Mesopotamia - The Redeemer (9 page)

"So"?

"So motion and gravity are two
sides of the same coin".

"I see. I think." As soon as he
succeeded in processing the information, things started to make
sense in his head. There was a ring of familiarity to the
principles she was talking about, or the names of the scientists.
He felt like it was a refresher talk, even though everything seemed
new.

"In the same way, James Clarke
Maxwell discovered electromagnetic force," she continued. "He
discovered that electricity and magnetism are just two forms of the
same phenomenon".

"I'm not sure I understand".

"Let me explain the whole thing to
you and then you'll get the idea".

"Okay, go on".

Cosmology's next genius was Albert
Einstein. Before Einstein, it was thought that time was a constant
which had no connection to dimensions or other forces. Einstein
discovered that time and space are two sides of the same coin. In
the same way that ice and water are two forms of the same material,
and just as Newton showed that gravitational pull and inertia are
two aspects of the same phenomenon, the same thing applies to time
and space. The faster an object travels a large distance, the less
time it takes for it to travel that distance. At the speed of
light, time stands still".

Even if he had known it in the past
and forgotten, this was inconceivable. He understood that ice and
water, being interchangeable, are two faces of the same phenomenon,
but time and space? He felt dizzy.

Sophia noticed. "You're tired.
We'll continue at another time".

"I want to know," he insisted.

"Are you sure"?

"Yes"!

"Einstein also showed that matter
and energy are two sides of the same phenomenon. The atom bombs
that destroyed the Earth in the Human-Gods Wars turned matter into
devastating energy".

"Which wars?" He asked.

"It's not important right now." Her
face sobered. "We'll get back to it at some point. Have you had
enough for now"? Sophia smiled understandingly. She knew it was a
lot to take in the first time.

"I can go on." His head ached, but
he wanted to stay close to her.

She stared at him as an unfamiliar
feeling washed over her like a wave. 'Who are you? Why did you come
to me? What is the cosmos trying to tell me through you?' she
thought. "Einstein showed in the end that gravity is the slope that
mass creates in space. Until then, it wasn't clear that different
phenomena in the universe are actually just different aspects of
the same thing. In Einstein's time it also became clear that
gravity and space are different aspects of one thing".

"I think I understand," said the
stranger, but his expression was hesitant.

"What did you understand"?

"Einstein showed that time and
space are one, energy and matter are one, and gravity and space are
one. Einstein must have been the biggest genius of them all," he
said, and she smiled in approval.

"Almost. We haven’t reached Orpheus
yet." She was satisfied with his ability to take things in. "I'm
telling you all of this so that you can understand the greatness of
Orpheus, the truth that is the base of the Pythagorean faith, and
how the particle processor works".

"So what did Orpheus discover"?

"We'll get to that in due course.
Ready to continue"?

"Yes." He no longer felt at all
tired.

"The Superstring theory explained
that energy, mass, space, speed, gravity, and even time, are all
made of particles. The most basis particle that everything is made
of is the string. It is two-dimensional, in other words a line, and
it has two properties; length and vibration frequency".

"Okay," he nodded.

"The string's length and vibration
speed, or its palpitation, give it its properties as a particle in
time, space, gravity, and so on".

"I think my brain is turning into a
homogenous mush. Further proof for unity." He smiled. Thanks to the
information, he felt better, and now he felt less detached. At the
same time, it appeared that her presence undermined his stability:
when he listened to her, talked with her and looked at her,
something inside of him wanted to break free.

"We'll carry on another time," her
smile charmed him.

