Meditations on Immortality, Part 6: The Lotus Gambit

Welcome back to this series on immortality and perfection! If you haven’t read the previous articles, check them out below:

Part 1: The Paradox of Perfection

Part 2: Fractals & Infinity

Part 3: Swordsmanship & Perfection

Part 4: Alchemy & the Magnum Opus

Part 5: The Horrors of Eternal Life

In Part 5, we talked about what it might feel like to experience eternal life without preparing one’s mind for the vastness of eternity. To sum up:

“…I believe the human experience of immortality would require a person to face both eternity (ie, endless time) and infinity (ie, endless space), which compose a reality whose horizons are far broader than the normal human mind can deal with, since the human mind is accustomed to a myopic view that is best suited to dealing with day-to-day life and limited lifespans. 

“These illusions and misapprehensions create a false view of the self that is exposed and eroded when facing eternity. Eternity may seem like a destructive force, but it’s actually a revelatory one. However, when the mind is not willing to admit the truth, it’s the formula for a psychotic break.”

Tied up with the ideas of immortality, eternity, and infinity is perfection, and it’s imperfections that eternity reveals: imperfections in one’s worldview, sense of self, and more.

This is interesting to think and read about, but there’s a difference between philosophizing and writing stories. In this essay, I want to talk about how all of these ideas are distilled into a story (and some worldbuilding).

Black Heaven & The Paper Lotus Problem

The first big project released by the Occult Triangle Lab was Black Heaven: A Necromantic Dating Sim (you can read about it here). In Black Heaven, a former scholar of immortality named Uzo returns to his old academy of Itzon, which now lies in ruins, to collect the ghosts of his former classmates. 

Over the course of the narrative, Uzo relives his memories of his time at Itzon, including meeting his mentor Ru Okazi. During the meeting, they have this exchange:

   Ru: “…one of the interesting things I discovered when studying here was…the ‘paper lotus problem…The idea is that when you fold a paper lotus, you will never perfectly align the folds, and each flaw will have…a ripple effect on the next fold.”

   Ru:  “In the end, one flaw can change the outcome of the entire lotus. If you know how, you can see, or at least recognize, a person by the flaws in their lotuses…”

    Ru: “…because those flaws reflect their individual soul, as expressed through their—their physical form.”

    “She quickly folds the lotus, smoothing the creases and rotating the paper as you watch. Finally, a pristine paper flower rests on the desk.”

    “You inspect the flower from different angles, trying to spot some kind of asymmetry.”

    Uzo: “It looks perfect.”

    Ru: “But it’s not! If you magnified your…your vision, you’d see the tiny imperfections. The more you magnify it, the bigger those flaws would seem.”

    Uzo: “Well, can anyone fold a perfect lotus?”

    Ru: “That’s the important question.”

Everything Ru is talking about is grounded in the previous parts of this series: perfection and imperfection, the microcosm and macrocosm, levels of magnification, etc.

Both Ru and Uzo are scholars seeking to master the art of immortality, and so the topic of perfection intersects everything they do.

What’s especially important is that the scene introduces the thesis that our flaws and imperfections are what make us unique individuals.

Working from this idea, as well as the previously established ideas about perfection and imperfection, I came up with this chain of reasoning:

1. Flaws, or deviations from perfection, are what make people into distinct individuals.
2. Each person’s flaws manifest in everything they do, from the way they talk to the way they think.
3. If you could reduce the complexity of a person’s self to geometric shapes, you could measure the deviations of those shapes from perfection and thereby quantify a person’s self.
4. If you can quantify a person’s self, you could potentially determine what they would do in a given situation.
5. If you placed that person into a situation where their freedom of choice is limited to a relatively small number of options, you could perfectly predict their actions.

The “paper lotus problem” gets elaborated on later in the story, when Ru and Uzo are playing a chess-like game called dogen, which was devised for Black Heaven.

