It is true my young ones. Again the Great Navigator has put us on course to the better world. We take for granted that this now happens every year. We forget the old times, the ignorant times, when the Readers of Chopthulu would weekly check our path and find that the new world was better or worse than the world that came before.
Who is Chopthulu? It is an old Alonic name for the Great Navigator. Look at this Message from Chopthulu. It is a tetrahedron, which is a fancy way to say a pyramid with a triangle base. The base is inscribed with a unique symbol and worlds written in Bezonic. In my grandparents’ time, the people of Alon could not read Bezonic. Each side has an image of an octopus, an owl, and an orangutan, on a small window covering. When a single window covering is opened, the Reader of Chopthulu would see either a clockwise swirl or a counter-clockwise swirl. Then the pyramid containing the message would be empty and the opened-window unclosable.
It was well known to all then that Chopthulu cut the universe into multiverses. Each cut created a better path and a worse path. The Readers of Chopthulu associated with clockwise swirl with the better path and the counter-clockwise swirl with the worse path. Chopthulu sent messages weekly and the Readers of Chopthulu vied for the right to open the window. Readers who saw the clockwise swirl multiple times were treated as heroes and Readers who saw the counter-clockwise swirl multiple times were deemed sinful and often cast out of the order.
Oblen the Analyst carefully checked all the historical Readings and made a startling discovery. There were about an equal number of clockwise swirls and counter-clockwise swirls. The so-called Holy Readers who revealed many better universes occurred as often as you would expect, if the two swirls were equally likely. This remained the case when Oblen controlled for which window that was opened.
It led to a great crisis for the faith. Apologists argued that Chopthulu was keeping us on this middle path between better and worse universes, since we ourselves were sometimes sinners and sometimes saints. Prophets claimed a Reader would arise, who would plead for Chopthulu to always send us to the better world. The people of Alon quit paying attention to the Readers and their numbers dwindled. Yet the messages from Chopthulu continued to arrive at the Cairn of Chopthulu, which was made from the discarded Messages, and a small group of Readers remained there to see how the universe split.
One day, in my grandparents’ time, a starship arrived. The people from Alon could not travel in space and we were startled. We were also comforted to see a Message of Chopthulu painted on the side of the ship. We were even more comforted to see that it contained people (more or less) and not the horde of insects that were suspected when the starship was first observed in the night sky. Alas, we did not speak a common language, but the visitors seemed friendly. As you know now, the visitors were from Bezon.
My grandmother, a senior Reader at that time, was asked to greet these space travelers with a scroll containing a years worth of readings. Each reading contained three symbols: the unique symbol of the message, the symbol of the chosen window, and the observed spiral. When she presented it the visitors were astonished. One of them ran back into the ship and brought out a tablet that scrolled through a similar collection of images.
Everyone was shocked and the hard work of learning each others languages and comparing the symbols began. Before we could speak to each other, we already found that for the same unique message if the Bezonites chose the same window as us, we recorded the same spiral symbol. Our cultures were thrown together into the better or worse universe by Chopthulu.
The problem was when we chose different symbols. The followers of Oblen, now called Data Analysts, used their tools to look for correlations. They found that the spirals were the same 1/3 of the time when different windows were open, for example, Alon chose the Octopus while Bezon chose the Orangutan and both saw clockwise spirals. They found the spirals were different 2/3 of the time when different windows were open, for example, Alon chose the Owl and saw a clockwise spiral, while Bezon chose the Octopus and saw the counter-clockwise spiral.
Later as the people of Alon and Bezon could communicate more fully they learned that the Bezonites called Chopthulu, The Great Navigator, and the Bezonites were aware that the symbols were random. This was immortalized in sacred scripture. “Give thee praise to the Navigator, even if They are giving out random numbers.”
The Readers of Chopthulu felt that the Speakers for the Navigator were holding something back. They did not have the latest four symbols. As more Messages from Chopthulu were read at Alon, the Speaker of the Navigators always revealed a symbol that was four unique symbols behind the current symbol on Alon. At first, the Readers assumed it was a test or perhaps Bezon had done so poorly on guessing the will of Chopthulu the last four times that they were embarassed, but as the delayed messages were announced by the Speaker, it showed neither of these things to be true.
The Speaker of the Navigator explained that Alon was four-weeks away from Bezon. The people of Alon rejoiced. They could visit Bezon and return in just eight-weeks. The Speaker of the Navigator clarified. It took messages made from light four-weeks to go from Bezon to Alon. It took the starships 57 years. 57 years ago a number of starships had been sent from Bezon in different directions turning slightly left or right every week according to the will of the Navigator. One starship had been sent to find the Navigator following the path of the Messages back to its origin. It was still traveling.
The Bezons explained that their communication was like signals between towers and they needed to place many towers on their path. Still since light had a limited speed, it took four-weeks for the Message of the Navigator to reach them. This starship had been following the Navigator until it saw the stream of Messages being sent to Alon and followed it to its destination.
The Speaker of the Navigator claimed that not even Chopthulu could move faster than light. This led to a real crisi. If that was the case, how could Chopthulu reward Bezon when they chose the Owl poorly when Alon chose the Orangutan correctly? The Data Analysts quickly showed that it was impossible for Chopthulu to make this happen, if Chopthulu was constrained to move at the speed of light. The peacemakers said that maybe Chopthulu has a small path that connects different parts of space like the handle of a jug connects different parts of a jug. Chopthulu could follow the handle but no human could do it. The Speaker of the Navigator called these wormholes, as if Chopthulu would blindly dig through the mud.
The Speaker of the Navigator went further to say that each Message was the same up to the unique symbol. This was ludicrous given the existence of the unique symbol, but they felt the Navigator must always send the same paired message and the unique identifiers simply labeled pairs. The Data Analysts showed that if each Message had a Data Analyst inside who could pick the direction of the spiral based on a formula that used Chopthulu’s initial instructions, the window opened, and a random die they could not match the statistics. It was critical that Chopthulu either sent more information instantly or knew from the beginning what signs Alon and Bezon would pick. Perhaps Chopthulu traveled both ways through time and that was the meaning of the clockwise and counter-clockwise swirl.
Tired of philosophy, the Readers of Chopthulu brought a discarded Message to the Speaker of the Navigator to look for these holes or handles. The Speaker of the Navigator was shocked by the message written in old Bezonic on the bottom. It said “Plot a set course by connecting two paired messages and opening the Owl windows.” The speaker brought up a picture of the bottom of a message sent to Bezon. This time the Reader was shocked to see a message in old Alonic “Bring my Messages together with the same symbol and open the Owl windows to mend the universe that I have split.”
After a long debate about why Chopthulu had sent the wrong text to each planet and what it meant for the infallibility of the great Navigator, the Speaker and the Reader agreed that the Readers of Chopthulu would only open every other Message while the starship would go back to Bezon and collect the same messages on Bezon and then return to Alon. They would bring a thousand unopened Messages back from Bezon in 114 years. Perhaps sooner if starship techonology improved. It would have made sense to send a new starship but the leaders of Bezon wanted to see an Alon Message in person before sending their precious messages.
It was a long-time waiting although thanks to the Bezon technology, we could remain in constant but delayed contact over this time. When the starship finally returned, the Message pyramids were brought together and tested. Both sides showed the clockwise spiral when the Owl was opened. It showed the clockwise spiral every time. The Great Navigator Chopthulu blessed both planets for mending the universe and placing us on the course of the better universe evermore. Yes, my young ones, you are lucky to live in a universe which only keeps getting better.