Mr g (12 page)

As eons went by, the civilizations in Aalam-104729 rose to greater and greater heights before they inevitably passed away and were replaced by new civilizations. I was continually surprised to see what new things the intelligent creatures would invent. They made machines that could fly. They built machines that could perform any mechanical task. They built devices to hear acoustic frequencies that their own sensory organs could not, see light that their own eyes could not, smell molecules that were undetectable by their own olfactory organs. They invented silicon-based electromagnetic communication devices that allowed them to see and talk to one another from great distances. They manufactured appendages and internal organs, so that they could replace defective parts in their own bodies. In some worlds, the creatures learned how to suspend their aging processes, so that they could take long trips between star systems and revive themselves upon arrival, many lifetimes later. On other planets, the creatures learned how to modify the replicating and control molecules so that they could create new life-forms that had never existed. Occasionally, the artificial organisms proceeded to infect and destroy all animate matter on the planet, but in other cases, the new life-forms could be engineered to cure diseases or provide energy or produce new types of machines, part animate and part inanimate. In some worlds, the creatures invented techniques to alter memories in their brains, so that they could have the sensation of experiences that had never, in fact, occurred.

The most fascinating invention—which occurred on a particularly advanced planet in a certain ellipsoidal galaxy—was the ability to separate mind almost entirely from matter. After eons of suffering from the various illnesses and disintegrations that necessarily accompany all animate matter, the creatures on this planet developed a method to extract the information in the cells of their brains and encode it in high-frequency electromagnetic radiation. These beings were completely devoid of bodies. They were pure energy. The only material substance remaining of each individual was a highly polished reflecting sphere, needed to contain and confine the mental radiations within.

To be sure, these creatures had to pay a heavy price for being thus encoded. They could no longer move about. They could no longer receive sensory impressions from the outside world, except for signals from other encoded brains. They could no longer see their thoughts carried out as actions. However, there were compensations. Once encoded, these creatures never suffered physical pain. They never had unsatisfied physical longings. They never grew hungry. They never grew thirsty. And they could live a very long time, their demise coming only by the slow degradation and information leakage of the electromagnetic radiation as it bounced back and forth trillions of times between the polished walls of the confining spheres.

These bodiless creatures truly lived in an interior world. It was a world of pure thought. It was a world of pure mind. Mountains, oceans, buildings could be imagined, but they existed only as abstractions, as slight alterations of electric and magnetic fields. Touch and vision and smell could be imagined, but they existed only as changes in frequency or amplitude of the energy waves that bounced back and forth, back and forth. Perhaps surprisingly, emotions could be felt. Long ago, the creatures, in their embodied form, had learned how anger, fear, joy, love, jealousy, and hate were imprinted in the biochemistry and electrical impulses of material brains. Thus, when the contents of their brain cells were analyzed and encoded in the delicate vibrations of electromagnetic waves, the emotions were transferred as well. Fear was a certain diagonal modulation of frequencies and amplitudes. Love was another. Jealousy was yet another. The bodiless creatures, existing entirely as energy waves, could experience all of these sentiments, if one interprets experience as the sensation of recognizing the meaning of certain repeating patterns of energy. But then, does that experience differ so much from the sensation of anger, hate, passion, and so forth in creatures with bodies, who recognize the meaning of certain repeating patterns of chemicals and electrified particles in their material brains?

Not only could these bodiless creatures experience emotions. They also had personalities. If a creature had been pompous and overbearing in its original, embodied form, then so it was in its bodiless, encoded form. If a creature had been meek and timid, fawning, good-natured, insecure, temperamental in its embodied form, then it would be the same when reincarnated as a concentration of pure energy. Likewise, if a creature had been a painter, a musician, a technician, a philosopher in its embodied form, it would be the same in its encoded form, since these talents and dexterities and intellectual capacities are, at their essence, properties of the mind. A painter, for example, could still create paintings, but the artistic aesthetic and design, the line and the form, would be translated to patterns of energy.

Furthermore, the painter or the musician or the philosopher could have personal relationships—friendships, business dealings, romantic liaisons—with other bodiless creatures, through the transmission and reception of radiation from one sphere to another. Although such relationships were strictly cerebral, they could be satisfying. If two creatures developed a romantic attachment to each other, they could share joy and pleasure and even a certain kind of sexual congress, all experienced in the exquisitely subtle transformations of their electromagnetic minds.

