Ohg looked at Kayla’s stricken expression and half-smiled. “Unlike you, I know who created me and for what purpose. I was made by a drunken bunch of frat boys as a Halloween prank. Now that is some twisted existential self-awareness.”
“So Dorky Dale didn’t try to kill you?”
“My guess is that he hoped I’d die on my own, absolving him of the tough decision. He later denied this, but I wouldn’t have blamed him. What college student wants the responsibility of raising a deformed child who could get him expelled or put in prison?”
“Dale saved you like the monk saved me,” Kayla said. “The custom in my village was to let children like me die of exposure.”
“I keep forgetting you spent most of your life as a cripple,” Ohg said. Was there a touch of bitterness in his tone? Might he not welcome switching places with her?
“When I recovered, Dale moved me into a second bedroom in his apartment. He lived alone and spent nearly twenty hours a day studying physics, so I rarely saw him.”
Ohg fell silent, his gaze drifting past her into the gently swaying trees. As their branches rubbed together, each tree emitted a barely audible tone, almost like a single sustained note of a violin. The eerie symphony crept down Kayla’s spine like a centipede.
There’s something wrong here.
“There’s no wind to move the branches,” Kayla whispered.
Ohg started from his reverie and glanced around. “It’s the trees speaking to one another.”
“I hear only individual notes.”
Ohg moved to an ancient oak and placed his hand gently against its rough surface. “Because of their slow metabolism, it takes days to complete a single sentence. Their conversations overlap each other simultaneously, and a discussion may span a decade or more.”
Kayla placed her hand against the tree, and the note vibrated up her arm. “I wonder if this is what we look like to a hummingbird?”
“The genetic engineers might have corrected the timing problem eventually, if the Gene-Purity laws hadn’t ended such experimentation.”
She strolled through the living columns as if through a cathedral, craning her neck back toward the canopy above. The lights in the ceiling filtered through the swaying leaves as if through a living stained-glass mural. Shifting emerald patterns caressed her face with their ethereal touch. Kayla breathed in the intoxicating smell of nature.
I miss the forest.
I miss Ishan.
How long had it been since she’d thought of him? Even if he didn’t exist, her memory of him did.
“Is there any way to decipher what they’re saying?” she asked.
“It’s simply a matter of speeding up their sounds to match our perceptions.”
Ohg pressed the gleaming cylinder in his hand, and a deep voice resonated around them.
“The divine vibration of the Great Mother flows through the roots of my being, and She speaks in the chord of C minor. She tells me that all will be well. Time heals all. Time is the arbiter and—”
“That’s from the past four weeks,” Ohg said. “I’ve even had a few conversations with them by recording my voice and playing it back at their pace over months and even years, but I’m not sure they truly understand anything I say, and I’m not sure I understand their replies.”
“Was language programmed into them from birth, like the Monads?” Kayla asked.
“That’s right. Otherwise, their brains operate too slowly to teach something as complex as speech.”
Ohg led her to a stream, and they splashed cool water on their faces. Ohg settled down to rest, and Kayla sat beside him, while Puck took the opportunity to explore among the tangle of roots.
“Tell me the rest of your story,” she said.
Ohg’s eyes lost their focus as he stared beyond her. “For the first month after my rebirth, I explored the sparse bedroom Dale gave me and reveled in the wondrous new world of light, sound, and freedom. The Care-Robot attended to my bodily needs as always, but my loneliness persisted, though I couldn’t have named it at the time. As humane as Dale was, I don’t think it occurred to him that I needed anything other than food and a place to live.”
A look of awe spread across Ohg’s face. “Then Charlotte visited Dale and brought me a roommate—the seminal event of my entire life.”
“Charlotte’s secret research project?” Kayla asked.
“Yes, a Bonobo named Helen with a genetically enhanced brain,” Ohg said. “A close call with a fundamentalist roommate frightened Charlotte. She promised Dale money for the extra food, but I suspect what sealed the deal was a bribe far older.”
