The Universe Builders: Bernie and the Putty

by Steve LeBel

  Alcandor looked at Bernie, and said, “Such great power you have. Yet even you have limits.”

  “Tell me, Lord Alcandor, why you have summoned me.”

  “I met with Gondal, the Leader of the Senate. We then met with Speaker Zardok. We both tried to convince him to move to your new world, but we were not successful. I want to ask if there are any other options for us to consider.”

  “It’s good to consider options. The portal I hoped to use to transport your people may not be available.”

  “What happened?” he asked, surprised by Bernie’s failure.

  “The portal may not exist. I thought it did, but we couldn’t find one. My friend said he would keep looking, but he wasn’t optimistic.” Bernie realized he had once again said too much.

  “You have friends?” Alcandor blurted out. “How many more of you are there?”

  Bernie wasn’t sure how to close the door he’d opened. Should he tell him more? What good would it do? Alcandor can’t stop Billy. He couldn’t even stop Billy. But Alcandor certainly had a stake in the outcome. He might understand if he had all the facts. But it’s embarrassing. All his problems are really my fault. If I hadn’t fought with Billy, he wouldn’t be doing this. How could he tell Alcandor he was the reason his people had died? How could he tell him his whole world would be destroyed because he wasn’t a good enough builder to keep his job? Bernie was about to lose his job, his friends, and everything that ever mattered to him. But Alcandor was about to lose his life and the lives of everyone he knew. Hopelessness overwhelmed Bernie and sent him to a very lonely place.

  A hand placed on his arm startled Bernie and brought him back from that dark place. “Bernie, I would help you if I could,” Alcandor said softly.

  That caught Bernie off guard. Anything else he could have handled. This offer of help was so genuine, so heartfelt, it opened the floodgates inside him, and he found himself powerless to hold back the feelings that spilled forth.

  “It’s all Billy’s fault. He’s doing this, and I can’t stop him. I tried and tried.” Bernie knew gods weren’t supposed to cry, but he couldn’t hold back the tears. He didn’t want these people destroyed. And with each sob, more words came out. “My friends are helping me, but we can’t stop him. And if we can’t, they’re going to fire me, and then they’ll destroy your world. And there’s nothing I can do about it.” The sobs continued.

  * * *

  Alcandor watched in speechless fascination as the great god sobbed and his words spilled forth. The anguish Alcandor had sensed in the god had caused him to instinctively reach out and touch Him. Watching now, his hand still on the god’s arm, he witnessed the extraordinary changes that followed. Bernie’s gray beard and long hair faded away, as did the white cloak, leaving the god dressed in pants and a T-shirt. Next, the god’s sandals turned into shoes with long, untied laces.

  Yet the greatest change of all was to see the massive god shrink. With each sob, He became smaller and smaller until He was no more than Alcandor’s height. Alcandor was mesmerized by the sight. Suddenly, it all made sense. So many questions were answered. Alcandor realized Bernie was a youth. More powerful than anything he could imagine, but still a youngster.

  Bernie looked so small and so helpless. Alcandor was so moved, he reached out with his arms and embraced him. Bernie, for the first time in his life, felt something his father had never given him. He felt the strong arms of a man consoling him. Somehow, it filled an empty place for Bernie.

  Actually, it filled an empty place for both of them.

  I Blew It

  Journal Entry

  I can’t believe what happened. So much for ‘Master of the Universe’. I’m so embarrassed. I can’t ever tell Lenny or Suzie about this. Lenny will say I broke every rule in the First Contact Protocol Handbook.

  I know what Dad would have said if he’d seen me. “You’re a moron. How can you be so stupid? Get out of my sight!” Then he would have blamed Mom for everything and made her cry.

  Alcandor is so different.

  I can’t imagine what he must have thought. Here I am, the most powerful thing in his universe, crying my eyes out. He didn’t laugh or anything. He held me in his arms. I never felt that before, and it made me cry even more. My dad would never have done that.

  Afterwards, we talked for a long time. I told him everything. I told him about Billy and what he’s been doing. I told him how I’ve been trying to protect his world. I even told him what will happen if I fail. I know I shouldn’t have told him any of this, but I’m glad I did. At least he knows I’ve been trying.

  I really like him. He told me a lot about himself, too. He’s never been married or had kids. The only woman he ever loved was Vianna. When she married Zardok, he was heartbroken. He still blames himself for not demanding the Senate let him lead the exploration. But he knew Vianna wanted it, so he didn’t protest. He still regrets that decision.

  How is it possible to love someone that much? I don’t think my dad ever loved Mom like that. If he did, I never saw it. I feel sorry for Mom. She deserves better.

  It’s too bad Alcandor never had kids. He would be a terrific dad.

  Astronomy 101

  Bernie had begun visiting Alcandor in the evenings as soon as he got home from work. They talked of many things.

  Bernie saw the awe in Alcandor’s eyes. “You humble me, Bernie. Your knowledge has no limits. I’ve spent my life trying to learn, but all of my knowledge is nothing to yours. And most of my knowledge is wrong.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself. My knowledge comes from books. They made us read thousands of books in school. Each of those books has the combined wisdom of hundreds, if not thousands, of others. I’m only repeating what I learned from them.”

