FAUST’S SHADOW: A Twice-Told Tale

by John Fast

  “What are you going to do?” She asked without breaking stride.

  I ran ahead of her, turned around and trotted backwards into the future.

  “I’m going to write some neo-evolutionary algorithms,” I announced grandly. “I’m going to discover the key to all codes. I’m going to unlock the secrets of the universe.”

  “Good luck,” Alexa said with a pitch perfect combination of encouragement and condescension.

  PART II.

  A MERCURIAL YOUTH

  CHAPTER 21.

  Conjuring Spells

  When does boyhood end? In my case it was when I made the first major breakthrough in my search for the key to all codes. I was sitting in my father’s library, struggling to revise the evolutionary algorithms that generated my quatecology. The May 15th deadline for submissions to the International Summer Quatix Tournament in Manhattan was just around the corner. I had worked all night and all morning, but hadn’t made a lot of progress.

  “Why did I say anything to Alexa?” I asked myself. “And here I am without a single neo-evolutionary algorithm to show for my effort.”

  I slumped down in my chair, closed my eyes and began to drift into sleep. I often did my most creative thinking in that twilight state, when the autopilot of my subconscious mind kicked into gear. And kick it did.

  “Hey!” My autopilot called out.

  I turned my head, but didn’t open my eyes.

  “Hey!”

  “Go away,” I muttered.

  “You’re trying too hard!”

  “What?”

  “You’re trying too hard!”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Instead of trying to write some neo-evolutionary algorithms, you should let them write themselves.”

  “What do you mean? How?”

  “Loosen up the search space, the problem set, the selection operators. Give your algorithms higher levels of self-reflexivity and auto-adaptability. That’s how quantum codes and genetic codes evolve, that’s how languages and stories evolve: from the gaps, the interplay. So instead of narrowly defined genetic algorithms which solve narrowly defined optimization problems, think of broadly defined genetic algorithms which evolve themselves. Instead of algorithms, think of …”

  I opened my eyes and sat up in my chair.

  “Alga-rithms!” I exclaimed. “Like algae! Alga-rithms … that evolve themselves!”

  I worked quickly and furiously on my tablet. And I kept right on working for the next two days, opening up the dynamic potential of the code. Every neuron in my brain was perfectly synchronized as I coaxed the algarithms to life. I skipped school and took just a few short breaks for power naps and protein drinks. When I ran out of time, I hit a few keys and sent the entire file to the International Summer Quatix Tournament in Manhattan. Then I streamed a note to Xi Zhu and Paxton, telling them about my breakthrough. Finally, I stumbled upstairs to my bed and fell into a deep sleep.

  *************

  I woke late the next morning, missing yet another day of school, and jumped out of bed. I went straight to my wall screen and cued up the Tournament site. I cut to the summary page and scrolled down the list of competitors. I found my name, clicked on it, and read, “T’ANG def. FAST, 9 hrs, 32 mns.” I let out an exasperated sigh. Then I phoned Xi Zhu. He was on his lunch break at school.

  “What happened?” I demanded.

  “Finally! You’re awake!” Xi Zhu replied. “It was beautiful. You got busted. Again. In record time.”

  “I wake up, and, Bang! It’s all over. What happened?”

  “It was amazing!” Xi Zhu said excitedly. “Your algarithms generated tons of phytoplankton. I mean tons. But T’ang had these quaticals that looked like something out of Dr. Seuss, with vacuum cleaner snouts and huge stomachs. They sucked up your phytoplankton faster than a whale sucks up krill. And that was that.”

  “My algarithms didn’t have enough time to evolve beyond the simplest forms.”

  “There’s always next year.”

  “Been there, done that.”

  “Sore loser?” Xi Zhu suggested.

  “I suppose,” I admitted. “But Quatix was only a means to an end. I’m going to keep working on my algarithms, and someday I’ll run them right up the evolutionary ladder.”

  “Where will that get you?”

  “To an old sycamore tree.”

  “That’s deep,” Xi Zhu said.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  We agreed to meet after school. And then I took a long, hot shower.

  CHAPTER 22.

