“Did you hear that?” Isda asked.
“Of course. So what?”
“Think of the corollary.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think of the opposite.”
“Like what?”
“Like an eighty-six percent chance that some visible and substantial geologic or atmospheric change should have taken place in the last six months.”
Margot stopped her mouth for a moment. “I don’t see what the big deal is. I know it was fourteen percent when I last asked the Wall.”
“Not fourteen percent, Margot. Eighty-six. Think of the corollary.”
“Fourteen, eighty-six. I could flip a coin.”
“Does this tell you anything?”
“No.”
“I know what your mind is thinking.”
“Damn you, damn you, Das. You should just turn it off.”
“We cannot, of course. So back to intuition. Your intuition tells you that eighty-six percent chance of something changing is much different than fourteen percent chance of nothing changing.”
Margot didn’t want to answer. “The Wall didn’t say ‘nothing changing’ now, did it?”
“Let’s argue the fine points.”
“No,” she replied.
“Then say it.”
“Yes, damn it! Then yes! You’ve exhausted me. And you haven’t been the most pleasant Das I’ve dealt with, and you still smell bad.”
“But, oh, what we Das sense about you!”
“Like what? Forget it, you’re just being rude.”
“Truthful,” Isda countered. “You could use some common courtesy.”
“Don’t screw with me. I’m tired of this. You still haven’t told me anything and I’m just wasting my time.”
“Go away, then. You know what I’ve told you. You feel the same as I feel about it. I know.”
Margot’s eyes drifted beyond the room. “Look, I'm hungry and this talk of ours has been fruitless. Is there anything you have to tell me that the Wall can’t?”
“Only intuition. ‘Gut’ you would say.”
“Intuition never got me anywhere, so why would I trust yours?” she asked.
“I’ve trusted mine for millennia.”
“So what? You trusted yours, how come it didn’t protect you from whatever hit your head?”
“I don’t always use what I feel. I don’t always hear it calling to me.”
“Calling about what?”
“Calling about right and wrong, mostly. Other things, too.”
Margot stopped for a minute. She wasn’t about to let this Das get the gratification that she was actually contemplating what he had been talking about.
“Foolish talk. Foolish. I’ve been over this a million times with the Wall. The virus replicated. You know this, too, and besides, who cares if a few flies or other vermin are still alive? The place is probably overrun with rats, feeding on dead bodies.” She stopped talking as her eyes filled with tears.
“Emotions aren’t intuition, Margot. They confuse intuition, sometimes they can help or contribute, but generally they disturb its freedom of movement and misdirect it.”
“What?” Suddenly her thought was redirected. “Does it hurt?” she asked, peering straight at the injury above his eye.
“Our pain, as you know it, is similar to yours. Reaction to stimulus, flight or fight, these things are common in nearly all living things. You should well have seen that in your Viewing room.”
“You’re the only one who’s not perfect. Everyone looks alike except for you. Maybe more of them should do something to change their faces, or at least reduce the smell. Why didn’t your great genetic magic fix your head when it happened, whatever caused it?”
Isda moved closer to Margot slowly so that she could take a close look at his misshapen head. “It was actually another of my kind that did this, and I had some role in it. Perhaps at another time I will explain. Margot, on the topic you’ve come here about. A chance like this would happen so rarely for a Das,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“We Das get lost in the largess, the sheer number of us in the universe and endless space-time. Truly endless. Perspective changes. You are going through it now. This event could even have some meaning for me in my time.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Having an influence.”
“An influence. Over what?” she asked.
“Over one other being. Moving beyond the interlock. It does happen, rarely.”
“You’ve lost me.” Margot was getting impatient with his confusing words. “Sergio,” she commanded, “he’s not making any sense. Let’s go.”
Sergio was a moving lump in the middle of the floor. He had forced the Wall to create a three-dimensional video game in which he was actively involved. He hardly noticed Margot calling his name.
“Sergio!”
The game stopped. The Wall had enshrouded Sergio so that his body could be actively engaged in the game, and it quickly uncovered his head just enough to allow him to talk and listen. “Did you say you wanted to go?”
“Yes, you little rat. I told you that you’re playing way too many of those stupid games.”
“But this is my favorite video game. It’s not too different than at home!”
“Yeah, you showed me. You know what I said about too much fantasy. If I don’t teach you what you need to know, nobody will. The Das sure as hell won’t.” Margot glanced at Isda with a scowl on her face.
Isda responded. “He will learn more than he ever would have been able to on earth. Not that the basic knowledge wasn’t there, just that humans lacked the discipline to employ it.”
“I didn’t see you setting up a school for him when I first awoke here. At least I’m trying to get him educated.”
“Facts are not learnings. You are based in facts. Facts don’t allow for actions.”
“Never mind, you don’t talk like you make sense. Sergio, let’s get!”
“Oh, Margot!” Sergio moaned. “I just want to stay here for another half hour or so. I mean, I was right at the fifth level and it won’t take much longer,” he pleaded.
