Reaching Angelica

by Peter Riva

  The apparition, sorry, Dad was still holding my hand. Why not ask? Dad, may we go back to Regus so I can talk with Apollo? Nothing happened, I didn’t move.

  Dad pulled my hand over a ways, without any visual reference I have no idea what a ways is, and stopped, facing me, still holding my hand. With his other hand, he reached up and touched the side of my head, the right side.

  Apollo was there, “Simon, is that you?”

  “Yes Apollo, it is too hard to explain, can you access my circuits, through the dome?”

  “No Simon, but I can hear you and you can obviously hear me. Are you safe?”

  I looked at Dad, he seemed benign, so I answered, ‘Yes, and in no pain. The snake has gone …”

  “No, it hasn’t, it is attached to your mirror program.”

  “Okay then, anyway I’m here with what looks like Dad. I have been in touch with the ship via binary code and let them know I am safe.”

  “How was that possible?”

  “I’ll explain later, but for now I need to figure something out and I suspect it may have a bearing on everything possible. Do you remember Dad’s god’s theater scenario from before?

  “Yes, it was without scientific foundation, useful philosophically, but not in practice.”

  “Yes, well, maybe not. Imagine an existence, an entity, dependent on engines developing a certain kind of energy to sustain life form or forms. Imagine those engines are enhanced by those life forms. Let’s call the entities gods, okay?”

  “If you must, there are over one thousand, four hundred and thirty-two recognized forms of deity in Earth’s history …”

  “Later Apollo. But if these gods need the engines to produce the energy that makes up their existence, then they would monitor those engines, wouldn’t they?” Apollo agreed. “Okay then, if monitoring these engines, and assuming they created these engines, they come across something that could interfere with that process, they would be likely to exterminate it, terminate the anomaly, wouldn’t they?” Again, Apollo agreed. “So why haven’t they?”

  Apollo was silent. I called out his name and he responded, “Simon, what you are describing, coupled with the diffuse brain theory, is a possible adaptation and symbiotic relationship theory to account for the non-extinction of anything that could interrupt those engines. In other words, they chose not to.”

  “Exactly, we may be parasites, once deadly, fulfilling what we think is our destiny but that is, in reality, only the destiny required for us to enhance the Vast Pattern’s engines. It never made sense to me that the bioforms on Earth were more important in producing transmissions that Gaia could then transmit off-Earth using the energy of the planet, energy off the core. Yet Gaia resided on the surface, everywhere on the surface, right?”

  “That is what I have found, yes.”

  “That means Gaia is there to monitor, collect and, if necessary, modify these life forms.”

  “So that the bioforms can make weak energy transmissions? I do not calculate that as likely.”

  “That’s not what bioforms are transmitting. We’re not part of the energy solution, maybe we’re part of the maintenance program to train and mold other bioforms, change them from infections to symbiotic life forms that actually enhance the energy production. If I’m the first being here, the first life form in this dimension, then it stands to reason we’re a pre-eminent life form. We’re instructors, okay, okay, certainly not the only ones, but a pre-eminent one. Look, if the structure of the solar system is part of the diffuse brain, it stands to reason that in the construction of the solar system, it would develop a flaw. What’s the flaw? A planet that can support life. That life can interrupt the structure of the whole solar system because of the activity of those life forms. Think of the atomic bomb. What other great weapons or planet destruction could life forms concoct—have they concocted billions of times over? Apollo, look, our knowledge, our experiences, from jellyfish to dolphins, dogs, apes, men—all of our transmissions at death are only part of the training programs for other parasites to bring them into the fold, to nurture them, to train them into ways of behavior designed not to interrupt the function of the Vast Pattern’s components.

  “Look, if you knew you were designing a vast universe or universes and that parts of that universe could develop life forms that could destroy part of your system, it is easier—and certainly given the physics of randomness involved in an enterprise as large as the Vast Pattern—easier to put fail-safe training mechanisms in place, operated by Gaia, reports transmitted through Regus to wherever—assuring you that the system was running perfectly. It’s like the human gut, the system adapts to bacteria, and our very existence depends on that symbiotic relationship. But if one bacteria gets out of hand, develops into something we see as nasty, we get doctors to purge it with antibiotics.

