Generations

by Francis Rosenfeld

  Lily visited them one by one, charting and discovering, not noticing the passing of years, for after all what would be the point of living a very long life if you have to skimp on experiencing it? As she explored the depths of space farther and farther from home the universe kept unfolding in front of her eyes, significantly the same, as if God wanted to clarify for her the concept of infinity.

  With every trip she went farther into deep space but the end of the universe was nowhere in sight, and neither was her dream of finding out what lay beyond.

  "Maybe it doesn't have an end," sister Roberta proposed.

  "It might not have an end but it surely had a beginning, I should at least be able to see past that point," Lily argued.

  "See where? Into the source singularity?" Roberta commented, shocked.

  "It can't be infinite. Maybe we're already seeing other universes and don't realize it," Lily postulated.

  "You don't make any sense. If you see them, they are in this universe, what, you're going to place a line and decide from here on it's another universe?" the sister retorted.

  "It's just that I always expected there to be an outside. There can't be an inside without an outside!" she protested. "And while we're at it, I'll believe existence sprung out of nothing before I picture the entire universe squeezed into a dot!" Lily continued, peeved.

  Roberta saw her frustration but didn't know how to comfort her. It was an unexpected turn of events for the engineering mastermind that for once it wasn't human limitations that prevented her from breaking through the secrets of the universe but the nature of existence itself.

  "How do you know we're seeing real galaxies? Maybe we're looking at a reflection of our own back yard?" Lily offered.

  "Oh, no, they're real," Roberta sighed.

  "There's got to be an outside!" the young woman stubbornly insisted.

  "Why don't we ask Purple? They're bound to know something," the sister tried.

  "Like the gamma dark conversation was an eye opener!" Lily mumbled. "Even if they do know and want to explain, what makes you think we'll be able to understand?"

  "Giants. Think. Cosmos. Big. Ball." the immortals giggled. Sometimes they really irritated Roberta with their childish mischief, but the sister demonstrated superior self-control this time and asked them very nicely for details.

  "Giant. Always. Same. Place." the immortals obliged, confirming Lily's theory about the limitations of the human mind to comprehend. "Outside. Different. Place."

  "You mean it's not possible for us to go outside?" Lily asked sorrowful.

  "Possible." the immortals answered laconically, then returned to complete silence.

  ***

  "What do you think they meant?" sister Roberta asked Seth and sister Benedict who had been summoned for a nature of the universe brainstorming session.

  "I don't know, maybe we're on the inside surface of a closed object," Seth suggested.

  "They specifically mentioned it's not round," sister Benedict theorized.

  "It doesn't have to be round. Maybe it's a Klein bottle, or a pseudo sphere, or some type of squiggle generated surface of revolution," sister Roberta proposed.

  "Do you have any scientific basis to back up this theory?" Seth asked unimpressed.

  "No, just trying to figure out what Purple meant," Roberta sheepishly admitted.

  "Purple likes riddles, I wouldn't take their words literally," sister Benedict intervened. "We have to start with the unquestionable information, like the fact that we're inside a closed system, and pay attention to the comment that we are not actually moving from our place, whatever that means for Purple. In fact, this is where I would start: in what way are we not moving from our place? If we perceive that we are moving through an environment but do not in fact move at all, either the environment is moving around us or it is continuously changing shape, thus giving us the illusion of motion."

  "We didn't consider the possibility that Purple is making fun of us," Roberta hesitated.

  "They haven't told us something untrue yet, until that time comes I think we should take their remarks seriously," sister Benedict replied, unperturbed. "Can anybody think of other ways in which we may think we're moving when in fact we are not?" she looked around curiously, relaying the question through the interlink at the same time, to ask the question publicly.

  "Maybe we're spinning," Jimmy offered.

  "That's movement," sister Benedict corrected him.

  "But not moving from location," Jimmy clarified.

  "That's a possibility," sister Benedict admitted. "What else?"

  "You know those scenes where you move through a door and end up in the same room?" Jimmy continued.

  "That's a Klein bottle," sister Benedict pointed out.

  "Not necessarily," Jimmy insisted. "It can be as simple as moving through a torus with a dividing wall."

  "If we define 'same place' broader, as in 'room' or 'site'." sister Benedict agreed. "So, basically most of the options could be simply summed up as 'going around in circles'?" she reformulated the premise. "Then maybe the problem becomes the fact that we attempt to move through the four dimensions," she continued thinking out loud.

  "You go ahead and move through the fifth dimension and let us all know how it went!" sister Joseph couldn't help herself. The sister had just returned from Soléa and had switched her bracelet on right in the middle of what sounded like a completely absurd conversation made even worse by the fact that her input wasn't requested.

  "I don't think so, sister," Sarah ignored sister Joseph's comment and replied to sister Benedict's train of thought. "Purple said it was possible for us to go outside, remember?"

