Concerning Vortigaunts Part One
Professor Jenkins, Ph.D. in Clinical PsychologyNotes Concerning Vortigaunt Subject #27, "The Messenger"
Spent time with The Messenger today, by reckoning November 20, 2009.
-He insists I refer to him as Jack, "As of the human who ventured up a dimension-spanning beanstalk."
-His comments remain mostly cryptic. Too vague to assign meaning.
-He refuses to assign meaning himself, saying, "Branches on a tree leading to leaves. Which leaf will fall first?"
-After many confusing statements I felt extreme annoyance, almost anger.
-I imagine this is what the Romans went through when consulting the Oracle.
-Attempted to question Jack about Vortigaunt telepathy.
-His responses seemed to imply that it does not handle specifics well, but that sense-impressions and identities come through clearly. Thus they can often know another of their kind is in pain, and which one, but not why.
-Jack's further meanderings are similar to psychedelic era thought as well as areas of Buddhism.
-I asked if 'Gaunts share a group mind and he said, "All morphologies are one. The topology of organisms is consistent with the fabric of all things; the other is a fiction."
-So I asked if that meant they believe in the Universe as a meta-organism and he replied, "Hierarchies of individuals obscure the hierarchies above. Seeing one thing makes us blind to another. Seeing all things makes us blind to ourselfs."
-Again, essentially Sixties Mysticism - ego-destruction coupled with novel interpretations of advanced physics.
-The strange contrast to all of this talk is Jack's constant fatalism. I told him of our continued advances against the outer barriers of City 9 and he assured me that "City 9 tosses about in the storm and will capsize, the wall will harden and all the assaulters will perish."
-I asked if that was a Vortigaunt portent and he sniffed and said, "It is The Jack's opinion."
-And when I informed him of three more infirmary deaths in the night he began making a clicking sound with his mouth, as I have observed him to do when he seems irritated, and he said harshly, "Stacked like cordwood. Let us hope with these bodies we can make a fire that the Combine can feel."
-It seems to me that Vortigaunts might exist in an essentially split-personality state.
-One is their ego-body, in which they develop personality traits and an individual nature.
-The other is their group mind, in which they synthesize a vast amount of sense-impressions to yield a colony of awarenesses - when this personality is active they all spout the same ambiguous philosophy, as if they were molded from one template.
-Tomorrow, ask to play Chess.
-Also, attempt to discover if Vortigaunts have genders, and what role that might play in their development.
About
- / Resist the Combine no matter the cost, for we fight, not to hold onto our freedom, but our identity.
Collaboration is but the first step toward annihilation.
Humanity breathes in. - Command Square 9 Information
- Post Slang: Hostiles