THE JOURNAL OF FRACTAL-BROTHER MANDELBROT

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Is there such a thing as Schrödinger's news? When I first saw the letter from the Empress that had been delivered to my desk during the night by the omnipresent imperial messenger drones, I was quite ignorant of the information I would be faced with a few hours later. In those few pale minutes in between dawn and morn, the immaculate envelope seemed to enclose infinite possibilities; news simultaneously paramount and trivial, glorious and terrible. Then, I stepped out into the cloisters, and the sky collapsed.

To get rid of the metaphor: Fractal-Sister Célestine is dead.

It's no secret that she was like a mother to me, she who had the kindness and compassion to take in a sickly infant abandoned at the doorsteps of the Order thirty-one stellar rotations ago. She raised me with zeal and lucidity, taught me the Cardinal Virtues, enlightened my faculties of rational reasoning and recognition of the cosmic order that reigns over beauty. My respect and gratitude towards her will stay as constant and ardent as the day Saint Singularity delivered me into her hands.

Yet like a star that goes out quietly during the night, its happening is at once overshadowed (in this case, overilluminated) by daybreak: the letter from Her Imperial Cosmic Radiation. In it, a blessing to mellow the grief of Fractal-Sister Célestine's absence—our long-awaited pilgrimage has been approved.

We have been granted the HIMS Burning, a beautiful Paladine-class sailing ship, who will carry us on our voyage to the center of our Solar System; to the black hole around which we orbit, Endymion 87; to our eternal, revered Saint Singularity.

The proto-chemist of Antiquity, A. Lavoisier, once said: "Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed".

Perhaps the death of Fractal-Sister Célestine was nothing more, nothing less than a transformation. She returns to us in another form—in the form of the advent of our expedition, an homage to the ill-fated pilgrimage of the Pérégrines, generation of which she was the sole tragic survivor.
This was a capricious turn of fate: Fractal Sister Célestine, who was unable to partake in the pilgrimage of her own generation, was supposed to lead ours—yet once again, she can only join the travellers in spirit.
I know she will be with us, within these cloisters and without.

I shared these thoughts with the rest of the Order during the evening assembly, who have proposed that I should take on Fractal-Sister Célestine's former role as the leader of the expedition. Despite my being the secondmost senior monk of the Order making this conclusion a logical one, I am nonetheless honoured and even somewhat flustered to be held in such high regards by my fellow Fractal-Siblings.

My duty made this acceptance one without hesitation; I have already started the logistical preparations for the voyage. As per the message from our Radiant Empress, the imperial representatives she has so graciously sent to assist our mission would be arriving on Endymion B as soon as in one quarter rotation's time—the speed of Endymion A's spacecraft is simply unparalleled on our humble B.

Nevertheless, between you and me, I cannot hide that this sudden imperial intervention imposed upon us elicits in me a seedling of doubt: the patronage of Her Imperial Majesty is not an easy thing to obtain, and, since she has seemingly nothing of value to reap from a group of holy fools' round trip to a black hole, it is clear to me that Her Radiance seeks to puppeteer us for her own designs via these ‘representatives’ sent to watch over us.

Whatever Her Imperial Cosmic Radiation's true motives may be, I cannot allow myself to dwell on them any longer: the days ahead are busy, and I would do well to get some peaceful sleep while I still can.

May light in Singularity forever remain.