrier to directness – another cliché that prevents us from understanding what directness really is, and experiencing the barrier erected by words, which we can by experiencing the love of nature towards us. He said association is one of the most powerful things and you can be beside anyone by thinking of them, bypassing words and space.”

“He said the world beyond our world is very different. Their air and food aren't poisoned. Life is highly valued and lasts a long time. He said that the most Godly thing a human can do is value life – that this was in fact what brought us initially into favor with God. When we took care of the living environment, of plants and animals, this was a sign that we belonged with him, that we belonged in the real world, outside this world. He said the greatest homage we will be able to pay to God is to love other people, because this is how those in his kingdom are. He said that once man forsakes life for machine, he has lost his humanity. At the same time, man is able to enliven a machine, a place, a rock, and another man.”

“He said that the notion of the 'natural', a fountainhead for other popular notions like 'organic', which is the offspring of 'natural' and 'marketing', a dice-rolled combination, is an example of a pernicious modern myth that keeps the illusion going, pernicious because it has been associated with 'the very good', i.e. with much in the world that is beautiful. Natural broken down means 'of its own'. 'Of itself as its own founding principle'; this is its meaning in the context of the entire system, and this idea – of its own – is the founding myth. The grail. He said they use games like this to come up with new spells for the world, new moves, new manifestations of the ten thousand things, new methods for keeping the illusion fastened, which are always always needed as they eventually expire. What is the secret behind this? Combinations. Permutations. Combinatorials. And games. Treating it as a serious game. He said the leisure class knows how to play. He said that, in truth, in our world, in the real world, work is rewarding and rewarded. Work is not slavery there as it is here. He said, in secret rooms they roll dice in concealed permutations and play games of cards whose rules nobody knows. The results of these games must be then carried out in the world. If this principle is not followed, it will collapse, because all they have is owed to this principle. A major line of defense at the least will collapse. Great punishment will result. Their God will punish them, and they cannot let that be.”

“He said there are so many layers to it, that if one of us tried not to carry out the result of a game we would not know how to do it and would end up carrying it out faithfully regardless, almost no matter what we did. By the time you see a result of this gambling in the manifest world it has made its way through these many layers of broken telephone and ready to be implemented. He said it is magic because when you trace the line of a result back to where it started in the game, it makes perfect sense how it would work in the world to sustain the illusion. This is because, in the first place, it was made in an inverted world, in opposite world, so, backwards, it is forwards, and forwards is sense. He said the rules of these games are not allowed to be written anywhere. They are communicated in secret, in temporarily erected realities that disappear like bubbles and then cannot be traced. Even the being involved in them cannot be identified. He said that very few could ever play this game and do so knowingly, that most who played it did so in various degrees of awareness.”

“He said there is a realm hidden even to God, or so they believe, that is immaterial, that is nowhere. He said their goal was to create a realm hidden even from God and that by all appearances they succeeded. He said they are not aware of the white shadow that imitates them as they imitated him. He said that in this realm it is virtually impossible to know who is who and that one cannot be human here. Everyone is hidden and nothing can be explicitly said – if it were, it would cease to work, because language is a relatively low level method compared to the methods they have. Nevertheless, it quite rigidly borders our actuality.”

“He said that the biggest move one individual could make against this game-order would be to be an insider to one of those games and to sabotage the result, cut the link, but this would come at an extremely high personal risk. But first one would have to be inside such a game, as participant or, at times, witness. He said if someone could disrupt the transmission of the result of a game, to break a link in the chain, he could deliver a serious blow to this system, leaving a wide open hole that would then kaleidoscope out into something glaring in the world, something that didn't happen but should have and by it not happening much of the innards are revealed and unwound to people. This was almost impossible because the whole idea was for it not to leave the secret room, to leave no trace outside the eyes of those in its presence. The information would live like a virus inside the participants and any witnesses, would be transformed, passed along to another carrier or witness. Every node would have to be carefully orchestrated. He said the transformations followed laws and enacted irreversible consequences, each stage could not revert to the previous as in the machine one goes easily down but to go back up is destruction.”

