The Creator
Clifford D. Simak
The Creator is a science fiction novelette by author Clifford D. Simak. It was published in book form in 1946 by Crawford Publications in an edition of 500 copies. It had previously appeared in the September 1935 issue of the magazine Marvel Tales.
Clifford D. Simak
The Creator
FOREWORD
This is written in the elder days as the Earth rides close to the rim of eternity, edging nearer to the dying Sun, into which her two inner companions of the solar system have already plunged to a fiery death. The Twilight of the Gods is history; and our planet drifts on and on into that oblivion from which nothing escapes, to which time itself may be dedicated in the final cosmic reckoning.
Old Earth, pacing her death march down the corridors of the heavens, turns more slowly upon her axis. Her days have lengthened as she crawls sadly to her tomb, shrouded only in the shreds of her former atmosphere. Because her air has thinned, her sky has lost its cheerful blue depths and she is arched with a dreary gray, which hovers close to the surface, as if the horrors of outer space were pressing close, like ravening wolves, upon the flanks of this ancient monarch of the heavens. When night creeps upon her, stranger stars blaze out like a ring of savage eyes closing in upon a dying campfire.
Earth must mourn her passing for she has stripped herself of all her gaudy finery and proud trappings. Upon her illimitable deserts and twisted ranges she has set up strange land sculptures. And these must be temples and altars before which she, not forgetting the powers of good and evil throughout the cosmos, prays in her last hours, like a dying man returning to his old faith. Mournful breezes Play a hymn of futility across her barren reaches of sand and rocky ledges. The waters of the empty oceans beat out upon the treeless, bleak and age-worn coast a march that is the last brave gesture of an ancient planet which has served its purpose and treads the path to Nirvana.
Little half-men and women, final survivors of a great race, which they remember only through legends handed down from father to son, burrow gnomelike in the bowels of the planet which has mothered their seed from dim days when the thing which was destined to rule over all his fellow creatures crawled in the slime of primal seas. A tired race, they wait for the day legend tells them will come, when the sun blazes anew in the sky and grass grows green upon the barren deserts once again. But I know this day will never come, although I would not disillusion them. I know their legends lie, but why should I destroy the only solid thing they have left to round out their colorless life with the everlasting phenomena of hope?
For these little folks have been kind to me and there is a bloodbond between us that even the passing of a million years cannot erase. They think me a god, a messenger that the day they have awaited so long is near. I regret in time to come they must know me as a false prophet.
There is no point in writing these words. My little friends asked me what I do and why I do it and do not seem to understand when I explain. They do not comprehend my purpose in making quaint marks and signs upon the well-tanned pelts of the little rodents which overrun their burrows. All they understand is that when I have finished my labor they must take the skins and treasure them as a sacred trust I have left in their hands.
I have no hope the things I record will ever be read. I write my experiences in the same spirit and with the same bewildered purpose which must have characterized the first ancestor who chipped a runic message upon a stone.
I realize that I write the last manuscript. Earth's proud cities have fallen into mounds of dust. The roads that once crossed her surface have disappeared without a trace. No wheels turn, no engines drone. The last tribe of the human race crouches in its caves, watching for the day that will never come.
FIRST EXPERIMENTS
There may be some who would claim that Scott Marston and I have blasphemed, that we probed too deeply into mysteries where we had no right.
But be that as it may, I do not regret what we did and I am certain that Scott Marston, wherever he may be, feels as I do, without regrets.
We began our friendship at a little college in California. We were naturally drawn together by the similitude of our life, the affinity of our natures. Although our lines of study were widely separated (he majored in science and I in psychology), we both pursued our education for the pure love of learning rather than with a thought of what education might do toward earning a living.
We eschewed the society of the campus, engaging in none of the frivolities of the student body. We spent happy hours in the library and study hall. Our discussions were ponderous and untouched by thought of the college life which flowed about us in all its colorful pageantry.
In our last two years we roomed together. As we were poor, our quarters were shabby, but this never occurred to us. Our entire life was embraced in our studies. We were fired with the true spirit of research.
Inevitably, we finally narrowed our research down to definite lines. Scott, intrigued by the enigma of time, devoted more and more of his leisure moments to the study of that inscrutable element. He found that very little was known of it, beyond the perplexing equations set up by equally perplexed savants.
I wandered into as remote paths, the study of psycho-physics and hypnology. I followed my research in hypnology until I came to the point where the mass of facts I had accumulated trapped me in a jungle of various diametrically opposed conclusions, many of which verged upon the occult.
It was at the insistence of my friend that I finally sought a solution in the material rather than the psychic world. He argued that if I were to make any real progress I must follow the dictate of pure, cold science rather than the elusive will-o'-the-wisp of an unproven shadow existence.
At length, having completed our required education, we were offered positions as instructors, he in physics and I in psychology. We eagerly accepted, as neither of us had any wish to change the routine of our lives.
