One might dismiss such behavior if it occurred in a society of low intelligence, such as insects. But the inhabitants of this society on Akeba are mentally advanced and evolved in all other aspects. They (the males) build cities of ingenious design. They have created flying machines and electromagnetic communication devices. They celebrate their painters and musicians and writers and philosophers. Yet they accept their cultural tradition of hand stunting without questioning it. Males consider it both a duty and a pleasure to take care of the helpless females, oblivious to the fact that they, the males, have themselves produced the conditions in which females must be cared for.
The most unusual aspect of this hand-stunting tradition is that the females accept it without protest. Not that the females are stupid. They are every bit as intelligent as the males. But after many generations of the custom, the females, just as the males, take it as ordained. Mothers watch with approval as the ritual knife descends into the flesh of their young daughters and severs the critical nerves. To the mothers, this practice is as natural as rain. On the rare occasions that a woman challenges the custom, she is shunned by the community, given a dim-witted male to take care of her, and spends the rest of her life in loneliness and despair. The vast majority of females not only accept hand stunting but embrace it, seem content and even happy to completely surrender their independence to males. Their role in life is to be taken care of, to make the males feel powerful, and to mate with males for reproduction and pleasure. They welcome this role.
Despite my promise to Belhor that I would not intervene in the affairs of life-forms on Aalam-104729, I have been tempted to put a halt to the custom of hand stunting on Akeba. Do the females not wonder what they might accomplish with the hands they were born with? Do they not cringe from being treated as helpless pets, when they are as intelligent as their keepers? Do they not see that their dignity has been taken from them?
But I hesitate to intervene. For I cannot predict what would follow from my intervention. Perhaps without its time-honored tradition of hand stunting, the society would slowly disintegrate. Perhaps the creatures on Akeba have so adapted to the notion that males are superior, that females must be totally dependent on males, that they cannot live in any other way. Perhaps they cannot imagine a life in which females are equal to males. Their minds have created their reality. If both males and females are content with their roles, even happy with their roles, then would it not be best to allow the society to continue on its own, undisturbed, satisfied with its illusions?
If I do intervene, I would like to do an experiment. I would like to create a planet on which the custom is just the reverse: it will be the males who get their hands stunted. Then, after many generations in which this countertradition has been established, I would like to bring together the creatures from both societies, the one with helpless females and the one with helpless males, and see what happens. Each society should, I think, be shocked to see such a different reality and might finally become aware of its fabrications. But even with such knowledge, each society might prefer its illusions. The mind is its own place.
Religion
Both of you wanted the creatures in the new universe to have some awareness of me, I said. I wanted to tell you—
I thought you had already taken care of that item, said Aunt Penelope, fussing with her hair. Of late, Aunt P had been trying out new hairstyles and was at that moment inserting a fancy clasp made out of nothingness. Deva, she shouted, didn’t you already sort that out with Nephew? The soul? The connection to Him?
I don’t think He’s done much about it, said Deva. I wouldn’t—
I thought we had all of that sorted out, said Aunt P. You think something is sorted out. Then you find out it’s not. If it’s not one way, then it’s the other. You think one thing, and it turns out to be the other. One thing, then the other.
You’re babbling, dear, said Uncle D.
Well, Nephew, said Aunt P, what are you saying? Did you take care of it or not? Do the creatures know that you are the Maker?
Yes and no, I said.
Here we go, said Aunt P. I tell you, the two of you are impossible, absolutely impossible.
The creatures have made up their own ideas about me, I said. They have religions.
What are you saying, Nephew? Did you straighten them out? Did you make an appearance?
An appearance? I said. A personal appearance! That would be way too much for them. And showy. I could never make a personal appearance.
So the creatures have ideas, without knowing anything about you for sure?
They have a lot of different ideas, I said. They want to believe in something big, to give meaning to their lives. They want some large purpose in the universe. I admire them for that.
I understand that perfectly, said Uncle Deva. These are intelligent creatures, Penelope. They think. They want meaning.
They want what we have, said Aunt P. They want immortality.
Of course they do, said Uncle. But since they know they can’t have it, they want something to be immortal. They come and go so quickly. They want something to last.
But they don’t know what they’re talking about, said Aunt P. They are just guessing. I thought you were going to take care of this, Nephew. I thought you were going to let them know who you are, who you really are. Whatever they’re imagining, it couldn’t be what you really are. It couldn’t be infinity. It couldn’t be the Void.
From my observations, I said, I don’t think they would be able to grasp the Void. They have no way of grasping it. But I have looked in on them. They have made beautiful buildings to worship me and to celebrate their belief in something eternal. I have seen the creatures congregate in those buildings, chanting and praying while waves of lavender and magenta light pour through arched windows or stream through openings in the domed roofs. They make offerings. They sing songs. They deny themselves comforts in order to live according to their beliefs. They teach their children their stories about the beginnings of the universe.
You don’t have to say anything more, said my aunt. I know how you are. I thought you had taken care of this, but I can see … So, you are going to let them keep guessing.