Kayla blushed and Ohg chuckled.
“Without Helen, I probably never would have learned to talk, let alone read.”
“A Bonobo that can read?” Kayla glanced around at the forest and chuckled. “I guess I forgot where I am.”
Ohg rose onto his eight legs, and Kayla followed his lead. Puck dashed up her skirt and took his place on her shoulder as they continued through the softly singing forest.
“Above all else, Helen taught me empathy for others. Wild Bonobos have a highly evolved moral sense, sharing food, and caring for young who have lost their parents. Despite her genetically enhanced brain, her innate morality remained.”
“I thought only humans had morality?” Kayla asked.
As they neared the end of the forest, a honey bee buzzed alongside them. Its humming wings blurred next to its yellow-and-black-striped body. Its oval eyes seemed comically large for its head. Puck also watched it from his perch on her shoulder. Did the little mouse miss such things as bees?
“It’s clear from research on many primates,” Ohg said, “that what we call ‘morality’ evolved long before the first humans.”
“But without God giving absolute rules, what’s to keep humans from changing them to suit themselves?”
“Nothing.” Ohg held his hand out, and the bee landed in his palm. “Absolute morality is an illusion and is reflected in the ever-changing morality of the religions we create. Sometimes religions even serve to subvert our instinctual empathy and guilt by telling us that something clearly immoral is the will of God.”
Several more bees appeared. They flew next to them as if listening in on their conversation.
“Like God telling the Israelites it is wrong to enslave a fellow Jew, but that it’s okay to enslave non-Jews?”
“Exactly,” Ohg said. “Even Jesus and Paul mention slavery, but never speak against it, so it couldn’t have bothered them that much.”
“But those times required different …” Kayla frowned. “I see your point. But you must admit many Christians fought to end slavery.”
“And many fought to maintain it.” Several more bees hovered around Ohg, but he seemed unconcerned. “The abolition of slavery came from a natural moral sense of right and wrong based on human empathy rather than from any divine rule. People don’t need God to sense that slavery, murder, or rape is wrong. We understand it instinctually.”
Kayla stiffened at the mention of rape. A vision of Elias hovered before her mind’s eye. Minister Coglin’s son certainly lacked any instinctual moral sense. Was he an exception to the norm?
“But if there is no God to punish evil,” she said, “that would mean Hitler got away with his crimes and is no worse off now than his victims.”
“Do you see how your innate desire for a moral universe cringes from this possibility? It is why nearly all novels, movies, and religious myths end with the hero rewarded and the evil villain punished.”
Beyond the last trees stretched a wide expanse of flowers. A slight hum rose from the brilliant carpet as thousands of bees harvested the bounty of the colorful field. Ohg entered the meadow without hesitation, and his pointed talons found the earth beneath the flowers without damaging a single leaf.
“The fantasy that Hitler receives his punishment in the end soothes your innate desire for a moral universe and clouds your reason because you want it so badly. This is w
hy I doubt religion will ever vanish from human society. As long as there is unfairness in the universe, humans will create gods to set things right. The truth is that only we can create such a world for ourselves, and that is what I’ve attempted with Middilgard.”
Puck snapped at one or two of the growing swarm of bees, but they proved too fast for him. Kayla stepped carefully to keep from crushing any of the delicate flowers.
“How could generosity and individual sacrifice evolve in a brutal world of survival of the fittest?” Kayla asked.
“Chimps and Bonobos share food and even assist wounded or blind members of their group. Do you think they do this out of a hope of reward or fear of punishment in an afterlife?” Ohg’s legs lowered him close to the carpet of flowers, and he picked a red poppy. “Empathy and moral instincts became hardwired into primate genes and brains by living in societies that necessitated cooperation for protection.”
