– Danlo wi Soli Ringess?
He watched the many clades of life divide and branch out into their ancient lineages and he was aware, dimly, of a voice calling out to him. He slowly realized it was the voice – or thoughts – of the master librarian. In the auricle room next to him, on the other side of the wall of neurologics, Master Baran Smith was monitoring his journey through shih space. (As he was also helping Hanuman with his journey.) Because they both shared parts of the same cybernetic space, Danlo could read quite a few of Master Smith's thoughts.
– Danlo wi Soli Ringess?
– Yes?
– Please face away from sight/sound/smell for a moment. You're too deep into simulation.
– Like this? If I do not reach out ... with a will to see, then the images will fade out and die, yes?
– Use your sense of tapas to restrain yourself; you know the way.
Of course, after only twelve brief, initiatory journeys into shih space, it would have been impossible for Danlo to have mastered tapas, or the other cybernetic senses. To face and cross the landscape of the computer's information flows, one needs the mental disciplines which the cetics have developed and evolved into the cybernetic senses. Although shih, the sense that 'tastes', feels and organizes varying concentrations of information, is the highest of these, there are others. There is plexure and iconic vision, simulation, syntaxis and tempo. Tapas is really more of a mental discipline than a sense; indeed, it is the ability to control – to restrain – the simulation of seeing, hearing, and smelling. First year novices always have trouble learning tapas, which is why a master librarian must be present to guide their first journeys into shih space.
– Do not depend too heavily on simulation, Young Danlo.
– But, to see/hear/smell, to ... simulate the history of the gods – it is more immediate to experience the field of knowledge than to kithe it.
– It's more immediate, but it takes much longer. And it exhausts the mind.
– I... did not mean to say it was merely more immediate. It is necessary, to experience, or not ... to know – I am not saying this clearly, am I? Or thinking it. What I mean is, it is vital to distinguish simulation from true living, yes?
Although it was dangerous to dwell very long in a simulated reality, Danlo felt strangely attracted to the unreal thoughtscapes that the computer painted with its electrons. To experience information constructs as blue waters, or as flowing lava rivers, or as mountains of rock and ice, to experience a simulated world as if he were a bird soaring above shatterwood forests, which, in their finely re-created black branches and shimmering green-grey needles, seemed almost real – this was as spellbinding as it was terrifying. In truth, he mistrusted and hated computer simulation. His deepest fear was that he might confuse unreality with reality, whatever 'reality' truly was. Reality is truth, he thought. The truth of the universe. And so, ironically, because he had a passion for truth, he made himself journey through the false worlds and surrealities of simulation as deeply as he could. He did this to test himself. He bared his nerves to the computer's sly touch because he had a passion to master this most basic of the cybernetic senses.
As he floated in the warm water and felt the cold wind of a computer-created landscape ice his eyes, he tried to explain this to the master librarian. But he did not explain himself well. The electronic telepathy of shih space was a poor way to communicate emotions because one could not see another's face or mannerisms, could not look deeply into another's true self.
– You're young still, and you'll have many years to learn simulation. But now you should face your syntactic sense and kithe the history that you're seeking. This is most efficient for simple information searches.
– But what I am looking for is not simple.
– What is it you want from today's journey, then?
– I am not sure. There must be a purpose ... to the evolution of gods. All evolution. The way the ecologies spring forth from a god's ontogenesis, the sprung ecologies, like ... the Golden Ring, a pattern and purpose.
– This is teleological thinking, Young Novice.
– But I... must know more about the gods. Their evolution. Mallory Ringess, my father – he became a god, yes? I must know why.
