'But what is mind?' Hanuman asked. 'Once again, our argument is turning in circles.'
Danlo smiled and said, 'But how should it not? Isn't the contemplation of consciousness ... like a snake swallowing its own tail?'
They stood there talking about the cetics' theory of the circular reduction of consciousness. In this reduction, the human mind is supposedly explainable by neural analysis, and neural analysis by brain chemistry. And brain chemistry is reducible to simple chemistry, which in turn, ultimately, can be reduced to pure quantum mechanics. For millennia, quantum mechanics has been a precise description of the interactions of the smallest pieces of observable matter, but it has never been an explanation of how – and why – these pieces come to be. To this day, some mechanics continue the attempt to explain matter in terms of itself, but most have given up this quest as hopeless. (The mechanics of Neverness, of course, have reduced all physics to pure mathematics. It is as if they seek to hone their equations until they are sharp and perfect as swords, thence to pierce the veils of Platonic space in the hope that all conceivable particles will spill out into creation like golden eggs from a sac. In this cosmic conceit, they are closer to the truth than they could ever know.) It was the cetics, in the time of Jonath Chu, who proposed the radical notion of explaining matter in terms of consciousness, rather than consciousness as an emergent property of the more highly organized forms of matter. Pure consciousness, according to Lord Chu, was the very stuff of reality. It underlay all matter, all energy, all spacetime. It was always moving, yet always still, as formless and eternal as water yet containing the possibilities of all things. Lord Chu had invented a physics of consciousness; he had attempted to explain, mathematically, how pure consciousness differentiates itself into all the particles and parts of the universe. Ultimately, the infamous Chu Wave Theory was proved inadequate and inconsistent, but Jonath Chu had almost succeeded in closing the circle of the reduction of human consciousness to the pure, universal consciousness that is only itself, and nothing more.
'I think you have your own theory of consciousness,' Danlo said.
'Every cetic has a theory.'
'Yes, but I have heard that you made improvements on the Wave Theory ... as a part of your masterwork.'
'Who told you this?'
Danlo shrugged his shoulders and said, 'I have many friends, Hanu. They cannot help talking about what you have done.'
'What have I done?' Hanuman wondered aloud. He began pacing back and forth. 'I've simply abandoned this notion of consciousness. What can we say about pure consciousness? It's not this, it's not that, it stirs, it stirs not, it's undefinable, unmeasurable, paradoxical. In a sense, it can't be said even to exist.'
'But you exist. We exist. We know ... that we exist.'
'Perhaps.'
'In the Elder Eddas, it is all there, the One Memory ... which is identical in each of us. The way consciousness becomes– '
'I've had a different remembrance of the Elder Eddas, you should know.'
'But at the deepest level, where all differences disappear, where memory is universal– '
'We each create our own universe, Danlo.'
Danlo touched the feather in his hair, then looked at the black sphere that Hanuman was holding. 'I think you love your own universe too well.'
'Should I love this world any better? This tangibility of stone and substance rushing to destruction? All the ugliness of a world that rots or decays or falls apart? No, I can't love it. There's so much pain. Even wickedness. You've seen the hibakusha children – the way they live. The way they die. You say that pain is the awareness of life. But, no, pain mocks life. Life, in this ugly flesh we're trapped in: it's all affliction and torment. A burning without end. And what is it that burns? Do we burn? What are we, really? We're pure flame, and flame burns, it's true, but it doesn't burn itself. There's a flame inside my flesh – call it pattern or program or soul, it doesn't matter. I am not matter. I can't tell you how I loathe any connection to this flawed, pinkish material that never stops burning,' here, he paused to grasp the skin on the back of his beautifully made hand, and then he shook it so violently that his knuckle bones fairly rattled. 'How should I love these common elements of blood and bone that keep my true self imprisoned? You say that matter is mind, but no, matter is misery. Matter is all mutability and disintegration. So long as we're bound to matter, we fall into decay atom by atom, or fall quickly to disease, but we all finally fall. And then there's only death and annihilation. Extinction. The memory of every fine feeling we've ever had or friends whom we've loved – all erased. Which is why I must find a way to free the fire from the flesh. It's only human to desire escape. We all desire this. Let's never forget that you've had your blessed remembrance.'