Our new status in life changed our mode of living not at all. We continued to dwell in our shabby quarters, we ate at the same restaurant, we had our nightly discussions. The fact that we were no longer students in the generally accepted term of the word made no iota of difference to our research and study.
It was in the second year after we had been appointed instructors that I finally stumbled upon my 'consciousness unit' theory. Gradually I worked it out with the enthusiastic moral support of my friend, who rendered me what assistance he could.
The theory was beautiful in simplicity. It was based upon the hypothesis that a dream is an expression of one's consciousness, that it is one's second self going forth to adventure and travel. When the physical being is at rest the consciousness is released and can travel and adventure at will within certain limits.
I went one step further, however. I assumed that the consciousness actually does travel, that certain infinitesimal parts of one's brain do actually escape to visit the strange places and encounter the odd events of which one dreams.
This was taking dreams out of the psychic world to which they had formerly been relegated and placing them on a solid scientific basis.
I speak of my theory as a 'consciousness units' theory. Scott and I spoke of the units as 'consciousness cells,' although we were aware they could not possibly be cells. I thought of them as highly specialized electrons, despite the fact that it appeared ridiculous to suspect electrons of specialization.
Scott contended that a wave force, an intelligence wave, might be nearer the truth. Which of us was correct was never determined, nor did it make any difference.
As may be suspected, I never definitely arrived at undeniable proof to sustain my theory, although later developments would seem to bear it out.
Strangely, it was Scott Ma
rston who did the most to add whatever measure of weight I could ever attach to my hypothesis.
While I was devoting my time to the abstract study of dreams, Scott was continuing with his equally baffling study of time. He confided to me that he was well satisfied with the progress he was making. At times he explained to me what he was doing, but my natural ineptitude at figures made impossible an understanding of the formidable array of formulas which he spread out before me.
I accepted as a matter of course his statement that he had finally discovered a time force, which he claimed was identical with a fourth-dimensional force. At first the force existed only in a jumble of equations, formulas, and graphs on a litter of paper, but finally we pooled our total resources and under Scott's hand a machine took shape.
Finished, it crouched like a malign entity on the worktable, but it pulsed and hummed with a strange power that was of no earthly source.
'It is operating on time, pure time,' declared Scott. 'It is warping and distorting the time pattern, snatching power from the fourth dimension. Given a machine large enough, we could create a time-stress great enough to throw this world into a new plane created by the distortion of the time-field.'
We shuddered as we gazed upon the humming mass of metal and realized the possibilities of our discovery. Perhaps for a moment we feared that we had probed too deeply into the mystery of an element that should have remained forever outside the province of human knowledge.
The realization that he had only scratched the surface, however, drove Scott on to renewed efforts. He even begrudged the time taken by his work as instructor and there were weeks when we ate meager lunches in our rooms after spending all our available funds but a few pennies to buy some piece needed for the time-power machine.
Came the day when we placed a potted plant within a compartment in the machine. We turned on the mechanism and when we opened the door after a few minutes the plant was gone. The pot and earth within it was intact, but the plant had vanished. A search of the pot revealed that not even a bit of root remained.
Where had the plant gone? Why did the pot and earth remain?
Scott declared the plant had been shunted into an outre dimension, lying between the lines of stress created in the time pattern by the action of the machine. He concluded that the newly discovered force acted more swiftly upon a life organism than upon an inanimate object.
We replaced the pot within the compartment, but after twenty-four hours it was still there. We were forced to conclude the force had no effect upon inanimate objects.
We found later that here we touched close to the truth, but had failed to grasp it in its entirety.
THE DREAM
A year following the construction of the time-power machine, Scott came into an inheritance when a relative, whom he had almost forgotten but who apparently had not forgotten him, died. The inheritance was modest, but to Scott and me, who had lived from hand to mouth for years, it appeared large.
Scott resigned his position as instructor and insisted upon my doing the same in order that we might devote our uninterrupted time to research.
Scott immediately set about the construction of a larger machine, while I plunged with enthusiasm into certain experiments I had held in mind for some time.
It was not until then that we thought to link our endeavors.
Our research had always seemed separated by too great a chasm to allow collaboration beyond the limited mutual aid of which we were both capable and which steadily diminished as our work progressed further and further, assuming greater and greater complications, demanding more and more specialization.
The idea occurred to me following repetition of a particularly vivid dream. In the dream I stood in a colossal laboratory, an unearthly laboratory, which seemed to stretch away on every hand for inconceivable distances. It was equipped with strange and unfamiliar apparatus and uncanny machines. On the first night the laboratory seemed unreal and filled with an unnatural mist, but on each subsequent occasion it became more and more real, until upon awakening I could reconstruct many of its details with surprising clarity. I even made a sketch of some of the apparatus for Scott and he agreed that I must have drawn it from the memory of my dream. No man could have imagined unaided the sketches I spread upon paper for my friend.
