Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2)

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  "I see," said Linda. "I guess that's something. So what's the next way to look at it?"

  "Ah," said William. "The next two ways relate to the discussion we had early on, in which you identified what feels like an addict's desire to seek release by hitting bottom. The force at work is the wish for self-annihilation, and it allows us to consider the actions I am proposing as either a 'right to die' issue or a matter of 'mercy killing.'"

  "You really believe there is such a thing as a death wish?" asked Linda.

  "I see it as a strong force in play, Madam. Think about it. Humans have doused the soil, the rivers, the forests, the oceans, their food, and themselves with known poisons, toxins, and radioactive particles. They've poured billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, even though the warnings about doing so have been sounded for decades. They've destroyed or damaged the planetary systems that maintain such things as ground temperature, oxygen levels, and precipitation, all of which are now spiraling into chaos. They've grown their population to levels that can only be sustained by the continued functioning of precarious financial, agricultural, political, and energy systems. They have, with the exception of yourself and a few others, put into positions of leadership people who do not understand what they are doing, and who are committed to the ramping up of all of these activities." The Fisherman raised an eyebrow. "Do these not sound like the outer expressions of an inner death wish to you?"

  "It does sound pretty crazy," said Linda with a sigh.

  "As the poet David Whyte said, 'Sometimes we have to make a complete and absolute disaster of our lives in such an epic, unavoidable way so that it can suddenly become absolutely clear to us what we have been doing all along.'"

  Linda shook her head in quiet incredulity.

  "Some in the Cosmic Community believe the death wish to be built into the fabric of reality, given how often it shows up in the development of self-aware species. Perhaps it's the necessary balance to creativity. Perhaps it's simply an expression of the force of entropy as it opposes the forces of organization. In any event, there is plenty of reason to regard it as a defining motivator in the Earth-human matrix. You saw the evidence for yourself. I called this wish for death a great wisdom."

  "Yeah," said Linda. "It just doesn't sound like wisdom to me."

  "It's odd, isn't it?" said William. "Your habitual reactivity wants to hold me as an elite, evil killer, yet to my mind I'm actually holding more respect for your people than you are."

  "And how is that, William?"

  "By believing them, Madam. By respecting their choices. By trusting that they can figure out what they need."

  "You think they're consciously choosing this?"

  William shook his head. "Not at all, Madam. This is all playing out in the unconscious. How could it be otherwise? The cultural conditioning with regard to death is so strong and so conflicted that any such impulses must be swept under the psychic rug. Notions of societal suicide are virtually unthinkable for most people. So they don't think about it. But that doesn't mean that their actions don't reveal their unconscious wishes."

  "But I don't feel like I'm wishing for death, William."

  "Most people would say the same. And that is true as well. As I said, humans are filled with opposing forces. Just the same, the vast majority of humans on Earth are craving the death of something, would you not agree?"

  Linda thought for a moment. "I think so," she answered. "I mean... I've met a lot of people, William. And yeah, most of them just seemed ready for it to end. Their own life situation. The whole system. The crazy culture. The government. They seemed afraid. Miserable. Stuck in bad jobs and worse relationships. Appalled at how bad things had gotten."

  "If you examine the statistics, Madam - crime, divorce, substance abuse, interpersonal abuse, mental illness, physical illness, violence, consumption, you name it - you see the evidence for a culture in complete collapse. People have lost their meaning, their purpose, their tribe, their belonging, and their healing arts. They are grief-stricken at those losses. And they carry the weight of generations of unmetabolized grief and pain. It is, as Jacob Marley said to Ebenezer Scrooge, 'a ponderous chain.'"

  "But I don't think people know this, William. Not even about themselves."

  "People still have bits of joy, meaning, and intimacy in their lives, to be sure. One can find a comfortable corner even in a prison cell. But I think they know, deep in their hearts, that what they have is a scant shadow of what is possible for human beings. And they sense that the only way to end their misery is to hit bottom so hard that they are either thrust into some new life, or cast into the peacefulness of death. They long to hit the reset button, Madam. It is this which I term their 'wisdom.'"

