Solivault

Do you truly understand Phigros?

The Pixel Tower's standard personal terminal system. Its programs crashed after the Pixel Tower shut down. It is said that after the Limbo reached the Vault, a subsystem called D.O.M.E. replaced the crashed PhigrOS. Though it cannot restore PhigrOS to full operation, as a lightweight operating system, it is more than enough for basic needs.

The now-slumbering world of mutual understanding, a spiritual sanctuary mankind wove for themselves. Much of the information connected to it no longer warrants an introduction, but what you might’ve not known is that it was the centerpiece of Project PhigrOS: a simulator, a virtual world woven from the collective subconscious. Its birth carried no poetic color, but the ideals it carried never faded away.

The far shore represents reality, and the Pixel Tower symbolizes illusion. Those of you still reading these words in this place are Limbos - awakened souls who know their bodies exist in another parallel world.

The hypothetical tenth floor of the Pixel Tower. The deepest of one’s heart where every secret reside within. Because the Pixel Tower existed, people's minds could touch one another, and one person's Vault could connect to another's. It was the connection of countless Vaults that made the Vault's existence possible as a floor. But when the Mazarine End arrived, the Vault shattered into countless fragments, and each person became an islet of the mind once more.

The Mazarine End marks the boundary between Mazarine and other spaces, manifesting as a line that devours data. When it sweeps across, everything vanishes, reducing all to darkness not unlike a skydog devouring the moon. All memories eventually reach Mazarine. It is the logic underlying the Pixel Tower, and only what is left after it shuts down.

For most of the Tower's history, people compressed myths, contamination, and ravings into standardized currencies, exchanged at fixed denominations. These are the "collectibles" we see so often. Whole or broken, when traded as currency, they are called data - the materialized form of undifferentiated human mental labor.

When exactly did the sky collapse into such a state? Geopelia sat on the floor, her back against the wooden frame of the tall window. Light escaping from the edge of a distant black hole barely lit half the room, casting a cold, porcelain white over the old objects scattered before her. Perhaps it was the Tower’s violent collapse that stirred certain memories hidden deep within her consciousness to surface. Geopelia stared at the objects in grim silence. No matter how many times she tried, she could not recall the past of her brother, Peregrinus. She knew the reason why. In the past, Geopelia had used her memories of “Peregrinus” to create a new “Peregrinus” within the Pixel Tower. But now, said Peregrinus had been corrupted beyond recognition. It’s no longer her dear brother she remembered, but an independent “human”, to the point that she could no longer recognize it, and had even given up on maintaining its existence. “Where is the real you…” Geopelia tilted her head to look out the window. The sky was transparent and unfathomable; countless Vaults stretched across like stars forming a galaxy, their light stretched into long, brilliant trails. Invisible long waves occasionally swept past, flickering, breaking, disappearing, repeating in an endless cycle, like a lone swaying boat. The elders said that the longing for a person always fades with time, and only a single fleeting moment remain unforgettably etched in one’s heart. Her only goal now was to simply find that moment, that first and final longing. Hint: The dual shadows can’t shake the resolve to leave.

"Do I just hold it, or do I need to do something else?" "Theoretically, this thing should activate on its own. Just take it out and hold it. Still, we can't guarantee that it’ll only attract our data. Human brains, you know - getting out cleanly isn't that easy. But it won't be dangerous, at least." Gino clutched the replacement data BDRG had given him and kept his head down as he walked. The ground beneath his feet turned from hard to soft. Grayish-white blades of grass brushed against his ankles and gently stroked his calves, growing knee-high, then as tall as a person. They swayed without any wind, fine fuzz falling in clusters, just like the snow he had seen on the surface. He looked back: Geopelia and their cabin were still in sight. Not too far, not too near - just right. Only one step remained in His cooperation with BDR: recovering the replacement data BDRG had transmitted earlier, deleting this "virus" from the host's brain, and wipe away the organization's traces. The timing was right. Gino took out the data, letting it emit a blue glow, drawing more of the same from the universe. ...... ...... ...... Rustle, rustle. Gino stopped. Countless noises gathered around him, multiplying, gradually becoming impossible to ignore. They were formless, rough, and sharp, yet rhythmic enough not to be irritable. Like imprints of flowing thoughts, they shifted endlessly without pause, merely erratically flickering as they wrapped around the drifting replacement data. One particularly strange cluser of noise caught Gino's attention. It floated in the air for a long time, and even when Gino approached with the replacement data in hand, its concealed core showed no sign of being drawn in. Should he try to untangle it? Gino reached out to touch it. Hint: Disordered signals heed only disordered choices.

