The Transmigration of Souls

by William Barton

  Imagine the howls of dismay I heard. But... but... what if some retarded janitor were to become president? Assholes. What if? First, most janitors are bright people who’ve suffered social discrimination and experienced a little bad luck. Second, what makes you think a retarded janitor, or anyone else for that matter, could conceivably do a worse job than the Bozos we’ve been electing for the past two centuries?

  Bozos? Er, sorry. I mean Bonzos.

  So. I get to be God because there exists a finite, calculable probability, that I actually am God. Simple as that.

  Level Two.

  Once upon a time, there was an aching, empty Heaven, as if the Multiverse were without form, and void, and darkness lay upon the face of the deep. God’s Machine continued to function. But, as machines will without their Master, the Machine began to wind down. Slowly. Very slowly, but wind down it did.

  Once day, into this darkness fell a man of two minds. Kepler, I think his name was. Laws of planetary motion. Somnium. Not the first of his kind. Not the last. But surely a definitive man of his type. Ties to the coming age of science, still mired in the preceding age of superstition. This is the same Kepler who had to defend his mother against charges of witchcraft after publishing a scientific fantasy in which he is transported to the Moon by demons old Mom conveniently conjures.

  Looks around his empty Heaven and recognizes it for what it seems to be. That’s the age of superstition speaking. And thinks, This is serious business. I bet I can help... the coming age of science. In due course, he summoned others of his type, one, then two, then four, then eight... Turn the Crank, men. Without us... we few... we stalwart... we brave... the End?

  In due course, this Band of Angels, renewing the essential force of God’s Machine, summoned the Archangel Bob, who thought he ought to be running the whole shebang. Who, in due course, summoned me.

  Level Three.

  Once upon a time, there was a Heaven full of sullen Angels. No, not the immature, back-biting, storytelling angels we know of today. These were real angels, old fashioned angels. Angels with wings of fire. And, unfortunately, the Changewar’s angels as well.

  By this time, you see, the Old Man was gone, quite possibly where the goblins go (which is, after all, into Nowhere At All), and the Angels had fallen into two camps, not so much the Snakes and Spiders, though Fafhrd’s many iterations among the Angels of today still insists he got it mostly right, as the older notion of Darkness and Light.

  Call the Figurehead Subdeities Lucifer Light-Bringer and Ahriman Heart-of-Darkness if you will. There are any number of names. The long and the short of it, as all students know, is that the Angels fell upon each other, made war for the mastery of Heaven Itself, and in due course were destroyed.

  Ahriman and Lucifer remain to this day, stranded on the event horizon of God’s Machine, looking for a way out, trapped by each other’s greed, battling to a death that will not come. Which left Heaven an aching, hollow void into which the first new Angel could fall. giving him a platform from which to summon us all.

  Level Four.

  Once upon a time there dwelt an Old Man God who sat on Heaven’s Throne and lived in Mastery over His Angels. The Old Man God was a sorry God and He was a sad God and He was a lonely God, but He kept the Angels in line, though that kept Him, so He said, from answering the Question.

  What question?

  He’d come here, He said, to this wretched little Heaven, looking for His Father. The Angels, who’d been here since the ass-end of Forever, didn’t seem to know what the Hell He was talking about. Never found out, either, because, one fine, Heavenly day, He looked up from an eternal bout of Almighty dysthymia, and cried, “Why, I know!”

  And vanished.

  And then the Angels fell upon each other.

  But you know about that already.

  Level Five.

  Once upon a time, Heaven was absolutely chock full of gods. Old style gods, good old-fashioned force-of-nature mythological gods. This one in charge of that. That one in charge of this. Division of labor, like any good family. Oh, to be sure, they bickered and fought and tried to kill each other off from Time to Time. But... well, we all know families like that. They seem to get along in the end, most of them.

  One day, into this simplistic Heaven, this teeming Neterkhert of gods and whatnot, there came an Old Man, not a god at all, but larger than all of them put together. A stern Old Man, a mean Old Man, who seemed to know what he was up to. Scared the Hell out of the gods and whatnot, who’d been trying, since Pluto was a Pup, to forget about the last such being they’d seen.

  Looming over them, the Old Man said, “All right, I’m here. Where is My Father?”

