by A. I. Zlato
So he studied the documents, countless and heteroclite, left by the Elders who had lived in the E.S. They had brought all their scientific knowledge, their literary jewels. History books chronicled the invention of writing, the creation and destruction of empires, war, culture, art. One would have thought that such a plethora of materials would have made it easy to do a thorough and quasi-comprehensive study. Nonetheless, despite the varied origins and scriptural periods, the history about the beginning of Spaces seemed flat.
Accounts about the invention of the very concept of Spaces were always brief. Always identical, down to the last comma, these accounts followed some type of charter encompassing ten articles. Different authors could not have written texts so similar to one another; they must have been rewritten. But why? The Elders probably wanted to hide something, to give a single description of their history. Paul was sure the answer to these questions was one of the keys, which would make it possible to sufficiently interpret the past in order to choose the future, another future, without the Machine. The beginning … A node in time … a bridge into infinity … the creation of the E.S…
Edgard landed, as usual, on the laboratory’s lawn. The animal knew pertinently that the security guard would remind everyone that it was forbidden to walk on the lawn. However, the Kandron considered it did nothing wrong, as it only landed there and did not walk on the grass … another example of the typical misunderstanding between a Kandron’s mind and the human world.
Paul slipped off the animal’s back smoothly, near the contiguous alley. He greeted the guard, who then started his everlasting tirade. He then proceeded, as usually, quickly towards the corridor that led into his department. He sat down to start the workday, in an office that epitomised his personality. A table, on which lay a terminal, held his database of documents stocked in the cold rooms. No photograph, no source of distraction. Work and only work, in which he immersed himself every day with ever-renewed passion. His life was all about this job; it trickled through every fibre of his body, throughout the day … and night.
He felt extremely lucky to have this job, to have been selected, among so many talented people, for this role. He loved touching manuscripts, feeling old leather on the covers; he felt like entering a new universe, that the author was speaking to him directly. The past was alive again, sharing its secrets with him. The author’s state of mind, his or her environmental perception, subjectivity, sometimes poignant, sometimes… incomprehensible. Each book changed him a bit, altering something in his mind. By expanding his knowledge about the Elders, he could muster a small piece to this immense puzzle, the end of which he could not yet see.
This morning, Paul found it difficult to focus. He kept thinking about Edgard’s cryptic sentence. He was convinced that the Kandron has implanted the sentence in his brain for a specific reason. He decided then to do some research about the word “reality.” After half an hour, he finally came across excerpts from a book:
“The pressing need for a logical and coherent universe is deeply embedded in the human subconscious mind. But the real universe, the reality, is always one step beyond logic. (Author: F. H.)
A stimulus in his brain, which he recognised as a message from Edgard, halted his reading. Reality lies beyond logic; also, the imaginary of the majority creates something else, a coherent reality. Paul felt like fainting … was all his reality simply an imagination to find coherence? Was it why Edgard told him this morning that a question made sense only if he was ready to hear the answer? Was the answer beyond his logic, beyond his coherent universe?
Finally, what if the E.S. papers — on which he had been working for so many years — were also imaginary, embodying the Elders’ collective thought? What if the theories he had been formulating were nothing but an additional sign of this atavistic need for coherence and logic?
His despair was so palpable that it drew Edgard’s attention. No matter where the animal was, it always stayed connected to his brain and thoughts. It generally came to his rescue when his brain reflected confusion.
“As always, you don’t ask the right questions.”
“But you forced me to think about this topic!”
“I gave you a truth, and you are choosing the direction of abstraction.”
“Is it an abstraction to consider and generate, as a reality, a coherent and logical imaginary?”
“You only care about a tiny part of reality. It is thus an abstraction, which leads you to a new imaginary.”
“If that means a minority has created another reality, which the majority calls imaginary … Do I need to find the corresponding term the Elders would use, so I can have a better overview, and then get the meaning of the Earliest Space?”
“The questions are nothing but another form of response, causes that trigger the same factuality.”
“So whatever I do, I will continue to be a prisoner of the coherent and logical universe that my own brain created?”
“It is not enough to admit that reality is the imagination of the majority, but it is a good start. Everything has a beginning; you are a good beginning. “
Paul understood his friend’s thought, at least he thought so. His conscience opened up again, and he agreed that the uniform description he found everywhere was nothing but the imaginary of the majority. He already knew that somehow. To capture things broadly, it was necessary to understand the minority’s viewpoint, to rid the mind of any preconception in order to see … something different … alien to one’s own coherence. If Edgard had pushed him all the way to despair, it was because the topic was critical … at least from a Kandron’s vantage point.
At that moment, Vlad entered the office, or rather crashed on his chair, moody. This athletic man, a few years younger than Paul, had everything a man needed. A stellar physique, an extraordinary intelligence, but nonetheless he had not figured out the best way to use his skills and genetics to lead a productive life.
