Taman Negara National Park, Malaysia
October, 2000
I blearily open my eyes and search for the alarm shrieking from my iPhone, finding it lying under my bed. I stab at the screen with a shaky finger to switch it off and stand up, then slip my feet into my flip flops and begin to mindlessly start jogging toward the screen door of my hut before realizing I am - save for a leopard-print banana hammock - stark naked.
Intending to spin on the ball of one foot to head back to the clothes piled next to my bed, I turn too sharply and cause both feet to fly out from under me - landing flat on my back and bouncing my skull off the weathered slats of the patio. Ah, I muse, it’s not officially a hangover without a migraine.
Blinking the stars from my eyes, I shakily get back to my feet and tenderly rub my tailbone to make sure there is no serious damage. I limp over to my bed, slowly, painfully shrug into my rumpled clothes then stagger back onto the porch and into the topless military-issue green jeep parked practically on the patio steps. I pray the old heap will start as I fumble the key into the ignition. I stomp on the brake and clutch, squeeze my eyes shut, hold my breath and turn the key.
Oh pleasepleaseplease don't get a bug up your ass today!
A sudden yelp of relief escapes me when the engine mercifully cranks on the first try - the backfire from the battered jeep startles me and sends leaves raining down as vibrantly colored macaws explode squawking from the nearest branches overhead into the iridescent emerald canopy of trees high above my team’s huts.
I floor the gas, and for a panicked instant, wonder why the jeep isn't moving. Then I notice my foot is still firmly planted on the clutch and release it, the spinning rear tires skate back and forth, spurting twin arcs of dirt into the air before getting traction. Suddenly the tires bite into the dark brown soil and the battered jeep yanks me onto the ancient path that snakes along the green embankment and down into a yawning canyon perpetually blanketed in hazy mist.
Below, the dig site I have spent the better part of five years wading through reams of paperwork to gain access to stretches out before me in a lush carpet of greenery. Overhead, the jungle canopy opens in a nearly perfect circle, permitting an oval of shafts of late morning sun to cast a natural spotlight on the ancient shrine’s ruins, occupying the surface of what I estimate to be about the size of the foundation of a fairly large two-story house .
My gut’s never steered me wrong before, and it’s been confidently - albeit, fitfully at the moment, thanks to Rich - telling I that all of the bureaucratic entanglements will be worth every hoop the government of Malaysia has made me jump through since early ‘95. Especially if I discover what is behind the legend that I had become a bit obsessed with since first told to me by a local shaman - a legend whose origins trace back through nearly forty thousand years of folklore to the Malay islands’ original settlers, the Negritos.
As far back as any of the locals can remember, the sacred island upon which the ruins, which were already clearly ancient to the newly-arrived Negritos was called Pulau Dewataor, which translates as Island of the Gods, and was not to be approached or even looked upon by human eyes. Yet despite the best efforts of the native inhabitants to obey the ancient commandment, there had been a persistent rumor kept alive by the local fisherman who worked at night reporting of a faint bluish light radiating through the island’s dense foliage...
The first bars of Beethoven's Fifth blasting from the phone in my pocket, startling me from idly wondering why I had felt it necessary to even listen to Rich, let alone allow him to talk me into drinking all that tequila last night - cause me to nearly drive the jeep over a cliff. And just who could that possibly be? Why of course, it’s the Richstigator! Last time I ever agree to play another drinking game with that shifty sumbitch, I think miserably.
Fumbling the phone from my t-shirt’s breast pocket, I stab the accept button under the photo of my ever-faithful - right, I think - assistant Rich, taken during last night’s half-remembered debaucherous activities.
I don't even need to punch the speakerphone button, missing the first few words of Rich's sentence, who didn't wait for their phones to completely connect, as he tended to begin speaking as soon as someone answered when he got really excited about something: "--something you're not gonna believe! Boss, where the hell are you?"
"Relax, I'm almost there." I reply, dropping the phone back in my shirt pocket. I slow when I see Rich's lanky figure jogging toward me from the dig site. I nose the jeep off the path, yank the parking brake and climb out.
"What's the rumpus?" I ask, doing my level best to make my way to a ladder extended down into a trench approximately three meters deep with as little stumbling as I can manage. I mount the ladder, with Rich close behind and my nostrils are greeted by the familiar smell of freshly turned soil and the tang of generator fuel.
Rich's voice is slightly muffled by the thick jungle air above and the puttering generator below, "The ground penetrating radar picked up something buried about half a meter down in the southeast quadrant. It appears to be symmetrical and hard."
In the early days of my undergrad work, such an announcement would have piqued my curiosity and ignited my imagination, much as it apparently has with Rich. But I quickly learned that pings from the GPR seldom warranted excitement, due to a combination of the excavator's expectations and the equipment's poor resolution. “How hard we talking about?” I ask.
“Extra-EME-ly hard. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on it rating around a ten on the Mohs Scale.” Mention of the word ‘betting’ from Rich alone would have caused me to pause to angrily glare at him, but hearing this startles me enough to momentarily lose grip of a rung - and what Rich says next causes me to fall off the last rung: "Whatever 'it' is, it's emitting energy."
Rich is suddenly standing over me, his hand gripping mine to help me to my feet, “Jesus, Boss. My bad.” I absently rub my abused coccyx and rub my throbbing skull as I stand, then dust myself off and limp over to the tent that covers the workstation and generator set up next to the dig site. My team of grad students had prepped the site the previous morning, with stakes driven into the site’s perimeter and strings tied to the spikes eight centimeters from the ground to form a grid comprised of five meter squares.
I pull a metal crate up to a laptop perched on a stack of plastic storage crates and gingerly sit down, then wake the computer from sleep mode. Rich leans over my shoulder and points at a small white square in the bottom corner of the application window. I flick my eyes down to the corresponding spot representing the ground of the dig site.
Rising from the laptop, I pick up the archaeology department's beaten up old Geiger counter, then shove a leather tool pouch tied shut with a rawhide strip into one of the deep pockets of my cargo shorts. Out of habit, I limp around the string border, careful not to step over until I have reached my intended digging spot. I set the counter on the ground, switch it on and sweep the detection wand toward the spot. Though my crew did a preliminary sweep when they set up the site, I want to be certain that the area is safe to dig into. The machine weakly clicks as it passes over, confirming yesterday’s readings and satisfying me that I and Rich are in no danger.
I switch off the Geiger counter and pass it back to my assistant, then kneel down. I grab the leather pouch and untie the strap to unroll my excavation kit. I select the hand trowel and brush that I have been using for decades, blow the bangs away from my face and set to work.
