Voyage at the Centre of the Universe: a Fractal Odyssey

In this visual journey inside a fractal I am going to take you deep down the rabbit hole, make you explore depths and wonders that defy imagination, and perhaps even challenge your vision of reality. We’ll sail together on a magical ship through the waves of space and time, like modern Argonauts looking for gold… Will we ever reach our destination? Only the brave who take the journey will know what the future holds. I can give you a hint though: at the end of this fractal odissey the mysterious words of the song ’39 by Brian May might make a lot of sense… may they be auspicious for our journey! 🙂

Here the ship’s log begins…

Once upon a time, in a colorfoul fractal space, I found a hole that goes down deep, so far that is beyond imagination. That hole is the big one you can see on the top half of this pic. Come join me like a modern argonaut in this journey inside the fractal, let's explore its depths, see were it leads, and whether we can find some light at the end of the tunnel.

A photo posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Sep 24, 2015 at 7:58am PDT

DAY 1. As we dive deep inside the rabbit hole, we notice it is an apparently endless tunnel that travels through spiral dimensional layers. There are strange horizontal lines everywhere, like a psychedelic interference on a cosmic tv screen. What can they be? It's not something you would expect to see in a fractal… let's move our ship closer!

A photo posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Sep 24, 2015 at 10:46am PDT

DAY 2. Our ship got closer to those strange lines we noticed yesterday. They look almost like barcodes from here, but while we were approaching they kept changing shapes, presenting irregularities, like they were broken lines of codes. All around us myriads of beautiful spiral holes that look like flowers with tentacles. They attract us with their gravity, but it's more like they are trying to suck us. Since they are literally all around us, we can escape the attraction and find a safe route only by aiming to travel at equal distance from opposite holes. If you get too close to a hole you will soon find yourself inside it as we experienced 5 times. We are kind of getting lost already…

A photo posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Sep 25, 2015 at 8:52am PDT

DAY 3. Today we decided to take a risk and move our ship closer to the field of attraction of those holes. As we got closer, the colored horizontal lines kept on mutating, in a way that led two members of the crew to swear they saw messages in them. This is the closest we could get before, once again, one of the holes sucked us in. We are now officially lost, as it's lost our hope to find a way back. But the spirits keep being high in the crew, as the mariners of Columbus we were all aware this could have been a one way journey to an uncertain promised land…

A photo posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Sep 26, 2015 at 8:00am PDT

DAY 4. Lost as we are inside a tunnel that leads to infinite tunnels, inside the ship the bewilderment of the crew is thankfully rivaled by the excitement for the marvels that keep on manifesting in front of our eyes. The myriad of lines that surround this endless spiral of black holes sometimes give the impression of being lines of code, or words. One member of the crew suggested that we may be traveling inside the mind of God… These visions have been reported by 3 people so far, but we have been unable to capture evidence on camera so we dismissed them as hallucinations. Today is to be reported as an exciting day filled with hope though: we finally found a hole that seems different from the others. As you can see there is a strange line pointing inside the big hole, which we never witnessed before. Clueless and lost as we are, we all agreed to take it as a sign to follow and headed our ship towards that black hole.

A photo posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Sep 27, 2015 at 5:40am PDT

DAY 5. The strange line we saw yesterday, which we took as a sign to follow, vanished as soon as our ship approached the hole and we found ourselves once again totally lost. Inside this new hole the landscape is consistent with what we witnessed so far but our computer spotted an anomaly in frequency on the point you see indicated by the arrow. Unfortunately we couldn't get closer to observe that interference or else we would have entered the field of attraction of another hole. But we are processing a magnification of that point where the interference was spotted with the hope of getting some clue.

A photo posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Sep 28, 2015 at 6:44am PDT

DAY 5 (Part 2). We magnified the previous pic on the point where our computer spotted the anomaly. I can hardly express how much this picture left us speechless. We basically found evidence of human writing… inside a fractal! The writing is in Italian, it reads "Cerca Trova" ("Seek Find"). The computer confirmed the calligraphy is from Leonardo da Vinci (!) This finding defied our reason like nothing else so far. The most cool and rational within the crew, those who always had an explanation for everything, this time remained silent and you could see in their eyes how much their mind was shaken. On the other side those who in the previous days reported sights we dismissed as hallucinations were full of excitement because they finally could demonstrate that they were not the crazy ones. Two people even got on their knees and started to pray… Whatever we are in, it has an intelligence of its own and is trying to communicate with us.