  "So, if humans are already enacting this unconscious death wish, why do we need to step in and kill them all?"

  "You already know my answer, Madam. They have been enacting their death wish for a very long time now. That it has manifested as an act of killing off their very bodies, rather than just their culture and paradigm, is unfortunate, but perhaps unavoidable. What is avoidable is the 'collateral damage' associated with that suicide, which is the death of the vast majority of other living things."

  Linda thought for a few moments. "So you said there are two ways to look at this," she said. "Related to this death wish."

  William nodded. "Certainly. If you have a patient who is terminally ill, and that patient decides to end his or her own life, it becomes a matter of 'the right to die' or 'death with dignity.' Many states have seen fit to honor the wisdom of such patients, though many others still debate this. The aliens, of course, would regard this as a Prime Directive matter."

  "Of course," said Linda with a brief smile.

  "If, on the other hand, this same patient lapsed into a coma before expressing his or her wish to die, and this patient was experiencing a great deal of pain and suffering, then it becomes a matter of whether to allow or perform what some call a 'mercy killing,' or the more clinical 'euthanasia.' This might require that we make an assumption regarding whether the patient would want to die were they conscious and able to say so."

  "So does the human race have some sort of an illness, William?"

  "Some have seen it that way, Madam. A cultural illness, perhaps. Or a spiritual one. One Native American writer wrote of the 'Wetiko disease,' borrowing imagery and metaphor from the old Algonquin tales of the Wendigo, a gluttonous half-human-half-beast who fed on human flesh. Others have diagnosed modern humans in terms of psychosis, psychopathy, narcissism, sociopathy, and addiction."

  "And some of the fundamentalists think we're all possessed by demons."

  The Fisherman nodded. "Indeed. So people seem to have a deep knowing that they are 'infected' with something, which may explain their fascination with viral and zombie apocalypse stories."

  "They know, William. That's how it always felt to me. Which was what I found so frustrating, trying to get them to act on what they know."

  "They don't know at the top layers of their consciousness," said the Fisherman nodding. "But they know. They know they feel miserable much of the time. They know they are unhealthy. They know they are eating poison. They know that 'things' don't make them happy. They know they have a great deal of guilt and shame hiding in their hearts. They know that their leaders are liars and murderers and greedy, power-hungry psychopaths. They know that growth and destruction cannot continue indefinitely. They know that they have no idea how to heal their pain. They know that there is more to reality than the dead, random materialism they've been told to believe in. They know this because each and every one of them, apart from some few misfortunates, perhaps, was born into the world with the potential to become a sensitive, connected, and sane human animal. Had they been born into a different culture. Had they not been raised and schooled and acculturated and poisoned in the way they were. They know." William opened his mouth to continued, then stopped and sighed. He sank back in his chair and looked at the President. Li
nda nodded slightly. Together they sat with the truth of the human predicament.

  At last Linda broke the silence. "So what are you arguing for here, William? Is it a mercy killing you're proposing?"

  "I don't feel like I'm arguing for anything, Madam, so much as offering some alternatives for how you might think about the choice you have been given to make."

  Linda shook her head, still unable to wrap her head around it. "Okay," she said. "Okay." She pulled her knees up and tucked her feet into the chair cushion. "So. Next?"

  William flashed his eyebrows. "You remember the film The Exorcist," he prompted.

  Linda nodded. "I saw it as a kid."

  "At the end, the young priest, the hero, manages to free the possessed girl by taking the demon into himself. What does he do then? He jumps out the window and falls to his death."

  "Self annihilation as a means to free oneself," said Linda. "Die and take the demon with you."

  "Exactly right, Madam. Self-annihilation and self-sacrifice, which brings us to our fourth possible way of thinking about my proposal: that of protecting the beloved. Do you remember when we spoke of this before?"