But soon the brutal combination of one hundred percent humidity and boiling hot sun overhead conspire to sap me of energy. It is not long before sweat is pouring down my face and into my eyes, momentarily blinded by the stinging drops. I quickly peel off my sweat-drenched shirt and send the phone skittering across the earthen floor - wipe off the sweat, then fashion the tee into a makeshift bandanna. Rich retrieves my phone and hands it to me. I quickly drop it into one of the pockets in my shorts and resume the arduous dig.
After an hour of alternating between digging and probing, my trowel scrapes against a solid object. I replace the trowel in its slot in the tool pouch and slip out a brush with stiff bristles. I then begin to carefully brush aside the remaining layer of soil, estimated to have been new in the eons following the Earth’s collision with a planet known as Theia - when the surface of the planet was almost entirely molten lava. In other words, I am excavating what was some of Earth's first land.
The half-buried impossible thing I see reflecting the hot morning sun causes me to involuntarily gasp and my heart is suddenly running at full-throttle. I practically jump to my feet, frantically yanking my phone from its pocket. I switch it on and notice my hands are shaking as I try to swipe from the main screen to the camera application while frantically waving Rich over to confirm what my eyes are trying to tell me, yet my brain is refusing to accept. I shut my eyes, take a deep breath and silently count to ten. When my eyes open again, my hands are steady and I can think more clearly.
Rich crouches over the find, and when he talks, I can pick up on a slight quaver in his voice. "That shouldn't be there. I mean, it can’t be there. So either we accept that we’re both somehow sharing a very realistic hallucination or what we’re looking at is real...and I’m not finding either possibility acceptable.”
Adrenaline magnifies my voice, startling me a bit “So it sounds like we’re both in agreement that I’m not hallucinating and my phone’s not malfunctioning?” Rich nods in agreement for the camera. I re-pocket the phone and squat in front of the hole.
With a sensation akin to reverence, I free from its two-and-a-half billion year old burial site a polished metal sphere. I’m expecting the object to be fairly heavy but astonished when I heft it in my hand, finding it weighs no more than an inflated beach ball and slightly larger than a softball, a spherical checkerboard pattern of indentations, sharply machined into its surface.
The logical portion of my mind struggles to make sense of what I am seeing. However I’m unable to deny the truth spoken by Rich’s question: "That's a Menger Sponge, isn't it?"
Again, I’m only capable of nodding, as my mouth still hangs wide open.
My phone rings, a riff from Dire Straits’ Sultans of Swing. Dad.
The emotional high of discovering the single most important find in this planet’s 4.5 billion year history is immediately shattered by the worst news I can imagine hearing. Somehow, my dad manages to keep it together as he shares with me the worst news he could imagine hearing, “Your mom has stage four ovarian cancer.”
I reply quickly so that he doesn’t need to stay on the phone with me, “Hang tight. I’m on the next flight out of here.” I hang up, completely running on auto-pilot now as I numbly drop the phone back in my shirt pocket - I begin to shiver, despite the intense noonday heat.
Feeling tiny and utterly helpless, I look up at a concerned-looking Rich. My voice sounds hollow when I speak, “My mom’s got stage four cancer.”
“Oh Jesus,” he whispers, then helps me to stand up, “Okay boss, first thing’s first - let’s get you out of this hot sun.” One step at a time, he cautiously guides me - on very shaky legs - back to the tent, lowers me in front of a stack of metal crates, and gently leans me against them. He quickly stands and riffles through the plastic crates and pulls from one a thick wool blanket.
He squats back down in front of me, tilts me forward enough to wrap the blanket around my shoulders then eases me back, “You’re going into shock, and every movie I’ve ever seen where a person goes into shock has them getting wrapped in a blanket. Is that the right thing to do here? I dunno, but it always seems to help the people in the movies. So I figure it can’t hurt to try it.”
From another plastic crate he pulls a desk fan, finds a nearby outlet to plug it into and sets it on another stack of crates a few feet across from me, angling it towards my face. The gentle breeze begins to dry the slick sheet of sweat coating my face, slowly reviving me from my state of shock.
Although I’m physically feeling slightly better now, my emotions spin out of my control and, powerless to stop them, tears start to flow freely.
***
The next morning, I board a flight with my eventual destination being a hospital room in North Carolina where my mother has been checked into a hospital.
Conversation, Part One
Raleigh, North Carolina
After a physically and emotionally draining 24 hour marathon of flights beginning in Kuala Lumpur, I arrive in Raleigh-Durham International Airport looking slightly disheveled but otherwise presentable. A rental from Hertz and thirty minutes later finds me walking down the brightly lit hallway of the hospital my mother had checked into two nights ago. Under one arm I carry a plastic Disney Store bag, inside is a large stuffed Winnie the Pooh toy I picked up on the way to the hospital.
While scanning the signs next to the door frames for her room number, I notice that for early afternoon, there is a distinct lack of people milling through the hall. In fact, I don’t see any people until reaching the nurses’ station directly across from my mother’s room.
Upon entering, I sense a subtle change in the air - a few degrees cooler than the hall, and the faint scent of lunch from an hour ago - pausing before shutting the door behind me, to see her sitting up watching Judge Judy on the ceiling-mounted television. Despite the feeble light of the overcast sky coming through the large windows, I can clearly see that she looks unexpectedly spry and chipper, considering she’d only quite recently received the results, and her eyes have their trademark sparkle and alertness that had not yet been touched by the cancer.
I try to shut the door as quietly as possible, but despite my best efforts, the air pressure from the hallway buffets between the door and jamb before being sucked closed with a gentle thud. I see my mom’s gaunt frame leaning forward for a better look, IV tubes, “Who’s that?” she asks.
I draw a deep breath, determined to put on a brave face for her. “Tis I, thy son who returneth home from yon exotic Malaysian Islands, bearing pressies and ginormous news!” I announce in a voice laden with a jovial grandiosity that I don’t actually feel, followed by a hearty chuckle of equal theatricality, eliciting mom’s own chuckle from the other side of the privacy curtain. Upon seeing me, she lights up and opens her arms wide - “There’s my boy. Come give yo’ mama a hug.”
I happily oblige her, then set the Disney Store bag in her lap, eager to see her reaction while I roll the high-backed vinyl guest hospital recliner next to the bed. She holds up the bag, gives it a quick squeeze, a slight tilt of her head and cocking of an eyebrow, “Native fertility mask?”
I close my eyes, cluck my tongue and slowly shake my head, “Newp.”
She opens the bag, clucks her own tongue once and grins weakly as she pulls Pooh out and lovingly tucks him under her arm, carefully avoiding the IV line. “Oh sweetie. You’re so good at this.” A reference to the significance of the fluffy yellow bear in the tiny red t-shirt, the first stuffed animal she had ever given me, awaiting me in my crib when she brought me home from the hospital for the very first time.
She holds out her free arm for another hug, and I swoop in for another one. She hugs me tightly, “Thank you, honey. He’s exactly what my day was missing.”
