‘Yes,’ Fat nodded. ‘And ground as black and white.’
‘So you could see the false work.’
‘Pardon?’ Fat said.
‘The false work that’s blended with the real world.’
‘Oh,’ Fat said. ‘Yes, I understand. It seemed as if some things had been taken away –’
‘And other things added,’ Mini said.
Fat nodded.
‘You have a voice inside your head now?’ Mini said. ‘The AI voice?’
After a long pause, and a glance at me, Kevin and David, Fat said, ‘It’s a neutral voice. Neither male nor female. Yes, it does sound as if it’s an artificial intelligence.’
‘That’s the inter-system communications network,’ Mini said. ‘It stretches between stars, connecting all the star systems with Albemuth.’
Staring at him, Fat said, ‘ “Albemuth”? It’s a star?’
‘You heard the word, but –’
‘I saw it in written form,’ Fat said, ‘but I didn’t know what it meant. I connected it with alchemy, because of the “al”.’
‘The al prefix,’ Mini said, ‘is Arabic; it simply means “the”. It’s a common prefix for stars. That was your clue. Anyhow, you did see written pages, then.’
‘Yes,’ Fat said. ‘Many of them. They told me what was going to happen to me. Like –’ He hesitated. ‘My later suicide attempt. It gave me the Greek word “ananke” which I didn’t know. And it said, “A gradual darkening of the world; a sickling over.” Later I realized what it meant: a bad thing, a sickness, a deed that I had to commit. But I did survive.’
‘My illness,’ Mini said, ‘is from proximity to VALIS, to its energy. It’s an unfortunate thing, but as you know, we are immortal, although not physically so. We will be reborn and remember.’
‘My animals died of cancer,’ Fat said.
‘Yes,’ Mini said. ‘The levels of radiation can sometimes be enormous. Too much for us.’
I thought, So that’s why you’re dying. Your god has killed you and yet you’re happy. I thought, We have to get out of here. These people court death.
‘What is VALIS?’ Kevin said to Mini. ‘Which deity or demi-urge is he? Shiva? Osiris? Horus? I’ve read The Cosmic Trigger and Robert Anton Wilson says –’
‘VALIS is a construct,’ Mini said. ‘An artifact. It’s anchored here on Earth, literally anchored. But since space and time don’t exist for it, VALIS can be anywhere and any time it wishes to. It’s something they built to program us at birth; normally it fires extremely short bursts of information at babies, engramming instructions to them which will bleed across from their right hemispheres at clock-time intervals during their full lifetimes, at the appropriate situational contexts.’
‘Does it have an antagonist?’ Kevin said.
‘Only the pathology of this planet,’ Eric said. ‘Due to the atmosphere. We can’t readily breathe this atmosphere, here; it’s toxic to our race.’
‘ “Our”?’ I said.
‘All of us,’ Linda said. ‘We’re all from Albemuth. This atmosphere poisons us and makes us deranged. So they – the ones who stayed behind in the Albemuth System – built VALIS and sent it here to fire rational instructions at us, to override the pathology caused by the toxicity of the atmosphere.’
‘Then VALIS is rational,’ I said.
‘The only rationality we have,’ Linda said.
‘And when we act rationally we’re under its jurisdiction,’ Mini said. ‘I don’t mean us here in the room; I mean everyone. Not everyone who lives but everyone who is rational.’
‘Then in essence,’ I said, ‘VALIS detoxifies people.’
‘That’s exactly it,’ Mini said. ‘It’s an informational anti-toxin. But exposure to it can cause – illness such as I have.’
Too much medication, I said to myself, remembering Paracelsus, is a poison. This man has been healed to death.
‘I wanted to know VALIS as much as possible,’ Mini said, seeing the expression on my face. ‘I begged it to return and communicate with me further. It didn’t want to; it knew the effect its radiation would have on me if it returned. But it did what I asked. I’m not sorry. It was worth it, to experience VALIS again.’ To Fat he said, ‘You know what I mean. The sound of bells ...’