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Of Reality

  While the science team debated the meaning of existence, life on Terra Two unfolded fervently, unaware of the planet's not changing location and enjoying the appearance of moving in all directions.

  Sister Joseph spared no effort to spoil Josephine in every way imaginable by adapting Soléa 'vegetation' everywhere she found an empty spot. Unfortunately the plant-animals depended on the wind to bring nutrient rich moisture from the fresh water seas and the rarefied salty and sulfurous breeze didn't suit them at all. The chagrined sister Joseph, worried that her pet will receive less than the very best, used every means of manipulation she could come up with, from cajoling, to guilt trips, to straight intimidation to persuade Sarah to cultivate a successful alien ecosystem.

  Sarah gave in eventually, despite the fact that her schedule was already overflowing and Josephine's behavior hadn't improved in any way that would ingratiate her with the redhead, more in the hope that she will finally be left in peace than for any other reason. A combination of miracle work, guesswork and knowledge of biology eventually yielded an environment more or less in equilibrium, even though the equilibrium was maintained at the expense of hard labor and excessive energy consumption.

  Sister Joseph didn't care about the splurge on resources, she liked to point out on occasion that Josephine was the one good thing that happened to her since she had the misfortune to associate with their group of ne'er-do-wells and if everyone had to put a dent in their self indulgence to make her pet's life tolerable she considered it a small price to pay.

  Everybody liked Josephine, how could one not? The shiny miniature dragon had become the community's good luck charm and local celebrity. No self-respecting visitor would dream of leaving Terra Two without seeing the alien lizard and the children adored her. Sarah had resigned herself to replant the ransacked flower and vegetable beds and sometimes sneaked fresh kale to Josephine against the specific instructions of her owner. Sister Joseph had concluded that an earthly diet didn't agree with her beloved pet and the dragon should only be fed according to the environment her species evolved in.

  Sarah made great efforts not to crack a smile through repeated lectures about Josephine's sensitive temperament and stomachs, and tried to chase from her mind the vivid images of vegetable, her
b and flower beds looking like the surface of the moon after the dragon was done with them. Sometimes, despite her better angels, Sarah hoped that the eating machine would actually find something that didn't agree with her stomachs, but due to the wondrous miracle of evolution Josephine was genetically programmed to eat molten lava without side effects.

  As far as Josephine's delicate nature was concerned, Sarah didn't know if the dragon's feelings were hurt when she tried to shoo it away from the cauliflower, but the lizard was adamant about holding its ground and every territorial disagreement was dutifully marked in scratches on the redhead's skin.

  The institute resembled a madhouse at times, with hordes of children chasing Josephine or the cats through the hallways, among moving carts with experiments in progress, visiting scholars trying to find their lecture halls and the occasional bird or bat escaped from one of the aviaries.

  Sys had finished a large symphonic piece (a musical narrative about the songs of the ocean that Purple found absolutely delightful) and was making feverish preparations for the opening night.

  Busy with their daily routine the sisters forgot about Lily. Since she had been travelling a lot lately everybody assumed she was traipsing across the galaxy charting one planet or another when in fact she had taken to the wilderness of Soléa of all places to spend some time in thought trying to figure out how it was possible for them to travel thousands of light years while remaining in the same place. Purple was its most obnoxious self, thrilled to challenge the young woman with this impossible logical puzzle and utterly amused by the series of wrong assumptions poor Lily threw at the problem.

  "Purple. Love. Soléa. Dragon. Sister." the immortals broke the silence. Under the vast skies of the blue planet, their whisper reverberated against the rocks and startled Lily, as she stood still as a statue in the middle of a circle of dragons.

  "Is here and home the same place?" Lily asked, irked.

  "Place. No. Different. State. Different." Purple said, nonchalantly.

  "State of what?" Lily startled.

  "Flux." the immortals answered, and then started jabbering like a broken record, trying to entice the dragons to communicate. The dragons ignored the chatter box, idly eyeing the moving pastures for larger and more appetizing delicacies.

  "Care to elaborate on that?" Lily lost her patience.

  "Why. Not. Fall. Through. Ice." Purple asked.

  "Because it's solid," Lily replied.

  "Fall. Through. Water." Purple continued.

  "Yes," Lily said, tentatively.

  "State. Different." Purple replied, displeased. Purple were quirky beings; one moment they were in awe of human beings' taste buds and the dragons' ability to fly and the next they became filled with disdain for the humans' inability to process concepts of quantum physics so advanced the latter didn't even know existed, not to mention try to understand them. The fact that Lily had difficulty grasping the phenomenon of the universe moving through her and not her moving through the universe annoyed them greatly and they secretly decided the dragons might make better candidates for the advanced research team.