As I settle back into the recliner, I notice on my mother’s rollaway tabletop sits a gallon of sweet tea from Chik-Fil-A, tucked into a pile of shaved ice, an unused sitz bath repurposed to hold it all, and I salivate a bit when I see the red-capped transparent jug, half-filled with that sweet caramel-colored nectar.
I pluck a clear plastic cup from the stack sitting behind the tea, shovel in some ice and fill it before taking a seat in the high-backed light turquoise recliner, a short sigh escapes through the zipper, making me think for an instant that mom left me a welcome back whoopie cushion.
The thought vanishes when she picks up the remote, switches Judge Judy off, and changes her expression to one reserved for matters of the utmost seriousness, which causes a flicker of alarm to ripple through me. Okay we’re being serious now, I think. “Haven’t seen that look in a while,” I say.
“I want to hear this ginormous news I have, but first I have something important to tell you. Okay?” she asks, raising her eyebrows slightly to make sure we’re both on the same page. I nod, feeling another, stronger, flicker of alarm. “Okay.”
She shifts closer to the mattress edge, snakes her free arm through the opening in the bed’s guardrail and holds open her hand, which I quickly take. She draws a deep breath, glances at the ceiling and returns her gaze to me, then begins, “Last night, from 1:02 until 1:04, I was clinically dead.”
I feel alarm draining the blood from my face and causing my eyelids to open wide. A smile of empathy and a light squeeze of her hand helps bring my rising panic under control, snapping me back to the Here and Now. She continues, “While I was gone, I learned the truth of this universe, and what reality really is.”
Of all the things I anticipated talking to my mom about, this is not one of them. Not even close.
"What?" I ask in a flat voice.
Doomsday Revealed
Late one exceptionally clear night, an astrophysics graduate student, only known around campus as “Buggo” would be awakened by an alarm and become the first person alerted to the presence of another planet on a highly probable collision course with his own.But something about the data he was receiving about the planet’s orbital trajectory and proximity puzzled him. As he ran a simulation on his tablet, his feelings of dread would slowly become raw horror as the grey-scale model of the errant world crept closer and closer to his home world’s trajectory until both intersect, approximately six months from the current date. His own planet is sheared in half: one half completely swallowed by the larger invading planet to become its molten iron center, the momentum of the other half propelling it forward on its original path while dragging along behind it some of the larger planet’s superheated debris in a glowing tail.
Trying to keep from panicking long enough to compose a quick email to his graduate advisor Erwin “Winky” Winkleman, Buggo converted the simulation into an animated file and attached it then hit Send.
Buggo sat back in his chair and began to nervously chew at his fingernails - a challenge with such shaky hands - desperately hoping that Winky was still awake enough to put his mind at ease and write back that the simulation’s data was inaccurate and that he should have a drink from the bottle stashed in the toilet bowl reservoir.
Then Buggo decided not to wait and headed for the bathroom.
Conversation, Part Two
My mother’s smile tells me she was expecting this precise reaction from me, “I promise I haven’t lost my marbles, honey. In fact, let me see a credit card for a sec and I’ll show I. Doesn’t matter which one.”
I fish my wallet from my pants pocket, flip it open and hand her a Visa card, absently setting the wallet on my lap.
She holds it in front of I between the tips of her fingers, making sure I'm seeing the back of the card, "You can ee the eagle in the hologram, right?" My eyes flick to the square of shimmering rainbow colors stamped into the bottom corner - the three-dimensional shape of an eagle in flight - then slowly moves the card around, causing the colors and the eagle’s position to shift, “The universe we live in and experience, it’s all an illusion.”
She hands the card back, which I drop because my hands are shaking. I reach down to pick up the card, causing the wallet to drop to the floor and sending the cards clattering across the tile.
How am I supposed to respond to that? Did cancer do this to her brain? I wonder while replacing the cards in the wallet, the wallet back into its pocket. What’s next, dad letting me know the sphere I found was just an elaborate prank by jumping out of the bathroom and shouting Surprise? Maybe tomorrow I’ll learn that my parachuting instructor is secretly insane and maybe just for chuckles, decide to stuff my pack full of his dirty clothes.
As if reading my thoughts, “I know, honey. I wouldn’t know what to say to that, myself. But I also know I’d never lie to you or make something like this up.” She reaches for my still-shaking hand and clasps it between both of hers
Christ, look at yourself, man! If this is your idea of being strong for your parents -- Dad! Oh god, he must have--
Again, my expression conveys my thoughts to my mom, “No, your Dad doesn’t know yet. You’re the only person I’ve told. They were about to call him – and you - in case you needed to be here in time to say goodbye. But then I suddenly started to show a pulse, and they were able to stabilize me,” she explains.
Something about this puzzles you, “Why are you telling me about it first? And separately?”
“Because I haven’t figured out how to tell him yet without coming off like a crazy person.” For emphasis, she tilts her head slightly, raises her hand from Pooh, points at her head, twirls her finger while crossing her eyes and poking her tongue out of the corner of her mouth.
I realize my eyes are still bugging out and my mouth has dropped open at some point, which mom apparently finds hysterically funny, because she breaks out laughing. Hard. This triggers my sympathetic laugh as I suddenly realize how ridiculous I must look, and within seconds we’re both reaching for Kleenex to dab away the tears. “Oh Lord, I needed that,” she manages to get out after a few moments. “I haven’t laughed that hard in ages.”
A timid knock from the door. One of the nurses pokes her head in and whispers, “Everything okay in here, Franny dear?”
Mom sheepishly flashes me a guilty smile as she leans forward, “I’m so sorry, honey! We got a little carried away. Yes, everything’s fantastic!”
Mock-sternness from the nurse, “You in here taking advantage of handsome young men again?”
Mock-offense taken by my mother, she demurely dips her chin and raises her hand to her chest with fingers spread, eyelashes batting, "Now Katy, you know I was raised a Catholic girl."
Both women, simultaneously, "So...yes." Riotous giggling erupts from both, which continues on the other side, muffled by the door.
Even though I can't help but grin and shake my head in wonder at my mother's antics in the face of the greatest challenge she has ever had to face, my thoughts return to the subject of her strange experience. “How?” I ask, finding she’s cupped my hand between both of her cold ones. But then again, her hands have always been cold. Cold hands, warm heart, indeed. So true, so true... I muse.
A squeeze from her hands, “How what, honey?”
“How did you...I know - know?”
She appears to ponder how to answer, lightly gnawing on her bottom lip for a moment, “When my soul left my body, it was no longer held back by the limitations of my senses. I instantly knew I was experiencing our reality as it truly is - and it’s because of those limitations that I’m not capable of even describing reality to you - not beyond the crude analogy with the credit card anyway. I’m sure a theoretical physicist could explain it better. But it’s just dumb ol’ mom trying to explain this the best she can with what she's got up here," she taps the side of her head, "so bear with me if I stumble along the way."
