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Now every time I have a creative burst I think of this podcast. It was mentioned in Jonah Lehrer's popular book, too, which I posted on. Even though a horrific disease like dementia is the trigger for these creative binges, there is some silver lining here because it puts a spotlight on the fact that the creative wiring of genius lies within all of us. Listen to the 20 minute Radiolab podcast here.
I recently read "Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins and it blew my socks off. It touches on some of my favorite topics: mysticism, transhumanism, the afterlife, spirituality, evolution, consciousness, mythology, and on and on and on. It's so full of optimism and wit that I highly recommend it. One of the main characters, Wiggs Dannyboy, was admittedly based, in parts, off of the famed psychonaut, Timothy Leary. Near the end of the novel is a chapter entitled "Dannyboy's Theory," which may as well have been called "The Wiggs Dannyboy Manifesto" or "Wiggs' Existential Thesis." However you'd like to describe it, it's pure awesome. The following is not the entirety of Dannyboy's theory, but the parts that stood out to me as most profound. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did.
"Humankind is about to enter the floral stage of its evolutionary development. On the mythological level, which is to say, on the psychic/symbolic level (no less real than the physical level), this event is signaled by the death of Pan. Pan, of course, represents animal consciousness. Pan embodies mammalian consciousness, although there are aspects of reptilian consciousness in his personality, as well. Reptilian consciousness did not disappear when our brains entered their mammalian stage. Mammalian consciousness was simply laid over the top of reptilian consciousness, and in many unenlightened—underevolved, underdeveloped—individuals, the mammalian layer was thin and porous, and much reptile energy has continued to seep through. When our remote ancestors crawled out of the sea, they no doubt had the minds of fish. Characteristics of mammal consciousness are warmth, generosity, loyalty, love (romantic, platonic, and familial), joy, grief, humor, pride, competition, intellectual curiosity, and appreciation of art and music. In late mammalian times, we evolved a third brain...whose principal part was the neocortex, a dense rind of nerve fibers about an eighth of an inch thick that was simply molded over top of the existing mammal brain. Brain researchers are puzzled by the neocortex. What is its function? Why did it develop in the first place? Moreover, neuromelanin absorbs light and has the capacity to convert light into other forms of energy. So Ely was correct. The neocortex is light-sensitive and can, itself, be lit up by higher forms of mental activity, such as meditation or chanting. The ancients were not being metaphoric when they referred to "illumination." With the emergence of the neocortex, the floral properties of the brain, which had, for millions of years, been biding their time, waiting their turn, began to make their move— the gradual move toward a dominant floral consciousness. When life was a constant struggle between predators, a minute-by-minute battle for survival, reptile consciousness was necessary. When there were seas to be sailed, wild continents to be explored, harsh territory to be settled, agriculture to be mastered, mine shafts to be sunk, civilization to be founded, mammal consciousness was necessary. In its social and familial aspects, it is still necessary, but no longer must it dominate.
We need a more relaxed, contemplative, gentle, flexible kind of person, for only he or she can survive (and expedite) this very new system that is upon us. Only he or she can participate in the next evolutionary phase. It has definite spiritual overtones, this floral phase of consciousness. The most intense spiritual experiences all seem to involve the suspension of time. It is the feeling of being outside of time, of being timeless, that is the source of ecstasy in meditation, chanting, hypnosis, and psychedelic drug experiences. Although it is briefer and less lucid, a timeless, egoless state (the ego exists in time, not space) is achieved in sexual orgasm, which is precisely why orgasm feels so good. Even drunks, in their crude, inadequate way, are searching for the timeless time. Alcoholism is an imperfect spiritual longing. In a hundred different ways, we have mastered the art of space. We know a great deal about space. Yet we know pitifully little about time. It seems that only in the mystic state do we master it. The "smell brain"—the memory area of the brain activated by the olfactory nerve—and the "light brain"—the neocortex—are the keys to the mystic state. With immediacy and intensity, smell activates memory, allowing our minds to travel freely in time. The most profound mystical states are ones in which normal mental activity seems suspended in light. In mystic illumination, as at the speed of light, time ceases to exist. With an increased floral consciousness, humans will begin to make full use of their "light brain" and to make more refined and sophisticated use of their "smell brain." We live now in an information technology. Flowers have always lived in an information technology. Flowers gather information all day. At night, they process it. For one thing, information gathered from daily newspapers, soap operas, sales conferences, and coffee Hatches is inferior to information gathered from sunlight. (Since all matter is condensed light, light is the source, the cause of life. Therefore, light is divine. The flowers have a direct line to God. Our own nocturnal processing is part-time work. The information our conscious minds receive during waking hours is processed by our unconscious during so-called "deep sleep." We are in deep sleep only two or three hours a night. For the rest of our sleeping session, the unconscious mind is off duty. It gets bored. It craves recreation. So it plays with the material at hand. In a sense, it plays with itself. It scrambles memories, juggles images, rearranges data, invents scary or titillating stories. This is what we call "dreaming." Some people believe that we process information during dreams. Quite the contrary. A dream is the mind having fun when there is no processing to keep it busy. In the future, when we become more efficient at gathering quality information and when floral consciousness becomes dominant, we will probably sleep longer hours and dream hardly at all. Plants collect odors as well as emit them. The rose may be in an olfactory relationship with the lilac. Another possibility is that between the trees a kind of telepathy is involved. There is also the possibility that all of what we call mental telepathy is olfactory. We don't read another's thoughts, we smell them. We know that schizophrenics can smell antagonism, distrust, desire, etc., on the part of their doctors, visitors, or fellow patients, no matter how well it might be visually or vocally concealed. The olfactory nerve may be small compared to a rabbit's, but it's our largest cranial receptor, nevertheless. Who can guess what "invisible" odors it might detect? As floral consciousness matures, telepathy will no doubt become a common medium of communication. With reptile consciousness, we had hostile confrontation. With mammal consciousness, we had civilized debate. With floral consciousness, we'll have empathetic telepathy. A floral consciousness and a data-based, soft technology are ideally suited for one another. A floral consciousness and a pacifist internationalism are ideally suited for one another. A floral consciousness and an easy, colorful sensuality are ideally suited for one another. (Flowers are more openly sexual than animals. The Tantric concept of converting sensual energy to spiritual energy is a floral ploy.) A floral consciousness and an extraterrestrial exploration program are ideally suited for one another. (Earthlings are blown aloft in silver pods to seed distant planets.) A floral consciousness and an immortalist society are ideally suited suited for one another. (Flowers have superior powers of renewal, and the logevity of trees is celebrated. The floral brain is the organ of eternity.) Lest we fancy that we shall endlesly and effortlessly be as the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la, let us bear in mind that reptilian and mammalian energies are still very much with us. Externally and internally. Obviously, there are powerful reptilian forces in the Pentagon and the Kremlin; and in the pulpits of churches, mosques, and synagogues, where deathist dogmas of judgment, punishment, self-denial, martyrdom, and afterlife supremacy are preached. But there are also reptilian forces within each individual. Myth is neither fiction nor history. Myths are acted out in our own psyches, and they are repetitive and ongoing. Beowulf, Siegfried, and the other dragon slayers are aspects of our own unconscious minds.
