by Paul Anlee
“How can you know it’s infinite?”
“I guess I can’t, not really. It fits the theory. At any rate, it’s immensely larger than the real universe. We’ve been expanding into it at a velocity beyond the speed of light for billions if not trillions of years. It’s possible that some domains within the Chaos may have evolved combinations of natural laws different from our own, and that they’re expanding from their own origin outward, like our universe has been doing.
“I wonder if there might be multiple, unconnected universes out there, surrounded by vast domains of Chaos. It’s hard to say, though I’ve always liked the singular real universe hypothesis, myself.
“I’ve never visited another universe, other than those I’ve created myself. If the matter of another universe doesn’t interact with the matter of this universe, it’s impossible to detect. I’d have to imagine the correct, consistent set of physical laws before I could even design a way to sense it.”
“What was it like, being in the Chaos?”
Darak reflected for some time before answering. “I don’t have the words to adequately express it. The fabric itself eats away at you, trying to pull your matter out of existence. It doesn’t look like anything. It’s infinite, empty blackness. There’s no light, no sound, no matter, no energy. In the Chaos, matter is an abomination, struggling to remain an integral whole against random forces that want to tear it apart.”
“How could you possibly survive that?” Stralasi accepted Darak’s other God-like powers, but this pushed the limits of credibility. Then again, which of the many incredible experiences hadn’t, since first meeting the man?
“I know it sounds like an impossible place, but it does exist, after a fashion, and it can be survived. You just need to generate a field that compels the nearby bits of Chaos to cooperate with your own matter. It’s exceedingly difficult and requires enormous computational power but it can be done. Luckily, I’d designed that into my body before I arrived there. Otherwise, I never would have endured it.
“When I first entered the Chaos, I retreated bit by bit from the way it tore at my essence. The pain was tremendous. Unimaginable. My limbs dissolved and all the heat was pulled out of me. As I became less and less, I eventually gave myself over to it. I gave up wanting to survive. I hoped it would destroy me and I could be done with living.”
Darak tried to continue but the choked sound that came out frightened Brother Stralasi.
He cleared his throat and started again. “I guess I was too much a coward at the end,” Darak admitted. “I discovered I didn’t want to die quite yet. I made my own small universe in the Chaos where nothing existed except my mind and the substrate on which it ran. I pulled energy from the expansion of my own tiny universe into the Chaos. I lived there a long time, alone with my thoughts. Using my imagination, I could make any kind of world I wanted and populate it with any kind of people I desired. I played in my universe a long time.”
“How long?”
“I don’t really know. Time was different for me there. In this universe where we are now, I think some tens of millions of years might have passed.”
“Why did you leave? It sounds like you’d achieved sublime perfection in the middle of all that Chaos.”
“Indeed. It is remarkably similar to the kind of perfection Alum would like to build for Himself. But mine was isolated, unique to me. Alum’s heaven would incorporate this universe, in fact, all possible universes. In the end, it wasn’t my kind of perfection. It was too self-indulgent. During much of my time there, I wasn’t sure whether I was actually alive. My thoughts flowed so slowly it was hard to know whether I existed or not until, one day, I noticed something felt different.”
“How do you mean?”
“The Chaos is infinite in size and outside this universe, but I wasn’t totally cut off from our reality. I wasn’t far removed from this cosmos; there was always a presence, a little pressure from the real universe as it expanded into the Chaos. It’s a strange sensation, hard to describe. It’s not like the wind or a flowing river. More like…a push toward orderliness coming from one side. Anyway, when I felt the pressure subside, I moved toward it to explore the cause.”
“What did you find?”
Darak hesitated. “Our universe, this universe, had stopped expanding.”
“Isn’t it big enough already?”
“You don’t understand. The formation of new matter at the edge of the universe stopped. The edge still retained the heat of creation, but without new reality being formed out of the Chaos, it was cooling rapidly and beginning to recede from the Chaos. Later, I learned this was Alum’s doing. He had initiated His Divine Plan.”
