EXCERPTS FROM "COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND TRANS-REALITY MANIPULATION" MONOGRAPH SUBMITTED TO JIHAD PRAXEUM VENIFICUS AND V.R.D.E.T. RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT BY PROFESSOR MALACLYPSE MORNING STAR (V.R.D.E.T., ret.) "So they dreamed the world into the form it is now?" "Not exactly. They dreamed the world so it ALWAYS WAS the way it is now, little one. There never WAS a world of high cat-ladies and cat- lords. They changed the universe from the beginning of all things to the end of time." --Neil Gaiman, "The Dream of a Thousand Cats," _Sandman_ #18 A reality quake occurred in early 1995. The ontocenter was outside Carlsbad, NM in the Carlsbad Caverns. The Caverns are a known weak point in the fabric of consensus reality (the current author, "Pre- Anasasi Sacred Places and Reality Magic," JPV 1999), and it was used by the Hellwyrm B'harne as an easy access point to his home dimensional space. It was on that fulcrum point that a quasi-mystical engine known as the Doomsday Device was triggered. The surmised intent was to cause enough overlap between B'harne's native reality and our own that It could either conquer the Earth outright or have an open base of operations from which It could work. This, obviously, did not happen. A team of elite Jihaddi led by Warrior Ashur Galand (DE) managed to penetrate the gray zone between the to realities and destroy the Doomsday Device before it could complete the merger (recorded in Jihad Archives as "Operation: WORLDWALK"). Damage to the fabric of reality, however, had already occurred. This damage was compounded by a *second* reality quake of lesser magnitude, which occurred during the X'hirjq Invasion. When the X'hirjq fleet departed Earth, they used a massive psychic blast to wipe the memory of the Invasion from the minds of the Mundane population. Tampering with consensus reality on that scale caused further fractures and magnified aftershocks from the WORLDWALK event. Reality quakes are tricky things to discuss, because we as observers are changed by the quantum nature of the quake with each passing moment. Most of the pertinent information on the nature of reality quakes was first compiled by Dr. Kenneth Hite of the University of Chicago. When a quake is triggered, the shockwaves radiate backwards and forwards in time, changing reality as they propagate further and further away from the ontocenter. History is literally rewritten on the fly, new events replacing the old in the history books, noted historical figures becoming the stuff of legend or myth, even entire cities vanishing and reappearing a short distance from their original location as history changes. (As an aside, it should be noted that Dr. Hite's emic research has indicated that Chicago was located on the *east* side of Lake Michigan, until sometime during or after the Great Fire of 1878.) The quakes do not erase all of the previous history (called Prealities), however. Quantum emic interference patterns create points where artifacts of the Preality can emerge. The artifacts are often based on information stored in the human brain (for some reason, neurons withstand the effects of a quake more readily than digital memory) although physical objects may survive. This is the primary source of information about pre-quake conditions. From investigation, we now can make a supported hypothesis that the WORLDWALK and X'hirjq quakes created a form of megaquake, which almost completely erased a previous reality where the Jihad existed. This Jihad however was... "shinier" is most apt descriptor. As such, the old timeline has been dubbed the Silver Age Jihad. What we know of the original timeline suggests that the Jihad was substantially better off than it is today. The technological base seems to have been higher, the production of advanced FTL spacecraft a routine event. One of the most complete fragments available to us suggests that the Jihad was equally involved in off-Earth operations as it was on-Earth. This would require a minimum tenfold increase in the number of active combat personnel available to the Jihad, and it appears the Silver Age Jihad had them. The most notable change from our current history involves the public perception of the Jihad. In the Silver Age, it would appear that the Jihad was not a covert organization but a fully public group. What little has survived the post-WORLDWALK reality quakes has indications of high-ranking Jihaddi conferring with heads of state, law-enforcement organizations and Mundane military forces. There are also indications that the Jihad was regarded as a "superheroic" organization – public- spirited citizens in the basic mold of a comic book superteam. Whether or not this was a correct perception has been lost, however. [...] Due to the events of the WORLDWALK/X'hirjq Crisis, the Jihad timeline (hereafter referred to as OTL) was remolded, an effect that moved progressively back in time, until the OTL version of events became the "true" version, from the beginning of time until now. The persons, events, places, names, etc. of the Silver Age Jihad (hereafter referred to as SAJ) were changed along with the rest of the universe. However, some remnants of the original SAJ remained in the subconscious of many individuals. For the vast majority, these remnants manifest in the dream state. Some Jihaddi (as well as a few Mundane) mystics can successfully