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A Gaze Into The Nexus: The Empirical Truth
Written by Sorrosyss, December 18th, 2017
Warning: Spoilers from across the franchise. Throughout the Temples of Assassin's Creed: Origins, there are hidden Isu Ancient Mechanisms that can be activated using Silica. Each of these Mechanisms tells a different cryptic message sent by the Isu, of which there are six in total. The messages are aimed at Layla Hassan, the new Modern Day protagonist, as she experiences them through the eyes of Bayek of Siwa. Let us take a look at each of the messages in turn, and then draw some conclusions. (Note that certain words are in reverse in the original audio. They have been placed in red brackets for clarity.)  1. Oun-mAa Niye Rassoot Retransmission. Segment 1. Acquiring Contemporaneity. It has been 91 days since the Great Catastrophe. The messenger speaks. How real is the ground you walk on? How real is the machine you toy with, the music you hear, the lover you kiss, or the foe you hate? Your foot taps the ground. Does that make it real? Your enemies bleed deep red. Does that make them real? The confusion growing within you due to my words... does it make you real? What if reality wasn't what you thought it was? What if this was all a construction? A masterfully crafted simulation? You know such things exist. You've been in the Animus before. In fact, aren't you in one right now? You know just how real a simulation can feel even when it has long vanished. You've experienced the Bleeding Effect. Layers upon layers of reality, each blurring into the next. Which is real, and which is not? What if none are real? What if everything you know is false? We ran thousands of simulations. searching for the right version, searching tor Desmond. Each one of them felt real. Very real. But there's no way of truly knowing, is there? Not for sure. Anything can be simulated. And finding the answer could mean erasure. From the build. From the code. From everything. So much to ponder and so little computational capacity. Take your time. This question has haunted humanity since its creation. It is a worry, a thought wormed deep in the collective mind. 2000 years ago, Zhuang Zhou fell asleep. He dreamed he was a butterfly, and woke up unable to decide if he was a man dreaming of a butter?y, or a butterfly dreaming of a man. In Plato's cave, prisoners were chained and forced to watch shadows dancing on a wall. Freedom was denied to them until they accepted the intangible as reality. It's everywhere. Ask this professor at Oxford University, or this cosmologist at MIT. And you. What would you choose, if you truly knew? Would you even want to understand? A dream within a dream, where even the truth is sometimes a lie? In any case, simulations are not meaningless. They have purpose. The question isn't whether or not you are in a simulation. What matters is how much of your free will is actually yours. No matter how true you are. Your Turing test would do nothing to determine whether you are conscience or code. Eliza, the natural language processing computer program... She managed to pass the Test, did she not? And she was very much machine. So… in Eliza's own words... How does that make you feel? Are you sure? The first thing to note is that these messages are sent after the Toba Catastrophe, by the remaining few Isu whom actually survived the devastation. Not for the first time in the franchise, we have a suggestion here that all of reality may in fact be a simulation. With humanity's limited perception via our senses, this theory has been suggested by many scientists throughout history, and is commonly referred to as the Simulation Hypothesis. In a way this segment is reciting the “Nothing is true” principle of the Assassin's Creed tenets, and if our perception is false it leaves you questioning how much free will one can truly have in a world directed by determinism. Our current understanding of time as a linear concept, would make time itself a simulation purely due to our limited perceptions alone. Theoretically, the Animus then technically creates a simulation within a simulation. The image is quite interesting as it shows the Isu guiding the enslaved humanity. We see a fractal, geometric shapes, and the Fibonacci numbers (which previously appeared in Assassin's Creed II's glyph puzzles). The implication of this of course, is that humanity was guided through mathematics, and were thus the architects of the pyramids and temples around the world by numerical design.  