by Ian Wallace
What I noticed about this volume of space was its personality; and while I realized that other volumes might have indistinguishably similar personalities, I hadn’t found them.
This volume of space—which I had come to call Non—was pregnant.
Uncertainly pregnant. Quite likely to miscarry.
Non was a lambently developing locale in nonspace—or metaspace, or psychospace, whatever the best word was for the spatial infinity of potentials outside all definite metagalaxies. And nonspace, or raw space, or psychospace, kept champagning with little random-spontaneous events that kept canceling each other out. The probabilities of canceling—or of damping out—of any recurrent pattern which may spontaneously and randomly generate itself in raw space are so immeasurably overwhelming that the development of any matter anywhere in any length of time is astronomically improbable. And you cannot increase the probabilities by multiplying volumes of space; because no matter how many volumes of no matter how large a size that you may arbitrarily cube off, within any single one of those volumes, and therefore within all of those volumes*, the improbabilities of systematic recurrence remain immeasurably overwhelming.
We should not be here; and it is by the merest luck that we are here. Or if somebody arbitrarily created us, still it is luck that he did—if that is what you call luck.
Whether each of the numerous metagalaxies generated itself by such a sustained stroking of luck, or whether a single central metagalaxy had proliferated itself to bud off the others, or whether the formation of one sympathetically had encouraged the generation of others, I did not know; I rather hoped that the last might not be the case, for if it were, it would suggest that metagalaxies were a cancerous development in psychospace (although the infinity of psychospace made this question ultimately unimportant); and I was fairly sure that the last had not been the case, because every metagalaxy by its own lure-gravity curves local metaspace around itself in such a way as to hold self-contained its energy thrust.
What I did know was that in my favorite volume of raw space far outside all metagalaxies—the volume that I called Non, naming it after the fecund Kamatic god-goddess Nun or Pregnant-Procreative Chaos—there was generating something vitally systematic.
If I should see signs that it was going to miscarry, perhaps I could do something to nudge it back into progression. In this case, new matter, a new metagalaxy, perhaps even new life might eventuate. And I could count myself its creator.
But there was a limit to what I could allow myself to do. I could not intentionally create, not require, not ordain. All I could allow myself to do was nudge.
When I arrived, the self-generating culture center was still there: I sensed it and went for it and took fascinated pleasure in its progress. Its persistence was so unbelievably improbable!
Infinite psychospace is not exactly a plenum but more inexactly an infinitum of small random spontaneous happenings. Each happening, insofar as one can be distinguished from its neighbors (and they are far less self-distinguished than bubbles in brew), follows a lambent unimaginative thrust-lure pattern: it is born inhaling, and exhaling it perishes. It is a psychomodal cycle inherent in the nature of psychospace—which is the most primitive of all natures, occurring every where-e very when for the lack of anything less primitive. No matter how far out you may go in any direction, no matter how far forward or backward in time, infinitely beyond is psychospace.
The typical psychomood is placidity; but the placidity is never permanent, for it degenerates locally into monotony or boredom. This, in the absence of exterior stimulus, is a necessary degeneration; and I comprehended it subjectively, having experienced it as a living human. Boredom then progresses to introversion (if an appetitive phase is not satisfied), and introversion to coarctation (which is tightfisted particularity). But then, by very self-reason of the tensive coarctation, the particle reacts outward, angrily thrusting. In the thrust it dissipates itself and ceases to be: all once again is placid psychospace. And that is the reason why everything that can happen is usually damped out before it does happen.
All this, be it noted, is primitively subjective. But every instance of subjectivity entails potentially observable objectivity. Loving you subjectively, I may successfully hide my love; but if you had sufficiently refined instrumentation, objectively you could observe my love. There is no instance of subjective feeling without objectively feelable effect, even though no intelligent observer may be able to identify this effect; and there is no instance of objective effect that does not originate in subjective dynamics, even though the subjectivity may not be intelligently conscious.
Hence, in psychospace—as I well knew, going into this interesting place—if there is any particle beginning to introvert, it is a lure for any other particle that happens to be starting to thrust: the introverting stimulates the thrusting. But by the same token, if any coarctated and therefore tensive particle experiences thrust from a neighbor, the tight-wound one is instantly self-exploded into extra outthrusting anger. At an intelligent level, this is human dynamics, modifiable by inhibition; at the dullest level of all levels, this is primitive psychospace dynamics. And in psychospace, the outcome is almost always a damping-out into normal and nonparticulate lambency wherein once again anything can happen but nothing significant is happening.
What was progressively exciting me was that, just here, something was happening—something recurrent, which could lead to the birth of matter.
Brooding over this active center, I totted up its progress. This progress was not small.
