2020-03-07 K. Malcolm Lawson's Awakening

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## Summary

In this Prelude scene, which happened about three years before the beginning of play, Kenneth Malcolm Lawson was on his way to the most important test of his life to date: His Law School Assessment Test, the dreaded LSAT. On his way to the Testing Facility, Malcolm, contemplating the Philosophical concept of *Divine Logos* - Universal Law - which was a concept that Malcolm always found appealing, and saw evidence of the world conforming to his belief, as if it was indeed the case. Almost arriving late to the Testing Center, Malcolm began the test, but as the test proceeds, Malcolm's increasing awareness that the Universe truly *was* ordered by an unseen, unknown, but discoverable and comprehensible sublime order, nothing at all felt random to him anymore. Seeing the patterns within the patterns in everything around him. Malcolm turned the epiphany of this deeper truth to his advantage in taking the test itself, deducing the patterns behind the answers, enabling him to find even the most occluded truths in the pattern beneath all patterns. Though the Epiphany faded when the test was over, its essential lesson remained, and Malcolm's perspective of the world has never since been the same.

## Log

> **Janothar**Malcolm has never been as nervous as he is this morning. He's never had more riding on one day that he has on today. Today...is the day he takes the LSAT. He HAS to do well, his entire plan depends on it. He needs to do well on the LSAT, get into a good school, become a lawyer...and from then, on to life. In a sense, when he finishes law school, his life will begin, and that entire phase, the metamorphosis from college student to lawyer, depends on his performance today.**K. Malcolm Lawson**Indeed, Malcolm had spent more time preparing for this test than any other in his life, yet all the preparation in the world felt like none at all. Too much at stake, he slept poorly, and to calm his racing heart and frayed nerves, he had built in time to his schedule to meditate before he left for the exam. Folding his legs underneath him, in the lotus position, Malcolm rested his hands on his knees, closed his eyes and focused on nothing but his breathing.**Janothar**Meditation eludes him today, unfortunately. Try as he might, obscure decisions, weird special cases, all the things that he's most afraid will show up just keep pushing their way in. Worst of all, there's a pattern to them. He's sure of it. From past exams, from practices...it FEELS like there's a pattern, but he can't quite see it.**K. Malcolm Lawson**With a sigh, Malcolm opened his eyes, allowing himself to come back to the present space and time. His sight rested on a book of philosophy on his shelf containing the writings of Heraclitus. A favorite quote of his rose without bidding to his mind. "Listen not to me, but to reason, it is wise to agree that all is one." He shook his head. "If only there was one universal law, it would make for a lot less to memorize, and a lot fewer precedents." Getting up from the floor, he grabbed his messenger bag, checking to make sure he had all his paperwork for the exam, his keys, his wallet, his phone, and his metro pass. He had plenty of time to get there, and the metro station was only a few blocks away. Taking one last look around the apartment, he prepared to head out the door.**Janothar**When he gets down to the street, things seem...not different, but his interpretation of them is different. The people moving, the traffic lights, it all seems to be pointing towards some universal law, just like he would desire, some rational construct that determines how everyone is moving, where they are going, and why.**K. Malcolm Lawson**Fascinated, Malcolm slowed his pace slightly, considering the pattern within the randomness. The lights controlled the movement of crowds and cars, that was based on predictable timing, but the flow of the people and the vehicles, that should have been more random, as should the composition of the crowd. Yet he could almost predict the next movements, almost before they happened. The pattern was unsettlingly obvious, as if ordered by some unseen hand. Was Malcolm just seeing what he hoped was true about the world, or just experiencing a bout of wishful thinking. Going with the flow of the people, he followed the crowd down into the metro station.**Janothar**Even the lateness of the Metro seems to be logical, even if the reasoning behind it is beyond him. His Philosophy courses spring to mind, and he can't help but wonder if he's staring at the shadows on the wall of a cave, and what it would take to just turn his head ever so slightly to glimpse the truth...**K. Malcolm Lawson**Thinking somewhat literally about that, Malcolm turned his head to look behind himself on the platform, looking towards the people coming down to the platform as he boarded the metro car.**Janothar**Whatever insight he felt like he was on the verge of, it's suddenly gone. On the other hand, that leaves more room for legal trivia, and he does have the LSAT in...wait, how much time did he spend watching? He's going to be late if he doesn't hurry!**K. Malcolm Lawson**Taking the platform as his destination at a bit of a run, he silently willed the crowd to part slightly for him, if only that he could make slightly better time. Malcolm chided himself for his leisurely pace earlier, it had burned most of the extra time he had built into his day, and the metro being late took much of the rest. He had to break the unwritten rule of moving through a crowd, and be in a hurry. Excusing himself to push past every person in his path, Malcolm made his way out of the metro towards the testing center as quickly as he could.**Janothar**He agitates people, quite a bit. But on the other hand, New Yorkers are used to people in a hurry, and know how to handle this. He manages to get onto the last Metro that will get him to the LSAT on time, just barely, and then he has to run a bit to get to the testing center. Just great, he's going to be a bit sweaty for all this, and he's out of breath when he gets there, but they're seating the students, and the people in charge look very annoyed at him, but he's still on time, so they seat him for the exam.**K. Malcolm Lawson**Breathing a sigh of relief, Malcolm lays out his test materials and prepares to take the exam. The testing anxiety has subsided somewhat, and it is time to begin.**Janothar**They set him up and he gets on with the exam. It's brutal, the hardest test he's ever had in his life, by far. He can hear one student a few desks away start crying.**K. Malcolm Lawson**Malcolm does not succumb to the pressure. It is just a test, like so many others he has conquered to get this far. The stakes may be high, but the rewards are within reach, and the pattern . . . the pattern . . . The more questions he went through, the more he could see it. The obviously wrong answers were easy to see, the attractive distractors stood out as such, and the almost - right answers fell away, leaving the only, correct answer obvious. With each question, the pattern unfolded more and more, and the right answers came faster and faster. How Malcolm was seeing it, he did not know, but there WAS a pattern, and he could see it clearly!**Janothar**That pattern is real, he's seeing the answers in strange correspondences, not just in the law. When there's an answer he's unsure of, he looks up, and sees it in the pattern of hair colors throughout the room, in the sounds of the pencils scratching, in the eddies of the HVAC system. He sees it all, reflections of a single unifying higher law, and the fact that As Above, So Below...a phrase so many philosophers he's read have come back to, again and again.**K. Malcolm Lawson**As Above, So Below Those words appeared not just in the works of the philosophers, but of the occultists, the scholars of things hidden and unknown, and those works too had spoken of a single, unifying Law under Heaven, and to understand the law is to be able to apply it to change the world, to use it to bend the world to their will, and understanding this principle and applying it, even to the questions at the very end where the questions concerned areas of law wholly unknown to him, Malcolm could easily see the patterns all around him, and draw upon the One Principle underlying them all. As Above, So Below Conforming his thoughts to the pattern, the right answers became obvious, and he completed the exam, certain beyond all doubt that he has succeeded.**Janothar**After the exam ends, he's more exhausted than he has ever been in his life. But he's also confident that he aced it...he never expected to be this confident about the LSAT. He'd been worried he might need to try more than once, like so many people. He finally exits the exam, and suddenly that insight is gone. Everything seems to be back to normal...but having had the insight still means that everything is different.