‘Yes,’ Fat said. ‘The Easter bells,’
‘Are you talking about Christ?’ David said. ‘Christ is an artificial construct built to fire information at us that works on us subliminally?’
‘From the time we are born,’ Mini said. ‘We the lucky ones. We whom it selects. Its flock. Before I die, VALIS will return; I have its promise. VALIS will come and take me with it; I will be a part of it forever.’ Tears filled his eyes.
Later we all sat around and talked more calmly.
The Eye of Shiva was of course the way the ancients represented VALIS firing information. They knew it could destroy; this is the element of harmful radiation which is necessary as a carrier for the information. Mini told us that VALIS is not actually close when it fires; it may be literally millions of miles away. Hence, in the film Valis, they represented it by a satellite, a very old satellite, not put into orbit by humans.
‘So we’re not dealing with religion then,’ I said, ‘but with a very advanced technology.’
‘Words,’ Mini said.
‘What is the Savior?’ David said.
Mini said, ‘You’ll see him. Presently. Tomorrow, if you wish; Saturday afternoon. He’s sleeping now. He still sleeps a great deal; most of the time, in fact. After all, he was completely asleep for thousands of years.’
‘At Nag Hammadi?’ Fat said.
‘I would rather not say,’ Mini said.
‘Why must this be kept secret?’ I said.
Eric said, ‘We’re not keeping it secret; we made the film and we’re making LPs with information in the lyrics. Subliminal information, mostly. Mini does it with his music’
‘ “Sometimes Brahman sleeps”,’ Kevin said, ‘ “and sometimes Brahman dances.” Are we talking about Brahman? Or Siddhartha the Buddha? Or Christ? Or is it all of them?’
I said to Kevin, ‘The great –’ I had intended to say, ‘The great Punta,’ but I decided not to; it wouldn’t be wise. ‘It’s not Dionysos, is it?’ I asked Mini.
‘Apollo,’ Linda said. ‘The paired opposite to Dionysos.’
That filled me with relief. I believed her; it fitted with what had been revealed to Horselover Fat: ‘The Head Apollo.’
‘We are in a maze, here,’ Mini said, ‘which we built and then fell into and can’t get out. In essence, VALIS selectively fires information to us which aids us in escaping from the maze, in finding the way out. It started back about two thousand years before Christ, in Mycenaean times or perhaps early Helladic. That’s why you saw ancient Crete through the 1:.618034 doorway. We were great builders, but one day we decided to play a game. We did it voluntarily; were we such good builders that we could build a maze with a way out but which constantly changed so that, despite the way out, in effect there was no way out for us because the maze – this world – was alive? To make the game into something real, into something more than an intellectual exercise, we elected to lose our exceptional faculties, to reduce us an entire level. This, unfortunately, included loss of memory – loss of knowledge of our true origins. But worse than that – and here is where we in a sense managed to defeat ourselves, to turn victory over to our servant, over to the maze we had built –’
‘The third eye closed,’ Fat said.
‘Yes,’ Mini said. ‘We relinquished the third eye, our prime evolutionary attribute. It is the third eye which VALIS re-opens.’
‘Then it’s the third eye that gets us back out of the maze,’ Fat said. ‘That’s why the third eye is identified with god-like powers or with enlightenment, in Egypt and in India.’
‘Which are the same thing,’ Mini said. ‘God-like, enlightened.’
‘Really?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ Mini sai
d, ‘It is man as he really is: his true state.’
Fat said, ‘So without memory, and without the third eye, we never had a chance to beat the maze. It was hopeless.’
I thought. Another Chinese finger-trap. And built by our own selves. To trap our own selves.
What kind of minds would create a Chinese finger-trap for themselves? Some game, I thought. Well, it isn’t merely intellectual.
“The third eye had to be re-opened if we were to get out of the maze,’ Mini said, ‘but since we no longer remembered that we had that ajna faculty, the eye of discernment, we could not go about seeking techniques for re-opening it. Something outside had to enter, something which we ourselves would be unable to build.’
