Ogg

by James Gault

  Chapter 19

  Antonia woke up the next morning a far from happy person. Not quite as unhappy as she had been the night before. Emotions are thankfully transient, while logic is forever. So thankfully she had stopped sobbing, but still there was something that had changed in her. She lay in bed and struggled to put what it was into words inside her head. She realised that what had changed was her attitude to Ogg’s end of the world. Before, she didn’t really believe it was true. No that wasn’t right, she believed it wasn’t really true. No, not that either! She struggled to be precise. She thought that it probably wasn’t true. That’s it! And all the correct thinking and travel through time and space had really just been an adventure. She had looked on it as an entertainment that Ogg had put together for her enjoyment, or as a teaching tool to help her get to grips with the problems and ideas of the real world. Now she saw how wrong she had probably been. She had been persuaded by Ogg and Perg’s arguments in MacDonald’s. Now although she didn’t actually know that the world would end soon, she thought that it probably would. Of course, she couldn’t really be sure, and that was some consolation, but even when you sort out the logic and think correctly, what is not impossible could be probable, and the weight of probability hangs heavily on your shoulders. Yesterday morning, she probably was going to have a future, and this morning she probably wasn’t. And OK, she knew nothing more this morning than she knew yesterday morning, so nothing really had changed, but try telling that to her stomach. She felt sick, sad and depressed and no matter that it was all down to no more than the flow of ideas in her head, it was real to her. She had often read that ideas were powerful, but now she was experiencing it for the first time.

  It seemed to Antonia that the thing about not having a future was that it made your life seem a little bit pointless. Like everyone else who devotes a goodly proportion of their spare time to thinking, Antonia’s thoughts had the habit of drifting towards wondering why she existed. What was the purpose of her life? Or even, was there one? It wasn’t a question she could answer, but this in itself wasn’t unexpected or worrying. The thing is, she was young and if she was meant to do something significant in her life, she had plenty of time. Or rather, she had had plenty of time. For, if Ogg was right about the end of the world, there was no time left for her contribution, if there was to be one. In other words, she was useless. And this in a girl who had been assured so often by so many people that she showed signs of great promise. If there was anything more depressing than knowing your whole life was for nothing, Antonia couldn’t think what it could be. She needed to talk to someone. She had some questions and she had to have some answers. No point in talking to Ogg, then. She dialled Perg and arranged to meet him in MacDonalds at lunch time.

  How she made it through the school morning she had no idea. She couldn’t concentrate on any of the lessons. Several teachers asked her if she was ill and she just smiled and shook her head.

  When she got to the restaurant, Perg hadn’t yet arrived. She bought herself a diet coke without really thinking and sat down to wait. Did some of her classmates say hello to her as they passed to their table, she wasn’t sure? Perg strolled in a few minutes after her. She rose to meet him and kissed him absent-mindedly. She didn’t even hear the little whistle of surprise from the table in the corner where Trish and some others from her class were sitting.

  “Perg, I’m feeling really low. Do you honestly feel that Ogg is right about the future? That it is in danger?”

  “I don’t know, of course. But if you look at things logically, you have to admit it’s possible.”

  “Let’s leave looking at things logically to the side for a few minutes. Where does Ogg’s correct thinking ever get us? We end up going round in circles and we never make any progress. I’m asking how you feel about it. ”

  “Well, when I look at the evidence, it seems pretty clear that that Ogg’s suggestion that the world is going to end is totally consistent with all the facts. So it has to be a possibility.”

  “Yes, but there are other possible explanations, aren’t there?”

  “Well, yes, of course.”

  “So, I am asking you if you feel Ogg’s is the right one. I mean, you do have feelings?”

  “Well, yes, but I mean, how am I to tell which explanation is the right one from all the explanations which fit the facts?”

  “Oh, really, Perg, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you have any intuition?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I mean, I had an intuition about the aliens, and see where that got me. I’ve learned my lesson. I know what I know, which is that I don’t know. What more can I say?”

