Chapters Year Two - Setting the Path
Past the child's birthday, a thing that had little value to the child, as attention was not something he desired. It made him uncomfortable. The mother started giving him more attention, but the infant did not want it, for her breath constantly reeked of alcohol, and her actions always made the child fear for its life, not for fear of violence, but fear of incompetence, for the mother's drunken body often swayed lethargically, and the child's week body could do nothing to flee from the danger her inebriation posed.
Farther still, the mother is being taken advantage of in bed, and right in front of the child. The child runs around on the floor, having learned to crawl efficiently. Its fecies trailed behind it, and stained its hands, leaving a trail behind it as it moved along the floor. To its right, the mother and the man were making meaningless love. The child watched intently, but was unaware completely of what was occurring. In the end, the last thing the child saw before falling asleep was the man's hoof digging around inside the ass of the mother as they both slept silently. This image haunts the child even still.
Moving ahead, the mother pulls her child in a cart. The child is sleeping when suddenly, it is jolted awake. Colors fly around in its vision, as shattered glass fills the air. The mother had been hit by a cart of vases falling down a hill. The glass passed the child and harmlessly hit the ground and the area around it. The mother, however, was not so lucky. Her harness stripped slesh from her neck, leaving large red marks all along her neck. The glass imbedded itself in her neck and scalp, studding her body like diamonds, blood red diamonds. The child, however, was not bothered by any of this, as it was drifting in a peaceful slumber.
The child sits at home, happy and content when suddenly, he is taken out of the arms of his grandmother and pulled into the undesired arms of the mother. The child wriggles, wanting to be put back into the arms of the grandmother. The mother places the child's face against her shoulder in an embrace, and so the child decided to stop fighting and just hang limply in her grasp.
There is conflict between the mother and grandmother, and the grandfather is not involved, but prefers to avoid conflict. The child doesn't understand it, but seeing them upset agitates him. Time moves swiftly in the next few years, as only a few events matter to him.
Years Six and Seven - Limelight's Gambit
Years Six and Seven - Limelight's Gambit
In order to solidify its place as an individual, and not an extension of the original, who shall from now and onward be addressed as Atwente, a name which has a meaning that is inexpressible in this story, the second personality devised a name for himself, one suited to his personality. Limelight.. Limelight's strongest desire, which you may believe to be the destruction of Atwente, was actually more understandable. It was to survive, to be independant, and to have a life of his own. Unfortunately, he knew that this was impossible for him as he was a mere weakling in comparison to the radiance that was Atwente. What was he to do to become his own creature? From this point and onward, we shall address the strength of a personality as its cognitive resources. There are three different kinds of cognitive resources, and the relative number of one in comparison to the others will determine the strengths and traits of a personality. That is not to say, however, that two personalities with equal cognitive resources are identical, for there are other variables that determine the mindset and behaviors of the different personalities.
The kind of resources that were available to Atwente gave him creativity and logic, while only a small amount of logic was available to Limelight, and a great deal of instinctual desire. However, that desire was enough drive for Limelight to use his meager resources to search for a way to find a path to independence. And so he did, but it was a gambit, for Atwente had a great power over Limelight and by depriving him of his desires, he would wretch in misery, lacking the only things that made his life bearable. Things like sleep and food and excretion.
His plan was to torture Atwente constantly, not bluntly and monstrously, but subtly and gently. A small pricking with a thorn. But to a sensitive and unstable thing like Atwente, that kind of torture can be unbearable. It can make everything so much harder to bear when you have that constant pressure bearing down on you. It caused him to start cracking, to start looking for relief wherever he could find it. It made him aggressive, and this was what Limelight wanted for aggressive children are not often liked by their peers.
Without the support of his peers, Atwente had no outlet except for Limelight, a presence he had begun to forget about. He was unaware that Limelight was the one who had been torturing him, and so was more ready to confide in Limelight and look to him for gratification than a wiser one would be. Notice now, how I am not explaining things from Atwente's view anymore, well that will be the way things are for some time, as Atwente will soon lose his ability to understand things at all, and so I don't want you to get too used to hearing about him. Limelight is going to be like Quantum's version of Discord for some time, but we are getting too far ahead of ourselves. Now let me get back on track.
Limelight had Atwente confiding in him all the time, and so Limelight began feeding him ideas of how he could elssen the pain that was constantly on him. However, there was a lie he told Atwente to convince him. He said that Logic was the reason for his pain, that if he could only relinquish himself from logical thought, that he would be only free. Atwente refuted this dea at first, but Limelight was persistent, and so over time, Limelight filled Atwente with a distaste for logic, a desire for mania. A desire that still has some presence, even in The Manic Journals.
The sun's light shone brightly at times, but could easily be blocked by the clouds flowing in the harsh winds flowing over Equestria. In a hospital, a child was birthed. A very light brown coat covered his body, and a deep dark chocolate mane flowed from his head. His eyes were closed, and remained shut for all his first day of life. Time passed, he was oblivious to all that happened around him, that is to say, not much. But that isn't relevant. It isn't about the way things are, it is about the way we perceive them. That, however, is a lesson you will soon come to be very familiar with.
