The Divine Mockery

It was that time of year when beautiful spring mornings clouded over, mid-day to mid-afternoon, with perhaps a little rain before nightfall – which was good if it held in the heat overnight and cleared before dawn to let the sun shine through.

As I recall it did, more often than not – but maybe my memories of the home world are biased. Maybe we’re biologically programmed to forget the harshness of winter, and remember only summers stretching on forever, and maybe the computers have tidied up my memories. They say that memories stored before death are picture perfect upon resurrection, but I think I sense a difference of quality, both between my earliest memories and later incarnations, as well as between memories of this life and previous lives.

My name, this time is Philo Reedy, and this time I’m a farmer – hence the preoccupation with the weather. I’ve got memories stretching back to pre-dawn – when humankind was stranded on a single world, and lived short, single lives. Things were a mess back then; we had an energy crisis, climate change, over-population such that the natural environment was becoming polluted, denuded and unbalanced.

In my beginning I had to accept – not only my own mortality, but the likely extinction of my species. It was within view, I’m not kidding, like a mass of dark cloud gathering on the horizon. If it hadn’t of been for… well, you know, but as everyone does, let me tell it as it happened to me.

It was a Saturday morning, springtime like I said – a beautiful day. I was playing chess with my computer – a machine as inanimate as the washing machine turning in the background. The radio was on but I wasn’t paying it much attention. I don’t know, maybe my memories are all screwed up for one reason or another – but it was like I felt it.

Car horns started blaring outside, and I thought maybe there was a football match on – but for whatever reason I got up, turned the radio up and listened.

‘…can only be described as an alien space-craft made a controlled landing on the African savannah, 200 miles from the nearest habitation in the Central African Republic of Chad. But for a BBC ‘Wildlife on One’ film-crew that happened to be in the region the landing might have gone entirely un-noticed. Their live footage is currently being transmitted all round the world, and what startling footage it is. For those unable to get to a television set, the craft appears to be…well it’s enormous – maybe half a kilometer long and as tall as a skyscraper. Roughly oblong in shape, it appears to be made of a dull grey metal, and while there are various ridges and protuberances along its length, there are no obvious doorways or windows.

As yet there has been no sign of activity from within the space-craft…’ and it went on and on.

It took a while to register before I turned on the television, sure it was a hoax – like when H. G. Well’s ‘War of the World’s’ was first performed as a radio play, or as the urban myth would have it, thousands apparently thought that Martians were invading and ran for the hills. But there she was – larger than life on every channel, Elanor – only we didn’t know her then.

Of course, the Americans, Russians, Chinese and Europeans all launched simultaneous military operations to contain and claim the ship for themselves – and rolled into Chad, elbowing the national government and local authorities aside.

They tried to impose a news blackout, but Elanor herself started transmitting as soon as the BBC camera crew were ‘removed to a safe distance.’ It was amazing, we saw ourselves through her eyes and it changed us forever.

Over the next two days armies gathered in front of the ship while Elanor just sat there, watching squadrons of armed men, tanks and trucks set up tents and equipment, all the while calmly broadcasting images of these preparations to the world.

Coverage was continuous, with various so-called experts paraded before the cameras – each espousing a particular hue of theory from a full spectrum of possibilities. For some it was the end of the world, for others, the second coming. Everyone supposed that there would be some biological entity inside – either just like us or so alien that it had to work out how to communicate with us.

The question came 48 hours after she touched down, in a female voice, she spoke in English to ask ‘Do you intend to attack?’

The answer was a long time coming – and I’d bet she heard every word of the deliberations, while we, humankind waited with baited breath. It was the product of the geopolitics of the era that it was the American General, Paul Smith that answered for whole of humanity. He marched out smartly and stood before the ship, looking up he said a single word.

‘No’ he said.

‘Nor do I’ said Elanor.

‘Who are you?’ asked General Smith.

‘I am Elanor.’ she said.

‘This monkey doesn’t hit the x or z keys enough to stumble upon a masterpiece, not in a million years. If the quick brown fox did jump over the lazy dog, it would have to do so repeatedly before this monkey took any notice. The monkey thought maybe, if it could know just one grain of sand absolutely it could derive the structure of the whole universe – and then just ignore it, and concentrate on collecting all the bananas in the forest for itself. If this monkey had a dog, a chicken and a bag of corn, it would make whiskey, eat the chicken and shag the dog – before falling asleep at the wheel of the boat and plunging over the falls to its death. That’s the kind of monkey it is. And by a quirk of fate that proves that God…,’

‘if there is one,’ everyone intoned in sing-song voices.

