PROLOGUE I

It is hard for a sentient being to imagine nothing. Not the same thing
as emptying your mind. A nebulous nothing surrounding nothing. This
was our first history as anything. Before sound, before touch, before
fire, water, before sky, before stars, before suns, before life,
before man, before war, before all we understand by our senses. Yet,
the most amazing thing about this nothing, this emptiness, is that it
is still here, with us. It occurs in pockets, defying the imagination
to points where we fail to see it, not because it is not there, but
because we refuse to accept it.
Suggested, from the times of more focused & structured scientific
thinking, to be what is found within an atom. We've reached the point
in of recognising sub-atomic particles. Yet still, in the
infinitesmal, we are confronted with that same emptiness.
The funny thing about emptiness is how it exists on all levels of
life, confronting the intellect, the imagination, the very dreams of
sleeping life, shows itself an impasse to even a collection of minds
and wills. It cannot be out-numbered, it cannot be contained, it
cannot be fully appreciated because it is an absence within substance
or thought.
It has proven something. We cannot understand it, even if it embodied
itself within a man, and made its full nature available to him. And it
does.
Why it chose these men, when, & how would require a one to be born in
Miyamoto Musashi's fifth ring of nothing. It was a flirting, brief &
superficial, compared to the rest of what he did not say. He did not
say everything. He did not need to. Man may yet conquer space, but he
has no footing in emptiness unless it was given, for it cannot be
taken. It would not be taken. It will not be taken.
It yielded for forms of matter, then of life, then of the intrusions
of that life. It had to yield to create space. It had to yield to God.
The men who it had joined with bear its nature of seclusion, of
uninvolvement, and of great power by just being. There were those who
had a passing connection with it. They didn't operate on its turf,
only near it. They were elementals closest to it. Their base of power
was established on the fourth day of creation. That was when God gave
definition to light and darkness, as man would understand it. Most men
wouldn't. It's not a curse. Rather it's a shield of ignorance. That
was what made the men of the emptiness feared. There was really
nothing they could be ignorant of. They had a side to their heritage
that went against all things human. They could never be a group, a
trio, or even a pair. Only one at a time. They are mortal. When it is
time to cross-over, never by human agency, they would have found a
successor, opened up his being and he would become his predecessor's
grave. The Emptiness is, like every other power, a burden that is
envied by stupid people &challenged by those given up by natural
selection.