In the mid-twenty-first century, the ice age arrived ahead of schedule. While developing the rest of the solar system's terrestrial planets and satellites, humanity also launched five probes to search for a new home. But as exploration proceeded, researchers discovered that exoplanets were nothing more than an astronomical myth. Every known terrestrial planet within a hundred light-years was an illusion produced by errors in a peculiar gravitational-wave theory; every previous observation had been false. By then, ten years had passed since the probes had launched, and the explorers could not turn back. Some crews had already reached their designated targets. Of course, what they found was not terrestrial planets, but stars that had expanded and collapsed into black holes. Two years later, another crew accidentally discovered the planet Ca-773 during their voyage. But because of signal interference from its atmosphere, they lost contact with Earth entirely. In 2089, contact from Ca-773 was received once more. That same year, the first experiment of Project PhigrOS officially began.

A meticulously protected loose-leaf notebook. Its owner's name is written in the lower-middle area, and both the cover and pages are made of special materials that can withstand any kind of damage. After Peregrinus disappeared, Gino never found this notebook among Peregrinus's belongings.

Oh, Geopelia! Can you still not let go of those stubborn thoughts of yours? What on earth were you thinking back then? Were you resenting him, vexing over him, or even blaming him? Simply because the silhouette that should’ve appeared behind the door on that day turned out to be him instead of your brother? You clearly harbored no such feelings then, yet whenever you look back on those pathetic tears, why do you always feel as though you did? Oh, even with how wonderfully he had treated you.

And you, you've already tried so many times... By now, perhaps he knows no more about those matters than you do. Are you afraid to admit it? Indeed, you are. Otherwise you wouldn't have spent hundreds of years trying to extract something from him before he even awakened, even going out of your way to disguise yourself as "Peregrinus" to get closer to him... It's a miracle you didn't stir up any catastrophic trouble given such a huge mess. One can only wonder what he thinks now, after remembering all of that...

Perhaps only here, in the stillest depths of the soul, can one find true tranquility: bidding farewell to the outside world, sealing oneself away and sinking, listening to the throb of one's own body, watching memories drift by like a clear, luminous dream. Yet I cannot pretend I don't hear it. That farthest place, the very farthest, that land cast aside and forgotten, beneath the icy shell of the homeland: the cracking sounds pile up, layer upon layer. The wreckage of memory, death, and language is melting, spilling over, breaking apart. This day has come at last. Beginning with the freeze, everything in this world of the mind will sink into that mazarine embrace, without exception. Is he still not awake? Go find him.

Welcome back to Phigros! ———————————————— Next, a tutorial on how to play. ...... [Limbo Wiki]: Phigros is a rhythm-based mining game developed by Pigeon Games. On August 31, 2091, it appeared out of nowhere in the educational system of the Jiangyuan Base.

The fall did not last long. Geopelia could feel that the pulling force guiding her was still weakening, and the barrier resisting the surrounding specks of light was growing thinner, disintegrating, and finally engulfing her. Within the formless ocean, Geopelia felt a brief suffocation, only to realize that those specks of light were not causing any actual harm to her. What is this? Curiosity was inevitable. Geopelia opened her hand and gently caught one of the beams, letting it flicker and transform in her palm - stretching and flattening, breaking apart and reforming, and then unfurling into a crimson stream of data. It resembled no known coding language. The shift in form reminded her of accessing collections in the terminal, yet it was far too chaotic, too bizarre, too restless and discordant, like noises in a melody. These "noises" were everywhere, barely manipulable, yet Geopelia could never comprehend the information they conveyed, as if they existed merely to act as some sort of obstruction. Seeing no response coming forth, the "collections" reverted into a tiny, fluctuating speck of light and drifted into the depths of the cosmos. Geopelia withdrew her gaze and looked down at her feet: more specks of light were slowly surging into the vacuum left by the vanished passage, covering it up little by little. There was no time to dwell of it; she had to press through, and quickly. Hint: ...No. Avoid them. Don't touch them. Don't miss the opportunity because of this. Nothing matters more right now than pushing forward.

The specks of light grew denser. They pressed against one another, interweaving into a tight, net-like structure. The overlapping radiance became dazzling and almost unbearable. Shielding her eyes with the back of her hand, Geopelia forged ahead with difficulty, until all traces of the passage were completely buried, and only a single will in her heart pointed the way forward. Having stopped who knows how many times, Geopelia felt a rare exhaustion wash over her. Looking back, the black hole - pale and dim, occupying the better part of the firmament - hung like a painting, a shadow, unchanging, serving as the sole reference point in this place. Compared to when she first set out, the size of the black hole had barely changed at all. Geopelia didn't think this meant she was merely treading in place, but these noise-like existences truly slowed down her pace. Was there any way to manipulate them? Geopelia pondered. If viewed as a riddle, failing to understand the premise didn't preclude searching for consistent elements within it. She began to stir this ocean of signals: whatever stood out, whatever repeated, whatever was anomalous - all could serve as clues, all could hold patterns, all could become opportunities. All it took was - an attempt. Hint: Collect… and then select and arrange. Will the answer lie within? How would you know unless you try?