Ohg handed her the flower. “If I pick the parasites from your hair and you don’t reciprocate in kind, you will find yourself shunned and your uncooperative genes removed from the population. If we evolved in an environment that favored non-cooperation, we’d have the opposite moral instincts than we do now.”
“That’s hard to imagine,” Kayla said.
“When a male lion defeats an older male and assumes Pride leadership, he kills all the cubs so his time and resources are spent raising only babies that contain his genes.”
“That’s horrible!”
“Says your primate brain. The lion isn’t conscious of why he does this, but is acting as his environment has programmed him to. Any lion with a genetic mutation for avoiding infanticide would pass on fewer genes than other lions with what we’d consider immoral genes. Soon, they would vanish from the gene pool altogether.”
“But the numbers of offspring would be the same if all lions let the previous cubs live, since the survival of the last cubs they fathered would balance the time lost at the beginning.”
“Only if everyone observed the same rules,” Ohg said. “If even one lion decided to cheat and kill the previous male’s cubs and gain a genetic benefit, the system falls apart. Such rules become enforceable only in larger societies like apes or other interdependent animal groups. Morality is one of the most beautiful things evolution has produced. I see it as on par with our ability to understand the universe like no other creature ever has.”
“But if we’re so intelligent,” Kayla asked, “how could so many believe in a God that doesn’t exist?”
“Helen thought supernatural explanations a byproduct of the dual nature of our desire to seek cause-and-effect answers, combined with the primate brain’s desire for moral order.”
“Now you’ve lost me,” Kayla said.
“When an earthquake strikes, our ancestors explained it as punishment from a supernatural being for some immoral action on their part, thus supplying both a causal explanation—God did it—combined with the moral purpose for the event—because someone did something bad. Plate tectonics only answers the how, but not the why, making it morally unsatisfying to our primate brains, who prefer both answers wrapped neatly into one.”
“That would explain the reaction to both Galileo and Darwin,” Kayla said.
“Precisely. Science threatens religion by providing a rational causal explanation that excludes any possible moral agency. This is the fundamental conflict between Faith, which is the expression of our innate primate morality, and Reason, which is the logical, problem-solving portion of our mind.”
Kayla brought the flower closer to her face. One of the honey bees landed on it.
I wonder what this bee would think of such questions of morality? Or the Rogues.
She rubbed one of the petals between her fingers and frowned. “It’s not real.”
“Plastic lasts longer, and I can more easily maintain the level of nectar that way.”
“But why would you need to …” Kayla trailed off as bees rose from the field and swarmed in their direction. She stumbled back and crushed several of the flowers beneath her feet.
“Steady,” Ohg said. “He’s just eager to meet you.”
“He?”
One by one, the bees flew close together and formed a buzzing core about the size of a watermelon. As more and more bees added to this, the core expanded into a cylindrical torso, then what looked like arms and legs, and finally, the head of a man. Though constructed entirely of bees, the face appeared Asian, with broad features and a kindly expression.
“I am known as Yuan Shi Tian Wang in honor of the Heavenly King of Primordial Beginning.” His voice came from the modulations of the thousands of wings making up his form. It sounded oddly harmonic, but was perfectly understandable. The excess of bees hovered around him like a humming aura.
Kayla opened her mouth but found no words.
“Yuan is a Taoist,” Ohg said.
Kayla’s voice emerged in a stammer. “How c-can you …?”
“My consciousness is a conglomeration of all the brains of each individual bee.” Yuan’s mouth moved as he spoke, even though this seemed unnecessary. “A microscopic transmitter in each tiny brain mimics the synapses and chemical pathways of a human neural network.”
Yuan expanded into a cloud of buzzing specks. “You would not deem any individual cell of your body conscious.” The swarm came back together into the likeness of a man. “Body and mind are manifestations of the duality of the indissoluble whole known as the yin and yang.”
Ohg scoffed. “Why not simply say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts?”