‘So we didn’t all fall into the maze,’ Fat said.
‘No,’ Mini said. ‘And those that stayed outside, in other star systems, reported back to Albemuth that we had done this thing to ourselves ... thus VALIS was constructed to rescue us. This is an irreal world. You realize that, I’m sure. VALIS made you realize that. We are in a living maze and not in a world at all.’
There was silence as we considered this.
‘And what happens when we get outside the maze?’ Kevin said.
‘We’re freed from space and time,’ Mini said. ‘Space and time are the binding, controlling conditions of the maze – its power.’
Fat and I glanced at each other. It dovetailed with our own speculations – speculations engineered by VALIS.
‘And then we never die?’ David asked.
‘Correct,’ Mini said.
‘So salvation -’
‘ “Salvation”,’ Mini said, ‘is a word denoting “Being led out of the space-time maze, where the servant has become the master”.’
‘May I ask a question?’ I said. ‘What is the purpose of the fifth Savior?’
‘It isn’t “fifth”,’ Mini said. ‘There is only one, over and over again, at different times, in different places, with different names. The Savior is VALIS incarnated as a human being.’
Crossbonded?’ Fat said.
‘No.’ Mini shook his head no vigorously. ‘There is no human element in the Savior.’
‘Wait a minute,’ David said.
‘I know what you’ve been taught,’ Mini said. ‘In a sense, it’s true. But the Savior is VALIS and that is the fact of the case. He is born, however, from a human woman. He doesn’t just generate a phantasm-body.’
To that, David nodded; he could accept that.
‘And he’s been born?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ Mini said.
‘My daughter,’ Linda Lampton said. ‘Not Eric’s, however. Just mine and VALIS’s.’
‘Daughter?’ several of us said in unison.
“This time,’ Mini said, ‘for the first time, the Savior takes female form.’
Eric Lampton said, ‘She’s very pretty. You’ll like her. She talks a blue streak, though; she’ll talk your ear off.’
‘Sophia is two,’ Linda said. ‘She was born in 1976. We tape what she says.’
‘Everything is taped,’ Mini said. ‘Sophia is surrounded by audio and video recording equipment that automatically monitors her constantly. Not for her protection, of course; VALIS protects her – VALIS, her father.’
‘And we can talk with her?’ I said.
‘She’ll dispute with you for hours,’ Linda said, and then she added, ‘in every language there is or ever was.’
Chapter 12
Wisdom had been born, not a deity: a deity which slew with one hand while healing with another... that deity was not the Savior, and I said to myself, Thank God.
We were taken the next morning to a small farm area, with animals everywhere. I saw no signs of video or audio recording equipment, but I saw-we all saw-a black-haired child seated with goats and chickens, and, in a hutch beside her, rabbits.
What I had expected was tranquility, the peace of God which passes all understanding. However, the child, upon seeing us, rose to her feet and came toward us with indignation blazing in her face; her eyes, huge, dilated with anger, fixed intently on me – she lifted her right hand and pointed at me.
‘Your suicide attempt was a violent cruelty against yourself,’ she said in a clear voice. And yet she was, as Linda had said, no more than two years old: a baby, really, and yet with the eyes of an infinitely old person.
‘It was Horselover Fat,’ I said.
Sophia said, ‘Phil, Kevin, and David. Three of you. There are no more.’
Turning to speak to Fat – I saw no one. I saw only Eric Lampton and his wife, the dying man in the wheelchair, Kevin and David. Fat was gone. Nothing remained of him.
Horselover Fat was gone forever. As if he had never existed.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘You destroyed him.’
‘Yes,’ the child said.
I said, ‘Why?’
To make you whole.’
‘Then he’s in me? Alive in me?’
‘Yes,’ Sophia said. By degrees, the anger left her face. The great dark eyes ceased to smolder.
‘He was me all the time,’ I said.
‘That is right,’ Sophia said.
‘Sit down,’ Eric Lampton said. ‘She prefers it if we sit; then she doesn’t have to talk up to us. We’re so much taller than she is.’