"As I understand it, everything that we experience in our universe as having three dimensions, everything we perceive as solid and tangible - and verified by all of the sophisticated scientific machines built by our most brilliant minds - is no more real than that eagle on the back of your credit card. Our three-dimensional "reality" is basically nothing more than a movie that's being projected onto a flat two-dimensional surface. I was about to learn what that surface is and why it - the universe we thought we knew and love - exists, and that it does exist for a very specific purpose."
She pulls my hand towards her, gives it a quick kiss and a pat, “Now, help your dumb ol’ mom sit up. She’s parched.”
I stand, slipping my hand under her shoulder for better leverage as she scooches upright and pushes the button in the guardrail to raise the top of the mattress, the tiny whir of the motor stopping when she drops her hand back on her lap. I refill her cup nearly to the top with ice and pour roughly a thimble-full of tea into the remaining space. Mom’s familiar, comforting hand softly strokes my back, then picks up her cup of tea and takes a long pull on the bent-neck straw. “Thank you, my sweet boy. Now go sit back down, because mama’s got more to tell you.”
Clandestine
The sunsets were lasting longer this time of year, and even more spectacular to witness so far from the light-polluted skies of urban sprawl and so close to the equator, the fiery star unleashing a bonanza of color mirrored on the ocean below that glittered like living jewels.Luckily for Newton, it was off-season for the islands and the only people around were the resort’s skeleton crew. This afforded him the level of privacy he needed to explain the general plan to the group sharing his table, mostly comprised of colleagues located around the world - most with whom he had frequently communicated, usually by e-mail and video conferencing.
However, explaining the project proved to be a thornier task than he had anticipated, as he needed to reveal to his team enough to convey the overall plan, but also keep it all vague enough for them not to know anything of real value to prying eyes. Newton considered it necessary to add that extra level of security, for which he specifically recruited the hacker who went by the name of Bella Starr to design and implement, if any of them were ever detained and questioned. He would then relegate to each scientist the highly specialized work for which they were hand-picked.
Then there was the matter of his friend and colleague Winky the missing astrophysicist - the reason Newton and the rest of the team were here for - who had reserved a suite but had not yet checked in. The numerous times Newton called Winky’s phone were met by his chipper voice mail greeting.
“Still with us, boss?” At the sound of Yuri’s thickly-accented, gravelly baritone, Newton tore his gaze away from the fluffy bank of distant clouds tinged in rich hues of pink and peach, pushed across the horizon by an intoxicatingly gentle breeze scented with exotic flowers.
He returned his attention to the group seated around the large round table, chatting quietly amongst themselves, then to his condensed matter expert Yuri, “Sorry Yuri, guess I’m just a bit distracted. I’m getting worried about Winky.”
His voice trailed off as he did a quick scan of the faces, all familiar except for one. His eyes lingered on the one he had met for the first time in the resort’s majestically opulent lobby a few minutes ago.
This woman’s face was the only one unfamiliar to him - the hacker who went by the name Bella Starr insisted on keeping her identity secret, for reasons unknown to him - and wasn’t even close to what he was expecting: mid to late 20s, raccoon eyes eyeliner, dressed in black, covered in tattoos and piercings, maybe a wallet chained to a belt buckle.
The woman that stepped out of the elevator looked every bit the Executive: five-foot-eight, mid 30s, tan, large green eyes, chestnut hair pulled into a severe bun, expertly subtle application of make-up, no-nonsense glasses, tight-fitting charcoal business suit, the hem terminating mid-thigh, sheer black stockings with the line up the back, all wrapped around long, well-toned legs, small feet clad in blood red leather high heels, and a gold anklet.
She had quickly charmed the rest of the group when introductions were made and was now chatting quietly with Stanislaw Sakharov, the creator of the project’s simulation architecture, “I had to miss out on so many great things because of allergies. I don’t even know what peanut butter tastes like,” she explained sadly. She glanced up and caught Newton staring at her and smiled.
Distractedly, Newton wondered what she looked like under the suit then quickly looked down at the tablet in his lap and closed the applications he wasn’t using to unclutter his desktop, until he was down to the mail application’s inbox window, below which was a message he had received from Winky yesterday, likely typed out while he was waiting to board his flight. Newton quickly reread it:
To: Bob
From: Winky
Subject: Keep This Under my Hat 4 Now
Re: on my calculations predicting collision with planetary body confirmed imminent. Planet avoided detection due to low surface reflectivity, detected by gravitational perturbations of planet’s wake.
Will discuss further upon arrival @ island for meeting. Landing late and going straight to bed - ha ha! Looking forward to seeing gang tomorrow night..
Later buddy!
Winky
Newton had a judgment call to make, debating over whether to postpone the meeting and try to determine what happened to his friend or to soldier on and break the news to the only group of people who could help him bring the project to fruition before their world was to be obliterated.
Newton made his choice then cleared his throat for attention and introduced his plan to the group - and as plans went, he ventured that it very well could be the most ambitious and probably the most important one ever devised in history.
Conversation, Part Three
I’m momentarily distracted by the first warming shafts of sunlight to appear in days breaking through the window, causing the atmosphere in the room to shift again - from a nondescript, melancholy slate, tinged with unseen anxiety into a divinely tranquil gold, imbued with the promise of revelation.
I catch mom looking at me intently, and a grin slowly plays over her face as I return from the daydream I was having and already forgotten what it was about. She glances at the wall clock, “Katy will be giving me my afternoon shot in a few minutes. It always makes me sleepy, and there are a few things I still need to tell you - so let me get through it before asking any questions, okay? Odds are, I won’t know any of the answers anyway,” she says with a soft chuckle.
“In the ancient world, when something - something able to have a sense of right and wrong - our ancestors created religion to cope with not knowing what lies beyond death. But out of all the people who have ever lived, only a few dozen have ever seen the truth and recognized it for what it is. Out of that small group, only a handful have spoken openly of what I’m about to tell you. The earliest were executed as heretics, then eventually labeled as crackpots and ostracized from the communities they lived in.”
I uncap the jug, pour mom another thimble-full of tea, return the jug to its sitz bath cradle and hand her the cup. She sips from the bendy straw before resuming, “What many people have come to believe in - with no small amount of help from the church - is that when we die, we are judged by a deity for our actions in this life. Depending on what those actions are, the soul is sent off to continue on its journey someplace else."
“What we learned during our own journeys beyond death is that our actions in life are not being ‘judged’ for reward or punishment, but are literally being collected for a task much larger and more important than the actions of any single human being. The information about the actions of our species as a whole is what is being collected. The ultimate purpose of this task is anybody’s guess. I was actually on the verge of finding that out before my soul was slammed back into my body.