At the birth of Christ, the cry resounded through the ancient world, "Great Pan is dead." The animal mind was about to be subdued. Christ's mission was to prepare the way for floral consciousness. In the East, Buddha performs an identical function. It should be emphasized that neither significance of their heroics should be apparent. We dispatched them with their symbolic swords and lances to slay reptile consciousness. The reptile brain is the dragon within us. When, in evolutionary process, it became time to subdue mammalian consciousness, a less violent tactic was called for. Instead of Beowulf with his sword and bow, we manifested Jesus Christ with his message and example. Jesus Christ, whose commandment "Love thy enemy" has proven to be too strong a floral medicine for reptilian types to swallow; Jesus Christ, who continues to point out to job-obsessed mammalians that the lilies of the field have never punched time clocks.) At the birth of Christ, the cry resounded through the ancient world, "Great Pan is dead." The animal mind was about to be subdued. Christ's mission was to prepare the way for floral consciousness. In the East, Buddha performs an identical function. It should be emphasized that neither Christ nor Buddha harbored the slightest antipathy toward Pan. They were merely fulfilling their mytho-evolutionary roles. Christ and Buddha came into our psyches not to deliver us from evil but to deliver us from mammal consciousness. The good versus evil plot has always been bogus. The drama unfolding in the universe—in our psyches—is not good against evil but new against old, or, more precisely, destined against obsolete. Just as the grand old dragon of our reptilian past had to be pierced by the hero's sword to make way for Pan and his randy minions, so Pan himself has had to be rendered weak and ineffectual, has had to be shoved into the background of our ongoing psychic progression. Because Pan is closer to our hearts and our genitals, we shall miss him more than we shall miss the dragon. We shall miss his pipes that drew us, trembling, into the dance of lust and confusion. We shall miss his pranksterish overturning of decorum; the way he caused the blood to heat, the cows to bawl, and the wine to flow. Most of all, perhaps, we shall miss the way he mocked us, with his leer and laughter, when we took our blaze of mammal intellect too seriously. But the old playfellow has to go. We've known for two thousand years that Pan must go. There is little place for Pan's great stink amidst the perfumed illumination of the flowers. When Western artists wished to demonstrate that a person was holy, they painted a ring of light around the divine one's head. Eastern artists painted a more diffused aura. The message was the same. The aura or the halo signified that the light was on in the subject's brain. The neocortex was fully operative. Maybe, as Dr. Dannyboy has postulated, all these things, including disease and our relationship with time, are merely bad habits. If so, an ultimate victory is possible. For individuals, if not for the mass. And maybe evolution—playful, adventurous, unpredictable, infuriatingly slow (by our standards of time) evolution—will rescue us eventually, according to a master plan. To physically overcome death—is that not the goal?—we must think unthinkable thoughts and ask unanswerable questions. Yet we must not lose ourselves in abstract vapors of philosophy. Death has his concrete allies, we must enlist ours. Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much comfort, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer. Thus, thou must vow upon this day that shouldst thou be living still when these events transpire, that thou wiltst battle them and refuseth prosperity to any immortalist thrust that doth not rise from man's soul and heart as well as his mind. Do promise me now." Alas, because they fight with reason only, making no advance in the area of soul and heart, true immortality wiltst be denied them. If I am truly immortal, I am my own grandchild, my own descendant, my own dynasty."
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Absolutely magical words. Wisdom doesn't take a big vocabulary. Big ideas don't require PhDs. If I can find more material from Maharshi I will definitely add him to my Master Teacher list.
My favorite quote:
"The keystone of the Maharshi's teaching is his self-inquiry...his infallible direct path to self-realization coupled with total devotional surrender to god, self or guru...The immortal self, or sachidananda, or pure existence consciousness awareness bliss, is already there inherent in each of us. The difficulty is we do not recognize that, or true nature, or essential "I-am-ness" because it is veiled and obscured by many latent tendencies and habits of the egotistical mind which act as a mirror and project a dream of the world, the body and the mind."
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This talk may make us understand how very far away we are from being a good species. Scattered good acts, no matter how good, can't make up for the sustaining of fundamental societal beliefs like the systemic and serial condemning of our own kind. Is it not our society that's developing and nurturing these criminals?
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Possibly my favorite author, Tom Robbins, defends Osho publicly. Great beings gravitate towards other great beings.
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Just as the epiphany sprung on him, a thought viper, he reanalyzed his intellect to make sure it had been sound; that truly unique and fresh idea was about to sink its teeth in when she spread her beach towel down next to his. With that, the inkling was smudged out. A strong girl and maybe not every man’s type (flat chest and broad shoulders), she had perfectly skinny legs and a warm glow about her, so despite the ghostly white complexion, he fell for her then and there, and maybe too severely because it took his love-doped melon a long hard second to register her question. “You'd be a complete doll if you tilted your umbrella juuuust a bit over my way.” “What? I, shit, yeah...I mean, oh sure,” he replied too quickly and too loudly. Either way, he nudged the metallic pole a few inches in her direction, grinding it forcefully through the tough sand, the resulting shade more than enough to protect her alabaster physique. Tilting her sunglasses down ever-so-slightly so she could lock eyes with him, she grinned comfortably like she had done this before, said, “You're a peach, hun,” and sprawled onto her towel just inches away. Despite her forwardness she didn't make him nervous like most girls, and after all, she could have chosen any towel-sized plot of sand, but she chose the one right beside him, so he was entitled to stare if just for two seconds too long.
