“Once you postulate infinity, not only can anything you can imagine happen, anything you can imagine MUST happen.”
Anonymous
Prelude
The problems facing the inhabitants of the third planet from a perfectly ordinary star on the outer fringe of an equally ordinary galaxy in the big wide universe can be traced to the first three nanoseconds after creation, what humans casually call the “big bang.” While there might not have been an infinite number of free bosons, mesons, hadrons, and quarks, the uncountable volume was close enough as to make no difference. As the four forces, gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear were developing, so was sentience. With a nearly infinite number of free subatomic particles being bathed in effectively unlimited energy it is hardly surprising that the first several trillion zeptoseconds saw billions of beings form, break apart, reform, and hold form.
Entities that operate at the quantum level where digital is the basis of being as well as thought do things unimaginably rapidly. During the next five seconds, as the universe was still a tiny sphere of about eight light years in diameter, they had created hundreds of societies and destroyed them all. Entities that operate at that level and those speeds, it turns out, are incapable of working together.
And so they spread, billions of entities that consisted of matrixes of energy and subatomic particles, lacking any mass, able to move through the quantum foam at will, beings of nothing but energy and curiosity.
Of them, one, nameless, formless, pure sentience with no morals but the will that went with its sentience, started another of the thousands of experiments it had going for its entertainment. It noticed the incredibly slow agglomeration of hydrogen atoms and down at the quantum level where will mattered, brought a few trillion of those atoms together, enough to have a measurable albeit tiny bit more gravity than the surrounding void. It watched for a few trillion nanoseconds and then went off to other entertainments.
With a kernel present, the free hydrogen in one insignificant corner of the universe, by now a few million light-years in diameter, a gigantic, expanding sphere growing less dense but more populated with the first few spots of light as stars were born, began gathering more atoms to itself. Hydrogen accumulated under its incredibly tiny mutual gravitational pull, slowly growing until the incredible pressures in the center of the infant star forced hydrogen atoms to fuse, creating helium and, per Mr. Einstein’s famous equation, releasing huge quantities of energy adding the yellow light of a baby G class star to the growing amount of light in the universe. The fusion at the core also squashed the simple hydrogen atoms with their single positively charged proton nucleus and single negatively charged electron together, creating helium first and then more complex atoms until matter stabilized at Uranium, the heaviest of the naturally occurring elements. Along the way the baby star spewed out these elements, adding to the general inventory of stuff in the universe.
The entity watched as the cosmic dust, the product of those terrible energies of the young suns that lit the universe, formed first an amorphous disc along the lines of gravitation from the spinning star and then as that dust succumbed to the minuscule gravitational pull when tiny particles clumped and then drew more to them. In the end, eight planets formed, the inner three of rock, the outer five simply balls of gas that never quite achieved enough size and density to ignite into suns. A fourth planet, dubbed Phaeton by the third planet’s scholars who cared about such things, failed to form, disrupted by the first of the gas giant planets, and the debris of its aborted birth still circle the star. Beyond the gas giants, accumulated cosmic detritus includes tiny planetoids.
The entity watched all of this in thousand year snatches, moving to visit it among the thousands of other experiments that it had scattered about.
About four billion years ago, as humans measure such things, the entity returned and found that as with all of the other rocky planets that formed in the sweet spot orbit around the sun where liquid water was allowed, life was spreading. The water was thick with carbon and under the millions-year-long thunderstorm had combined with the hydrogen in the water. Long-chain hydrogen and carbon molecules, hydrocarbons, interspersed with the occasional nitrogen and oxygen atoms formed the basic molecules of life.
This was the pattern the entity found to be common among its experiments. Carbon, the most egregious of atoms, had a special affinity for hydrogen and where hydrocarbons formed, life was sure to follow. There were a few exceptions. On one planet, a life form of silicone was slowly spreading along the edges of the oceans. The entity wondered if it would someday cover the planet, and then moved on. On another planet, life at the molten core brooded and wondered if there could be more than simply thinking.
On that third planet from the sun, life was spreading. Tiny single-celled creatures swarmed in the thick water. In a burst of inspiration, the entity invested a few trillion nanoseconds to touch two of the creatures, changing them subtly so that one could accept part of the code of life from the other. Then it moved on to other experiments.
Over the next few thousand thousand years the entity watched, fascinated, as that experiment played out. From that first pair able to exchange the code of life, an amazing thing had happened. Each of the subtle changes as the energy from the sun knocked single atoms out of the molecules in the code was passed along. Only a million years ago, as humans measure such things, the entity found the third planet covered in life in a variety unknown anywhere else it found in its wide-ranging travels.
After a few more cycles, while the entity made its circuit of its various experiments, it stopped, captivated.
Here was something far beyond life. On this insignificant planet, something truly significant occurred. Beyond life, here the entity found sentience.
It watched, fascinated, as oddly shaped, bilaterally symmetrical creatures, crouched around fire, heated and ingested other creatures, and communicated.
This was outside of the entity’s experience, the first time in countless zeptoseconds it had a completely new thing to observe.
The entity discarded its old paradigm and moved its frame of reference from zeptoseconds to seconds.
