by Anne Rice
"Yes, that is the crucial issue here," said Garekyn. "Why would they make us, grow us, instill knowledge in us, and let these souls develop or emanate from us, and then send us here on a dishonest mission?"
"They want trouble, to make trouble. They want you to foment conflict. They hoped very likely that you'd be captured in the villages and revealed to be non-human, and that you would all be brought here with much fanfare to be executed by me in defiance of them and their machinations. Or they wanted you to attempt to kill me, and maybe even to damage the great dome of Atalantaya! They wanted conflict, trouble. Who knows? Look what happened when they returned me to the planet!"
"But what did happen?" I asked.
"They sent me down here, equipped with immense knowledge and godlike strength, to enslave the tribes, to install transmission stations for them far and wide so that their streaming could take place. And I was told that when this mission was complete, I was then to loose a plague on the planet that would kill huge numbers of the population. 'This is desirable for the world's improvement,' they told me. But they knew, positively knew, I'd never do it. They knew that I'd come to love my fellow human beings, I'd come through working with them and living with them and ruling over them to see their inherent virtues, their values, to let my soul warm to their souls! And they knew I'd refuse to loose the plague, and that I'd start to do things in direct contradiction to their orders, and thereby make conflict, make new things happen!"
"I see what you're saying," I said. "And I see the similarity between your mission and our mission, and I can see why they might have known full well that you wouldn't fulfill your purpose and we wouldn't fulfill ours. But why? Why do they want to 'make new things happen,' as you put it?"
"Yes, what is the point?" asked Garekyn.
Amel waited. He was looking at each of us in turn and then his eyes settled on Derek.
"Ooooh, I see," said Derek. "The Chambers of Suffering! The films, the streams! They are feeding off the suffering of the planet!"
The most brilliant smile spread over Amel's face.
I was astonished. It seemed obvious, then too obvious, and then undeniably obvious!
"They feed off it!" Derek went on. "They want to watch this...people weeping and screaming in grief and pain! This is why their film feeds are filled with scenes of people dying and those around them in agony as they die, agony worse than that of the dying!"
"Yes," said Amel. "I believe that is exactly what is happening! And they value this planet all the more for its mammalian ascendant species because no creature in the universe suffers like a hot-blooded self-aware mammal."
"But this is an unspeakable lie!" I whispered. I shook my head. I didn't want to believe it, but I couldn't not believe it.
"When I came back here to this planet," said Amel, "war was as common as peace, and tribes fought tribes and murdered and raped, and sacrificed their own children and their enemies to their gods, and the planet was covered in blood-soaked altars and blood-soaked groves where men sought to placate the storms and the snows and the fire of the volcano or the rages of the sea with bloodshed and death and pain! And they loved it! The Bravennans loved it, and their transmitting stations which I myself installed all over this planet in places I can no longer find or recognize--these are their means of receiving this suffering, receiving it and devouring it!"
"But how?" I asked. "They enjoy it, yes, I have seen this with my own eyes. They love it, and they lied to us about this, but how do they devour it exactly?"
"I don't know," said Amel with obvious frustration, "but I do know that suffering itself, emotion, pain, agony, rebellion, these things give off an energy just as the sun does, and just as the raging sea does....But I have not been able to discover the science of it! I have not been able to discover how the energy given off by emotion can be translated into the physical or biological realm! It's driving me mad." He paused, then went on. "This is a biological world. Biology is the reality of this world. Soul is generated by biology, by the chemistry of the brain rooted in biology. All things spiritual emanate from the biological. And they must have some way of translating the energy of anguish into a definable force in the biological realm."
This struck me as powerfully fascinating.
"I understand this in a crude way," said Welf. "When we were drinking and dancing during the Wilderness Festival, I felt the energy of the crowds around me--."
"Exactly!" said Amel.
"I felt it, it was palpable and I felt myself grow more excited and more...more delirious...on account of the delirium around me. And at the Meditation Center when someone told a tragic story--."
"Yes, exactly!" said Amel.
"--I felt the energy from that story; I felt it enter me and make me cry," said Welf.
"Exactly!" said Amel. "And when you see heroism, great heroism as in a battle, this too gives off energy, and you are energized to fight beyond your normal endurance. And when you gather and sing around a great tower being planted and grown in the earth, you feel the energy and your own body warms and quickens and gives off more energy to join the communal energy." He looked to each of us for a nod, for confirmation, and we gave it willingly.
"Well, somehow," he said, "the Parents thrive on the suffering and other less dramatic emotions of the human beings of this planet--anger, resentment, sorrow, grief--and they are, I suspect, transmitting their film streams of hot-blooded life on Earth all over the 'Realm of Worlds' to those cooler species, cold species like them who also thrive off this suffering, off the pain that human mammals feel! And for all I know this not only gives them delight, intoxicating delight, but this fuels Bravenna itself and fuels its lights and its warm air, and the laboratories in which you were developed and grown! It is their fuel--our human suffering!"
"This is appalling!" said Derek. "This is cruel."
