“Ex falso quodlibet.” – the Principle of Explosion

“Everything is true, nothing is permitted. You are free.” – popular Fortean graffiti

“Try not to think about exploding or you’ll explode … what did I just tell you?” – an Inrisus

Introduction

The Fortean power is the unexplained range of ‘miraculous’ abilities possessed by individuals who are generally known in public rumor as Forteans. There is no definite list describing precisely what ‘miracles’ Forteans can perform, and the vast majority of Forteans seem to be limited to just a few ‘impossible’ actions; however, each Fortean’s performance is unique, and it is difficult to specify an act that would be beyond the ability of every Fortean.

The general consensus of highly classified Unity science is that Forteans are individuals who have accessed pre-historic artefacts of uncertain origin, with candidate creators of this scattered eldrich technology ranging from pre-glaciation homo sapiens, Neanderthals to Denisovans. Forteans themselves may believe practically anything about their own powers, including multiple contradictory ideas simultaneously: that they have been abducted and altered by aliens, that they have been possessed by demons, blessed by gods or angels, etc. They might believe that their power comes from an extraterrestrial implant, a divine/infernal mark upon their forehead, a lucky charm, or a hallucinogenic drug, but any examination of a Fortean by Unity science will only detect a normal human or post-human body (though likely festooned with odd tattoos, symbolic jewelry, and/or bizarrely mutilated and dosed with narcotics, never in a consistent way).

This technology – if it can even be called ‘technology’ at this level of advancement and abstraction – does not require any implant or item worn on their person, and it is worryingly likely that virtually every human and near-human being could become a Fortean if they were exposed to the relics that are being gradually unearthed. It is hypothesized that a human mind merely needs to be ‘logged in’, or given their own ‘account’ with the mysterious ancient machinery, at which point they will be Fortean wherever they travel upon the Earth’s surface. Attempts to pinpoint the location and range of these Fortean ‘projectors’ (described as arcs, beacons, pylons, etc.) are excruciatingly difficult, as many are now guarded and even worshipped by the humans they have changed.

Community: The New Error

Attempts to generally explain the Fortean ability in a formally scientific and rational manner are practically guaranteed to fail – not as an admission from science of a ‘supernatural’ realm, but following from the observation that Fortean ability consistently makes its users incomprehensibly insane, even to each other. Attempts to build a ‘rule book’ for their abilities are futile when each individual seems to have their own personal book of rules.

The Fortean ‘community’ is an underground melting pot of conspiracy theorists, religious fundamentalists, esoterics, occultists, anarchists, absurdists, artists, and self-proclaimed gurus and mystics of every tradition and traditions of their own invention, constantly gaining new believers and charlatans and the innocently curious. Even the skeptical, atheistic and scientific individuals resistant to conventional pseudoscience and conspiracy theorizing have, upon achieving Fortean power, been unable to return with coherent findings. The Noir Skeptics have dubbed the entire phenomenon of fringe belief empowered by Fortean ability ‘the New Error’, a name which seems to be very popular with Forteans themselves.

Even the most powerful individuals and groups in the New Error have no understanding of their numbers, and there is no majority viewpoint of how their abilities work, or even a clear leading viewpoint. There is also no absolute leadership: Forteans may retain their loyalties to their original Scapes and governments, to their religious origins, embrace their new ‘community’ in conflict with all outsiders, or be purely self-interested. The New Error’s most capable individuals seem to be loosely organized as a group known as Majority Twelve, but if there are twelve individuals in this elite group only five of them are confirmed to even exist by the Noir Skeptics and the Austral Unity.

The vast majority of Forteans are regarded by observers as ‘amateurs’: individuals who have just recently gained their abilities. While the earliest users of Fortean power were inclined to quickly self-destruct the part of the New Error under Majority Twelve has organized at least to the point of streamlining the hiring process, arranging these amateurs into teams to perform their missions. The voluntary nature of this servitude is unclear and probably varies between teams. Amateur Forteans are controlled by ‘professionals’: amateurs who survived long enough to either work without a team or break the control of their previous boss. The label ‘professional’ is very non-specific, simply applying to every Fortean who is not obligated to work in a team. It seems that the vast majority of new Forteans still self-destruct, especially if they refuse to be controlled by a professional, though their destruction can now be delayed to make them more useful for the New Error as a whole.

Abilities

Any non-delusional understanding of Fortean ability will be purely empirical and case-by-case. With the vast majority of witnesses and users being insane studying Fortean phenomenon is very difficult, and to some researchers Fortean power threatens the very definition of reality, and therefore the definitions of delusion and insanity. As one authority asked, ‘If you believe something crazy, but can make things in your head real, are you still crazy?’

As a group the more religious Forteans can replicate nearly every every miracle found in scripture, with some fanatics aspiring to complete the list by launching their apocalypse. They might travel impossible distances in an instant, communicate without speech, read a person’s thoughts, or incinerate an enemy with a flash of light. Disturbingly, resurrection of the dead is an easy feat for many Forteans, even the amateurs – though this perhaps should be unsurprising on information theoretic grounds, as turning a corpse into a living body or vice versa is a smaller change of information than turning a human body into a pillar of salt or a donkey, which some Forteans can also do. As individuals they will be limited by their personal beliefs, which unfortunately grants considerably more abilities to the more fanatical believers.

