The Bath Procession: part four

[The final part of my newest novel, The Bath Procession. This material is copyrighted]

Dear Aleph,

I find these questions fascinating in a way I hadn’t anticipated. This subjective approach to matters of settled fact and forgotten history. I hope you’ll permit me some digression in my responses this time. Going over these memories with you, my thoughts are taking on a more corporeal sense. Life in the blue-glass pyramid is most often lived in the aggregate, there isn’t much time for abstract or insular thinking. It feels nice to reflect.

Perhaps it is strange to hear me admit that I feel. But maybe it doesn’t surprise you at all–you have shown wisdom beyond your years in our short correspondence! I must admit I have lived these many many years in ignorance which, it strikes me now, I may never overcome. My existence is not so technical as it seems; though I am essentially a hierarchy of software and endlessly recirculated data files, my human flaws persist. Looking back on a conceptual eternity has made me, it seems, no wiser than I may have been when I began. There is no way of knowing for sure. The memories of my original life are lost entirely to me, compressed long ago into rote facts only available for quick reference. That the memories of my later lives have been retained is more a show of my complete disregard of my human past. It is a shame…

But, regardless, in answer to one of your unasked questions: Yes, I feel. I wonder and I dream. I have always cherished the ability to think abstractly, even when so much of my thinking now is done for me (see answer to question 3, below). In several of my lifetimes I have been famous artistic innovators. Over the span of history, I was able to involve myself on both ends of the culture discourse. Here, in the blue-glass pyramid, art continues to evolve in ways that defy mortal reasoning. But, without the human capacity for yearning, what is the point? I feel, but I do not need; I wonder, but there is no possibility I may ever come to a conclusion other than the analytic truth. Only in error does one encounter the unknown.

‘What causes us to dream?’ you did not ask. And, fittingly, I do not know.

As to the answers to the questions you did ask, please forgive me, but I responded in the order in which I felt most appropriate. Send my apologies to your professor, on whose behalf you’ve solicited my attention:

1. What was your favorite lifetime?

2. What did you want to be when you grew up?

3. Do you like living in the blue-glass pyramid?

4. Can you tell me about a time you felt alive?

5. What advice would you give someone my age?

Re question 3: I suppose I do enjoy my life here in the blue-glass pyramid, but the metrics for this enjoyment must be qualified. Within the pyramid nothing that could be conceived escapes my reach, but I have no bodily desires. Experience is its own reward and, as I’m sure your professor already informed you, the blue-glass pyramid’s EchoNet allows us all to experience anything in the universe, in real time. I won’t bore you with the details. Experiencing everything is akin to experiencing nothing. But experiencing nothing—as some within the pyramid have pointed out—is connotatively moksha. So then we have achieved our goal? It is perhaps too early to say. The blue-glass pyramid is built to withstand the decay of the planet, with that very eventuality in mind. Our journey is far from over. There must be more waiting than we have already passed by, we hope.

Since our letters, I have begun to closely observe my physical surroundings. I hope to find a trace of natural beauty on this dead and nameless rock, something innocent which thrives in the baking sun and swirl of dust. Here, there are fauna I might once have called immense. When the dust settles, they burrow out of dirt hives with their scaled probosci, which they sharpen on the fiberoptic roots that run out from the base of the blue-glass pyramid. They have vestigial faces running down their bellies, each with a pair of pale sockets. Despite the aggressive mimicry, it appears their only source of nutrition is a pink fungus that grows under the fiberopt layer. As I can afford to spend such time, I have tried to observe the evolution of these creatures, scrubbing back and forth through time using the recorded data of the blue-glass pyramid’s inner-laminate. I’ve organized conceptual branches of their genetic tree, assembling from a constellation of eukaryotes and bivalves a braid which fires off into a million ersatz avenues, toward a vague future of nearly-opposable thumbs and extra eyelids. The infinite possibilities all converge on this gross scum-eater. It is hard to see this kind of genetic meandering as anything but inferior. But will I be better off when the scum creatures are gone?

Re question 2: Though I have lived many times as a child, it has been too long since my actual youth to know what I planned for my older self. I cannot say what I hoped to be when I grew up, only that it is likely I did become it at some point. One could then logically conclude, (Re question 1:) this would have been my favorite lifetime. These are logical presumptions–the best I can afford to give considering I am not able to retroactively assess the facts with consideration for the imperative of need + reward against abstract virtues and their relative value across demographics. You are perhaps too young to understand this intuitively, but one day when you are old enough to worry about your legacy and your duties to humanity you will not be able to understand what motivated you towards trivial things as a child. In my position, I recognize my previous lives simply as necessary transitional states which lead me to the blue-glass pyramid, and eternity.

