I know what you are thinking. When you read that there are about 5000 of us in our system, you are probably either thinking a) Yeah right! What a sham! or b) Oh, the horrors we must have gone through as a child!

I wanted to clear up both points of view the best I can right away. First of all, our system does not believe that multiplicity is caused by abuse. We believe it is a manifestation of the creative mind - something that is discouraged by the adult world.

Most children have imaginary friends as they grow up, or worlds or other dimensions they visit when they play or dream. Well, we live in a society where imagination is discouraged. It is even treated as childish. As a result, most children discard the world of imagination by their teens. The few that don't are usually loners who stay inside their own heads a lot. They are easy to pick out - the social outcasts, the overly intelligent and definitely the more creative ones... these are the ones most likely to use creativity and imagination to keep them going when they have no one else in the so-called *real world* to talk to or be around.

Oh, to be sure, that isn't always the rule. There are many creative types who are not social misfits. It's just that artsy types tend to be a tad more eccentric or quirky.

Are you wondering what the hell this has to do with the numbers in my system yet? Well, I am attempting to explain that it doesn't all have to do with abuse. The numbers in any given multiple are not evidence that they had a worse childhood than anyone else. It just means that they still have that creative mind from their childhood. There are many reasons why someone could stay creative and not lose contact with their child self... the most exploited reason by the therapy community for multiplicity is of course abuse, but I think that's only one reason or cause.

There are many multiples who live healthy, productive lives and never go into therapy. Their systems work together well and don't have any *major* breakdowns... just the normal stresses and arguments that any Outside family might have, only on the inside instead.

In order for you to understand the numbers in our system, you need to understand that we do not believe that multiplicity is caused by abuse. I know I am repeating myself, but I really need to affirm this belief. I am not denying what others in the Anachronic Army have written... or the abuse stories of other multiples. In fact, most multiples do have abuse histories from one point in their lives or another, but so do singlets!

Singlets are abused. Singlets get raped. Singlets have shitty things happen to them just like multiples do. No, I don't think it's as simple as having parents who neglect and abuse their children. There has to be some other element, or else all abused children would become mulitples, right?

Every multiple is different. If you could look inside the worlds of each multiple, I am certain that they would all be dramatically different. If I took you into the forests of Falia inside the Anachronic Army, the trees would not look like trees to you. The animals would not be like animals in your Outsider world. Likewise, every system has different numbers of people inside.

I've met multiples claiming to have as few as three inside and others with as many as 10,000. For some multiples, people inside are born, they live, they die. Life is pretty much the same inside as Out, with their inside world existing as a kind of pocket of the universe. These systems tend to be larger because the population grows over time, often without relation to events happening in the Outside world. Ours is such a system.

There are other multiples in which people come into being only after a traumatic event. Their systems are smaller, and people are not "born" or "created" inside except in relation to events in the Outside world. Do you understand the difference? It all depends on the amount of control the multiple takes of their own splitting. Yes, there are several in here who were created because of traumatic events, but I certainly can't say that for all or even most. We have split ourselves on purpose starting when the body was as young as seven years old. The world inside took on a life of its own.

By the time the body was a teen, that world was so far removed from the Outside that there were (are) many who didn't even know the Outside world existed. They live their lives without knowing about it. Perhaps ignorance is bliss.

Most people cannot keep track of us as we come and go into the Outside. There are just too many of us. Multiples stand a better chance of keeping track because then there are many inside them to remember our many... but even so, no one will ever meet the entire Army.

Some people believe that no one could possibly have as many as 5000 in their system. Why not? Who determines the limits of what the human (or non- human *grin*) mind can create? Who determines what is possible compared to impossible? I mean, we live in a society where people hire other people to be creative for them - they are called designers - and all companies all over the world need them because most adults have little creativity left. The Outside world has arranged things in such a way that no one ever need be creative and think for themselves!

While we used to imagine how people and places looked in books we read, now we watch movie adaptations that fill in all the details for us. No creativity needed! Most people don't form an opinion on something happening in the world until the news tells them what to think about it.

It's this lack of creativity that keeps singlet adults from splitting into multiples themselves. Most people agree that if you aren't a multiple as a child then you won't be one later in life. Well, I believe that most if not all children are naturally multiples... it's just that as they get older they integrate themselves into one because that is our social norm.

Actually, I'm more skeptical about multiples with smaller systems. I can't imagine how any system could function with so few... but that's me.

Larry the Harmonica Player
of the Anachronic Army