After Hanuman had finished this little speech, Danlo bowed his head in remembrance of the disease that had swept all the Devaki tribe into death. He touched the lightning scar above his eye, then said, Truly, everyone wants to escape suffering. But, Hanu, your world of dolls, this new passion of yours ... this is an escape from material reality. Remembrancing is escaping into material reality.'
'I don't see the difference.'
'But, there is all the difference in the world. It is the difference between what is real ... and what is not.'
Hanuman's face fell cold and he asked, rhetorically, 'Should a cetic listen to a pilot circumscribe the nature of reality?'
'That was not my intention,' Danlo said. He tapped the glass tabletop glowing with the light of Hanuman's dolls. 'I only wanted to distinguish between real life ... and a simulation of life.'
'I see. A pilot wishes to make this distinction.'
'Life cannot be made ... from bits of information.'
'No, that's precisely wrong,' Hanuman said. 'Information is the most real thing there is. The essence of everything is pure information.'
Like a Zanshin master preparing to defend the space nearby him, Hanuman placed his feet precisely on the wooden floor tiles. He seemed preternaturally relaxed, yet wary. He stood in the orange glow of the dying fire. He told Danlo something of his contribution to the cetics' theory of the circular reduction of consciousness. He admitted that he knew nothing of consciousness but nearly everything about mind. All mind, he said (and all matter, too), could be seen as a precise ordering of information. This was especially true of life, of the logical form that underlay all life. He claimed that the logical form of any living thing could be separated from the elements of material reality. Aliveness, he said, our sense of selfness and existence as minded beings resided only in this logical form and not in matter. Our minds were nothing but pure and elegant patterns that could be encoded as programs, thence to be preserved in the cybernetic spaces of a computer. Hanuman's sudden reversion to the philosophy of cybernetic gnosticism – the belief that matter was evil and that I mind or soul could be redeemed from flesh and saved forever in some cybernetic paradise – bewildered and disturbed Danlo. From the moment they had set out for Bardo's party, he'd thought that he had understood a part of Hanuman's attraction to Ringism: it was pure heresy against the fundamental doctrines of the Cybernetic Universal Church. Hanuman loved playing the heretic as he loved playing chess. It was his delight to mock the sanctimonies of the church into which he had been born. He had hated everything about Edeism, especially the easy machine ecstasies that were an Architect's reward for cleansing negative programs from one's brain. He had hated this corrupt old religion, and so it was his intention to play the prophet of one that was new. And so he stood there clutching a precisely machined ball of neurologics between his hands, and he seemed hollow-eyed and haunted by his own words. Danlo wondered if Hanuman truly believed that mind could be encoded as a computer program. He did not want to think that Hanuman might be as insincere as a wormrunner selling a dead firestone. As they faced each other in front of the room's darkening fireplace and he listened to Hanuman talk about dolls and the perfecting of all life, he was dazzled by the darkness of Hanuman's words. He could see only the faintest shadow of what would be obvious to historians a thousand years hence: that Hanuman's genius, as man and cetic, would be to infuse Ringism with cybernetic gnosticism and the ecstatic use of the computer, thus causing an explosive and universal religion to be born.
While staring at the beautiful dolls that Hanuman had made, Danlo ran his finger along the feather in his hair. Except for the zippering sound of his fingernail against the feather's barbs, the room was very quiet. At last, he stepped nearer to Hanuman and told him, 'You have fallen crueller, the older you have become. Cruel toward yourself.'
'Perhaps,' Hanuman said. 'Although it's cruel of you to remind me, if this is so.'
'I am ... sorry,' Danlo said. He bowed his head, ashamed at having spoken too freely.
'If I'm cruel, I'm no crueller than this ugly world I was born into.'
'The world is the world. The universe– '
'The universe is running to ruin,' Hanuman said. 'If you wish to envision the future of the universe, think of the Vild. A thousand light-years of ruined stars and dead planets. Dust, decay. Think of this when you look out the window at night.'