2. Seshem.eff Er Aat Retransmission. Segment 2. Acquiring Contemporaneity. It has been 93 days since the Great Catastrophe. The messenger speaks. Hello World. Language is the key to our mutual understanding. Yours and mine. Alone. We listened to your times. We learned. And today, we'll exchange words from the age of post-truth. They mean nothing to him. Human language carries knowledge and wit. Lies and broken promises. Through language, you share fear, excitement, hope. It is the syntax with which you articulate what surrounds you. A structure to express and share your understanding of the world. It conveys abstraction, change, and uncertainty. Human language is flexible. It can even become mathematics. It solves and predicts; weights and decodes. It can count objects using basic numbers in one breath, and solve quadratic equations using imaginary ones in the next. You've engineered dialogs with thinking machines, in an attempt to add new vocabulary. To expand your understanding of reality. But your mastery of the code is rudimentary at best. No surprise. You were designed to have boundaries, after all. And one cannot speak of that which one cannot conceive. The Code. Equations that define life. They are nestled deep within every star, and every mote of dust. Every second that passes is a word, a symbol. All part of an intricate yet simple language existing within the framework of time itself. It is the one rule which applies to us all. Immutable. Inescapable. The Code is a bridge. A single point of cohesion between your civilization and... mine. It is a language that can be read, that tells of what was, what is and what will be. A language We Who Came Before can read, though you cannot... Time is more than the hour of the day. The readings of an atomic clock. Something to lose. Something to run out of. Time is a set of rules, not unlike the language you so dearly use to converse with your powerful machines. Time is a system that defines what comes to be. That is how we understand it. The Code is Time, and Time is Code. As you scratch the surface and uncover the truth, ask yourself if there is something more? Something else. No need to be puzzled. You've seen time written before. You are surrounded by it as we speak. To your untrained mind. [...] [Time] might just look like paths and nodes. To us, it is not unlike a chalkboard covered in calculus. It reveals a window through which stretches the map to infinity. [...] [Time] See? As I speak of it in its true form, your mind is incapable of making sense of it. Were you to read, you'd learn about the other simulations. You'd learn about the genesis of who you came to be. You'd learn about space and its fluidity. Simply put, time is the language which existence is made of. All our existences. Yours. Mine. And all those you dare not imagine. They refer here to time as code, and a language to be interpreted. This is true of the real world as well, as scientists have wracked to explore the mathematics and relationships between space and time. Quantum mechanics argues that there could in theory be an entire multiverse of realities, where even the smallest of details can be different from another. “Divination through numbers. There is a pattern to existence. To comprehend the calculations is to tame time.” - Minerva We know that the Isu had some rudimentary knowledge in this area, thanks to their work within the Nexus. Perhaps then that is what the sixth sense allows them to see – the code - through time, as it was previously referred to as “knowledge”. It would also explain how Eagle Vision/Sense has allowed some Assassins to have pre and post cognitive abilities – essentially seeing through time. Such as how you can see the path a guard will, and has taken. “A hundred years I might speak and still you would not know us. You with five senses. Us with six. The one we kept from you. To be safe. Now, you can never know. Only try. Grasp. You can SEE. SMELL. TASTE. TOUCH. HEAR. Knowledge has been locked away. After, when the world became undone, we tried to pass it through the blood. Tried to join you with us. You see the blue shimmer. You hear the words. But you do not know.” - Juno As we know the sixth sense was denied to humanity by design, I feel this is what we are seeing in the image on this occasion – especially with the DNA compound structures present.  3. Khesesh Em Sesh Em Eeneb Retransmission. Segment 3. Acquiring Contemporaneity. It has been 95 days since the Great Catastrophe. The messenger speaks. You must be wondering why I reach out to you. It was written, you see. That you would come. To this particular chamber, at this very moment in time. The walls told us of your coming. When we once were. Look at them. Are they not fascinating? [...] [Break the code] These walls tell of a tragic story. A story we transcribed on our structures, on our artifacts. A story we could not alter. A mystery, defying us, in plain sight. We tried. Our scholars and scientists, poets and physicists. Bright minds. Rebellious hearts. They all tried so hard to bring about change. They... we all failed. None could change what we discovered. The stories written into the walls of these rooms. By whom, we never knew. We know they tell of the future that is. The future that was. And the future that is yet to come. The [...] [Stories] We failed at modifying a line. We failed at adding a single dot. It was clear. We were to be messengers at best. But messengers to whom? To you. We removed our ability to read those [...] [Stories] from your original template. "A doorway that is also a puzzle. We must find the solution". Those were Brutus' words when he visited the Vault under the Colosseum, more than 2000 years ago. He drew the vault. Sketched it to the best of his abilities. But he could not see. Just as you are blind. You may read your watch. You may read hourglasses and calendars. But you cannot grasp beyond