Probably just out of college, she somehow found a way to hang onto her high school body – thin arms, great skin, flat stomach, inner thighs that pinched comfortably between a thumb and two fingers. And her face was utterly stunning (innocent in every single place except for that hard-to-notice bedroom-adventurous gleam) that he had already forgotten about her unsupported bikini fabric. He knew his window of acceptable ogling time was just about closed, so he turned to the ocean again, the only place he could ever come up with fresh ideas for work. Like a dog, his blue-green muse was faithful and lapping. Unfortunately, this new great idea had not come to fruition yet. At the moment the only thing ripe in the front of his mind was the beauty that had arrived under his shade. He was going to have to scrap this endeavor and hope his powerful muse proved to have compassion in her deep mysterious waters, allowing him to salvage this sunken ship another time, for this woman's presence drew him inside an ethereal cloud, magical if not productive. Since he was a little boy he had always had his most profound and vivid thoughts when it was just him and ocean – alone together. Could anything or anyone come between them? Since well before high school his folks had been taking him to this very beach. While Dad surfed for hours off-shore, Mom became engrossed in yet another romance or murder mystery novel, the kind whose pages were weirdly yellow -- the thickest easy books ever. “Let Mommy concentrate on her story,” she would say politely without making eye-contact. “Make one up in your head,” she would add encouragingly (or mockingly?). They didn't feel like they were neglecting the poor boy. After all, they fed him well, sent him to a decent school, and brought him to the beautiful beach every weekend. What more could the boy want? He had friends in the neighborhood, but he got so used to those long days alone in the sand, that over time he preferred thoughts to flesh. His teachers scolded him for daydreaming too much. The girls began to think he was weird. And it wasn't until he entered film school that anybody even knew his imagination existed. Worlds swirled inside his head. Thoughts mated, their offspring begat worlds of their own, rocks of creation unturned. Nevertheless, he knew what others thought of him and he looked forward to the day when he could live normally and not be a prisoner inside his own head. Upon arriving that day he had a tingle on his skin, a sign of good to come. And even though the sand around him was at first companionless, it gradually began accumulating (mostly) doughy imprints of human bottoms, the mouths linked to said keisters eventually spoiling his peace. The odds of those voices and their attached asses coming near, of those deputy dog cheeks flapping in the breeze and killing his concentration, mirrored those of a hustler running a Bronx shell game; the squawks from pasty plump Ohio tourists have been known to rub out the musings of genius. Instead, thankfully, his presence was blessed by the goddamned tastiest distraction he had seen in forever. And at that thought, he found himself looking her way again.
He had finally put the idea of refining his vision for the next project officially on the back burner and focused his eyes, no, his attention, no, his heart, on the creature beside him. From his angle he could have stared all day at those long slender legs if he had wanted to. Wouldn't have been a bad day, either, but he had to see that eye-spark one more time. Even if it was a risky move, he went for it, gambling all that nervous tension and risking a horrendously awkward near-future to meet her gaze. To his surprise, it felt like she had been waiting for him. The smile of relief that splashed onto her face sighed a nonverbal, “Finally!” and what he found when he looked deep into those mysterious hazel irises was no less stunning than his muse the mighty sea. A force of nature.
In a way he had never experienced before, ideas pranced, two-stepped, dosey-doed, and jigged through his (he then realized) innocent and naïve skull. Had he not known true wonder until now? Had the ocean he so adored been nothing but – compared to this newcomer, this goddess – a natural occurrence as commonplace as buttercups and mud puddles? But just as quickly as his party of black tie ideas had begun mingling and toasting their creative cocktails high in the air, nearly percolating into an orgiastic stream of imagination, the record scratched out and his head went blank again.
Something was wrong.
She wasn't looking into his eyes at all, but rather past them, or right through him, focusing on something or someone else. When he turned around there was a splendidly large sun, gorgeous in Russet and Valencia hues, along with a young boy, maybe six, flying a toy kite in the sky and angling it ever so perfectly, its silhouette dotting the fiery ball in the blue vault like a fair German’s pupil. Three eyes of beauty staring at him -- one from the heavens and two from the shade. And it was then that the spark of creativity, the muse, came rushing back to him. He picked up his notebook and jotted diligently, unconcerned with legibility, only worrying to capture the essence of ideas here in this fleeting realm called earthly time and space, a place where so much is forgotten. It took him seven minutes to fill the yellow pad's page, though it felt like a twenty second turn in a money wind machine, his fists left clenching on tight to freshly hauled in ideas. Like an expert lumberjack he had meticulously painted all of the trees to fall; all he had to do now was chop. To him, the time spent behind the camera was more grunt work than artistry. The footage was easy to gather as long as the seed of vision germinated properly, and today it had, however when he lifted his head up after dotting that last sentence, the girl beside him was gone, an imprint of her dairyaire remained in the sand and her footprints led up the beach toward the boardwalk. Perhaps she went for a drink or to use the bathroom. Though his intuition told him that wasn’t the case. What he would do next was simple and obvious. Besides considering forming a plaster mold of those ass-cheeks, he would wait. And so he sat and he waited. He watched the sun's circular outline plummet over the horizon, disappearing as if being swallowed slowly by an infesting Florida python. After a while, he stood up and performed a full panoramic search for the girl who had dashed so quickly into and out of his life. As he scanned he shaded his eyes and puffed out his chest like a dutiful lifeguard, but she was nowhere to be seen. So he continued to wait. To pass the time, while the sun was still finding a way to project its rays up and over the vast curvature of the earth, he read through his notes, at first congratulating himself on such ingenious ideas, then reneging and cursing himself for losing their source! Had he not written with blinders on, in that zone of white concentration, he wouldn’t have taken his imagination to that indescribable place. It was a catch-22 and he would wait all night if he had to. The sun's light finally ran out, but his patience did not. Feelings of persistence and hope ran through him, however irrational they may have been. The sounds of the boardwalk changed from careless family jibber-jabber to the exaggerated guffaws of self-indulgent adults. The clanks of plastic sand castle buckets morphed into clinks of martini glasses, the chatter of AM beach radios converted into the pulsating beats of a nearby nightclub. But she still didn't return, and with nothing left to lay his gaze on, he closed his eyes and tried to reconfigure her image, one imperfect yet beautiful piece at a time. His eyes remained shut and time passed on. Her shape took form and in his sleep the image he had created became animated, walking slowly toward him. Her legs glistened under the sun like before, and her eyes performed layers of functions. Behind those sea green shutters were a child, a comedian, a performer and a seductress. When she got close she put her fingertips around his waist, the part that's mostly skin and bone, then slid only her fingernails under the elastic grip of his swim trunks. He squirmed instinctively, but she thought it was cute, more of a cue that it was safe to get closer than a sign that he was inexperienced, or worse, afraid. Now close enough, the smell – a mixture of shampoo, sea salt, and pheromones – rushed into his nostrils, setting neurons spinning in his brain off like the whizzing reels on a slot machine. The rush