Thales felt uneasy and ashamed. He
had never dreamed of following the stationmaster without her
knowledge. If the truth be known, he had intended to follow the
stranger, but since she devoted a large part of her time to him, it
ended up that he was following her too. The tiny camera installed
on the mechanical mosquito broadcasted their conversation to the
holographic space in the simulator. He felt uneasy when Sophia gave
details about the station to the stranger, who had still not been
clarified as not being a Gnostic spy. She explained to him the
cosmic importance of the station; explained with shining eyes the
movement of the spheres as part of the universe and its
mathematical rules. She painted Samos as a manmade universe, as
being part of the work of creation. An un-ascetic jealousy bubbled
up in his gut when he heard the enthusiasm in her voice, like the
excitement she showed at the beauty of nature in the simulator.
Suddenly, he saw in the hologram that the two were making their way
towards the simulator in which he was sitting. He just managed to
turn off the simulator before they entered.

"Thales – our head scout, meet… our
guest".

Thales tried to be friendly despite
the feeling of asphyxiation in his throat. "Welcome to Samos. Well,
what do you think of us, the Pythagoreans"?

"It's very pleasant and orderly
here. Sophie is treating me wonderfully," he said innocently, and
was surprised to see Thales's face turn sour.

"We're looking for a thread of
memory which will help our guest get his memory back. Would you be
willing to go through our historical databases with him?" requested
Sophia.

"Of course," Thales replied. The
opportunity we waited for came his way.

"Well then, I'll leave you to it
and get back to my own business." She turned to the stranger, "I'm
sure Thales will be able to answer all your questions." She hoped
the meeting between the two would cool off Thales's hostility.

"Has Sophia told you about the
simulator?" Thales asked, playing dumb.

"Yes".

"In that case, we'll start with the
Human-Gods Wars".

They sat in the space of the
simulator, sunken in soft silk cocoons and blanketed with a
homogeneous cobalt-blue color. The stranger felt like he was in a
spaceship, moving at great speed in the holographic space towards a
planet with hues of blue, green, brown and white. The narration
began:

"Dismal Earth. The place where the
human race came into being and where it also annihilated itself. In
the year 2050, the majority of Earth's population was split between
two main governing blocs: Christianity, headed by the United States
of America, and Islam, headed by the United Arab Nations."
Different colors covered parts of the globe according to the areas
of control. "Then began the regional wars." Pyres on the borders
between the blocs emitted smoke and fire. "The economic gaps and
the neocolonialist standpoint of Christianity aroused the loathing
of Islam, and caused a renewal of the theological rivalry of the
Crusades from the end of the first and second millennia".

"Stop at any point you'd like me to
expand on," said Thales.

"Thank you, I'm listening," the
stranger replied politely.

The simulator continued. "In the
past, Christianity had had a clear technological advantage, but
this all changed after a series of ecological holocausts that left
the Christian technological development behind, and allowed Islam
to catch up to it and arm itself at an accelerated pace. Islam
provided its believers with a messianic belief that constituted a
human advantage in the global struggle. Starting in the year 2050,
for a decade, the Muslim majority won the democratic elections,
starting in France and Serbia, and then in Russia, Turkey, Greece,
and the rest of the Balkan states. China was making a profit from
the struggles, and therefore did not intervene. These countries
united under the name 'The United Arab Nations', and put an end to
the Christian supremacy that had kept a relative peace until that
point. In the year 2062, the first of a series of wars broke out,
eventually called The Human-Gods' Wars. In these wars, two-thirds
of Earth's population was killed in the two opposing camps. The
majority of the losses were caused by ecological damage; poisoning
of water, air and food".

"That's terrible," he murmured. He
appeared at peace, but he was shocked inside. He tried to imagine a
"global struggle". He saw smoking spaces, littered with millions of
dead. He saw demolished cities full of women, children, and people
torn from their homes, starving, disease-ridden, and without limbs.
He tried to distance himself from the thought of their distress,
their despair, but some images refused to disappear. He felt like
his stomach was churning. "I'm happy I don't remember a thing. How
long has it been since then"?

"More than two hundred years. We're
already in the year 2287," Thales smiled.