  “But how can they know such things? Their insights are truly amazing.”

  “Remember, you have disadvantages they didn’t have.”

  “How so?”

  “I created an extremely simple system here. The only thing you ever saw was your sun. Most people see multiple suns and sometimes even galaxies. In most universes, there are lots of planets and moons. Because things change all the time, people look for explanations. Eventually, they figure it out.

  “You lack any of these advantages. You have no celestial landmarks to gauge the passage of time. You only have one sun. Until I made the moon and the other two planets, there was nothing to be seen in your sky. All of your days are the same as the next.”

  “I think I understand. Even now, people are starting to refer to past events in terms of the number of cycles the night sun as completed, instead of the number of days.”

  “Exactly. And if you had seasons, you would probably count the number of times the most important season had happened. This would give you the concept of years. Now, not to get too technical, but if you lived on a world that…” continued Bernie.

  * * *

  “We live on a sphere? How can this be?”

  “Yes. Your world and the sun both have the same spherical shape. It is—”

  Alcandor, in his enthusiasm, interrupted. “The Sun is not flat? Our earth is not flat?”

  Bernie waited for him to absorb that information.

  “But how can anything survive on the upside down part of the world?”

  “It’s just like here. There’s a force that holds everything down. They don’t experience being upside down.”

  * * *

  Bernie was fascinated by how quickly Alcandor grasped new concepts. Everything Bernie said shattered and re-shattered Alcandor’s concepts about his world. Alcandor paused long enough to grasp each idea, incorporate it into his new world-view, and then rushed eagerly to the next question.

  * * *

  “But what of the great voyage? If our continent stretches along the equator of our world, as you said, then our voyagers traveled along the equator.”

  Bernie watched as Alcandor tried to visualize their world, waiting for his aha moment. It came quickly. “T
hey sailed west and returned from the east! That’s how it happened. They circled the world and arrived back where they started! We never understood how that could happen.”

  Alcandor thought back to the larger question, the reason the voyage had been launched in the first place. They had failed to find the resting place of the sun.

  “The Sun must travel around this equator too. We never discovered where He rested at night because He does not rest. He stays high in the sky and does not come down at all. Every day He makes the same journey our explorers made. This is why He departs to the West and He returns in the East!”

  * * *

  “Bernie, is it possible the monthly wasting of the night sun is just a shadow? That would mean our night sun has no light of its own but is illuminated by our Sun,” said Alcandor as his thoughts raced onward.

  * * *

  “Bernie, if our Sun doesn’t move, then our planet must be turning all the time so it just looks like He’s the one who is moving. This makes so much sense.” Alcandor thought through the implications.

  “Is it possible the night sun revolves around us? I could calculate this to see if I’m right. I should be able to calculate the tiny suns, the ones you call planets, to see if they revolve around us or around the Sun. I’m guessing they revolve around the Sun too…” Alcandor said as one insight after another exploded in his brain.

  * * *

  Bernie enjoyed watching this amazing man hurtle through concepts that normally took centuries to discover.

  He wondered if he had done any kindness here. This knowledge had forever changed Alcandor and made him different from the others on his planet. Some people already resented Alcandor’s fearless search for truth and his willingness to tell the world whatever he found. Such things can get you killed, thought Bernie. Perhaps it’s time to temper his enthusiasm.

  “I’m concerned your new knowledge could be harmful.”

  “How can knowledge be harmful?”

  “Many people become attached to their view of the world. If you challenge it, they can get upset.” Bernie watched as Alcandor turned his mind to this new question. Bernie had no doubt of Alcandor’s ability to see down this road as he had seen so clearly down the other roads of knowledge.

  Alcandor paced back and forth. Several times, he appeared about to speak, but his thoughts raced onward, leaving him no time to voice earlier thoughts. Finally, he said, “I begin to understand. The things I know undermine everything we believe.

  “We believe the Sun is our benefactor, the giver of everything we hold dear. To discover our Sun is not a god would be calamitous news. How can we trade our loving god for a ball of fire with no special powers or sentience or caring?” Alcandor took a deep breath and then said, “You’re right, Bernie. I can’t share this knowledge. Not at this time. We all need something to believe in.

  “And right now,” said Alcandor, “we desperately need our god.”

  Zoology 101

  No matter how busy he was, Bernie made time to visit Alcandor every day. Alcandor enjoyed their visits every bit as much as he did.

  “I still can’t figure out where you came from,” Bernie said one day. “I never put anything on this world except plants. I was going to add animals, but I never got that far.”

  “Animals? Do you mean people like us?”

  Bernie wondered how to explain animals to someone who had never seen any. “Well, think of it this way. There are two kinds of life on this world, plants and animals. In the plant category, out of an unlimited number of possibilities, I created thirty-seven types, mostly selected for their food value. In the animal category, there are also an unlimited number of possibilities. But here, there’s only one type, and that is you. Usually the animals look very different and most of them are not as intelligent as we are.”

