Issue 20, Page 35
Transcript
1: Julia struggles as thick dark tendrils wrap around her, attempting to drag her deeper into darkness, pulling under her clothes and pulling her hair into tentacles. The mixed from of Sedjet/Julia grasps at her angrily.
Julia: So, I am the Black Idol…
[BlackFennec]: WE are the Black Idol…
Julia: Yes… but… I can also be myself.
2: We see an intimate moment between Julia and Melissa, their bodies pressed close: they are not fusing, just together. Julia’s hairstyle is reminiscent of Issue #15, after their first date.
Julia (narrating): Everyone’s just clustered vibrations of space… bound atoms, stardust brought together for a short time… but we’re still us. We still love and hate and touch…
3: Julia is slowly covered by the writhing black mass. Black hands grip her cheeks.
[BlackFennec] (off-panel): But this aching space between us…
Julia: The differences between us, the conflicts…
It has to be worth it.
4: Julia clutches at the tendrils, now mostly covered. The hybrid canid’s face is right next to hers, eyes shut: peaceful and sad, unlike Julia. Bony protrusions, like teeth start to close in on them.
Julia: To stand out… to be a unique identity, to be my own self…
Without that, there’d be nothing. Without those struggles and that pain, we’d be…
5: The hybrid’s eyes open: no longer the horrible glowing red, they are Sedjet’s normal blue eyes.
[BlackFennec] (in Sedjet’s voice): Nothing.
6: Julia’s hands are disappearing into the black mass, we see the last glimpses of the key, it is starting to glow and smoke as the fang-like teeth close in above and below Julia and she is swallowed up.
7: The key disappears with the rest of Julia into the dark behind the teeth, but a crack in the tentacles emits light and fire.
So being part of a whole is nothing?
If one does not appreciate what it means to be whole and individual.
To put it another way, to be whole is to be individual.
I think it’s more about whether a cog in the machine is nothing? The Black Idol clearly doesn’t think she is literaly nothing. It wants her knowledge, her biomass, etc. And Julia obviously isn’t saying that she is worthless either.
But she *is* saying that she considers herself to be worth nothing, if she ends up as just part of the idol. It’s about the fallacies of composition/division. She has values that are different from those of the Idol, and those specific values tell her that she becomes nothing if she is absorbed into it, but worth something apart from it. Being a tool of the system is not the same as steering the ship.
And why shouldn’t she think this? To be alive is to be in conflict, to struggle, and the Black Mass actually embodies this as much as anything. From what we know, the God of Flesh is a mass-murdering, black-hearted machine. What better death than for its “children”, the species spawned from the Idol, to collectively decide to turn their back on it, and seal it beneath an eternity of disregard? There are other “wholes” to be a part of, without being some kind of recapitulation of the Borg.
To be alive is to be in harmony.
Infinity minus one is still infinity, as is infinity plus one is still infinity. These indelible truths are what they are, but the one still knows it’s not the same with or without its whole.
The one is many and the many are one.
Oh, now that’s intriguing… the Idol’s needing to actually consider *its own* nonexistence…
And she’s got the key!
cogito ergo sum