Mesopotamia - The Redeemer

by Yehuda Israely

  For a few long minutes, she meditated with complete serenity but still could not fall asleep. Her appointment to the position of Samos' station master brought with it a heavy dose of mental noise. Unlike the mundane thoughts regarding reporting to Octavia, misgivings about personnel, inventory, equipment and rate of technological development that usually prevented sleep from settling upon her eyes, today her thoughts were occupied with the stranger. She was intrigued by the riddle of his identity and tried to fill in his details in her mind. 'Is he a member of some high-tech civilization? From a familial or institutional social system? Is he familiar with the Pythagoreans?'

  Thales could not maintain his usual concentration during the introspection ceremony. Doubt gnawed at his Pythagorean equanimity. Images of Sophia in her blue gown walking in the river gave him no respite. His closed eyes narrowed as he thought about the stranger who reeked of danger to him. One of his internal voices told him to stop talking about the stranger, not to trust him and to protect Sophia and Samos. Thales hoped that one day he would attain the spiritual level of the master and then he would not be so mistrustful. But in the meantime, he hoped to fall asleep and replenish his energy in preparation for the busy day ahead of him. Suddenly, an idea flashed into his head. He rose from his bed and approached the display in his room.

  “Presentation kit in the simulator,” he commanded.

  The stranger was alone. Or so he thought, since he could not see the tiny mosquito-like insect that hovered above him. He studied the wrinkles on the sides of his nose and in the corners of his eyes, as well as the small unfamiliar scars. A stranger peered back at him from the mirror. His height was average. Deep indentations stretched over his scalp. Tufts of gray flashed though his cropped brown hair. Soft brown eyes peered at him from underneath thick brows. He felt no connection to the fleshy nose, puffy cheeks and thin lips. His build was average, with no distinctive features aside from a mostly hirsute body. He shot a glance at the roots of his facial stubble. His pores vaguely reminded him of an array of points. He tried to reveal if this was some sort of hidden pattern; he continued to ponder this quandary for a while to no avail. The pores were not arranged like trees in an orchard, in rows or columns, in patterns or arrangements. He felt disquieted by their lack of order. During the course of the three days since he had awoken in Samos, he did not encounter even one deviation from the order. Everything around him was arranged in straight lines or in circles. Only the tiny pores in his face defied the impeccable order and his peace. He returned his gaze to the stranger opposite him and studied the expression, but felt no parallelism. He felt like he was incapable of declaring, 'This is me'. It seemed like the reflection was disappointed in him.

  He turned his back to the mirror and buried his face in his hands. 'What happened to me? Who am I?' His head began to spin and he leaned against the mirror for balance. All of a sudden, he became so weak that he forced himself to pinch his left arm, to grab hold of reality, of tangibility. 'What kind of man am I? Where did I grow up? Do I have a family?' But the more he grappled with these unknowns, the greater his terror became. Everything around him was spinning: no certainty, not reality aside from the throbbing in his arm. He pinched himself again.

  He only succeeded in calming himself after some time had passed. Survival instincts had pulled him back to reality. 'Well, now I'm here! I must clarify everything I can about this place and these people. I need to use my head, to think. Thinking and learning may also jog my memory.' He breathed a succession of deep breaths and returned to scanning his environment.

  A creeping suspicion within him wondered if part of him refused to know, denied knowledge. The celestial music was so pleasant, the objects and items were so smooth and Sophia was so calming and enchanting. Perhaps he came from a more distraught place and was in no hurry to return to it? 'Perhaps I was captivated by the enchantment of a siren, causing me to forget all of my self-awareness? And how do I even know about sirens anyway?' he wondered.

  Sophia appeared from around the bend in the corridor. He averted his gaze and caught her reflection behind him. Something in the confidence of her stride calmed him. He alternated glances between her and her reflection, trying to ascertain if the reflection deceived him. If she is identical to her mirror image, it means that the stubble on his chin was indeed his own stubble, the wrinkles his wrinkles, and the image... well, while it might not be him, the image was his own image.

  This time, he was sufficiently alert to examine her closely. She wore the same blue gown, made from a single bolt of cotton fabric. Her hood was rolled back to reveal straight brown hair, light skin, serene smile and the same soft, pleasant eyes like lakes. The garment did not conceal the curves of her feminine body and the grace with which she moved. Sophia murmured in an incomprehensible language. The mirror extinguished and became a blank wall that glowed faintly.

  “Sophia?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Who am I?”

  Sophia inhaled deeply and looked at him with concentration, as if to determine if he were capable of tolerating this conversation. “We believe you came from one of the colonies, and not from Earth. The fact is, your body is healthy, well-nourished and clean. If you had come from Earth, your body would have borne signs of neglect, hunger or various diseases, unless you are a Gnostic, and we haven't found any evidence of that.”

  He murmured softly, “Earth? What is Earth?”

