Mr g (3 page)

In my anger, I smashed thousands of nascent universes. Some, I strangled the space out of them, leaving dry husks of nothingness. From Void to Void. Others, I spewed in so much energy that they exploded in a soundless catastrophe. Some universes I hurled at other universes, splattered them into each other. I ripped apart space. I scattered geometry. I crushed and destroyed. Never before had I felt such emotion, and the Void seethed with my anger, the Void’s music devolved to a screech of clashed chords.

What are you doing? cried my uncle. He stooped to pick up pieces of the fractured universes. You have frightened me, and your aunt as well. The two of them rushed about as if looking for somewhere to hide, then cowered a distance away, each trying to shelter the other.

I would, of course, never do anything to harm Uncle Deva and Aunt Penelope, but I found myself behaving without any thought. I was pure action, and I watched myself wreak havoc as if it were another being moving about and crushing alien creations. I was outside myself. How long this went on was difficult to gauge. Eventually, my fury softened. Looking about, I could see that I had annihilated many of the universes I had made. But many more remained, growing larger. I had not destroyed everything.

I told Uncle and Aunt about the stranger. The arrogance, said Aunt Penelope. He had no right to come here, and certainly not in that manner. Just let him show up again. You should not be discouraged.

I don’t know, I said to my aunt. Perhaps you were right. I should have left everything just as it was, in an infinite nothingness. I do not want my creations to end in tragedies. I should have left things as they were.

Tragedies? said my aunt. Are you referring to the creation of animate beings in your universes? Listen to me, Nephew. First, you have not made animate beings. So far, you have made only empty cosmoses. And secondly, even if you do create animate beings, you do not know that they will suffer tragedies just because that swaggering desperado said so. You forget your power, Nephew. You made those cosmoses. If you choose to, you will make animate beings. And you will make them as you wish. Have faith in your creations. Yes, yes, said Uncle Deva. Have faith. Your aunt and I stand behind you. Don’t we, Penelope? Absolutely.

I looked out into the Void, at the billions of cosmoses whizzing about, and I imagined populating each of them with matter, both animate and inanimate. I imagined atoms and molecules. I imagined gases and liquids and solids. I imagined silica and soil, atmospheres, chemical elements, oceans and lakes, mountains, forests, great lumbering clouds, electrical impulses in space, movements of ions, gelatinous membranes, bacteria. I imagined brains, some made of matter and some made of energy. I imagined intelligent creatures. And
their
creations. Their cities. I tried to picture the future. Would my living creations suffer and writhe in some agony? Was it necessarily so? Or would they have only pleasure and joy? I felt the future, but I could not hear it. I listened. Could I hear the voices of the trillions of creatures who might come to be? Could they tell me of life? Could they tell me of suffering? But I could not hear them. All I could hear was the soft adagio of the Void. I felt the future, but the future did not exist. I gazed at the billions of universes, fraught with their emptiness and possibilities, and I wondered. Perhaps I should make only nonliving matter. That would be simpler, and safe. But could I limit my productions to inanimate matter? I could make whatever I wished, but could I be certain about the subsequent movements of each atom once made? Could I be certain that trillions of dull and dead atoms could never combine and give rise to a thing that had life? And there were so many worlds.

May I give you some advice, Nephew? said Aunt Penelope. The three of us had been wandering about in the Void for some time, talking about how our existence had changed and sweeping up bits of debris still lying about. Don’t give Him advice, said Uncle. He doesn’t need our advice. Hush, said Aunt Penelope. I am entitled to give advice to my nephew. If it is not to your liking, then give Him your own advice. I would be careful, said Uncle. Do you really—Aunt Penelope cut off Uncle with one of her looks. But now that she’d been regularly combing her hair, she did not appear nearly so fierce as she once had. Still.

Aunt Penelope took me aside, leaving Uncle by himself. Now, I want you to listen to me, she said. This is no criticism. Your uncle and I have always been impressed with you. But we are your elders, and we do notice what goes on around here … You shouldn’t do things with such haste. You rush into things. Slow down. Take your time with this project.

I hadn’t been aware I was rushing, I said to my aunt.

All these things flying about? said Aunt. You made them so quickly. Why don’t you concentrate on just
one
of your universes and see if you can do a good job with it.

That’s excellent advice, said Uncle Deva, standing some distance away.

