Cycle

## Disambiguation

The Cycle [possible] is the most metaphysical thing in the FOG Universe. It is when the idea of the 16 being the Silent.

## Process

It starts with the first people existing. Then, after time passes, the 16 are born. They defeat the Silent, then become small gods that have creative power. Eventually, they become the most powerful beings in the universe, and end up causing the extinction of other races. This makes them like an antagonist in the overall story, due to their power, even though their intention is to preserve the human race. After thousands of years being in space and learning about the universe, a new race of species is born that are new humans. The 16 then try to remove that race, and they are actually perceived as nonphysical auras by the new humans. So, the 16 are now the Silent, because they use their powers to contrast the new humans by attempting to replace their positive characteristics with negative ones; here, positive and negative doesn't mean good and bad, but stand as opposites. For example, if the new humans have darkness inside them, the new Silent have light. The new humans eventually create descendants of the 16 again, and they're the exact same people as The Silent. There's no explanation for this yet, however it could be because the Silent are unbounded by time, and can exist in two places. What happens is a cycle in which The Silent try to stop the 16, who are actually themselves.

At some instance of the cycle, Eli or Stacey realizes what's happening. This is after the God Saga. The thing is, it seems like they can't actually stop it because it's inevitable. The problem with this concept is that it centralizes the 16 as the only thing in the entire universe that actually matters, basically meaning there are only 16 beings that ever even existed in the history of the Universe, and making everyone else irrelevant overall.

The solution is the following concept: that the 16 were placed in an instance loop by something greater than themselves; possibly the characters in Stacey's dreams. And then when they break this loop, they can actually directly work with the original humans, wait until they are born, and then work with themselves, but as the Silent. When this happens, they accept the Silents and gain complete power over everything in the Universe, regardless if the power is negative or positive. This was seen earlier, for example, in Stacey's story when she can remove life from others--effectively killing them.

This idea is a bit confusing, so to illustrate it, imagine an apple seed. This seed can grow into a tree, and make more apples. It's like the apple has creative power. Now imagine that a bunch of worms come along and eat the apples and the trees that the apple makes. Taking Stacey as our example, the seed represents Stacey's power to create, while the worms represent the Silent. However, Stacey can also command the worms to eat the apples if she wants to. Regardless of whether she plants seeds or commissions the worms, there is a subtraction of or addition of apples depending on which one she is doing at the moment. This is the tension between the Silent and the humans' power. The Silents can exist if humans allow, wherever they allow, but then the opposite entity can't exist in the same place and time. Stacey was never controlled by the Silent, but she can use the Silence of death by removing life from something. But she can't actually have control of the Silent. Ironically, the Silent of Death is her...or so she thinks. See next section.

When the Silent work with the future humans, they come to an agreement, where the Silents are now partners with the new humans. In other words, in Stacey's example, the Silent of Death is working with her now, so if Death agrees, she can send it out--so now when Death occupies whatever time, space, etc., life will leave. This has the same result effectively as removing life, however it means something else. See next section.

## Out of the Cycle

Once the Silent and the new humans (future Stacey, Thomas, etc.) work together to remove the cycle. So when the time in history comes where the 16 normally war against the Silent, they don't. Instead the 16 become gods and the cycle doesn't repeat. There aren't any new humans. Here is where the real trouble comes.

The real enemy of the FOG Universe are the Dreamers (colloquial) who are the race the ruled before humans came. Basically, the humans were a threat to them. They saw this, and instituted the Cycle to keep humans in a loop with themselves and not overpower them. Now that they were expanding into the Universe, they were about to over power them, so the Dreamers come to eliminate humans with one Silent which they took from existence, which hasn't been known by anyone. It has an unknown name, as it is a concept that isn't explainable to humans. Basically, it is a dimension other than time, and space. By taking the Silent into their control, humanity never knew it's opposite existed. But with this Silent they can remove the humans and Silents completely.

Here is the final twist: The Silents are not the 16 as godly auras but are controlled by the 16 who were gods. They knew this all along, and fooled the dreamers. And they told their human selves later. A godly war ensues and the 16 win as gods.