Mr g (13 page)

I thought. I did think. I am thinking. I will think.

For eons, it has been quiet and still in the Void. Aunt Penelope and Uncle Deva have been sleeping. It is almost the serenity of long long ago, before time. At that ancient moment of eternity, before time and space, all of my thoughts happened at once. But I did not have so much to think about.

Aunt Penelope and Uncle Deva have been sleeping. And I have been thinking. And while I have been thinking, the eternal music of the Void has softened and slowed like the breathing of a great animal falling asleep, with ever-increasing spaces between inhales and exhales, in and out, until there are eons between breaths, until each breath is a low moaning note.

I have been thinking about Belhor. A strange fellow, he is. As much as I detest elements of his character, he is the most interesting being I’ve encountered. At the beginning of the Era of Creation, I thought that perhaps I might converse with some of the more intelligent creatures in the new universe. And I do hear their voices. But they cannot hear mine. They can see what I’ve done, but they cannot hear me. Their intelligence is limited. Their understanding is limited, certainly. For how can they fathom the infinite? Or immortality? Or the Void? How can a creature of substance and mass fathom a thing without substance or mass? How can a creature who will certainly die have an understanding of things that will exist forever? All of these aspects of mortal existence have prevented a true communion between the new cosmos and me. But Belhor, like me, is not made of matter and flesh. Like me, he travels both in the material universe and in the Void, he can experience not only the one but also the many. Belhor, like me, can inhabit a realm without time and without space. Like me, Belhor is immortal. And he is immensely intelligent, even witty at times. He is my dim shadow. He is my antipodal companion. He is the thin black line. He is the beckoning voice in the Wall of the Dead.

I will wait and wait, until time has run out. And then I will exhale more time. But … not all things can be contained. That, I have learned. The suffering and joy, they cannot be contained, they spill, like events and like time. The irrational lives with the rational. Another thing I have learned, and this of myself: I can take chances. I can act, even with doubts.

I admit now, as I think with myself, that the “good” and the “evil” are not easily defined—whether or not they are both
necessary
, as Belhor proclaims. Do not the circumstances themselves prescribe how one should act and behave? Who can decide in advance of the circumstances how one should behave? Of course, it helps to have principles that one can believe, but even these do not always determine what is good and what is bad. Perhaps the good is what makes a thing whole, makes a life harmonious with all its surroundings. Perhaps the good, like music, forms a completeness of being, while evil divides and fractures. I will wait and wait, until time has run out. And then I will exhale more time. But not all things can be contained. Even the questions cannot be contained.

The Void is nearly asleep. There I can see Aunt and Uncle, sleeping, sleeping, and they diminish to two dancing dots, dancing a waltz that moves slower and slower. How long will they sleep? Eons. And Belhor sleeps in his castle. But the new universe does not sleep. It unwinds and evolves, it builds and destructs, it sings and it sings and it spins to the future.

Uncle Deva has awakened. In an unusual break with past habit, he has bounded up with ideas and energy while Aunt Penelope remains asleep. Ever since her birthday party, she has slept longer and longer intervals and, when awake, spends more time brushing her hair.

I had a dream, said Uncle D, stretching and yawning. It was not a very restful sleep. I dreamed I was taking a long walk through the Void, in places I had not ventured, and then there they were, thousands of creatures from the new universe, all begging me for second lives. Of course, I referred them to you, Nephew. I didn’t know what to say to them. And you told them that they had to go back inside the universe and be dead. They didn’t take the news well.

An unpleasant dream, I said to Uncle. I can see that you are distressed.

Yes. The dream quite woke me up. Also, your aunt snores more loudly than the sharpened spines of a puya. Nobody can sleep next to her.

You don’t have to worry, I said. Material lifeforms could never get out of the universe and into the Void.

I understand that, said Uncle D. But they looked so forlorn … Nephew, now that the thing has been running for a few zillion ticks, I don’t know how many, couldn’t we let the creatures have a little bit of a second life, at least the intelligent ones? Some little remnant of them that continued on? Their lives are so quick.

But they are material, I said. It would have to be a nonmaterial remnant, and then it would be different from everything else in Aalam-104729. You’ve said yourself that the things in the new universe have a different essence than things in the Void. It is the nature of material things to pass away.

I know, I know, said Uncle D, and he sighed. But there must be something. Perhaps just at the moment of death they could
feel
a little piece of the Void.

Some of them have that feeling now, I said. At least they feel a mystery. They sense that there are big things they do not know, even though they have no way to know them.

That’s what you said before, said Uncle. Religion. But a mystery is mysterious. I want them to have something more than that.