Margot sighed. It wasn’t time for Sergio’s lessons yet, anyway. “Okay, little rat, but I’m not going to let up on your homework like I’ve been doing lately. You’ve had every excuse but a reasonable one. I want to see you promptly at ten.” Margot peered at her watch. The watch was pretty useless in her new, relatively timeless environment, but she still tried to manage her routines by it, even though she did extend her days to twenty-eight regular earth hours. She found herself extending a little more time each week.
“I’d get rid of it,” Isda suggested.
“Why?”
“It interferes with your ability to do things when you want to do them.”
“So what?”
“That then interferes with your ability to get things done, or, most importantly, to create.”
“Geez. You sure are pushy! No one else has commanded me to do anything!”
“No one else cares all that much. Do you think you’re the first alien they’ve encountered? You’re maybe the fifty-thousandth. You aren’t that special. In fact, you’re common.”
Margot was tired of verbal slights. “I’m outta here!” she stammered, growling angrily at the pod that encircled Sergio.
The Wall melted and Margot was instantly outside. The more she thought of his remark, the angrier she became. She began walking aimlessly through the mesh of channels and tunnels.
Common! How the hell can he call me ‘common’ if I’m only one of five humans left? How could these beasts consider me common? From what they tell me they are probably the most common form of intelligent life in the universe, numerous, common, so what’s the difference? They’re so sickly polite, too, when I talk with them. All except this turkey, this bad bug. To have a deformed roach call me ‘common’ makes me sick. Hell, I’m unique, as far as I’m concerned. I always was. Dad tol
d me I was one of a kind. Nobody else had my genes, my looks, my good brains. He always said I had such smarts. He always praised me. Now nobody’s here to praise me. Jesus, even Sergio doesn’t think I know anything. How could I, compared to the Wall? The Wall knows everything, at least everything recordable or recorded, and it continues to add more from incoming transmissions for other Das worlds. I could never, ever know it all. None could except the Wall. ‘Inter-galactic communications,’ Rovada said. Ongoing, constant, interchange of information between all Das, even all the other “recorders” they call themselves, those other disgusting beings beyond the Das, none of whom even slightly resemble humans, who have “settled’ the universe. Part of the Interlocking Effects that the Das started up, long ago. They say they were the first, that’s why they exist across a larger part of the universe, that’s why they’ve spread. But it could have been humans, it could have been us, barring this accident. It’s not, though. It’s not.
Margot kept walking through the maze, not really noticing where she was going.
I’ve never seen this section of this horrible brown hole on this lifeless planet. God, this is a deserted life that is left for me. How could you let this happen? How could it happen to us? What of all your people, the people who went to church? All those people who prayed to you? Could you just let them go like that? Could you stand to hear their cries of pain as they writhed helplessly at the quick degradation of their bodies? Their terrible cry. Their terrible cry must have been heard beyond the earth, whether through prayer or not. How could you? Weren’t you responsible for us, responsible to us? And look at that which remains. Me, an agnostic who wanted to believe, or at least I used to want to believe. I can’t imagine anymore or doubt that you don’t exist after seeing what I’ve seen, of knowing what I know. Surely if you were alive you’d understand how I feel, why I feel this way.
It appalls me that you had others in this space and time. That other beings actually lived, loved, and died, long before we emerged from the trees, and how many there were even now on thousands of worlds, progressing to their inevitable doom. And so odd that they still believe, or that so many beings in so many other worlds commonly do, despite their horrific deeds and practices and abuses of each other, despite the universal inconsideration, violence, and despair that the Viewing room has shown me.
Is this it? Are these roaches that populate a stretch of the universe your chosen class? How could they be? What makes them better than humans? Why would you let us wipe ourselves out, why would you let us be wiped from the face of the earth, from all that was here and available to us? Was this the convenient way to eliminate a species that had wrecked your earth? Was this your own revenge? Was it your way to start again with something else?
But look what you took with you! I saw the dying antelope in the field at Hart Prairie. I saw dogs twitching in their last stages of death in the streets in Berlin. I saw the masses of fish dredged up from the ocean, piles upon piles, along the Chilean coast. This was the death of it all. Terrible, thoughtless destruction. Of no value, no purpose, mindless, disgusting, heartbreaking. Do you know how many people lived down there? Do you know how many people were happy? How many spent their lives making others happy? But you didn’t spare the good or the bad, and the priests and nuns died just as did the prisoners in the jails.
It was merciless. How could you have mercy, how could you be mercy, if it is only flies that are left? Flies and ants, likely the ants, those disgusting things that were everywhere in the desert. One eighth of the animal mass of the world. Or used to be one-eighth. Now probably one-half, with flies comprising the other half.
You know, I used to be skeptical because look at how crappy the world was. I know it was crappy, you don’t have to tell me that. But why? What value to have us all in it, with humans at the top of the food chain? Why did we have to eat? Why couldn’t you just have made the world so that we could breathe the air and live, or so that we were egoless and didn’t compete for the things in the world to fulfill our needs? Why did you give us needs? Were we the ants, or less, to you, as we seem to be to the Das?
