#apotheosis.

Apotheosis. The goal.

Zane: [things to trade to Drixa] and... ::has some difficulty saying this:: ...Dawnmaker. Dawnmaker was- is- was- will- must- be- part of the Apotheosis. It was something foreign to the Realm. It could turn any kind of star into any other kind of star, but how? The best minds in the Realm... (that is to say, Lylana and Nashar) ...would've tackled that question and extracted answers. Because this thing has to be either advanced tech or advanced magic, and who knows which? Who knows if both? Not the Realm. Not yet. Figuring out Dawnmaker, mastering it, replicating it... That would be good. Stopping that would be bad. Almost as bad as destroying every planetkiller. Then every prototype, every schematic, and then erasing the ideas from Lylana's mind. Almost bad as stopping the planetkiller before it was Realm tech. Zane did as bad as that, by giving Dawnmaker to Drixa. Drixa: Won't someone miss those? Zane: ::a strained laugh:: Oh, yes. If the Hands find out that Zane gave up so much of his purpose to get Xur back... To say the least, his relationship with Xur could be at risk. A Hand valuing his consort more than his purpose as a Hand? No. Drixa: But... Zane: But I'm impulsive, and I can tell them I felt like it. A child Hand? A child Edge Hand? It's understandable. Someone so young, who's forced so far from the Eye. No wonder a Hand like that would get... confused. No wonder a Hand like that would need... guidance. But then, Zane didn't sell Dawnmaker for Xur. He sold it to take power away from the Realm and give it to Drixa. To take something from his enemy and give it to his ally. Gael made a binding that protected the defection. So it's safe... ...right?

::the room fills with tiny, translucent blocks- completely filled, to the walls and ceiling and floor. Each is almost invisibly small, but they can- barely- be told apart by their colors:: Sora: ::looks at it, puzzled, waits:: Zane: How many of those do you think you could really watch? The rest of the metaphor would've gone like this: Zane would've willed a single box to his hand, and examined it. He would've used holographic versions of space!microscopes. Then he'd say it wasn't anything but a plain, translucent, reddish cube. Which is all that it knows how to be. But to something like Zane, who's so much more than a tiny cube, it's something small and simple. He could look over all the cubes in the room, but why bother? Except... He would've started arranging the cubes by color, starting to make a pattern. And then he would've fallen over, screaming a stutter of whatever sentence he was saying. (If I move this here, I can- can- I can- I can move it here- if here- I can- move here- if I can.)