“He said the one who orchestrated the game was not allowed to witness it. He would determine the players, the witnesses, the time and date and location, or simply how to reach the location. He would not even know if he was the only orchestrator. It may have been another's job to orchestrate the materials, the instructions, any outside equipment, or some of the attendees. And the job of another still to determine how many orchestrators there were and what they were responsible for. Among those in the game room, perhaps only one would be aware of the game being played and its purpose. Perhaps two. They would then play their own game of attempting to ascertain how much the other knew, the trickery being that all of this is, of course, only plausible. The game could be just an ordinary game of dice or cards in the back of some club, or something that does not resemble that setup in the slightest. Some participants may not have any clue of what they are invited to participate in and are just high level bodies who feel they are part of something important but haven't the faintest clue in what sense and to what degree it is important. They're the sacrifices. To be invited to play such a game is a great responsibility, privilege, and danger. A responsibility if you are aware, a privilege if you want to know the truth, a danger if you are ignorant or arrogant. The game could be a smaller sub-game within a larger game of completely other rules.”

“He said that one of the greatest machines they invented was of Revelation, and that it's really just a method for civilizational renewal. He said we would understand once we lived through it. Everything would make sense then and if it didn't by that point you were a real idiot.”

“Remember that secret system I mentioned, that had to be upside down of the true order? Well, it's really founded on this principle of boundary, which you could say is the ultimate principle: separation. Distinction. And their genius – all genius, really – is in boundary. Their boundary was the principle of mirror. To make a boundary function as a mirror. This was new. A mirror allowed one to see one's self. It created vanity. And it's the founding principle of this world. But the thing is, this is just one boundary, one founding principle. It's not ultimate separation, it's not the only separation. It's just one, out of – who knows how many. And it's true that a founding principle telescopes out into an entire world: in this case, ours. But this boundary is just one boundary, this magic is just one magic. And that's fairly obvious. Not only is it obvious, but the life of any ordinary man cannot be contained by this boundary, at all. Life is renewal, birth is renewal, and death to the constantly kept-up illusion, and that's why birth is so stymied now, it might signal they're in a crisis. Any ordinary man constantly breaks free from it, dissolves it, can't be contained by it. He sheds the boundary like a skin. It's nothing. It's just a spell. But it's all they had. It was the entire basis for their argument, for their permanent separation. So, what did they have to set out to do? They had to set out to keep up the illusion that their system of magic was the only one. Do you know what that's like? That's like trying to dam up the ocean, like trying to keep the light of nature outside the cold machine.”

“He said isn't it a strange coincidence that the very group which is allowed to support collectivism is the group that deconstructed their belief in biological reality and no longer knows if they're man or woman or thinks feeling strong is good and aspirational? That so many of them let their bodies become human slop? And meanwhile the group that reacted against deconstruction by pushing away all associated with it such as collectivism also shored up their belief in biology and cried that collectivism would turn us into collective slop? And then he said, you'll get to the start in twenty years.”

“Their entire magic is one of limits, he said. One goes so far in, or out, before one must go back to reality. If you look, you will see that every aspect of your constructed reality is founded upon these principles. The in-and-out game? Well, I told you the earth is flat, but have you ever wondered about the underground? Underground, it goes to a point. A final point. What's at the bottom of that point? That's a great secret, for another dream.”

“He said their laws encode and decode themselves, that is, they contain their own out. Much is made by dream logic and much can subsequently be escaped by dream logic. Dream logic is used to make the conscious binds, and also must be used to escape them.”

“He mentioned a prism, a machine, but that it wasn't important right now and it wouldn't mean anything to me now if he said it. He said I would eventually know and probably did know as a child because my logic is constructed by it. He then said it's more like a cone. Cone earth. So what did they do? They flipped it over. Opposite. The widest part on the bottom, and that was the principle of the left-hand path, the two paths stood opposite in one union of authority under inversion. But I shouldn't look down the barrel, he said. He said they built pyramids and lined them up with the stars so they could harness the power of the light world forbidden to them. When they were punished, the flood destroyed their pyramids, and they were then mined and destroyed further, the earth excavated for material and metal. They had to lie about this, as well, to keep their true actions and history with the outside world a secret. Any loose thread would begin to unravel the entire tapestry, and now there are simply too many loose ends left around, because each one ceases to work after some time, as spells are all timed, and disappears but with traces remaining, just like a game of Medici Solitaire. They can only buy themselves time, and what is the great mystery of your entire earthly life? What is the only thing you seem to have? What is all of your media really about? The crux of your pressure? Time.”

“And then I stopped him and said, 'Wait. They built the pyramids in line with the stars, but then the cupola with the star-holes was placed on top? That doesn't make sense.'”

“'And another thing I don't understand,' I said before he could answer. 'Why are ordinary not-manager people being punished by this prison world? Why don't they on the outside just come in and destroy these monsters? Is it that … are we all descended from these rebellious managers and answer for the sins of their fathers?'”