Let us jump ahead to the next day, the child finally opened his eyes. He had been held by his mother for hours, and the few disorderly thoughts that his unpracticed mind was capable of forming were all revolving around that sound. That beat. As Quantum opened his eyes, he saw the face of his mother. He smiled, and she smiled back. One would think that more detail would be provided about her, but she isn't really an important part of this story. Just the way she is seen.
Get used to jumping ahead, because it will be happening quite often. Quantum was both fortunate and cursed to be born to this mare, she she was almost a child herself. Unwed, twenty years old, and emotionally unstable. Controlling, insecure, and easily taken advantage of. This will be vague time, full of gaping holes in time. This is symbolic of perception, for if we are to know what it is that occurred in the mind of Quantum, we must see through the mind of Quantum, and only important memories were held from this time.
Jumping months ahead, the foal's birthday was coming swiftly, the family was swiftly preparing for the celebration. The child's thirst for affection from her mother was going unsatisfied, and was instead being satisfied by her mother's mother and father. The father is, at this time, unknown to the child, and instead the mother's father has taken this role.
We are skipping far ahead, to the Pre - Kindergarten stage of the child's life. The first time actually, as the child's birthday was too late for it to be considered old enough to enter K-1 and up, but to early to be considered to young to enter Pre-K, so he had to repeat this stage. It was here that he developed an attachment to a young child by the name of Mary. This attachment was formed the moment she spoke to him, as he was extremely shy and spent most of his time observing others and drawing pictures of trees and flowers in his note pad. It was with her that he spent most of his time until one day, a male child approached them. He insulted the boy, and the boy's first instinct was to harm the boy, and so he got up off the ground next to Mary and approached the boy. Mary, however, reached out to stop him from doing so. He respected her opinion greatly, and so he refrained from harming the boy. The boy, however, insulted the little girl, and so the controlling side of the young child took over. Kill him. What? I can't do that! Gouge his eyes out with the spoon! The boy's attempt to kill and gouge the eyes of the other child were in vain, not due to intervention, but due to a lung problem of the child himself. He could only run for so long before the colors in his vision started to darken. He passed out. He was promptly removed from that school and was home schooled until he was old enough for Kindergarten. All the while, his obsession with finding a way to reunite himself with the girl he had known, whose name was already starting to fade from his memory, flourished.
Now, as we can clearly see, there was a semblance of an alternate personality that had formed at this event. This was created by two conflicting desires, one to defend the honor and to satisfy the desire to kill the other boy, and the other desire being to obey the one he cared for. Now, I currently don't have enough evidence to speculate as to how the creation of the second personality was made, but I am aware that it was always inferior to the original except in situations where strong emotion was pushing in the same direction as the alternate personality. In situations like these, the alternate personality could override logic for a time. There was a constant power struggle between the original consciousness and this newer, more instinctual one. But the only way it could ever overcome its stronger kage was if it could convince it to surrender, so that is what it did.
Over time, and with the influence of Limelight's malicious intentions, two other personalities were birthed in situations with similar emotional strength to the one which spurned Limelight. These two personalities will be titled LeVanna and Lestrade. LeVanna was largely composed of creativity and instinctual desire, with not even a rim of logic to guide her away from her own self destruction. The other, named Lestrade, was entirely composed of logic, completely inhumane and unimaginative, with no desires other than to collect and store information. These two personalities took up space that would otherwise be taken by Atwente, who was now blissful and spurning forth many weaker personalities, most of which just collapsed in on themselves and returned to Alpha or Limelight, who were both still the largest bodies. Others, however, managed to remain stable, and sat obliviously until influenced by the failed attempts to create new personalities by the other three personalities.
The ones who were created by Atwente will be addressed as they are encountered, but as for the three greater personalities, now known as Greater Enemies, all managed to create two personalities each. Le`Vanna, who afterwards spent a great amount of time hunting down and capturing Atwente's personalities and trapping them in what is known as a matrix, created Epsilon, a pyromaniac with a lust for the misery of others, and Beta, a thoughtless, obedient animal who always craved violence. They both originally had different names, but they have been lost. Lestrade, who later went to trap his own personalities in a matrix and perform many experiments on them, created Delta, one with a mind devoted to the creation and perfection of logic, and Omega, who like his creator, was devoted entirely to the gathering and storage of information. Limelight, who was much stronger than either of the other two, created two much more complex personalities. Gamma, who was always filled with a desire to wander and understand things, and Zeta, who was apathetic to all things and simply felt a desire to manipulate others, for their benefit or detriment. This is how the Quantumsphere was created, all an illusion seen by different personalities.
Now, I know you think that The Manic Journals contradicts this story, but in time all will be explained.