  Magic Formulas

  A God Game always has a God Code which generates everything from the first moment of Creation to the last moment of Apocalypse, from the fate of Alexa Pavlova to the fate of John Fast. And Paxton helped me understand the logic of that God Code when I met him in his Pattern Recognition Lab the next evening. He was sitting at his desk, near the wall of cascading algorithms. The relentless downpour of green numbers made the room feel like a hut in a tropical rain forest.

  “I thought I’d win,” I said morosely as I sat in the chair in front of his desk. “I thought I’d be the youngest Quatix Master in the world.”

  “You’ve just begun to evolve these …,” Paxton began. “What did you call them?” He asked. “Alga-rithms? You have to develop your technique, learn your craft. It takes a lot of time and practice, as every artist knows. So be patient with yourself, John, and with your ambition.”

  “I wanted to impress Alexa,” I said.

  “Ahh,” Paxton replied. “Now I see why you’re in such a hurry.”

  “She’s a hard person to impress, and an even harder person to know,” I grumbled. “I get a few glimpses of her, then she disappears again.”

  “Alexa is struggling to find herself,” Paxton said. “And, as different as you two are, you have a lot in common. That’s why I wanted you to meet.”

  “And I’m really glad we did,” I assured him. “I’m just trying to figure her out.”

  I stared out the window, into the twilight.

  “Maybe …?” I began.

  “What?” Paxton prompted.

  “Alexa mentioned her Enkidu Complex. She said something about an ancient purification ritual. She said she’d talked with you about it. If you could help me understand the connection, then maybe …?”

  “It would help you to understand her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well … I can’t betray Alexa’s confidence,” Paxton said. “But I can tell you about the logic of the ancient purification ritual which underwrites the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  “I’ve been studying this purification ritual for a few months now, and I’m just about to publish my results. It all began when I decided to use my pattern recognition programs to search for God.”

  “You did?” I said, surprised by the idea. “What did you find?”

  “I found the Ancient Mesopotamian God Code,” Paxton replied.

  “What’s that?”

  “One of the oldest and most powerful codes in the world. As the name indicates, I focused my pattern recognition search on the Ancient Near Eastern traditions. A colleague of mine is running a similar search on the Ancient Far Eastern traditions. Of course, the terms, ‘Near,’ and, ‘Far,’ East reflect our Western prejudices and perspectives.”

  “And then you and your colleague will compare your results?”

  “Yes, but for now I’m just going to tell you about the evolution of the Ancient Mesopotamian God Code. Specifically, I focused my pattern recognition programs on the Epic of Gilgamesh. Alexa told you the basic plot?”

  “Yes, and I read it after I spoke with her. I like the Kovacs translation, and the George translation.”

  “Good. Those are the most accurate versions. So you already know that the historical Gilgamesh lived in the ancient city of Uruk sometime around 2700 B.C. The earliest surviving cuneiform tablets, which record his Sumerian legends,
date to about 2100 B.C. And the earliest surviving cuneiform tablets, which record his Babylonian epic, date to about 1800 B.C.”

  “Yes, yes,” I said impatiently. “But why do the gods create Enkidu from the clay? I mean, why specifically a wild-man who wanders in the forest? And why does Gilgamesh send Shamhat, the temple prostitute, to seduce Enkidu? And why does Enkidu come to the city? And why does he look exactly like Gilgamesh? And how does Enkidu become Gilgamesh’s scapegoat? And how does any of this connect to Alexa’s Enkidu Complex? And what, exactly, is an Enkidu Complex?”

  “Let’s back up a minute,” Paxton urged. “We have to clarify the basic facts of the story before we can answer your questions. For example: What does Gilgamesh actually do to anger the people of Uruk in the first place? Why does he need a scapegoat?”

  “Okay,” I said. “As I understand it, Gilgamesh, offends his people in a number of different ways, like claiming the first night with every new bride in the city. And that’s what makes everyone so angry.”

  “Very good,” Paxton said. “In other words, Gilgamesh, the civilized god-king, acts like an uncivilized wild-man. And that’s one of the reasons why Enkidu looks exactly like Gilgamesh: because he embodies the god-king’s wild nature.”

  “Oh. That makes sense,” I acknowledged.