Other Forteans convinced of the existence of cryptids might transform normal animals into monstrous beings, or even transform statues or drawings that they carefully prepare into powerful entities. Forteans convinced in the existence of aliens and alien-human hybrids might make themselves levitate, pass through walls, project tractor beams or destructive heat-rays, or transform conventional appliances and toys into devastatingly powerful sci-fi weapons or vehicles. A growing number of youths assimilated into the New Error ranks are either school shooters or would-be mass murderers, their manifestations being twisted tropes from action movies including slow motion and impossible martial arts skills. Forteans who were more educated and skeptical before their conversion are usually able to unmake the miracles of other Forteans and might playfully invert miracles (e.g. killing a person by turning their blood into pure water), though this period of lucidity and self-awareness might be very temporary.

Limitations

In a rare moment of clarity, the Inrisus have described the Fortean talent as ‘limited by its own lack of limitation’.

Forteans cannot simply perform any act that they might desire – the importance of belief seems obvious in the abilities manifested by particular individuals. The impact of self-realization, knowing that more beliefs will allow for more manifestations, can at once unlock more abilities in a Fortean and make them self-transform or self-destruct as they are at risk of manifesting increasingly idle, subconscious or repressed thoughts, which might also introduce limitations. This produces bizarre handicaps that are most obvious in the amateurs, with a well-known case being the Last Man Problem:

A team of Fortean amateurs might annihilate a group of human defenders with ease … but when the last defender is standing it is often the case that their attempts to kill this final individual will fail. As if operating by the rules of an action movie in which a bruised and bloody underdog finds their feet one last time to face the villain, the final defender against a group of amateur Forteans might shrug off bullets or rays or deadly miracles that killed others, might punch through armor that held against stronger blows, or find their wounds to be merely superficial – for as long as the Forteans are alive. Beyond losing their power, the Fortean amateurs often have their power turned against them in this way.

Overall, a Fortean’s subconscious expectations, guilts, reluctance or phobias can interfere with their manifestations and introduce personal limits: they might not be able to manifest their power on the Sabbath, or without a lucky token or OCD ritual, or against a person wearing some icon of a belief they hold. Manifestations made in defiance of their personal rules will be distorted and clumsy, inviting disaster.

Self-transformation is the most dangerous feat a Fortean can attempt, and while many Forteans will transform their own bodies into more powerful, monstrous or attractive forms great pains are generally made to prevent the amateurs from going deeper than superficial appearances, for Fortean power does not respect the supposed duality of mind and body; it can change a mind as well, producing a feedback loop. A Fortean might use their power to cure their alcoholism or change their sexual orientation, but this kind of tinkering is considered to be beyond-suicidal. When most Forteans self-destruct they enter into an uncontrolled feedback loop in which their manifestations change their own minds, leading to more uncontrolled manifestations, cycling faster and faster and generally resulting in a powerful but feral abomination in the shape of the Fortean’s childhood or religious fears, manifesting Jungian or Freudian attributes that can no longer be repressed.

Theories

In general, it is believed that Forteans are manipulating information at some fundamental level of reality that is inaccessible even to the quantum technology of Unity computer science. A complete sub-quantum theory of physics would probably be necessary to explain Fortean ability, and the competing interpretations of quantum mechanics result in several unfalsifiable theories about what the Forteans are ‘really’ doing when they perform their miracles.

Search engine theory

As multiple universes are known to exist in the physics of the Austral Unity, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is the default assumption for many Unity researchers. Attempting to embrace Forteana in this interpretation results in search engine theory, which has perhaps the most disturbing suggestions for the Forteans themselves.

In conventional search engine theory, Forteans are making requests to a pre-historic search engine that scans the multiverse for a universe in which their request is occurring, and then transports the Fortean to that universe. Any event with non-zero probability in the entirety of the multiverse would then be available to a Fortean, although their handling of the user interface is very imperfect. This would mean that, to the inhabitants of their original universe, the Fortean would seem to vanish, departing on a personal journey and encountering alternative versions of all the people they knew beforehand.

In a purely temporal variant of the search engine theory, in which an infinite universe appears and disappears and recreates itself over and over again with changes each cycle, the Fortean ‘engine’ is imagined to be an ultimate machine that will exist at the end of time, which scans the infinitely-long cosmic history and delivers the Fortean user to the time in the linear chain of universes where their desired manifestation already occurred.

Holographic theory

The general alternative to Fortean manifestations being found from a near-infinite set of possibilities is that they are made within a single universe. Lord Fa has described the Fortean manifestations as ‘matter-wave holographics’, and holography with the de Broglie ‘matter-wave’ would in principle be able to produce material holograms equivalent to optical or sonic holograms created with light or sound.

Simulation theory

In this proposal, the universe and even the multiverse is an artificial system running as a simulation in a computer. Forteans are inhabitants of the simulation that have been given special priveleges by a glitch or external force, allowing for the breaking of its internal laws. Forteans who subscribe to this theory generally believe that they must convert more humans to set them free, and will have disagreeing ‘visions’ of the external reality.