Which one would you like? I asked my aunt. It wasn’t really a serious question. There were quadrillions of spheres and hyperboloids flying about, by now having inflated to at least 10
¹⁷
times larger than they were just a few moments ago. This one, said my aunt, and she suddenly reached up and caught one of the spheres flying past. Work on this one. We have confidence in you, your uncle and I, and we are certain that you can do well with it. Now that you’ve started this project. Just take your time, that’s all I’m suggesting.

Perhaps my aunt had given me decent advice. The universe in question was nearly spherical in shape, spinning slightly, and it was inflating with a rabid determination. The first thing I did was to slow its expansion. There, said Aunt Penelope, at least now we can examine it. We? said Deva. Let Him examine it on His own.

I should mark this one, I said, so that it will not get lost among the others. I pinched the universe very slightly, making a small dip in its middle. Interrupted in its flight and caught, the thing sat there quietly.

We must give it a name, said Uncle Deva. Everything has a name. Something with a lilt. Something pretty. Why not call it Amrita. Or Anki. Or Aalam.

Oh mush, said Aunt Penelope. You’re being sentimental. And you can’t name an entire universe anyway.

Of course you can, said Uncle. A name expresses its essence. A name gives a thing character, personality.

But a universe doesn’t have a personality, said Aunt. As I understand it, a universe is a … well, a totality. A universe is everything that is, as far as the inside of the thing.

But we’re on the outside, said Uncle Deva.

If we have to name it, said my aunt, at least call it a number, not one of those mushy things you said.

A number! cried Uncle. That’s so impersonal. Numbers are so remote. What do you say, Nephew?

I looked at the pinched cosmos, still held firmly by my aunt as if she were afraid it might go whizzing off any moment. It seemed pretty featureless to me. But perhaps it would grow into its name. All right, I said. I’ll call it Aalam-104729. So be it.

104729? said Uncle. What a random number.

It’s the ten thousandth prime number in base ten, I said. I won’t forget it.

You see why I wanted a name? said Uncle. Now put some spirit into the thing.

Look who’s telling Him what to do, said Aunt Penelope. A moment ago, you didn’t—

Everything must have a spirit, Uncle said to me. Do it however you want, just give it a spirit. And use
feeling
. You’ve made something grand, but it will be grander if it has feeling and beauty and harmony and—

Deva, I’ve never heard you talk so much, said Aunt Penelope. This discussion is wearing me out. I’m going to sit. Where’s my chair? Where’s my chair? Uncle Deva shuffled off and fetched the chair, which he had named Guptachandraha. My aunt, clutching Aalam-104729, went over to her chair and sat down. She stretched out and sighed and began mumbling: First it’s this, then it’s that. If it’s not one thing, it’s another, not one thing, it’s another, not one thing, another. Her mumbling gradually tapered off, and she pretended to fall asleep.

I have to think about this, I said. I’m afraid if I put in spirit and feeling, before anything else, the thing is going to get all jumbled up and confused and end up in chaos. It needs to start off with some
organizational principles
.

OK. OK, said Uncle. It’s your project. Organizational principles. OK. We will leave you to it. Do tell us when you are finished with the … organizational principles. Leave Him to it, he said to Aunt Penelope, who was still pretending to sleep. Uncle walked over and extricated Aalam-104729 from her grip and gave it to me. Organizational principles, Uncle said once more. Take your time with it, said Aunt Penelope. That’s all I ask.

I generally try to be everywhere at once, but I moved to a place in the Void where I could be alone. I meditated, and I entered the pinched universe and looked about. It was empty of course. I imagined moving in various directions in space, and I also imagined traveling forwards and backwards in time, and I decided that I wanted my universe to be completely symmetrical in time and in space, so that one place and one moment should be the same as any other place and moment. This was by far the simplest cosmos I could make, and I wanted my first universe to be simple. Symmetry of position and moment. This was my first law. And I remade Aalam-104729 to obey this first law. For a few moments, the universe quivered and murmured, and then it was still. The first law seemed good to me.

But then I began considering future and past. Inside Aalam-104729, I wanted to know clearly that the future was different from the past, so that any intelligent being could tell that
things were happening
. Wasn’t that precisely the point of waking from my slumber, to make things happen?