“The last thing I learned before I returned is that even ‘death’ itself is an illusion - that the actual physical universe that our simulated universe is modeled after begins beyond the plane in which our souls exist. What people call 'ghosts' are like what remains of a file in a computer after it's been deleted - some level of information about that file will linger in the hard drive until it’s reformatted.”
The she appeared to be struck with a thought, “Do you remember the day we played hooky back when you were just starting high school and I took you to see Purple Rose of Cairo?" she asks.
I vaguely recall that day, mostly because it was rainfall that had broken a 30 year record and knocked the power out. So, instead of sitting around in a dark house, mom and I hopped in the car and went to the movies to sit in a dark theater instead, "Was that the Woody Allen flick? Jeff Daniels steps off a movie screen --"
Everything my mother has been telling me suddenly clicks into place and I feel my eyebrows lifting and my mouth falling open, again. I slowly raise my eyes and look at my mother, hands in her lap, her nod barely perceptible, as if to say, “Now you’ve got it.”
“So, for all we know,” I gesture to the room, “this is Purple Rose of Cairo 2?” I ask, incredulous.
She pauses for a moment, looking up and to her right in consideration, then wrinkles her brow and turns a corner of her lips up in a slight frown, as if something she has just tasted doesn’t taste quite right, “In a way...yes. I do know there’s a greater purpose behind it - and there's one last thing I have to tell you about during the time that I was dead. I don't know what it means exactly but that it was very important that I tell you that you are the final subject before the next phase was to begin.” I start to ask what she thought it meant, but she already seems to know what my question is and gives me a bewildered shrug.
“When are you going to tell dad?” I ask, hoping he takes it well.
“He’ll be up later, when his seminar is done. He’s bringing pizza from San Carlo’s!” She claps lightly and flashes a big smile, “Can’t wait to have real food again!”
A soft knock before the door opens to admit Katy, carrying my mom’s pills in a small pleated paper cup, “Hey there, sweetness. Time for your afternoon nap.” She gently rattles the pills around as she bustles up next to the bed, clad entirely in blue scrubs, a pair of reading glasses rests on her matronly ample bosom, clipped to a brass ball-link chain around her neck, sneakers faintly squeaking on the tile.
Mom tosses back the proffered pills and washes them down with a swig of tea and thanks Katy, already bustling back to the nurse’s station. “You know where we are if you need anything, dear.” Katy calls out before easing the door closed.
I stand up while mom presses the button to lower the head of the bed in preparation for her nap, then fluffs her pillow before turning on her side to face me. Again, she reaches for my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze, “I’m sure you have a thousand questions, but I’ll be out like a light in two minutes. Besides, I want you to have some time to process it all, because it’s a lot to take in. But I want you to do me a favor and keep all this between us until I’ve had a chance to tell your dad,” another squeeze of her hand, firmer, “just know I love you more than anything in the world -” she motions with a quick head tilt away for me to come closer, and whispers, “and I love my pressie.”
She slips her hand behind my neck and pulls me in to kiss me on the cheek, then lowers her arms, then her head and snugs the bedsheets up around her neck. I bend down and kiss her gently on the side of her forehead and whisper that I love her too.
She smiles and closes her eyes.
I walk out to the hall and shut the door behind me then make my way to the elevators, pushing the down button. The elevator doors directly in front of me slide open, the motion sensor clicking as I step in, remembering that I have to pack for skydiving tomorrow morning.
I shake the thought from my mind and slip out my phone, then pull up Contacts, scrolling until I reach Mom, then touch the Info icon for a dropdown menu of options for sharing files. I find the video of the sphere and send her a copy.
As the lighted digital numbers over the door count down, I lift my finger to the button panel as the counter reaches 02. My finger hovers over the button for the floor my mom is on as I debate whether to head back up to tell her. Remembering that she’s probably sawing logs by now, I let my hand drop and step through the doors as they open on the lobby.
Unbagged Cat
“Bob, why are we doing this?” Russ Lederman asked, unable to contain his curiosity any longer after glancing at the equation on Newton’s whiteboard and seeing his laptop running a wireframe animation of a sphere whose surface was covered with a checkerboard pattern of recesses, “I’m your Ex O, right?”
Newton’s lanky six-foot-plus frame continued to pace in front of the white board and glared at it occasionally, completely absorbed in solving the equation and oblivious to Lederman’s question. “Say, Bob?” Lederman called out again. He had grown accustomed to Bob Newton’s propensity for obsessing over details without seeing the forest for the trees, and in the past that personality trait had served him well when he worked alone without a timetable or an oncoming planet to provide a sense of urgency. However, Newton did not have that luxury now, and Lederman desperately needed to light a fire under the man’s ass. Something he couldn’t do while being kept in the dark about so much. “Bob.”
Bob Newton paused to erase a small portion of the equation, pulled out a blue marker and inserted a different value then stepped back and tapped the marker against his chin. Lederman watched his old friend’s eyes dart around the board to assess the impact of the newer calculation, absently nodding in satisfaction. “Russ!” Newton shouted over his shoulder without looking away from the equation.
Lederman rose from his chair, took a step forward to stand directly behind Bob, “Right here, Bob,” which caused Bob to quickly tuck his head between his shoulders. A moment later, his shoulders lowered and he slowly turned around, a bright blue mark running from his chin to the base of his nose. Bob Newton wasn’t smiling.
“Yes, Bob?” Lederman asked before returning to his seat, his face completely expressionless, his voice carrying no trace of irony. “I’m worried about you, Bob. I mean, how long have I been doing that to you? Something like twenty-five years, isn’t it?” Russ Lederman asked, shaking his head in what appeared to be genuine and utter amazement.
“Yeah, you’d think I’d learn, sooner or later...” Newton muttered to himself while stepping to the industrial sink to scrub the blue line from his face. He pulled a clean washcloth from the cabinet over the sink and soaked it under steaming hot water. He then squirted dish soap onto the rag and worked it into a foamy lather. He leaned toward the small mirror hanging over the sink, raised the cloth and scrubbed at the blue mark as he spoke, while stretching his lips away from his nostrils, causing his esses to whistle softly. “You want to know what all the secrecy’s about.”
Russ Lederman nods, “I think I have the right to know. Don’t I?”
“Absolutely, you have the right.” Bob Newton rinsed the pale blue suds from the washcloth and his chin, then draped the cloth over the sink’s lip. “The simple fact is we can’t risk letting anyone know what we’re up to. If anyone gets wind of this project, the government gets involved and the instant that happens, we get boxed out. And I haven’t even gone into all the ways they can make us vanish without a trace if they decide we’re too much of a liability. It’s not like they answer to anybody.” It wasn’t unheard of - both Newton and Lederman had colleagues who had perished under suspicious circumstances in order to serve some unfathomably sinister political agenda. “And although none of those things will matter a few months from now, it will make finishing the device a bit difficult if none of us is alive to get it done.”