It's Geopelia's victory. With a sweep of the greatsword, a shrill howl burst from the cranial cavity of the hound-like, turbid monster. On its greyish-white shell, cracks spread like roots, widening until they split its entire body, from which dreamy colors began to bleed. In those colors, Geopelia saw her own past - experiences from the Tower, from reality, all slipping by in a fraction of a thought. The illusion of the empty shell shattered, revealing its essence - a turbulence of signals, nearly condensed into solids, piling up into an impassable wall. Boom. The sword momentum unspent, she shattered the high wall along with it. Geopelia broke free from the interference of the noises and fell back onto the correct trajectory. She slowly descended onto a vast expanse of open ground, the sensory stimulation gradually fading away. "Hah-" The earth was like a mirror, glowing with a soft luminescence; the deep black sky seemed veiled in mist, with occasional patches left uncovered, revealing cybernetic grids. Geopelia raised her head, watching something falling from the sky, and instinctively reached out her hand -

Can you read me? I'm calling out to you. Are you still there? That premonition has come true - Now that we have said our goodbyes, your island has become a shore I can no longer reach. I search. I study. I try to simplify that language called "self", combining, deconstructing, rebuilding, polishing, making it clearer, and clearer still. Yet the fear grows with each passing day, for nothing keeps meaning from eroding away. I don't know if you can still parse, comprehend, or grasp this text. And yet I put pen to paper, hoping with all my heart that I have managed to translate my solitude, and my love.

Aha! I get it now! You've taken it apart! You've unraveled this message, you've decoded it! And now you're awfully pleased with yourself! Oh, take a look at your screen - your mouth is twitching, utterly confused, all because of me! Take your time, you'll figure it out! Yes, this is just my speculation. I'm speculating about your thoughts, your expressions, your actions. Because speculating is so much fun! It saves me all the trouble of actual negotiation. Of course, it's a skill that requires constant practice, and that's why these words are right here. No matter how far apart you and I may be, to my eyes, you are still as transparent as glass - Well, maybe not that exaggerated. I know, of course, this is as far as my guesswork goes. I am imposing my assumptions onto you; I am putting on a show for you. But what else can I do? There's nobody else left here! I want to keep this craft alive for eternity, I want to outrun the crisis of non-existence. After all, my greed is so fierce that it has turned me into someone this arrogant, unhinged, and utterly beyond saving! Ah, Pixel Tower, how I miss you! Oh, everyone, how I miss you all!

Oh, God! I mean, my whole body is covered in stickers. Don't give me that unbelieving look, and don't take me for some sort of freak - Wait, hold on, hold on, before all this starts I should introduce myself! Ahem! I am someone who loves flowers, someone who likes drinking tea, someone who loves the scent of parchment and lavender, someone who hates tomatoes, someone who must stamp their feet three times at eight o'clock in the evening - wait, I'm not done yet. I'm also someone who loves to chatter endlessly, someone completely mindless. That's how everyone describes me. All my friends describe me that way! What? What did you say? Oh - you're asking why I introduce myself like this? Oh, just look at all these stickers on me! Flowers, tea, parchment, and... isn't it obvious! And you, too - if you think there's something I like, just slap a sticker on my left hand; if you think there's something I hate, just slap a sticker on my right hand. How convenient is that! Don't hesitate, just BAM! - and you've got yourself a satisfied friend, what a joyous thing, ahahaha... ...You, come on, hurry up! It is so boring here, so boring that even my stickers are starting to peel off... That is truly a miserable thing. I need stickers, I want them to cover my entire body. A life without being covered in them?! I can't even imagine such a thing! Bare skin! I'm begging you, my friend... Are you listening? ...Are you there?

Right now, I am walking down a street with no end. It took me a long time to recognize this place. This is my Vault, and now please allow me to introduce it to you. Perhaps my life has always been smooth; deep within my heart, no obscure entities have ever lurked since the very beginning, nor have I ever found anything particularly interesting. Monotony, blandness, and above all, loneliness, ultimately drove me to open up my Vault and let others decorate this place for me. As for places, and environments - a place may be similar for both you and me, but the meaning behind them could never be the same. Language, and context - if a piece of language is not restricted by a constructed context between you and me, then any communication between us is out of the question from the very start. The visitors, they felt quite at ease leaving behind the heartfelt thoughts carried within the secret moments of their lives, because I would never probe into what those things were; I merely displayed them as ornaments, placed continuously and densely along both sides of the street, leaving not a single gap between them. Would you like to come and take a look? To gaze upon the spectacle within my heart, and just like them, build a wonder inside me? My location is at ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ - If you can understand this, then please do not come looking for me; if you cannot read it, then that is truly who I am.