When one visits this planet, one beholds entire cities of these creatures. But instead of buildings, avenues, solar domes, bridges, one sees rows upon rows of little titanium spheres covering the hillsides and valleys. Love affairs, arguments, paintings, the discovery of scientific principles, even warfare are taking place within these spheres, yet are totally invisible from the outside. From the outside, one sees only rows upon rows of little spheres, motionless, soundless, serene. But I, who can see everything at once, know all that transpires within. I know that many of these bodiless creatures yearn for the bodies and physicality they once had. They are tormented. They worry that because their entire existence is now interior existence, then the exterior world might be only an illusion. Carrying this logic one step further, they worry that even their interior world might be illusion, that
all
is illusion. For how could they tell, within the confines of their little spheres, whether anything exists? All they know for sure is that they think. In a certain sense, isn’t this true of creatures with bodies as well?

“Please do me the honor to see where I live,” Belhor said to me soon after Aunt Penelope’s dress began to fade. “I think it will be worth your time.”

“I know where you live,” I responded.

“You know, but you do not know. Please. You will be my guest.” As always, Belhor had a way of speaking that was hypnotic, a whispering voice that emerged from everywhere at once, like a wind that blows from every direction. And yet, as I have said before, no wind ever moved through the Void.

To get to Belhor’s abode, we traveled an enormous distance. In fact, an infinite distance. But there are many orders of infinity, and after aleph-naught, we proceeded to aleph-vav, and then on to aleph-omega, and even on beyond that, to realms I had rarely inhabited. In a way that is difficult to characterize, the Void became thicker and thicker during our journey. Not that the Void has any substance or mass, but the layers of nothingness grew more compressed and dense, more tangled together, so that one had the sensation of moving through ever-thickening somethingness—like a gauze, to use a metaphor from the new universe. Moreover, as we came closer and closer to Belhor’s domain, the music of the Void went through its own transmogrification, increasingly shaped and controlled by Belhor’s thoughts as well my own. Dark fugues. Nocturnes. Symphonies of melancholia. It was all extremely beautiful but unsettling and sad at the same time, as if the Void itself were longing for something it desperately wanted. It also seemed that as we traveled farther and farther, we were descending, but that was only a sensation, since the Void has no down or up, no gravity. I can only report the impression of walking down a great stairway, down and down and down, farther and farther to some submerged depth in the emptiness. Billions and billions of descending steps. Even the ambient light of the Void—which, like the music, originates in my mind—grew dimmer and dimmer. We traveled in silence. Eons passed.

Eventually, we came to a magnificent floating castle. Its walls and surfaces, although made from layers of emptiness like all things in the Void, were so compacted and compressed that they seemed to have a materiality. Parapets carved with strange symbols thrust outward in peculiar directions. Towers and turrets shimmered in pale colors, first translucent, then utterly transparent, then translucent again. Through great arched windows, one could see courtyards and walkways, storerooms, great halls with ornate chandeliers, balconies and winding stairways, elliptical pools of liquid nothingness. Each of these structures emerged from the Void, vibrated and fluttered for brief moments, then dissolved into the surrounding vacuum. When the structures reappeared, they would be shaped differently or placed at different locations. At one moment, a round tower would appear next to a particular battlement. At another moment, both battlement and tower would melt away and reappear as a four-sided bell tower on the opposite wall. Each architectural feature of the castle was temporary and fleeting, of course, yet there was a density and momentary persistence I had seen nowhere else.

At the ramparts, I expected attendants and servants to greet us. When none appeared, Belhor explained that he lived in his castle alone. He seemed not unhappy with this solitary existence, and yet not altogether satisfied with it either—but far too proud to acknowledge a need for anything he did not have. For long swaths of time, he said, he never emerged from his castle. The two Baphomets evidently dwelled somewhere else, and he pointed vaguely to a dim region beyond the castle. “All of this,” he said with a sweeping gesture, “as well as I myself came into being when you created the new universes.”

“I did not knowingly make you,” I said. Now that I had entered Belhor’s abode, I felt an uneasiness that I was not accustomed to, almost an obligation to do his bidding, or at least to show sympathy to him even against my own judgment. As if he were slowly inhaling my independence and will. Was I his guest? Or an intellectual sparring partner? Or a target of his immense ego and force?