Lederman was trying to mask his exasperation at Newton’s evasiveness, but it was becoming more and more of a challenge, “Okay, that’s why we’re keeping the project a secret - I get that part. But so far, all I know is you asked me to help you put a team together. So now we have a--” holding his fist out and extending each finger with each job title, “--materials expert, a microbiologist, a computer programmer, an AI specialist, not to mention this Bella Starr you recruited to set up a security system for our communications and data, and finally - the applied physics guru, yours truly - all furiously working to build….what? What is this Big Secret we’re keeping from them, Bob?”
Newton held his palms out in a placating gesture, “I’m sorry. I promise I wasn’t trying to hide it from you. We’ve just been running at full throttle ever since the meet and greet at the resort - but I swear it wasn’t intentional.” He opened the cabinet over the sink and pulled out a pair of thick glass tumblers before walking to his desk - a dinosaur from fifty years ago - yanked at the top drawer on the side until it sprang open with a metallic shriek, and a pint of some kind of dark amber-colored liquid with a fancy label slid to the front. He set the glasses down, poured three fingers of booze into each tumbler, capped the bottle and dropped it back into its drawer then shoved the drawer closed with a bump of his hip. He picked up both tumblers and held one out for his colleague.
Lederman got up from his chair, which he carried over to Newton’s desk. He took the glass, clinked it against Newton’s and reseated himself, his rotundness causing the springs in his chair to groan. Newton pulled his own chair from under the desktop and sat down heavily, his splayed legs looking almost spider-like.
With both hands cradling his drink, Bob Newton leaned forward and rested his forearms atop his knees, then explained to his old friend the details of the plan that he had omitted during the meeting at the resort, and any doubts Russ had about the project vanished by the time Bob had finished.
Random Accidental Death
Christ, I was only kidding about the parachute being stuffed full of the instructor’s dirty laundry. I ignored my gut instinct to not jump out of a perfectly good airplane for recreation. Now that I have pulled the ripcord a sixth time, I am finally willing to accept that my chute will not deploy and that my situation is inescapable. Acceptance triggers a cascade of endorphins that flood through my body and I’m overtaken by a stillness radiating from a tingly spot at the center of my forehead.
Time takes on a viscous, syrupy quality, and the rapidly approaching target that is filling more and more of my field of vision rather abruptly slows to a crawl. The dawning realization on the spectators’ faces make it appear is if their horrified expressions are melting into place like Silly Putty.
I wonder if time will continue on in slow motion, meaning that my death will be excruciatingly drawn out or if it will happen so quickly that I won’t even realize it. I hope for the latter as my brain is inundated and my senses take in every single detail of the world around me - the way the updraft turns my face into floppy rubber, the individual blades of grass within the bullseye’s alternating rings of vibrant white and red, the taste of the unfortunate mosquito splattering against the roof of my mouth, and the piercing screams of those assembled outside of the target getting louder and louder.
But just as dread begins to creep in from the periphery of my awareness, millimeters from the hard ground, just before I squeeze my eyes shut, the ground resumes its rapid approach.
I smile broadly with relief, never feeling more alive, more real in the entirety of my existence than I do at this moment and swearing that if I somehow manage to survive this.
The sphere flashes in my mind.
Then, my consciousness is swallowed by impenetrable blackness.
Blackmailed..?
Despite being physically attracted to her, Newton was mistrustful of Bella Stark from the time their affair started at the resort months before. But he didn’t have time to hunt for other available prospects and she possessed the specific skill set the project needed for the project to be completed in secret. Bob had two options: hire Bella on her own terms and take his chances or err on the side of caution and hope that he would find another hacker in time to do what nobody else on the project’s team was qualified to do.
Knowing he had no choice but to roll the dice and take the plunge, Bob Newton had forced aside his feelings of unease and brought her into the group, all the while keeping a close eye on her just in case she had ulterior motives.
Ever since Bob was a child, his dad was relentless in pointing out the usefulness of contingency plans and got in the habit of always having a backup handy, regardless of the circumstances. “You might think I’m just being a nag,” dad would say, “but trust me, you’ll be in a jam and wish you’d been paying more attention to what I’m telling you.”
At least that’s what he was allowing her to assume. But Bob had other ideas.
Belle had changed from the Executive persona and replaced it with something that was closer to what Newton imagined was her true personality: the Femme Fatale. Gone were the glasses, the business suit, replaced by a tight-fitting black dress, large gold hoop earrings, and lustrous chestnut hair that cascaded over her shoulders and back.
She moved closer to him on the sofa, placing her hand on his chest. “I don’t think you’re quite following me, Bob, she said with a smirk, then leaned closer to Newton’s earlobe and continued in a whisper, laced with a hint of the spicy peanut satay sauce coating the chicken kebabs from dinner. “You have two choices, darling: play nice with me and I keep what I’ve seen to myself. Or...your juicy little simulation hits the internet and your secret project instantly gets a global audience.”
She followed with a sly smile and a wink.
Gray spots began dancing into his periphery and a buzzing, faint at first, rose in his ears as he struggled to keep his awareness from being sucked into the depths of whatever mickey she had slipped him. Even though the drug was already starting to wear off, as she hadn’t made the dose strong enough, he was a bit surprised to find he could already speak, “Yeah, I thought the chicken tasted funny…”
“Oh, that? Well, I had a feeling you might get a bit emotional and I needed for you to be docile when I explained to you the situation in which you currently find yourself. Normally I would’ve just gotten you drunk, but you’re such a lightweight that you’d be passed out after two drinks.”
She coughed gently into her hand. “So I opted for adding just a pinch of sedative to your kebabs to keep you awake but mellow. They really were delicious, by the way. Just out of curiosity, what’s the base for that sauce? I just can’t put my finger on the flavor.” She coughed again, harder this time.
Bob Newton could see that her curiosity was sincere, and he thought it would be cruel to keep the key ingredient a secret - and so he told her, “Oh that? That, “darling”, is my dear friend, the simple little peanut.”
Suddenly, Bob appeared to have been struck with a novel thought, “Say, you’re allergic to peanuts, aren’t you? I suppose you couldn’t place the flavor since your mom made you stop eating them after you were tested positive for an allergy to legumes as a kid - which wasn’t as recently as you’d like people to assume, I might add.”
It was Bob’s turn to smirk as he watched the realization hit home. Her eyes went wide and her jaw went slack, dropping her mouth open slightly. “You were playing me the whole time,” she said in a dead, emotionless voice.
Bob chuckled without mirth, “Yeah, just about - and had I not overheard you telling Stan how bummed you are that you don’t know what peanut butter tastes like - which, by the way, is awesome - then this would’ve been a lot more complicated.”