Look here. Look at it. Tell me - what do you see in this picture? A crystal, right? I can tell you with absolute certainty that it is purple and yellow, so please believe the same. I ask for nothing more than this; simply listen. In the reality of the far shore, I spent countless nights trying to imagine those two hues, but an innate flaw left me unable to truly see them. I only knew that they hid between the stretched ends of red and cyan, caught in the hesitation of my own judgment. I could only daydream, left with nothing but empty fantasies. So, have you ever wondered: are the colors we see the same as what others see? Is the world in our eyes the same as the world in theirs? And if so, how would we ever know if the things in our eyes differ from those of others? Day and night, I racked my brain over this question, asking myself: By what means can we prove whether our world is unified? I could not answer this question, but that place could - that collapsing tower could. That tower gave me an answer: Yes. Because everyone together defined what "Yes" means. And so, within the tower, I obtained a crystal. It wasn't large, just right to be held in the palms of both hands, and it was a crystal where purple and yellow coexisted - pure, unquestionable, defined by objectivity as purple and yellow. I raised it before my eyes, letting the light pass through, transforming into colors I had never seen before, casting them into my eyes, and from my eyes out into the world I beheld. Under the shelter of the tower, I finally saw how dazzling and magnificent the colors in the eyes of others truly were. - Yet that shelter has faded away. Now, within this confined space filled with subjective perception, everything foreign, simply by being observed by me, inevitably twists into a shape that conforms to my own cognition. Do I truly understand what purple and yellow are anymore? Will my crystal lose its inherent color? Will it turn into an unremarkable piece of glass? Will it morph into some other color I have never known? I am not sure, nor do I have the capacity to be sure, just as I could not answer the question I asked you before. Failing to understand one another is simply the norm - until that world of shared minds arrived; and when the tower collapsed, the tragedy of incomprehension played out once more. Therefore, I have sealed this crystal away, and told this story. By the time you receive my signal, I will have erased my own perception of this crystal from my mind. The only way to keep it true to its color is never to meet again, leaving behind only remembrance.

Ah, the end is here at last, All joy and pain remain in the past. The dreams of yore we cannot chase, All love is veiled in data's space. Fear creeps in and numbs my mind, Leaving no voice or cry behind. Oh, how I wish to turn back time, And at the end, the start to climb. No one hears what I sing, Yet loud and raw my voice must ring, My only prayer is that my longing transcends, Through the static noise that never ends. My dear, if you still can reach my frequency, Look back at the tower falling free, And ask your heart, does sorrow beat in every place within that space? This is a long and final goodbye, Even if "I" stand before your eye, Not a fraction of my heart can fly! I still yearn for that golden age, But the falling curtains close the stage. An exile on this deserted borderland, Where blankness sweeps away all I claimed, And leaves even me, to be forgotten in the sand.

Do you know about old televisions? Those big, boxy ones with knobs right beside the screen? I have one - no, to be precise, nowadays I only have a television like that by my side. Looking at it, sometimes I feel as though I'm actually living inside it, separated from other people and things, by a thick outer shell. I can watch the people outside laughing and talking, but my own voice cannot get out, and their warmth cannot seep in either. My friends back in the tower called this a kind of innate misfortune. Yet, dull-witted as I am, I can still understand that I've even missed the chance to be pitied by them once more. Today, I can only wall myself up inside that thick shell once more, gazing out at others. I should be sad; I should groan wearily; I should be in so much pain that tears fall from my eyes - for my friends, and for myself. Yet I can do none of these things. Every emotion, upon passing through that curved, fluorescent screen, gets filtered into vague, wavering ripples, which leaves me bewildered. Even when I try to face others using measures like "empathy" or "understanding" that my friends always talked about, that sense of powerlessness and panic stands in my way first, and then… Well, it's the same as always. Everything remains hanging by a thread, with no turn for the better in sight. I hate this… Why does it always have to be like this… Always the same… I cannot understand them, just as they cannot understand me. So, are you the same? Can you understand what I mean? ………… I have nothing left to say. Goodbye.