Obediently, we all seated ourselves on the rough parched brown ground-which I now recognized as the opening shot in the film Valis; they had filmed part of it here.
Sophia said, ‘Thank you.’
‘Are you Christ?’ David said, tugging his knees up against his chin, his arms wrapped around them; he, too, looked like a child: one child addressing another in equal conversation.
‘I am that which I am,’ Sophia said.
‘I’m glad to -’ I couldn’t think what to say.
‘Unless your past perishes,’ Sophia said to me, ‘you are doomed. Do you know that?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Sophia said, ‘Your future must differ from your past. The future must always differ from the past.’
David said, ‘Are you God?’
‘I am that which I am,’ Sophia said.
I said, ‘Then Horselover Fat was part of me projected outward so I wouldn’t have to face Gloria’s death.’
Sophia said, ‘That is so.’
I said, ‘Where is Gloria now?’
Sophia said, ‘She lies in the grave.’
I said, ‘Will she return?’
Sophia said, ‘Never.’
I said, ‘I thought there was immortality.’
To that, Sophia said nothing.
‘Can you help me?’ I said.
Sophia said, ‘I have already helped you. I helped you in 1974 and I helped you when you tried to kill yourself. I have helped you since you were born.’
‘You are VALIS?’ I said.
Sophia said, ‘I am that which I am.’
Turning to Eric and Linda, I said, ‘She doesn’t always answer.’
‘Some questions are meaningless,’ Linda said.
‘Why don’t you heal Mini?’ Kevin said.
Sophia said, ‘I do what I do; I am what I am.’
I said, ‘Then we can’t understand you.’
Sophia said, ‘You understood that’
David said, ‘You are eternal, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Sophia said.
‘And you know everything?’ David said.
‘Yes,’ Sophia said.
I said, ‘Were you Siddhartha?’
‘Yes,’ Sophia said.
‘Are you the slayer and the slain?’ I said.
‘No,’ Sophia said.
‘The slayer?’ I said.
‘No.’
‘The slain, then.’
‘I am the injured and the slain,’ Sophia said. ‘But I am not the slayer. I am the healer and the healed.’
‘But VALIS has killed Mini,’ I said.
To that, Sophia said nothing.
‘Are you the
judge of the world?’ David said.
‘Yes,’ Sophia said.
‘When does the judgment begin?’ Kevin said.
Sophia said, ‘You are all judged already from the start.’
I said, ‘How did you appraise me?’
To that, Sophia said nothing.
‘Don’t we get to find out?’ Kevin said.
‘Yes,’ Sophia said.
‘When?’ Kevin said.
To that, Sophia said nothing.
Linda said, ‘I think that’s enough for now. You can talk to her again later. She likes to sit with the animals; she loves the animals.’ She touched me on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go.’
As we walked away from the child, I said, ‘Her voice is the neutral AI voice that I’ve heard in my head since 1974.’
Kevin said hoarsely, ‘It’s a computer. That’s why it only answers certain questions.’
Both Eric and Linda smiled; David and I glanced at him; in his wheel chair Mini rolled along sedately.
‘An AI system,’ Eric said. ‘An artificial intelligence.’
‘A terminal of VALIS,’ Kevin said. ‘An input, output terminal of the master system VALIS.’
‘That’s right,’ Mini said.
‘Not a little girl,’ Kevin said.
‘I gave birth to her,’ Linda said.
‘Maybe you just thought you did,’ Kevin said.
Smiling, Linda said, ‘An artificial intelligence in a human body. Her body is alive, but her psyche is not. She is sentient; she knows everything. But her mind is not alive in the sense that we are alive. She was not created. She has always existed.’
‘Read your Bible,’ Mini said. ‘She was with the Creator before creation existed; she was his darling and delight, his greatest treasure.’
‘I can see why,’ I said.
‘It would be easy to love her,’ Mini said. ‘Many people have loved her ... as it says in the Book of Wisdom. And so she entered them and guided them and descended even into the prison with them; she never abandoned those who loved her or who love her now.’