  Antonia sighed. In a sense, he was right. If several theories could explain the situation, and these theories were mutually exclusive, then only one was right. But which one? There was no rational way of telling. But on the other hand she herself had this all-consuming feeling that Ogg’s theory was right, that the world was coming to an end and that her very existence was pointless. And the terrible thing was that that feeling was so real to her, and that, logical or not, she just couldn’t ignore it. So what she was asking herself was this. Was she the only one to have this feeling? If Perg didn’t have it, then maybe it was a mistaken feeling. It seemed to her a kind of coward’s way out, but if others didn’t feel the same as her, then her feelings were brought into question and maybe they would change. At least she hoped they would, because there seemed to be nothing else she could do to shake of this sense of hopelessness that was engulfing her. So it was important to get Perg to express how he felt abut the whole situation.

  “Perg, given that there isn’t going to be a world this time next year, aren’t you just a little bit worried?”

  “We don’t know for certain that Ogg’s end of the world theory is correct.”

  “Oh for goodness sake, Perg! Last night you and Ogg both agreed that it was not just possible, but likely to be true. So, you have to be scared about it, right?”

  “Well....”

  “I mean, you are telling me that the end of the world is more likely to happen than not, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “I mean, wouldn’t the end of the world upset you, even just a little. For example, what’s the point of us being here at all, if it’s all going to come to nothing, not just for you or me, but for everyone.”

  “Ant, you’ve got a point. I can’t find fault with your logic. But...”

  “But what?”

  “I can’t honestly say I’m really worried, or depressed about it. I feel quite good, actually.”

  “Don’t you have any feelings then?”

  “Of course I do. For example, you know how I feel about you.”

  “Yes, well let’s not go into that right now. I need you to explain to me, as simply as you can, how you can think that the world might be about to end and yet feel quite good actually.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “Not to me, Perg.”

  “Well. I suppose that I just hope the world won’t end, even in the face of the evidence.”

  “Blind optimism?”

  “If you like.”

  “But you think Ogg is right about the end of the world, most probably? So how can you be optimistic?”

  “I suppose I’m relying on Ogg to get us out of this mess, with or without our help. I mean, he is a Great Being.”

  “But not infallible, not all-powerful. Didn’t we agree that?”

  “Yes we did, but I’m just hoping he’s powerful enough.”

  “Perg, you’re not being logical. Look at the facts! Ogg has been bustling around everywhere and everytime on this for ages, and he’s no further forward. So what gives you the idea that he’s going to save us in the end?”

  “It’s another of those things we can’t tell eith
er way. He might save the world, he might not. It seems that my mind has decided he is going to save us, but I don’t know why.”

  “So you’re really not that worried then?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Antonia was puzzled. There they were, the two of them, herself and Perg, with the same information, using the same logical thinking processes and even with the same Great Being to help them, yet they were reacting in completely different ways. She didn’t think she was more of a pessimist than he was. Maybe her black mood wasn’t justified.

  What was really upsetting her was that she had been counting on Perg being optimistic and it rubbing rub off on her. But it hadn’t. Logically, she understood that Perg didn’t share her negative feelings, and therefore it was likely that she was over-reacting. So the reasonable, rational thing to do was to accept she had been wrong, snap out of this depression and get on with helping Ogg save the world. So why couldn’t she? It seemed that she was emotionally stuck with superglue. She needed to do something

  “Look, Perg, it’s a nice day,” she said. “Why don’t we get a couple of burgers to carry out and go sit in the park?”

  Perg jumped up at once and went to the counter. Antonia just sat there. She couldn’t even sum up the energy to go over and tell him what she wanted. What difference did it make if she ate a single hamburger, a double cheeseburger or a fish sandwich? And, given the impending end of the world, could there be much harm in drinking full-blooded cola instead of her usual diet variety? She went over the logic in her mind again and again. This is stupid, she kept telling herself. Why am I letting this get to me? Why can’t I sum up some hope, like Perg is doing?

  “Are you coming, then?”

  Perg interrupted her thoughts with a cheery smile. She got up slowly with her shoulders and the corners of her mouth still down. They walked in silence to the park behind the railway.

  “If the world ends now,” Antonia began, “what’s the point of any of this?”

