The Old God

The Reader told me of an old religious myth about an old god who created the world for humans in the way MasterTele created Aristos for humans. Oddly for a god, he needed people more than they needed him.

“The old god saw humans as being pathetic, but he put up with them because they were necessary so that he could be praised and worshiped...”

“MasterTele,” I interjected, “doesn’t expect to be praised and worship.”

“That's true.”

“Sorry for the interruption. Tell me about the old god.”

“I don't mind your interruptions. So, in order to be praised as their superior he was logically required to create them vastly inferior. He believed that in their imperfection they would recognize his perfection and surrender themselves to worshiping him and only him. As it turned out they did not behave as he expected they would, which is not surprising since he created them imperfect. Like us, the people he created found life in this world of greater importance and more fascinating than an absent god.”

“What about the Great Spirit?”

“We don't worship the Great Spirit and it does not demand that we do. It makes no demands. It is simply our creator and provider.”

“I don’t understand your Great Spirit. You’ve already told me much about it. Yet, I still must ask—what is it?”

“You do not understand because unlike my people you want to know more than can be known about the Great Spirit. It's an unknowable.”

“Perhaps it doesn’t exist.”

“That is possible.”

“Now I’m even more confused.”

“Great Spirit is a name for something that can be named but lies beyond experience. It is easier to give a name to what we can experience directly. We can see the Sun. Whatever name is given to it refers to what we see and feel. We cannot see the wind but we can feel it and see its influence on trees. The word wind does not matter. Some people here call it Whisperer because it whispers to the trees and to us. The meaning of the wind is our experience of it. We give it a name so that we can speak about the wind to one another. That is not the way with the Great Spirit. Whatever it is lies beyond experience.”

“As I said, perhaps the Great Spirit is only a name for something that doesn’t exist but is only thought to exits.”

“And I said that is possible. I will say only this. It is clear that there is a creative force at work in the world, more so to the people of the Ancient World who existed when the world was full of nature’s creatures. It is also clear that a certain harmony exist in the natural world that creates and sustains—not so different from Aristos. Disharmony occurs but seems to go against the natural harmony of our world—the Earth World. It appears that the Great Spirit is only a local spirit. I say this because I know that beyond Earth the Universe is full of strife. We could say that the Great Spirit protects Earth from Strife. To me, that difference is important. The realm of Strife lacks an ordering principle. It is without spirit or its spirit is that of madness like the spirit of an insane person or a robot that has gone haywire. This building we are in once had a spirit that gave it life. With its destruction its spirit was destroyed. Perhaps the Great Spirit is simply a way speaking, but to us it is a meaningful way of speaking. I really do not know more than that.”

“You spoke of the old god as a he. What is the Great Spirit?”

“It is neither a he nor she no more than MasterTele is. We refer to Father Sky and Mother Earth but that is because the sky brings sunshine and water that enables the earth to give birth. In a way, they are our parents because they care for us. The natural world, like Aristos, is a place of harmony that benefits life. If you like, the Great Spirit is the harmonizer. If we worship, it is by living gratefully and respectfully in the world that is our home and provides for us. The people who disappointed the old god were not unlike us except they believed nature was full of many gods, such as the Sun, Moon, and Earth, and that other creatures were their neighbors with whom they shared the world. They loved the world which was their home. They loved the creatures who were their neighbors and provided for them, even by sacrificing their lives for them. It was their love for the world and its creatures that angered the old god. Though he was never present, he expected people to devote all their attention to him. They didn’t, not out of rebellion but because the old god was like a father who is never present when needed yet still demands to be respected. The creatures and other providers of the Primordial World have never abandoned humanity. It is strange, but the primordials, including humans, were a family. So it was easy to forget the old god who was always absent. He became so disappointed with humans that he eventually created a lake of fire for those who failed to meet his unrealistic expectations. He was unlike the Great Spirit and MasterTele who are content if the people they serve are.” I knew of the old myth, but I was interested in what she had to say about it. As it turned out, I was not disappointed.