of an unfamiliar desire. A treasure. Jackpot. The rest of the collision, for that's what it was -- raw, visceral -- was experienced not in conventional time, but as one moment slipping seamlessly into place with next, like a time lapse recording of a mistake-free completion of an impossible jigsaw puzzle. Flashes of stimulation like projection slides of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Dream merging with reality. To try to appreciate the subtlety of one of the senses involved was to miss the big picture. But to appreciate the experience as a whole was to miss out on the finer animalistic details. Confusion brought on by passion. Then submission. That tug-of-war played itself out for thirty sensual minutes, but it seemed like three-thousand. When it was over, out of the slits of his tired eyes, he could see her shimmy her way back into that bathing suit and disappear up the beach just as quickly as she had materialized. She stopped for an instant, turned around, smiled and winked at the lucky bastard still lying there – satisfied. Was it real after all? Any pre-coitus man in his right mind would have bolted down the dark beach after her, his prized love, doing anything – pleading, deceiving, performing impossibly heroic feats – to stop her from making one more indistinguishable footprint in the sand. But ironically that would be time travel, my friends, for he was post-coitus, wading in a pool so satisfying that he hadn’t thought to hang-on to her. Men. He realized now – just after that last toe left the sand for the night, as her moon shadow disappeared behind the picnic structure just past the beach – that none of it was fiction. The unchangeable truth told him that she was gone. But forever? Maybe those first few new squiggly swimmers had materialized, or maybe he actually loved her. Whichever, he wanted her back and he knew as much. The fact that she wasn't making a homecoming was fucking depressing. Out of ideas about how to alleviate the pain, he buried himself in his work: that apple before a ripe summer peach, that John Glenn before Neil Armstrong. He filled endless days and nights perfecting the film. The work was good, but lacking. And because his work could never achieve that lofty level of perfection that that dark moment on the beach was able to, he couldn't stop tinkering, tweaking, and toggling until it was cleaner, crisper and cooler than ever before. Redefining his perception of high-quality, his muse had struck gold for him again. “What the fuck got into you, Blumlund?” shouted an ecstatic Billy Saturday, Eric's producer. “This is the best shit to have ever come drooling out of your goober mouth. Applause! Applause!” After the screening, the small-ball producer called his people and lobbied for wider promotion and recognition, which eventually came, followed by screenings at a few local independent theaters in the city, which eventually spread to others. And so on and so on. In certain circles it wouldn't have been an exaggeration to say that little old Mr. Blumlund had gained what is known as a cult following, aka the grandest prize in showbiz, the reason he ever picked up a camera in the first place. He gave interviews to a variety of magazines and online publications, and the common theme that appeared in all of them was his muse. He described her as his “lady of the sea”. The interviewers took those flowery words as a metaphor for the city and her briny proximity, a fine guess but an assumption and off the mark. Eric paid no mind to the interpretive fallacies of critics, for they added an air of mystique to his brand. When falsely or correctly doled out, extrinsic praises were a mere sugary extra, sweetness with a half-life, no more real than perceptions of the stars’ meaning or of the invisible scientific forces holding them together – constructs of the mind, mere brainchildren of a short-list of evolved and inaccurate senses. What was more inclined to stick to Mr. Blumlund's sides, however, keeping him full and content, was the the splendid memory of the creative process, momentarily balanced perfectly like the letter V, held taught by a past and future unaware of each other, none of it made possible without the kind and thoughtful muse that showed up that day, over a year ago now, under his umbrella. He never completely put the memory of that girl at the beach out of his mind, strolling up and down that same familiar stretch of sand whenever he had free time, which was nearly every day now that his film was finished, discovering new ideas at the same rate that topographers discover new continents. His well had dried up. Fresh images upstairs were scarce, but memories were running a surplus, and the future seemed bleak as he combed the beach for glimpses of his muse, who without, mediocrity crept up on him like boxer shorts in summer. So he would stare too long at the teenage beauties that lined the smooth hot sand. They would home in on his protracted gawk and rush to cover up like Saudi women after a haboob. Horrified creatures those babes did become.
Eric came back day after day and quickly got the reputation for being the creepy guy down by the pier. People stared and he ignorantly mistook their pointed fingers as those of fans. After all, his movie was catching sail. One day, however, the finger pointing his way didn't belong to a trim co-ed, but to a man dressed all in blue, save for the gold star badge. And this time the word that came out of his mouth wasn't creep, but freeze. The concrete floor of his holding cell was colder than he had imagined, his cellmate much less hefty and much less black. It wasn't long before the station officer called his name and took him to an interrogation room. Though his story was odd, he was able to talk his way out of any charges. After all, using one's eyes at a public place is far from a crime. A solid tongue lashing was all he got, and though he counted the word pervert having been said twenty-six times he let out a sigh of relief when he found himself out on the pavement, free from the law but still enslaved by the image of his muse, the girl that he then realized would be his demise should he fail to find her again.
Eric had a dream that night that Fate was a domineering pimp of the Muses. Decked out in a purple suit and matching wide-brimmed hat he told those poor inspirational bitches who they could and couldn’t spark with their gifts, as well as how often. The angry boss then looked at poor Eric with evil intent, his eyes filled with red-hot fire, pushed his long and twisted finger into Blumlund’s bony chest and said, “Stay away from the girl, peckerwood.” It was enough to jolt Eric out of bed in a cold sweat and consider ending his quest to find her. Still dark, he sat upright and considered this option hard. By sunset, though, he came to the realization that he would not give up looking for her. He could not give up looking for her. Ever. So he started a serious hunt for his muse. Of course beaches, but also department stores, boutiques and coffee shops made up the bulk of his hunting ground. When possible, he tried to wear the same t-shirt that he wore that day under the umbrella. Thanks to the Internet he soon had a drawer full. After a few months of frantic searching, not only hadn't he snared that wondrous bird, but he was also severely behind on his next project, as well as deep in the doldrums. After a freakout in a Macy's (which entailed clenching a young female patron's shoulders squarely and firmly while screaming, “Why aren't you her! You have to be her!”) and another scrape with the law at the beach, he feared he was caught in a downward spiral and called off the search, spending the following days in his home studio trying, but not succeeding, to focus on his work. Though the bloodhounds lay panting eagerly in the barn, they hadn't lost the memory of the scent, or of the desire to find it, so when he beared down and told himself that he was going to work, his gaze drifted away from the computer and meandered toward the blank opal wall (a perfect canvas for daydreaming). Images of her delicate legs and her kaleidascope eyes cycloned through his consciousness. Ideas of concert halls and diners, places she might show her face, gave him hope and distracted him further. Changing his routine hadn't helped him work more and neither did it keep her off his mind. He knew that the day would come when he had to own up to his shortcomings...one way or another. About a month later, after one too many grade school excuses (one only had so many family members who could have “emergencies”) he couldn't