A photo posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Sep 28, 2015 at 8:15am PDT

DAY 24. Back from 19 days of black out. Our ship's computer has been sabotaged by one member of the crew. We had to face a riot, it has been difficult to regain control of the ship. There has been blood, but no one was killed. It's difficult to express how much this electrical landscape we are immersed in is challenging our brains, causing all sort of hallucinations, and ultimately spreading mad superstitions among the crew, which caused the riot. We finally repaired the computer and I can update the journal, which would have been rather depressive in the past couple of weeks, both because of the events inside the ship, both because after the great hope after finding the writing of Leonardo "cerca trova" inside the fractal space we have been as lost as ever. The marvellous and hypnotic rabbit hole we are in has lost its power to excite us and as the days went by it became endlessly monotonous and repetitive, as well as terribly silent. We are losing hope of finding our way, the fear of being lost for eternity is raising and is shaking the minds of the most loyal and rational within the crew. We desperately need another sign…

A photo posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Oct 17, 2015 at 6:51am PDT

DAY 34. After 10 very difficult days, when hope was lost and madness was widely infecting our minds, we finally found another message inside the rabbit hole! From the monotonous and endlessly repetitive fractal space another intelligent sign emerged: the Google logo plus a visual artwork. Our computer identified it as "Journey to the West" by a mysterious Italian artist called Barabeke, a freak who claims to be a "messenger of an extravagant theory about the origin and nature of the universe". There seems to be no relation at all between Google and this guy, which adds even more question marks in our already puzzled minds. No matter how strange the sight, the excitement that brought to us was comparable to the one of a thirsty explorer who after a long and lonesome journey in the desert finally spots an oasis. Without second thoughts we directed our ship closer to the artwork, which we'll be exploring in detail.

A photo posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Oct 27, 2015 at 11:37am PDT

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DAY 35. As our ship got closer to the artwork we found inside the fractal space, we noticed a mysterious doll holding a ball of purple energy with a heart and a cross inside it. As soon as we stopped to observe it, the image started to mutate and all sort of creatures began to arise from it, almost as it was a dream created with Google’s Deep Dream Generator. Soon we found ourselves sucked in that dream full of organic forms with alien eyes all around watching us. It was almost like an evolution in reverse, we went from primates, to reptiles, and finally we reached the insect stage where we found strange bugs whose body seemed to be in part mechanical. In the eye of one of these bugs there was an azure light. As we got closer, that light revealed itself to be the scariest vision we had so far: an eerie creature, some sort of a ghost made of fractals whose power of attraction we could not escape….

DAY 41. As we approached the fractal ghost we found in the last update, a field of attraction located in the ghost's head started to suck us in and we entered what seemed to be the creature's third eye, which revealed to be a dark endless tunnel. We have been lost inside this tunnel for the past 6 days, never losing the hope that we will reach the end of it and find an answer to our journey…

A video posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Nov 3, 2015 at 3:33pm PST

DAY 42. After one week we finally reached the end of the tunnel and we found ourselves in this landscape, free at last from the field of attraction of the fractal ghost we are in and able again to control the ship and choose our direction. We noticed a strange asymmetry in the landscape, the dot you see on top, slightly on the left side. That's where we are going next as we have no other option than following what is calling our attention…

A photo posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Nov 4, 2015 at 5:14am PST

DAY 43. As we approached that strange dot we spotted yesterday it soon revealed to be another fractal ghost, this time resembling a mysterious lady wearing a hood. Once again we got sucked in the head of the creature and we found ourself inside another tunnel, going deeper and deeper towards an uncertain destination, "deeper" being the only direction we can follow as our hope to find a way back is long lost…

A video posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Nov 5, 2015 at 1:58pm PST

DAY 44. Did we reach the end of the rabbit hole? What is this BIG LOL we found at the end of the tunnel and what's inside of it?!?

A video posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Nov 6, 2015 at 6:14am PST

DAY 45. We reached our destination. What we found at the end of the rabbit hole is these 10 commandments which we take as message for the new generations. As soon as we captured them the rainbow colors turned into a bright light, then into a round opening that sucked us in, through which we saw some of the beautiful things that heaven bears. And thence we came forth to see again the stars.

A photo posted by Barabeke (@barabeke) on Nov 7, 2015 at 7:26am PST

This concludes our magical journey. I hope you enjoyed it and will treasure the words we found and the end of the rabbit hole. These Ten Commandments for the Digital Millennium are my heritage for the new generations.