At that moment, we heard Aunt P rustling about, calling for her slippers. She’s up, said Uncle. But she can wait. Nephew … those figures from my dream haunt me. I can see them still. One mortal life isn’t enough. Cannot we do something for them, something that will not violate your precious rules of materiality? Uncle reached over and plucked up Aalam-104729, which had been slowly drifting by. Although it was continually expanding, it did not seem as swollen as before, as if it had successfully digested a big meal. So much inside this thing, said Uncle. And yet I can hold it so easily. So many creatures yearning for more life, yearning for something more.

Perhaps we could give them just a tiny glimpse of the Void, I said. But I worry that it might be too much for their minds.

Please, said Uncle. Try. I would be so relieved if the intelligent ones could understand that their lives, as brief as they are, are part of something immortal.

Yes, I said, I believe I can do that.

At the moment of death, said Uncle. Then, even if the glimpse is overwhelming, it will not crush their lives.

Let us try with the guilt-ridden young woman who stole food to support her family, I said. Eons ago. I will shift time, so that we can go back to her era. And … I have wanted to do something for her. This, at least, will be something. Even though at the end of her life.

Thank you, Nephew. We will not be gone long? Your aunt is getting impatient.

Then I compactified Uncle to a dot, and we entered the universe. Together, we glided through the cosmos, through galactic clusters, past one shining galaxy after another, to a particular galaxy, one spiral arm, one star system, one planet, one commune.

There she is, now eighty-three local years old. She lies upon a porcelain bed in a dim chamber, surrounded by her children and grandchildren, the scent of the ritual branda plant filling the air. Following her custom, she lies on her right side, one of her eyes covered with a leaf. Her labored breaths make a sputtering sound. You hear her breathing? Yes, says Uncle, the time must be near. It goes by so quickly, a life.

Sixty-five years have passed since she stood by a window in a different abode in a different commune, looking out at a courtyard with spherical rocks and a tadr bird circling the cistern. Soon after that defining moment, struggling with confusion and guilt, she left her home, joined a traveling group of merchants, decided to punish herself by uniting with a vagabond, gave birth to a child that she abandoned. Every man she met, she wanted to be her father. Over time, a great remorse flowed through her, and she forgave her mother and herself. But she did not forgive the vagaries of the universe. She and her second husband had four children, who then bore their own children. Never did she find the child she abandoned in her youth. Despite years of searching, she never found that child. And that is her final regret as she now lies on her right side, breathing with shallow breaths, holding the hand of her grandson.

She has had moments of joy in her life, as well as frustration and sadness? asked Uncle.

Yes.

Sixty-five years passed in an instant. Her life has been used up in an instant.

Her ability to hear has ceased. Although one of her eyes is open, she sees only dim hazy shapes. She feels heavy, as if she cannot move from the position where she lies. Her mouth feels dry. She cannot move her tongue. Her breathing sounds like a pant, a dry thirsty exhale and inhale.

The moment approaches. She dreams.

Through the opaline clouds of a dream, she sees herself as a girl. Her father, young and strong, runs with her over a field. He is trying to tell her something, but each time he speaks she cannot hear him. Then she is holding her first child, the one she abandoned, the one she loved most. Then she is walking from habitat to habitat making her prophecies, behind each door a face, a room, a table, running water.

I can’t believe it’s over. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to hear it. It grows smaller and smaller. Where’s my daughter Leita? Where’s my son Mrand? I want a second life. I want more life. Please. You, there. Who are you? What is this place? Is this where I’ve gone
?

She has entered my dream, said Uncle Deva. Uncle began weeping.

Now, I said. Now she has the glimpse.

The old woman lying on her right side gave one long exhale, and a smile appeared on her face, and she died.

And she died. At that moment, there were 3,​147,​740,​103,​497,​276,​498,​750,​208,​327 atoms in her body. Of her total mass, 63.7 percent was oxygen, 21.0 percent carbon, 10.1 percent hydrogen, 2.6 percent nitrogen, 1.4 percent calcium, 1.1 percent phosphorous, plus a smattering of the ninety-odd other chemical elements created in stars.

In the cremation, her water evaporated. Her carbon and nitrogen combined with oxygen to make gaseous carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, which floated skyward and mingled with the air. Most of her calcium and phosphorous baked into a reddish brown residue and scattered in soil and in wind.