What had improbably happened was this. A number of introvertive particles—nine of them, as I counted—had, just by unlikely chance, formed themselves in a hollow-spheroid group like an irregular blastula. Even more excitingly, the coarctationtiming of these nine particles was offbeat-rhythmic. As a result, every time one particle progressed toward coarctation, some other particle, tiring of tension, exploded into a thrust; and the thrust, catching the coarctated one, exploded it into thrust, which in turn caught still another coarctating particle…
Already it was settling into semiregularity.
I watched rapturous. It was the start of self-creation, the beginning of matter—defining matter as primitive spontaneity, premind, presoul, trapped in patterns of reciprocal periodicity.
I foresaw what could happen.
Matter may be atoms: each atom is a tyrannical proton-matriarch of semicoarctate lure compelling an around-dance of its thrust-electrons in system. Or it may be photons: each photon is a pulsating-and-balanced lure-thrust propagate winging through psychospace, as the result of an electron which has given up thrust and fallen inward toward the commanding mother. Because matter is periodic, science can identify and predict it by means of sensitive instruments. That which cannot be periodically identified and predicted is not matter.
As now I watched the cluster of nine fluctuating particles which constituted the most important part of this my favorite volume of psychospace, I anticipated that here matter could happen. …
On the other hand, here matter could abort.
Could I, at the right instant, prevent this matter from aborting, I could be tagged as the creator or at least the male midwife of a new metagalaxy.
“Watching the cluster” was a curious phase, I reflected as primordial matter slowly struggled into development: there was no light here—not even from the remote metagalaxies, for these hugged their light jealously within and just around themselves; and had any propagation escaped into this metaspace, quickly it would have been damped out in the minuscule randomness. Nevertheless I was experiencing reliable mental-visual images, and these were supplemented and deepened by empathetic infeel into the subjectivity of the particle-yaw.
It did now appear that the nine-cluster was beginning to settle into a balanced periodicity. Eight of these crude emotive units formed an inexact ring, and their mood seemed to be primarily thrusting; the ninth, which had drifted toward the center, tended in the direction of predominant lure. The eff
ect was becoming nicely reciprocal, now that the outer ones had developed a certain spindrift around the ring. The predominant thrust of the outers kept them spaced apart from each other, and also away from the inner; the predominant lure of the inner was holding the ring fairly secure, because the outers were by no means in a self-demolishing state of total thrust but instead were responsive to lure.
It was a polyandry, I whimsied: a jealous matriarch surrounded by her tied-rebellious men. Or a tabby in heat, circled by toms, drawing them, yet keeping them at bay with her spitting. Or, perhaps most aptly, a possessive mother holding onto her young sons, who pulled as far away from her as they could but were unable to bring themselves quite to break away and roar out into space. Whatever you called it, the potential was exciting because of the sympathetic effect that the cluster was beginning to exert on the immediately environing sensitive psychospace.
For now I was noticing an inward-outward dancing of the outers in reciprocal response to the lure-rhythm of the inner. I selected an outer for study, following it slowly around and around the ring. For convenience, I named it Joe, while I dubbed the inner Mom.
As the lure of Mom waxed, Joe’s responsive counterthrust waxed desperately with it, until he appeared to reach a breaking point and give up, drifting inward toward her—not all the way, but much closer in. His giving-up was a relinquishing of thrust; and it took the form of his own periphery stripping itself away and flying free into space: there this new particle was rather swiftly damped out by random multiplicitous lambent brew-bubbling, but it excited space as it died. Meanwhile Mom, having more or less won Joe, seemed in his immediacy to swell euphorically, herself moving toward a condition of semithrust: reexcited by her, Joe himself regained thrust-energy and retreated again to the outer ring, as though he had fed upon her for energy to push away from her. This reciprocal response was multiplied by eight: all the outers, one after another and over and over again, were engaging in the same Mom-dance, taking each his turn; and whenever one drifted in, he did so at the cost of losing thrust-exterior which then darted off into space as a new dying particle.
And what was Mom feeding on? apparently on space itself, sucked into her as her lure-cycles progressed, giving her energy to swell euphorically and feed her sons whenever they approached her…
As for the surrounding halo of psychospace, its arousal was growing evident; and I thrilled to anticipate that I might be about to witness reproduction. For the primal nine-cluster had developed in the most random way, with the chances overwhelmingly against its development proceeding so far. But now that the environing space had been excited thereby, the chances of this kind of event inexactly replicating itself were enormously increased. And if reproduction-by-sympathy should occur—so that instead of one primal atom there would be two, and then three or four, with probabilities rising all the time—hey, the outcome could be a new metagalaxy, given a few billion years of this! shining with stars, droning with planets, lush with life, heroic with history.
There were, after all, only already a few thousands of such metagalaxies.
And there it was, maybe! The small events in raw psychospace normally canceled each other quickly in their minithrust and minilure, their hypodepression and hypo-euphoria, all like the futile bubbling of a witchless cauldron. But now, stimulated by the photons of thrust that the primal atom was emitting, two neighboring particles had semistabilized into concrescence and had grown large, were beginning to spar with each other in an angry tilt of hard-coarctating yin reacting into exploding yang.