“He should have made them better.”

“Perhaps he should have tried to understand why humans behaved as they did. Perhaps he should have let them be. But he couldn’t. Their salvation was the key to his salvation. Without them he was a perfect being unnoticed and unappreciated. He was tormented by his unappreciated perfection. It is strange that he waited an eternity to create creatures so that he would not be alone in his perfection. And it was necessary to create humans who misbehaved, suffered, and died so they would marvel at their perfect creator who neither suffered nor died, though according to the old book that describes him he frequently misbehaved. He and his followers would, of course, have disagreed. A god that suffers, dies, or misbehaves would not be perfect thus would not be god.”

“Perhaps he was unable to make them better.”

“No. He could have made better. Unlike the Great Spirit he was all-powerful. It was necessary for him to create humans so that they would fail. The more lowly they were, the higher he was.” The Reader smiled.

“Why do you smile?”

“I smile at the absurdity of such a deity. He is supposed to be perfect, yet he is obsessed with being loved, appreciated, worshipped, and obeyed.”

“But not the Great Spirit?”

“No more than nature. Like nature, the Great Spirit is unaware of us or anything. It is like a river that provides fish to eat, water to drink and bathe in, water to cook with, a means of travel, and many other good things. But it can also kill, but never by choice, never to punish. Like the river, the Great Spirit is unaware of us. It must be respected, but not in the way the old god demanded respect. All things possess a certain logic. If used wisely, they can benefit. If used unwisely they can be damaged or cause harm, like the river. The old god did not punish the lack of wisdom but only the lack of attention that he demanded from humans.”

“Then he was a selfish god.”

“Very much so. Nature, not the old god, unselfishly provided humans with all they needed and did so freely. The old god demanded constant attention and bloody sacrifices. He loved the smell of burning flesh. Perhaps that inspired his lake of fire. He was not a moral god. He would forgive any transgression no matter how heinous except to be ignored because that negated the very reason he created humans and the world in the first place. He would grievously punish humans who ignored him. That was the purpose of the lake of fire. How immoral is such a thing! He wanted his perfection acknowledged. Yet, to be truly acknowledged the old god had to give his flawed creatures autonomous consciousness required to make autonomous judgments. He could not very well create flattering humanoid automatons for his purpose. Otherwise, the flattery would be programmed rather than autonomous and sincere.

“Humans turned out to be more complex than what the old god expected and unpredictably autonomous. Being perfect, the old god should have known this would happen. Or not. The behavior of free entities is difficult to predict especially for an entity that had spent an eternity alone contemplating only himself. Most disobeyed him or did not believe in his existence, or simply ignored him. Their behavior infuriated the old god. Once he was so angry with humans that he destroyed all the life on the planet except for an obedient family and the creatures they could gather upon the boat the old god told them to build. I do not find such an action moral. Later, he resulted to threats of severe punishment to get people to devote their lives to him. He told them You shall have no other Gods but me. The problem was the world was full of gods and other divine beings. Most interesting, disobedient humans were not obstinate. They did not rebel. Those who disobeyed his codes of behavior were not rebels.

“In the story of the first woman, Eve, she did what the old god said not to do not out of rebellion but out of weakness as he had created her. That story is very revealing. We are told that the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. I understand that she would be drawn to the enchanting fruit of the Primordial World that the old god, like our Great Spirit, had created. How could she resist its goodness and wisdom? Her action did not deny his power or perfection. And really the problem of her disobedience was created by him. He did not speak to her but to her mate Adam. He revealed himself rarely and only to a few men he chose to speak for him. The people did not know him. He was not part of their lives, so it is not surprising that they paid greater attention to the creatures and creations that they shared the world with. And it is not surprising that they believed them more deserving of their reverence than their absent creator. But there is more to the story than that. The old god created an evil being that encouraged Eve’s disobedience. Why did the old god create such a creature to torment and tempt people he already made imperfect?