Dogen & The Lotus Gambit

In dogen, players control five pieces and attempt to capture their opponent’s “master” piece by moving their own pieces according to patterns printed on two cards, which are chosen at the beginning of the game.

Here’s what the game looks like:

While playing dogen in the story, someone asks if Uzo and Ru are playing the Lotus Gambit, which causes Uzo to ask: “What’s the Lotus Gambit?”

Ru explains to Uzo that the Gambit is a special way of playing dogen—it’s essentially a bid to demonstrate that you’re a master of not only the game, but of your opponent.

The Gambit works like this:

Uzo and Ru sit down to play dogen. Ru asks Uzo to fold a paper lotus. Uzo does so and hands the lotus to Ru, who unfolds it and inspects the folds, paying attention to their asymmetry and deviations from the ideal pattern.

Based on the aggregate of the deviations and imperfections, Ru gets a sense of Uzo’s personality: whether he’s cautious or aggressive, willing to take chances or think laterally, and so on.

Based on specific flaws in the lotus, Ru can gain a sharper picture of Uzo’s character, allowing Ru to more accurately predict Uzo’s moves.

Ru blindfolds herself and plays the game of dogen without seeing the pieces.

If the Ru wins, she has won the Lotus Gambit.

In effect, reading an opponent’s lotus is similar to palmistry, where you’re reading a person’s personality in the lines of their palm. But while palmistry uses the contours of the hand to reveal the influences of astrological bodies (like Mars or the Moon) on the person’s soul and future, the Lotus is using the geometry of origami to capture an impression of the person’s soul, then translate that knowledge into predictions of how they will play a game.

The Gambit was partly inspired by my reading into chess players and history, including the matches between Gary Kasparov and Deep Blue. Chess is a “perfect information” game, where all the potential moves are available for both players to see—there’s no hidden hand like poker, and there’s no random chance, like dice. The only unknown is the opponent and what they’re going to do.

But chess is strange. Despite being a game that seems suited to cold, objective analysis, many high-level players still rely on assessments of their opponents’ personalities, which come through in their playstyle: some players are more risk-averse, some are bold, and some can be conniving. Even the pauses a player takes before moving can be revealing.

On top of that, the game is filled with stories of master players using mind games to wear down their opponents or lead them in a desired direction. Mikhail Tal famously said:

“You must take your opponent into a deep, dark forest where 2+2=5 and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.”

All of this describes a game where one’s perception and personality have as much influence over the outcome of the game as analysis.

That made me think: if there was a way to know your chess opponent intimately, inside and out, there would be no unknowns. With that knowledge and some skill, you would be able to beat your opponent in chess without fail, because you would know their every move before they did. 

Thus the Lotus Gambit was born.

Tying the Lotus Into Storytelling & Character

I want to return to the idea that a person’s flaws make them into a unique individual. This idea is partly inspired by something I learned in my creative writing courses: to make a character realistic, three-dimensional, and convincing, their personality should be built on a contradiction, some internal tension between conflicting parts of themselves.

An example might be Jimmy McGill from Better Call Saul. Jimmy struggles with two conflicting drives: to be an honest lawyer who earns his brother’s respect, and to abuse his power as a lawyer to indulge his hunger for respect, success, and revenge. This conflict is embodied in the two names he uses: Jimmy McGill and Saul Goodman.

Bringing together two opposites isn’t just a narrative trick—it’s another theme that’s been explored in this essay series, particularly in Part 4, when talking about alchemy. Each person is struggling to reconcile the conflicting forces within themselves, and when they reach that reconciliation, they become whole, perfect.

The philosopher and mystic Giordano Bruno phrases it like this in his work The Heroic Frenzies:

“…vice consists in this, that a thing deviates from its own nature whose perfection consists in unity; and the composition of virtue is at the point where the contraries unite.”

But until that unity and perfection within the self is achieved, there remains an imbalance, an imperfection. It’s that imbalance that, narratively, drives a character to change, to desire, and to seek something outside themselves. The best stories are usually based on that drive.

