EARLIER THAT WEEK

I read an article about the long drawn-out end of the universe. It basically said matter and energy will break down totally at last, but then (over huge spans of time) random quantum fluctuations will spontaneously create particles, statues, stars, abortive universes... and eventually, by chance, a baby cosmos suitable for life.

THAT NIGHT

This dream took place in a third person point of view: I was not actually in the dream, I was simply observing. I have a tendency toward unusually coherent and sequential dreams, including background information needed to know the scenario, therefore, some of the details were not exactly dreamed, but I just "knew." The entire history of the "Primus Mobile" colony below is an example of me just happening to know.

This whole dream takes place so far in the future, most matter in the universe has simply faded away. The only consistent matter and energy in existence are in contained colonies. There are only three of these "existence colonies". The largest is Yggdrasil Colony (named for the Norse world-tree); the other two colonies are called Primus Mobile (the name is taken from the medieval Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri; it means first cause, the divine impulse that created the world) and the Sefiroth Armada (whose name is taken from Hebrew mysticism; like Yggdrasil, it's sometimes translated Tree of Life).

Yggdrasil was the first one constructed. It survived the Phase (when most matter and energy ceased to exist) by replacing all of its own mass-energy with mass-energy stolen from an alternate, younger universe by use of a machine known as the Ragnarok Drive (called such because the invasion of the other universe causes it to decay.)

The Sefiroth Armada was the second colony: a large fleet of sealed ships that maintained themselves by mysterious means. Well, not mysterious to me: I knew that they had a grapefruit sized sphere that collected energy from any spot in the universe, including energy leaked from the hole left by the Ragnarok drive. The sphere had enough energy to restore the universe, but doing so would annihilate the colonies.

The Sefiroth Armada was eventually destroyed during a short war, in which Primus Mobile and Yggdrasil attacked it.

The third and youngest colony was called Primus Mobile. It was made as a result of a failed use of the Ragnarok drive that forced the Yggdrasil Colony to jettison part of the machine, which exploded, and pierced a hole to something other than another universe. The hole leaked a strange energy that sustained matter (but couldn't be utilized by the Sefiroth Armada). Yggdrasil sent people to inspect it; they built a huge habitat ring around the hole and made the energy form a sphere as wide as the ring. Here they founded Primus Mobile. It gained independence during a short war with the Sefiroth Armada.

The main character the dream focused on was a man who found the Sefiroth Armada's sphere in the wreckage of their flagship. He grew slightly mad with a God complex. He wanted to see the birth of a universe in its full glory, but he was stopped by a younger and gentler man who somehow knew how to gradually restore the universe with the sphere (although it was still a relatively fast process: a galaxy in a thousand years, no matter what distance).

There were several passing references to other things happening. Natives of other universes attempted to stop the Yggdrasil Colony from destroying more. And strange beings from the plane on the other side of the hole that powered Primus Mobile came and killed nearly the entire population of Primus Mobile as an act of justice for the genocide of the Sefiroth Armada (Primus Mobile was the one to do the actual destroying in the war, by focusing their energy into a beam.) None of the other stories had much more than a passing mention, though.

INTERPRETATION

I see the three colonies as a symbol of three types of people, or groups:

1. Yggdrasil is a group that has plenty of resources, but lets much of it to go to waste.
2. Sefiroth stands for a person or group that has his own system that is efficient and useful, but is despised for its secrecy, therefore the wasteful wealth and the clueless lucky conspire against it.
3. Primus Mobile is the representation of a person that has plenty of wealth for no reason other than sheer luck, leaving it conceited and careless with his plentiful resources (unless, of course, it involves actually helping someone.)
   Primus Mobile is a case of irony that I, personally, have never seen the likes of before. They waste more than anyone else, yet they don't suffer any consequences, leading them to think that they have the favor of some higher power. Later, that higher power shows its disapproval for their actions by laying waste to their land built on luck.

--Exarian

EDITOR'S NOTE

I find it curious that all three colonies are named after old models of the cosmos, from very different traditions. Even Primus Mobile has a second, structural meaning: in the heliocentric model of the universe, it's the sphere supporting the fixed stars, that cradles the lesser crystal spheres bearing the sun, moon and planets.

Yggdrasil seem neither treelike nor Nordic; Primus Mobile isn't Greco-Roman (the idea is pre-Christian) or medieval. Only Sefiroth slightly resembles its mystical meaning: a fleet of deepspace ships in communication could well be diagrammed as a complex of nodes and connecting rods--the traditional schematic of the Sephiroth.

If you search for more on these ancient world-models, "Primum Mobile" is the standard spelling; and Sefiroth is often spelled "Sephiroth."

--Chris Wayan

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