  “And when Gilgamesh first hears about this mysterious wild-man of the forest, he sends Shamhat, the temple prostitute, to seduce him. As a result, Enkidu learns to talk, starts to wear clothes and begins to feel lonely. He leaves the forest for the city, and his early life, combined with his epic journey, recapitulates the entire history of civilization. Enkidu meets, respectively, hunters, shepherds, farmers and, finally, city-dwellers. As he passes from one symbolic stage of civilization to another, he becomes progressively more civilized.”

  “So the Mesopotamians were the first anthropologists!” I said. “That’s very cool. But I’ve got another question. After Gilgamesh and Enkidu become friends, they go on a series of adventures together. And, on one of those adventures, Enkidu encourages Gilgamesh to kill Humbaba, the sacred guardian of the forest. And, later on, Enkidu throws the thigh of the Bull of Heaven into Ishtar’s face. What does that have to do with Gilgamesh’s abuse of his people?”

  “A very good question,” Paxton replied. “And the answer is that Gilgamesh and Enkidu are mirror-opposite doubles: Gilgamesh, the god-king, acts like a bestial wild-man when he claims the first night with the new brides of Uruk, and when he abuses his people; Enkidu, the wild-man, acts like an arrogant god-king when he defies the sacred guardian of the forest, and when he abuses the high gods.”

  “And the Ancient Mesopotamian God Code is hidden somewhere in that mirror symmetry?”

  “Hidden in plain sight,” Paxton replied. “And it can be stated as a natural language algorithm.”

  Before I could ask what he meant, Paxton turned to his keyboard and cleared one of the wall screens, opening a blue window in the green rain. Then he entered another command and the blue screen displayed the formula:

  “This algorithm,” Paxton said, gesturing to the screen, “summarizes the logic of the ancient purification ritual which underwrites the Epic of Gilgamesh.”

  I puzzled over the formula for a moment, then asked, “How does it work?”

  “First, the god-king, who embodies the social order of the city, commits some kind of transgression against that order; Second, his transgression leaves a stain, or stigma, on his body; Third, the high priests find, or create, a double of the god-king: either a real person or a clay figurine; Fourth, the priests magically transfer the stigma from the body of the god-king to the body of his double; Fifth, the priests sacrifice the double, offering him up as a gift to appease the gods and the people; and Sixth, in this way the priests also destroy the stigma, thus purifying the body of the god-king and, in what amounts to the same thing, the body of the community. In short, the sacrificial gift of the scapegoat double restores the normal relations of exchange between heaven and earth, king and kingdom.”

  “What kind of exchange relations are we talking about?” I wondered.

  “In ancient and traditional cultures,” Paxton replied, “everyone exchanges gifts and goods, and the people you exchange with, as well as the things you exchange, define and redefine your communal status. Of course, the sacred logic and the profane logic of gift exchange are inseparable, and that’s why the purification rituals of the priests can restore the balance.”

  “So in the story,” I said, “the death of Enkidu ultimately purifies Gilgamesh and Uruk and restores the proper relations of exchange. That seems like a weird way of fixing Gilgamesh’s problem, and yet it kind of makes sense. But I still don’t understand why you think this particular algorithm is so important. I don’t understand why you call it the, ‘Ancient Mesopotamian God Code.’ And I don’t understand how it relates to Alexa.”

  “This algorithm is so important because so many other powerful narratives have evolved from it. That is, the ritual logic of purification is so deeply encoded in our communal psyche that we have repeated it, consciously and unconsciously, for millennia.”

  “Which reminds me: Alexa said something about Alpha-Clones as the new scapegoat doubles?”

  “Yes, but let’s stick with the ancient stories for a moment longer, because the next question we have to ask is, How did the God Code evolve from this Ancient Mesopotamian beginning? And the answer lies with two key words in the Book of Genesis: ‘adamah,’ which means, ‘earth,’ ‘ground,’ ‘soil;’ and, ‘adam,’ which means, ‘man.’”

  “Are you suggesting, what?” I said, thinking out loud. “That Adam, like Enkidu, is also made from the clay? That Adam is also a living figurine, also made in the god-king’s image? That he’s also a mirror-opposite? That he’s also a wild-man double? That he’s also a sacrificial scapegoat? But wait, wait! What is Yahweh’s transgression? How is Yahweh’s stain transferred to Adam? How does Adam become Yahweh’s scapegoat? The analogy doesn’t make sense!”