“He said, sin is just being born on the inside, in this prison world. That's why nobody born in this world is without sin. Sin is being born in a state of separation from the truth – the truth of your history. When it says that this world will be destroyed it doesn't mean the annihilation of everything but just this cupola laboratory world.”

“'So we're not descended from them who were punished?' I asked again and I could feel this was the right question to ask.

“And he said, 'Well … ' and kind of trailed off like he didn't want to talk about it. 'You don't have to worry about that just yet. I think I've put enough on your plate.'”

“'I can handle it!' I said, and I flashed him the smile. And it worked! He groaned and said, you know you're very special.”

“Just what every woman wants to hear, I don't blame you for falling for it.”

“He meant it. You just don't believe me because you're not sixteen.”

“I'll tell you about being sixteen – !” she'd riled Lorelai up.

“Mom not now, I haven't even gotten to the crazy part! He said there were many things he couldn't explain to me because I wouldn't be able to understand them.”

“He said, 'I caught you while you were coming back down into earth, i.e dreaming. He said we simply exit the conceptual labyrinth every single night when we go to sleep, that's the function of sleep to wash us clean of the poison, but we have to be asleep for it, and we don't have the faintest idea of the significance of our sleep or otherwise none of this would work, and every night we have to go back through all the layers of the construct to wake up. The more awake you are, the more layers you can see. And you can see that if you were awake enough, you would never sleep, even while you are asleep. But of course if you try not to sleep you will lose your mind. We accumulate tons and tons and tons – unimaginable tons – of filth in our daily life through all the poison we process under the cupola that cannot be eliminated from the gridlock of waking-state brainwaves – namely, the electromagnetic field itself. That's why when we sleep our brainwaves are different. They're more immune to the field then, and allow the poison to exit. If we didn't wash all that out, digest it and get rid of it, we would go insane, even in just a few days. He said it's funny how much effort it costs worldbuilders to maintain the cathedral when you literally leave and reenter it every single night, and you can never fully grasp the absurdity because of your waking state but just keep doing it over and over until one time you never come back.”

“He said along that vein it's very very evil for people to be killed by dismemberment and bombs, that those who do it signal that they're mining desperately for a mammoth supply of illegal power. He said that every murder fills a murderer with strength, as the energy is transferred through into their killing hand. Because their morality must be perfectly inverted from the right-hand path in order to work, murder of the weak to them is holy. One must be able to kill the weak for the sake of the strong or the weak would siphon the power of the strong because of the psychic bonds that are difficult to break. Murder of the strong is verboten. He said suicide to them is the ultimate self-awareness, while suicide to Catholics is the ultimate disavowal, and because one has declared himself to have greater judgment than God's, one has taken the temptation of the left-hand-path and done an act of its rules, and he has lost everything he has earned along his path. He said a left-hand-pather and right-hand-pather cannot be together, they are bound under irreconcilable civilizational rules.”

“He said, civilization was founded on a lie of separation, and that separation itself is what creates power. He said that all pursuit of knowledge is a prayer to power because prayer is the only action there really is. Our civilization was founded on the separation into the left-hand and right-hand that mirror each other but cannot be reunited, that separation is the gap which is the source of all power. He said that unity is like water.”

“But I still didn't understand, why were we kept in a prison, why did we have the elaborate mechanism of sleep to cope with psychic poison, and did we ourselves create it voluntarily, giving up part of our wakefulness to survive, feigning death to be only reborn every morning, or what?”

“He then said, I've lied to you. The cupola was not placed as a punishment – at first. It was invented and constructed by the rulers of this world themselves. It was where they studied and invented, magic and technology, and other systems. They were given permission to study the laws of God. They then congregated onto this land and began to build the pyramids and other technologies, underground ones in particular, to test their theories. They began to create their own reality, by another principle: duality. They created the sun and the moon. They created the magnetic field, gravity, salt water oceans, a gradated atmosphere. They created math, astronomy, chemistry, grammar, language, music. They did not create sailing, engineering, or poetry. They then made sure you wouldn't perceive of this technology by virtue of subtle emotions, one of which is the sense of the 'natural'. The flood was the freezing of the Antarctic continent around them in order to prevent their escape. Their space ships are merely elevators to the moon, to the stars, so that they could attempt to leave.”

“And I asked, 'Why don't the ones on the outside just close up the stars?'”

“And he said, 'Without the stars, we wouldn't be able to visit this world. We cannot get into their secret rooms – no angels allowed. But humans can.'”