The simulator continued. "Humanity
did not escape so quickly from all these. In fact, it was almost
wiped out. A meaningless existence almost annihilated it. In the
year 2107, the final deciding battle took place, and after it all
that was left were traces of empires that had crumbled into small
tribal groups which existed in the desolation and filth." The
practical indifference in Thales's voice was a complete
contradiction to the stranger's emotional storm.

Strange colorful pictures appeared
on the monitor. For a moment, they seemed familiar, but immediately
escaped him, and became alienated and threatening.

"The tribes returned to the ancient
cults and religions, to the rituals of witchcraft and sorcery, to
the animistic faith in the powers of nature, to a social
organization of tyranny, and established ceremonies based on
commercial trademarks left over from the Capitalistic period.

"The Atheist organization, which
was secret to begin with, was founded by people from both rival
blocs. The Atheists recognized the anthropocentric theology as the
root of evil in human history, and strove to eradicate all
religions. They operated on the military plane, and recruited
citizens to form an alternative global culture".

"Are the Pythagoreans Atheists?"
Asked the stranger.

"No," replied Thales. The simulator
stopped. "The Atheists saved Earth from the devastating
consequences of treating God as human. The Pythagoreans, that is,
us – the New Pythagoreans – appeared later. We returned the
meaning, God, without ascribing him human form. The Pythagoreans
settled on the planet Octavia. The Atheists settled on the planet
Dust, and the Gnostics remained on Earth's chaos. Do you want me to
go into more detail about the Gnosis?" Thales finally reached the
point to which he had been aiming the simulator.

"Yes, certainly," replied the
stranger. It seemed he had begun to get used to the tremendous
amount of information he had been taking in over the past few
days.

From a bird's-eye-view a great
compound could be seen, crammed with smoking chimneys. From closer
up, aircrafts could be seen, some on the ground and some in the
air. He saw black cubes of differing sizes, and people in black
uniforms dashing between the cubes. The narration began. The
stranger didn't notice a difference in the narration or the
hologram, but in actual fact, from this point on, the history
lesson had been staged meticulously by Thales, who had labored over
it the whole of the previous night.

"This is the Gnostic compound in
Uruk, the most important of the three centers on Earth. The second
is in Istanbul and the third in Jerusalem. On the ruins of the
Human-Gods' Wars, grew the devastating Gnostic culture, headed by
Adamas. The Gnostics who worked Earth's resources, gathered
refugees and survivors of the destruction to their ranks,
frequently by force. The ancient Gnostic belief in the impurity of
creation and of man received a dangerous change in direction with
the blossoming of the new Gnosis, who had at his disposal
technological means to destroy humanity"…

Thales glanced at the stranger's
look of concentration. He was watching the images of the compound.
The Gnostic compound was very different from Samos. The colors were
dark, the architecture sharp, and the atmosphere gloomy. Only the
order and organization were common to both.

… "One of the tactics of the
Gnostics is to recruit agents who are not Gnostic. They hold their
families hostage, and force them to go out on spying missions at
their enemies. Among their most sworn enemies are the
Pythagoreans".

Thales continued to study the
stranger's reactions. He tried to interpret every movement and
tremor of his face and body language in order to figure him out.
The stranger's forehead wrinkled. Thales was sure he'd seen a
glimmer of deceit in his eyes. Within seconds, he was convinced the
stranger was indeed a spy.

"Who did they take?" Thales
asked.

"Who"?

"The Gnostics, of course".

"Hostages," the stranger gestured
at the simulator.

"Your child? Your wife"?

The stranger blinked at Thales,
grasped the essence of his question, and his breath froze; he
opened his mouth, but was so shocked that he couldn't say a
word.

"Doesn't it seem strange to you
that you don’t remember a thing?" Thales continued.

The stranger regained his
composure. "You think I'm a Gnostic agent?!" he shouted in
astonishment. 'How does he dare'? He wondered, and immediately
another thought popped into his head: 'But maybe he's right, maybe
I am here on a Gnostic mission. I can't be angry, I don't know
myself if it's true'.