Mr g (4 page)

When Aunt Penelope and Uncle Deva saw the cosmos I’d made, with its three laws, they were not displeased.

Well, what we got? said Uncle, looking more rumpled than usual. He held the universe up and squinted at it from all sides. Although it appeared nearly the same as before, it had a new heft, he announced, and it vibrated with a higher frequency. Yes, said Uncle, the three laws seem to be agreeing with the thing.

It’s because He’s taking His time, said Aunt, like I told Him to do. You take your time, and you can do good work. You rush into things, and you might destroy a whole universe. What a pity that would be.

Uncle Deva passed the new Aalam-104729 over to Aunt Penelope, who began her own inspection. She rolled it over on its side, turned it upside down, spun it around. It was still expanding, getting bigger every moment. She nodded her approval. So, Nephew, she said. What’s next?

It’s still empty, I said. Perhaps it’s time to start putting things into it.

If I may make one last suggestion, said Uncle Deva. You say that your universe has a spirit. I don’t follow all of that folderol of causal connections and so forth. You always defeat me in those kinds of explanations. Be that as it may, I would be grateful if you give your universe a
soul
. You need to make sure that everything in the universe is connected not just to other things, but to
you
. You are the Maker, after all.

I don’t feel that’s necessary, I said. I know I’m the Maker. But there’s no reason my creations need to know it. You know it. Aunt Penelope knows it. That’s sufficient.

Don’t be modest, said Aunt Penelope. For once, I agree with your uncle. You are the Maker of everything. Your creations should understand that. They should have some awareness of you and your infinities. And it’s not just about you. It’s about our family, all of us here in the Void, our reputation. You’re an artist, Nephew. Deva and I appreciate your artistic work, but that’s a small audience.

Aunt Penelope, please. I haven’t decided whether I’m going to make any living creatures period, much less
aware
creatures, much less creatures aware of Me. It might be a comfort to be unaware. I might decide to make only inanimate matter.

What a waste! said Uncle. To make such a beautiful universe filled only with inanimate matter? It would be
boring
. Boring, I tell you. Am I the only one who thinks it would be boring?

It would be boring, said Aunt Penelope.

Yes, I said. It might be boring.

Then we are agreed, said Uncle. There will be animate matter with intelligence, and there will be an immortal soul in each living being, connecting it to you.

Wait a moment, I said. Only we, and the Void, can be immortal. Immortality does not exist in Aalam-104729. The thing has a direction of time, caused by the dulling of its energy, and everything in it will eventually dissipate. Nothing lasts forever in Aalam-104729, or in any of the universes I have created. I will consider a soul, but it cannot be immortal. It must follow the direction of time, like everything else. It must gradually decay and disintegrate. We cannot begin making exceptions to the rules here and there, helter-skelter, or we’ll end up with chaos again. Let me consider this … Maybe in the life of each creature I will allow a brief recognition of something vast, a flash of Me, a hint of the unchanging and infinite Void.

And then those creatures will pass away? said Deva. Dissipate and die? And their souls with them? At least let the souls come back in new bodies. Otherwise, it is so sad.

There you are getting mushy again, said Aunt Penelope. What do you know of sadness? What do any of us know? Sadness may not even exist. Let’s take a walk. I feel like stretching a bit.

All of us—Uncle Deva, Aunt Penelope, and I—were feeling protective of the fledgling Aalam-104729. We didn’t want to leave it alone among the zillions of other universes flying about, so we carried it with us on our stroll through the Void. Although its mass was infinite, the infinity was a small infinity, so it felt like nothing at all.

My aunt moved ahead, poking at folds of the emptiness as was her habit and stopping to collect little scraps of Void for some private use later on. She was in fine form. We could hear her commenting and exclaiming to herself. Uncle and I lingered behind. He had always been slower than she, one of their many marital incongruities. After every long sleep, she would leap up with plans for a new sightseeing excursion through the Void, while he would roll over, look groggily about for a few moments, and go back to sleep. Ironically, my aunt was the more patient one. She would take any amount of time for even small things (except her own appearance), whereas Uncle worked in broad strokes and easily grew upset with details. He was the idealist, she was the more practical member of the pair.

You’ve got to put in a soul, whispered Deva. You heard what your aunt said.

I’m thinking, I’m thinking, I answered. Dear Uncle, can we not talk about the soul for a while and just enjoy our walk? Listen to the music. At that moment, a playful scherzo was resonating throughout the Void. Listen. Yes, of course, said Uncle Deva. For a while. I have no idea where your aunt has got to.

Unmeasured time passed.