  The gods and whatnot, being forces of nature and all that, didn’t have the slightest idea what the Old Man was talking about. Father? What’s that? they said. Before any deep discussion of the matter could be undertaken, the Old Man tore the place to pieces, looking and looking.

  No Father.

  Then the Old Man said, “What the Hell. This is as good a place as any. You guys will just have to be Angels now and behave yourselves and do as I say.”

  Since the Old Man was bigger than all of them put together, that was just what they did. For a time.

  Level Six.

  Once upon a time, they were all the Mother’s Children, as were we all. Obedient children, doing their chores, keeping the Multiverse in good order, doing the Mother’s bidding, in her own sweet time. Call them the Little Ones, all of them, all of us.

  It was a fine, soft Heaven then, with the Mother running the show, as Mothers will, making assignments, lavishing praise, meting out punishments for the Little Ones who failed. Punishment leavened with a Mother’s compassion.

  Still, the Little Ones would cry from time to time. And resent the accumulation of punishments. In Time, they grew up, grew older, grew into something like adolescence. Became uppity and defiant, these Little Ones, as adolescents will, and the Mother punished them, as Mothers will, but all to no avail.

  In time the Little Ones broke their Mother’s heart, as grown children will. And so the Mother decided to punish them, once and for all, as Mothers will.

  I know the way back now, she said, and I will go.

  And she left them all alone.

  As Mothers will.

  At some point, it dawned on the Little Ones that they were in charge now. All of them. Together. In concert. Gods in Heaven.

  Level Seven.

  Once upon a time, there was Nothing At All.

  No Heaven. No Hell.

  No God, no Angels.

  No Old Man, no elder gods.

  No Mother. No children.

  No soul. No mind. No heart. No matter.

  No Light. No Dark.

  No Nothing At All.

  Then there was Heaven, a spark on the void.

  Spark on the void, with gravid Mother, weaving a web in which her children could spawn. And spawn they did, and filled the void, which was space and time and everything else.

  Which leaves us right where we started. Where did Heaven come from?

  Maybe from Nowhere At All. Maybe there was just a finite probability that there could be a Heaven, so, in Time, inevitably, a Heaven appeared. It’s the same theory that tells us the Multiverse (or maybe just the One, the Only Universe) emerged from an infinitely hot, infinitely dense nothingness, merely because, in some probabilistic fashion, given sufficient duration, Nothing is unstable.

  However...

  How does God do his job?

  Probably... well, yes. Probably.

  Does it the same way we break Zeno’s Paradox.

  You want to go from point A to point B. So you go halfway from point A to point B. Then you go halfway from there to point B. Three-quarters of the way. And halfway from there. Seven-eighths. And halfway from there. Fifteen-sixteenths... Can’t get there from here?

  Kid stuff.

  Einstein’s time shells. A space divided up into discrete Planck lengths. A finite
number of points to be transited in finite divisions of time. Click. Click. Click. Click. Here we are. And something else. If you are on point A, there is a finite, calculable probability that you will, some day, be on point B. Which is, in fact, how God conducts his business.

  A Toolbox call to the Probability Manager and zap. Maybe changes to Is.

  Now, unfortunately, distance beckons.

  We’ll call out Archangel Bob and all the little Cosmic Commandos. Get out the Jug, boys and girls, for there’s work to be done. I really hate to do it. Not just in my single self’s heart of hearts, that one special Dale who sets himself above all the rest, the ones gathered here, the ones still spinning down their long, tangled paths, all across the many faces of the Multiverse.

  First, we’ll shut the gates that made their voyage possible. Snap. Now they can’t get back out into the Multiverse. Not ever. Then we go back and we begin the long and tedious task of Rectification.

  There never was, you see, a stargate under the Moon.

  Never was an expedition that dug down to the ice deposit.

  Never was a time when a tired, middle-aged man stepped through a hole in the wall between the universes, walking right behind that soldier girl, standing in the midst of a might band of U.S. marines, wanting to look at the cute sergeant-girl’s muscular butt, despite the fact that he was about the step into a most astonishing dream.

  Looking up. Looking over her shoulder. Looking in wonder at that splendid sky, the sky hanging over dead Mars-Plus, and realizing, suddenly realizing, what it might mean.