Guessing is not so bad, I said. They feel a mystery about it all. I think a little bit of mystery is good. Mystery makes them wonder. It inspires them.
Sometimes, Nephew, you are hopeless, said Aunt P. Well, you’re going to do what you’re going to do. So be it. They’ll have their religions.
On a Small Planet
I did not tell Uncle and Aunt about all of my visits to Aalam-104729. Or of the many things that I saw. Once, I hovered invisibly in a city that arched over a hill. The planet was one of a dozen orbiting an ordinary star, the smallest planet in the system. It was a quiet world. Oceans and wind made scarcely a sound. People spoke to one another only in whispers. I floated above the city and looked down at its streets and inhabitants. Corners of buildings rusted in the air, billows of steam rose from underground canals. Through throngs of creatures moving this way and that, as creatures do in their cities, I spotted two men passing each other on a crowded walkway. Complete strangers. In the eight million beings living in the city, these two had never met before, never chanced to find themselves in the same place at the same time. A common enough occurence in a city of millions. And as these two strangers moved past, they greeted each other, just a simple greeting. A remark about the sun in the sky. One of them said something else to the other, they exchanged smiles, and then the moment was gone. What an extraordinary event! No one noticed but me. What an extraordinary event! Two men who had never seen each other before and would not likely see each other again. But their sincerity and sweetness, their sharing an instant in a fleeting life. It was almost as if a secret had passed between them. Was this some kind of love? I wanted to follow them, to touch them, to tell them of my happiness. I wanted to whisper to them: “This is it, this is it.”
For Our Amusement
So much was new. So mu
ch was joyous. And disturbing. I asked Belhor: “Tell me, what do you think is the meaning of these creatures? What would you say is the meaning of their lives?”
Belhor laughed. “What meaning could they have? They amuse me. That is their meaning. But whether they have meaning in and of themselves? That would be giving these little things far more credit than they deserve. How can their lives have any meaning when they are mortal and know nothing of infinity? Their lives have meaning only insofar as they amuse us in the Void, only insofar as they increase our knowledge of what is possible and what is not. But meaning beyond that? No. What other meaning could they have?”
“I am not speaking necessarily of a grand meaning,” I said, “but of individual meaning. Wouldn’t you agree that each individual life has its own meaning, or at least a meaning as understood by the individual creature? Cannot each individual creature find some meaning for its own life?”
“What difference does it make?” Belhor said, and he stared as if bored at the gyrating spheres flying through the Void. On occasion, he would reach out and grasp one, squeeze it hard, then let it go. “There are so many trillions of ‘individuals,’ as you call them. They come and go. How could an individual mortal life have any meaning? And even if the individual, the tiny ant, thinks its life has a meaning, it is only an illusion. It is only a sensation, an excess of electrical current in its tiny brain. What significance could that have for us?”
“But surely it has significance for them,” I said. “Each one of them tries so desperately to find meaning. In a way, it doesn’t matter what particular meaning each of them finds. As long as each of the creatures finds something to give a coherence and harmony to the jumble of existence. Perhaps it might be as simple as a discovery of their own capacities, and a thriving in that discovery. And even if they are mortal, they are part of things. They are part of things larger than their universe, whether they know it or not. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“With all due respect,” said Belhor, “sometimes I cannot follow you. Why would you occupy yourself with such thoughts? How could you possibly suggest that these tiny ants have any consequence? Let them have their meanings. Let them have hundreds of meanings. If they like, they can believe that the cosmos is a giant fish, swimming in the mouth of a bigger fish. What difference does it make?”
Time Again
Time, always the magician. I now understand time to be my strangest invention. At moments slow, like the dripping of sap from a tree. At other moments quick, like the fluttering wings of a small bird. I go for brief expeditions in the Void, and when I have returned, eons have passed in the new universe. Civilizations flourish and fade during a single conversation with Uncle or Aunt. Or I can witness one event in the new universe, separate it into pieces of shorter and shorter duration, until shards of time are consumed with the wave of a hand, a breath, the first impulse of a nerve, the slight passage of one molecule. Eons to moments to eons.
Does time bring events into existence, or do events bring time into existence?
Not that time isn’t exact. You can map events precisely onto the ticks of the hydrogen clocks. Assign each event a number, a precise position in the long filament of time. And yet what do you know in the end? Uncle was right. You know little. You do not know the cause of events. You do not know how events interweave to produce new events. You do not know how lived lives lie down, one after another, to make a vertical pattern of action and change, or perhaps to form a lengthy epoch of inaction and emptiness. You do not know, from the temporal labels attached to a life, what events brought happiness, or sadness, or joy, or regret. Or simply boredom.
But the movements of electrons in hydrogen atoms, the emission of photons with lockstep vibrations also do not know these things. They mark out tick after tick after tick, in an unending stairway of time, yet they know nothing. Of movements of glaciers, of heartbeats, of gains and of losses, of individual thoughts they know nothing. Much less do they understand.