Released from their temporary confinement, her atoms slowly spread out and diffused through the atmosphere. In sixty days’ time, they could be found in every handful of air on the planet. In one hundred days, some of her atoms, the vaporous water, had condensed into liquid and returned to the surface as rain, to be drunk and ingested by animals and plants. Some of her atoms were absorbed by light-utilizing organisms and transformed into tissues and tubules and leaves. Some were breathed in by oxygen creatures, incorporated into organs and bone.

Pregnant women ate animals and plants made of her atoms. A year later, babies contained some of her atoms. Not that her atoms had identification labels. But they were certainly
her
atoms, there is no doubt about that. I knew which ones. I could count them. Here, and here, and here.

Several years after her death, millions of children contained some of her atoms. And their children would contain some of her atoms as well. Their minds contained part of her mind.

Will these millions of children, for generations upon future generations, know that some of their atoms cycled through this woman? It is not likely. Will they feel what she felt in her life, will their memories have flickering strokes of her memories, will they recall that moment long ago when she stood by the window, guilt ridden and confused, and watched as the tadr bird circled the cistern? No, it is not possible. Will they have some faint sense of her glimpse of the Void? No, it is not possible. It is not possible. But I will let them have their own brief glimpse of the Void, just at the moment they pass from living to dead, from animate to inanimate, from consciousness to that which has no consciousness. For a moment, they will understand infinity.

And the individual atoms, cycled through her body and then cycled through wind and water and soil, cycled through generations and generations of living creatures and minds, will repeat and connect and make a whole out of parts. Although without memory, they make a memory. Although impermanent, they make a permanence. Although scattered, they make a totality.

See, Uncle, it is done.

Eons passed in the universe. But in the Void, eons can be moments.

“The Void does not seem what it was once before,” said Belhor. “Would you agree?”

“It seems much more empty,” I said.

Belhor laughed. “Isn’t it fascinating that a totally empty thing can become more empty. A long time ago, I predicted that our new universe would change us. Indeed. We have all become more full, and everything else has become more empty. But the new universe is not so new anymore, is it.”

“It is nearly 2.5 x 10
³³
atomic ticks old.”

“It is passing away,” said Belhor. “Already many of the stars have faded. Even a universe passes away.”

“I say good riddance,” said Baphomet the Larger, who was following behind Belhor and me as we moved through the Void. “The place had some unpleasant individuals in it.”

“Some
very
unpleasant individuals,” said Baphomet the Smaller, who walked another few paces behind Baphomet the Larger. “But we fixed quite a few of them, didn’t we. We fixed them good.”

Baphomet L. turned around and frowned at Baphomet S., then did a backwards somersault. At which point the smaller Baphomet performed his own somersault, clumsily done. The larger Baphomet stopped and showed the smaller beast how to tuck itself in during the roll.

“None of you should have intervened,” I said. “I did not intervene.”

“Allow me to apologize for the enthusiasm of my companions,” said Belhor. “But we did not alter the course of events in any significant way. We merely observed. And if we ever did more than observe, it was only to give a slight nudge to capacities and tendencies already there, to events already in motion.”

“You have a circuitous way of saying things,” I said.

“You are getting to know me,” said Belhor. “Nonetheless, I think we can all agree that the thing had quite an inertia of its own. The universe and its contents, including its minds, seemed to know from the beginning where it was headed.”

“The most advanced civilizations continually amazed me,” I said. “On their own, they discovered my organizational principles. With not much to go on. I have been impressed.”

“Yes,” said Belhor. “Impressive. But none of them ever discovered the First Cause.”

“No, that would have been impossible. With their calculations, they could go far back in time, back to the point when the cosmos was only a fraction of a tick old. But there is no way they could go back to the beginning.”

“Of course not,” said Belhor. “They cannot get outside of the sphere they inhabit. They cannot even see the walls of the sphere. For all of their inventiveness, they are still insects compared to us.”

“They exist in three dimensions. But it would be the same at five or a hundred. As you say, they cannot get out of the space they inhabit. They cannot even imagine the Void.”

“I, for one, would not be comfortable with their imagining the Void,” said Belhor. “Let them live and expire inside their little sphere. All in all, it has been an interesting experiment.”

“Experiment? Experiment?” said Baphomet the Larger. “Nobody told me we were doing an experiment.”

“Nobody told me either,” said Baphomet the Smaller, who pretended to start sobbing. “Nobody ever tells me anything.”

“We have learned something about what a material mind is capable of,” said Belhor. “It is capable of great goodness, and also great evil. And more extreme in either case than I would have thought. But that is what happens with intelligence.”

“Is it a consequence of intelligence, or materiality?” I said. “Because
we
have even greater intelligence.”

Belhor smiled and said nothing.