avoid his executive producer any longer. Sitting down in his office, Eric had no plan for getting out of trouble – he had dug that deep of a hole for himself. I shall accept my fate however she reveals herself: witch or guardian angel. And so, the plump, red-faced little veteran of the 40 Years Hollywood War began the sparring session filled with wincing jabs of insult, always preceded by equally stinging backhanded compliments. A master technician. “I will never let that fine piece of work you did some time ago fall from my memory, but I can't be a producer without product. . There’s a lot of young talent that I could roll the dice with. At least I’d know they’d be prolific. Congolese elephants eat and shit diamonds every now and again. In this business bad work is better than no work at all, and it’s my job to dig through the shit up to my elbows. I’m the slave in the gem yard and my foreman is about to chop my fucking hand off if I don’t make him some money. Why the hell do you think I’m such an old bastard?” All he said was fair and absorbable. But then the cells in his cheeks began to acquired blood, even more in volume than the two-fingers of scotch he had with his breakfast. He then said bluntly, “I give my booger-faced nephew a camcorder and he puts out better shit that you. Get me something by fucking Friday or you're ass is fired.” Like any experienced fighter he saved his haymaker till the end. “Yes, sir. I'll turn things around. I've been struggling a little in my, uh...” – just then, like a schoolboy, Eric's voice cracked into a falsetto – “personal life,” and in that instant, reality, as it sometimes does, switched off its autopilot and illuminated to Eric his pitiful existence, one absent of the lifeblood of human progress, one void of creativity. Without the big “C”, during this brief moment of clarity, Eric knew he was as good as dead. This epiphany was the kick in the ass that he needed, not the chick from the beach. He knew now that he had always had the power. The muse was within. As a gesture of closure, he returned to the very beach where it had all started – the same beach that he had known true pleasure over a year ago, the same beach the police had dragged him from in handcuffs, and also the same beach that his dear parents had taken him to so many years ago. In a way, his whole life -- the loving highs, the disgraceful lows and the rocksteady moments of innocence -- were all there in that sand. He once thought that everything he needed to be creative crashed under those reliable waves, beamed in with that bright and steadfast helotic orb in the sky, or more recently, sparkled out of a woman’s eyes. The lunacy! One last time he would return to that beach, his lifelong companion, and pay a final homage to that false idol. As he twisted his trusty umbrella deep into the sand and unfolded his rusty chair, a sense of a new beginning brushed along his cheeks, mixed with the scents of the suntan lotion and filtered cigarettes of custardy tourists he once again felt at home and could put the past behind him. Blumlund pulled out his yellow legal pad and uncapped his pen before fixing his gaze on the lapping waves, hoping they would set him into a sort of trance, in which he could channel his creative force. As his eyes went glassy and the world in front of him blurred, he heard the sound of children splish-splashing through the shallow water. Without focusing he could easily see them waddling along, gripping oversized plastic shovels while jaundiced, rash-inducing inflatable duckies stuck grippingly to their soft little arms. Their innocence and frivolity filled Eric with a sense of hope and possibility. They knew not the woes of failure or the soul-grinding effects of fuming bosses, corporate brackets and social ladders. Just then the rush of the muse, this time cherubic instead of provocative, overflowed out of him, its energy beaming in a steady stream from hand to pen to paper. High upon the exciting muse rush, Eric Bloomlund ran ashore onto an undiscovered continent of new ideas. He asked those newfound muses, those synaptic fairies of innocence and uncovered memories, to stay with him, to never leave. But feelings of resentment and hate crept into his pure flow of mind. Unlike the girl from before, he forbade them to prance out of his life, kicking sand up into his face on their way out. But his inability to be present yanked his new muse away under cold grasping fingers, reaching insistently from the past and slapping his glassy-eyed euphoric stare back into focus, back to the grim reality poor Eric had, ironically, created for himself.
The kids now had full diapers and snotty noses. Their parents lobbed profanities and threats at them, a barrage of endless grenades onto weaker opponents. A yellow Lays potato chip bag floated in the water, abrasively scrubbing away beauty like brillo. In a flash the entire scene had gone from romantic to cancerous. The next occurrence was most cruel of all. The avatar of his internal muse, the rashy, mucous encased toddler, barely able to stand, down playing in shallows, turned Eric’s way and undoubtedly looked him in the eye. Something strangely familiar flickered from those glimmering globes. Not sure why, the boy continued to look, intrigued. While eye-locked with the brat a funny memory entered old Blumlund's dome. A vivid picture of his grandma's floral tablecloth – lily pad green and buttercup yellow offset by a chipped-tusk white – stuck center stage in his mind's eye. Its awe-striking beauty smashed back into his emotional memory like a brick to the face. His younger self didn't need to call on some fairytale muse to drop beauty into his life like it was scarcer than platinum. It shocked him how intuitive he was once. It nearly knocked him back out of his chair to understand again how, if nurtured properly, children see the world the way it was meant to be seen: simply gloriously. He was able to feel the contrast of perspective between his younger self and this current decrepit one in a singular flash of emotion so horrific that it forced bile to bubble up from his stomach. What have I turned into? Did this sickly world really suck that magic out of me so slowly and slickly that I failed to notice? Are we all that naïve? But the kid really was pointing at him. No, the boy didn't know him, but his intuition knew something. He knew to call attention to the man under the umbrella, and that was enough because his mother, tall, skinny and attractive save for the twenty surplus LBs she was packing, did a double take. She clawed off her sunglasses haphazardly and took half a wary step forward to auto-focus the sight laid out in front of her.
“You,” she said.
A few more steps came next, this time intentional. “I can't fucking believe it's you!” she exclaimed, void of joy, and full to the brim of its opposite. Next she was marching aggressively, leaving crumpled towels and crushed toys in her wake. When she finally arrived just in front of his umbrella he was able put it all together. It was her! And he was happy until his head started doing math on its own, calculating the age of that boy.
The math added up and all he could get out was a weary, “It's you,” the word you dropping out of his mouth like a hot iron.
He remembered that she used to look athletic, her legs slender and agile. He now assumed she must have been a soccer player because of the way that she inside-kicked the sand. Eric's mouth, which had been agape, was now full of freshly foot-flung beach and he could feel it grinding between his teeth which were clenched in frustration. Once his muse, she was now definitely not in the business of helping him. Instead of yelling at Blumlund in front of her son, the boy with the muse-like intuition, she only pantomimed to the despicable sand-covered man. First she pointed at her son. Second, she pointed to her stomach. Third, she pointed at lowly old Blumlund, only this time she chose the adjacent finger, raising it high in the air toward the all-seeing sun. And that was the last that old Blumlund ever saw of his once-precious muse.
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There's a lot to be said about stand-up comedy in the modern age. It's philosophy. It's religion. It's therapy. It's guidance. It's an honest look in the mirror. Within the medium we can come together and reflect on certain common problems. This clip puts perspective on how many of us daily get tricked into depression by the mores of society, how we let ourselves get amnesia and drift out of our periods of clarity, however brief or extensive.
