{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/vermin/aether-brain",
  "path": "/posts/vermin/aether-brain",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-27T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "tags": [
    "rough"
  ],
  "textContent": "The way I usually explain how alchemy works is the existence of two\nmagical substances.  Essence is the fundamental basis of alchemy, and\nit arises from the dreams and desires of a conscious brain.  Why this\nis so is oft-considered one of the great mysteries of the world. But\nessence is innately unstable and reactive; whenever it comes into\ncontact with physical matter, combustion-subsumption results and\ntogether they create limina.\n\nThis is the other, more outwardly obvious magical substance.  Limina\nhas mass and more stability than esseence.  It is able to coexist in\nthe physical world.  But it can also shield essence from interaction\nwith matter, allowing it to persist.\n\nImagine pouring dirt into a puddle.  At first it becomes wet and turns\ninto mud, but after some of the dirt is sacrificed to form that first\nlayer, the dirt piling atop it remains dry.  Essence reacts to produce\nenough limina to protect itself.\n \nEssence has a lot in common with electricity; it flows and creates a\nfield for forces to act at a distance.  Limina --- despite its mass\n--- is exceptionally easy to reshape, especially by manipulation of\nthe essence field.  The ancients called it \"divine clay.\"\n\nBut I did not describe limina as stable, only more stable.  If\nstarved of the flow of essence, limina will undergoes a kind of\ncollapse back into almost-ordinary matter.  But since limina was so\neasy to reshape, you can see a utility in this process: first\ntransform matter into limina, then mold it into a new form, then\nsiphon off the essence, and behold how easily you reshape the world.\n\nThose with honed phyisical instincts may expect a conservation law. If\nessence + matter = limina, and this product presists as long as there\nis excess essence, then shouldn't the collapse of limina back into\nmatter also return the essence that created it?  Otherwise, where does\nit go?\n\nThe mathematics aren't so kind.  Essence is changed through its affair\nwith matter; it cannot return with the same purity it once had.\nInstead, it becomes a sort of anti-essence.  Where essence could not\nbear the presence of matter without reacting with it, this byproduct\nis perfectly able to persist, clinging to objects like static fuzz. An\nobject imbued this way is considered transmuted.\n\nWith some abuse of language, we might refer to this \"anti-essence\" as\ntransmutation.  And the distinguishing feature is that transmutation\nviolently combusts with essence, preventing the formation of more\nlimina, or that mysterious genesis of essence ex nihiho.\n\nBecause essence originates in the brain, and because the flow of\nessence controls the form of limina, alchemists consider these\nsubstances to form the soul, the chief organ for practicing\nmetaphysical work.\n\nIn a layperson, limina seeps throughout the body, circulating through\nthe blood, but without disciplined control of their essence flow, at\ntheir extremities limina often collapses into transmutation, resulting\na messy patchwork of essence-laden limina and transmutation.\n\nMatter cannot be shorn of its transmutated nature except at a cost of\nenergy --- even still, expelling the \"anti-essence\" often creates\nexplosive forces that threaten the structure integrity of the\ntransmuted object.  In bodies, this means tissue damage.  This is the\ndifficulty of the alchemists' first task: compleating the soul.\n\nSimply burning away transmuted impurities would cause lacerations and\nfissures throughout the bodies: it would prove swiftly fatal.  Thus\nthe transmutation must be cleared away slowly, carefully.  Slowly\nenough that even as you remove one impurity, more transmutation in\nbeing ingested or created by the body's metabolism.  It is no mystery\nwhy this process can take years.\n\nBut there's a further wrinkle.  I mislead you, which I told you that\ntransmuted impurities arise through the laity's lack of control.  No,\nthe fundamental contradiction of alchemy is that a single brain cannot\ngenerate enough essence to compleat a soul.  It is akin to flying by\ntugging on one's own bootstraps.\n\nThe body bears the stain of transmutation as an inevitability, the\nhigh banks of  river will on occasion know the touch of its waters but\nthe flow is never sufficient to flood the it to the brim every day of\nevery season.\n\nEven the wisest alchemists, acquainted with essence's origin in the\ndreams of mortals, cannot generate enough of it, not at a rate\nappreciably faster than the a lay fool.  In this all mortals are\nlargely equal.\n\nNo, the only way alchemists are able to sustain themselves is by\nsupping on the essence generated by vigners and offered in the fruit\nof their vines.\n\nHearing all of this, you would naturally come to the conclusion that\nessence is a very scarce thing, as if each mind is mining some\nprecious gem from the inscrutable depth of the world.\n\nThis is the belief that the Aether Brain Hypothesis challenges.