The Outside by Ada Hoffmann

Author:Ada Hoffmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Watkins Media

CHAPTER 12

Like any other aspect of the universe, the idea of Outside appears in many non-human cultures. Often this is not apparent at first glance: the requisite concepts are frequently taboo, esoteric, or situated in the guise of myth and fiction. However, any culture studied in sufficient detail will yield up a word, and often a fairly sophisticated system of safeguards and protections, for the things in this universe which are inherently incomprehensible to sentient minds. The semantics of the word chosen can be culturally informative. My favorite, of course, is the Spider term: Îsîrinin-neri-înik, or ‘that which eats reality’.

Interestingly, many cultures have more than one word for Outside. Though Outside itself is incomprehensible, cultures which acknowledge an experience of Outside can divide up their own experience on various axes. The most common axis of division is, of course, the perceived effect on rational beings. Experiences of the incomprehensible can be divided into positive and negative (despite the fact that even experiences considered positive are likely to cause what we would call madness, or, at best, neurological divergence) or positive, negative, and neutral. The importance of this division varies. Glupes, for instance, will insist that all three of their terms for Outside refer to the same thing, perceived in different contexts. Round-Bodies, making the same positive-negative-neutral distinction as Glupes, see no connection between the three categories. The positive category, bulngou, are gods to be worshipped, despite their maddening and incomprehensible nature. The negative category, niui, are best translated as “nightmares”, and are dealt with through non-religious means; they are neither connected to bulngou, nor considered the bulngou’s enemies in any cosmically significant way. The neutral category, uiliu, is likewise not associated with either bulngou or niui.

I suspect that, if we knew the Boater term for Outside, we would understand a great deal more about Boaters than we do now. Unfortunately, this is one of the thousands of things that Boaters refuse to discuss.

FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO THE RESEARCH PAPER

“OUTSIDE AND NON-HUMAN MYSTIC TRADITIONS”,

BY THE SPIDER SELL-SOUL SISPIRINITHAS.

THIS PAPER IS DESIGNATED CLASSIFICATION

LEVEL 3: NOT TO BE REVEALED TO HUMAN MORTALS,

EVEN PRIESTS OR SELL-SOULS, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE.

It was a struggle getting used to working in the open even though Yasira’s actual work was minimal. Her real job here was to find Dr Talirr. The tablet Elu had given her was loaded with fine-grained sensors so that she could take various readings, but the tablet mostly did that by itself. So she found herself standing around brooding in the heat while most of the team ran this way and that, taking soil samples and cuttings of the local plants. Trying to think about sensible things and make plans instead of lapsing back into anxiety about the buzzing feeling under her feet. The strong sensation, no matter where she went and how she paced, that everything had gone terribly wrong.

She found herself stomping through the weeds to Ushanche and talking without a pause, even though Uschanche seemed to be concentrating on something else. Ushanche

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