call up "echoes" of the subsumed SAJ timeline while awake. Most of our information about the SAJ comes from these "echoes," and regretfully, this information is quite fragmentary. The occasional solid artifact has turned up (usually in the less-used corners of a WEDJEE weapons depot), but aside from general function, no useful data on SAJ can be derived. The most curious effect of the SAJ/OTL manipulation has been recorded in several Mundane individuals, where the subject has *a complete memory* of both OTL *and* SAJ. The Mundane subjects currently under study by an interested third party have exhibited signs of being Jihaddi in the SAJ timeframe, while otherwise not involved in OTL's Jihad (according to an examination of Jihad personnel files). This "double memory" effect creates a severe case of cognitive dissonance (the state of mind found when two valid but contradictory statements are considered "true," usually found in mild form when confronting new information) in the person experiencing it. This level of cognitive dissonance does not vanish over time, instead building until the individual succumbs to a psychotic break, which manifests itself in a form of paranoia, manic-depressive behavior (usually related to a feeling of "isolation," or "displacement" from the rest of the world. Tests suggest this may be in fact a quantum effect left over from the SAJ/OTL event), and (in truly severe cases) schizophrenia. As such, it must be noted that all Mundane subjects reviewed in this paper are currently undergoing intensive psychiatric treatment. (See Appendix C) [...] [...] While undergoing primary research for this paper, the author unearthed several documents in VRDET archives dating from December 1996 that suggest that Blood Jihad Commander Theodore Brock (codenamed "Arsenal" in Jihad Archives), as well as a number of Blood Jihad command-level officers, suffered from the third form of SAJ manifestation. The documents, mostly materiel requests involving the BJSF _Andromeda,_ engineering calculations and notes scribbled on the backs of them, indicate that the cognitive dissonance was extreme. Commander Brock was at the time not of the soundest mental health -- the previous year had seen the X'hirjq Invasion, the destruction of the Blood Jihad Space Fleet and the deaths of almost the entire Blood Jihad save the Earthbound members and the crew of the Andromeda. The Commander had been present at the battle where fleet captains Patrick Stewart and Michael Davis sacrificed themselves and their commands to slow the advance of the X'hirjq throneship. [...] The documentation of what happened next is unclear, to say the least. It appears Brock and his remaining commanders decided to avoid detection, and as such kept their movements off the books until the last possible moment. Nevertheless, BJ requisition forms show that between December 1996 and February 1997, tons of advanced weapons and vehicles were transferred to the Andromeda, along with 20% of the Earthbound staff. Unusual requests for experimental equipment found in the wreckage of Luna Base and the destroyed Fairplay, CO base of the Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow were also processed. As the entire org was busy rebuilding from the shambles it was left in by the Invasion, these requests were processed without comment. On February 5, 1997 at 9:21AM, a transport shuttle carrying Brock and his senior staff left Blood Jihad Base One for the Andromeda, with the stated purpose of an inspection. Base One was left under the command of Lt. Col. Arianna Matasha, a relative newcomer to the Jihad. At 10:21AM, the Andromeda broke orbit and proceeded on a vector heading towards the outer Solar System. The crew did not respond to calls from TRES Corps space station Ithaca. Fearing that the ship -- one of the two remaining starships in the Jihad's inventory -- had been compromised, Ithaca launched interceptors. The TRES craft were repulsed with nonlethal force from a close approach, but continued to follow the Andromeda at a safe distance. At 2:04PM, roughly 4,000,000 miles from Earth, something happened. Undergoing debriefing, the TRES pilots reported seeing a wormhole of unknown size and unusual shape open in front of the Andromeda, swallow the ship, and vanish. Sensor records from the interceptors indicate that the wormhole was generated from the Andromeda. At 4:00PM, Lt. Col. Matasha received a time-delay message from Commander Brock. He apologized for the secrecy surrounding his actions, said that he was going on a mission to "find help," and that he would return the following day. Until then, she was to take command of the remaining Blood Jihad forces. Three days later, it became apparent that the Andromeda was not coming back. The ship has not been seen since 2-5-97, and it is highly unlikely that it will be seen again in our lifetime. Inspecting the sensor records taken at the time of the Andromeda's disappearance, the author has concluded that the wormhole generator was a primitive version of an interdimensional portal projector, similar in function to the VRDET Gateway. It would seem that the Andromeda's Gateway transported it to some unknown corner of the multiverse -- most likely in search of the SAJ timeline. As that timeline was destroyed by the events of the WORLDWALK/X'hirjq Crisis, it is an impossible quest the crew of the Andromeda has set upon. We may never know their fate.