The Infinite Library (79 page)

S
omewhere over the Rainbow...

If only human beings understood the rather base and unremarkable origins of what they call the universe, perhaps they might revise their own sense of wonder. If you cast a single beam of light at a pool of sludge or some such material in a mixed solid-liquid state, you might find that it is possible to have this light refracted at large number of angles, thus producing a diffuse prismatic effect.

All that can be sensed has its origins with a task myself and many others do. We tend the slush. We stir it and light catches the individual crystals of it at varying angles and throws off the hues of reality as can be sensed or known.

The current era of humanity, and therefore what I see projected as the after-effect of my stirring of the cosmic slush and the pure, harsh beam that is filtered through that crudités, has succeeded in coming close to the underlying motif of this place: the pollution of distance.

My sense of play is malicious, negligent to what consequences they may bring to those who know only the projection of the rainbow. I stir the slush and create new variations that humans will so brazenly take authorship of as “discovery” and thus place it in their ballooning archives of their previous knowledge. Little do they know that they hoard images from a kind of eternal kaleidoscope, snapshots of accidental colour thrown up by the passing of a light beam and my action of stirring this slush. And even among those rare few who may glean that these collected images are akin to collecting every chicken and treating them as uniquely separate objects, folly has no better representative than those who assume that behind these colourful projections there is some purposeful, base pattern. They suspect that this pattern is based on math, or physics, or the musical scale, or numerology, or gods. All of these are wrong, for where would the pattern be? It is not in projection, not in the slush, and not in the beams of light that enter at random angles to strike at slush I simply swish about. Light splits and converges, and although light follows laws, it is foolish to believe that a rule is a pattern.

There is an obvious question one might pose to me: why do I tend the slush and not do something else if the action is idle, serves little purpose, or does not grant one satisfaction and contentment. What this inquirer would have to understand is that there is simply nothing else to do: either one stirs the slush to amuse oneself, or one sits and does nothing in the slush.

But I cannot count how many of those stamped with folly who try to approach this realm behind the projections. They are armoured with their weapons of reason, their assumptions of order and purpose, and they continue trying - and failing - to find the patterns they so desire to exist. They try to gain access to this realm through an observation of the stars with special machines that interpret wavelengths or perhaps cloister themselves to give patient study to a single book written in some impossible cipher.

Distance between this realm and the projection has been polluted before, but now with ever more sophisticated instruments and the collapse of the - still inconsequential - distance between individuals in a digital space, I fear a repeat of what I had to endure before. I have heard of one who was able to penetrate to this realm, and another I personally met. I do detest their blind zealousness, their assumption that there must be some common denominator that explains their universe as if there can be no justification for existence without it.

The first was an Alexandrian who tended a library, no longer standing. Taking advantage of some freak slip, perhaps, he pushed through the luminescent membrane and found himself here. A believer in harmonies and order, his discovery of this place was devastating. Upon his return, he continued to carry out his duties of ordering the contents of the library with the same apparent zeal, but perhaps only in a kind of private jest or even the foolish hope that to found an order in one place would spread virally until the entire universe and what was behind it would succumb, seduced by that dominating thing called order.

The second was a man named Tariq. I know this not because I had any interest in soliciting this information, but because he was prone to that pointless habit of announcing his presence as if the very mention of his name should be accompanied by an awed hush. Yes, he was a disagreeable sort, and had found his way here by a special method of reading coupled with some meditative exercise that he believed was the key that unlocked our realm (in actual fact, such things are always accidents - there are no keys and no locks in this place). When I explained to this insistent crusader of reason that there was no substrate of order, but that everything was simply a trick of the light, he responded with a rebuke. Let me retell what was said:

“
No, that is absolutely impossible. This must simply be the wedge of plasma that connects the world and its true metaphysical motor. And you, you are most likely a kind of demon placed here to deter any further ingress to the mysteries. Yes, you are one of the guardians of the truth who uses lies to prevent access to truth.”

“Think what you will,” I said, stirring more slush and sending up another of a trillion new projections. “But I know myself to possess no reason to deceive you.”

“I have trespassed where humans are forbidden. You have every reason to try and deceive me,” Tariq responded sharply.

“No one is forbidden from this place, for that would presuppose a purpose to this place. There are only natural barriers. If there was something to be guarded, then this place would have a purpose. But we are not guards. We have no assigned function. We can stir the slush or we can do nothing. Most of us find it more amusing to choose action over inaction if only to quiet our boredom.”

“There is a realm beyond this one that is the source of all order. If you are not deceiving me, then you yourself are deceived or ignorant.”

“I am not impeding you. You are at liberty to search all you like,” I told him, going back to my stirring wand. Irritation is a poor cure for tedium.

And so this Tariq started digging into the slush, pulling up handfuls of it.

“This slush burns my hands with its coldness,” he said in complaint.

“I cannot warm it for you. I do not touch the slush with my hands, but I do not feel the cold. Perhaps this is a lesson for you to stop digging through it.”