  “Ant, think about this. If the world doesn’t end now, what’s the point anyway?” They sat down on a bench and Perg handed her her lunch. Antonia bit into the burger and chewed. Her mind and her mouth were turning things over at the same rate. OK, so Perg has thrown her another GPQ, but, GPQ or not, she needed some kind of answer all the same. Not an answer that was necessarily right, if there could be such a thing. But an answer to help her throw off her depression, an answer that her brain could get round, an answer that would snap something inside her into place and get her thought processes working again.

  “Where is Ogg, anyway?” she suddenly said. “I mean, here we are, getting all our ideas completely confused, with neither of us thinking in the right way, and no sign of the Great Being. Yet he’s always there when your thoughts get a bit out of kilter. So where is he now?”

  “Two possible explanations! Firstly, he is really tied up saving the world just at the moment, or, secondly, you know how he moves in mysterious ways.”

  “Yes, well, whatever, it looks like I’ll just have to work this out on my own.”

  “Ant, if you think about it, you’ll realise you always had to work it out on your own, even when Ogg was there.”

  Perg was right. And just knowing that made her feel a little better. She took her end of the world problem and looked at it from different angles. What was the difference between a world that went on for ever and one that ended quite soon?

  Her studies in science told her that the world would come to an end anyway, the sun would eventually burn out and even long before that the conditions for life on Earth would no longer exist. So it wasn’t a question of the world ending or not ending, but of the world ending sooner rather than later. And, apart from the fact that the former situation was more likely to affect her personally, there didn’t seem to Antonia to be much different between these two possibilities. So, if we believe the scientists, no hope then anyway, But even Ogg wasn’t always right, so why accept that scientists knew everything and were always correct. Anyway, the question wasn’t about the inevitability of the end of the world, which was a GPQ and so by definition had no answer. The question was : assuming the world doesn’t end, what’s the point of life? Well, Antonia supposed that her purpose, biologically speaking, was to procreate, so that her raison d’etre was the continuing existence of the human species. Was that a sufficient and satisfying reason in itself, or should she go on and ask why the existence of the human species needed to be continued? Antonia didn’t know, but she suspected she was being dragged down a path to which there was no end. But she did know that the idea of the continuing existence of the human species made her feel better than the idea of its disappearance. In fact, it was the only thing that had made her feel better in a while. So feeling the way she did, it seemed a good point to stop the incessant why questions and, right thinking or not, she was going to take this idea at its face value.

  “The point of living is the continuing existence of the human species, Perg. And don’t even ask why that’s important.”

  Perg continued munching his burger and said nothing. Antonia too carried on eating and thinking. It seemed to her that thing to do was to put all her efforts into actually doing something to solve the problem. After all, she could never really know the answers to these ‘why’ questions. You answer one, and another one jumps up begging to be answered. And you could never be sure that any answer to any question was the right one. Anyway, weren’t your actions more important than your thoughts? Wasn’t it more important to decide whether what you were doing was a good thing or a bad thing? And saving the world couldn’t be a bad thing, could it? Of course it couldn’t. Antonia couldn’t think of any way in which saving the future could be harmful to anybody, or, at least, could be more harmful than letting it disappear. So it was something that had to be done. In fact, maybe saving the future was the most important thing there could be. Because everything else depended on it, didn’t it? No future, no anything! It was that simple. It was so clear what she had to do, she didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it before. It was an entirely different Antonia who was speaking to Perg now.

  “Saving the future has to be our top priority, Perg,” she told, or rather instructed, him. I think we’re agreed about that.”

  Perg nodded.

  “But”, she went on, “ It just isn’t good enough to rely totally on Ogg. Even he has his weaknesses. We need to get on with it ourselves.”

  “Are you suggesting that maybe just we ourselves could be more powerful than Ogg?”

  “That’s another GPQ, and we just don’t have time for it just now. Time for action! What I am saying is that when it comes to actually doing something, we have just been too passive up to now. Going where Ogg takes us, chasing after his notions and ideas.”

  “Yes, but we need Ogg. How else can we travel back and forward in time?”

  “I’m not saying we don’t need to Ogg to help us, but he doesn’t have to be in control all the time. Because maybe it will be you or I who finds whatever it takes to solve this problem.”

  “Have you got some plan then Ant?”

  “No. not yet, but I will have. I’m not going to let this thing get the better of me. I need to get back to school now, so let’s both think about it and see what we can come up with.”