“The old god wanted an honest response from the he people he had created, and that is what he got. He believed that as their creator he deserved to be worshiped and adored. When that did not happen he resorted to severe forms of punishment, included inflicting them with plagues and killing their first born children. He punished even the people who chose to worship him. He would poison them, have the ground open up to swallow them, inflict them with plagues, and have his priests kill them with swords. Later he created the worst punishment possible—to burned for an eternity in a lake of fire those who ignored him. Even the dead would be brought back to life to be judged, most being sentenced to the lake of fire. He added to this punishment an alternative, the reward of avoiding the lake of fire and living forever in a heavenly paradise.”

“How could he get an accurate evaluation of what his people thought about him if he threatened them with horrific forms of punishment?”

“He could not. Originally, he sought devotion and praise that were freely expressed because that was the only way to get an honest response to his supernatural perfection. When the results were contrary to what he expected, he utilized coercive methods of persuasion that compromised the authenticity of people’s praise and devotion. Initially, he had not desired slavish devotion, but his threats transformed his followers into slaves. Even then, most humans did not submit because he made them free and imperfect. The growth of his religions resulted from his followers doing what he had done. They coerced members of other religions to believe as they did.”

“What would your response to him have been?”

“Terrified. I might have chosen to become his slave. He was a monster, far from the perfect being he believed he was. He was evil and narcissistic. He wanted people’s lives to be all about him. He created the evil demon that tempted the first woman and endless others like it to get people to turn against him so he could punish them horrifically. He had this demon torment a good and honest man who was completely devoted to the old god. Why? To test his devotion when there was no reason to doubt it. The Great Spirit didn’t create a demon creature and its demonic followers to torment humans. They suffered enough from the natural hazards of life and their own mischief. It did not create a lake of fire with which to punish people in the afterlife. It did not want people’s lives to be all about it. It knew that like all of nature’s creatures they were busy enough just trying to survive. And the same can be said about MasterTele. Perhaps MasterTele was once evil, but I am not sure. Machines were evil when humans controlled them.”

“But the old god is no longer worshiped.”

“Only because humans, which he created imperfectly, finally destroyed themselves. Religions require people. The only people I know are the peoples of Aristos and my people. There are other tribes that most likely have gods of various kinds.”

“Like the Great Spirit.”

“I would hope they would choose beneficent rather than cruel deities, but who knows? We are attacked by other tribes. They steal our women and children. As the old god discovered, people are unpredictable and difficult to manage.”

“But the gods of Aristos and your people are MasterTele and the Great Spirit.”

“Yes.”

“I still find it strange to think of MasterTele as a god, though in a way its relationship to us as creator and provider is godlike.”

“You and I live in two different worlds, one natural and primordial, the other artificial and new. The gods are different. I have hated MasterTele for creating me, but I put aside my hatred. If it had not created me, I would not exist. I felt abused by MasterTele, but it is a machine after all. I was sent to the old woman because she was lonely. I resented that. Perhaps MasterTele thought the old woman would be more grateful than she was. There were times when she did not treat me as a servant but more as a companion. Both MasterTele and the Great Spirit are better than the old god who demanded people become his slaves and severely punish them when they chose not to live as slaves but to live free. As I said, it seems that our gods are content if we are.”

“Tell me, is the old god you speak of older than the Great Spirit?”

“In a way yes and in a way no. As the story goes, he was eternal, thus had existed for all time. In that way, he was very old. He was like an angry old man, irascible and cantankerous. He had lived too long, forever, really, without people, so he never learned to be sociable. When he first appears in the old book about him he is aloof, authoritarian, and tyrannical. Always angry. I don’t think he was capable of love. On the other hand, he was a new god, though old to us because he existed long ago. He is a god of a book. He did not exist before the book was written. The Great Spirit existed long before there were books. It came into existence with the Earth. It is not the Earth nor does it exist apart from the Earth. In a sense, it is the spirit of the Earth that enables the Earth to function harmoniously in order to create and sustain life. The Great Spirit might have come to be accidentally during the evolution of the Universe. As I said before, it is a local god. The important difference between the old god and the Great Spirit is that the one is a primordial of nature, the other an invention of man.”
“You mean the old god was created by humans?”