  Snap.

  Gone.

  Not just clean bones gone.

  No, I feel it like a scream in my heart, as the me’s who lived those lives vanish without... no, not without a trace. The memories remain. What good is being God Almighty, if I can’t keep my God-forsaken memories?

  And now?

  Astrid Astride, you are loose in the Multiverse, and that must be Rectified as well. How much courage will it take to see her snuffed out, as if she never was?

  Look around you now.

  Time tracks. Universes. Infinite realities spinning out in directions no one ever imagined could exist, least of all you, Dale Millikan. Will you snuff her out? Is that how Rectification feels? Maybe, maybe not. Somewhere, deep downdeep, the probability still exists, that she will still live, that it really did happen.

  Somewhere, those lost doppelgängers must still exist. Part of some Alternate God, some Changewarred Almighty, who never sent out the Jug, never slid them off the platter of this Multiverse, out into the Nothing At All.

  That’d be a Hell of a note, wouldn’t it? Wish I’d thought of that when I was alive. What would I have called a Multiverse of Multiverses? I think, just maybe, I would have pissed them off by calling it a Garment Industry.

  Nine. World Without End.

  Cool, cool wind, soft wind, blowing on his face. And no pain at all. Ling Erhshan could feel soft bristles, like short blades of new-mown grass, making a delicate, welcome itch on the naked skin of his back, sensation stretching all the way down, across the softer skin of naked buttocks, down the length of thighs, of calves, round, bare heels resting in beds of stiff, dry grass.

  Sunlight on my skin. Warm on my face, especially up by my cheekbones, bright light shining red through my eyelids. Sunlight hot on my chest, burning on my forearms, on the surface of my thighs, the insteps of my bare feet.

  He opened his eyes, looking for the sun. Pale blue sky above, cloudless sky. Nothing else to be seen. No sun, though the tingle of ultraviolet light falling on him was no less intense. Where am I? So comfortable though. No will to move. If I move, the pain will come back.

  He turned his left wrist, felt the sharp edges of the grass sliding across his palm. Palm of my imaginary left hand. No throb yet from the stump. The wind blew on him again, filling his nostrils with a faint earthy smell, the smell of rich soil, the tang of a well-tended garden, breeze freshening, raising the sensation of goosebumps. Blew cool on his genitals, focusing his awareness there. Moved his right hand. Put it on his flat stomach. Felt a distinct urge to start masturbating. Strange, I haven’t felt like...

  Flat stomach. I haven’t had a flat stomach in fifteen years. Too much sedentary labor, not enough good exercise. I...

  He sat up suddenly, feeling the smooth pull of long, sturdy abdominal muscles lift him off the ground, sat in the dry grass, looking down at his two whole hands, flat, sleek stomach with no sign of his... wound. No sign, even, of the little gallbladder surgery scar he’d worn for almost three decades. Familiar penis, though, resting in its little nest of hair. Slim young thighs, no sign of a big, fresh cut.

  Feet. Those are my feet.

  Crouching then, one knee resting on the dry grass, looking around, heart suddenly pounding in his chest. Where? The world stretched away in all directions, going out and out and out, growing blue-misty with distance, never coming to anything like a horizon line. Far, far away were tall, crisp, silvery mountains, shining like bright, bare rock in the sunlight, jagged, rising out of the haze.

  No clouds anywhere, just blue-on-blue sky. Rolling blue-green hills, yellow-green plains and snatches of dark, dense green forest, and those bright, remote mountains. Are we still in Pellucidar, then? Hesperidia, I mean...

  Pang of disappointment. Cast away, then, naked, on one more madcap world, when we thought we’d reached God’s doorstep? No noonday sun. No upcurving landscape. No Pellucidar. Nor even Hesperidia. Certainly not the Valley of the Portal, round dark and dismal Koro’mal’luma.

  Standing now, still looking around. There was a big river, a big silver river winding back and forth only a few kilometers away. Big river of bends and loops, a chopped-off oxbow lake not far beyond. Standing now on a grassy hillside, not far from the crown of the hill, looking down the slope. People lying in the grass, people beginning to stir. Nearby, a small, slender, rather handsome young man was sitting up, blond head bowed. Seeming to... Well. Looks like he’s playing with himself. Remember that urge you had when you woke up?