  Linda closed her eyes and thought for a few moments. "If I remember correctly," she said, opening her eyes, "you didn't think that 'saving the Earth's creatures' was a very good explanation for the death wish. Is that right?"

  William nodded. "I did say that, yes. I don't think that this is a primary motivation for most people. The question is: can it be a primary motivation for you?"

  Linda frowned. "You mean, if it meant saving the rest of the life on the planet, would I go ahead and flip the switch that took out humanity?"

  "Or just a very large portion of humanity, Madam. Quickly and painlessly. It may or may not mean the end of human life on Earth."

  Linda sighed deeply.

  The Fisherman continued. "While your people cannot make a decision to die for the beloved life of Earth, mostly because they do not consciously know that it is beloved, can you, as their chosen representative, make that decision for them?"

  Linda shook her head and closed her eyes. "Jesus," she whispered. A pair of tears slid slowly down her cheeks and she wiped them away. She looked at William. "I don't know if I can," she said.

  William waited for a few moments, then continued. "This notion of 'sacrifice for the beloved' might be similar to how sometimes a fetus is aborted in order to save the life of the mother. The fetus, so far as we know, is not the one choosing to make the sacrifice. The choice is made by an outside party, who makes an assessment of the situation, weighing the needs of the various parties involved. In our case, the metaphor yields another way to access the question before us: do we 'abort' humanity in order to save the life of the 'mother,' the community of life?"

  Linda looked at William and just shook her head, as if this was all too big for her to even think about.

  "And yet we could turn it all around, Madam," said William. "These metaphors focus on the killing and the killer: on the murderer, on the genocidal maniac, on the doctors taking the patient off life-support, or administering the lethal drug, or making the decision to abort the fetus. We focus on these things because I have focused on the choice you must make and the actions you might take. Yet if the people of the dominant global culture are miserable and seek an end, could we not put it on them? Could we not view this as a case of 'suicide by cop,' where one cannot perform the wished-for release for oneself, and so creates the conditions by which one is killed by another?"

  "Suicide by Linda Travis?" said Linda, her face twisted with a bleak smile. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes.

  "I find the notion worthy of consideration, Madam, regardless of how difficult it might be to take it seriously," said William. "We might also posit that the dominant global culture has been trying to commit suicide by climate change, or suicide by pandemic, or suicide by global agricultural meltdown, or suicide by nuclear poisoning, or suicide by global financial catastrophe. Surely in the realm of actions taken, if nothing else, it looks to me like an attempt to create an end, a death, without consciously acknowledging that one is doing so."

  "So I'm the cop, shooting the crazed guy with the gun before he hurts other people. Isn't the whole 'suicide by cop' story just a justification, so the cop doesn't have to feel guilty?" Linda exhaled loudly. "I mean, how do we know it was suicide the guy was seeking?"

  The Fisherman nodded. "Indeed," he said. "How do we know?" His smiled, his eyes alive with light.

  "When you do that it's because you think I already know the answer," said Linda.

  "Do you forget the speech you made to your people assembled in the great meeting room on Phobos?"

  Linda shrugged. "Yeah," she said. "I remember."

  "I'll leave it to you to know what you know, then, Madam. For now, I have one last way in which we might view the actions I am proposing."

  "Okay," said Linda. "Shoot."

  William flashed his eyebrows. "Well, Madam, it's simply this: if there is no death, then you will not be killing anyone!"

  14.20

  Ness slept, curled next to Grace in her hospital bed. Outside, the sky was brightening, though the sun would not be shining today. Vast, gray clouds scudded across the firmament as if fleeing the forthcoming storm, and the wind rapped on the window pans, demanding entry. Ness slept, dreaming of a forgotten life, of a house full of children, and a husband, and of friends she had known. Though she could not allow such dreams to filter into memory, Alice allowed them to unfold in sleep. Ness had lost so much. At least she should have her dreams.