And it stayed.
The other experiments were not forgotten, but the entity’s attention didn’t return to them.
It was so fascinated with these creatures that, manifestly, could think that it decided to become one of them. It studied the process for several hundred thousand seconds and then when two of the creatures engaged in the sharing of the code of life, it inserted itself into the complex chain of hydrocarbons that served as the codebook.
And it was absorbed.
Interlude
The entity was immortal.
Its body was not.
But once in the body, it was bound.
It could stretch the short life span of one of the bodies, what the creatures of the third planet called “humans,” far longer than others, but there were limits. As it did that, though, it provided the basis for legends that moved through the human consciousness. It could use all of its body’s strength and the great heroes, Hercules and Beowulf, the Phoenician Melqart, Egyptian Heryshaf, and Japanese Kintarō grew from what he did.
But it was more than that.
He, the entity thought of itself as “He” by then, could use all of that magnificent brain that had evolved. He could, as humans say, “figure things out.” He learned to make and control fire and the legend of Prometheus was created along with his equivalent in other cultures.
But it was more than that.
Even in his human form, the entity could still work at the level of the quantum foam.
He could, not to put too fine a point on it, do magic.
He became, again not to put too fine a point on it, for all intents and purposes a god and he was treated as such.
Occasionally, very rarely but one time in every ten million or so, one of his acolytes would have a talent, a capability that allowed him, or sometimes even her, to manipulate the quantum foam. Oh, these pitiful creatures could not get close to His level of control but one, a woman as it turned out, could reach deeper into the foam than anyone else and therein lies the tale.
She was a sensual woman who enjoyed the sensations of her body and learned how to use it to get what she wanted.
It turned out that He wanted her.
Oh, her name wasn’t Jezebel or Eve or Morgan le Fay or Salome. In this culture in this place she was i’a wikiwiki which, in the language of the island culture He was enjoying at the time meant Quick Fish. And she was quick although, as He would explain in great detail if asked, she was most certainly not a fish. She was purely a mammal and she could draw pleasure from a man that he had never imagined.
The racial consciousness finds echoes of this in the stories of Leda and the Swan, Vivasvata Manu and Shraddga, or God and Mary.
So He taught her secrets he had never allowed one of the creatures to learn. And since he was utterly infused into his human existence, the spell she cast locked him.
i’a wikiwiki lived a very long life and, to her credit, ruled well over a prosperous people. But she was not immortal and eventually she died. As so often happens among humans, the society she was so central in developing was dead by the time her oldest granddaughter ascended to the throne.
Story
“Hoʻokuʻu wau iā ʻoe mai ka hōʻino ʻana o ka mea nāna e hoʻomalu i ka lua pele,” the young Polynesian carpenter yelled, holding his damaged thumb, wondering if he would lose it. The cut was deep enought that bright red arterial blood spurted until he clamped his handkerchief tightly on the wound, got his initial panic/anger under control, and went in search of the carpenter foreman to notify him before heading to the Emergency Room. He had no idea that the words he uttered translated as “I release you from the curse of the one who controls the volcano,” in the vowel rich language of the islands. For that matter, neither did his grandfather from whom he had learned the phrase. He just liked the sound of it.
The universe would probably have been okay if not for one of those strange coincidences that are only possible in a reality of infinite, or at least almost infinite, possibilities.
Unfortunately, coincidences do happen.
A drop of the unfortunate carpenter’s blood, in an accident only possible when infinity is approached, fell onto the tampon a terribly embarrassed virgin had discarded down the local storm sewer.
The universe and all it contained was still okay, though. Surely this string of nearly impossible coincidences was at its end.
Alas, there was one more twist of fortune to play out.
The tampon, now with the virgin male carpenter’s blood mixed with the virgin’s blood, and activated by the ancient curse release, drifted slowly in the now-polluted rainwater until it snagged on a stray branch.
The Universe would have been okay but in the final chain of unfortunate events, a tourist discarded the lei with which he had been gifted, clearly having no understanding of its significance. He, at least, had the common courtesy to hang it on a convenient bench as he passed by.
A single petal of the Cordyline fruticosa plant, what the natives called the Ti plant, important in their culture and religion, broke free from the receptacle that held the petals to form the beautiful flower that had been part of the lei.
It drifted in the wind until it fell to earth in a small rivulet of rain water.
It fell through a grate to join the bigger stream.
It came to rest on the tampon.
Deep in the earth, in a small cave long ago sealed with the lava of the planet’s core, something stirred.
The End
The Entity woke after uncouontable zeptoseconds of imprisonment.
A new aspect had been added to it’s being after the eternity of confinement it suffered.
It was sentience, curiosity, and RAGE!
It thought for seven milliseconds, contemplating the punishment it would mete out.
It reached into the quantum foam and changed the weak nuclear force, just a little tweak.
It barely had time to utter the binary equivalent of “Oops,” before throughout the universe the bonds that held creation failed. There was a brief flash of light as all of the stuff of the universe returned to it original building blocks.
Three milliseconds later the universe was a dark place with free bosons, mesons, hadrons, and quarks with no ability to form anything more complex.
Reality ended.