  "They are not advanced enough for thinking and language!" Lily babbled, confused at Purple's insistence to communicate with the scratchy lizards.

  "Giant. Not. Advanced. Enough. Either." Purple threw the words back at her bluntly. They didn't go for the sparing of feelings either. Lily took the high road and abandoned the argument. She tried to divert the conversation to more flattering subjects so she could let Purple show off.

  "Have you ever been outside the universe?" she asked.

  "No. Outside. Different. State." Purple blurted, exasperated.

  "Have you?" Lily insisted.

  "Yes." Purple answered. Lily expected them to continue but they didn't, they just started humming a gentle lull. The dragon closest to them half-closed its eyes, looking very pleased, and started performing a weird dance with its graceful necks.

  "And?!" Lily couldn't believe their disinterest. "What was it like?"

  "Bright." Purple replied after what seemed like a very long pause. "Much. Bright. All. Same." they continued, with a tinge of sadness, guilt and longing that made Lily wonder what happened to them out there to make them so uncomfortable even talking about it. "Purple. Back. Different. Universe." they said, almost in a whisper. "Old. Universe. Better."

  Lily felt a little hurt that Purple preferred the universe without her, but swallowed her bruised feelings to find out more.

  "What was the old one like? Why did you like it better?" she said.

  "No. Dark. Yuck. Gamma. Scramble." they said, in an even quieter whisper, and Lily got a little insight into the guilty aspect of their feelings.

  "Did you make that happen when you jumped out? The dark matter?" Lily continued her interrogation, mercilessly. Purple pondered for a while, deep in thought.

  "No." they concluded. "Different. Universe."

  "So you couldn't find your way back home?" Lily said gently, saddened about the loneliness and tribulations of the lost immortal travelers.

  "Everywhere. Home. Every. Universe. Purple." they replied flatly.

  ***

  Lily was so excited to find out so much information about her obsessive subject of study that she didn't pause to ask herself the obvious questions: why did they have to go all the way to Soléa for Purple to share these insights with her, how was flux involved in the properties of matter, or why did the immortals think it was possible for her to go outside if she had to change the living structure of her being in order to do it.

  For the life of her she didn't want to throw herself into the endless sea of hypotheses and debates regarding the shape of the universe and its absence of movement. She was certain she would never understand the concepts and frankly didn't want to, because she didn't want to have to rebuild existence from scratch, so to speak, when there was a perfectly good and coherent context with structure and reliable physical laws already available to her.

  Sister Roberta on the other hand threw herself at the problem with gusto, commenting that the young woman's unwillingness to accept a radical change in her understanding of being was as narrow minded as insisting that the Earth was flat, or curing fevers by bloodletting. The sister pestered poor Lily endlessly, trying to squeeze out more details out of her non-cooperating mind, so thrilled to have a new and vast subject for research that she almost burst out of her skin.

  "Don't you want to keep any semblance of normality in your life? Why can't I accept things as I perceive them?" Lily tried to protest.

  "You want old-fashioned?" sister Roberta jumped, revolted. "How old are you? One forty? One forty five? You should be dead!"

  "But..." the youngster attempted a reply.

  "No buts!" the sister ended the conversation. "If you're going to the institute can you ask Sys to recycle my holo lasers? They started to lose accuracy."

  ***

  Lily was a curious person, not an adventurer. Once clear on the nature of 'outside' her scientific interest was quenched and she was perfectly satisfied with her treks across multiple galaxies, even if she knew all of them occupied the same place.

  "Same difference!" she figured, and decided to leave the questions regarding the meaning of existence to people more metaphysically inclined.

  The fine irony of the matter is that Lily had dedicated a large portion of her young life to the study of epistemology, trying to find reason, order and coherence in her environment and culture. Sister Joseph didn't miss a perfect opportunity to ask what good did it do her to know that everything she thought she knew about life was wrong. The sister concluded that Lily was steered in the wrong direction by crazies the likes of Roberta, that talking to Purple was a mistake and she had said so in the very beginning, and that every one of them was going to lose their God loving mind in the madness that would become their existence. She decried the demise of modesty as well as other true values and expressed her desire to run to the mountains and leave all this soulless an
d artificial life behind.

  While engaged in this discourse on the virtues of simplicity and self-denial the sister was feeding Josephine freshly cut up morsels from an Oma tree's succulent foliage. The tree had been transported from Soléa in a specially designed container, calibrated to maintain the perfect levels of humidity and atmospheric gases, so that the taste of the foliage would not be altered. Upon its arrival to Terra Two Sarah and a small group of horticultural engineers spent an entire month to ensure the tree was perfectly adjusted to its new environment.

  "What was wrong with living a simple life?" sister Joseph asked rhetorically. "You wake up in the morning, do your work the best you can and sleep soundly at night! No good ever came from listening to all that Purple nonsense!"