“Oh-ho!” he exclaimed hotly. “So this is the ruse. You will not physically prevent me from my quest, but will politely suggest that I stop if I find it uncomfortable! No, I will continue to dig despite any pain it may cause me!”

And so he did. Perhaps for hours. It was a comedic scene, for his agitation increased the longer he set himself to his futile scooping. Without realizing it, Tariq’s fervent scramble in the slush was sending up several interesting projections. Perhaps on the receiving end, some astronomer was being presented with a thrilling and mysterious spectacle of magnetic shift in a galactic cluster, compiling data on a hitherto unobserved phenomenon.

Tariq, his face red and his hands bitten redder by the cold of the slush, panted in exhaustion. The slush he disturbed had already resolved back into its initial position as if it had not been disturbed at all.

“What is the meaning of all this?” he moaned, more to himself.

“I have told you before. It is just slush and all that we see is but a trick of the light as we move the slush around, splitting the light into its many overlapping hues.”

“What is the composition of this substance?”

I get irritated easily by his kind of person, the sort that attempt to find meaning behind the wind or truth in a shadow, but I have to admit that it was a fair question, and one that warranted some exploration.

“I cannot say for sure. I know it only as slush. It receives light and has the quality of variegating it from its many minute crystals.”

“It has the quality of slushy ice but seems to behave differently,” he mused. “How large is this space?”

“I have not seen an end to it. I would think the expanse is infinite.”

“Covered in this slush and tended by your kind?”

“From what I know.”

“Why do we not sink?”

“That I do not know. The slush at a certain depth under my feet feels firm enough.”

“Has anyone attempted to excavate deep into it?”

“Perhaps out of boredom, someone must have. I cannot see that they would have got any further than you have. As you saw, dig it one handful and the rest of the slush rushes to fill the pocket left behind.”

“And the rainbows that stream from it, these are the projections we see?”

“Yes, I suppose they are.”

“And these rainbows form our perception of matter?”

“And perhaps the forces that govern it as well, I would suppose.”

“And you have no idea who or what placed this slush here?”

“None at all. I cannot recall anything before me: out of nothing I must have come, and I came unchanged as you see me now, standing in this slush with this wand. I was given no instructions.”

“Interesting,” Tariq said, pulling at his well groomed goatee. “To come fully formed with no outside directive... I assume you all came into this realm in the same way?”

“From what I know in speaking with them. None of us are, of course, all that concerned with the deeper meanings you are searching for, so it does not occur to us to pose questions that cannot be answered. We are in a place absolutely devoid of anyone that we know of who knows more than any of us already know, which is that there is this slush, and that we have the choice to stir it or simply do nothing with it.”

“Perhaps whoever or whatever conceived of this place had created your kind and felt it would compromise your essential task by giving you any access to knowledge that there is an outside to this place. I can imagine that it is preferable to have automatons going about their business entirely ignorant of anything else.”

“If you say so, but you continue to hold to this idea that there is some entity or outside that is responsible for this place, completely disregarding the possibility that this is the very base of the universe itself, that there is no deeper floor or foundation, that beneath all of this slush is nothing more... than just slush.”

“I know this not to be true because you have not considered the light. There is an origin to this light.”

“Is there an origin to a circle? Is there a foot upon which we can say a circle begins? Perhaps all has emerged as is, and the light that concentrates into this slush originates from the place from which it has been variegated. It is possible for light to converge and diverge many times, to break into separate hues, or by the concentrated angles meeting at a point to reproduce a solid white beam.”

“Then what you are saying is that there is no original source to this projection, that it is a cyclical motion of light to and from the projected zone. And so it might be just as true to say that this place is simply a projection of the projected universe.”

“An interesting thought experiment, I suppose. Yes, it is possible that we are the projected and not the projectors. But, perhaps there is a third possibility. Perhaps both the projector and the projected are the same thing and that it is only a matter of taking turns so that we produce the light that makes the world, and the world produces the light that makes us.”

“I find this paradox offensive,” Tariq argued. “Even in circular processes there must be, according to the rules of time, a beginning. That beginning can only occur in one place, thus meaning either my world or this realm is the zone of an originating projection.”

“I am not one to dispute finer philosophical points, but you neglect the possibility that if time fixes an event in a particular place that this event is exclusive and not repeated elsewhere. It is possible that the original projection - if there is such a thing - could have simultaneously occurred in both your world and this realm. So, the same event beginning at two opposite points of a circle.”

Tariq hesitated from discounting my conjecture as illogical. But I could tell by that dumb hunger in his eyes that he could not admit of that possibility without assuming that there was some original, singular event that caused two points in a cycle to begin. The authorship of one entity or event that bifurcated to create the possible cause I put forward. And so, I knew his type: perpetually condemned to assume that there must be another layer concealing the true, single cause of everything. I was tiring of Tariq’s presence and felt no obligation to pay him any further mind. Yet, he would continue to pose questions.

“You have seen that there is nothing left to uncover. There are no doors or windows to other places. You know all that I know, which is very little or nothing. I think it best if you quit this place.”