that simplistic surface. For now. The true reading of time still escapes you. And so today, the curtain is pulled and the [...] [Stories] is shown. Tragic and complete. Those walls, you might never read. Events yet unfold as written. But something, anything, must change. You do not understand what is at stake. The reader has no power. He is but an observer. But the author...the author invents the future. The author owns the future. A future where […] [Stories] are avoided. A future where a loved one can be revived by the drafting of a new chapter. A future where humankind is more than it is today. A future where, just perhaps, we can all still exist, together. “What is a fact? Is it fixed? Immutable? Certain in its existence and only awaiting discovery? Or might it be changed?” - Juno As the saying goes “The writing is on the wall.” This message is clearly referring to the future having been written as stories, with all the cruel fates that await us. But who wrote the stories originally? Again we are told that humanity is blind to read this (the missing sixth sense). Interestingly though, we see the first reference to the possibility of the author rewriting the story. If the story can be rewritten, then indeed we may yet bring back lost loved ones. Or as they surmise – a reality where the Isu and humanity both survived. The image appears to show three Isu, which could actually be the famed Capitoline Triad, though as this was sent after the Toba Catastrophe it is probably unlikely to be them. On either side of the image there is Morse Code which read vertically states; “Transcend your kind and learn how to alter the code of time. A long time ago we failed at changing our tragic destiny.”  4. Eeyoo Sekedoo Aat Retransmission. Segment 4. Acquiring Contemporaneity. It has been 99 days since the Great Catastrophe. The messenger speaks. On the 21st day of December 2012, Desmond activated the global aurora borealis device and protected the earth from the sun's deadly coronal mass ejection. On the 21st day of December 2012, humanity carried on without a care in the world. People went to work. People went to school, and people went to the well for water. On the night of December 21st 2012, as the sun set on their days, humankind went to bed. Then, on the morning of December 22nd 2012, humankind was graced with yet another morning. They never knew that on the previous day, the world almost ended. We thought that would have been enough. And it was, until it wasn't. Time is unyielding. It always corrects itself. The language of time works in many ways. Two of which you can understand... as you are now. Linear continuity is a simulation that allows for variations. Within the linear continuity, there are nodes. Choke points. Moments where algorithms converge the flows of superposed possibilities to a single moment where only one absolute truth is possible. Paths are fluid, continuous. Nodes are static, changeless. And the wave function collapses the paths into nodes which branch out. Again, and again, and again. And so I wonder. Can you feel the wave collapsing, trying to course correct Desmond's act of defiance? The incoming node needs for the world to end. The algorithms have been carving the flow of possibilities towards that end for over a 100 years now. [...] [Collapse the wave] A labyrinth of trenches, filled with mud and mustard gas. Families cowering in fear as V2'S vaporize their dwellings. Fire born from the bellows of the Los Alamos Laboratory, fuelling global catastrophes. The Serpukhov-15 incident of 1983. The Doomsday clock, tucked away in an office of the University of Chicago. Its needle moving as the years go. The node is near. Perhaps you knew. Perhaps you felt it too. That the world is closing in on you. “Almost did we have the means. But time... time erodes us. We can distract him. We can see past him. Feint left when he strikes right. But his reach is so very long. His stamina unending. We cannot evade his grasp. Not forever.” - Juno Minerva warned Desmond that by freeing Juno he was dooming the world, effectively trading one catastrophe for another. Whilst humanity has some modicum of free will, it appears that some events are just predestined to occur no matter what – herein known as nodes. If we accept time is linear and picture it anecdotally as a river, then we may well be able to change its course by our actions – but ultimately fate will correct itself and bring the river eventually to the sea regardless of what we do. As such, the end of the world is inevitable for the current node. If the wave function is indeed comprised of all possibilities, if it is collapsed (by our analogy – stopping the water from flowing) then perhaps the end result can indeed be changed. The image here could be any number of things. To me though it resembles a clock with the twelve triangles, which kind of makes sense given the Doomsday Clock mention, and vaguely matches the remaining minutes. Some of the inner symbols resemble the Greek alphabet (Pi, Omega and Eta are clearly present). The outward lines very much resemble the magnetic fields of the Earth, which could be a reference to the Aurora Borealis event that Desmond ultimately triggered.  