Danlo pressed his fingers to his forehead, then said, 'But, Hanu, haven't you ever stood on the ocean just before the moons come up? When the world is all ice and starlight? Why is everything so beautiful?'
'Is it? How many times have I heard you decry this world as shaida?'
'It is true, the world is full of shaida.'
'Then why seek so blindly to affirm it?'
'You think I am blind ... to the world?'
'Your aspiration of becoming an asarya – this is a blind man's quest.'
'But there must be a way to go beyond shaida. To live, even if the living is lethal.'
'Live?' Hanuman cried out, and he pointed at the scar above Danlo's eye. He thumped his chest with both hands, then held his palms upward in exasperation. 'Do you call this living?'
'This is the only life we will ever have.'
'A blind man's philosophy.'
'This is the only life we could ever have,' Danlo said. 'Of all the trillions of times the universe has called living things into life, you could have been born ... only when you were born.'
'But why should anyone have to be born at all?'
'I do not know,' Danlo said. 'But despite the shaida, there is something marvellous in the way the universe– '
'No, our universe is flawed,' Hanuman said. He rubbed his red eyes. 'Horribly and irredeemably flawed. Everywhere we look: disease, delusion, despair. Everywhere, all the elements of this creation, the immutable laws of nature. Who created these elements? Who wrote these laws? God? It's silly to believe in God, even sillier to ignore his handiwork. If there was ever a God, he must have been drunk when he created this abomination. No, I'm being too kind. Let's look at the universe just as it is. What is this infinite stellar machine that grinds us until we bleed and die? It's nothing more than a computer made of common matter, programmed by universal laws. The universe is computing the consequences of these laws. Why? So that we might live in marvel? No. No, no, no. The universe was programmed to arrive at the answer to some great question. The Programmer must have his question answered. What question, you wonder? It's a silly question, really, a cruel question better asked by a mathematician or a merchant: how much? That is the only question the universe asks, and every time a child dies of radiation burns or a man grows so old and feeble-brained he forgets his wife's name, her very face, the nearer the universe to an answer. How much, Danlo? How much suffering and ugliness can a man behold before he falls mad? Before he falls upon the crowds outside the Hofgarten with foaming teeth or lasers or knives? How much insanity can a civilization hold before it blows up the stars? God wants to know. Make no mistake, God is completely cruel, and this universe he's created is hell. God wants to know how much hell we can bear, because the hellfire that consumes him is infinite and unbearable, and it never stops. God tortures the creatures of his hand in the hope we'll join him in suffering, and thus ease the loneliness of his pain.'
At these words, Danlo rubbed his eyes and walked over to the sunflowers. He studied them a while, then looked at Hanuman and said, 'And so you sit alone in this room and play with dolls? Why, Hanu?'
Hanuman was still holding his black sphere, and he turned it around and around between his hands. He said, 'If I could build a computer large enough, if I could write programs with enough subtlety and elegance, then I believe it would be possible to evolve a perfect metalife. A life without war, without death, without bitterness, suffering, or even pain.'
'Truly? You believe this is truly possible?'
Hanuman smiled, then said, softly, 'It must be.'
He spoke with such sincerity and rare openness that Danlo could not bear looking at him. Danlo's head was beginning to ache, and his eyes burned, and he could not bear to meet the look of terrible hope on Hanuman's face. And so he stared off at the logs glowing red in the fireplace. After a long while he said, 'But what about you?'
'You mustn't concern yourself.'
'Even if you achieve ... what you wish to achieve, what about yourself? The fire, the light, inside – it will still be there, yes?'
'Perhaps.'
'But, Hanu, there is a way to make the burning stop.'
'No, you don't understand.'
'In the remembrances– '
'No, no.'
'The blessed kalla ... it is like an ocean that will quench all burning.'
'Oh, Danlo – no, no, no, no.'
'The One memory – we have only begun to see it.'
'In so many ways, you're still so blind.'
There was bitterness in the way that Hanuman said this, and something more, and Danlo felt as if a serpent had spat venom into his eyes. His eyes began to sting and water and he threw his hand across his forehead. 'That may be so,' he said. 'But a friend would not say that to his friend, not in that way.'