GUARDIANS

When people of the future first crossed over to The Complex, it was not a smooth transition for everyone. While some individuals, especially children, explored the strange new environment playfully, many visitors had much darker experiences. The raw creative energy of The Complex overwhelmed a lot of people, forcing many of them to relive bad memories, get stuck in nightmares or inescapable mazes and worse.

As more people entered The Complex, human imaginations began to swirl and mix like infinite colors of paint. From this primordial ooze, the Collective Unconscious formed and gave rise to Omega, the first psychic superbeing. In an instant, Omega gave rise to five more psychic superbeings, the Guardians, and together they created the first Mind Palaces. The Mind Palaces gave everyone in The Complex a safe place from which to explore without being overwhelmed.

It works like this – imagine you’re watching a movie that’s being streamed to your device. Some of the data being downloaded turns into the images you see and other data turns into the sounds you hear. The streaming program needs to separate and organize the incoming data so the movie plays the right way.

Now imagine that you’re downloading an entire adventure – including smells, tastes and touches – directly to your brain. Like the streaming program, your brain needs a way to organize the information so that you experience the adventure properly.

That’s one part of who Omega and the Guardians are and what they do. When you hear a story, Amber is in charge of how you imagine things smell, ZAP handles what you hear and so on. Each Guardian oversees many different aspects of every experience, helping your mind make sense of it all.

On the other hand, conflict is also an important part of who the Guardians are and what they do. While they often work together very efficiently, Guardians also regularly disagree about the best ways to protect people and The Complex. The constant struggle for balance between the Guardians is known as the Eternal Conflict or Unending Cycle. While the Unending Cycle itself can be a source of trouble, its main purpose is to keep the Mind Palaces strong. Like players on the same team competing against each other at practice, the Guardians fight in the Eternal Conflict to be ready for anything our collective survival demands.