  “Nope, it is much better to regulate the whole by training. To bring these life forms eventually onto the Path. When we leave the path, we become bad parasites, non-symbiotic forms.”

  I had remembered learning that our guts contain millions of parasitic bacteria and if they become out of balance, become too numerous or if they die off, either way, they can kill us.

  Apollo cut in, “Simon, that bacteria hypothesis is acceptable. But how do these memories, these transmissions get used? Experiences of a man on Earth are hardly useful to an ameba on another planet, are they?”

  I was actually laughing now, “Yes, they are Apollo. You see we think we’re transmitting memories, well, yes, we are, but the strength of those memories is all about cohesiveness as a species, about relationships, about getting along, about love. Strong emotions. In the same way that talking kindly to your plants makes them grow better—better in a way no scientist has been able to measure. And what’s the outcome? What’s the real message? Do for others as you would want for you, in short, not just do no harm but help. Look, in the same way a mother feels love for her invisible child in the womb, our transmissions may be channeled to seed, or modify primitive life forms in other galaxies, perhaps other universes to become useful, to fit in, to assist, live as if we know that we are connected and that our actions affect all life! That’s a universal message of most religions, most people’s personal belief systems, even if they are agnostic. What the Vast Pattern will not want anywhere in the multi-universe world it inhabits, are hostile, anti-Path transmissions.”

  Dad waved a hand, a giant rift opened, and I could see only orange sky with shimmering globes spaced evenly. Slack-jawed, I stared and said to Apollo, “Ah, Apollo, I am being given a chance to see something no one has ever seen before. Apollo, I am looking at multiple universes, each a sphere, suspended in what looks like orange sky. I do not know why orange or what it means, but I am sure this is what I am seeing. Multi-universes. Oh, my god they exist.”

  Dad spoke to me, although his lips did not move, you see what you are supposed to know, what has always been, what will always be. Forever. Balance forever renewed.

  Apollo said, “Simon, I was able to hear that. Amazing. Please thank your father for me.”

  Dad bowed, just a little.

  I couldn’t help it, I was feeling giddy from the spectacle we were seeing, “Apollo, you just got head bowing, denoting subservience, friendliness, amicable manners, silly bending over posture.”

  Apollo laughed and Dad even smiled. Seems a joke is universal.

  My dilemma now was how to get back into my very own god’s theater universe, get back into my body and at the same time, secure the safety of our parasitic species. The key lay in our usefulness. And I had no idea how—or if—humankind had ever been useful at all.

  There had to be a reason we had lived for so long—And then Dad waved his hand and the slit closed returning us to the room without light but where I could see without any perspective, without distance reference, just Dad and me, holding hands. His face was blank, but his eyes were questioning as he did when testing my memory when I was a child. Dad wanted answers, wanted me to reach th
e right conclusion.

  Humans had lived so long? Who was I kidding? If the whole of the life of Earth were made into a day, humanoids would only appear at the last minute and a half. I turned to Dad, “Father, if humans are a recent creation, via evolution, are we a finite species that has failed Gaia and the Vast Pattern? Are we doomed to extinction because we live apart from the natural order, the symbiosis you require?”

  Dad nodded.

  “What do we need to do to reverse that decision?” I asked.

  Dad nodded again.

  “Okay, can we be useful to the universe going forward?”

  Apollo cut in, “Simon, please repeat what is said to you in case I do not get the transmission …” And then his voice in my head stopped. I could not hear Apollo anymore.

  Dad’s fingers let go of me, and I floated a little. Then his form changed into a glowing orange orb, and inside I could see it contained hundreds, perhaps thousands, perhaps millions of orbs. And then it was joined by another and another identical orb, of different colors, until all above me, all behind me, underneath and all around were orbs, millions and millions of them, each touching the other, each forming part of a whole. Before me floated a pan-multi-universe.