Her coughing had become constant, punctuated by gasps of air as she frantically looked around Bob’s rented bungalow for her cell phone. Her eyes bugged out of their sockets and her face slowly continued to swell, turning from a violent pink to beet red. She flailed about, knocking over the coffee table and the candles and wine glasses that sat atop it before collapsing to the floor in a heap in front of the sofa, doubled over and gagging for air as her inflamed windpipe had almost swollen completely closed. Then she looked up at him. Even as her eyelids began to swell to a pair of puckered slits and her face darkened from deep red to purple, he could still clearly see her naked terror.
He slid to the edge of the overstuffed salmon-colored cushions, leaned forward and rested his forearms atop his knees. “Pity that I was drugged. I might have been able to save you long enough for an ambulance to get way out here.”
Still a bit woozy, Bob slid his hands to his knees, gripping them for support as he started to rise from the sofa then paused, looking down at her lying on the floor, arch-backed and clawing at her throat for air, her mouth opening and closing silently like a fish out of water. “You know, the fact that you don’t have an identity actually ends up working to my advantage, since search parties aren’t generally sent out to look for nonexistent people.”
By now her face is nearly the shade of eggplant as she spasms one last time before collapsing, lifeless, to the bungalow floor, a drop of saliva fell from her red lips.
Ascension
Suddenly I am no longer plummeting toward Earth at terminal velocity. My body is gone - and, like a phantom limb, my mind has not yet figured out that I no longer need to look around or listen to take in my environment, which is why the words appear to my consciousness, for the words “see” and “hear” no longer hold any meaning...When life was created on our planet of Theia, it had no kind of guiding force and was left to fend for itself. By simple necessity, life was forced to adapt rapidly and savagely grab at every available resource if it had any chance of surviving. Perhaps this was the original Necessary Evil of life on our planet - survive, but risk only knowing an existence of brutality and single-minded self-interest.
This is where scientists all agreed that this is biology’s single greatest downfall - its inability to see beyond its own immediate needs, and the willingness to commit any act without conscience in order to fulfill those needs - because those lifeforms pass down that trait to their offspring. They realized that even though it may be possible to breed out this trait over many eons, there was also the probability that species would extinguish themselves before having a chance of the trait being removed.
Millions of years later, our ancient ancestors evolved a rudimentary level of awareness that did not exist in any other organism during our planet’s long history. At some point in our past, one of these ancestors committed a terrible act and felt remorse. Then he wondered if a bear killed another bear because it was too near her cubs or if she killed out of an innately savage nature. Regardless of the reason, this ancestor wondered if the bear felt guilty afterward.
And then this ancestor did something else that none before him had ever done: he communicated regret in a cave painting. This is roughly when what we would come to call religion originated, when worship of the forces of nature were no longer sufficient in contemplating sophisticated issues like morality. Something grander and more omniscient was needed to answer the questions our ancestors were struggling with. It was at this point in our history that our forefathers invented gods to answer those questions as well as provide consequences for their misdeeds.
But as time passed, our ancestors multiplied and spread across the planet, stumbling around blindly - wholly reliant on trial-and-error to determine the differences between right and wrong - their lack of a guiding force resulted in wildly different ideas of what was moral, forming more religions with followers who were convinced that their interpretation was right. Disagreement became dispute, which bred zealots who declared war on each other - willing to murder and die for something they unquestioningly believed in yet had no proof even existed or ever did.
Many generations and thousands of years later, our innately savage nature had been suppressed enough to allow civilization to evolve. Yet that savagery could not be completely extinguished within us and only led us to create cunning and deception, as time after time our leaders grew insatiable appetites for decadence and power until their empires could no longer sustain those appetites and eventually collapsed. But as long as a few of our ancestors survived the cataclysms they had created, then there was always the small chance that their inheritors would get things right the next time.
Then the day came when we learned how to harness a force so destructive that it was capable of sterilizing the entire planet of life. Some of us - especially the scientists who had unwittingly built these engines of destruction - asked a rather novel question: Our calculations say our universe should be teeming with life, and yet we’ve never seen any evidence that life exists beyond our planet. Is it possible that life on this planet was purely the result of random chance and existed nowhere else in the entire universe - and if so, what happens if we destroy all life here?
A small group of these scientists met to create a safeguard to prevent that from happening. They laid plans to design a means of seeding another planet with life able to reproduce should life on our own planet ever be destroyed.
One of the scientists then had a flash of insight and wondered if this newly created organism would fare any better than the lifeforms on this planet had and realized that without a guiding force it would likely evolve in much the same way we had - ultimately condemned to succumb to its insatiable self-destructive appetites.
The group soon realized their plan left too much to random chance and that one further safeguard was needed to keep their new lifeform from evolving into something that was doomed to destroy itself. It needed to have an instinct written into its very genetic structure which would push it to evolve to be peaceful. Even if the organism had not sufficiently evolved to understand concepts like morality, its innate instinct to abhor violence would override the savage nature its most primitive ancestors needed to survive their earliest days on our planet.
In addition to building a capsule impervious to the ravages of the eons for carrying this lifeform, the scientists were faced with two more seemingly insurmountable problems: how to write an instinct into a lifeform’s DNA, and locating a sterile planet devoid of any trace of life - preexisting life which had already evolved its own rules for survival not consistent with those of the organism the scientists aimed to create.
The first problem would be solved by the creation of the simulated universe that you inhabited, modeled after our own which evolved from a very specific initial set of physical conditions. This universe contained a planet which would eventually be known as Earth, seeded with organic life by scientists from a race of aliens called Theians. The spherical device was discovered in the group of islands collectively known as Malaysia on an archaeological dig undertaken and overseen by you. This device was constructed and launched by my friends and designed by me, a Theian scientist named Robert Newton.
Shortly after we solved the problem of behaviorally engineering an organism, the solution for locating a suitable planet was provided by nature: a planet on a collision course with our own.
Our planet, Theia was sheared in half by the planet into which you are about to be born. One half was expelled and became the planet’s orbiting satellite. The other half of what was once Theia was completely absorbed by the planet to become its molten iron core.
This planet - which you have proven yourself worthy of inhabiting because of the choices you made in the simulation - will know as Earth.
This is the real reason we programmed all life in the simulation to have free will. Had you made choices that reflected a disharmonious nature, it would prove that your consciousness was not yet ready to ascend from the simulation into a real body and you would be reborn into the simulation with memories of the mistakes you had made in your previous life so that you would eventually learn from those mistakes. This is why the belief of reincarnation developed in the religions of the simulated Earth you inhabited.
Now you are about to be born into reality. You will remember nothing from the simulated universe nor will you remember any of this, yet you will have a sense that there was a Before.