5. Qeneb too Kah’Aiye Retransmission. Segment 5. Acquiring Contemporaneity. It has been 105 days since the Great Catastrophe. The messenger speaks. The color blue. We believe everyone sees it as we do. Ocean. Sky. International Klein Blue. What’s to say yours and mine are of the same hue? Do you truly see it as I do? Frequencies so high only a few can hear their cue. A heightened response to the taste of food. Colors invisible to the human eye save for a few. A high voice, perceived as living glass. Perceptions shapes reality. Color blindness. Tinnitus. Supertasting. Tetrachromacy. Synesthesia. Reality is a mathematical model which gets solved over and over again by the observer. Your thoughts are computations. And they render this world for you to call your own. Not all processors are alike. Different brains produce different realities. The variations go from the subtle to the drastic. Your mind defines how much you can taste. How much you can feel. How much you can understand. Perception defines perspective. Where one sees a skull, the other sees a woman in a mirror. Where one hears silence, the other will hear entrancing voices. You experience what your brain allows you to perceive. We designed you and made sure to engineer your senses so you could perceive just what we needed you to. Neither more nor less. There are parts of Time we preferred you to remained blind to. It was a necessity. We have six senses, you have five. Can you guess the one missing? [...] [Overload your mind's capacity] For centuries, humanity has fought for freedom. The real cage is not around you. It is in you. Your mind will not allow you to wander in uncharted territories. A Faraday cage, for the mind. A concealed strait jacket. Events such as Upsweep and Julia fuel internet conspiracies. Sounds unknown, heard only once. A cabinets of curiosities for the Modern Age. And yet, they were messages, just like this one, waiting for their observer, their compatible processor. Human visionaries developed a vague awareness of their limits. They wrote obscure research papers, popular science fiction novels, some asking us to stop the world. But that's all they ever were. Fictions. How could they not be? Reality is what the observer allows it to be. The Doppler Effect. The Möbius strip. Deja-vus. Cicada 3301. UVB-76. Eureka effects. Ambigrams and Anamorphisis. P versus NP. Is Schrödinger's cat dead or alive? It all depends on what you perceive, on what the cage is not hiding for you to see. Think. Think. Let your mind be free. Explore the borders of your reality. Again the sixth sense is referenced, and how it is locked away from us. To have its knowledge would indeed allow the individual to have a far greater perception of reality, especially if the increased sensory abilities of Eagle Vision are anything to go by. We see this displayed in the image, as we see impossibly shaped objects. You can see them, but can they be perceived as real? Equally we see a sound wave, and a moth. The significance of this is that a moth apparently has the most attuned hearing of any creature on the planet – up to 150 times stronger than any human. If we cannot hear a sound that a moth can – does that make it real?  6. Eesfet Oon-m’Aa Poo Retransmission. Segment 6. Acquiring Contemporaneity. It has been 109 days since the Great Catastrophe. The messenger speaks. Wake up. Not from a dreamless sleep or an absence of light. But from a reality that will soon cease to be. Wake up. The next chapter is unstoppable. And yet. The greatest revolutions sometimes originate from the confines of impossibility, do they not? Change your mind. Subvert your perception. Stop this world. Bend it into something new. Destiny is not without irony. Here I am, imploring a lesser version of myself... to do what I could never do. In this timeless moment, you and I are a bridge. Both of us from different eras, meeting halfway at the narrowing of the hourglass in this ocean of sand. It is not enough to tell time. You must learn Time. [...] [Reality is a simulation. Break the code.] And in so doing, escape the inescapable. Fill in the blanks: the ones hiding between words, between worlds. Find the spaces that we could not erase, the variables that ended up erasing us. If you do not, they will erase you as well. Time told of a story that ended with us, and now it tells of a story that ends with you. Once upon a time, a new story will begin. After the functions which run our days have scattered into an array of random numbers. We found solace in Order. We thought it would help us rule the world. We were wrong. Order never served us. It has kept us within the code, within the boundaries. We were tricked into thinking we were the ones writing the rules when they were in fact guiding us to our conclusion. You need to transgress. You, of all people, understand the value of disobeying. Take an unexpected turn, away from the path that is drawn straight ahead of you. The Animus was humankind’s first unconscious attempt to explain what it could not see. Understanding genetic memories, an eye into history. But the Animus bears a fatal flaw. It follows the rules from those who embrace Order just as we did. It allows you to witness – but not alter. Your Animus is