During his time at Itzon, Uzo is struggling with two conflicting urges: to present himself honestly and authentically (and thus prove that he is worthy of respect and love), and to deceive and manipulate others in order to ensure he can get what he wants (respect, success, and love). 

For Uzo, learning to read others’ lotuses is a tempting prospect because he can learn about his friends’ flaws and vulnerabilities, which give him the chance to manipulate them. However, Uzo does not spend much time examining his own lotus, since it would force him to face the truth that his reliance on deception and trickery reveals his own imperfections: cowardice, egotism, and self-deception.

The flaws, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses of Black Heaven’s characters, as expressed in their lotuses, take center stage when Uzo encounters his friends’ ghosts, since each of the ghosts’ forms reflects their obsessions, guilt, fears, or insecurities.

For example, the ghost of Izagi Ito takes the form of a powerful, faceless, many-armed monster wielding weapons. Izagi’s ghostly form evokes power and elegance, reflecting the more disciplined and stoic side of personality, but the ghost’s temperament and patchwork of self-inflicted cuts reflect the other side of Izagi’s personality: frustrated, volatile, and self-destructive.

Although Uzo doesn’t outright play the Lotus Gambit against all his friends, the Gambit becomes a metaphor for a number of key themes: how immortality and perfection are tied together, how our imperfections shape us, and how sharing vulnerabilities and flaws can lead to intimacy and trust…or betrayal.

Conclusion

In the worldbuilding of Black Heaven, a lotus contains an impression of the soul of the person who folded it. This allows another person to use magic to evoke an image of the folder. Uzo does this in one scene in Black Heaven, years after Izagi has died:

    “After years of tinkering, you finally sat down with that faded paper lotus and whispered a spell to it.”

    “A human form, silvery and transparent like glass, coalesced in the air. You recognized what it was doing: folding an invisible lotus.”

    “And you recognized who it was—Izagi, dressed in her martial arts uniform. Traces of the old Izagi were embedded in the folds of that lotus, as crude as it was.”

But a folded paper lotus isn’t just a snapshot of a person’s soul at a given moment—its contours point to their future. What decisions they’ll make, what type of person they’ll turn out to be, and even what their ghost will be like, because a lotus is a map of their self—which is to say, the imperfections that drive them. 

This leads us to one of the questions at the heart of Black Heaven: whether the patterns in one’s lotus can change, or whether you are forever doomed to be the person you are, forever shackled by your flaws. At one point, Uzo reflects:

   “Is it only the surface that changes? How far can one person deviate from who they used to be? Does the shape of their soul change, or do some parts endure?”

I’d like to hope that everyone has the capacity to change, to become whole, and to reconcile with themselves. The path to achieving that kind of perfection may be as long as eternity itself, but this whole series has been about how infinity is defined by paradox, and how eternity can be grasped by letting go.

To quote The Heroic Frenzies again:

Tansillo: “…it is neither fitting nor natural that the infinite be understood, or that it present itself as finite, for then it would cease to be infinite; but it is perfectly in accord with nature that the infinite…be pursued without end, in that mode of pursuit which is not physical movement, but a certain metaphysical movement. 

And this movement is not from the imperfect to the perfect, but it goes circling through the degrees of perfection to reach that infinite center which is neither form nor formed.

Cicada: I would like to know how by circling you can arrive at the center.

Tansillo: This I cannot imagine.

Cicada: Then why do you say it?

Tansillo: Because I can say it and leave it for you to consider.

That’s the end of this essay series! I wanted to give readers a deep dive into the kinds of thoughts and inspirations that shape my worldbuilding and storytelling, and I hope I’ve done that. Thank you for taking this journey with me.

If you’d like to play Black Heaven, it’s available on Steam here, and the demo is available here.

If you’d like to read some of my published fiction, check here.

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