“No, you did not knowingly make me,” Belhor said. “But you created certain
capacities
, let us say. When you created time and space and then matter, you created the
potential
for animate matter. And from there, it is only a few logical syllogisms to arrive at the existence of new minds. And then the ability to act, for good and for ill.”

“And how would I destroy you?” I said.

“What an interesting question,” said Belhor, “and straightforward. But I do not believe you would want to destroy me. You would have no one of my intelligence to converse with. To answer your question, it is not so easy to destroy me. You can destroy me only by destroying the worlds you have made. Is that something you wish to do? I do not think so. You are proud of what you have made, and you are rightfully proud.” Belhor hesitated and stared at me, as he had often done in the past. “But why should we spend our time talking about destruction, when there is so much exquisite creation about, thanks to you.”

During this conversation, we had walked through one great hall after another. In each hall, Belhor paused to adjust the trappings on one of his many thrones. Pictures of the Void adorned the shimmering ceilings, melting out of the nothingness, then slowly vanishing, then appearing again.

“I want to speak to you of good and evil,” said my host as we walked through an interior courtyard. Leafy fronds of emptiness hung over pale green pools, bordered by flowing benches and couches and reclining chairs. Everything was immaculate. Everything shimmered into faint visibility, then dissolved, then reappeared in different form. “There are creatures in our new universe,” said Belhor. “Creatures with great intelligence, who knowingly do harm and cause suffering. You have observed such things?”

“Yes,” I said. “And it grieves me. All suffering grieves me.”

“I admire your compassion,” said Belhor. “But I want to suggest that evil, maliciousness, greed, deceit, while being unfortunate, are in fact
necessary
.”

“Necessary? I could have prevented those despicable qualities. I should have prevented them.” I felt that perhaps I should stop saying such things to Belhor. He seemed to take my sympathies for weakness. Belhor was a creature who understood only power and strength. Still, a most interesting creature. His mind.

“With all due respect,” said Belhor, stopping to pick up a piece of fleeting debris on the mosaic floor, “I do not think you could have prevented those attributes once you brought the universe into existence. Those ‘despicable qualities,’ as you call them, are a mandatory part of existence, an unavoidable dimension of behavior.”

“I cannot agree,” I said. “I can conceive of creatures who are wholly good. If I can conceive of them, then they could exist.”

“And what do you mean by ‘good’?” asked Belhor.

“The doing of deeds to benefit others, for example. The living of a life devoted to beauty.”

“Ah,” said Belhor. “And please tell me, how do you know whether a particular deed
benefits
another being? And please tell me the definition of ‘beauty.’ ”

“You understand these things as well as I.”

“Yes,” said Belhor. “But I understand them only because I understand their opposites. I understand evil. I understand ugliness. I maintain that good can be defined only in its contrast to evil, beauty only in its contrast to ugliness. Qualities such as these must exist in pairs. Good comes with evil. Beauty comes with ugliness, and so on. There are no absolutes in the universe, no unitary qualities. All qualities are bound to their opposites. Come, let me show something to you.”

I followed Belhor through a corridor that led out to a coliseum, which was enclosed by a vast shimmering wall. The structure was decorated with a fine etching, intricate and beautiful. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the etching consisted, in fact, of names, billions upon billions of names. “Whenever a creature in the universe dies, its name appears on this wall,” said Belhor. Indeed, during the few moments we lingered there, new names appeared so rapidly that the etchings proceeded to wind round and round on themselves, sprouting little shoots like the tendrils of a growing plant. “Listen,” said Belhor. One could hear something like faint moans coming from the wall. And also faint laughter. But both so indistinct that it was difficult to tell one from the other. Moans and laughter, countless tiny voices, all crowding against and on top of one another, so that it seemed like a single sound, a great whispered rush of existence. “The recorded voices of the dead,” said Belhor. “Recorded while living. So many little lives, each too faint to hear. And who would want to bother listening to one or the other of them. But added together, they make a perceptible sound. As you can hear, the individual sufferings and joys quite cancel themselves out. What remains is the great combined mass of them, a single breath.”

“I know many of those names,” I said.

