"Why did they leave"?
"They saved humanity from annihilation, from the death-grip of religion built around the image of man, but they knew they could not create a completely atheistic culture on Earth. Religion was no longer so destructive, but it still prevented them from building a culture based on purely atheistic principles".
"Wait," he had trouble following the flow of information. "Let's go back. You said that belief in God caused the destruction of humanity on Earth, and so the Atheists, who spread the belief that God did not exist, saved it? Don't you believe in God"?
"Earth was destroyed because of a belief in a Human God and because of the competition between populations who had differing images of the human figures who were supposed to represent him. The Atheists stopped the competition over God, but almost completely erased him from Earth. God, or the belief in him did not cause the wars, but rather the ridiculous anthropomorphism of God, and all the aggressive human instincts attributed to the Gods because of that. The Atheistic government tried to eradicate not just the Human God, but God in general, and is still paying a high price for that".
"What's that"?
"A materialistic culture. A culture based on competition, on the contrast between rich and poor, a culture that sacrifices people to the Gods of poverty in order to appease the Gods of wealth. They don't call it a God, but they worship a meaningless God no less than any culture that considers itself religious".
"And your God isn't human like that of the anthropomorphic God in the Human-Gods' Wars, and isn't materialistic like the Gods of the Atheists"?
"Of course," Sophia said confidently. "The fading of the Human-Gods stopped a significant part of the violence, but without a God to give meaning to life, humanity was struck by a plague of depression and suicide, especially on the Atheistic planet Dust. Cultural creativity was halted, and scientific discoveries dwindled".
Something flickered in his brain, but it evaporated before he could try and figure out what trace of memory it was. "What's the connection between God's fading and a lack of meaning?" he asked, curiously.
"Throughout history, God comprised a primary reason for everything. The eternal answer to the question 'what's the point?' was because it was God's wish. Without God as a supreme reason for all missions, there was no point in missions. Life became bland, devoid of meaning".
"So God died"?
"No".
"Who saved him"?
"The Pythagoreans." She gave a satisfied smile. "Orpheus released God from the clutches of the Atheists".
"Ah, the genius you mentioned"?
"Yes," Sophia's face shone. The stranger listened with rapt attention. "In the year 2174, the cosmologist Orpheus discovered the holocratic, fractalic, infinite structure of the universe, and thus confirmed theories of multiple universes from the beginning of the third millennium. With the help of a group of mathematicians, particle physicists, and astrophysicists, he discovered deep within the tiniest strings, a minute particle built exactly the same way as our universe. This was in fact, a miniscule universe with clusters, galaxies, black holes, and lots and lots of dust and vacuum. By his observations, Orpheus penetrated a universe inside a universe inside a universe. He discovered that each of these universes is smaller than the universe that contains it by exactly the same proportion. He called this constant scaled proportion An.
"An"?
"Yes. An is the ancient Sumerian God, the God of the heavens and mathematics".
"So then Orpheus discovered the non-human God"?
"Rediscovered, yes." Sophia relaxed in her place, and it was clear that she was satisfied with how her words had been understood. "But the discovery of An – the constant of creation – had two main ramifications, which were contradictory to one another. The first ramification was that the set of universes is probably infinite. This idea supports the atheistic metaphysics that states that the world has always existed, there was never an act of creation, and thus there is no God as a creator who predated Creation. The second ramification of the discovery pointed to the exact opposite. The perfect order that exists in the world points to the existence of mathematic principles that only God could have created. Pythagoras was the first to discover the Gods of Mathematics, Astronomy and Music, using constants such as Phi and Pi. As such, Orpheus identified himself as a Pythagorean and renewed Pythagoreanism".
"How can a universe with at least three dimensions exist inside of a particle that has two dimensions or maybe even only one"?
"Therein stands the greatness of the discovery. He also discovered that dimensions are like matter in the hand of the creator, the Gods of Mathematics. Even the matter that dimensions are made of is flexible, and can change shape and change from one dimension to more than one dimension. Superstring theory made it clear that in a world that has ten dimensions of space and one dimension of time, all the phenomena drain into one unified phenomenon – strings. Orpheus discovered that the ten dimensions are also different expressions of the same basic phenomenon. That's why in a one-dimensional grain there can be an infinite number of folded dimensions. Because of this, the original expansion after the Big Bang was not just an expansion of basic matter into its different forms, but also an expansion of one dimension into an infinite number of dimensions. Is that clear so far"?
"What you're saying is clear. I understand what a dimension is – like matter, it is also made of basic building blocks; but I still can't paint the image in my mind." The effort he was making to concentrate on what she was saying was hindered by his enjoyment of the sound of her voice.
"I can't either. Even Orpheus said that he understood it mathematically, but not visually. Let's take a step backwards." She was also having trouble concentrating. Something about him fascinated her, made her curious.
"Please".
"String Theory discovered what the Pythagoreans knew even back in the days of Pythagoras".
"Which is"…
"That our universe is nothing but music. Everything that exists is different frequencies. Our whole wonderful universe is a great symphony of multi-nuanced energy in different shapes. It's not just the principle that is the same; the mathematical data are also the same. Just as shortening the string of a harp raises its vibration speed, minutely shortening a two-dimensional string raises its vibration speed and the energy stored in it".