"Yes, it is very cruel," said Amel, "and the Parents are very cruel. Did you not see that?" He paused, then went on. "Someday I will discover how this energy is being translated into something biological or measurably physical. I will discover it."
At this point, Derek began to cry. Just as he's crying now. Because of course we had all seen it, the unspeakable cruelty of the Parents developing us and growing us and offering us beautiful music in our cradles and then telling us that we were meant to destroy ourselves, to lose our lives as we destroyed everything on this planet.
In a hushed voice Derek began to talk about it, talk about the cruelty of the Parents, and talk about how the deathbed scenes in the film streaming had torn at his "soul," and how he loathed and detested the Parents and would fight them forever, and fight everything that was cruel.
"Ah, but be wise," said Amel. "They want you to fight. They have bred you to fight. They would like nothing better than for you to go forth and start to try to root out every transmission base and station and to quarrel and fight with any human who sought to stop you. They want people to come to blows. They want people to shed blood. They would love to see you taken prisoner by the tribes for seeking to destroy their Chambers of Suffering!"
"The people believe suffering has value!" said Welf. "That's what I saw in the Wilderness lands. We all saw it."
"Yes, for thousands of years, the people have believed this!" said Amel. "It's the only way they can go forward in a world where there is so much suffering. They have always believed that a brave man will suffer torment but will not give in. They have believed the gods want the blood of children and the agony of those children when they die, and the agony of their parents when they see them sacrificed. And people have been bred to feed off suffering! To feed off the grief and pain of the victims of war and blood-soaked altars. But there is no value to suffering!"
"There is only value," said Derek, "to overcoming suffering and seeking to spare others the suffering one has known oneself!" He sat on the edge of the couch. "In the Meditation Center I saw and heard that people of all ranks understand this. They see suffering as inherently a natural evil!"
We sat quiet for a long moment, and then for an endless while we talked about these things. We talked about the stories we'd heard in the Meditation Centers. We talked about all the lessons we'd learned on Atalantaya and how we marveled at life here and the influence of Atalantaya and what it meant for the Wilderness lands.
"It is through example and enticement that I teach," said Amel. "Not coercion. Those tribes who war and sacrifice are banned from Atalantaya. They are not welcome in our farming or mining villages in the Wilderness lands. And that alone is the most powerful inducement for them to seek the peaceful ways."
"Yes, we've seen it," I said. "There was indeed so much the Parents never explained."
Amel laughed suddenly. "They treated you like humans treat their pets, didn't they?" he asked. "You've seen the dogs in the village? You've seen the pretty little cats and dogs people on Atalantaya are given to keeping? That's how they treated you? Am I right?"
"Yes," said Derek. He was wiping his tears away and trying to calm himself. "That is how they treated us, putting out food for us, letting us wander about, comforting us when they felt we needed it."
"And any truths or explanations that they sought to teach were just part of that comfort," said Amel. "They have sent so many bands of you here!"
"But what happened to the others?" I asked.
"Well, in the beginning, I destroyed them. I hadn't caught on. I played into their hands. I won the battles that they fomented. And they were crude, these early Replimoids, some apelike, others mechanical. They went to the very opposite extreme of what they had achieved in enhancing me. But whatever the case, I was a better leader. I won out against their emissaries. But for all I know, there are surviving Replimoids out there now." He made a gesture to include the wide world. "For all I know there are Replimoids up north building transmitting stations among the northern tribes who are far beyond my influence. There are Replimoids perhaps beyond the seas on islands that have no name. How can we know? And some Replimoids they sent in the first years of Atalantaya disappeared without a trace when I refused to go with them outside the dome--wandering back out to report the failure of their mission, I presume, and being given some other dreary task if not the making of more transmission stations."
"And no one has ever remained with you to work with you?" asked Derek. "To give you their allegiance?"
"Yes," said Amel. "They exist and they are here, and they are scattered throughout Atalantaya. But even the latest are not as complex or beautifully realized as you are. The last group before you was excellent, I have to admit. But not as fine as you are." He paused as if to ponder. "But there are a few here, yes, a very few. Alas, like me, and like you, they are sterile. They're good workers. But no new tribe can ever be grown from those of us who have been the playthings of Bravenna. Our offspring must be the promotion of love and goodness. Because that is all we can birth and nurture."
Derek gasped at this. I found myself smiling. Our offspring must be the promotion of love and goodness.
"I want to stay here," said Derek. He turned to me. "I want to remain with Amel and learn from Amel and serve Amel!" He looked at me, waiting for some sort of permission. "I don't care if they kill me for it. Who knows, but there aren't devices inside of us by which they are listening to us here, and devices by which they can paralyze me and punish me! I don't care! I want to be with Amel!"
"Derek, what authority have I over you?" I asked. "Any authority given me was given by Bravenna. Do what your soul tells you and what Amel will allow."
"Oh, I would so love to have your loyalty," Amel said. "You are welcome in Atalantaya no matter what you do. And do know that I have learned and profited from every single Replimoid that has ever stayed behind with me." He looked tired suddenly, crestfallen, and empty. His mind was wandering. His words had been scattered, and confused though a strong truth united all he had said.