“You astonish me,” said Belhor.

“Your Wall of the Dead is fascinating,” I said, “but it has little to do with our discussion.”

“Yes, but I wanted you to see it. We were speaking of whether absolutes exist in the universe. I hold that they do not. There are only relativities. This you said yourself. In fact, didn’t you decree that there would be no state of absolute stillness in the new universe? Wasn’t that one of your organizational principles?”

I looked at Belhor without disguising my irritation. “I was thinking of physical principles, not principles of behavior or aesthetics. You know that.”

Belhor laughed. “But did you not argue a while back that animate and inanimate matter should follow the same rules and principles?”

“Yes, I see your logic,” I said. Belhor bowed. “But let us think about this for a moment,” I continued. “I can agree that beauty and ugliness are relative concepts. A particular creature with six appendages on its body might be considered highly beautiful on its home planet and a horror on a planet where similar creatures had four appendages. But behavior is different, is it not? Isn’t it true that a creature who kills another creature is committing a wrongful act, in absolute terms? I can answer my own question. If a creature kills another creature for personal survival, for food for example, this is not a wrongful act. But suppose a creature kills another creature when food is not the motive. Can we not say that this act is absolutely wrong, without reference to anything else?”

“What about the case of warfare?” said Belhor. “Suppose your creature is fighting in battle to defend its family, its commune. Under these conditions, is it not permissible, even honorable, to kill the enemy?”

“Yes. That is the same as for personal survival.”

“What about to kill when one’s honor has been disgraced?” said Belhor. “Or to kill in revenge when one’s child has been murdered? How many more exceptions do you need before you will agree that absolute evil does not exist? Evil, good, beauty, ugliness—none of these can be determined in the absolute, without a particular context.”

“Perhaps,” I said. I found that a storm was now raging inside of me. I wanted to leave the castle, to walk in the open nothingness of the Void. I wanted empty space.

“If we agree that absolutes do not exist in any form,” said Belhor, “then I believe that I have won my argument that good can exist only if evil also exists. Start with one quality in one situation, and it becomes the other in a different situation.”

Long ago, perhaps eons ago, we had left the Wall of the Dead and were now moving through a palatial hall. Two grand thrones were placed at opposite ends of the hall, facing each other. “We have arrived here at last,” said Belhor. “The Chamber of Triumph.” Belhor looked contentedly about the vast hall. Then he took a seat on one of the thrones. “Both of us are more powerful than anything else in existence, are we not? Sit in the other throne, my friend, it is waiting for you. Sit.”

“I cannot,” I said.

“Isn’t it a fabulous throne?” said Belhor. “Do you feel it is beneath you?”

“I will not sit here.”

Belhor smiled and rose. “Suit yourself. If you will not sit on the throne, neither will I.”

“We are not finished with our conversation,” I said. “While you have made some valid points, I do not concede the argument. I do not believe that evil and ugliness are
necessary
, as you put it. Perhaps none of the qualities we have discussed are necessary. Perhaps we can dispense with all of these categories. Let the universe be as it is, without calling some things good and some bad, some beautiful and some ugly.”

“That is an interesting point of view,” said Belhor.

“But then, tell me why do some creatures feel a rapture when listening to music, or a thrill when seeing a wind move across a field, or a satisfaction when they have helped another being? We do not have to call such feelings good, or beautiful, but they exist nonetheless.”

“Yes,” said Belhor, “I grant you that. And some creatures gain pleasure from inflicting pain on others. And some spend their tiny lives living only for themselves. And some are crippled and wounded at a young age. We do not have to call these things evil or selfishness or suffering. But they exist. We can say that they are merely what is.”

“I cannot accept these actions you mention even if they are what is,” I said.

“Now you speak of acceptance,” said Belhor. “That is another matter entirely. We must coexist with things we cannot accept, even when we have infinite power.”

“Not all things can be contained,” I said.

“Well spoken,” said Belhor. “It is such a pleasure to converse with an intellectual equal.”

“Is that an absolute pleasure or a relative pleasure?”

Belhor laughed, and the castle trembled with his laughter. “I will be very interested to see what becomes of your experiment with Aalam-104729. We will have to wait and see.” Belhor gestured towards a curving staircase. “Come, we have not yet gone up to the towers.”