"Has anyone seen the strings or do they exist in dimensions that we can't comprehend"?
"Very few have seen them, but you will be one of them".
"Me"?
"Yes. The strings that surround Samos, webs of light in an abundance of different colors, the external light spheres, they are interwoven braids of cosmic strings. They are one-dimensional strings that constitute an inseparable part of the work of the processor. Admittedly the processor lies at the core of Samos, but actually, the whole of Samos is the processor, and the strings are an intermediate stage in turning stardust into objects. That is Samos's designation. In the whole of our universe you won't find any other cosmic strings made by man".
"And natural strings?" he inquired.
"We know of their existence, but they're on the edges of the universe, in remnants left over from the infancy of the universe. The pace of the expansion of space prevents us from ever being able to see them".
"You mentioned Pythagoras".
"Yes," she said with reverence.
"Who is he"?
His rapid pace of understanding had made Sophia forget the fact that his memory was lost. "Pythagoras was a Greek academic, one of the first who understood that the universe works according to mathematic principles. He discovered the constant 'Phi', the number 1.618, which expresses the perfect proportion, and exists in a lot of examples in nature. It is the ratio between the rings on the shells of gastropods in the sea; the ratio between the trunk, the branch, the leaf, and the leaflet of a tree, or the ratio between the bends in the galaxies.
"Pythagoras discovered these principles back in the sixth century BCE, and implem
ented them in architecture or in the proportion between the lengths of strings that make harmonious music. Orpheus was the last in the dynasty of distinguished Pythagoreans, from the ancient Greek architect and sculptor Phidias, who built the Parthenon, to Leonardo Da Vinci, who painted the human body according to the proportions of Phi in the Renaissance period. Even the capitalists at the beginning of the third millennium used Fibonacci's sequences, which were based on Pythagoras, to predict rises and falls in commercial share exchange rates".
"Clearly I don't know any of them," he said, ironically.
"It doesn't matter. The important thing is to understand that Orpheus outdid his predecessors; He came to the fundamental discovery, the most concealed, the constant ratio between the size of the universes and the dimensions folded one inside the other. Orpheus had the formula that makes it possible to calculate the ratio between a one-dimensional sub-string particle, and the universe stored in it, which has eleven dimensions. He understood Pythagoras as no one had understood him before. But don't get it wrong. From everything we've said until now, you might think the greatness of the cosmologists was in their ability to observe nature with the help of mathematics".
"Don't get it wrong? If that's the case, I haven't understood a thing," he said, confused.
You understood, don't worry. Everything I've said about cosmological discoveries is true, but its importance is only in the fact that it confirmed what they felt".
"What"?
"They checked and established everything that they felt – the fact that men feel the unity of the universe is a wonderful thing! From that point of view, Pythagoras was a clear genius. He believed in unity thousands of years before proof could be found based on observations of nature. That's why the unity he found didn't stay in the realm of cosmology, but rather was turned into a way of life by Pythagoras," she said passionately.
"Does it have something to do with the dance I saw you performing earlier"?
"Yes. That is the ceremony which indicates my participation in the unity of creation. Orpheus applied the whole of Pythagoras's theory, and founded a brotherhood of people who maintain the principles of human harmony just as Pythagoras formulated and kept them: pacifism, vegetarianism, satisfaction with a little, and abolition of personal property. The materialistic Atheists didn't like that".
"Why"?
"With the discovery of the constant of creation and its religious implications, a rift opened up between Orpheus and his Pythagorean followers on one side, and the Atheists on the other. Just as the Catholic Church preferred the theological atrophy of the middle-ages over the spiritual renewal and scientific discoveries following the discovery that the Earth orbits the sun, so did the Atheistic government. Orpheus's discovery appeared to them to be a danger to the stability of the materialistic culture, and they preferred the Atheistic atrophy. After a long process, during which the struggle with the traces of humanity on Earth continued, the Pythagoreans and the Atheists founded colonies on separate planets. The Pythagoreans on Octavia and the Atheists on Dust".
"Why not on Earth"?
"On Earth there were violent groups developing. The Atheists and the Pythagoreans weren't interested in forcing their beliefs on others. Humanity had suffered enough from religious wars, and so they preferred to start anew in a new place where they could formulate their own principles and beliefs. We, the Pythagoreans, intended to return to our mission for humanity only after our own continued existence was guaranteed. Even today there are arguments between Pythagoreans about the extent of isolation needed to survive and the extent of openness necessary to have influence. The perceived danger to the Pythagoreans was not the only reason we abandoned Earth. In fact, that's how danger was averted from all of humanity. Orpheus knew that such a sensational discovery could change the paradigm of human thought. He knew that the technology which would result from the discovery of An, the Constant of Creation, could be harnessed for destructive purposes, and be taken as a "miracle" that awakens messianic discontent which could go in any direction. An could cause a change in the philosophical, mathematical, physical, and eventually technological paradigms. He knew it was not safe to trust humans to use the new technology to build and not to destroy. He preferred to take the secret with him than to share it".
