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What is Dichotomy Anyway?

            Exactly when this all started is moot, it’s better to leave the chickens and the eggs to their own affairs and hatch out new solutions to their old problems.  Knowing the precise date of when humanity utterly changed their world doesn’t lessen or heighten the significance of the alteration itself; the difference is very clear.  The characters live and die in it, and their interaction with their world is what makes it important rather than numbers on a calendar. Part of what makes identifying a date for Dichotomy so pointless is that it was a gradual process.  Beginnings and endings are not even noticeable. 

Triggering factors for Dichotomy include among other things:  burgeoning human population, rampant spread of AIDS and new diseases, global business (which had become the new government by that point anyway) squeezing too hard and loosing control of its holdings which left a large power void that everyone tried to fill at once, and most importantly the very human reactions to all these stimuli. 

On one end was a rational approach.  Problems could be solved by an attempt to leave Earth in order to lessen some of the stress placed on it to support humanity.  Technology had developed to the point that space travel was possible as well as colonization, however without a concentrated source of power with which to fund such programs they were infeasible.  No one had any interest anyway.  The other side of the spectrum became very introspective.  People responded to these problems with religious and spiritual fervor as well as an intense interest in psychiatric solutions on an individual level that were supposed to solve social problems. 

Developing completely separate of this, but both sides claiming responsibility, was the development of people who had the ability to psychically leave the physical world behind them.  The stars were not their destination but rather internal vistas that always existed just within the blind spots of most people’s perception.  These were what would eventually become Magic Theatres.  As more and more people became aware of their capacity to physically leave reality for their own mindscapes, they enhanced their abilities to the extent that they could take others with them.  This gradual exodus is what would eventually spark Dichotomy.

What did these new landscapes offer?  To a human society that developed a completely ravenous spiritual fervor, this was the ultimate opportunity.  It represented the chance to live a life completely devoid of the immediate physical needs that were becoming so difficult to satisfy and live in a completely divine state, within their own minds or the minds of other enlightened individuals. Or so they thought.  As more and more people moved away from Earth they did so unaware of the fact that humans had previously existed in both worlds at once.  While humans were spiritual beings, they were grounded to physical reality as a bridge to enlightenment.  The massive movement from existence in both states, to both existences in one state subsequently turned the world inside out. 

Realities that were once intangible and existed only in the mind could suddenly be manipulated physically while not actually leaving the mental/spiritual plane that they were always on.  People realized that they had not left Earth at all but had merely taken what was once inaccessible and grasped it firmly.  Soon afterwards, another problem became very apparent; The Peace reared its head and people began to drop like flies.  Humans found that they did indeed need to be sustained physically: the Earth that they left had the spiritual counterpart sown into it and it was a part of their being.  Interacting with it had been as natural as breathing.  Now that essence was external and the benefits that people reaped by being a part of it was nullified.  This is what The Peace actually is.  Symptoms of Peace are the human body’s reactions to separation from an environment in which everything that people experienced physically also interacted with people psychically. What we know as reality.  With the advent of the spiritual becoming external the necessary advantages given to the human form from its environment were lost, causing the body to waste away. 

But what of those who made the initial trip to these new worlds?  Along with strange beings that already existed there, they were to be among those who became the first theatre masters.  Those that did not develop into theatre masters became the first Stills.  Being a Still is not something transmittable through genetics.  It just happens.  People began to notice that Stills cold counter the effects of The Peace and that brings us up to where we are at the moment. 

Dichotomy has not ended.  It is merely a step on a path that is leading somewhere for humanity.  People have since chosen to try to live their lives in this world and gradually rebuilt the old cities, if not the old technology, allowing new societies and cultures to develop in a place that is at once familiar but also strange and alien.

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