What if the world only stayed put while you watched it? You see a plain. You blink, are distracted, or something blocks your view — and it has been replaced by a mountain. What if even people aren't safe? If you lose sight of your travelling companions, they can be whisked away to somewhere you can never find them.
Welcome to the Flux: a force that surrounds our realm, lapping at its edges.
It's not pure chaos. Instead, it has an underlying framework that borrows from quantum mechanics. When the world is unobserved, it exists in a state similar to superposition. Every possibility is true all at once. The moment you look, these possibilities collapse down into a single reality. There is no way to know which one it will be in advance.
The Flux and the Persistence
At the centre of the lands of the Persistence, things aren't affected. There, the world functions much as ours does. If today two lefts take you to your local tavern, then tomorrow two lefts will have you return there.
But this is a luxury. It takes a constant drip of stability, and the objects that let it seep in are few and valuable. What they project is a resource that is carefully managed (how this works, and what the Persistence is, will be the focus of other essays).
As you travel away from the centre, this stability shrinks. Initially the effects of this are subtle. A tree has moved a few metres. A comrade you thought was right beside you is suddenly on the other side of a field.
Then, as you get further out, the Flux becomes stronger. The tree, the mountain, your companions, all might vanish if you look away. At this point, speaking about direction also becomes meaningless. Because if what is ahead of you and behind you shifts, then so does your position and orientation within it.
Once you're in the deep Flux, you exist within a bubble of collapsed reality. Beyond its edge everything exists at the same time in the same place. Asking 'where am I within the Flux' is our minds applying our mental models onto an alien world. The question not only has no answer but is, according to some philosophers, meaningless to begin with.
Attention
Since attention collapses possibilities, the Flux can be partially tamed if you're able to pay continuous attention to it. This is not easy. The mind wanders. When it does, the world will wander with it.
That is not to imply that people can decide how the Flux wanders. The Flux doesn't care where your attention goes. Only that it does.
Keep people in your attention and your bubble overlaps with theirs. You exist within a single shared reality. The moment your attention no longer overlaps, those bubbles don't either. And within the deep Flux, when there is even a hair's breadth of un-collapsed space between you, all space is between you. You are adrift and there is no way to find your way back.
Note that attention here does not mean just sight. All senses can be used to collapse the Flux. Though not all to the same level. Holding somebody's hand will fix them in place. Similarly, the sound of a voice or a drum they're playing, or a strong body odour, can keep them anchored. Even memory has a weak effect.
As far as anybody can tell, attention must come from a conscious, self-aware entity. Machines and magical devices can't replicate this effect.
Communities use it to survive out near the edge. It is not an easy life. It requires both serious adjustments and sacrifices. But it is possible.
Living on the Edge
If you're going to live close to something that shifts things outside of your attention, then anything that blocks attention is dangerous. That means walls are out unless you're willing to invest the attention to have people constantly look around them. The same goes for objects, like cupboards, trees and forges, that block sight. And where do you store things? Things stacked too high are a hazard. Store them out of sight and they won't be there when you need them.
In other words, you can only have a very small collection of things. Hoarding is dangerous. Anything that isn't essential has to go.
Nor is the effect only physical. For example, since attention is what keeps everybody together, privacy goes out the (non-existent) window. Being alone means nobody is watching you, and you're not watching anybody else.
Nor is your disappearance just a problem for you. Attention is a valuable resource. The more people pay attention, the less likely something within that community vanishes. Those who want privacy threaten that.
Among edge communities, wanting to be alone has become something sinful.
Attention is something you spend on those you care about. Because looking away endangers the person you're looking away from. So you look at them. Not just occasionally, but always. No matter what they're doing. Going to the toilet, arguing, sex. All are watched, and all are expected to be watched.
Then there's sleep. As attention depends on consciousness, there is nothing more dangerous in the Flux than losing it. So sleep is feared and heavily regulated. Whenever somebody sleeps, others must hold them in their attention. Here it's not weird to have people watch you as you sleep. It's far more worrying if you wake up and nobody is.
Sleep in the Flux must be done in shifts with some people always watching the others. This is a drain on attention as people who watch through the night must sleep themselves and be watched in turn.
Since attention is so valuable, it is honed and trained by the people who live here and becomes a measure of their worth.