Danlo knew that the Order academicians were fairly divided over the manner in which life's evolution should be viewed. Many of the mechanics, for instance, eschewed and reviled teleology. Those who honoured the ancient scientific philosophy regarded life as the result of uncountable, random chemical and quantum events; for them, all of history was a pushing process, the micro-events of the past determining and pushing life into an unknown, arbitrary (and meaningless) future. While Danlo appreciated the stark beauty of determinism and chance, he found that this philosophy gave a distorted vision of reality or rather, a narrow vision. This vision did not fundamentally lie, but it was much like examining the colours of a painting molecule by molecule in order to perceive its symmetry or the artist's intention. There were other ways of seeing, and teleology was one of these. For Danlo, as for any good scryer or holist, the future was as real as the present moment; when he closed his eyes or looked up into the starry night, he saw intimations of a something infinite and splendid pulling him into its heart. Or pulling him with its bloody talons and beak into its belly – the wild, atavistic part of Danlo still saw the universe as an infinitely vast silver thallow just beginning to wake up and devour all living things.
– But teleology is like a lens ... that reveals history's direction, yes?
Master Smith's response to this question – his directed thoughts – should have been nearly instantaneous, so Danlo was surprised at the silence inside his head. But then he remembered that the librarian was also guiding Hanuman's journey, so he waited patiently for Master Smith to re-enter the shared space of their computer.
Danlo wi Soli Ringess? You wonder about teleology? This is true; there are many epistemological systems you might choose, Young Novice.
– The Fravashi call the ability to see knowledge as through different lenses, that is, through different epistemological systems, to enter and hold different worldviews ... they call this 'plexure'.
– The Honoured Fravashi misuse the word. They've broadened it to fit certain concepts of their philosophy.
– But plexure is ... a splendid way of seeing, yes?
– Properly, plexure is one of the cybernetic senses. You're here today, Young Novice, to attend to these primary senses.
– Such as syntaxis?
– You'll never become a pilot unless you master it.
– But the symbols, the word storm.
– Is it that you have trouble visualizing the ideoplasts?
– No, sir, it is just the opposite. I visualize them ... too intensely. Even when I am faced away from the computer, I can still see them. They burn in my mind.
For many moments, Danlo held his breath as he let his head fall back into the waters of the tank. He floated in liquid darkness and silence. When his brain's throbbing need for oxygen grew unbearable, he breached the surface, gasped for air and tasted mineral salts in his mouth. The sound of his deep breathing echoed off the neurologics close all around him. He faced the computer's shih space, then, calling up his sense of syntaxis in order to see his way through the word storm building up inside his mind. When he closed his eyes, he saw fields of glittering, three-dimensional symbols, the jewel-like ideoplasts of the universal syntax. His mind's eye beheld and kithed the ideoplast for the concept 'as', which appeared in the form of a pentacle, or rather, a wispy, five-pointed starfish frozen with the rigidity and crystalline perfection of blue topaz. This connected to the double diamond bars of the 'god' ideoplast, and to others. Each ideoplast, like the characters of the ancient Chinese script, was designed as a unique, graphic (and beautiful) expression of the most complex or simple of things and ideas, and there were many, many ideoplasts. Danlo, in his study of the universal syntax, had memorized some fifty thousand of them. The notationists say their number is potentially infinite, and this must be so, for reality itself may be sliced up, viewed, symbolized and reassembled into concepts of infinitely refined nuance and profundity. Ideoplasts are sometimes referred to as the 'words' of the universal syntax, but in fact they can also represent the sounds of spoken language, or ideas, or axioms, definitions, formalizations, logics, or even entire models of the universe.
– Young Novice, you must kithe now, or else you'll become lost in the word storm.
Kithing, the decipherment and understanding of the ideoplasts – the reading of symbols – is the most elementary part of syntaxis, but it is not an easily learned art. Inside Danlo's visual field, the computer placed arrays of brilliant mental symbols, artful orderings of the many teachings and concepts relating to the godhead. He studied the relationships between the ideoplasts; like diamonds and emeralds set into a Fravashi tapestry, there was an implicate pattern and meaning revealed in the way they linked together. He kithed the ideoplasts one by one, and as a wholeness which revealed startling juxtapositions of alien and ancient philosophies. In kithing the almost organic correspondences among the ideoplasts, the way in which the placement of each one influenced the placement and meaning of any other, he saw beautiful ideas and truths that otherwise might have been impossible to apprehend.