  “Earth is our homeland, the planet where all of us, all humans, came from. Today, however, it has gone from a planet teeming with life to a ruined wasteland inhabited by only a few free men. Most of Earth's inhabitants are enslaved by crime lords, poverty and Gnosticism. Whoever could leave has already left, like we, the Pythagoreans, did.”

  “And who are you, the Pythagoreans?”

  “Come, let me tell you,” she stretched out her hand and smiled as she assisted him to rise from his chair. He leaned on her, stood up from his chair, and immediately let go of her hand. She led him out of the infirmary.

  “As I have already explained to you, this is the Samos Space Station.”

  “Yes, I do recall.”

  “If so, your amnesia only affects your past memories. You are capable of procuring new memories.”

  “Yes. I do not know how to explain this. I remember certain things yet other places in my mind are blank, erased. As if doors and passages have been sealed off,” he said with frustration.

  “It is probably only temporary. You must be patient,” she said compassionately. “Let's continue. We, the Pythagoreans from Octavia, established this space station as a research base for the development of a particle processor. The Samos space station is comprised of balls or spheres that revolve within each other. The processor lies in the heart of the station, in the core sphere. It absorbs stardust from the space all around us and processes it into any material for which we know the formula.”

  “The processor can create any type of material?” asked the stranger in amazement.

  “Almost any material. Any material that we have analyzed.”

  “And you are capable of analyzing all matter?”

  “We are still in the research phase. The processor can create any material for which we know the formula, or any object that we can analyze and decode its formula.”

  “It’s formula?” he asked.

  “Do you hear the music?”

  “Yes.” He had become accustomed to the harmonies playing throughout the station.

  “Simple computational mathematics is not sufficient for the simulator or the processor, so we developed musical calculation engines and interfaces.”

  “Musical?” he smiled dubiously.

  “Yes. The properties of an object are interpreted by the simulator analysis into notes and coded into sounds. The specification of an object is basically a score of notes that the processor can play,” she explained excitedly.

  “So you play objects into being?”

  “Exactly.” Sophia smiled happily
. Sharp minds like his brought her satisfaction and pleasure.

  The stranger was encouraged by her reaction.

  “And what I am hearing right now is the sound of matter?”

  “Yes,” she rejoiced in his understanding, “but that's not all. You are mostly hearing the sound of the station revolving.”

  “Explain.”

  “Gladly.” Her eyes flashed. As soon as they began discussing music, something had stirred inside her. “The station's spheres revolve within each other at various speeds and directions. These rotations are critical not only for maintaining gravity, but also because they constitute an integral part of the process of absorbing and processing the dust.”

  “I think I understand the principle.”

  “Come with me.” Sophia led him through arched corridors whose pastel colors gradually changed from pink to peach to silver. The walls appeared to be wet but when he touched them, his hand was dry.

  “It's not wet?” he asked.

  “No, it just looks like it is. The station is made of raw star dust whose molecules are so small that it appears to be liquid when it is in fact solid.”

  Sophia paused to allow a team of ten scouts in flight jumpsuits to pass them in the hall. They nodded in greeting towards them and continued on their way.

  “Surrounding the processor is the simulation sphere. The simulator is a holographic area that supports a virtual reality of any place or object whose formula exists in the formula bank. The simulator cannot function without the processor: we can simulate objects in the simulator that the processor will learn to create. The residential sphere, which we are in right now, surrounds the simulator sphere. Here you can find the living quarters, food and equipment warehouses, leisure rooms and the infirmary. Above us, or more accurately, around us, is the command sphere, which houses the command and control systems of the station. The command sphere is enveloped by the surface sphere, and the incoming and outgoing aircraft are anchored at the various docks. Your aircraft is parked there. There are five physical spheres in all: the processor, the simulator, the residential, the command, and the surface. These are then wrapped in six additional spheres comprised of strings of light. It is likely that you saw Samos as a grid of light strings when you arrived.”

  “I do not remember.”

  “Are you familiar with the division of Earth into latitudinal and longitudinal lines?”

  “No,” he said, scratching his head.

  “It doesn't matter. Think of a ball that you have wrapped in vertical rings at periodic intervals, passing through the poles.”

  “Fine, continue.”

  “Now, add horizontal lines, parallel to each other, also at periodic intervals.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is what each of the six light spheres look like. The lines that you imagined are made of strings of light that exhibit resistance. You cannot pass through them or between them because they rotate at extremely high speeds.”

  “So how did I get into Samos?” asked the stranger.

  “Thales, the chief scout, attached your ship to his. Afterwards he accelerated the ship to the speed of the light strings of the outermost sphere. With the aid of an electromagnet, he connected to the string and rotated on its axis to the internal portion of the outer sphere. From there he once again accelerated to the speed of the stings in the next sphere, attached himself to it and swiveled inside. He repeated the process until he had reached the surface sphere.”

  “It sounds complicated to me,” said the stranger.

  “It's not that complicated. We don't go in or out that much anyway,” she replied with a smile.