Is there some arcane pleasure in watching an entire planet’s life be destroyed, as you did with the dinosaurs so many millions of years before? How could a merciful god watch that? Is it trial and error? Were the dinosaurs not enough, did they not suit your fancy? Did you just get bored over time? Is that it? Were you bored with us?
Margot fell down in a dark alcove, the light just barely illuminating her knees as they rose slightly up to her eye level. The Wall sensed her needs and cushioned her slow fall, as she knew it would.
Calm down, Margot, calm down. As Joey would say to me, ‘Mind like water’. A funny thing he learned from his time in karate. Mind like water. See the pool. It has waves and ripples, currents, even tumult. Slow it down with your mind. Be patient and slow it down with your mind, gradually, work it down to where large waves become small, small waves become ripples, ripples become tiny disturbances, the disturbances become smooth flow, and the smooth flow stops. No flow. No flow. Just a glassy stillness at the top, all through it. Be the water. Be the water. I am the water. I am the water.
Calm yourself, Margot, you know this works. It has worked before when you were at work and something upset you. It worked at those times when your mind was frenzied, when emotions were the highest, or when your boss was on you about something. You will need this in the future, for all things you will encounter. It works. Just think about doing it, then do it, slowly, there now, calming, calming, the water is waves, just waves, and they have stopped crashing, white peaks no longer present, just a rolling sea, quiet on top, but still rolling, now rolling less, now less, now confined, no longer a sea, but a small lake, and I am outside, outside sitting in front of it. Joey’s there, Joey’s there, quiet, watching me, winking, and I laugh inside for a moment, and he is silently sitting now. I see him, at the pond, it’s smaller, he’s on the other side, but he is calm, so I can be calm, too. The pond is quiet now, just a ripple drop. Now the ripple drop has spread. It is the last drop, and the pond is a solid sheet, unmoving on top or inside, quiet and still. This sun beats down on me. I feel its heat. The sun is calm, like the pond. ‘The sun is the pond, the pond is the sun, they are constant and calm,’ Joey speaks to me in a whisper as he stares into its glass.
Margot didn’t know how long she sat there, quietly, pushing the rude Das from her mind, the burning stench of the earth from her mind. As her mind wandered, she kept returning to the desert and the brown dirt surrounding the pond of water, a low hanging mesquite a few feet in the distance in its reflection giving contrast to the pond. Joey popping from corner to corner on occasion. Margot’s eyes were half open as she lay on the soft chair that the Wall formed for her.
God, this is the first time I’ve been this calm in a long time.
Chapter 12
“WHAT’S THAT?” MARGOT SAID aloud as she shot up from the floor where she sat, startled at a sudden melting of the Wall just opposite her in the small alcove where she meditated.
“Stay away from me!” she heard the Das scream as he retreated quickly behind a wall.
She looked around instantly. “What?” she cried out. “Who was he?” This small corner of the cave was dimly lit. “Lights!” she yelled at the Wall, and instantly the intensity of the light in the alcove increased. She could see nothing of the Das who briefly appeared in front of her. She could see nothing of any Das. Stunned by another rudeness, she was afraid to call out to the Wall and demand an explanation. Margot picked herself up and walked quickly, quietly away from this edge of the cave.
Where is this? I thought I’ve seen the cave in its entirety. I don’t remember this!
When she was far enough away from the alcove, she called out to the Wall, “Who was that?”
“It may be difficult to understand,” the Wall replied. “That Das has no name. He is in seclusion.”
“Has no name? What do you mean seclusion?”
“The
Das on occasion remove themselves from the others. These periods can last a few hours, or countless years. They do as they choose in their own Wall, and all that it provides. Their privacy is respected.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Various reasons, Margot. For many, it is an adjustment to continuous living, life without end. The custom goes far back, however, to times prior to the Wall and prior to their integration of the elements that provide for their eternal living.”
“Why didn’t Rovada tell me?”
“Who could he tell you about?”
“That Das, of course.”
“To the Wall, as well as to the Das, those who go into seclusion have no name. It is as if they do not exist, not in current time. They are offered complete privacy and separation from the others.”
“Odd,” Margot mumbled. “Stupid. Somebody hermits-out and they just forget that he’s lived?”
“No, Margot, the history of those in seclusion is not forgotten. Indeed, when a Das returns from seclusion, all information about that Das is revealed again. The Wall knows that Das, and the other Das know that Das.”
“Wall, you aren’t making sense. Answer the question! Why don’t they exist?”
“Because in Das terms, if one goes into seclusion, all links are severed including the links of mind-reading, mind-linking, the interconnect. Once the mind-reading link with the group is eliminated, then so is the effective existence of that Das.”
“That’s crazy.”
“That is the way of the Das.”
“That’s nuts. Some guy just goes behind a Wall and everyone forgets about him? How does he eat?” she asked, reminding herself of her own hunger.
“The Wall provides for a Das in seclusion. But that part of the Wall is separated from the rest of the Wall. It is exclusive only to the Das in seclusion, and it provides for the Das while in seclusion. It then reintegrates itself into the rest of the Wall if and when the Das ends its seclusion.”
The Space Between Her Thoughts (The Space in Time Book 1) Page 16