different. As is the mind that imagined it. It could escape the code. It could do that leap, and make possible a decision that defies the order of things that are. Wake up. Be the chaos that comes to be. Gods are just like you and me. REMEMBER. Nothing is real. Everything is permitted. Finally, the big one. The indications are clear. Layla must break the code, of the simulation of time that we call reality. The Isu could not find a way to escape their fate, but Layla's Animus appears to have the potential to be able to unlock the ability to manipulate reality by effectively adjusting the past. There is a vague suggestion here that the Animus simulations have always been simplistic time travel for an observer, and to a degree this is true. It certainly makes you wonder what the White Rooms and Duat cutscenes have all meant, when you consider the code of reality. Just what are we touching upon there? Even the most smallest of changes to the past could affect the future. Could Layla save the Isu from their fate? Save the world? Save... Desmond? To have such power would indeed make a god. “The way lies all before you. Only she remains to be found. Awaken the sixth.” - Juno The image shows a representation of a wormhole through the fabric of spacetime. The Abstergo logo likely shows that this is how an Animus works, and that the logo changes colour to show that anything can be changed or potentially reset. Conclusions Firstly, that is a lot of information to process. Everyone's interpretation may be different. So let us recap what we know. The Isu were able to view endless future simulations of reality via a disruption in space time known as the Nexus. From here, Minerva and other Isu were able to form 'Calculations' about reality and where the future was headed. Whilst trying to find a solution to avoid the Toba Catastrophe, they became aware that there is an underlying code to time and all of reality. They were unable to amend it, to save themselves. Yet they tried to bend the simulation, by sending a message to Desmond to prevent a further disaster for humanity. However, in so doing, time has unbreakable nodes that cannot be altered and reality (or “the code”) is trying to correct itself back to its predestined fate of erasure. It's a circular causal loop story theme we've seen a few times in other IPs, such as fixed time points in the TV show Doctor Who, or where reality is constantly being reset – for example in the Mass Effect games where the Reapers were wiping out the existence of life every time they reached their potential or became aware of their true existence. Or the Battlestar Galactica TV series where - “All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.” In essence if all reality is a code, then it is also a causality loop with a beginning and end. The Isu were always destined to be erased, and this was why they never were able to escape their fate. Now they urge humanity to escape their own fate, as the plan with Desmond ultimately failed to achieve this. The Isu maintained their existence in 'Order' believing it to be the story they were supposed to write, but by their admission this was never the way to break the code – to “collapse the wave”. In essence, turning to an ordered society was their way of accepting their fate as they could not change it. To achieve change, it appears you need to rebel against reality, to add a little chaos if you will. This in turn is why they have turned to Layla, as she is clearly of this mindset – with apparently the tools to make a difference – namely her Animus. In turn, with their sworn Creed promoting freedom over Order – the Assassins are a natural fit for her. It should also be noted that Layla has actively been researching causality by the mathematical probability of the past through studying Cliodynamics – as she mentions on the WeR postings of her laptop. Her mind is already open to the possibilities that the Isu are presenting to her. “Our first instance was to travel back. To change the past. But we could not find a way. But forward… We could look forward... And so here we sought to see beyond ourselves - and know what was to come. First we watched to learn if our work would succeed. But the answer was always the same.” - Juno Herein lies the key then. The Isu were evidently only aware of a way to travel forwards in time. Never back. The recent Conspirations comics have really explored this area in detail, where it has been revealed by Nikola Tesla and John von Neumann that an Apple of Eden has the ability to create Zero Time. This is a similar theory to that proposed by Tesla with his work on Zero Point Field Energy, where essentially even a space containing no matter still generates energy. By token, a thought can become matter even out of completely nothing. With Zero Time, the principle is that this field could be used as an anchor point for a consciousness across spacetime. Within the comics, we see the scientists try to send an individual back in time through a Proto-Animus known as Die Glocke, but it resulted in their consciousness instead leaping forwards. When they attempted the same experiment using the ship known as the USS Eldridge, it too ends up manifesting in a future state.