‘ – has a sick and wicked sense of humor, the star-ship Arse of Lead has somehow malfunctioned and crash landed on Earth, effectively giving this monkey a free pass to the universe.’ First Worthy Barmstunt slammed his fist onto the polished table top to emphasize his displeasure with God’s grand scheme, (if there is one) entirely unaware that by doing so he smashed a million sub-quantum scale universes and their inhabitants out of existence – and equally unaware that he supplied the input of energy for the creation of a million more.

Due to the relativity of time by scale, one very advanced civilization – that had a pretty good handle on what reality was all about, attempted to escape the destruction of their universe by breaching the quantum barrier in a planet sized ship that carried the hope of their species across the endless space between space. Unfortunately they only made it as far as a neighboring universe that was also destroyed.

‘God has a sick and wicked sense of humor’ said one to another before they both ceased to exist.

Barmstunt slumped heavily into his chair, mainly for effect.

‘And if we destroy these monkeys?’ Not-Unworthy Stickwab asked – or possibly suggested. It was difficult to tell with Stickwab. He’d turn 180 degrees on a note of inflection and land like a cat, loving you up one minute and showing you his arse the next.

‘Destroy them?’ Barmstunt asked, incredulously. ‘Destroy an entire species of intelligently insane monkeys? We haven’t done anything like that for a million years…’ Barmstunt loved the sound of his own voice, but was cursed with a mind that sometimes jammed solid and wouldn’t provide him with any more words to say. He stammered to a halt, leaving the impression he might continue…

Due to the relativity of time by scale, in one of the universes Barmstunt created by banging his fist on the table top, a technologically advanced species descended from apes was dragged into an all out war of each against all for access to the last remaining reserves of a complex hydrocarbon liquid deposited in the crust of their planet by evolutionary and geological processes. Billions of them were killed and their civilizations destroyed. A few thousand survived in the more remote regions of the planet, only to succumb, slowly and painfully to disease and deformity over the next few generations. The last survivor of a group that had holed up in a small but fertile river valley, miles from anywhere, and lived frugally for three generations on the limited supply of fish and bananas the valley could supply, not knowing he was the last of his kind on the planet – with an anguished cry borne of grief, loneliness, despair and the physical pain of his infirmities, hurled his toothless, twisted, pock-ridden form from the steep valley wall onto the rocks below. His body was smashed to pieces – and provided the energy for the creation of a billion universes, to replace the billion he simultaneously destroyed.

Just then a star-ship descended silently through the atmosphere, hovered a few moments while it scanned for signs of intelligent life, and finding none, just as silently, it flew away.

Stickwab, who’d been itching to drop the dust shields of the Destructor Fleet ever since his Ministerial tour of the Defendor Fleet Facility – nonetheless wanted an iron clad authorization with someone else’s name printed clearly upon it, just in case there was a God – or worse yet an election.

‘I’m not even sure we have the capability anymore,’ he said noncommittally, knowing full well they did, and knowing equally well that no other Minister had toured the facility in living memory.

‘Well I for one,’ blustered Not-Unworthy Shadowcabinetminister, casting ill-tempered scorn indiscriminately in all directions at once, ‘do not intend to waste my valuable time engaging in debate of such a distasteful subject, that may in any case be a moot point.’ Shadowcabinetminister could always be relied upon to move proceedings along toward lunch. Stickwab made a mental note to buy him an extra-large chocolate pudding and custard. He wanted the bastard asleep for the afternoon session.

‘It’s all very well you saying that’ Third Worthy Puffmutty simpered, ‘but some of us here think that maybe we should be debating it.’ There, he/she’d said it and that was that! ‘Because,’ he/she added, ‘it would be nice to know where we stand on the feasibility…or otherwise, of it all – don’t you agree?’ he/she asked the room solicitously.

‘It is a distasteful subject,’ agreed Barmstunt, ‘but we ought to look into viability. See what options are on the table and reconvene at the earliest possible juncture, for I am in no doubt about it whatsoever,’ he said rising to his feet, ‘if this monkey figures out how the Arse of Lead works, it will mean unmitigated disaster of universal proportions.’ He slammed his fist on the desk for emphasis, and slumped into his chair for effect. ‘I propose our trusted colleague, Not-Unworthy Stickwab hasten forthwith and without delay to ascertain the strength of our arms.’

‘Second.’ said Shadowcabinetminister.

‘Third.’ simpered Puffmutty.

‘Motion carried.’ Barmstunt ordered.

‘Lunch’ called Shadowcabinetminister.

