Codex of the Synapse: Folio B3.2

The Ritual of Reception: Chaos as Revelation

"Of course history never gave Tesla credit for inventing radio, only because he pointed his antenna toward the sky, so mankind could listen to the hiss of the cosmos; whereas Marconi pointed his antenna at New York City, so mankind could listen to Benny Goodman.
                  ~ Svetlana Janovic, My Secret Life with Nikola Tesla

In a practice they call The Reception, the Keepers have been known to sit for hours, listening to the static between radio stations, contemplating piles of sand and water currents, or endlessly flipping coins. They believe anything that eludes the realm of the determinate, does so because its cause originates outside of our world-lattice.

Mathematicians theorize that chaos originates through a series of smaller and smaller dependent events, each similar to and each determined by its predecessor. The very same fractal hierarchy that forms the Synapse and the Pattern Language, also forms the mathematical infrastrucutre of chaos. In both cases the first event in the chain of recursion is invisible, possibly non-existent.

Ambient Pattern Language, carrying the encoded imprints of neighbor-worlds from the Synapse, instantly decays into local-world images upon entry. Under certain conditons, however, it can get through in almost raw, untranslated form. Untranslated Pattern Language appears as white noise, a polyrhythm of notes and silences so intricate that it approaches chaos.

The Keepers believe it is their role, as custodians of the place between worlds, to observe and document this noise. In a tireless pursuit of pure Pattern Language, they have constructed Ambient Pattern Receivers to allow them better Reception and deeper forays into the Synapse. When they can, the Keepers document the noise of Ambient Pattern using direct mechanical reproductions - whether in sand, static, or light. Unlike the scrolls from less esoteric Ritual of Transcription, Reception Documents prohibit the interpretive hand of the calligrapher. They are usually made to be ephemeral, the course of their decay becoming itself another scrutinized display of the eternal dialogue between chaos and Pattern.