The Flux as a Resource
Large-scale land use is nearly impossible unless you can keep it under constant surveillance. This means farming is out. So is herding and digging underground. Activities that rely on big objects, like smithing, are more expensive as they require extra watchers.
But it's not all bad news. Waste disposal, for one. Just carry it out beyond the town limit, walk away, and it's no longer your problem.
Foraging is also easier than in a stable world. There is no risk of overforaging a region and therefore no need to move on. Instead, you stay in one place and let the Flux bring things to you. All you need to do is go out with a group to the edge of your attention and see what's there. Don't like what you're finding? Turn your back collectively and see what you'll find next when you look again.
Sure, you don't know what you'll find. It might be useless. It might be dangerous. It often won't be what you need. But it will be something.
Except sometimes something isn't enough. You might be dying of thirst and find no water. And if the entire world's flora and fauna might show up, it's hard to know what you can't eat or how to prepare what you can.
Nor is trying again and again without its risks. The landscapes you find might have poisonous plants and animals, hidden crevices, or other dangers.
The edge communities have found a way to deal with them.
Spread the Wager
If you don't need what you find, it doesn't mean somebody else won't. And the more groups interact with the Flux, the more likely somebody will find what you need. That's why Flux communities keep strong ties with their neighbours.
This does come with a few of its own problems. The biggest is that both the other community and the path towards them must always be kept in view. Perhaps you have a set of watchtowers that watch the road between your community and theirs. Or perhaps you build your community by a high spire from where you can watch other communities and they can see you.
Yes, it costs attention. The people who watch the other community can't focus on something else as well. But what you receive in return is worth it.
What you receive is the ability to get what you need or give what you don't. It isn't quite trade, as that implies the direct exchange of goods. Sometimes it does work that way. But just as often it's a network of carefully tracked favours that allow goods to move to where they're needed. This might seem counterintuitive. If the person who owes you a favour disappears, so does your favour. But the alternative is to store value in physical objects. And objects, as we now know, require constant attention to avoid losing them to the Flux. In comparison, favours aren't quite so bad.
Goods can end up moving quite a distance. When every community keeps ties with at least two other communities, you end up with a giant network. And if one end is anchored to the stable centre where industry is possible, then found materials flow from the Flux inwards while manufactured goods flow the other way. Suddenly, that amber you just found is worth collecting as somebody somewhere in the network will want it.
Nor is maintaining those networks quite as hard as it might first appear. In a stable world, the spaces between communities are where you grow your food, mine your metals and collect your wood. So these areas need to be large.
That's not the case in the Flux.
Here communities just need to be far enough apart that there is space between them for the land to transform. That means shorter roads and fewer people needed to maintain them. And moving between communities takes far less time — a big advantage for trade and communication.
Short travel times cut both ways. Anything intent on conquering, eating, or infecting you finds the road between communities just as short.
It Just Gets Weirder
That's quite a few consequences flowing from this one idea. But the truth is, we're only just scratching the surface. That's because a phenomenon like this doesn't just affect lives, culture, and economics but how people function on a fundamental level. People who are raised here are different. Ideas we take for granted, they never learn.
Take the game of peekaboo. Babies find this game amazing because they're not yet sure about 'object permanence' or whether you'll come back when you drop your hands. Then, as they become used to you always coming back, the game loses its appeal.
But on the edge of the Flux, babies are right to be amazed. Certainty is weaker. That change cascades through how the mind develops. For some, attachment becomes filled with anxiety. Others simply put less value in things, people, or even their own lives. Goodbyes are more poignant. Losing sight of important people is an existential threat. Working towards long-term goals — a cornerstone of modern life — is largely meaningless.
Other big questions include, what does the Flux and the importance of attention do to memory? How does it affect our sense of community? What would a species that spends a lot of time in the Flux be like? Or what about one that's native to it?
What about trust? It becomes both harder to give and more important. Harder because people are likelier to disappear and therefore not fulfil their promises. More important because you rely on others to keep the people and things you love within their attention and thereby tied to the community.
Then there's how it changes morality. Yes, murder is still terrible. But what about theft? It is still bad, but with object permanence undermined, maybe not quite so bad. Besides, how can you steal if you're always being watched?
Attention itself becomes a moral quality. Those who can focus well are considered moral. Those who get distracted are both immoral and dangerous.
And when a moral model shifts, so does the whole society built upon it. What that society looks like, and what growing up in it does to a mind, is the next essay.