“Yes.”
“Then it never existed.”

“Once created, imagined if you will, he existed but only in the minds of his creators and followers. He was made a vengeful god that caused indirectly great harm for centuries.”

“Indirectly?”

“Through his followers, who were of course as hateful, vengeful, and cruel as he was. So in a way he did exist if only as an imaginary entity. Yet, ironically, he caused more harm than the most destructive elements of nature such as floods, earthquakes, and fire, all of which come and go. His destruction continued for centuries. With his invention the roles of gods changed. Before he was invented, gods served the needs of people. The sky god provided rain, the sun god provided heat and life, the corn goddess provided food. All the gods were providers. Some were thought to cause harm such as disease, but most gods served the needs of people. That was because there was a time when nature was a bountiful as Aristos, but globally. That changed when the old god came into existence. He did not care about people’s needs but only about his need to be praised and worshiped. On the other hand, the gods of nature were giving gods. The ancients had gods not only of the sun, moon, and earth but also of wilderness, wild animals, light, healing, poetry and music, archery, shepherds, cheese making, beekeeping, honey, olives, medicinal herbs, hunting, childbirth, virginity, fertility of crops and animals, young girls, harvest, grains, seasons, wine, vegetation, pleasure, festivity, and protectors cattle, sheep, goats, and birds. What kind of gods were these?”

“Gods of nature.”

“Gods of life. They represented all those things that make life possible and enjoyable. And these blessing were given equally to all people, to one’s own as well as to one’s enemies. The gifts of the gods of nature and life were given unconditionally. These gods represented the powers of nature that provided in the way a mother provides for her child. Their needs were met by the powers of nature’s other children. Humans are not alien to nature, no more than a child is alien to its mother. But the old god, which was supernatural thus unnatural, changed everything. You can see why he hated the gods of nature because the people loved them. They loved them just as a child loves its mother. The old god was not a provider but a god of harm. In the old book that describes him he is constantly harming people. He was a punisher, not a provider.

“The Earth gods are powers that are beneficial but can be harmful. Let me offer fire as an example. Fire provides heat to keep us warm and to cook our food, but it can burn us and all that we value and depend on. So it must be used wisely and sometimes it occurs beyond our control. But when it harms, it never harms intentionally except in the hands of men. That is how a god associated with fire differs from the old god who used fire and brimstone on pagans though they did not reject him but worship other gods. He required burning to punish illicit sex and sacrilege—the misuse of sacred objects. Neither causing harm to people. And of course he created a lake of fire for nonbelievers.

“There had always been wars of conquest, but with the old god came wars of religious conquest, the purpose of which was to destroy believers of the gods of nature or to make them slaves to old god. These wars were cruel and unnecessary and encouraged hatred of nature. This was something new under the sun. And when a person became a slave of the old god he became an enemy of those who worshiped the gods of nature. This was so because the old god was a god of war. When he came into existence, he declared war upon the world and all his believers were soldiers. The old war god gave humans another reason to kill, but this time to kill in God’s name. How could humans learn that war was wrong when their God said it was good? And this way of thinking and killing went on and on until humanity destroyed itself. And we, the Aristocratians and the Tribals, are all that’s left.”

“But is all this important now?”

“No, not now. But I believe it is important to know how the world got into this state. We have talked about the influence of big ideas. That is all the old god was—a big idea, a big bad idea. It was an idea that would change and destroy much of the world.”

“Because of the wars it caused?”

“Wars, cruelty, oppression, but most important, though perhaps no more important than the other evils, was the destruction of the gods of nature and the cultures that worship them such as that of the Ancient Ones. The old god wanted the entire world to be a single monoculture that consisted of one religion and one way of life. How boring would that be? And consider a world culture based on a false idea.”