So I remade the energy in my universe so that it was all concentrated in a near-perfect order, a razor-sharp contour of energy. Almost at once, the razor of energy began fraying at the edges, loosening, dulling, and diffusing away, and this was good because now there was a definite future and past. At any moment, the past was the direction of time with greater sharpness and shape, and the future was the direction with less. I was pleased.

Then I made a second law. There would be no absolutes in my universe, only relatives. In particular, there would be no such thing as absolute stillness in Aalam-104729. I wanted the only point of absolute stillness to be Myself. If something appeared still from one perspective, from another perspective it would be in motion. If a material object changed its motion, going from one motion to another, everything should remain the same, with no reference point of stillness to say that one motion was any different than another. This second law was a principle of symmetry, like the first, and there was an artistic beauty in it, and it was good. Or—if a principle could not be deemed good or bad—at least it was satisfying, it seemed in harmony with the music of the Void.

The second law necessarily tied time and space together, since motion involved the two. A particular period of time would signify a particular distance in space, with the proportionality between the two being a fundamental speed of the universe. This relationship between time and space was also beautiful and good.

Was I acting too hastily? I wondered if Aunt Penelope was watching. Even though I was inside Aalam-104729, I could look outside, because I could look everywhere, and I could see Aunt and Uncle far off in the Void, paying no attention to me. Uncle Deva had somehow installed himself in my aunt’s chair, stretched out as if he meant to spend quite a long time there. Meanwhile, she was swatting at him, shoving and pushing in an attempt to dislodge him.

With Uncle and Aunt thus occupied, I made a third law: Every event should be necessarily caused by a previous event. I did not want things happening willy-nilly in my new universe. Events without cause would lead to a reckless cosmos, a universe ruled by chance. According to my third law, for every event, there would be a previous event without which it would not have happened. And that previous event would also require and be determined by a previous event, and so on, back through an immense chain of events to the very
first event
, which was my original creation of the universe. This law was also good. It prevented pandemonium. It bestowed Aalam-104729 with causality. It bestowed logic and rationality. And it connected everything. Cause-and-effect relationships would spread out from every event to every other event, even to multiple subsequent events, ripple through the cosmos, and bind the totality of being in a web of interdependence and connectedness. Even the smallest event would be linked to other events. Wasn’t this a kind of spirituality? See, I wanted to tell Uncle Deva (who was at that moment still scuffling with Aunt Penelope over the single chair in existence). Rationality and logic can be spiritual.

What’s more, there was still plenty of room for the mysterious. Because even if a very intelligent creature within this universe could trace each event to a previous event, and trace that event to a previous event, and so on, back and back, the creature could not penetrate earlier than the First Event. The creature could never know where that First Event came from because it came from outside the universe, just as the creature could never experience the Void. The origin of the First Event would always remain unknowable, and the creature would be left wondering, and that wondering would leave a mystery. So my universe would have logic and rationality and organizational principles, but it would also have spirituality and mystery.

Three laws. I floated about the interior of Aalam-104729, squeezing the vacuum here and there to see if the laws held, and they did. No loose parts or inconsistencies. I was satisfied with what I had done. More than satisfied. In retrospect, creating a principled universe did not seem so difficult. I had been concerned for no reason. I was eager to make a fourth law. Perhaps I’d do a dozen. Or two dozen.

What should I do for my fourth? Uncle Deva wanted harmony. My symmetry principles were already harmonious, but I could do better. I divided the ubiquitous energy into parts, each with its corresponding force, and I ordered the forces in a progression from the weakest to the strongest. All right. Harmony. I decreed that each force in the progression was stronger than the preceding force by a constant ratio, like an even-tempered musical scale. Done. What could be more harmonious! But, almost immediately, the universe began writhing and straining. Space fissured. Pieces of emptiness screamed through the tears. Shortly thereafter, the universe turned inside out and was gone, and I found myself standing beyond in the Void. Evidently, the fourth law was not compatible with the first three. The constant ratio of forces, although beautiful, contradicted the even greater beauty of embedded relativity. Looking about, I saw that, fortunately, Aunt and Uncle were nowhere within sight. Quickly, I caught another universe of roughly the same size and shape as Aalam-104729, pinched it slightly at its midsection as I’d done before, and gave it my first three laws. Three it would be, and no more. I wouldn’t make that particular blunder again.