The Nexus
So young are his first memories, so violent are they. No child should experience what Anaxilus has experienced, especially at such a young age, but it was several decades from that tragically memorable day before he came to realize this. Prior to this realization, that memory, and others like it, existed as a relatively unremarkable, dimly lit corner of his mind, normalized but as a matter of fact—a piece of a much larger puzzle, altogether comprising a complexly compartmentalized consciousness. Although, to him, the walls of these compartments, draped in the dismal tapestries of trauma, protect him as much from the outside world as do they, indeed, make him an outsider within it.
His mind has always served as an observatory, the nexus of a whole other universe within a universe, from which he observes the world from a tightly guarded vantage point—so guarded, in fact, his emotions scarcely can escape it, leading people to often misunderstand his motives, and, therefore, his actions. But, this nexus is his safe haven, one to which he has so often retreated that it has grown difficult for him to distinguish between the real world and his own; rather, it is more accurate to say that he has gradually just stopped caring to make such a distinction, given the pain he has endured within our world. Would that he could altogether replace our world with his own.
He is under no delusions, nor possessed of any hallucinations, however. He but applies layers upon layers of cognitive models to the reality in which you and I exist, so as to more comfortably navigate it: a massive accumulation of systems data overtime, juxtaposed onto our reality, his memories functioning as a constant feedback loop stretching all the way back to that very first memory; though, it is not a photographic memory, only biographical. It it something of an unbroken chain of events actively constructing a narrative within spacetime, one constantly restructuring itself in order to incorporate new data into old memories, abandoning obsolete models and constructs in lieu of those granting a greater understanding, allowing a more refined perspective of both the past and present, as for him, the two exist as one.
This is by no means a perfect, harmonious process, and certainly not one without great cost. It weighs heavily, consumes excessively, always feeling as if one exists within a temporal whirlwind of emotion forging snap connections between the past and the present, forcing them into a singular, existential perspective. Indeed, there are many days when it is fair to say that his mind exists more in the past than in the present, reserving only those minimal faculties necessary to navigate the physical world.
Meanwhile, his consciousness resides in the Nexus: a realm existing beyond the reach of any human, beyond all spacetime—well, as we know it, anyway. It is there his soul prefers to remain, majority of the time, no longer at all interested in this world and, furthermore, ever desperately searching for souls akin to that of his own. Though, the Nexus is as much a prison as it is an escape, and should this prison ever fail, it is difficult to say who is in greater danger: him, or us.