The E.S. did not offer anything of interest to him. Thinking about the past? For what? He wanted to work in Section A.1., which studied the Machine, Its features and operation. Unfortunately, for him, his test scores did not indicate an aptitude to work in this field, and they assigned him to this crappy department, to use his words. However, aptitude tests that the Machine conducted were meant to precisely gauge each candidate’s potential. Even if Paul wanted humanity to get rid of the Machine, he nonetheless acknowledged Its ability to evaluate individual capacities effectively. That said, no test in the world, no matter how effective, could be successful against bad faith. Rather than identifying the skills that landed him in this department, and determining how his skills could be useful to the Machine in his role, Vlad locked himself up in rejection, crying foul. However, if the Machine had assigned him to this section, there must have been a good reason … that Paul, despite his ingenuity, could not identify. Nonetheless, he decided to share his current thinking with his assistant. He barely finished summarising his thoughts that Vlad jumped up.
“That’s what I kept telling you since the beginning! All these E.S. stories are just that: stories! You work on thin air! Your old, mouldy books say that the E.S. no longer exists … It’s a good shortcut, it is not? Wouldn’t it rather be a good way to describe a myth, something that never existed? These Elders are nothing but outdated gods, so you can say there was a “beginning,” an “Earliest Space.” To justify all that … Why can’t there be Spaces, creations of Spaces dating back to an infinite time? Why do you absolutely want a beginning, and most important, why do you inevitably want humans to be at the origins of things? Mmmmm?”
“You cannot dismiss all historical knowledge so easily”, Paul said. “If there had not been overpopulation, the creation of additional Spaces would not have been necessary … one would have been enough. Second, and I think you might be right, nothing proves that the Elders were exclusively at the beginning of things; they may have received help … But studying the ‘beginning,’ as you put it, can provide helpful informat
ion on the ‘now’ and guide the ‘after.’ In some manuscripts, they talked about some knowledge that had not to be transferred into the newly created Spaces. If we find out which pieces of knowledge, and most important, why they must not be transferred, we may be able to avoid similar mistakes. There it is, the majority! If the majority had decided that this or that thing was bad, then their will, their belief … their imaginary became our reality!”
Edgard’s sentence suddenly gained full substance, thanks to Vlad and his bad faith. Paul resumed his work with enthusiasm, leaving his assistant performing his own favorite activity … which, in sum, meant not doing anything, always fuming, and taking long breaks with the young interns. The good thing was, Paul could enjoy the quietness in his office. He burrowed into his database, and thoroughly selected the documents he would study. He was so immersed, as usual, that he forgot the lunch break. Vlad, while raging, brought him some meal, which Paul ate without paying much attention. Vlad could be a nice fellow, after all. The day went on, with Paul in his office, and Vlad in the corridors.
At the end of the day, Paul thought he had made some progress, not in terms of knowledge gain, but with respect to mindset improvement, his yearning to connect with the Elders … and all of this thanks to Edgard’s cryptic thoughts and Vlad’s acerbic comments. Ultimately, these two somewhat formed a catalyst for his thoughts. Maybe that was the reason why Vlad was transferred into the department. Not that he had a complete skill, but a complement, a part of a whole, himself being a part of … everything is relative to its environment … reality is the imaginary of the majority … the need for a coherent and logical universe … I am a human in a specific time, a Space, an environment … The Elders were part of another time, another Space … But which environment?
Once again, he was the last one to leave the building. The night-shift guard nodded to him inattentively, his eyes glued to TV images scrolling on the screen. A random sports game, no doubt. When he started working there, Paul had tried to cultivate friendships with the guards, but they had nothing in common. Nothing he was interested in caught their attention, and vice versa. He had no interest in sports or, worse, office gossip. He and they remained strangers, exchanging civilities and formalities when necessary.
He left as he had come, with Edgard. The sun set a long time earlier, and stars shone above him. The Machine’s black Tower in its back, the dark mass of the Unique Forest far away, the Periphery seemed a haven of soothing and reassuring light. Edgard landed in the garden, and Paul hopped off. He went in the living room, which was a quasi-office, a tangle of manuscripts, of notes pinned on the wall. He lived alone in this big house. He did not have time to start a family, his job grabbing much of his time. In addition, most humans who were selected by a Kandron before starting a family remained single afterwards. The relationship with such a being was so total, so intense, that cultivating a relationship with another human being was not worth pursuing.
As usual, Paul spent more time cooking Edgard’s dinner than his own. As he was about to eat, he connected his terminal to the news channel, which was, understandably, selected by the Machine. Most of the news covered suicides of some teenagers, aged 11-13. He missed the beginning of the story, as he was too focused on his work to watch the news every day, but the story had escalated to such a level that even he could no longer miss it. They had found, once again, a group of dead children. Why they had committed suicide remained a mystery, and more strange, the way they committed the act was undetermined. This must have been unbearable for the families, for their friends. Understandably, the death of a child was not in the natural order of things, not to mention self-inflicted fatality.
Edgard opened the window to intervene. Rather, it pushed the pillar, which let go with a light screeching.