I am going to make matter, I announced. Inanimate matter. And then? asked Uncle. You are not going to stop with that? There is plenty of time to decide what to do after that, I said. Do you mind if I attend to this now? Uncle shrugged. I’ll be back in no time, I said. In fact, you won’t know I’m gone.

I entered the new universe again and took stock. Matter. At the moment, Aalam-104729 contained only pure energy. But my two symmetry laws already guaranteed that matter could be created from energy—in fact, required it—so all I needed to do was to specify the parameters of a few basic particles. This one spins this much, that one spins that much, this one responds to this force, that one to that force, and so on and so forth. Done.

Immediately, matter appeared! In fact, matter exploded. Matter burst into being with a vengeance, as if it had been languishing in a frustrated state of potentiality for eons of time and was finally given the opportunity to exist. Electrons and muons and taus, top quarks and bottom quarks, squarks, gravitons, photons, neutrinos and neutralinos, gluons, W and Z bosons, axions, photinos, winos, and zinos. And with matter, of course, came antimatter: positrons, antimuons, antiquarks, et cetera and anti et cetera.

At every point of space, the hillocks and basins of energy gushed forth with matter. Some of this matter instantly annihilated with antimatter to create energy again, which in turn spit forth new matter, so that there was a continual give and take between the two. Energy begat matter which begat energy which begat matter. It was a spectacle.

The photons in particular sometimes took the form of an oscillating wave of electrical and magnetic energy. I decided to call such a thing “light.” Where photons flew about in abundance and collided with other matter, there was light. Where photons were absent, there was darkness. Thus, when I created matter and energy, I also created darkness and light, and I decided that these things were also good, although I was not sure at the moment exactly what they would be good for.

So now there was matter and energy. And as I was watching, the universe grew and it cooled. The average energy of each particle diminished, and eventually some of the elementary particles began to coalesce with one another to make larger particles and masses. I could imagine, in the future, the formation of atoms and molecules, ripples of electromagnetic energy streaming through space, vast clouds of gas condensing under the gravitational force, spiral-shaped galaxies studded with bright balls of gas. Inside these spheres, roiling with nuclear reactions, new elements would be formed—carbon and oxygen, sulfur and magnesium. Great diffusions of neutrinos and light. And then titanic explosions, spewing more elements into space. And I could imagine vast disks of gas rotating around embryonic stars, elliptical orbits of comets, condensations of matter into rocky planets of silica and iron, or gaseous planets of hydrogen and helium, icy planets of frozen methane, molten planets of liquid sulfur, planets in retrograde motion, seething magnetic fields accelerating matter to maximal speeds, atmospheres of gaseous sulfur dioxide, oceans and mountains and silicon lagoons. In time, it would all come to pass. And all of it dumb, inert matter.

Aunt Penelope emerged from somewhere, beaming with a healthy exhaustion. She was practically bent over, shouldering the piles of emptiness she’d gathered. Nothing like it, she said. Nothing like it. She looked at Uncle Deva and frowned. If you could just move a little faster, she said. Look at you. You are so confoundedly slow. And
you
, answered Uncle, tear through the place like … I don’t know what you’re like, but you do it. Can’t you stop and listen to the music? And can’t we walk
together
for once? He kissed her. Deva! she said. Not out here in the open. She gave Uncle some of the odd-shaped patches of Void to carry for her, sighed, and began walking beside us.

I’ve made matter, I said casually.

Really! said Aunt Penelope. She picked up Aalam-104729 and shook it. It rattled. Yes, she said, there are pieces of stuff inside it now. Congratulations again. All of these congratulations are getting tiresome, I should think. Perhaps we’ve had enough congratulations for a while.

It’s time to put in a soul, said Deva.

But it’s only inanimate matter, I said. I haven’t—

We were interrupted by a howl, followed by a snicker. Then Baphomet appeared in front of us, grinning as usual. The beast jumped up and down and cartwheeled, keeping its stupid gaze fixed on me.

“What do you want?” said my aunt. “Off with you.”

“Him,” said the creature, pointing at me. “My master wishes to speak to Him. My master is waiting over there.” The squat beast gestured in a particular direction of the Void.

“You are an outrage,” said my aunt. “My nephew does not answer to summons. My nephew is the summoner.”

The beast turned to stare at Aunt Penelope with its hideous grin, snarled, and began laughing. “You forget yourself, Penelope.” Then the creature did a somersault in such an extraordinary manner that its grin seemed not to move at all while the rest of it tumbled through the Void and returned to an upright position. “My master does not like to be kept waiting,” said the beast. “Suit yourself.” It snarled again and went trotting off.

“This is intolerable,” my aunt said to me. “This creature—whatever it is—speaks to me like … Oh, it is intolerable. Disgraceful.”