What we see in all these examples here are Pieces of Eden evidently adjusting reality, and in doing so affecting the code of the simulation. We've often marveled at the strange imagery that often emanates from them as they perform their miracles, and it does make one wonder if this is indeed a visual representation of the very code of reality. One of the proposed Isu solutions to the Toba Catastrophe was for them to will the threat away through a thought in unified consensus, which they attempted to do with a global field of Apples of Eden to alter reality. The experiment failed, but even in that example we can see that the Isu were again becoming acutely aware of the potential to affect the code around them. With all this in mind, I would surmise that Layla's Animus could feasibly be combined with a Piece of Eden (potentially an Apple, as the Assassins have a few). In doing so it would give the machine the ability to touch the code of reality, creating a wormhole through space and time and thus in turn open up the possibility that the simulation that she enters in her Animus actually is the ancient past. Any and all actions she then makes as her consciousness, could well alter all of reality. The implications and possibilities of this are simply profound. With the correct blood sample, just imagine what could be achieved! Every time she awakens from the Animus, she may well be in a completely different state or timeline of existence. Through the Bleeding Effect she may well see many of these realities at once, as well as potentially unlocking Eagle Vision and the sixth sense within herself. What we currently do not know is what the next great disaster is for humanity. Minerva did warn Desmond that by freeing Juno we were trading one ending for another. If we assume that the next catastrophe for the Earth is in fact the threat of Juno, then even she is in potential peril now. Clay often warned us that Eve's DNA was the key to finding Eden. Her blood may not be required directly though. As Layla points out in her e-mails, she is interested in the concept of exploring non-organic matter for memories at the molecular level. This is not too outlandish of a concept, as we have seen Eagle Vision show us the history of events by looking at singular inanimate objects on several occasions – such as the investigations in Syndicate where you can see bullet trajectories and the like. If the Apple that Eve originally touched could be recovered, her memory may well still be tied to it at a molecular level. Be it in this fashion, or if there is a Blood Vial that stored Eve's DNA perhaps, we could potentially travel back to the time of the Isu – and as they desire – perhaps prevent the war between the races and usher in a new era of collective peace. Effectively, Juno could be stopped before she is even a threat. But perhaps there is yet another twist – what if Juno has been waiting for Layla all of this time as part of her own plans? Is Layla “She” who remains to be found? Juno could effectively travel back in time to save her father from death, and annihilate the human race before they are even created. It would certainly be one way to bring about her New Eden.
This situation in turn now allows Ubisoft many narrative options. William Miles has been in hiding for years. Do you notice how he suddenly re-emerges when this new kind of Animus appears? If he too has realised what Layla's Animus can achieve, then it is within his grasp to find a way to restore Desmond to reality. Some fans may find this point difficult to accept, but it really does imply that any existing lore could be completely retconned and reverted by the actions of Layla. I'll leave you to decide if you find that exciting, but the potential for a reboot and clean slate of the lore here are obvious. Gameplay wise, this will open a few new possibilities to players though. One of the old restrictions of the Animus is that the past is fixed. No matter what, you cannot change it. Or you Desynchronize. That restriction would in theory fall away. And what then? Well, as the series is leaning heavily on it's RPG mechanics, it could theoretically open up the possibility of multiple dialogue options, or missions that could end in many different ways. We have seen this in other games such as Mass Effect or Dragon Age, where a decision can take the narrative in two quite stark opposing directions. As the Isu said, the author (or you) will ultimately have all the control of the story to come. But what of those that wrote the “stories”? If all of time and reality is a code, if our fates truly were predestined as the Isu said, then that suggests an intelligent design created by someone or something. If reality truly is a simulation in of itself, then who are its creators? Are we ourselves simulated, or might we be able to escape this reality – perhaps wake up in a future setting akin to the Matrix movies? After all, if “Nothing Is True” and everything is false, then what lies out there for Layla? Is escape even possible? We may never even know. However, if Ubisoft elected to take the main story line to a futuristic setting then this is certainly the perfect opportunity that some fans have dreamed of. In a franchise known for determinism, of Order versus Free Will, would everything that has occurred ultimately be undermined? Was it all a dream and meaningless? One thing is sure, we have always been within a computer simulation in every game to date. There would be a great irony and symmetry if all of reality within the Assassin's Creed universe ended up being a computer simulation too. Bonus Thoughts:
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