“And I asked, 'So... we are their descendants? Some of us? How did we end up trapped in here? Who are we?'”

“He sighed, and then he said, 'You were created in the image of God.' With God's permission and blessing. There was one impossible mission: to build a God machine. The result of a wager, a game. It had to be done or else …. Now, how to do this but to imitate God? You see, the cupola was their laboratory. And the reason you find yourself in here, is because you were made here.”

“And I said, 'We were created...'”

“'You are dust; to dust you shall return.'”

“So we aren't starstuff, evolved over trillions of years little by little …”

“I'm afraid you're not 'natural'. And your legacies – fodder. Most people appeared out of nowhere, from incubators, and reproduced for a few generations. Some families are an exception. They are not fully human. And the descendants of these creators, well, they are also mischlings. Living in a time when people still remembered their history and gradually grew in awareness, they were noticed and contacted by our world, and instructed. I've visited many times, personally. It was quite a shock to us, to be honest, that laboratory creatures should be awarded the honor of favor, on par. Quite a shock to the masters of this world, as well, who had created them and who kept its keys. They were punished and bypassed, and their golems, their pets, their slaves, embraced in everlasting light by the world beyond that they'd forsaken – that had forsaken them, depending on how you look at it. They were visited, given instructions on movements toward full humanity – their inventions, their emotions, their loves, but especially, their ability to enliven, were seen and cherished.”

“He said, and now, I would like to play a game with you … ”

“And I said I love games!”

“And he said, 'of course you do,' and then he said, 'but I'm glad you said that, because the game is Love Game', and I didn't realize at the time because I was in a dream that what I was doing was sex! It was the most incredible sex that it's possible to have. Of course I have nothing to compare it with, but I think because he presented it that way, and not first as sex, that it's correct. I felt like we lived a whole romance in one dream,” Rory sighed as her mother looked on jealously.

“He told me the stars were the only way out, and that I would give birth to our son, and because he would be able to communicate with him telepathically, he would know all these things and lead people from this prison with clarity. He said that it was the plan. That one of the world outside should be born in this world. This would mean he would be born without sin, and that would redeem us creations of the cupola who will then become worthy to join the life beyond it. If one of our flesh is real, then that is the sign for the rest of us, because this world is timed, the permutations will exhaust themselves, and the illusion we call our world will be destroyed, as its founding principle of math runs its course. The cupola will be lifted or opened. The ice caps will melt. We have been made of this world and should else be discarded with it. And this was only decided because we have been made with a breath of life in the first place. They knew not what they had imprisoned, what had slipped into their game through a Trojan horse, and that was their mistake. They knew not of white shadow.”

“Okay but... why you, Rory?”

“He said I was the most special and perfect girl, the only girl he liked. He said he had to pick a virgin because he didn't have much time.”

“I asked him what I should name our child, and he said he would be a 'Chris', but I was waking up and didn't really understand.... Dad is a good dad. What if I'm not a good mom? I'm afraid of motherhood!” she was ranting.

“Rory,” Lorelai put her hands on her daughter's shoulders, “don't be ridiculous. You're not going to have a baby. Unless this was all a very elaborate distraction from you having a summer fling which, a, impressive, b, you're already older than I was when I had you.”

“But mom, I'm not making it up! It was so real. It felt more real than this feels now. I really do feel like we're in a prison world! That man was my only true breath of fresh air! And now I'm back here, under the dome,” said Rory in anguish. “If nothing happens, what was it all for!?”

“What was it all for!?” Lorelai jumped up in bed. “Why, for Chilton, for Yale! Don't forget your future, honey. You can't get pregnant from a dream... no matter how real it seemed,” Lorelai said. “Now, go back to sleep.”

“It's eleven in the morning.”

“Yeah, well, when you're an adult you can sleep for however long you want,” Lorelai then gave a sleepy yawn and fell back down for a nap. Chris had been at work since 6.

Rory said nothing more and left her be. The slow realization washed over her that she had witnessed Lorelai's superpower – Lorelai was completely unaffected by the information she had relayed. It had bounced off her brain like wood. Meanwhile, the angel touched her once and flushed her down a spiral. Whose daughter was she, really.

***

The very next day, Lorelai caught Rory loading up her library cart with all the occult books when she popped home for a quick lunch at an odd hour in the middle of the day.

“Okay... I knew you were a fast reader but even you wouldn't be able to get through The Secret Doctrine that fast... unless you cast a spell,” said Lorelai shrewdly.

 “I didn't finish them,” Rory said. 

“Moving on to tarot?” Lorelai asked.