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Maybe most people have seen this, but it fits in here perfectly. Spiritual, scientific, uplifting.
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If you feel you have benefited from this site, apart from sharing on Google+, Facebook or Twitter, please also consider submitting your own article, donating through the Paypal link or making a purchase at the eBookstore.
Without giving away the story, Asimov finds a way to ingeniously weave so many of the issues that I focus my awareness on: the self, ego, immortality, collectivism, progress, expansion, discovery, connectivity, the nature of reality, computing, transhumanism, purpose, and more. For anyone interested in both spirituality and technology, this is a must-read/listen.
The following is the full-text of the story if you'd prefer to read it. Click here to download the epub version for iBooks and here for the Kindle (.mobi) version. I'm fairly certain that the copyright has expired and that this is now part of the public domain. If not, please email me and I'll remove it.
Isaac Asimov was the most prolific science fiction author of all time. In fifty years he averaged a new magazine article, short story, or book every two weeks, and most of that on a manual typewriter. Asimov thought that The Last Question, first copyrighted in 1956, was his best short story ever. Even if you do not have the background in science to be familiar with all of the concepts presented here, the ending packs more impact than any other book that I've ever read. Don't read the end of the story first!
This is by far my favorite story of all those I have written.
After all, I undertook to tell several trillion years of human history in the space of a short story and I leave it to you as to how well I succeeded. I also undertook another task, but I won't tell you what that was lest l spoil the story for you.
It is a curious fact that innumerable readers have asked me if I wrote this story. They seem never to remember the title of the story or (for sure) the author, except for the vague thought it might be me. But, of course, they never forget the story itself especially the ending. The idea seems to drown out everything -- and I'm satisfied that it should.
The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way: Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face -- of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole. Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough. So Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share in the glory that was Multivac's. For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth's poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both. But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact. The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower. Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public functions, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it. They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle. "It's amazing when you think of it," said Adell. His broad face had lines of weariness in it, and he stirred his drink slowly with a glass rod, watching the cubes of ice slur clumsily about. "All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy, if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Earth into a big drop of impure liquid iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever." Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. "Not forever," he said. "Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert." "That's not forever." "All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Ten billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?" Lupov put his fingers through his thinning hair as though to reassure himself that some was still left and sipped gently at his own drink. "Ten billion years isn't forever." "Well, it will last our time, won't it?" "So would the coal and uranium." "All right, but now we can hook up each individual spaceship to the Solar Station, and it can go to Pluto and back a million times without ever worrying about fuel. You can't do that on coal and uranium. Ask Multivac, if you don't believe me. "I don't have to ask Multivac. I know that." "Then stop running down what Multivac's done for us," said Adell, blazing up, "It did all right." "Who says it didn't? What I say is that a sun won't last forever. That's all I'm saying. We're safe for ten billion years, but then what?" Lupow pointed a slightly shaky finger at the other. "And don't say we'll switch to another sun." There was silence for a while. Adell put his glass to his lips only occasionally, and Lupov's eyes slowly closed. They rested. Then Lupov's eyes snapped open. "You're thinking we'll switch to another sun when ours is done, aren't you?" "I'm not thinking." "Sure you are. You're weak on logic, that's the trouble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one." "I get it," said Adell. "Don't shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too." "Darn right they will," muttered Lupov. "It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was, and it'll all have an end when all the stars run down. Some run down faster than others. Hell, the giants won't last a hundred million years. The sun will last ten billion years and maybe the dwarfs will last two hundred billion for all the good they are. But just give us a trillion years and everything will be dark. Entropy has to increase to maximum, that's all." "I know all about entropy," said Adell, standing on his dignity. "The hell you do." "I know as much as you do." "Then you know everything's got to run down someday." "All right. Who says they won't?" "You did, you poor sap. You said we had all the energy we needed, forever. You said 'forever.' It was Adell's turn to be contrary. "Maybe we can build things up again someday," he said. "Never." "Why not? Someday." "Never." "Ask Multivac." "You ask Multivac. I dare you. Five dollars says it can't be done." Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this: Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age? Or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased? Multivac fell dead and silent. The slow flashing of lights ceased, the distant sounds of clicking relays ended. Then, just as the frightened technicians felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached to that portion of Multivac. Five words were printed: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER. "No bet," whispered Lupov. They left hurriedly. By next morning, the two, plagued with throbbing head and cottony mouth, had forgotten the incident. Jerrodd, Jerrodine, and Jerrodette I and II watched the starry picture in the visiplate change as the passage through hyperspace was completed in its non-time lapse. At once, the even powdering of stars gave way to the predominance of a single bright shining disk, the size of a marble, centered on the viewing-screen. "That's X-23," said Jerrodd confidently. His thin hands clamped tightly behind his back and the knuckles whitened. The little Jerrodettes, both girls, had experienced the hyperspace passage for the first time in their lives and were self-conscious over the momentary sensation of insideoutness. They buried their giggles and chased one another wildly about their mother, screaming, "We've reached X-23 -- we've reached X-23 -- we've --" "Quiet, children." said Jerrodine sharply. "Are you sure, Jerrodd?" "What is there to be but sure?" asked Jerrodd, glancing up at the bulge of featureless metal just under the ceiling. It ran the length of the room, disappearing through the wall at either end. It was as long as the ship. Jerrodd scarcely knew a thing about the thick rod of metal except that it was called a Microvac, that one asked it questions if one wished; that if one did not it still had its task of guiding the ship to a preordered destination; of feeding on energies from the various Sub-galactic Power Stations; of computing the equations for the hyperspatial jumps. Jerrodd and his family had only to wait and live in the comfortable residence quarters of the ship. Someone had once told Jerrodd that the "ac" at the end of "Microvac" stood for ''automatic computer" in ancient English, but he was on the edge of forgetting even that. Jerrodine's eyes were moist as she watched the visiplate. "I can't help it. I feel funny about leaving