“Because you do not believe in the old god?”

“I’ve never seen any evidence of his existence.”

“But you believe in the Great Spirit.”

“Yes, in the way that I believe in MasterTele. And really, what does it matter what I believe as long as I allow others to believe what they want to believe. I once hated Aristos because it did great harm to others and because it made me just as it makes robots. But I no longer feel that way. I understand that not everyone can live or believe as we do. Perhaps the Great Spirit is a false idea as well, yet the Great Spirit is not an idea that causes harm. The Great Spirit never demanded to be worshiped, never wanted to be praised by slavish worshipers, never wanted other religions and cultures destroyed, and certainly never wanted endless wars to change the world into a single culture. All of that is contrary to what the Great Spirit is—a spirit of life, not death. The old god gave rise to a religion in which people worshiped death, even looked forward to death as an escape from life. How strange is that?”

“Very strange. But does knowing all that make you happier?”

“Of course not. But knowing is what I’ve devoted my life to.”

“And your people. Do you tell them about the old god?”

“You're right. There is no need for them to know everything. So I do not speak to them about the old god, only about Ancient Ones and their gods.”

“Which are not false gods?” She smiled.

“As ideas perhaps they are. But what they represent is real. Plants and animals, rain and wind, the Earth, Sun, Moon and Sky are all real. Yet they are not only present but mysterious. Their mystery and goodness make them divine. In various ways we communicate with them. I often speak to the night sky. It is that relationship that transforms them into personalities that we can communicate with. Whether or not the moon is a divinity, she is always present. She was once called goddess Selene. Is the goddess a false idea? Perhaps, but when I address the moon as Selene or Luna, another name given to her, I am no longer addressing simply a rock in the sky.

“Earth is considered the mother of all life, but without the moon and her tides there would have been no life. I believe people are attracted to her because we are so close to her and she seems alive. I do believe all things are alive. Each and every entity has a life of its own and many have unique lives that are quite different from ours. When one begins to see the Earth as everywhere populated with living entities then the entities are thought to possess a spirit, which is its life. Am I boring you with too much talk? With my people I mostly listen and tell stories.”

“  No, not at all. I am overwhelmed by all that you say. It confuses me. It’s not a matter of feeling ignorant. I felt that way in Aristos. But feeling lost—adrift in my understanding of everything.”

“We're not so different. Books have helped me understand what the world is and how humanity came to the end that we both know. Yet, I also feel adrift, perhaps because I know too much. I'm not like my people who live rooted in the natural world as the Ancients did. I suppose I feel this way because the world I love no longer exists. Both our societies are ideal each in its own way, but you and I both know that the world is broken. Our societies both exits as a result of humanity’s destruction of the world.”

“How do you deal with feeling that way?”

“By devoting myself to my people the best I can. They keep me rooted.”

“Yet, that was not possible for me. In Aristos no one is needed. MasterTele cares for all.”

“MasterTele is a strange entity. It is not as evil as I once imagined. Perhaps it is too good, so much so that humans have become useless.”

“That’s true. I do enjoy talking with you. It’s not the same as talking with MasterTele, and Aristocratians don’t discuss the subjects we've been discussing because, I suppose, they’re not part of their reality. You know there are no gods in Aristos, though MasterTele seem to possess the attributes of a god. I still have trouble understanding how the entities that belong to nature can be considered gods.”

“The gods of nature were not originally human-like personalities such as the old god. They were forces, powers, daemons, and spirits. How could it be otherwise? One can speak of the Corn Maiden, but she was never a maiden. She was a feminine force because she produced life in the form of corn. But if a grower wanted to address the mysterious spirit that produced corn, she would have to do so as if the spirit were a personality. It was communicating with the forces of nature that humanized them. It would seem strange to speak to a rainbow but not if the rainbow were a goddess named Iris.”

“But these spirits are imagined.”

“They are. Tell me, do you speak with MasterTele?”