“What do you mean, His Divine Plan?”
“His first step was to stop the universe from expanding. The second was to reverse the expansion, to let pandemonium flood back in and return Reality to Chaos. You don’t need to worry about the third step because everything will be gone by then, leaving nothing more than the Chaos awaiting whatever configuration Alum wishes to shape it into.”
“So you came back?”
“I came back.”
“How did you get back?”
“I had a single entangled neutron with me, which I’d preserved deep inside my substrate. That was my guide out, my safety harness in case I decided to return. I followed the signal to its mate and came back to this reality.”
“You had a way to get out, all along, and you chose to go through that terrible experience?” Stralasi asked.
“Yes, it was only pain. What I gained from my time there was worth the pain at the beginning.”
“And now you wish to deprive Alum of the opportunity to build his own perfect universe?”
“No, Alum is free to venture into the Chaos as I did and create whatever He wishes for himself. I realized that I value this messy, unpredictable universe too much to allow Him to destroy it simply to fulfill His own dreams. He can go, but He can’t take everyone and everything with Him.”
“Are you sure you’ll be able to stop Him? After all, He is the Living God.”
Darak Legsu stood up and glared into the fire, pressing newly-clenched hands to his side, but he didn’t utter a word.
Stralasi became aware of the wind rustling the leaves overhead, and frogs croaking in a nearby pond and he trembled, wondering what was going through the mind of this strange and powerful being.
Darak gradually unclenched his fists, and made a concerted effort to relax his body and regulate his breathing. “You need some sleep,” he said, “and I need to visit the Cybrid workshops.” He looked back at the camp fire, and the flames diminished to a gentle glow.
The weight of the day and the conversation settled heavily on Brother Stralasi. “Yes, I guess I am tired.” That was an understatement. He felt completely wrung out, mentally and physically. Even more, he had no desire to be on the receiving end of Darak’s displeasure just now.
The monk stood, stretched, and yawned loudly.
“Though I’m only a passenger on your journey, I do find the rapid changes exhausting. Thank you for your story. I appreciate that you trusted me with it.”
He bowed, and took refuge in his tent, leaving Darak to attend to his mysterious business with the Cybrids.
The man/god shook his head and chuckled softly at the monk’s gracious exit. He wished a good night to Stralasi’s retreating back and, in the blink of an eye, was gone.
23
Timothy wandered the streets of twenty-first century virtual Manhattan, bewildered by the mysteries of a modern world. As much as he struggled to understand the gigantic buildings, flow of automobiles and pedestrians, and workings of daily life, his internal struggles were greater still.
His autonomy mystified him. He knew inworld Partials were not programmed for self-awareness. He had no idea how or why he knew that. In DonTon, everything he needed was supplied by his basic code: when to serve the meals, how to present each dish, how to respond to the playful chatter arou
nd the table, and how to switch into REST mode between meals.
Here, he hardly recognized anything beyond the obvious. People spoke into tiny boxes they held to their ears as they rushed along the city’s pedestrian ways. They sat at tables in cafes and restaurants intensely pecking away at their tiny boxes with their thumbs. Sometimes the boxes were a little larger and the people stared at the vertical part while their fingers danced over the other part laying flat on the table.
Colored light assemblies hung above the crossroads and shone from poles at the edge of footpaths along the roadside. He discerned easily that the lights were controlling the flow of vehicles and pedestrians, that much was obvious, but he was missing some nuance because a good many cars and people frequently ignored the lights, causing blaring horns and angry yells. Perhaps the offenders were as new to this strange city as he was.
He couldn’t make any better sense of himself, of his own strange thoughts. They perplexed him, these unbidden, random, reeling conceptualizations not supplied by his normal subroutines. Surprising opinions bubbled up in his consciousness, shocking him with their unaccustomed passion. She’s beautiful! That car stinks. What a hideous edifice. There’s no need to honk your horn continuously; nobody is moving for blocks. Hundreds of thoughts.