  “Doesn’t it? As you’ve already recognized, Yahweh, like Gilgamesh, is a god-king. He is the ultimate God-King of the Hebrews. And he also has a double nature: he is the remote creator-destroyer, deeply connected to the elemental forces of nature; and he is the intimate magistrate-redeemer, deeply concerned with the fate of his people.”

  “So how does the Ancient Mesopotamian God Code work in this new context?”

  “That’s what I’d like to ask you: How does the mirror symmetry work in Genesis? How does this god-king act like a wild-man, and how does this wild-man act like a god-king?”

  “Well … uh,” I began tentatively. “Yahweh acts like a wild-man when he … uh?”

  “When he becomes enraged, wreaks vengeance, delivers punishment,” Paxton suggested.

  “When he becomes enraged,” I repeated. “And Adam acts like a god-king, um … when he dares to eat from the Tree of Knowledge! When he defies God in order to become like God! Then he’s banished from the Garden and condemned to death!”

  I sat up. This was starting to make sense! But I still wondered how the Ancient Mesopotamian God Code could help me understand Alexa and her Enkidu Complex.

  “High marks,” Paxton said. “Enkidu and Adam both start out as innocent wild-men, made from the clay, in the exact image of their respective god-kings, and they both end up acting like arrogant god-kings, defying heaven. And they’re both condemned to death. In other words, Adam represents yet another development of the ritual algorithm.”

  “But wait,” I protested again. “Back up for a second. How, exactly, does Yahweh act like a wild-man when he gets angry?”

  “As I’ve suggested,” Paxton replied patiently, “Yahweh is an elemental god who, from the very beginning of the story, embodies all the terrifying forces of nature, all the darkness and light of creation. In fact, Yahweh starts out as a sublime animist Spirit and evolves into a sublime anthropomorphic God-King. And the tension between Yahweh’s fierce animist nature and his augu
st anthropomorphic stature runs right through the biblical tradition. Think, for example, how Yahweh condemns Adam and Eve: he sends them from the pastoral bliss of the Garden into the brutal despair of the Wilderness. And think how Yahweh condemns Adam and Eve’s descendants: he calls up the global catastrophe of the Great Flood. In other words, Yahweh manifests his elemental wrath through the elemental forces of nature. And the biblical writers worked and reworked the ancient ritual logic of purification in an attempt to purge their God-King, and their community, of this primordial wildness, this primordial otherness.”

  “And that’s how the logic of purification works in the ritual and the stories?” I asked. “The high priests magically transfer the mark of wildness from the body of the god-king to the body of his wild-man double? And when the wild-man double is destroyed, the mark of wildness is destroyed with him?”

  “Right. Modern cultures interpret this kind of transference as a form of psychological projection and semiotic representation. Ancient cultures interpret it as a matter of ritual magic and symbolic fact.”

  “But the resolutions of these rituals and stories are also really wild and violent, aren’t they? I mean, Enkidu gets sick and he dies; Adam and Eve are condemned to death in the Wilderness; and almost all the descendants of Adam and Eve are killed in a Great Flood that destroys most of the world.”

  “Exactly! You might say that these rituals and stories are attempts to redirect the wildness and violence of the community. In effect, they’re attempts to transform the uncivilized violence of the community into a civilized violence–although that’s an oxymoron if there ever was one.”

  “But aren’t the connections you’ve made between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Yahweh and Adam really kind of generic and abstract?” I objected. “I mean, does anything more specific connect the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Book of Genesis?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. They share other key elements, as you might recall from your reading. When the Epic of Gilgamesh was finally rediscovered in the nineteenth century, and when the cuneiform tablets were finally translated, the news made worldwide headlines. Why? Because the clay tablets record an early version of the Flood narrative, with a Noah-like figure called, ‘Utnapishtim.’ And other connections also emerged: the sexual encounter of Enkidu and Shamhat in the forest, and Enkidu’s consequent loss of innocence, prefigures the sexual encounter of Adam and Eve in the Garden and their loss of innocence; similarly, the snake which steals the plant of rejuvenation from Gilgamesh at the end of the story prefigures the snake, the Tree of Knowledge and Adam in the Garden.”