  The three children lay as they had since Saturday. This would be the third day. They were not sleeping. They were not dead. They were simply absent, and their bodies carried on, awaiting their return. In the meantime, they were as safe as they could be. Ness's construct held, even as she slept, and her purple shield, and surrounding that was an even larger bubble of consciousness, one woven by the created beings that had gathered, finally, in Augusta. There were more forces at play in this moment than just this storm. They must be allowed to play out, without interruption. Choices had to be made.

  Alice, hiding in this shell of Ness, knew that she was one of these forces. She knew that she, too, would have a choice to make. She was fairly certain that that choice would come today.

  14.21

  Albert Singer stood in his office doorway, surveying the scene. It looked just as he wished it to look, as if he’d been raptured away while working at his desk, or beamed up by the aliens. Though he knew that it would never matter, the politician in him insisted that he take pains to preserve his image. He would not go down in history as a spy or turncoat, his reputation forever tarnished by betrayal and treason. Not if he had anything to say about it. And he did.

  Singer turned and walked down the hallway, noting the first intimations of dawn. Outside the State House sat a twelve-footer, waiting for him. With a glance over his shoulder to assure himself that he was not being watched, he climbed into the tiny wok. Not wishing to draw attention to himself, he piloted the wok slowly upward, avoiding the bright white flash that accompanied faster speeds. With no feelings of regret or remorse, and a rising excitement regarding his future, Albert Singer headed toward the East.

  14.22

  "You remember the story The Little Prince, of course. It's one of your daughters' favorites."

  Linda nodded.

  "So you remember that when the Little Prince had learned all he could learn about love and roses on Earth, it came time for him to go home. The flock of geese that had brought him to Earth had long since flown away. But on his journeys he had met a poisonous snake who had offered to release him from his body, his Earthly shell, so that he might return to his asteroid. The pilot was appalled, of course, but the Little Prince was ready. He snuck away in the night and made his date with the snake. The pilot woke to find the Little Prince gone. Searching, all he found was a dead body. The Little Prince himself was back home. While the Pilot was sa
d to see him go, he knew that the Little Prince was not dead. He knew. He could hear the dear boy's laughter amongst the stars."

  The Fisherman stopped and looked at Linda closely for a moment. "This is what the Fortunate knew that most of you have forgotten, Madam. It's probably why the Life call them the Fortunate. And while it made perfect sense that human beings - a small, localized population of self-reflective motes of consciousness - would create a consensus meta-reality in which most of you forgot this - how else to explore the depths of circumstance and limitation that you have explored? - it is time to bring the experiment to an end, and to remember. It's time to know that death does not automatically represent the annihilation of consciousness, but can be regarded as little more than the tossing away of a costume or vehicle."

  William sat forward in his chair. "These are not parlor tricks, Madam. You sit now in a non-material body separate from your physical body. Your consciousness has floated in the depths of space and passed through solid stone. And you witnessed the death and resurrection of your husband. It's time you just accept the reality of it. Were people to know and understand what it is that lies beyond death, there would be mass suicide. There would be no need for you to make this choice at all."

  Linda sighed and held up a hand, palm out. "Can you just... let me think for a bit, please?" she said.

  The Fisherman nodded.

  Linda closed her eyes and breathed deeply for a very long time. As she thought, the Martian dawn came, lighting her face. She opened her eyes. "So then, why not just kill us all? Why not do it a long time ago? I mean..." she shook her head, trying to clear it, "... why are we alive at all? It's like... nothing matters then. It's like..." she sighed again and stopped.

  "Now you're just being dense, Madam, not to put too fine a point on it." William smiled, hoping to soften the blow of his words. "Have I not said that this realm of limitations and circumstance is a precious thing? A laboratory for the evolution of consciousness? A font of diversity and novelty to be cherished and nurtured?"