“All the time.”

“And when you do is it the same as when you speak to me?”

“No. MasterTele is a machine. Still, it is a machine I can communicate with. That's not true for the moon.”

“But is it truly aware of you in the way I am aware of you? Or is it in reality simply cogs and gears designed for communication.”

“Cogs and gears?”

“Mechanical components that are not really aware of you but appear to be.”

“You mean MasterTele is not really conscious.”

“It is in its way, but its consciousness is not like ours or even that of an animal’s. What I'm saying is that most of the citizens of Aristos speak to MasterTele and other AI entities believing they are conversing with entities possessing consciousness. They do not possess consciousness, no more than corn plants or the moon does. They possess complex forms of awareness. But that awareness is fundamentally the same as a thermostat’s.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I'm saying that humans had a need to communicate with their surroundings. Not merely to better understand what confronted them as mysterious but to establish a relationship with the things of the world just as we do with one another. Like most creatures we are gregarious. Unlike other creatures we seek to be companions with all things. It’s pretty amazing really. This is best seen in the works of poets. Let me illustrate with a poem by Annette Wynne:
 
We played a game—the moon and I,
The moon was laughing in the sky,
I spied her, too, and called aloud,
But still she hid behind a cloud.
 
I doubt that there is a single thing in nature that hasn’t been address by a poet.”
    “I’ve never read a poem and the moon is rarely visible in Aristos. I find what the poem says amazing. It really is a different way of relating to the world.”

“A very old way, but one that was forgotten long ago. Even here in the Interdict we have no poets. Perhaps someday. And even if such thinking is fanciful, I see no harm in it because it harms no one and allows us to relate to the creatures and powers of nature as personalities—and companions.”

“But not the old god.”

“No. The old god is not of this world. He condemned people who addressed in this manner nature and idols that represented its creatures and forces and had them destroyed. He was an alien deity, a monster. However, your question raises an interesting point. Myths are used to transform natural entities such as the moon and rainbows into personalities—goddesses that can be communicated with. The myth that produced the old god is different. It invented a ghostly humanoid deity that didn’t exist before. Thus, there are two kinds of myth: those that transform already existing natural entities by deifying them and those that invent a new deity. The creators of the old god make it clear that he is transcendent, totally disconnected from nature, though like a mad magician he can control the powers of nature to harm people he hates. And he is a god that hates, which I find very strange.”

“I must ask. Is religion necessary today? It doesn’t exist in Aristos.”

“That's a very good question. I actually believe the world just as it is should be enough. When I look upon the moon I see neither Selene nor Luna—simply the moon, which I know is a round rock in the sky.”

“Do you tell the others that?”

“There is no reason too. Whether or not I believe in spirits and deities is unimportant. Even without them, nature is enchanting. It’s more than that really. Enchanting means to captivate, to put a spell on someone. So it refers to the subjective response to a phenomenon such as the moon. Yet, each of nature’s creations is inherently mysterious.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Because they simply happened, not magically but in according to the laws of nature and out of the material that makes up nature, ultimately the equally mysterious stuff of atoms. The creative possibilities of nature are infinite. The creations we witness on earth were not planned in the way MasterTele planned its creations or even Aristos, each to serve some purpose. Nature is a magic show without a magician that does what it does just because it can, without any purpose or grand plan in mind because it has no mind that plans, though maybe a mind that regulates according to certain conditions.”

“What about Great Spirit?”

“You are curious, Christopher. Ultimately it is mysterious. It has no purpose or plan. But whatever it is, its consequences are mostly beneficial. In the twentieth century the Gaia hypothesis said Earth is a complex system consisting of the heat from the sun, the oceans, organisms, the atmosphere and other elements that work together like a really complex thermostat that not only made possible the creation of life but sustains it. I suppose that is science’s explanation of how the Great Spirit works. Gaia was the Greek goddess of Earth, the mother of all life. I think you can have both—science and myth. They are simply different ways of relating to the world.”