Scott expressed an opinion that my research into hypnology had served to train my 'consciousness units' to a point where they had become more specialized and were capable of retaining a more accurate memory of their wandering. I formulated a theory that my consciousness units had actually increased in number, which would account in a measure for the vividness of the dream.
'I wonder,' I mused, 'if your time-power would have any influence upon the units.'
Scott hummed under his breath. 'I wonder,' he said.
The dream occurred at regular intervals. Had it not been for my absorption in my work, the dream might have become irksome, but I was elated, for I had found in myself a subject for investigation.
One night Scott brought forth a mechanism resembling the headphones of early radio sets, on which he had been working for weeks. He had not yet explained its purpose.
Pete,' he said, 'I want you to move your cot near the table and put on this helmet. When you go to sleep I'll plug it in the time-power. If it has any effect upon consciousness units, this will demonstrate it.'
He noticed my hesitation.
'Don't be afraid,' he urged. 'I will watch beside you. If anything goes wrong, I'll jerk the plug and wake you.'
So I put on the helmet and, with Scott Marston sitting in a chair beside my cot, went to sleep.
That night I seemed to actually walk in the laboratory. I saw no one, but I examined the place from end to end. I distinctly remember handling strange tools, the use of which I could only vaguely speculate upon. Flanking the main laboratory were many archways, opening into smaller rooms, which I did not investigate. The architecture of the laboratory and the archways was unbelievably alien, a fact I had noticed before but had never examined in such minute detail.
I opened my eyes and saw the anxious face of Scott Marston above me.
'What happened, Pete?' he asked.
I grasped his arm.
'Scott, I was there. I actually walked in the laboratory. I picked up tools. I can see the place now, plainer than ever before.'
I saw a wild light come into his eyes. He rose from the chair and stood towering above me as I propped myself up on my arms.
'Do you know what we've found, Pete! Do you realize that we can travel in time, that we can explore the future, investigate the past? We are not even bound to this sphere, this plane of existence. We can travel into the multi dimensions. We can go back to the first flush of eternity and see the cosmos born out of the womb of nothingness! We can travel forward to the day when all that exists comes to an end in the ultimate dispersion of wasted energy, when even space may be wiped out of existence and nothing but frozen time remains!'
'Are you mad, Scott?'
His eyes gleamed.
'Mot mad, Pete. Victorious! We can build a machine large enough, powerful enough, to turn every cell of our bodies into consciousness units. We can travel in body as well as in thought. We can live thousands of lifetimes, review billions of years. We can visit undreamed-of planets, unknown ages. We hold time in our hands!'
He beat his clenched fists together.
'That plant we placed in the machine. My God, Pete, do you know what happened to it? What primordial memories did that plant hold? Where is it now? Is it in some swamp of the carboniferous age? Has it returned to its ancestral era?'
Years passed, but we scarcely noticed their passing.
Our hair grayed slightly at the temples and the mantle of youth dropped slowly from us. No fame came to us, for our research had progressed to a point where it would have strained even the most credulous mind to believe what we could have unfolded.
Scott built his larger time-power machine, experimented with it, devised new
improvements, discovered new details… and rebuilt it, not once, but many times. The ultimate machine, squatting like an alien god in our workshop, bore little resemblance to the original model.
On my part, I delved more deeply into my study of dreams, relentlessly pursuing my theory of consciousness units. My progress necessarily was slower than that of my friend as I was dealing almost entirely with the abstruse although I tried to make it as practical as possible, while Scott had a more practical and material basis for his investigations.
Of course, we soon decided to make the attempt to actually transfer our bodies into the laboratory of my dreams. That is, we proposed to transform all the electrons, all the elements of our bodies, into consciousness units through the use of the time-power. A more daring scheme possibly had never been conceived by man.
In an attempt to impress upon my friend's mind a picture of the laboratory, I drew diagrams and pictures, visiting the laboratory many times, with the aid of the time-power, to gather more detailed data on the place.
It was not until I used hypnotism that I could finally transfer to Scott's mind a true picture of that massive room with its outre scientific equipment.
It was a day of high triumph when Scott, placed under the influence of the time-power, awoke to tell me of the place I had visited so often. It was not until then that we could be absolutely sure we had accomplished the first, and perhaps most difficult, step in our great experiment.
I plunged into a mad study of the psychology of the Oriental ascetic, who of all people was the furthest advanced in the matter of concentration, the science of willpower, and the ability to subjugate the body to the mind.
Although my studies left much to be desired, they nevertheless pointed the way for us to consciously aid the time-power element in reducing our corporeal beings to the state of consciousness units necessary for our actual transportation to the huge laboratory with which we had both grown so familiar.
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