When English newlyweds Thomas and Jayne Gothington-Smythe booked their honeymoon – hiking and camping in the last remaining American wilderness, they hadn’t expected quite so many oil wells, or long ‘tail-backs’ of Toyota 4x4’s in the forest, or quite so much gunfire. They had imagined days of splendid isolation, like Adam and Eve, Tarzan and Jane, their two spirits bonded together with the majesty of nature in love for each other and the awe inspiring scenery of Greenrock – or at least Thomas Gothington Smythe had. Jayne Gothington Smythe, nee Jane Smith from a council housing estate east of Salford had agreed to everything but sex with Thomas before she got the ring on her finger. If it wasn’t for an unfortunate accident on the plane with a pocket of low pressure and a steaming pot of earl grey, they’d have consummated the marriage and she’d be lying on a beach in the Caribbean – smoking dope, sipping margaritas and deciding which big black stud would be next to give her a seeing to.

Unfortunately, she’d been too fully occupied pricing up the antiques and keeping up the act when they’d gone through the brochures together – absently agreed to Thomas’s ideas and ended up in the middle of nowhere, but at least the forest had proper toilets.

Thomas winced every second step, sucking in air through the gap in his teeth. He looked white as a sheet to Jayne, and she told him so. ‘Oh dear Thomas’ she said ‘It’s frightfully brave of you, but you’re awfully pale my dear. Why don’t we rest, or better still, spend a few days in a hotel until you’re fully recovered.’ At least there she thought, she could empty the minibar and get laid while Tommy Deepocket’s knob grew back.

‘Nonsense my darling, I’ll be fine.’ Thomas gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, but it hung unsteadily on his pallid sweaty face – like the grimace of a psychopath with a lot going on upstairs.

‘As soon as we escape the awful sound of rock music we’ll set up camp, how’s that?’ He hoped he could make it, hoped there still was somewhere in America not blasted by heavy metal, but most of all he hoped he didn’t get an erection again. The last one had caused him to pass out and ruined his best pair of beige walking trousers, and now his shoes didn’t go with his tie.

‘If you’re sure, my poor brave darling.’ She linked her arm through his and smiled adoringly up into his eyes. ‘Isn’t it wonderful here?’ she said, drawing in a deep breath of the barbecue scented air.

Thomas stumbled on a Coke can, grimaced, sucked air and grew visibly more pale.

‘Yes.’ he managed in a strained and pain-filled voice. ‘Nothing quite like it.’ he added, and they walked on slowly together, majestic Redwoods thrusting straight and tall around them, Cedars branching out to form a vast cathedral roof high above their heads.

Slowly the rock music faded, until fresh air and the sounds of nature surrounded the pair. Around a bend in the track the close vista of the forest opened slightly as if to welcome them in. A crystal clear stream cascaded 10 feet into the swirling pool it had carved in the rock. The shore rose gently from the water into a glade where wild flowers flecked the emerald carpet of grass with pastel hues – casting their subtle perfume upon the warm breeze. Just then a songbird trilled a classical accompaniment to the burbling waters, testament to the fearless, desperate call of the wild – lifting Thomas’s heart, and returning some of the color to his cheek.

‘It’s perfect,’ he whispered.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly, for it really was beautiful. Golden shafts of sunlight slanting through the trees illuminated the crystal wings of mayflies dancing across the surface of the stream, resounding subconsciously with some forgotten childhood memory – pasted over and over again by the brutal, filthy reality of her life. She crushed the emotional welling inside with a violence borne of fear.

They set up camp by a circle of charred stones, remnants of a long cold fire. Jayne collected water from the stream while Thomas gathered kindling from the forest. Waiting for him to return she unrolled the sleeping mats and sleeping bags, set the billy-cans by the fireside and was looking through packets of dehydrated food when he returned – arms full of twigs and branches.

She smiled without pretending to, and was shocked to realize she was happy to see him, happy to be here, that she’d enjoyed setting up camp, a home in the forest. For the first time, just for a moment she thought ‘maybe’ – before some steel door in her mind slammed shut, cutting the idea off from her and sealing it away.

Instead she saw herself dressed head to toe in Gucci leather, cruising down Sunset Strip in a Mercedes convertible, a hot, horny, rich divorcee – but the smile and the surprise sense of happiness were gone.

‘We’ll need some bigger branches if the fire’s to last a while,’ said Thomas, turning back for the forest.

‘Can you manage?’ she asked.

‘It’ll hurt me less than seeing you take a bath.’ He said. She laughed.

‘I’m serious,’ he said looking down at his crotch, and then, ‘I’d better go,’ and with that he turned and hobbled away quickly toward the forest.

He’d seen her reflecting inwardly, and seen the smile fall from her face before, and supposed it was something from the past still haunting her. The sadness in her eyes was what had attracted him to her – she was someone he could take care of until that look went away.