\n\nIt suggests that essence is in fact just abundant as the air\nsurounding us. Or perhaps not essence itself.  Rigorously\nformulated, this conjecture introduces a third class of phenomena: the\ntitular aether.  Aether is furtive and unreactive, able to suffuse\nevery inch of the world without revealing its presence.\n\nIt is attracted to matter, trailing in its wake, and dutiful reënacts\nits every motion.  For this, theorists have been moved to imagine an\n\"astral plane\", identical to the material world, but composed of this\naether pantomime.\n\nThis equivalance between material and aether is the Grand Symmetry.\nBut grand as it is, it is only notable because it not perfect. In\nanimate bodies, the aether counterpart diverges subtly from its\nsource.  Romantically, we might imagine the astral imitation is unable\nto cope with the vagaries of free will.\n\nA more mechanical explanation is substances present in living bodies\nare what break the symmetry.  Small particles that interact with\nmatter and aether both, yet discriminate and perturb the symmetry.\n\nImagine inviting men and women to a dance, each paired with the\nopposite gender. Now suppose someone tampers with the records, skewing\nthe balance of genders and making a confusion of the intended\norganization.  Instead of a perfect one-to-one pairing, strange new\ndances emerge, multiple men competing for a woman (many to one) or a\nman with several admiring women (one to many) or girls dancing among\nthemselves (zero to one).\n\nAether, remember, was supposed to imitate the behavior of matter.  But\nthis imitation isn't idle --- aether does have mass.  When it is\ndragged in the wake of matter, matter likewise falls back to join it.\nBecause of the grand symmetry, this two-way interaction can be\nignored: aether's influence simply redundantly reduplicates the\nmotions of matter.  When they diverge? Matter will be dragged astral.\n\nConsider a one-to-many interaction.  Here, several subdivisions of the\naether field have mappped onto the same material element, and as a\nresult, the stablizing influence of aether is disportionate.  In order\nfor the matter to move, it must tug on not only the usual aether\nhanger-on, but several others who cling to it.\n\nMany-to-one are more interesting to contemplate, owing to the fact\nthat two objects cannot overlap in space, meaning that this aether\nacts to synchronize several similar objects to a shared state.\n\nZero-to-one are the strangest by far.  It is as if the astral plane\nwas twisted, subducted into itself, causing aether to imitate aether\nas if it were matter.  But this is self-referential, and consequential\nany behavior becomes self-justifyingly possible.\n\nOne theory posits that \"essence,\" \"limina\" and \"transmutation\" are no\nmore than phases of aether, geometric arrangements of this deviations\nin the Grand Symmetry.  But perhaps a rigorous reduction of alchemy to\naether is beyond the scope of this discussion.\n\nStep back, and consider the true implication of this astral plane.\nIt's nothing less than a doubling of space, with profound implication\nfor processes which find themselves limited by space. Could Book could\nbe bound to take up half as much space if every page had not two sides\nbut four?\n\nRemember that we supposed living things bore substances that broke the\nGrand Symmetry.  The Aether Brain Hypothesis proposes that the brain\ndeliberately alters its cognition across the material/aether split to\nexploit the duplication.  This aether divergence is used to not just\nto accelerate thought, but to rapidly signal and synchronize across\ncortices.  It is in fact essential to the emergence of the unified\nexperience of consciousness.\n\nBiologically, all brains would perform this operation to greater or\nlesser extent, but it is of course the most acutely developed in the\nmost intelligent species.\n\nIf the sea of aether is everywhere around us, but only in brain is\nthere turbulence enough to subduct and create those zero-to-one\n\"bubbles\" that are unbound to matter... have we not arrived at an\nexplanation of just what essence is, and why brains alone generate\nthem?\n\nBut what is unique about cognition?  What stops us from isolated the\nmolecules that give rise to this phenomena and generating abiotic\nessence, perhaps stirring them in a warm pot?\n\nKey to what's happening isn't that the Grand Symmetry is breaking, but\nthat it's breaking in a structured, useful way.  Why not create food\nby putting amino acids into a warm pot and stirring it?  Only\nmetabolism creates the proteins that life requires, and only brains\nproduce the emyra that is the true power of essence.\n\nIt is possibible for inanimate objects to produce noises, and animals\ncan produce complex calls indeed, but only sapient animals produce\nlanguage.  And it is the complexity of emyra, the self-modifying\nrecursive flows of essence, that allow for alchemy as such.\n\nBut what happens if you insist on trying to replicate the production\nof emyra through nonsapient means?\n\nThe result is chimeric.\n\nOccasionally, especially through illness and defect, an animal may\nsecrete a surplus of the molecules responsible for symmetry-breaking.\nM",
  "title": "Aether Brain Hypothesis"
}