"It's a good thing he succeeded".
"Actually, he didn't".
"What?" he said, surprised.
"He didn't succeed." Sophia sat down in the silk cocoon and looked into the eyes of the stranger. "Adamas was Orpheus's deputy in the research laboratory and he stole the formula for the creation constant 'An'. At the same time as Orpheus was founding the Pythagorean Brotherhood, Adamas founded the New Gnosis Order. That's how the terrible secret ended up in the wrong hands".
"So Adamas is the founder of the Gnosis"?
"The New Gnosis, yes".
"And how did Adamas use the secret?" asked the stranger.
"Adamas swept after him the desperate people of earth, and together they built an army that recruited more and more people and resources, and all with the aim of developing technological applications for the creation constant An".
"For what purpose"?
"On Samos we research the creation of matter according to the creation constant. To this end, our research is done with the help of the simulator and the processor. The Gnostics also base their work on discovery of technological applications, but their purpose is to dismantle matter".
"What for?" the stranger questioned.
"For destruction".
"Destruction of what?" he asked in amazement.
"Of everything, of every living thing, of the entire universe if they have the opportunity." She saw something hardening within him and continued, "It's complicated. They believe in destruction as a spiritual mission".
The stranger was silent. Everything was beginning to consolidate like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
"Do you understand?" she asked, her voice pained.
"No, I don't understand them, but I understand why Thales is afraid of the possibility that I might be a Gnostic spy".
It was clear again to Sophia that she would not be able to concentrate. She tried in vain to tune the sound of the spinning of the spheres. She was tempted to use an automatic calibrator but restrained herself at the last minute. After several tries, the station finally played the exact sounds. 'Can I ever tune myself like this?' she wondered. She removed her robe and sank into the soft sheets.
The images and experiences left over at the end of that stormy day came up suddenly and increased. Thales had spoken uncharacteristically harshly. He claimed, seemingly logically, that he had to look after the security of the station and check out the stranger. And yet, his words implied that he didn't trust her, and was thus forced to act to the best of his understanding, without consulting her. He had never acted like this before. Why had he lost his faith in her? Why had he been pushed to such manipulative actions, in complete contradiction with the Pythagorean way?
She knew there was no denying the fact that there was something in him, the stranger, something that disrupted the harmony that had characterized their lives in the station until today. Again, she felt the nagging feeling in her mind about the identity of the man.
Speculation overwhelmed her mind. His comprehension speed showed that he came from a knowledge abundant civilization.
She didn't think he was Gnostic, despite Thales's suspicions. He didn't have their typical tattoo behind his ear. But maybe he wasn't Gnostic, but was still a spy in their service, having been forced into it by violence, torture or terrible extortion?
It couldn't be. But why not? She reminded herself that she didn't know anything – just like him – about his personal life. What was his profession, his job, his position? Had he been trained to deal with this intensity, with the distress he was facing in this situation, alone, with no identity, outside of everything he knows, without everything that was, all his loved ones and friends… she tried to imagine his family, the tr
aining he had received. He has a strange scent, unfamiliar, a scent of far-off places, she said to herself, and was surprised: why in the world was she giving her opinion about the scent of a man? And then she recalled the scent of Thales when he held her hand.
Sophia turned over on her mattress restlessly. 'I am a Pythagorean ascetic, devoted only to my duties.' But she couldn't deny the truth: the stranger thrilled her. She was attracted to his mystery, even if he was mysterious against his will; she thought back to his look, knowledgeable, trusting; a look that contradicted his situation. She was shocked when she realized that his look had caused her to regret her vows of asceticism. She rose, got dressed, and went to the station's bar.
Barman, as everyone called him, knew the night-owls who frequented the bar well. The Pythagoreans didn't drink alcohol. They had to be satisfied with drinks like coffee for alertness or chamomile for relaxation. In the evening hours, groups of coworkers came talked and befriended others; at night, sometimes until the small hours of the morning, came individuals.
"What can I indulge you with?" Barman asked Sophia.
"I need something to help me fall asleep".
"Something to curb alertness," Barman smiled a tiny smile through his beard, long and pale, with streaks of white. He was short and athletic, but the loose clothes he customarily wore hid his muscles. Hid his strength. He was exceptional: His curly hair was wild, tiny wrinkles at the sides of his eyes and his bronzed skin testified to the fact that he had not spent his entire life on the space station. When the bar was full of customers he worked with the speed of a demon, but on his face there was the smile of a child. His wise, understanding look induced a feeling of tranquility on his guests. He took out a bottle with valerian root extract from under the counter, dropped a few drops into a thick guava drink, added crushed ice and stirred.
"This is for the head of the head of the station." He placed a napkin on the counter and placed the glass on it. Like her colleagues in the station, Sophia appreciated Barman's warm, noninvasive treatment. He never asked people direct questions about what was bothering them. He usually managed to make them relax or put a smile on their faces, either with a generally consoling and relaxing comment, or with a wise proverb or an original and on the mark metaphor. Everyone who chose to share their misgivings with him discovered him to be a loyal friend who did his best to help.
Mesopotamia - The Redeemer Page 8