  “Exactly how do the processor and the simulator work?”

  “They function in tandem. The simulator carries out an analysis of the subatomic, atomic and molecular formulas. If it's living, it also analyzes its genetic formula. The simulator creates a virtual version of the object and saves its properties in the information bank.”

  “And when you want to recreate that object, the simulator transfers the data to the processor, which in turn creates the object?” he asked in fascination.

  “Exactly. The simulator can simulate any object that exists as data in the information bank.”

  “Can the processor create itself?”

  “No, but that's an excellent question.” She smiled at the paradoxical question, “At the beginning of the twentieth century, a mathematician named Kurt Gödel expressed a system's inability to demonstrate its own limits. This is one explanation that accounts for the processor's inability to create itself.”

  He looked at her, confused.

  “Never mind. It's not important.”

  “It is important,” he insisted hotly. “I want to understand.” His voice was tinged with anger.

  “Okay, no need to get irate,” she said, taken aback by his reaction.

  'What are you doing? Don't push her away—she is only trying to help,' he thought to himself. He said: “I'm not angry, just frustrated. I am grateful to you for your patience and willingness, but I cannot convey to you how hard it is for me to remember nothing. I don't know what world I am living in, what my occupation is, if I have a wife, a family?” She empathized with his distress.

  “I can only imagine your plight, but you must hold fast to what you do remember and progress from there. Don't worry, you're in good hands,” she said, trying to encourage him.

  “Then let us continue.”

  CHAPTER 4

  "Let's find a base point and then continue from there. Have you heard of Orpheus's constant of creation?"

  "No."

  "How about the Roman’s theory in physics?"

  "Maybe. I don't remember."

  "How about Superstring theory?"

  "No."

  "What about Quantum theory?"

  "Not that one either." 'What am I going to do? How am I going to make up years of gaps? How can you go back to a life with no memories at all?' He thought angrily.

  "And general relativity?" Sophia asked.

  He looked at her in astonishment, desperate and confused.

  "I take it you have no recollection or idea about Einstein's theory of Special Relativity?"

  He nodded his head.

  "Maxwell? Electromagnetism?"

  He didn't respond.

  "What about Newton? It isn't possible that you haven't heard of Isaac Newton." She regretted her words immediately; they made it sound like he was uneducated. That wasn't what she had intended.

  "Tell me about Newton," he saved her from her embarrassment. 'I can't give up, I must start from somewhere'.

  She wondered for a few seconds how to phrase her words and then began. "You have surely noticed that everything around you is smooth".

  "Yes. The smooth texture of the walls, the round angles of the openings, the gradual change from shade to shade. Yes, I've noticed".

  "Well, we designed our surroundings to reflect our world outlook. We, the Pythagoreans believe there is continuity, that is, an inseparable connection between all the components of our universe".

  He nodded. She went on. "Once in every few generations a cosmological genius comes along and reveals another hidden connection between the phenomena. Newton wasn't the first, but I can start the explanation with him so that you can understand the rest of it, which is more complicated".

  "I'm listening." He was indeed listening, but found it difficult to concentrate. He tried to get over his frustration at his situation, and returned his attention to the woman in front of him. She spoke slowly and clearly. He concentrated on her lips and saw how each word rolled out.

  "One type of continuity is the hidden unity that in fact exists in principles which seem to have no connection between them".

  "What do you mean?" He asked.

  "There seems to be no connection between the principle of gravity and the principle of motion. Gravity, the gravitational pull that causes a moon to drift in orbit around a planet, is determined by three factors: The mass
of the planet and of the moon, the distance between them, and their motion. Assuming the moon's mass is constant, the faster the moon moves in its orbit around the planet, the smaller the gravitational pull of the planet on the moon. That's the centrifugal force".

  "So"?

  "So motion and gravity are two sides of the same coin".

  "I see. I think." As soon as he succeeded in processing the information, things started to make sense in his head. There was a ring of familiarity to the principles she was talking about, or the names of the scientists. He felt like it was a refresher talk, even though everything seemed new.

  "In the same way, James Clarke Maxwell discovered electromagnetic force," she continued. "He discovered that electricity and magnetism are just two forms of the same phenomenon".

  "I'm not sure I understand".

  "Let me explain the whole thing to you and then you'll get the idea".

  "Okay, go on".

  Cosmology's next genius was Albert Einstein. Before Einstein, it was thought that time was a constant which had no connection to dimensions or other forces. Einstein discovered that time and space are two sides of the same coin. In the same way that ice and water are two forms of the same material, and just as Newton showed that gravitational pull and inertia are two aspects of the same phenomenon, the same thing applies to time and space. The faster an object travels a large distance, the less time it takes for it to travel that distance. At the speed of light, time stands still".

  Even if he had known it in the past and forgotten, this was inconceivable. He understood that ice and water, being interchangeable, are two faces of the same phenomenon, but time and space? He felt dizzy.