  The man looked up at him. Smiled. “Jesus. I paid a lot for that fucking thing.” Looked him up and down, smile broadening. “Hello, Ling. Got your arm back, I see.”

  Ling looked down at his restored hand. What has happened to us? Looked back up at the attractive young man.

  Brucie Big-Dick, of course. Except now he had a rather ordinary Caucasian penis, reddish, rather darker than the rest of his fair skin, surrounded by a downy clot of straw-colored hair. Not circumcised. Didn’t the Americans, like all savages, cut their male children at birth? Brucie the Technician stood up, dusting bits of dry grass off his bare backside.

  A young couple sitting together, not far away, holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes. Laing and Jensen, still more or less the same, the woman still incredibly good looking, the man still muscular and heroic. But... different, somehow?

  Passiphaë Laing said, “Why are we still here? Why haven’t we dissipated?”

  Rhino Jensen, manly and stern, squinted up at the bright, sunless sky. “Maybe the Creator still has a script for our code to execute.”

  Beyond them, Amanda Grey and Squire Edgar, standing, looking around, the woman with a look of panic in her eyes. “He’s... gone.” Who? Ardry Bright-Sky of course. Squire Edgar, still bald, though rather younger, slimmer than he had been, seemed to smile.

  Ling found himself looking at the soft red hair of her mons, felt himself growing an erection. Some women, most women, no more than a swatch of hair. Many Chinese women, not even that, just bare abdominal skin, hardly a hint of... With this Amanda Grey, you could see the beginning of... things.

  She was staring at him now, obviously angry. He turned away quickly, trying to calm down. You’re a man approaching sixty. Try to act like it. But, somehow, I don’t feel like... Yes. That flat stomach. You feel young again, don’t you? Heart in chest going thump-a-thump, like you’re going to live forever.

  Lord Genda Hiroshige, naked young O
riental man. Looking, I suppose, not so different from me. Young oriental man kneeling over a young Oriental woman, obviously concerned. Young woman... frightened. Very frightened. Holding her breast, seeming to pull at it. Genda bending down, leaning between her small breasts, putting an ear to her sternum, listening intently. Astonishment. Astonishment on his face. Something impossible going on.

  A plump young man with a rather large penis. The only circumcised penis in sight. Inbar? Of course. Whatever happened let him remain a Jew... Good looking young man he is, muscular, yet sleek with fat all the same, round-headed, slope-shouldered. One of those graceful, dancing fat men, whose fat is never a burden, physically or socially...

  Facing a slim, foxy-looking young woman, naked young woman with long, lustrous brown hair and big brown eyes. Never saw her before. A stranger in our midst. But the two embraced, threw their arms around each other, man burying his face in her hair, lifting her off the ground.

  Ling found himself admiring the woman’s full, muscular buttocks. Can’t seem to keep my eyes off these things, my mind full of thoughts about...

  I know who the brown-eyed girl might be. Aarae would be her name.

  Two more women, standing together, chatting quietly. Rahman, Subaïda Rahman. Unchanged. Sleek, well-exercised young woman, before and after. How does it feel to be... the same?

  And the other brown-eyed, brown-haired girl, young, a bit muscular perhaps? By default, this must be Sergeant-Major Astrid Kincaid, late of the United States Marine Corps, gone the flowing golden hair, gone the molten silver eyes. She keeps looking down at herself. Reaching out to touch herself, hand on stomach, on brown-nippled breast, smoothing her bush of curly brown pubic hair. Hardly able to believe...

  This is the woman her old lovers saw. This is the woman Dale Millikan lay with in the days before my grandfather was born. Disappointed at her transformation? No. Smiling now, whatever she was saying to Rahman. And those eyes. You can see into those eyes, so much better than into empty silver pools.

  My, my. There she stands, watching me get another erection.

  Ling Erhshan felt himself begin to blush, color suffusing right down onto his chest. Listened as the women began to laugh. Laughed back, a weak sort of sound round a weak sort of smile. “Well. Where do you think we are now? I don’t see a... Throne of God anywhere.”