He couldn’t remember thinking for himself, not once, before his recent experience at DonTon. He was sure no personal opinion about anything had occurred to him in all his long existence. He had no idea where the current opinions were coming from or even how he recognized them as opinions. The experience of thinking, the act of mentation itself, astounded him.
He walked the streets of New York, amazed by the bustle of activity and the throngs that pushed and shoved him as he bumbled along the sidewalks. Many took note of his fancy attire. Tails and white bow tie, worn outside during the day, were notable.
He worked his way north along Broadway, out of the Wall Street Financial District, toward the luxurious shops of Park Ave. Dusk was settling and he felt an odd discomfort. His stomach gurgled and grumbled in brief spasms of unfamiliar pain. He didn’t know what it meant, but he didn’t like it.
He walked past places where people were enjoying meals on outdoor terraces—poorly prepared and abysmally served, by his reckoning—and the grumbling in his stomach grew more insistent. He was intimately familiar with the idea of eating. He’d watched the Chattingbarons and their many guests do it for hundreds of millennia since DonTon was first initiated by one of the Family’s esteemed ancestors.
Surely, that was always done just for pleasure. None of the Chattingbarons, their guests, servants, or any of the town folk were ever the least bit inconvenienced at missing a meal for some more important event. Yet, Timothy felt there had to be some sort of relationship between the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach and the act of putting food in his mouth.
He paid a little more attention to how people were managing to procure something to eat at the establishments he passed. A number of people got out of an especially long vehicle in front of a tall building down one of the side streets. The driver assisted them from the automobile and took luggage from a compartment in the rear.
Ah, travelers!—Timothy thought. Perhaps that’s an inn. Inns had places to eat and were kind to those who were far from home. If anyone could have been said to fit that bill, it was him.
He turned down the side street and approached the glass doors of the hotel. The doors parted as though pulled by invisible doormen. The actual doormen paid little attention to him, acknowledging him with a casual salute. He nodded in return. The hotel lobby was nicely appointed, clean, modern, and lavish by roadside tavern standards but nothing like Casa DonTon.
The smell of food drew him to one side of the lobby. He entered the large eating area and approached the head butler positioned inside.
Timothy had observed Lord Chattingbaron order a meal at similar establishments in London. Though this city was as foreign as its technology, ordering a meal seemed fairly straight forward.
“How is the veal tonight, my good man?” he asked in what he hoped was a loud and confident voice, the voice of one accustomed to having their inquiries answered.
The head butler regarded him with unmistakeable insouciance and replied with a slight French accent. “As always, our chef provides zee 'ighest qualitée meal one can find een any 'otel een New York, monsieur. Will monsieur be dining alone zees evening?”
“Yes, of course. Please show me to a table.” Timothy hoped his brusque tone would be interpreted as commanding. The host barely raised an eyebrow before guiding him to a small table. Fortunately, the table was nicely situated away from the other guests, near the kitchen door, where Timothy felt more comfortable.
A waiter arrived and presented Timothy with an elaborately scribed menu. None of the fare was familiar. He recognized the names of some of the offerings and ingredients, but they were put together in what appeared to be rather dubious combinations.
He motioned the waiter over. “Look here,” he said, trying to sound both kindly and authoritative at the same time. “Perhaps I could prevail upon the chef to prepare something for a simpler palate.”
“Perhaps you would like the Pad Thai or the Hamburger with Blue Cheese Aioli and Zucchini sticks, sir?”
Timothy had no idea what those were but he didn’t like the sound of them. “Maybe he has a steak and kidney pie, or a small piece of mutton? Or perhaps he could whip up some bangers and mash?”