Giving the primal one swift reinspection, I decided that its periodicity had attained an assurance which would last for a while without my help: the nine-cluster was prematter, all right. Leaving it then, I turned to the new pair. For these two particles were enough to establish a reciprocity analogous to that in a hydrogen atom (the reason, perhaps, why hydrogen was the most plentiful element): not as solid or as stable as a nine-cluster, but nevertheless further reinforcement for the developing totality.
If I was going to interfere minimally, this was the place to do it. But how—and when—and precisely where? What sort of deft intervention would assure permanent continuity?
I studied the dynamics, thinking tentatively of the two wildly interengaged particles as Katharina and Petruchio. If one of them could arrive at taming the other—just enough, not too much—the match would be made; but at this moment they seemed to be progressively infuriating each other so intensively that before long both of them would blow up and cease to be. Indeed, calling them Katharina and Petruchio, I had no way to tell yet which was which: they were sucking and blowing equally…
I decided on an arbitrary decision. “You,” I said, mentally pointing, “will be Katharina.” To establish this decision would be my small intervention.
I hovered, judging the pace of the ping-pong dynamics. Katharina sucked herself into a degree of lure just short of coarctation, caught thrust from Petruchio, and exploded furiously into counterthrust—just as Petruchio, having shot thrust at Katharina, sucked himself into lure while she hit him with her thrust. If at just the right instant I could dart in and screen off part of a Petruchio-thrust from the bosom of Katharina, her reaction when she would catch the reduced rest of it would be slightly less violent; if then I would allow the fullness of her reduced counterthrust to hit Petruchio full in the chest, his reaction would be slightly less violent than before, yet stronger than hers. Perhaps this one partial screening would prove to be the sole required midcourse correction…
I watched. I timed several interchanges. A Katharina-blow hit Petruchio. Swelling with rage, Petruchio launched his counter. Half of it I intercepted. The rest rolled into Katharina when she was at maximum sensitivity just prior to coarctating…
The result was not quite as predicted.
Absorbing the reduced thrust, Katharina hesitated, swelled a bit, emitted an abortive poof, trembled, subsided into pure lure, began to coarctate. Petruchio, deprived of her allure by her coarctation, swelled violently and exploded into nothing. The violent thrust of his explosion sent a continually densening Katharina wallowing as a hard particle, a bowling ball, through space at the nine-cluster.
Before I could comprehend the disaster, Katharina had entered the nine-cluster, hard-knotted in coarctation, and had cannonballed into Mom. The impacted pair snarled into coalescence and reacted violently into explosive thrust.
The nine-cluster was erased.
And space was raw.
And Non was nothing.
Deep in my mind, the Thoth-voice murmured from a mighty distance: “Perhaps it was a time when you should have done nothing.”
Hurting, I responded: “I thought that minimal intervention was what you always expected of me.”
“I do not recall saying this, Pan. I recall saying that in each assignment you were to decide for yourself what minimal intervention might be needed. The scope extends to deciding against any intervention at all. Especially now when you are under assignment only to take a vacation.”
“Then I have learned this lesson bitterly.”
“Why bitterly? All you did was terminate a couple of primordial atoms that probably would have perished anyway without much if any issue.”
“On the other hand, I may have destroyed a metagalaxy and all its possible people.”
“That kind of consideration is blithely brushed aside every time a woman takes a contraceptive pill. Do you therefore damn the pill, Pan?”
“Well, hardly—”
“On the other hand again, had this germ of a metagalaxy survived and developed, for all we know it might have ended by destroying all other metagalaxies.”
“Are you saying, perhaps, that what I did or did not do ultimately didn’t matter?”
“It may have mattered very much indeed, Pan. Whether for good or for evil, there is no way to know.”
“Nevertheless it occurs to me, Thoth, that on all my assignments I have been applying correctives to events that had already h
appened. Whereas this time, supposedly on vacation, I meddled germinally with the future of events that were starting to happen for the first time. This I shall never presume to do again, Thoth.”
“Not even if you are assigned to it?”
“You mean—I might some day be assigned to meddle with some life that ought to be determining its own course?”
“Aren’t people forever doing that with each other anyway?” “Yes, but—”
“I understand, Pan. You are objecting that this kind of meddling with lives would be external, even in a way supernal. But I promise never to send you on such an assignment unless disaster is practically certain otherwise.”
I mused: “Then perhaps on this vacation I have learned something about handling such an assignment. I must not intervene until and unless it is clear to me that the minds in the situation may see new perspectives through my intervention and may carry along thereafter through their own abilities and courage.”
CONCLUSION OF THESE PAN-ASSIGNMENTS