  “Hmm… You’re intelligent. We’re intelligent. We look like each other. Is that just a coincidence?”

  “That’s one of the mysteries I haven’t been able to explain. You have no knowledge of any place before you came here?”

  “We’ve always been here. No one remembers anything else. The Sun has always been here. Some of us can even remember when we learned to make fire, built our first shelters, and learned to gather food from the sea. Some lords claim to recall the time before we had a spoken language.”

  “Sometimes people come from other worlds, but since there are no other worlds here with any life, that doesn’t explain your situation,” said Bernie, “although sometimes, life can start by itself.”

  “Perhaps that’s what happened with us.”

  “The problem with that hypothesis is there just wasn’t enough time. To evolve to a higher life form like yours takes millions of years. Billy destroyed all the life on this planet two million years ago. That’s when I reintroduced the plant life. Even if you got started then, it wouldn’t be possible to evolve into people in two million years. Look at the plants. They are still very close to the way I created them.”

  “One difference between you and me, Bernie, is my green skin, which is the same color as the plants. Perhaps there’s a connection between us and the plants?”

  “That gives me an idea. Can you tell me about your children? Do they look like you when they’re born?”

  “Yes, they’re small versions of us. They have green skin. They have fingers and toes like us. There’s a 500-day gestation period.”

  “Where can I find women whose gestation period is just starting?”

  Alcandor’s green skin showed a hint of red. “That might be a little awkward.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” said Bernie. “I’ll be right back.”

  * * *

  Bernie moved 600 days into the future. He scanned the city until he found a newborn baby. The child’s form looked just as Alcandor had described. Bernie was looking for something else.

  With unsupervised evolution, life moves from primitive forms to more advanced forms as the life form develops increasingly specialized survival skills. His teachers had said you could figure out how it evolved by doing phylogenetic analysis. You just watch the embryo from its fertilization to the time it’s born. Interestingly, life forms retain their evolutionary history in their cells.

  Bernie recalled one creation lab experiment where they observed the gestation process of an organism whose earliest embryo looked like a fish, changed to an amphibian, then to a reptile, and finally to a mammal before it looked like its parents and was born. This was what Bernie wanted to observe now.

  The young god moved his time lever backward as he focused on the newborn baby. Just before birth, the fetus looked like every parent wants their child to look: fully formed, with all its fingers and toes and no abnormalities. Bernie pushed back in time, eager to see what it would look like. Would the early embryo resemble one of Bernie’s plants? Maybe its progenitors were plants living deep in the ocean that survived when Billy destroyed the other life on the planet. The child’s form remained stable for quite a while. Finally, he saw it begin to change. Bernie observed all the way back to the point of fertilization. Well, not quite that far. Bernie was a little uncomfortable with that kind of stuff. He’d studied it in school and all, but he didn’t really have any firsthand experience with it.

  Now, Bernie moved his time lever forward and watched again as the zygote began its process of mitosis. The new cells divided over and over again until they looked like a large translucent gob. The gob stayed gob-like for days; the only noticeable change was taking on a light green color. Finally, the gob began shaping itself into the form of a child. Yet it was still translucent, and no bones or internal organs could be seen. Slowly, organs formed and bones materialized inside the gob.

  Bernie saw no evidence the child’s ancestors had once slithered across the ground, swum in the sea, or walked on all fours. The bones that formed were complete and ready for upright walking. By the end of 100 days, any hint of an evolutionary ancestor was lost.

  Bernie ran his time lever forward a
nd back several times, each time observing different aspects. He didn’t have to do that. He did it without thinking as he tried to absorb the inescapable explanation to his mystery. Alcandor’s people had not come from another planet. They had grown up right here. There was only one source they could have come from.

  Bernie returned to Alcandor, allowing a five-second interval between his disappearance and his reappearance. Otherwise he would have to explain that he actually left and returned in what Alcandor would experience as no more than the blink of an eye.

  “I found the answer,” Bernie said with excitement.

  Alcandor’s expression changed to one of surprise and something more. Shaking his head, he said, “We must be fools. We’ve been baffled by this question from the beginning, yet you answer it in seconds.”

  “You could never have guessed this answer,” said Bernie as he composed his thoughts. “Something we use to help us in our creation process is called Universe Putty. The gods combine their creative energy to make the putty. It’s very powerful. It can become anything.”

  “Are you saying we came from this putty?” From his expression, Bernie suspected Alcandor had hoped for a different answer.

  “Yes, I’m sure of it. The putty has a history of making unexpected things happen. This wouldn’t surprise anyone.”

  “But, putty?”

  “Think about it. Everything ever created in the universe bears the fingerprints of its creator. The gods created this putty. If you evolved out of the putty, it makes perfect sense you would look like us.”

  Alcandor considered this.

  Bernie added, “It also explains why you live so long.”

  “We live so long? What do you mean?”

  “Most animals don’t live very long. We’re taught to add a death directive when we create life forms because it helps them evolve and stay adapted to their world. I put directives in the plants. Gods don’t have one. That’s why we live so long. You don’t have one either.”