The Realm exists in several dimensions/realities/etc. It may be more accurate to say that it's limited to several dimensions/etc. There are reasons why things happen in some dimensions and not others. Take, for example, Squirrel Howell. In our Squirrel's dimension, she met the spacetime wanderer named Gael, and the resulting pregnancy changed her life. Squirrel presumably exists in our main dimension. Ben has commented on how our main dimension's Squirrel might not get pregnant with him, and therefore might never meet and marry Charlotte. So, even skipping forward in time to the years Our Ben would be alive in, This Reality probably won't have a Ben Howell. That's how dimensions work. The Eye only created the Realm in one dimension. It then spread the Realm into several other dimensions, but the Realm's presence is different in each one. There aren't countless Shevarns in countless dimensions. Other dimensions might have a similarly-sized planet orbiting a star in the same location, but the Shevarn that would be familiar to Zia, Sora, and Zane only exists in one dimension. Shevarn as the Adnixes and Landstriders know it is the direct of the Eye's efforts, and a result of the Realm. In other dimensions, that planet circling that star has a different name, a different society, and different people. Why? For one, it fits nicely into my idea of what the Eye wants. Why it created the Realm, and why it's expanding the Realm and why it's controlling its space and people so harshly. Another thing that fits nicely is the thought that it could only begin the Realm in a limited way. That it had to intrude on one dimension for its plans. Not that its variations (which are different for the Timeless than for normal people) are doing the same thing in all (or most) dimensions. But for the Doylist reasons... When Zane and Sora found Arthur and followed that lead into another dimension, it occurred to me that there could be alternate Zanes. With alternate plans for defection, and alternate levels of success. Zane became established as being able to cross dimensions. If he had alternates, they could be a range of people Zane had to be paranoid about, people could be allies with, and people he could greatly benefit from. Because he could go through dimensions and fight off the Zanes who stayed loyal to the Eye, get support from the Zanes who were defecting, and get advice from the Zanes who had successfully defected. With Cal, it's easy to keep him from that kind of thing, because it's easy to make it part of his characterization. Emotional things. Mage's principles. That dimension a group of his alternates made, home to an organization of people dedicated to making sure Cal alternates don't fuck up the multiverse. Zane? I cannot think of a reason that he wouldn't use the shit out of any resource he could get to... unless there's a definite reason he can't. Something like Cal's thing? Been there, done that, done with that. So, here's the reason: Zane only exists because the Eye put things into motion that resulted in his ancestors. This wasn't something that happened accross dimensions, it happened in one dimension. When he hops from his Core-home dimension to Ziz and Zia's Earth-home dimension, he doesn't go into a dimension with an same-but-alternate Realm (and an alternate him Sora Ziz Zia Cephra Nurem Phaedra Volund Ianthe). He goes into a dimension with an extension of the Realm. With no one. Just more subjects in more Realmspace. There aren't alternate Zanes that could be a problem or an ally. There aren't alternate Eyes.

Sora: He had a holo set he prized, of the Realm under the Arisaxes. [...] Zane: ::offhandedly:: Realm space, not the Realm. The underlying idea is that the Realm is the Eye and the Eye is the Realm. The thing before the Eye was something else- the space the Realm occupies, sure, but not the Realm itself. The average person might know this, but they just as easily might not. Either way, they're under no pressure to care. Anyone who's been in the presence of the Eye will automatically think that the Realm is the Eye and the Eye is the Realm, and casually correct anyone who says differently.

In Jupiter Ascending, Balem talked with an advisor about Earth, and how it would bring him very great profits if harvested... later. Earth, with its population of seven billion. Let's say (though I may be very wrong, my audio was choppy) that the ideal harvest was just rounding up to ten billion. That's my baseline for the Arisax family. That's my baseline for when they usually harvest the planets they own- and therefore, the number of people they kill as a matter of course. And even if the Arisaxes have more control over that process than they have any right to, it's been millions of years since they allied with the Eye. The Realm just won't- tolerate- being- less- deadly. Zane: Two billion- is that how many people I'll be killing today? I hoped it'd be more. But if there are Arisaxes who'll give their secrets to the Eye, if there are Hands and Sections working tirelessly to make the Realm more than them, if the Realm really is that deadly... ...why destroy a planet of just two billion? Why not just depopulate it with Arisax tools, and leave the planet itself intact for some Arisax or other to grow their next crop on? Surely that'd be enough to torture a prince into talking. Was it to demonstrate the Realm's newest weapon? Was it the whim of an angry Hand? Was it because of nanites? The Hand of War is almost completely made of nanites. The weapon could just become part of his body, and be something he implants in a planet when he's on the surface. And maybe that thought would be in the mind of any leader facing him on their world. Maybe the stories are true, and the Hand of War can launch himself off of a planet's surface and survive in a vacuum. Maybe that means he'd be safe if he released the planetkiller against a world he was standing on. Maybe the phrase "my own turf" would be redefined as the absolute last place you'd want him. Maybe just knowing he'd landed would make entire populations terrified, because all it would take is a few wrong words, all it would take is a mistake, all it would take is a whim, and everyone would die. Maybe just knowing he'd landed would make entire populations fall in line. Maybe people would fall over themselves to expose the heretics and traitors amongst them, in the hopes that the Hand would just kill people. Maybe it's all of that. Maybe it's just that. But then, why are there whispers about Apotheosis?