I don't want to keep proving myself anymore. Why? Have you ever sailed the sea? When you set sail with absolute confidence, spend months or even years living at sea, and are finally about to discover that new continent, only for the map to tell you: this place has already been set foot upon, its name was recorded long ago, and you are merely one of thousands of visitors, never the first! Have you ever experienced that kind of despair? Everything I've ever done has constantly stepped in someone else's footprints, and not a single path was carved out by my own hands! Even the Pixel Tower is no different - people need it, but what they truly need isn't the tower itself; the Pixel Tower is merely a means to make those things return. Yet, when I first discovered them, I was ecstatic! I thought I had made an incomparable, monumental discovery, until now, when it finally dawns on me that long before an unknown past I never knew, it had already been born and flourished, right up until that cleansing descended. And right now, what I'm doing is merely proving that they have reappeared once more. But I don't want to keep doing this. I just want to go home, but where on earth is a real home? A new wave is already surging, and I can no longer remain silent. Tell me. Tell me!

Do you know the term "Esinsiakeu Flutter"? "Esinsiakeu Flutter. I slowed down for you. It's spelled Esinsiakeu Flutter. Ah, please note: 'Esinsiakeu' shouldn't be mispronounced. I won't correct the rest for now; correction itself requires another whole set of complex explanations." "It originates from The Sleep of the Seventh Salt by the pseudo-scholar Joachim von Hermes. Printed in Nuremberg in 643, only twelve copies were made. Seven of those were corroded by salt, and of the remaining five, two had their indexes chewed off by sleepy-mice. But no matter, Joachim used this term to describe a… well, a precipitation of memory under the 'salt-slumber state'. By the way, do you know what the salt-slumber state is?" "…" "The salt-slumber state is… when Esinsiakeu Salt loses its crystal nucleus in a saturated solution, it doesn't disappear; instead, it enters a suspended, semi-memory state that can be disturbed by sound waves. Joachim believed that the human soul undergoes a similar phase transition. When a person repeatedly experiences the same disappointment, their cognition enters a salt-slumber state, no longer crystallizing into clear judgments, but remaining suspended, waiting for a flutter of a certain frequency to precipitate it anew." "Later on, the Esinsiakeu Flutter was often borrowed into other fields. In lithomancy, it refers to the 'collapsed residue of non-local memory' - meaning two entangled particles where, after one is observed, the other retains a ghostly delay that cannot be described by the Axiom Matrix. They call this delay the 'Esinsiakeu phase'. Mmm… and in chaotic phenomenology, it refers to the 'reverse transpiration' that occurs in the leaves of parasitic plants after a photoperiod disruption - stomata no longer draining water, but instead reabsorbing the water vapor they once released from the air, as if the plant were trying to remember what it felt like to be thirsty. In music theory, it refers to the 'ghost harmony' formed by microtonal intervals in the auditory cortex: when you simultaneously hear two notes differing by less than a quarter-tone, your secondary brain will hallucinate a third note. That note doesn't exist on the sheet music, but you can hear it." "…" "Do you… understand this term just a little bit now? In my explanation, does it touch upon anything you are familiar with?" "Ah…" "Let me think of how to explain it again…" "… No. It can't be. Is it possible…" "Then, do I - do I truly understand this term at all? Is my understanding merely a self-righteous conceit of my own?" "… This is terrible…"

The firmament shatters, the tower collapses, and after all, we have finally reached this point. I suppose I might be considered one of the culprits, too? Don't be surprised, because by introducing myself this way, you'll likely become interested in my thoughts. Let me give you an example. When a seed is planted, people hold an a priori expectation for it, but the environment in which the plant grows will alter what the seed ultimately becomes. What it will grow into in the end is beyond our control. Our goal is merely to harvest its ripe fruit, and we care little for the mess left in its wake or beforehand. Things are just like that. Well, perhaps I am half an exception. To this day, I still retain that initial passion for this world - the passion of walking alone in solitude: it is a paradoxical driving force, bringing both pain and inspiring action; it is both a blockade and a generator of echoes; it makes you think you are the only one left on this road, yet sharpens your perception enough to hear the footsteps of those walking alongside you. Everything beneath the shade of the trees feels like an old dream. Once the wildfire passes, brushes away the ashes, and deep within the soil, fine roots still lie hidden. It only takes a single rain for them to revive and grow. Not to restore what once was, but to let life rediscover the shape it was meant to have. I assert that a world of mutual understanding has once existed: it may fall silent, but it will never vanish, just as loneliness can never truly rid us of our connection to others - whether through language, bloodline, or spirit. Thus, we are always together. In this time indefinitely abandoned, I hope whoever receives this signal - you, will ponder upon it, and in doing so, you will find that, just like me, you yearn for the Pixel Tower to rise once more.