Even I, who have infinite power. The unending sequence of events, each meticulously labeled in time, does not inevitably explain. There are things that defy explanation: irrationalities, odd juxtapositions in time. For example: I do not yet understand the life of the young woman who stole food for her family. I have a complete record of every one of her actions and thoughts. But I do not yet understand the interplay of movements, the reasons for each event, those that were accidental and those that were not. I do not yet understand which of her possible decisions would have been the best decision. That requires the future, but the future does not exist. Should she have disobeyed her mother, taken a chance that her family would starve, in order to uphold a principle of right behavior? Or should she have done as she did, violated her principles and beliefs in order to follow another principle: loyalty to her mother? Either way, she will almost certainly be haunted. Not all is logical. Perhaps even not all is understandable. After all, what is it that constitutes understanding? One can say that such and such an event came before another event in time. One can say that a system had a particular arrangement, which was a necessary consequence of a prior arrangement. Does such knowledge confer understanding? If events could be reshuffled in time, if future and past could be exchanged with each other, so that we always knew the consequences of actions before they occurred, would we then understand? Events—and the time that creates them or is created by them—cannot be contained. Events spill out and slide and defeat attempts to explain. Even against infinite power and force. This I have learned from the new universe.
And so, for some indefinite period of time, I am finished with this thought about time. Whether before something else, or after something else, or perhaps both, I am temporarily finished. The Void and the new universe, once so clearly distinct, are now part of the same fabric of time. Eons and moments. Mortality and immortality. That which lives and passes away, and that which lives on forever. Is it all not connected now? Existence and nonexistence? It is all connected now. I am all that is, and all that is not.
It is fair to say that the sadness Uncle Deva, Aunt Penelope, and I felt from the suffering of life in the new universe was more than offset by the evident joy of the same creatures. During our many visits to Aalam-104729, we witnessed happy celebrations of births, of marriages and unions, of natural events such as eclipses and solstices and air glowings, of symbiotic transferences, celebrations even of deaths. The two passing strangers I saw in the arched city. Despite their brief life spans, many creatures seem happy to wake up each morning, happy simply to breathe and to speak.
Nowhere is the joy of existence so apparent as in music. From one star system to the next, intelligent life-forms have created a multitude of sounds that express their exhilaration at being alive. There are waltzes and scherzos, apalas and calgias, symphonies, madrigals, fanbeis, sonatas and fugues, bhajans and dhrupads, tnagrs and falladias. The music dances and glides and swoops. Not that all of it is melodic or soft. But even the dissonant and the jarring contain a rapture, an ecstasy, an embrace of existence.
For some time now, I have admired many of the melodies invented in Aalam-104729 and find myself singing them as I move about in the Void. As do Uncle Deva and Aunt Penelope. We continue to sing our favorite songs trillions of atomic ticks after the composer has died, after the composer’s civilization has vanished, sometimes even after the composer’s central star has burned up and faded to a dead ember floating through space.
Before this new musical development, each of us often wandered alone through the Void, following one empty path after another during our excursions or simply searching for a solitary place to ruminate, shielded from one another by vast quantities of nothingness like beings on separate islands at sea. Out of sight, out of hearing, out of mind. We needed our privacies. Now, however, I no sooner set out on such a contemplative journey, glad to be alone among my own thoughts, when I hear Uncle or Aunt at some other location, loudly humming a tune picked up in the new universe. Will you please keep your singing to yourse
lf, Aunt P shouts in the direction of Uncle D. I was having a pleasant stroll through the Void until you started up. You are one to talk, Uncle hollers back from a great distance away. I’ve been listening to that disagreeable song of yours now for eons, and I cannot hear myself think. Oh really, shouts Aunt P. Are you thinking or singing? Which is it?
When Aunt and Uncle get sufficiently annoyed with each other, they begin humming at high volume the very worst tunes in the universe, carefully selected from galaxy to galaxy and epoch to epoch.
Your voice sounds like the scaly underbelly of a bottom-feeding fish, Uncle D screams to Aunt P.
And you sound like a rotting pile of animal dung, Aunt replies.
Ha, ha, ha, Uncle shouts in a fake laugh. You know the difference between sounds and smells about as well as a rock can climb up a tree.
Dumb, dumb, dumb, shouts Aunt Penelope. I’m married to someone with an amber sunset for a mind.
All of us have taken to using metaphors from the new universe. Before, we had only the Void. And there are just so many things that can be compared to nothingness.
A Dress for Aunt Penelope
There were other things we in the Void picked up from the new universe. Birthdays, for example. We thought birthdays were delightful. Aunt P and Uncle D began planning birthday parties for themselves, although choosing a date and an interval of time between birthdays was a bit problematic. Following one of our excursions into the new universe and back, Aunt P suddenly announced that she was having a birthday party after her next sleep, and she expected presents. And I don’t want any items from the Void, made out of nothingness, she quipped. I’ve already got plenty of nothing. I want something material. Do you understand what I’m saying?