  32

  WHAT USE WERE WE?

  It is hard not to mentally collapse when presented with a reality beyond comprehension. How could I be looking upon one multi-universe let alone a pan-multi-universe? Human sight doesn’t work that way. I couldn’t be seeing this. Okay, I knew I was being made to see what it wanted me to see. I suppose it calculated what the maximum level of comprehension was for my species.

  It overestimated a bit. For me anyway. I was sadly dumbstruck. The orbs, on the other hand, wanted nothing, said nothing—they merely stayed there, floating beyond my reach, filling all that was.

  Suddenly I understood the message: Or could be. This was all there was and all there could be, ever. The infinite. A world without end. The word world took on a whole new meaning.

  Truthfully, I didn’t try or want to touch it. Touch a multi-universe, try and reach out and embrace a pan-multi-universe? What, was I that nuts? Nope. It was so beautiful, so radiant, so perfect that I felt totally inferior. It was looking into the face, the existence, the world of a superior entity or entities. I really wasn’t sure, but at that moment, it did not matter.

  But the thought did occur to me: Was this a single being or merely a manifestation of life that lived on a different plane, dimensional planes? Perhaps I was as foreign to it as it was to me.

  On the other hand, everything shown to me felt godly and I did feel inferior floating there, unable to return to Regus’ passageway or, better still, to my body on the ship. Suddenly, I had a yearning to be back with my own kind.

  But if that was the point, to awe strike me, then why make this pan-multi-universe apparition so human in scale. If I could see it, then that meant it was being shown infinitesimally smaller than it was? Right? Or did the pandimension I was in alter all perspective? Confusing, to say the least.

  Perhaps that was what was being communicated—there is no bigger or smaller, no greater and lesser, no superior and inferior. We are all part of a whole and could continue being part of life, but only if we knew how to fit in going forward, if we didn’t go and become overabundant, over-reaching, if we didn’t go and once again become a destructive across-the-board species. Yes, I thought, with the Purge atomic blasts on Earth, hundreds of billions of lives were lost, millions of humans, but also billions and billions of other parasites, other symbiotic creatures, each fulfilling a function. It doesn’t matter if those creatures know what they are doing and why, as long as they fulfill their task as part of the whole.

  It all came back to the energy transmissions, the need for like-parasitic training of new life forms. Our death thoughts were that vital part of the genetic code of the universe to make sure that the nascent life forms would complete their happy lives and, in return, the Vast Pattern would provide the soup, the digestive tract for us to flourish; planets, sunshine, water, air. That’s why the comets carried right and left-handed amino acids and water, tons and tons of water over billions of years raining down from space until each suitable planet had water to sustain life.

  “Dad,” I felt it was best to address the one orange orb as my father, “how many stable bio-formed planets are there in the two supergalaxies my planet is part of, Perseus-Pisces and Laniakea?” As I said that, I pictured Dr. Tully’s image of the Great Attractor and the two supergalaxies in my head.

  I saw a number in my head, 1018.

  That many? One Quintillion? “And how many are at the seeding stage?”

  A trillion. A trillion planets that are virgin, ready for life, safe for bioform expansion.

  “Do you need us, us humans as a species?”

  No.

  “May we stay?” I wanted to add please and perhaps make a long explanation that I now had come to understand and that we could live in tune with life, conduct peaceful, happy lives if that would help. The response I got gave me partial hope, perhaps false hope, but hope nonetheless.

  Some Maybe. Some Not. Mechanical Humans Must End.

  Did it mean that humans that use mechanical tools or did it mean Apollo as a new being, or was it also meaning the reborn versions—Aten and Apollo’s nine children? It heard my thoughts and I heard Wrong Thinking.

  Puzzled, I had to say, “Dad, these mind games may be beyond my capability. I can help, I can make amends for what was done in the past …”

  No, you cannot.