Earth." "Why, for Pete's sake?" demanded Jerrodd. "We had nothing there. We'll have everything on X-23. You won't be alone. You won't be a pioneer. There are over a million people on the planet already. Good Lord, our great-grandchildren will be looking for new worlds because X-23 will be overcrowded." Then, after a reflective pause, "I tell you, it's a lucky thing the computers worked out interstellar travel the way the race is growing." "I know, I know," said Jerrodine miserably. Jerrodette I said promptly, "Our Microvac is the best Microvac in the world." "I think so, too," said Jerrodd, tousling her hair. It was a nice feeling to have a Microvac of your own and Jerrodd was glad he was part of his generation and no other. In his father's youth, the only computers had been tremendous machines taking up a hundred square miles of land. There was only one to a planet. Planetary ACs they were called. They had been growing in size steadily for a thousand years and then, all at once, came refinement. In place of transistors, had come molecular valves so that even the largest Planetary AC could be put into a space only half the volume of a spaceship. Jerrodd felt uplifted, as he always did when he thought that his own personal Microvac was many times more complicated than the ancient and primitive Multivac that had first tamed the Sun, and almost as complicated as Earth's Planetarv AC (the largest) that had first solved the problem of hyperspatial travel and had made trips to the stars possible. "So many stars, so many planets," sighed Jerrodine, busy with her own thoughts. "I suppose families will be going out to new planets forever, the way we are now." "Not forever," said Jerrodd, with a smile. "It will all stop someday, but not for billions of years. Many billions. Even the stars run down, you know. Entropy must increase. "What's entropy, daddy?" shrilled Jerrodette II. "Entropy, little sweet, is just a word which means the amount of running-down of the universe. Everything runs down, you know, like your little walkie-talkie robot, remember?" "Can't you just put in a new power-unit, like with my robot?" "The stars are the power-units. dear. Once they're gone, there are no more power-units." Jerrodette I at once set up a howl. "Don't let them, daddy. Don't let the stars run down." "Now look what you've done," whispered Jerrodine, exasperated. "How was I to know it would frighten them?" Jerrodd whispered back, "Ask the Microvac," wailed Jerrodette I. "Ask him how to turn the stars on again." "Go ahead," said Jerrodine. "It will quiet them down." (Jerrodette II was beginning to cry, also.) Jerrodd shrugged. "Now, now, honeys. I'll ask Microvac. Don't worry, he'll tell us." He asked the Microvac, adding quickly, "Print the answer." Jerrodd cupped the strip or thin cellufilm and said cheerfully, "See now, the Microvac says it will take care of everything when the time comes so don't worry." Jerrodine said, "And now, children, it's time for bed. We'll be in our new home soon." Jerrodd read the words on the cellufilm again before destroying it: INSUFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER. He shrugged and looked at the visiplate. X-23 was just ahead. VJ-23X of Lameth stared into the black depths of the three-dimensional, small-scale map of the Galaxy and said, "Are we ridiculous, I wonder in being so concerned about the matter?" MQ-17J of Nicron shook his head. "I think not. You know the Galaxy will be filled in five years at the present rate of expansion." Both seemed in their early twenties, both were tall and perfectly formed. "Still," said VJ-23X, "I hesitate to submit a pessimistic report to the Galactic Council." "I wouldn't consider any other kind of report. Stir them up a bit. We've got to stir them up." VJ-23X sighed. "Space is infinite. A hundred billion Galaxies are there for the taking. More." "A hundred billion is not infinite and it's getting less infinite all the time. Consider! Twenty thousand years ago, mankind first solved the problem of utilizing stellar energy, and a few centuries later, interstellar travel became possible. It took mankind a million years to fill one small world and then only fifteen thousand years to fill the rest of the Galaxy. Now the population doubles every ten years -- VJ-23X interrupted. "We can thank immortality for that." "Very well. Immortality exists and we have to take it into account. I admit it has its seamy side, this immortality. The Galactic AC has solved many problems for us, but in solving the problem of preventing old age and death, it has undone all its other solutions." "Yet you wouldn't want to abandon life, I suppose." "Not at all," snapped MQ-17J, softening it at once to, "Not yet. I'm by no means old enough. How old are you?" "Two hundred twenty-three. And you?" "I'm still under two hundred. --But to get back to my point. Population doubles every ten years. Once this GaIaxy is filled, we'll have filled another in ten years. Another ten years and we'll have filled two more. Another decade, four more. In a hundred years, we'll have filled a thousand Galaxies. In a thousand years, a million Galaxies. In ten thousand years, the entire known universe. Then what?" VJ-23X said, "As a side issue, there's a problem of transportation. I wonder how many sunpower units it will take to move Galaxies of individuals from one Galaxy to the next." "A very good point. Already, mankind consumes two sunpower units per year." "Most of it's wasted. After all, our own Galaxy alone pours out a thousand sunpower units a year and we only use two of those." "Granted, but even with a hundred per cent efficiency, we only stave off the end. Our energy requirements are going up in a geometric progression even faster than our population. We'll run out of energy even sooner than we run out of Galaxies. A good point. A very good point." "We'll just have to build new stars out of interstellar gas." "Or out of dissipated heat?" asked MQ-17J, sarcastically. "There may be some way to reverse entropy. We ought to ask the Galactic AC." VJ-23X was not really serious, but MQ-17J pulled out his AC-contact from his pocket and placed it on the table before him. "I've half a mind to," he said. "It's something the human race will have to face someday." He stared somberly at his small AC-contact. It was only two inches cubed and nothing in itself, but it was connected through hyperspace with the great Galactic AC that served all mankind. Hyperspace considered, it was an integral part of the Galactic AC. MQ-17J paused to wonder if someday in his immortal life he would get to see the Galactic AC. It was on a little world of its own, a spider webbing of force-beams holding the matter within which surges of submesons took the place of the old clumsy molecular valves. Yet despite its sub-etheric workings, the Galactic AC was known to be a full thousand feet across. MQ-17J asked suddenly of his AC-contact, "Can entropy ever be reversed?" VJ-23X looked startled and said at once, "Oh, say, I didn't really mean to have you ask that." "Why not?" "We both know entropy can't be reversed. You can't turn smoke and ash back into a tree." "Do you have trees on your world?" asked MQ-17J. The sound of the Galactic AC startled them into silence. Its voice came thin and beautiful out of the small AC-contact on the desk. It said: THERE IS INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER. VJ-23X said, "See!" The two men thereupon returned to the question of the report they were to make to the Galactic Council. Zee Prime's mind spanned the new Galaxy with a faint interest in the countless twists of stars that powdered it. He had never seen this one before. Would he ever see them all? So many of them, each with its load of humanity. --But a load that was almost a dead weight. More and more, the real essence of men was to be found out here, in space. Minds, not bodies! The immortal bodies remained back on the planets, in suspension over the eons. Sometimes they roused for material activity but that was growing rarer. Few new individuals were coming into existence to join the incredibly mighty throng, but what matter? There was little room in the Universe for new individuals. Zee Prime was roused out of his reverie upon coming across the wispy tendrils of another mind. "I am Zee Prime," said Zee Prime. "And you?" "I am Dee Sub Wun. Your Galaxy?" "We call it only the Galaxy. And you?" "We call ours