The computationists of the first cybernetic religions viewed the universe as a computer. Every bit of material reality was treated as a component of this universal computer. Every event in spacetime therefore was seen to be the result of the universe computing the consequences of nature's laws, which the computationists called algorithms. According to the oldest cybernetic theologies, twenty billion years ago, at the moment of creation, the universe was programmed with these algorithms to run until it reached its halt state and the answer to some great question was finally decided.
Because the arrays of ideoplasts were now forming up too quickly for him to kithe easily, Danlo faced away from the computer's word storm. He wanted to think alone and in silence. All around his naked skin was blackness, warm waters and real air heavy with salt and moisture, but inside his mind he could still see too many of the ideoplasts. He had been born with his mother's 'memory of pictures', a vivid, eidetic memory which often caused him as much consternation and confusion as it did joy. In his memory field, where the colours of each image were as pure and clear as the silvery greenness of a shih leaf, one ideoplast in particular stood out. This ideoplast derived from one of the great formulae of the Upanishads, and it symbolized the mystical equation between one's deepest self and the supreme godhead underlying all of reality. It appeared as a tear-shaped diamond drop suspended in the centre of a sphere of ten thousand other similar drops, each one shimmering violet or red or deep blue, each one reflecting the light of all the others. He could not rid his inner sight of this beautiful ideoplast, nor could he forget the many other ideoplasts placed in correspondence with it. Or rather, he could forget only with utmost difficulty. He had to use a trick of the remembrancers, to conjure up in his mind a vast snowfield onto which he dropped the ideoplasts, one by one, until they had all vanished through layers of fluffy white soreesh snow. Only then could he efface his memory. Only then could he find the quiet place where his thoughts ran deeper than the flow of mere symbols or words.
– The reality behind all things, the deep reality that some say is unknowable, and ineffable ... if there is a deeper reality, a will beneath the reality of natural laws, snow and ice, the blessed natural world, how could I ever know what it is?
For many moments of real time, the objective time that the horologes sometimes call out-time, Danlo floated in his tank pondering the cybernetic theologies. He decided that if the universe really were an infinite computer, then it would be impossible ever to know deep reality, for the same reason that the information flows of a simple computer could never 'know' the architect who had designed and written the programs. There was no way for a human being or any other part of the universe to get outside that universe, to see reality (or the 'God' who had created that reality) as it really was. Because he craved knowledge of the true nature of God, he decided to learn everything he could about this strange cybernetic theology which had influenced so many peoples across the Milky Way galaxy and so much of man's history.
– Nikolos Daru Ede, the first Architect of the Cybernetic Universal Church, was ... the first god. The first human being to become a god, if he was a god, or is, still, then where is his freedom ... to be and become, since he is still, like everything else within our universe, a being of matter and energy programmed by the god outside ... by the real God's universal algorithm, yes?
Again, he faced the tutelary computer, letting the stream of his turbulent, half-formed thoughts flow freely. He waited a long time for the master librarian's voice to speak inside his inner ear.
– Do you understand this question, Master Smith?
He waited and waited, but the tutelary computer had fallen into silence.
– Master Smith, I do not mean to interrupt but ... is Hanuman all right? He is looking for something that he should not, yes? He sometimes becomes too absorbed ... in the possibilities of computers.
Danlo waited in his hot pool of water, and still there was only silence and darkness. After he had waited almost longer than he could bear, he became aware of Master Smith's chiding thoughts.
– Danlo wi Soli Ringess, you must not ask about your friend or his journey. On pain of your forbiddance to the library, you must not ask this.
Librarians, Danlo suddenly recalled, on pain of banishment from the Order (or sometimes even death) may not reveal anything to anyone about journeys that they have guided.
– I am sorry, sir, but when you did not answer my question ...
– To get a precise answer to your questions, Young Novice, it's best to form your questions precisely. Don't the grammarians teach that the whole art of the universal syntax is in precisely asking the right questions?