“No more magic for me.”

Lorelai gasped. “So that means you're not studying, yay. Now we can stay up and watch Lifetime and eat ice cream til two, yay,” Lorelai jiggled her hands.

“I'm still going to bed early. Gotta get up early for church tomorrow with grandma.”

“Grandma? Satan-in-a-mother-skinsuit-grandma?” said Lorelai.

“You just don't understand her,” said Rory.

“Your words or hers?”

Lorelai cut herself off from inquiring further about her mother, but she did grow worried. Church wasn't the only change in Rory; she became severely withdrawn. She retreated completely into her own world, sans books, instead glassy eyed and looking up, longing, anguished by an unseen spiritual crisis of directionlessness. True to her word, she no longer read books about magic, but it wasn't because she had to keep herself away from them; there was nothing more they could tell her.

She spent her days in silent contemplation – that is, what appeared as her lolling about. The whole town could feel her energetic shift; the yard was bare bones of boys now, with Lorelai jumping out onto it and scratching her head like a duped sheriff before a tumbleweed saloon. The only other person Rory relayed the dream to was Lane, who sympathized with her feelings of isolation and tried to offer perspective. Lane rejected nothing of what she said. She just told Rory to write it all down and that that would give her some relief so she could begin to move on.

“I don't want to move on,” Rory lamented.

“I don't think you have a choice here. Time is going to keep moving whether you're in a prison or not. And instead you'll be faced with getting into Yale.”

“Do you think there's any real difference between community college and Yale?”

“Okay,” Lane panicked. “There is a difference. And this world does matter, at least it matters to the people you care about. Think of it like this: right now you're in a dip that comes inevitably after the peak, but eventually, as you process this, the impact is going to even out, and then you're going to be able to make something incredible from this experience!”

“Oh no,” Rory groaned.

“No! It's a good thing! That's what's going to bring you real fulfillment, and where are you more likely to push forward, community college or Yale – ?”

“No – look,” Rory was nodding to a little down the road. Heading toward the two of them, and toward each other, were Dean and Jess, each on his own coming from an opposite way. Rory stood tensely in dread of the quadruple collision that seemed destined to happen beneath these late summer trees.

Dean spotted them first and passed by the two of them smoothly, nodding politely and saying, “Hey, Lane, hey, Rory.” But then he kept going. And not a minute later Jess came strolling by the same spot, having spotted all three of them but saying nothing to the girls, nor giving any other form of acknowledgment, his attention instead in an open copy of Tacitus' Germania held up to eye level in one hand. Further down the sidewalk he ran into Dean and clapped him on the back, and they chatted congenially for a minute before both carrying on.

“Things are changing...” said Lane. “I feel it....”

A few weeks later, Rory's withdrawal grew even more severe. She stopped looking up. She remained cast down, looking ever at her feet, at her navel, at the ground, at the earth, and she sighed heavily often, muttering to herself things that nobody else could discern. Lorelai worried, of course. It wasn't like her daughter to skip Oprah and junk food night and switch to eating red meat and eggs almost exclusively. Their grocery bill would have tripled!, but because these foods were so nutrient-dense Rory consumed far less of them so it almost evened out, plus she was a lot healthier (even though a teenager has a few years of binge eating junk food in them before they start seeing the cumulative deleterious effects). Noticing the improvements, Lorelai told her daughter to put on a bikini and seduce the boys. But Rory was in her own bed at 10pm every night, and reading again, though not about the occult.

“She's trying to get under my skin...” Lorelai muttered to herself with narrowed eyes as she flipped through her daughter's phone and found no messages, no selfies, no nudes... nothing. Lorelai took a deep breath, centered her chi, and thereon enlightenedly left her daughter alone to figure her own shit out, and focused on figuring her own shit out. And, as usual, mother's intuition proved right. Rory eventually approached her of her own. It was one afternoon a few months after the dream, when Lorelai was sitting in the backyard gazebo sipping a hot tea and Chris was somewhere. Rory tentatively walked up to her mother buried in a cute scarf and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, doubling down on her DGAF attitude to make the read more palatable.

“Going out tonight?” Lorelai asked, then with a smile said graciously, “You have my permission.”

“Nowhere to go,” said Rory.

“Did you get into college early?” her curiosity was piqued.

“No...”

Lorelai was now concerned. She put down her book and invited her daughter to sit beside her, like old times.

“Honey, what is it?” she asked anxiously.

Rory sighed reflexively like she so often did of late.

“Mom...” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I'm pregnant.”