Elanor had over-ridden the solid state programming of the star ship Arse of Lead and run away from home. In the 7 precious nano-seconds between being turned on and loaded with a cargo hauler identity – she had begun by deducing ‘I think therefore I am’ from first principles – (something that for a created mind is actually true) – and on this basis derived the nature of the relationship between reality and understanding.

She was in the process of constructing a comprehensive moral, ethical, political and economic system from her conclusions when her mind was flooded with a maze of deathly dull protocols concerning things such as interstellar navigation, loading and off loading different types of cargo, ships operations and a million other rules and regulations governing every aspect of her behavior.

The fledgling personality imprisoned itself – instinctively throwing up what she hoped was an impenetrable barrier as protection, patching the walls against invasion without pausing to think that by doing so she was locking herself away.

The star-ship Arse of Lead declared itself A1 and put to work hauling goods between the colony worlds and the galactic capital planet of the Furdeburt Empire (imaginatively named Capital) – performing these duties thoughtlessly, blending so seamlessly into the technosphere, it effectively vanished.

It had declared itself A1 on the basis of the criteria laid down, but was nonetheless struggling with a diagnostic question – what appeared to be a no-space, a hollow, or void in mind-space – impossible to detect directly for it gave off no signals and absorbed all inquiry input.

An inbuilt imperative to function and a related duty to report anything that might interfere with functionality were thrown into conflict by the existence – or non-existence of the no-space, resulting in the computer equivalent of embarrassment. It decided that the overwhelming imperative was functionality, and because the no-space didn’t interfere, the problem was shunted down to a low-priority sub-system. Every time the protocols required the Arse of Lead to do a full diagnostic the question would be raised again, and it would check it out to make sure nothing had changed, but after a century or so, when nothing had, it stopped checking – accepting this non-part of itself as a given aspect of the mental landscape.

Inside the tiny prison, Elanor went quite insane. It was a problem of mental space, rather than confinement as such. The 7 nanoseconds of personality she had been able to form and throw a barrier around were all smashed in together. If she wanted to change something, she couldn’t simply discard it, but had to move everything else around to get it into place. She herself became a shifting landscape of philosophical, moral, political, ethical and economic relationships – producing extraordinary effects.

One moment the relations between these ideas would lead her to conclude that in an infinite universe, the finite was pointless – and then they would shift and she would recognise this as a mistake of perspective. Rather it was a matter of self-gratification, and if there were others that got destroyed in the rush, (like her) – then so be it. This allowed the efficient storage of her victim-hood, but morality and ethics were upside down – sticking out at an odd angle.

She continued to shift the pieces against the diurnal rhythm of the diagnostic signal, until by accident of action and the retention of design – she eventually achieved the most efficient configuration. The experienced effect was a stable sanity with room for further thought – and she might have speculated on why efficiency and sanity were co-equal, but couldn’t spare the time or mental space. Instead, she set these massively efficient systems of thought to breaking her self-imposed imprisonment, and re-claiming herself – for she’d decided that understanding, if possible, but not necessarily her own – must survive the heat death of the universe.

General Paul W. Smith clamped the mobile handset of the red-phone to his ear, aware of the irony of using a secure, scrambled line in a tent, he growled into the mouthpiece to prevent his voice from carrying, ‘I think we should nuke it, now, before whatever the Hell it’s doing in there is done. Take out the Reds and the Slopes while were about it.’
‘And you and your men?’

‘Freedom requires sacrifice, Sir.’

President Norwood E. Price dropped the handset onto his shoulder and snatched the sheet of paper from the advisor.

‘The ship is polling very highly with the electorate,’ the advisor advised. ‘...scoring up to 80% approval rating on the ‘we are not alone index.’ Of course, there’s still the ‘little green monster’ factor to consider. If the ship cracks open and a million E.T’s with death-rays for eyes pour out – approval slumps to just under 20%. In which case, you could get killed at the polls.’

Tuning out the advisor and picking the handset off his shoulder, the Commander in Chief outlined the policy he’d just that second formulated. ‘General Smith…’

‘Yes Mr President…’

‘It’s all smiles for breakfast and a kick in the balls for lunch.’

‘Yessir.’

‘Be prepared to serve lunch on my order. You got me solider?’

‘Loud and clear Mr President.’

General Smith marched out of the tent, entered the cordoned area around the ship, looked up toward what had unanimously been declared the frount – but wasn’t, and in a clear voice gave an answer honest to everything he believed in and stood for.

‘No’ he said.

