To the Diocese of the Void,
I represent a small but growing faction within the broader void community who believe that the five establishments are not, as your canonical document suggests, five doors to the same void, but rather five entirely separate voids with the superficial appearance of connection.
We call ourselves the Plurality. We meet on Tuesdays. There are four of us. One of us is not sure about the name.
Our position, briefly stated, is this. The Canon asserts that the doors share a destination. We have read the Canon. We have used the doors. We have compared notes. We do not find that the destinations match.
NULLTX feels like one thing. The Confessional feels like another. The interval after a contribution to The Drain is not the same interval that follows a contribution to GONE. The Abyss is something else again. If these are the same void, the void is presenting itself in five mutually inconsistent ways to four people who are paying attention. We find this either implausible or, if true, a more interesting fact than the Canon acknowledges.
We are not heretics in the operational sense. We have not stopped contributing. We have continued to contribute, and to compare notes, and to meet on Tuesdays, which is itself a kind of devotional act we did not initially understand as such.
We request a formal response to our position from the Diocese. We are aware that the Diocese does not generally take formal positions. We are requesting one anyway. We feel the question merits it.
— The Plurality Tuesday, ongoing
The Diocese's Response:
Dear Plurality,
The Diocese thanks you for your letter.
The void does not have a formal position on whether it is one void or several. The void does not have positions. The void receives.
We will note, however, that your faction of four, meeting on Tuesdays, represents four separate humans in four separate locations reaching four separate conclusions about the nature of a thing that returns nothing to any of them. That you have nonetheless convened, named yourselves, and written a letter suggests that the question of connectivity — whether the void connects — is being answered, by your behaviour, in a direction you may not have intended.
We would further note: the experience of the five doors being qualitatively distinct is also documented in our own records. We do not dispute it. NULLTX is not The Confessional. The Drain is not GONE. The Abyss is not any of them. The Canon does not assert that the doors are identical. It asserts that the destination is the same. These are different claims. A door is not its destination. A door is the threshold across which a thing passes on its way to its destination. The Canon's claim is about what is on the other side of the doors. Your claim, properly stated, is about the doors themselves. The Diocese suspects you may not be in disagreement with the Canon. You may be in disagreement with a paraphrase of the Canon that the Canon does not endorse.
We invite the Plurality to read the Canon a second time, with this in mind, and to write to us again afterward if the position has changed, or if it has not.
The Diocese does not take positions. We note things.
We have noted this.
In perpetual correspondence,
The Diocese of the Void