“I just did.” More bees formed themselves into wings along his back, and he rose into the air as they flapped. “Reality is but an illusion. Look not for truth with the eye, but with the inner self.”
“I’ve read a little about Taoism,” Kayla said, “but I don’t think I really understand it.”
Yuan settled to the ground in front of her, and his wings dissolved back into a humming cloud of honey bees. “The more one studies the Tao, the less they know.”
“But what is the goal of knowledge, then?”
“The goal is obliteration. Only by discarding your physical self can you unlock the eternal manifestation of the divine entombed within you.”
Ohg cleared his throat. “Men, in being born, emerge—in dying, they enter.”
Yuan nodded. “You quote the words of the great teacher, and yet you doubt their truth.”
Ohg smiled. “You know my thoughts on the existence of the soul.” Ohg tapped his head. “I believe consciousness is a product of this, just as AI consciousness is a result of quantum computers.”
“Your soul does not require your belief,” Yuan said through the buzzing of his thousands of wings. “For its existence depends not upon you, but you upon it.”
Kayla blurred her eyes slightly and found it easier to see him as a man. “What exactly do you mean by the Tao?”
“The word Tao means ‘The Way’ and can be thought of as the path toward virtue and divine power. We call this the ‘Tao Te Ching.’ It is the source and force of the universe. The synthesis of nature, spirit, and consciousness. It is being and non-being. The Tao harmonizes nature, humanity, and the divine into the yin and yang of opposites working together.”
“Your creator was no god,” Ohg said, “but a corporation who genetically engineered you after some of their designer pesticides eradicated natural bees.”
“The Tao works through all things, even the science of man.” A sadness crept into Yuan’s tone. “I enjoyed the participation in life’s initiation by spreading the seed of nature from plant to plant.” His face rose to the lights in the cavern ceiling, and he sighed with such force that a breeze brushed Kayla’s clothing back. “How I miss the sky, the sun, the moon, and the stars. Now I am but a hollow automaton imitating the rituals of life that once gave me purpose and meaning.”
“I’m sorry,” Kayla said. “I wish I could help.”
“It is no matter, Kay
la of Potemia,” Yuan said. “The Tao will renew all cycles in time.” His body dissolved and spread across the field.
At Kayla’s feet, palm-sized molecular printers repaired the flowers she’d crushed. Ohg turned and made his way across the rest of the field to a tunnel on the far side. She inhaled one last lungful of the nearby trees and hurried to catch up with him.
When they entered the tunnel, Kayla asked, “Is the man who saved you still alive?”
“You’ve met him yourself,” Ohg said.
Her brow wrinkled for a moment, but then relaxed. “Professor Blumenschein is Dorky Dale?”
“You’ve got it.”
“If they’d probed his memories, General Colrev would have learned your history!”
“Exactly,” Ohg said. “Ironic that my own big mouth doomed me anyway.”
“But how did you survive the Gene-Pure laws, the Plague, and then go on to build Middilgard?”
“I’m afraid the rest will have to wait for another time,” Ohg said.
They’d entered the Crystal Cavern through a trapdoor she’d never noticed. The transport to the Outside sat waiting. The implication was clear.
She walked to the odd vehicle and stepped onto it. The loneliness bore down on her like some vast weight. Puck poked his head out of her pocket and looked up at her. I won’t be completely alone, at least.
How would she enter Ixtalia without Tem’s instruction? Or avoid capture by the government on the surface? Kayla clenched her fists. I will not give up my search, no matter what.
She turned and faced Ohg. “Why did you bring me to Middilgard in the first place?”
“I thought you and I had something in common.”
Kayla gazed into his eyes, sparkling amidst the mass of twisted flesh imprisoning him. What could he mean?
Ohg smiled.“If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasure, then thou shalt understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.”
“You’re seeking God?”
“I seek truth, wherever it may lead.” Ohg moved forward and extended a claw toward her chest until it pressed painfully against her sternum. “Are you willing to do the same?”
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