My consciousness is flooded with a pure, brilliant white light and I begin my final ascent.
Launch
Mere weeks had passed since Newton dealt with his would-be blackmailer, the woman he had recruited for the project simply vanished without a trace. All Bob needed to dispose of was a laptop, a bag of clothes on hangers, and a rucksack that carried clothes and toiletries - only the essentials for a person who had been living on the run for most of her life.But he had no time to think about the phantom hacker, as Russ Lederman was becoming increasingly relentless in his self-appointed task of slave-driver, as if he had grown afraid that the sky becoming completely blotted out by the other planet was not enough to keep Newton focused. With the sky’s departure arrived weather that was growing increasingly unpredictable and violent.
This was Newton’s baby, and it was ready for delivery.
His “baby” was a sphere forged with Yuri’s newly-developed superalloy – a material endowed with such unprecedented durability that Yuri, the project’s materials engineer, estimated the device could be buried in a cliff face for ten billion years and upon excavation, emerge looking as if it had only been buried the day before it was dug up. The sphere - which was, for all intents and purposes, indestructible - contained a fluid-filled chamber populated by a swarm of millions of microscopic nanobots fabricated by Lederman in his home laboratory at night after his wife went to bed, that would act as an ensemble collective intelligence.
The miniscule nanobots were programmed to complete two enormous undertakings - first, to project the simulation universe built by Stan Sakharov upon the hollow inner sphere’s surface. Then, when the simulation’s program had compiled the last packet of data when the last simulated person “died”, the nanobots would begin data mining the entire collective human experience of every being ever simulated in order to determine the behavioral traits needed for intelligent life to split off from its initial base survival instincts - qualities such as wisdom, compassion, empathy, reverence, and judiciousness - the nanobots would then make the needed additions to its DNA.
The nanobots would then begin synthesizing the behaviorally reprogrammed DNA using material extracted via the apertures hidden in the sphere’s checkerboard niches from the environment’s available organic molecules. The systems designer, Ed Chandra embedded within the sphere an array of sensors able to detect when the appropriate molecules were present for constructing a eukaryotic cell in which to inject the fragile synthesized DNA strand. Chandra also devised a propulsion system for the sphere, designing retractable low-power thrusters positioned behind the niche apertures.
Upon completion, the sphere would then deploy the organism back into the environment to locate an existing lifeform with which to merge its own genetic code and begin to reproduce, seeding the pristine Earth with organic life.
Lederman was the lynchpin in Newton’s blueprint for perpetuating conscientious intelligence in the universe, as he was responsible for ensuring their package arrived at its destination intact.
Taking all the different factors into account, including the mass predicted by the simulations to be added to Earth after the collision, Lederman had programmed the launch system to propel the sphere to Theia’s escape velocity, then upon reaching Earth, would skim along the edge of the planet’s gravitational pull and slingshot around the collision zone before settling into a gradually decaying Earth orbit lasting one billion years using the thrusters to maintain position until finally slipping into the atmosphere at a shallow angle, avoiding the tremendous amounts of heat produced by friction at steeper angles of approach.
Lederman then took the launch data and used it to guide the process for designing and constructing the device's launch track. At the head of the track was connected a scram gun that would expel the sphere like a bullet, with enough propulsion to escape from Theia’s gravitational pull.
All that remained for Bob and Russ to do was to toast their accomplishment with one last drink, launch the device, then return home to spend their final days with their loved ones.
***
Three days later, in the most unimaginably titanic single moment of destruction either planet had experienced since their creation, the two worlds silently collided in the vacuum of space.
Epilogue
Earth, Unknown Supercontinent
Vernal equinox, 1.7 billion years b.c.e
After silently orbiting the third planet from the sun for a billion years, kept on course with small bursts of thrust from the sphere’s propulsion jets hidden within the tiny niches, the sphere crosses into the third planet’s modest gravity at a steep angle, adjusting its trajectory as needed when the sensors approached their programmed heat threshold to avoid friction.
For several minutes it accelerates through the planet’s progressively thicker layers of atmosphere before smacking with a hiss into a feeble colony of green algae fringing the shore of a pond - the force almost burying it into the soft muck, a tendril of steam curling into the air.
Mountain range-sized clouds sluggishly boil across the sky as lightning strobes across their titanic ebon undersides. From far above, a bolt of lightning strikes the exposed half of the sphere and triggers a slowly pulsing faint blue glow.
Within the center of the sphere’s perfectly symmetrical labyrinth corridors, the collective consciousness of the millions of nanobots that populate the fluid-filled hollow of the sphere initiates the synthesis routine its creators had programmed eons before
An aperture recessed within one of the niches on the side immersed in the pond slides open then snaps shut, sucking a droplet of the algae into a tiny decontamination chamber for chemical analysis. Deeming the fluid to be free of contaminants, the nanobots' shared consciousness opens an adjacent aperture, permitting the algae to ooze into the sterile inner chamber, encased inside an air bubble to be converted into material needed for creating the cell into which the internal components would be stored and protected during their first years on Earth.
***
The third planet's solitary star has crossed the horizon countless times. The sphere has since completely sunk into the shore, reshaped by eons of weathering and tidal forces, the rampant growth of algae rendering the landscape into an unrecognizable marshy green vista, blanketed in fog.
Suddenly, the sphere's pulsing accelerates and shifts from blue to a brilliant crimson, its surface superheating and incinerating the dense layer of growth into a circle of ash which is blown clean by a gust of wind from the north.
For the first time in millennia, brilliant sunlight reflects off the exposed half of the sphere's polished surface as the water fills in where the ground was burned away. The aperture, which admitted the biological sample so many years before, opens and a single drop of clear liquid rolls down the gentle slope of the sphere into the water covered algae.
The infinitesimal organism drifts down through the murk of the pond. It possesses no appendages, utterly incapable of propulsion. Constructed of the most abundant organic materials available, the cell has been engineered to survive, to evolve, and to adapt to its environment in the simplest configuration possible: a single cell enclosed in a thin yet tough membrane, now slowly sinking into Earth’s primordial waters.
Then something magical happens: the cell, embraced in the swaying diaphanous green tendrils and warmed by the rays of the sun, unites with the algae and becomes Life.
***
Encoded deep within the cell’s double helix is a blueprint for an exceptional being. This enlightened entity appeared within the sphere’s simulated universe only a few times throughout history known but known by many names, including Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and Zoroaster, as the conditions permitting it to achieve transcendence rarely occurred.
Deeper still within the tightly bunched coils of the cell's DNA is a secret payload which will remain undiscovered for over 2.5 billion years. The code bestows a form of immortality upon the being - the mechanism for what Buddhists within the simulation defined as bhāva - the continuity of life and death.
The people of the sphere’s simulated universe are being given the extra chance on Earth their Theian progenitors did not receive.