1.4
Post-Encounter Deposition
Brother Michael Jablonski
Prior, St. Joseph of Cupertion’s
Monastery, Luna
The universe, for some reason, appears to us a grid of Cartesian space, occupied by masses slung around through Newtonian inertia, when in fact we know full well it’s the iron fist of relativity smashing the rippling pool of quantum mechanics. Or vice versa. I don’t know why this should be so, but I think the Beings have told us, or tried to, that even the universes of Einstein and Schrödinger are illusions. Time and space and matter and energy—in other words, all the things that make a universe exist to our senses at all—are themselves illusions, mere shadows cast by some cunningly simple underlying . . . stuff. And it seems to strike them mighty strange, that we perceive only a handful of derivative quantities, while they perceive the thing itself (and perhaps only the thing itself).
Wiser heads may disagree (with good and calculable reason!), but I think for the Beings there is no difference between their own size and the size of a volume of space to which they’re paying attention. There is no difference between their own lifespans and the span of time they happen to be thinking about. I think their existence within the universe must require they consume something and excrete a different something in order to, I guess, increase the local entropy. Entropy is not conserved, they insist, and so I imagine time still has a direction for them. Can they swim against it like salmon? Can they pluck information from other portions of the stream?
One struggles to find appropriate metaphors for something so countersensual, but I find it useful to nail down the extremes. Can they swell to observe the entire simultaneous universe, for one infinitesimal moment? Can they shrink sufficient to know all of history for a single geometric point—all that passes through it or doesn’t, ever? And betwixt these bookends, can they perhaps sniff a galaxy for a millisecond? Hug a planet for a year? Follow a human through all the days of her life? And in so doing, do they forget all that falls outside the bubble? Are they diffuse in space and time, straining vast energies to attend to something as tiny as we? Recall, a human life does not occur at a single point in space, but whirls around the axis of a planet that moves in both solar and galactic orbits, in a rapidly ballooning universe. Imagine, then, the difficulty of pinning a tail on that donkey!
This is how I imagine the Beings, and so if I ask one what will happen to me next year, I may be asking for something so exceedingly difficult or costly, and so exceedingly teensy, that the very concept strikes them absurd. And so the question begs itself: What common reference point can we have with creatures such as these, beyond our mutual astonishment at one another’s existence?
Michael: “Why did you contact us?”
Beings: “You are amazing.”
Michael: “Have you contacted others?”
Beings: “Not yet.”
Michael: “Not yet? Will you?”
Beings: “Difficult to explain.”
Michael: “Why?”
Beings: “Self-consistent structures in spacetime: conserved.”
Michael: “What?”
Beings: “Difficult to explain.”
Michael: “Are you aware of other intelligent beings, besides yourselves and us?”
Beings: “Not yet.”
Michael: “Are you looking?”
Beings: “Difficult to explain.”
***
Michael: “Are you here to help us?”
Beings: “. . . ? . . . Do you need help?”
Michael: “I don’t know. Do we?”
Beings: “Amazing.”
Beings: “You perceive energy associated with . . . the past?”
Michael: “Yes. We can see the light of stars, emitted eons ago and light-eons away.”
Beings: “Amazing. Do you perceive a . . . beginning of time?”
Michael: “Not directly, with our senses. But we know it’s there.”
Beings: “Amazing.”
Michael: “What came before the beginning?”
Beings: “Disallowed.”
Michael: “What? Disallowed by whom?”
Beings: “Difficult to explain.”
Michael: “Do you perceive the universe as having a Creator?”
Beings: “Yes!”
Michael: “Tell me about the Creator.”
Beings: “Disallowed.”
Michael: “Are you emissaries of the Creator?”
Beings: “. . . No?”
Michael: “But you perceive Him?”
Beings: “Not directly.”
Michael: “You perceive Him indirectly?”
Beings: “Difficult to explain.”
Michael: “Why was the universe created?”
Beings: “Disallowed.”
Michael: “Disallowed in what way?”
Beings: “Information horizon.”
Michael: “Like the surface of a black hole?”
Beings: “. . . Yes?”
Michael: “Are we inside a black hole?”
Beings: “Difficult to explain.”
Michael: “Indirectly or not, you know something about God.”
Beings: “. . .”
Michael: “Do you perceive God’s love?”
Beings: “. . .”
Michael: “Do you perceive God’s handiwork in the structure of the universe?”
Beings: “. . . Yes?”
Michael: “What does the handiwork tell you?”
Beings: “. . .”
Michael: “You don’t like these questions.”
Beings: “No.”
Michael: “The Creator is very important to us.”
Beings: “. . .”
Michael: “We seek to know Him.”
Beings: “. . .”
Michael: “We seek to love Him.”
Beings: “. . .”
Michael: “Can you help us do that?”
Beings: “Unlikely.”
Michael: “Can you try?”
Beings: “. . .”