“Those are breaks in lifetimes, but time has nothing to do with these.”
“That’s it, Edgard, this is the definition of suicide! But why youngsters, who have all their lives ahead of them, who had — it appears — no particular problem, choose to end their own lives? Why would they do it collectively and simultaneously? What caused this desire to die collectively?”
“Their reality and imaginary were not compatible.”
“Come on! Everybody has dreams, which aren’t compatible with reality! That is the very definition of a dream … and, at that age, you have plenty of dreams. Why did these become unbearable for those kids? More important, how does one prevent this tragedy from happening again?”
Edgard kept silent. Paul remained immersed in his queries, paralysed as he saw images scrolling, of these small bodies, of these bereaved families, forever broken. For God’s sake, what was happening? What was the Machine doing, given that Its job was to maintain the Equilibrium? Paul’s fear and anguish made him recite, in loop, the three rules of Space H.
1. Do not do tomorrow what you did yesterday.
2. Create an additional Space so yours is not saturated.
3. Life as a whole must be saved; no one life is worth more than another is.
Life as a whole must be saved; no one life is worth more than another is … So what?
Each belief intrinsically contains its share of reality and nonsense. No belief is worth more than another is: they all are either real or absurd. The concept of Good and Evil does not exist.
Recollections from Chaacetime
Chapter 2
: Pre-E.S. Era
Edgard looked at Paul entering the lab at a quick pace, hurried to start the day and commit to his human activities. After seeing him vanish into the building, the Kandron lay lazily on the lawn. It took advantage of the sunny morning, leaving the sun warm its body. Folded up like a cat, its tail rolled up around its head and long neck; it was ready to enjoy a well-deserved nap. All around the animal, people went and came. Without looking at it, as they were used to seeing the animal at the entrance. It listened, dispassionately, to their hurried steps and conversations, falling gradually asleep.
These people, with such a short lifespan, were wasting their time struggling against established things, only to follow the trail blazed at the end… Strange creatures. They went every day to their workplace, to … work. A purely human activity, which consisted in performing tasks while being convinced that, if the tasks were not performed, there would be a serious consequence. Serious for whom? Serious for what? For what purpose? Edgard was still perplexed.
Humans, for their part, convinced of the importance of their tasks, were going to work quickly, squealing the white stones along the alley. These humans, in Paul’s view, were late. He had had to spend a lot of time to understand their rules, particularly those relating to work. They needed thus to go to work at the same time. Getting to work early was considered a courageous gesture, as long as one did not get there too early, lest colleagues consider the early bird odd. The same rule applied to the departure time. Leaving the office too early, as arriving late, meant laziness. Arriving reasonably early and leaving reasonably late were considered signs of professionalism. Otherwise, colleagues would label one strange or uncanny.
Edgard eavesdropped on some conversations categorising Paul as strange, although he, himself, thought he was just a very devoted researcher. Their respective social norms were hard to gauge, especially because those norms varied from one person to another. Strange creatures, indeed!
All workers, even latecomers, entered the laboratory, and the atmosphere was quiet again, allowing Edgard to enjoy the soft noise of birds singing on surrounding trees’ branches. Some bold birds landed on the Kandron, probably unaware that they were in contact with a living being. Life was good, in this Space, and at this time. It would not always be so, unless the Kandron could change the course of things. All this beauty, this life, was condemned, even though nothing would clearly predict such demise. Its thoughts veered from the present to the future, its past in reality, from quietness to chaos, from life to nothingness. Its reflections gradually slowed down, reducing their scope and breadth, and lettin
g Edgard enjoy few tidbits of a dreamless sleep.
Feeling rested, the Kandron stoop up and stretched extensively, ploughing the ground with its long claws. The birds flew away, squawking, scared by the abrupt movement of what they thought was a rock. The sun had heated its gigantic body unequally, and it loved the warm feel pervading its metabolism. It stood up on its two lower limbs and tail.
It then shook off before deploying its wings, cutting some low-hanging branches on the tree that served as refuge to the birds that had flown off its back earlier. The cracking in the tree made the birds flee once again. They fled even farther when Edgard flapped its wings, creating huge airwaves. The birds waited for the Kandron to be higher in the sky before landing anew on the neighbouring trees, as they were bewildered by so many upheavals. It flew towards Paul’s house, to have lunch. It navigated above the City of humans, or rather the world of their Machine, to which they gave so much power.
Created to protect humans from themselves, the Tower defined, controlled, and maintained the world in the initially programmed framework. Why had they not sought to alter themselves, rather than entrusting their existence to an artificial entity? They indeed had the knowledge base necessary to modify their genome, and then engineer a selection program over several generations to remove auto-destructive behaviour traits. They had not chosen that path. They had created a technology that had to constantly fight against its makers. The approach was… counterproductive, but so … human. The Machine was now a very separate entity. Its decisions affected the future, or created it … Nobody was sure at that moment. The Machine was managing the humans — but who oversaw the Machine? The humans no longer had control over it, despite their denial.