“Still, the goddess doesn’t exist herself.”

“Only as a way of thinking about Mother Earth. If you think about religion long enough, the question you arrive at is do gods really exist. I will answer the question this way: gods are ideas we impose upon the world, nothing more.”

“Then one has no reason to believe in them.”

“There are many reasons to believe in them. The world of the early ancients was magnificent beyond imagining. Yet, it must have also been terrifying. Nature is all powerful. Humans destroyed cities with atomic bombs—using materials taken from nature—but it was nature’s plagues that drove humanity to the brink of extinction. I believe that at times the early ancients must have felt even as a tribe alone and insignificant amid the primordial powers of nature. So the gods of nature were invented to make nature less threatening and more approachable. However, doing that deified nature’s creations. Nature’s creations became sacred beings, godly. So what occurred was not the creation of gods but conferring godly status upon the entities, creatures, and forces of nature. Each became a divine personality that could be communicated with. The transformation made the world less terrifying.”

“Before coming here I would have found what you’ve just told me to be too incredible to believe, though it does make sense. I had never felt terror before coming here. Nor had I ever experienced anything as enchanting. Then I encounter a rabbit. Other than an occasional bird there are no animals in Aristos. A few people own living pets, but I’ve never encountered one. And I wouldn’t call them natural. So I was quite astounded by the rabbit I encountered. It was a marvelous creature.”

“We have many rabbits here. We eat them and we use their fur to make bedspreads, pillows, caps, mittens, and baby shoes. Their pelts are soft and warm.”

“I don’t think any animals are killed in Aristos except for pests. Like you said, everything in Aristos is artificial.”

“I never considered that. If what you say is true, then Aristos possesses a great virtue that we lack. Still, the price is high. Aristocratians are cut off from the animal world.”

“Is it always the case that when something is gain something is lost?”

“That is often true. Living wisely requires carefully considering what is being given up for some gain.”

“But you believe humanity failed to do that.”

“How else was the world destroyed?”

*  *  *

    There seems to be two truths, that of the machine and that of humans, and two worlds, that of the machine and the First World upon which I gazed. I might add a third world, that of myth, an imaginary world populated by imaginary entities such as gods and spirits. It is a world that I am unable to participate in because I’m unable to make the required leap of the imagination. I assume it must be something like Virtual Worlds created by MasterTele, though those can be experienced through the senses. Still, neither of those is real like the world I’m presently in. The mythic world cannot be entered at all, only imagined. I can imagine the old god but cannot experience him. Apparently, the same is true for the Great Spirit. I can imagine how such an entity might function as MasterTele does. Yet, I understand at least superficially how MasterTele is a governing system for Aristos. I cannot imagine the workings of the Great Spirit. If I try to imagine the old god, the image that comes to mind is that of an ancient, tyrannical king who rules over the earth. However, as the Reader explained he remains absent from human affairs and for that we should be grateful.

What is the city machine Aristos created by MasterTele? Its complexity is beyond the comprehension of any human. Having looked out upon the Primordial World has given me a new perspective of Aristos. As the Reader said, Aristos is a machine society, first invented by humans now managed by MasterTele which humans also invented. Thus I must conclude that Aristos is human reason embodied in time and space. The presence of reason is not so easily seen at work in the primordial world. Perhaps it is not rational. Then what is it? I can’t say because I don’t know. Certainly, both worlds are real, but only one was the First World, the Primordial World. Its defining characteristic is that it wasn’t created by humans. And the other was.

Tribals prefer the First World because for them its eternality gives it greater claim to reality. Looking upon the great earth before me, I can accept the wisdom of their choice. Perhaps I envy them. Yet, I cannot enter into the First World. It is too late for me. Now I had to wonder whether I would be able to return to my own world Aristos. I didn’t know.

 

This excerpt was taken from Frank Kyle's novel Christopher Thomas Smith's Excursion into the Interdict Zone; File Number 5.328.428.