I felt I knew why. Because, though I was exhilarated from what I'd learned, I was also shocked and wounded. The idea of the "Realm of Worlds" deliberately fomenting suffering on Earth and planting the idea that suffering had value, the idea of the "Realm of Worlds" actually using this suffering as a form of energy, was more ghastly than anything I could ever have imagined.
"You need to rest now," said Amel, "and to be alone and to talk amongst yourselves. I will give you passes that provide unlimited access to every plant, factory, Creative laboratory, or compound. You'd be welcomed in most of these places anyway, but the passes will assure you of welcome. Study what we do with luracastria, the many uses we have put it to and our continuing explorations with luracastria. Watch the workers who are experimenting with it, and its extraordinary properties."
"I want to do this above all!" I said immediately.
He drew the "passes" out of his pocket, four small disks engraved with a pictograph on one side and his face on the other, and he put these in our hands. The disks shone like gold, but were obviously made of something much lighter.
I found myself staring down at his image on the disk, the long-haired, square-faced image of a human--a human face with a faint smile to the lips and large inviting eyes.
"And when you've done that," Amel went on. "When you've roamed and studied and seen the unlimited possibilities, you come back to me. Come back anytime that you wish. You'll be received and brought up here to me. And when the time is right, I will invite you to meet the other Replimoids who have come over to me. I will bring you together with them. And we will all talk again together."
"One last question," I said. He nodded. "Have you attempted to build Replimoids yourself?"
"I have," he said. "Until recently it wasn't remotely possible but I have attempted it and I have not been successful. I have infused a few human beings, human beings who were willing, with luracastria as a step towards the building of some sort of Replimoid, but this was not successful. These subjects were of course dying of diseases I couldn't cure, but still, it was death to them when I injected luracastria into them. And I have no knowledge even in my wildest dreams of how to quicken a Replimoid into conscious life. Perhaps the perfect biology and chemistry will inevitably generate the conscious life. But I'll tell you--if the Bravennans have in fact done this, well then, I will someday be able to do it. But it must serve human beings when I do it; it must be for the good of human beings to make such creatures, and there are many reasons to be cautious."
"Why do you say 'if'?" asked Garekyn. "Aren't all the Replimoids from Bravenna proof that they can make Replimoids? I don't understand."
"We don't know the full extent of the ingredients used to create you," said Amel. "Believe me. We do study the blood, skin tissue, and other biopsied tissue from the Replimoids we have here who are willing, but we really don't know what they used to achieve what they have done. It is still possible they used humans from this planet as part of their process, and that they have lied about this."
"So they might have taken brain tissue from humans," I suggested. "They might have taken substantial amounts of brain tissue to make us?"
"Yes," he said. "That is one way of putting it."
"They led us to believe," said Garekyn, "that we were wholly grown from Earth elements in a way that did not involve parts of living human beings. At least that is how I understood them."
"Yes, but they told you I was such a freshly developed Replimoid, too, didn't they?" Amel smiled. It was a bitter smile.
"Yes, they did," I said.
Amel rose, which was obviously the signal for us to rise too, and he put his arms around Derek and held him warmly. "You are splendid creations," he said in a low reverent voice, "whoever made you and for whatever purpose. You are splendid." Then he offered each of us the same embrace and we felt a fever emanating from hi
m, and also we felt his suffering. We felt the energy of his suffering, the energy of the pain he was experiencing due to all he had laid out in plain words for us.
"You are like music," he said looking at us, including all of us in an open gesture of his right hand. "A man or woman carves a flute from a piece of wood and brings it to the lips and breathes into it a deep feeling, and out comes an astonishing sound, a sound which surprises everyone even the musician, and then the sound develops and grows and is splendid and is a new thing, a thing born of the feeling inside the man or woman who made the flute and dared to breathe into it. You are like this. Your souls are like this. The Bravennans don't know what they have achieved. I picture them lazing about their rooms full of picture walls, drunk and drowsy and gorging on the suffering they are viewing. Enough. You are their gift to me, though they can't know it."
There were tears in his eyes. He gestured for us to go.
And as we left him, there was no doubt in our minds, none whatsoever, that he had told us the truth and that he represented all that was good of which we knew; he was, in sum, the most nearly perfect being we had ever encountered, and we had Atalantaya to back up this conviction. And our time in the Wilderness lands amongst the tribes he'd influenced only underscored it more.
Now, let me pause here in this story. You cannot imagine how stunned we were by Amel himself and by the presentation of his ideas. But think on this! Think on the surprise of Welf and me when we came alive again in the twentieth century, having slept for aeons in the ice, to discover that the major religion of the Western world taught that suffering is good and suffering has value! Think on our shock to hear people speaking of "offering up their suffering" to a God who valued it! Think of our horror to discover the mythic story of a God who sent Himself in human form to the planet to die a horrific death through crucifixion to appease Himself with His own Incarnate suffering! Think on that. Think on our horror to see the very concept against which Amel railed as the driving force of a religion that has dominated the West during the time of its highest philosophical and technological and artistic development!