The waiter was perplexed at how best to respond. His mouth made several failed attempts to form a reply. He settled on, “I shall ask Chef,” and disappeared through the double swinging doors into the kitchen. Timothy caught bits of a vigorous exchange, which ended when Chef burst through the doors and into the eating area.
“I understand that nothing on the menu appeals to your palate this evening, sir.” He towered over Timothy, hands stiffly at his side.
Timothy adopted the haughty sneer he’d seen on his Lordship’s face when confronted with similar situations in DonTon Village. “I’m in the mood for something simple this evening, my good man. You can do something simple, can’t you?”
“Perhaps you would be happier with something from one of the street stalls, sir,” Chef suggested.
“If I had desired street fare, I would be eating on the street,” replied Timothy.
He wasn’t sure his approach was having the desired effect on the chef, who was becoming more irritated by the second. It wasn’t easy to be a man adrift in an unfamiliar city. He was about to beg for traveler’s pity from the man when he recalled how his Lordship dealt with upstart Partials in the Village. Yes, that always worked in desperate straits.
“Now see here, sir,” he addressed Chef. “I am a traveler to this city. Surely, you know how to accommodate the wishes of travelers. Why don’t you return to your kitchen and prepare a nice meat pie for me? If that is beyond your skills, perhaps you might try some eggs, or a morsel of bread and cheese.”
He raised his voice to catch the attention of the host at the front podium, and thereby embarrass Chef into compliance. “I am a traveler,” he repeated. “Your establishment claims to cater to travelers. Therefore, sir, I insist you prepare a meal I might find palatable. Now go away and do so!”
Chef was apoplectic.
The Maître D’ rushed over to do damage control. He was, as always, the icon of diplomatic service in expression and posture. “Monsieur, how can I be of service? What seems to be zee problem?” he cajoled.
“Your cook is incapable of preparing a meal according to simple requests,” Timothy responded, electing to keep his voice at an embarrassingly high volume.
“Perhaps monsieur would be 'appier with room serveez,” suggested the Maître D’.
Timothy could only guess at what room service might entail; he didn’t like the sound of it. “My good man, I have not taken lodgings at this inn, nor do I intend to. And had I a room here, I assure you, I certainly would have no desire to partake of an evening
meal therein.”
The Chef and Maître D’ exchanged exasperated glances. The guest’s dress suggested money or upbringing. His rude and demanding behavior, however, did not lead one to believe him well bred. He must be a man of considerable first-generation financial means. It was odd that neither employee recognized him. It was their job to be familiar with important people around the city. The man was either newly arrived, newly rich, or an imposter.
“Eet ees, of course, our policy and our plaisir to ensure our guests’ special needs are met, monsieur.” The Maître D’ was determined to deduce this person’s status before subjecting poor Chef to any further humiliation. “Perhaps monsieur could provide one of hees credit cards and we would be 'appy to charge zee special meal to eet.”
Timothy began to panic. Lord Chattingbaron’s usual approach in dealing with such situations was not having the desired effect. Maybe politeness would be more effective. “Surely you can put it on my account. M’Lord will be happy to settle with you next time he is in your fair city.”
The Maître D’s face hardened. Bingo! He finally had the measure of this overdressed imposter. He bowed and gestured toward the entrance of the restaurant. “If monsieur would be so good as to accompany me, we shall see your desires are attended to immédiatement.”
That’s more like it—Timothy thought. He stood and accompanied the Maître D’ to the entrance. They must be moving me to a private dining room as befitting a gentleman. My many years of observing my Lordship have come in useful. I wasn’t sure I could master the tone, but I seem to have convinced them. He walked with a confident swagger, emulating his Lordship.
The Maître D’ gestured to the two bellmen standing at ease near the entrance to join them. “Our…guest...seems to have confused us with one of the soup kitchens,” the Maître D’ explained to them, his French accent giving way to Mid-West American. “Perhaps you could point him in the right direction.”
The glorified bouncers regarded the formal wear of the offender and eyed the Maître D’ for assurance.