“I observe that the making of laws has begun,” came a voice from behind us. And there was the stranger, twice the height he had been before. He bowed to Aunt Penelope and Uncle Deva. “May I see it,” he said, and somehow gained possession of Aalam-104729 without moving. “This particular universe you have chosen among all the others. I wonder why. But it makes no difference. This one it will be.” He studied it closely and sniffed it. It seemed to shudder in his grasp.

“That does not belong to you,” said Uncle Deva.

“It belongs to all of us,” said the stranger. “It is … how shall I put it … It will provide the path whereby we complete ourselves, make ourselves more than what we are now.”

“Destroy this abomination,” Aunt Penelope said to me. She turned to the stranger. “Who are you?”

“I am called Belhor,” said the stranger. “You may also call me Fedir or Belial or another name if you wish. And I apologize for any offense given.” The stranger bowed again and offered the pinched universe back to Aunt Penelope. “As I told your nephew earlier, you have very pleasant accommodations in these regions. And I must further compliment you on the lovely music.”

“You are not entitled to exist,” said my aunt. “My nephew did not make you.”

“Oh, but He did,” said Belhor.

“Oh, but He did, He did, He most certainly did,” said Baphomet, and the beast erupted in laughter and performed two somersaults and a bow. “That is the most delicious part of it all.”

“What is your business here?” I said. “Although I have unlimited power, I have limited patience.”

“Well spoken,” said Belhor. “I would like to discuss your laws with you, the ones you are devising for your new universe.”

“There is nothing to discuss,” I said. “The laws have been made.”

“Ah,” said Belhor. “But the laws you have made are only the physical laws, governing elementary particles and forces. Am I not correct? At some point in the future, intelligent beings will exist in your universe, and it is the laws governing the behavior of such beings I would like to discuss. I believe that we all share the view that animate matter is far more interesting than inanimate matter.”

“Animate matter will be governed by the same laws as inanimate matter,” I said.

The stranger laughed. “For someone as powerful as you … I am afraid it is not so simple. As we said earlier, the mind is its own place. None of us, and especially you, should underestimate the complexity and subtlety of a mind, once formed. Do you mean to say that every action and every thought of an intelligent creature in your universe will be determined by preexisting physical laws?” I nodded. “In that case,” continued Belhor, “your intelligent beings will have no independence of movement or thought. They will be completely controlled by you, or rather, by the physical laws that you have created, which is tantamount to the same. In fact, could we not say that their lives are already prescribed? Am I understanding you correctly?”

“Oh, what fun this is,” said Baphomet. “I’m so glad I came.” The beast turned to Aunt Penelope, grinning its unceasing grin. “Didn’t I tell you that my master was not to be trifled with? Didn’t I? Didn’t I?”

“I can see that you have been thinking about this,” I said to Belhor. “Yes, what you say follows logically. The thoughts and actions of animate matter, if such matter comes to exist, are already determined by the laws I have made and by cause-and-effect relationships. That is my intention. If there are rules, there are rules, and no exceptions for animate matter.”

“So you wish for total control over your creations, animate as well as inanimate,” said Belhor.

“Nephew, you must do away with this monster,” Aunt Penelope said to me. “He is bullying you.”

“No, Aunt. This discussion interests me.”

Belhor bowed. “Thank you for your respect,” he said. He looked at me for a few moments without speaking. “And I say to you, with equal respect, I believe that you are allowing your ego to get in your way. Why do you require such complete control? Do you not trust your intelligent creations to act on their own, without your supervision? Do you think they may do something to embarrass you, or something you consider unseemly or unworthy?”

“It is not a matter of trust,” I said to him. “It is a matter of self-consistency.” I found myself concerned, and I wanted to examine my concern, to turn it around in my mind and to explain it with clarity. “Surely you can understand that I do not want the universe to be a hodgepodge of contradictory rules and events. Where would that lead? All of us appreciate a certain amount of ambiguity and subtlety, but there must be limits … Animate matter should be subject to the same laws and rules as inanimate matter. Since those laws completely determine the behavior of inanimate matter, they also completely determine the behavior of animate matter.”

“Then animate matter is no longer interesting,” said Belhor. “I am disappointed in what I have heard. And, for the moment, I have no further business with you.”

“Oh, my master is disappointed,” said Baphomet, who had snatched the universe from Aunt Penelope and was tossing it up and down like a plaything. “My master is sooooo disappointed, and it is a very bad thing to disappoint Master Belhor.”

“Please excuse Baphomet,” said the stranger. “He lacks manners, and he gets excited. Now, we will be off.”