the same. All men call their Galaxy their Galaxy and nothing more. Why not?" "True. Since all Galaxies are the same." "Not all Galaxies. On one particular Galaxy the race of man must have originated. That makes it different." Zee Prime said, "On which one?" "I cannot say. The Universal AC would know." "Shall we ask him? I am suddenly curious." Zee Prime's perceptions broadened until the Galaxies themselves shrank and became a new, more diffuse powdering on a much larger background. So many hundreds of billions of them, all with their immortal beings, all carrying their load of intelligences with minds that drifted freely through space. And yet one of them was unique among them all in being the original Galaxy. One of them had, in its vague and distant past, a period when it was the only Galaxy populated by man. Zee Prime was consumed with curiosity to see this Galaxy and he called out: "Universal AC! On which Galaxy did mankind originate?" The Universal AC heard, for on every world and throughout space, it had its receptors ready, and each receptor led through hyperspace to some unknown point where the Universal AC kept itself aloof. Zee Prime knew of only one man whose thoughts had penetrated within sensing distance of Universal AC, and he reported only a shining globe, two feet across, difficult to see. "But how can that be all of Universal AC?" Zee Prime had asked. "Most of it," had been the answer, "is in hyperspace. In what form it is there I cannot imagine." Nor could anyone, for the day had long since passed, Zee Prime knew, when any man had any part of the making of a Universal AC. Each Universal AC designed and constructed its successor. Each, during its existence of a million years or more accumulated the necessary data to build a better and more intricate, more capable successor in which its own store of data and individuality would be submerged. The Universal AC interrupted Zee Prime's wandering thoughts, not with words, but with guidance. Zee Prime's mentality was guided into the dim sea of Galaxies and one in particular enlarged into stars. A thought came, infinitely distant, but infinitely clear. "THIS IS THE ORIGINAL GALAXY OF MAN." But it was the same after all, the same as any other, and Lee Prime stifled his disappointment. Dee Sub Wun, whose mind had accompanied the other, said suddenly, "And is one of these stars the original star of Man?" The Universal AC said, "MAN'S ORIGINAL STAR HAS GONE NOVA. IT IS A WHITE DWARF" "Did the men upon it die?" asked Lee Prime, startled and without thinking. The Universal AC said, "A NEW WORLD, AS IN SUCH CASES WAS CONSTRUCTED FOR THEIR PHYSICAL BODIES IN TlME." "Yes, of course," said Zee Prime, but a sense of loss overwhelmed him even so. His mind released its hold on the original Galaxy of Man, let it spring back and lose itself among the blurred pin points. He never wanted to see it again. Dee Sub Wun said, "What is wrong?" "The stars are dying. The original star is dead." "They must all die. Why not?" "But when all energy is gone, our bodies will finally die, and you and I with them." "It will take billions of years." "I do not wish it to happen even after billions of years. Universal AC! How may stars be kept from dying?" Dee Sub Wun said in amusement, "You're asking how entropy might be reversed in direction." And the Universal AC answered: "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER." Zee Prime's thoughts fled back to his own Galaxy. He gave no further thought to Dee Sub Wun, whose body might be waiting on a Galaxy a trillion light-years away, or on the star next to Zee Prime's own. It didn't matter. Unhappily, Zee Prime began collecting interstellar hydrogen out of which to build a small star of his own. If the stars must someday die, at least some could yet be built. Man considered with himself, for in a way, Man, mentally, was one. He consisted of a trillion, trillion, trillion ageless bodies, each in its place, each resting quiet and incorruptible, each cared for by perfect automatons, equally incorruptible, while the minds of all the bodies freely melted one into the other, indistinguishable. Man said, "The Universe is dying." Man looked about at the dimming Galaxies. The giant stars, spendthrifts, were gone long ago, back in the dimmest of the dim far past. Almost all stars were white dwarfs, fading to the end. New stars had been built of the dust between the stars, some by natural processes, some by Man himself, and those were going, too. White dwarfs might yet be crashed together and of the mighty forces so released, new stars built, but only one star for every thousand white dwarfs destroyed, and those would come to an end, too. Man said, "Carefully husbanded, as directed by the Cosmic AC, the energy that is even yet left in all the Universe will last for billions of years." "But even so," said Man, "eventually it will all come to an end. However it may be husbanded, however stretched out, the energy once expended is gone and cannot be restored. Entropy must increase forever to the maximum." Man said, "Can entropy not be reversed? Let us ask the Cosmic AC." The Cosmic AC surrounded them but not in space. Not a fragment of it was in space. It was in hyperspace and made of something that was neither matter nor energy. The question of its size and nature no longer had meaning in any terms that Man could comprehend. "Cosmic AC," said Man, "how may entropy be reversed?" The Cosmic AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER." Man said, "Collect additional data." The Cosmic AC said, 'I WILL DO S0. I HAVE BEEN DOING SO FOR A HUNDRED BILLION YEARS. MY PREDECESORS AND I HAVE BEEN ASKED THIS QUESTION MANY TlMES. ALL THE DATA I HAVE REMAINS INSUFFICIENT. "Will there come a time," said Man, 'when data will be sufficient or is the problem insoluble in all conceivable circumstances?" The Cosmic AC said, "NO PROBLEM IS INSOLUBLE IN ALL CONCEIVABLE CIRCUMSTANCES." Man said, "When will you have enough data to answer the question?" The Cosmic AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER." "Will you keep working on it?" asked Man. The Cosmic AC said, "I WILL." Man said, "We shall wait." The stars and Galaxies died and snuffed out, and space grew black after ten trillion years of running down. One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain. Man's last mind paused before fusion, looking over a space that included nothing but the dregs of one last dark star and nothing besides but incredibly thin matter, agitated randomly by the tag ends of heat wearing out, asymptotically, to the absolute zero. Man said, "AC, is this the end? Can this chaos not be reversed into the Universe once more? Can that not be done?" AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER." Man's last mind fused and only AC existed -- and that in hyperspace. Matter and energy had ended and with it space and time. Even AC existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never answered from the time a half-drunken computer [technician] ten trillion years before had asked the question of a computer that was to AC far less than was a man to Man. All other questions had been answered, and until this last question was answered also, AC might not release his consciousness. All collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collected. But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships. A timeless interval was spent in doing that. And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy. But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration -- would take care of that, too. For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program. The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done. And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" And there was light --
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Just as the epiphany sprung on him, a thought viper, he reanalyzed his intellect to make sure it had been sound; that truly unique and fresh idea was about to sink its teeth in when she spread her beach towel down next to his. With that, the inkling was smudged out. A strong girl and maybe not every man’s type (flat chest and broad shoulders), she had perfectly skinny legs and a warm glow about her, so despite the ghostly white complexion, he fell for her then and there, and maybe too severely because it took his love-doped melon a long hard second to register her question.
