Absolute Revisionism: Explaining The Diamondae Machine
The Diamondae Machine, an orange pincer floating in the void of space, as seen in Threads that Bind the Tempest, has a cryptic function that is totally antithetical to existence, to the unfettered continuity of it. It is explained in a round-about way, but still, it doesn’t seem to make any sense. And making sense of it would lead to madness. And after the events of TTBTT, the Trinity and the One, especially Spellbinder, are wary of such things for good reason.
But we have no reason to be wary! At least, I do not. I can freely explain the Diamondae Machine and its function without issue. So I will. Feel free to stop reading if you’re afraid of paradoxes or the crushing horror of absolutism.
If you are free.
And that’s part of the problem with the Diamondae Machine, not the problem of it, but the problem, the horror, that comes from what it does and how it removes freedom. It creates Vashwva and answers itself…using people as tools to fulfill its goal. Pieces of a puzzle that has to be completed because it is already done.
Let’s step back from that edge.
What did the Diamondae Machine actually do? Disregarding intent and anything else, but concretely, what happened when it was used?
The Primer
To understand that, we have to look back to where we started. Er, where I started. As in: How to Stop Wildfire.
In HTSW, Cyclone, King, and Spellbinder, each have a vision: a vision of the Trinity at their end. Here’s the except:
A man, a Jalon, wearing armor of a dark blue hue stood over a form. It was the bleeding body of woman with red hair. Red tears fell from her face, scratches covering her face, and his Am was tearing him apart seeing these unknown entities that felt so familiar. His arms were raised, about to plunge his sword into his body. To the side of this view, this single burning image, was a mage, who clutched a staff and was gasping with raw understanding. He looked like he was muttering some words, reaching out to touch some invisible, non-present entity. Something hit his chest, a shot of some kind and he collapsed to the ground.
When that mage hit the ground the image snapped away.
Sound familiar?
These visions are recounted again TTBTT:
“When I was falling to Earth after the Paquav was spectacularly blown up by that Empirian patrol, I fell into some dreamlike state,” Cyclone admitted. His arms dropped down and his knees relaxed. “I saw the old Trinity. It looked like it was their end—but I am so morbid, as you know, so whether this was my own biased inference or not I do not know. There was blood from Qua’wva. I think it was blood. So much red. Then Alexai was about to impale himself on his own sword. Or something. Eyierak fell to the ground soon after.” He paused. “I saw it like I was a rock on the wall of that blue cavernous place. Not like I was one of them.”
Fla’neiel clicked his black digits. “My ‘vision’ was the same as the one that Cyclone had,” he confessed softly.
...
“My first vision informed me that we were the Trinity. It was of an abstract, God-like voice, perhaps Ra, speaking to me,” Spellbinder recalled, her voice shining with piousness and holy resolution. “Telling me to bring us together. Then I had that same glimpse of the past you two had.”
The important thing to note is Spellbinder’s observation on their shared vision (not her separate one):
That same one now again. Yet it was not a blue cavern, but a yellow-orange mechanical place. Colors are important or are they just misdirections?
Colors. They recount their visions as having taken place in a blue cavern. But that was not what happened, was it? Because we see what really happened and some of it is the same. Eyierak reaching out—truly Spellbinder reaching for Farrco and getting shot as such.
The setting changed. It took place within the yellow-orange Diamondae Machine instead of a blue cavern.
Are they misremembering the vision or have things changed? As we know from TTBTT…the answer is perhaps…yes.
Knowing Knowing
How can they be both right and wrong? It doesn’t make any sense in this context. That is, in part, the essence and conclusion regarding the Diamondae Machine: it’s blasphemously paradoxical. It not making sense makes sense.
But it does have a function and that function is clear and it explains how both things can be true and all of it wrong.
The function of the Diamondae Machine is to rewrite reality. Rewrite it so there was no previous. Its rewriting was part of the original copy. Thus it is vain and yet it is essential. It is the fulcrum to which reality, for a time, had to operate on. Piercing and pinching it to one point and then unspooling it back out with its new pattern sewn in.
This is what happens in the climax of Threads that Bind the Tempest. Spellbinder exists and persists during the smashing of time and space atop each other and experiences what had already happened. She acts as Eyierak. Through this, absolute verification is obtained to confirm what has transpired—despite it contradicting their visions and making them true. They were true and made true.
Like a closed time travel loop story. Except…instead of events being perfectly aligned, reality was forced to reconstruct to suit itself, to suit the events and things the Diamondae Machine inserted into being. It created its own totality.
To give a clear example:
If the Trinity had to be in the Diamondae Machine, then they were there and always there.
If things had to be so they existed, then they were. So it did not matter if originally something was one way instead of this way. It was shifted and forced so that it could verify its own existence properly. Things operated indistinguishably besides that and a few other minor additions. The Primordial Essences, later, have the same effect of inspiring acts that are akin to Vashwva. They cause people to act or the Diamondae Machine uses them as actors for its own play. That play…that is seen in full later.
We are talking the past.
And so:
The Past is not the Past
What had happened was not what had happened. The reality the Trinity and the One had experienced as part of a vision of before was not what is truth now. We can perceive that. We see the ‘original’. But reality was revised. An absolute revision. Think of it like Star Wars and all the changes made. The old copy is a myth now. Imagine if the old version where Han shot first ceased to exist and only existed in meta-memory. Better yet: the screenings never happened. Like it was some Mandela Effect.
But it was real. Was and…never.
The Diamondae Machine acts are a retcon that’s in-universe instead of out of universe. The retcon exists and is perceived and known. The retcon is absolute. There is no back. The back was a memory that no longer applies. Its a misremembrance now. The past is no longer what it was.
Getting Right Back to Where We Are
Reality is no longer as it was before the Diamondae’s meddling via this Machine. No longer as it was before Archalex, truly, but Archalex is a whole other topic. Creation of Catasore has been rewritten by Archalex’s machine. Concepts and ideas not present in the original manifesto of being were added in.
But…with that, we have to analyze it deeper. How can such creation be rewritten without some approval? Perhaps…The Diamondae Machine was Vashwva. Perhaps all it did was Vashwva from Catasore instead of Archalex and he was the tool of inevitability not from the Diamondae Aspect of Vashwva but Catasore taking form as it. Perhaps…it was all as it should have been. And everything that comes from it was anticipated.
So maybe the answer is not a question but simply that this was the way. There was never anything not the way. This is destiny, this is fate, this is Vashwva.
But that is not the way of Catasore—or is it?
The Future
Beyond all that rambling, there is a future with the Diamondae Machine gone and yet having left a non-existent impression on reality. Not a footprint, but a natural curve in the natural landscape. It is a part of this reality and maybe it never wasn’t. But reality knows that. It knows the paradoxical implications of what was done.
But…
What does that matter?
Wrong question:
Who does that matter for?
And that is not a question for this here.
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