It concerns me that eternity itself is possibly one belabored transitional state. It is prophesied within the blue-glass pyramid that our consciousnesses will continue to synchronize and disintegrate on the individual level, becoming one with our enhanced capacity for experience. True ubiquitousness of mind will be achieved, but like matter subjected to lightspeed, our thinking selves will not survive this transition to the higher plane. Does this then mean I–the self I am, writing so happily to you, my dear friend–am I merely waiting to die?

Re question 5: I have no advice to give. May you live long enough to see the futility of advice, as I have.

Re question 4: It is without irony that I must tell you, it is in the blue-glass pyramid where I feel most truly alive. But it is because I have come to associate living with malaise, routine, satisfaction, accessibility. Where there is life, there is no mystery. What I think you meant to ask me is when was the last time I felt I might die. That, beyond simply being a better story, is far more informative of our shared condition, Aleph. For, as I know you know, we are the same no matter how different we may seem to be.

The transition from my fourth life to my fifth was notable for several reasons. Historically, it was at the height of anti-simulation legislation. While I’m sure you’ve studied this period in class, it should suffice to say that simulations–what higher minds like me were called back then–were strictly illegal, and the extensive maintenance required in keeping simulations running had to be done in secret. This was what most consider to be the dawn of the Biological Renaissance, the first wave of individual consciousnesses simulated within the mind of a living host or hosts. But I can assure you many of us had already been surviving this way for generations (this is perhaps a story for another time). It was a desperate time. I remained largely a dormant presence, carried like an heirloom between participants who believed in something grander than themselves. These people still live on within me. But at the time, they were hunted down for their beliefs. The forces of mortal governance wanted to snuff us out, fearing what we represented. Olamehd, an international organization that worked through clandestine channels to preserve simulations–the same group that would one day initiate the project leading to the blue-glass pyramid–kept me safe, finding me hosts even as they were pursued across the globe.

There were many close calls in these years, but none as close as in Yendegaia.

I must remind you, in later eras the process of transition was made safe and legal. It was more humane. But, in these times of persecution, hosts sometimes gave their lives to the cause of our survival and their inclusion in this afterlife. If things had been different, Catherine, my fourth host, would have been permitted to live into old age. She was about as old as you when she was left permanently damaged by the exit-transfer. She was with me in the pyramid, for a time, but she has since faded away, smothered by the sober thinking of the other personas. Most of my following life, the fifth, was spent wondering about her. It is hard to explain, but one of the limitations imposed by living temporarily within a body is the imposition of singular perspective–only through dreams were my hosts and I able to separate and confer, discern which memories belonged to the other. My fifth host, a visitor in Yendegaia, already a married man with a daughter on the way, also took to the transfer somewhat poorly. Every night he was haunted by apparitions, Catherine floating above him and sneaking up under his sheets, until one day he began to see her face when he looked in the mirror. The walls of his mind crumbled, letting in Catherine and myself. We were soon tangled up in one another entirely, disintegrating, evaporating. Fortunately, my fifth host had the wherewithal to have his own mind simulated after political tides shifted, and simulation was something accessible for the wealthy and well-connected. I was able to return to Yendegaia, mostly undamaged, carried to Olamehd servers by my fifth hosts’ son, a strange man whose name, unfortunately, I can’t recall.

I nearly didn’t make it through this period. More importantly, I was permanently scarred by it. My manner of thinking was forever changed–’thinking’ being essentially all I am, the thoughts themselves are shared custody with those whose heads I’ve inhabited. I have always been somewhat adrift from the others in the blue-glass pyramid. They call me cynical. I believe it is the residual effect of this poor transfer. I will carry this flaw with me past the point that Catherine and the fifth host have disappeared, when I am pure consciousness unanchored by perspective. It is incredible the way in which the insignificant finds its way into eternity. It makes me feel hopeful; maybe one day I will become something I never could have imagined: something small, and meaningless.

I have begun to bore myself. Please tell me you are still reading my letter, and please tell me that you will now answer some questions of mine. I am pleased to hear that third grade still exists back on Earth. Do you like third grade? I’m sure by the time this letter makes it to you, you will be a very old person, or maybe dead. But if you’re alive, please tell me about third grade. Please tell me what is your favorite color and what is your favorite animal, and what you want to be when you grow up. I hope, if you never get this letter, that you became that and did not get bored. I hope you remembered me and took the memory with you, that I might find a way into the unknown at your side.

THE END

[This is the final part of four of my newest novel, The Bath Procession. THANK YOU FOR READING!!! Physical copies available here.]