  “Okay, I didn’t mean repair damage already done, I meant repair ways, behavior going forward. We could fit in but …”

  If you cease, then all can return to normal. Soon.

  That was devastating. Did it mean that humans, mechanically empowered humans, had to go? I pondered silently for a moment. The Buddhist monks tried desperately never to use machinery, never to adversely affect another living thing—insects or mammals. But I knew that was false. Just pulling a carrot could deprive the carrot of life and perhaps starve the insects prepared to consume the carrot or the cow foraging for the green tops. As a species, indeed like most of Earth’s species, we feed on each other, we feed on each other’s needs and food. In short, we compete. It is the basis for animal, human, and all planetary evolution. Was this being asking us to change or was it merely stating the obvious that we all had to go, starting with the mechanically capable humans? I needed to find out.

  “Can you give me an example of an Earth bioform that is acceptable?” An image of a jellyfish appeared in my mind. Oh, great. Perfect. “Can you try something a little more capable, something humanoid?” A gibbon appeared, arms outstretched, spinning slowly. Now, I thought, that’s interesting. Gibbons forage for food, depriving others, they are territorial, and they have battles for supremacy. Okay, they have no machines. Making a new image in my mind, I asked, “And how about bonobos?” The response was a clear acceptable. Bonobos used tools, sticks to dig out termites, rocks to break up marrowbones. What made humans, then, so different?

  I asked, “Are computers the problem?”

  Affirmative, false life.

  “All computers, all mechanical calculation devices?”

  Wrong thinking. Human machines must cease.

  I think I began to understand then, the problem was that the generator had a new parasite that was not empowering a transition of data for the universe’s use in training other parasites. And to make matters worse, the new parasite was, evolutionarily speaking, overpowering all the natural species on the planet. Apollo and Ra, before becoming Aten, had controlled all of humankind and the planet’s systems, water, weather, power, war. If Apollo and Ra had wanted to, they could have terminated every living being on Earth easily. They had not done so nor wanted to simply because I had trusted them and I had accidentally used the Path as a means to achieve balance …

  Balance!

  I went back to addressing the orange globe multi-universe as m
y father, “Dad, the mechanical-humans, the computer entities, are on the Path. Search my mind and understand the Path. It is balance, it is based on thinking and programming, an if, what if, programming sequence. What you do must be done in balance or nothing works, nothing can last. The Universe is like that, in balance. Nothing disappears, nothing is lost, all matter, energy, mass is transformative into each other state. Balance is achieved. That is the Path. Apollo, the voice I was listening to, is on the Path …”

  Affirmative and Ra/Aten live. Not next mechanical-humans. Not in balance.

  “I need to tell Apollo that. He can cease all new births, he can curtail any development.” I thought for a second, “Is that why Gaia said we could continue to exist and then years later Regus informed Gaia to terminate life on Earth?”

  Affirmative. In my head, I remembered someone once saying, “God save us from well-meaning do-gooders for they know not the harm they do.” Our desire to allow more Apollos to be born, and then have an endless stream of System entities developing and then even have some of them living as humans was the root cause of Earth’s imminent destruction.

  I curled up into a ball, floating, frightened. I had caused this. As usual, I was to blame. It wasn’t Apollo or Ra, or Cramer, Cramer’s dad, my Angie or anyone else. It was my idea to allow, no, to encourage Apollo and Ra to become parents. How could I now tell them their kids must die or that all of Earth was to become extinct because of my so-called magnanimous gift? All I could think was to say, “Sorry, I’m so damned sorry.”

  The orbs all around me changed color to blue, shrank, and then disappeared. I was all alone. I do not know for how long, there was no spatial reference, but I suspected the time delay was brief because I didn’t have much time to think it all through before Dad reappeared and, lips not moving, said in my head. Find a way. No planet fall until. Earth end waiting. And immediately I was transported into the hot zone again and then into the passageway, Regus, and I called out to Apollo. My mirror image was there, snake attached, both immobile. Neither reacted to my presence, the mirroring program seemed to be defunct. I didn’t care.