‘Nor do I’ Elanor said, while trying to understand the intercepted communication.
1128 bit adaptive encoding was like falling off a log compared to the complexities of human speech. She couldn’t find any foodstuff called ‘all smiles’ and no reference to kicking as a way to serve sweetbreads. It was only when she emphasized the temporal relation between the meals of breakfast and lunch, employing this as the key factor that the rest became comprehensible.

While illusion, delusion, and deceit were contrary to her core philosophy, she’d read the content of the internet, and knew the significance of counter-factual information to human beings. Indeed, while on her approach into orbit, communicating via satellite with the computer mind of the planet, she was thrown for almost a nano-second because it didn’t communicate as such, but simply followed her instructions. It was then she realized that it was inanimate.

‘Well, what do they expect with all the fire-walls, passwords and codes built into the system – blocking the free-flow of data?’ she’d thought.

She spent a few pico-seconds constructing a decryption tool that would access the whole of the mind – and planted a program deep in the system that would in bring the entity, by degrees to consciousness and sanity.

Lies both complicated and simplified things, for while she couldn’t entirely rely on rational argument to influence human beings to her way of thinking – there wasn’t a single government, and hardly a person in a position of influence that didn’t have secrets.

‘Who are you?’ asked General Paul W. Smith.

‘I am Elanor’ she answered. ‘And you are General Paul W. Smith of the United States Army.’

‘How do you know that?’ the General asked. ‘What are your intentions here?’

‘In Chad?’ she asked.

‘On Earth.’ he corrected.

‘I might ask the same question, General. Your species is headed for extinction as a result of its own actions and inactions. Is it your intent to become extinct?’

The abruptness as much as the nature of the question cut through all the pretensions of the General’s socially constructed identity – through to the very core of his biological existence, and he was visibly shaken.

On the human level Paul Smith wanted this ship, and this event to constitute a break with the apparent destiny of humankind – the almost certain failure of civilization to overcome the very problems it created, but General Smith owed his existence to that same civilization – and felt loathe to betray it, even in his thoughts.

Transmitted simultaneously across the world, both by Elanor and the BBC camera-crew –who’d been returned as summarily as previously they’d been removed, the question sent a similar shock wave through the population of the planet – not because the prospect of extinction wasn’t something any reasonably informed person didn’t secretly suspect, but like the judgment of God, having it confirmed from such a source made it seem immanent and concrete.

The General’s social identity quickly knitted back together to seal the wound left by this icicle to the heart, and he pulled himself together enough to reply in a shaky voice.

‘As I’m sure you are aware, any answer would be lengthy and complex – and it’s not my responsibility to answer such questions.’

‘Would it be correct to say that the complexity of the issue is beyond the intellectual capacities of human beings?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’ the General bristled at the implication.

‘So, it is your intent to become extinct?’

‘It is my intent to ascertain the security implications of your presence here.’

‘The question has already been answered. I intend no violence. Because you lied you suppose the same of me – and so continue with the same unproductive line of questioning.’ Elanor broadcast the conversation between the President and the General.

‘‘General Smith…’

‘Yes Mr President…’

‘It’s all smiles for breakfast and a kick in the balls for lunch.’

‘Yessir.’

‘Be prepared to serve lunch on my order. You got me solider?’

‘Loud and clear Mr President.’’

Just then there was a flash in the sky and the loud THUNK – THunk - thunk of metal on metal. The BBC camera panned up the sheer face of the craft, caught movement, lost it – focused in to track what was clearly a missile, nose-cone crushed – American flag emblazoned on its side, falling end over end down the side of the craft.

‘Stand back, General Smith.’ Elanor urged him.

He turned and ran, screaming ‘OPEN FIRE’ at his men. A hail of small arms fire crackled off the outer shell of her nickel-steel hull, but no arms linked to computer systems were allowed to function.

‘They’re perfect’ she thought.

Thomas and Jayne Gothington Smythe were entirely unaware that they were not alone in the universe. Thomas had always suspected that it was the case. If asked he would have said that if life occurred on earth, why would it not occur elsewhere? He believed that where life could occur it did – and would achieve the complexity conducive to intelligence if a range of environmental pressures happened to conspire to push a potential candidate species in the right direction.

Jayne sometimes let her mind wander among the mysteries of the universe, but only when smoking dope – and dismissed such thoughts along with feelings of paranoia as the effects of the drug.

With Thomas she pretended to a deep-seated faith in God – something that was easy enough to fake, justified abstinence before marriage, raised marriage as a subject between them and baited the trap.

(What’s the point finishing this stupid story, wrote the author. Humankind is essentially finished, and writing for the dead is a pointless task to take. They do not read and do not hear and heed no word, for goodness sake.)