IZZY HEARS A WHO
Nakomi looks like the way I just felt: like she's going to faint. I just learned that our universe is merely a microcosm of another world, of Horton's world. Heck, my own body probably hosts infinite worlds. In fact, I know it does. As many before me have said, "I contain multitudes." Except "multitude" just means a really large number, so I'll revise: I contain infinities. My body is host to bacteria, archaea, fungi, protists, viruses, and even micro-animals. One might say I am a world of my own, that each human is a world of their own. And the things that I host are apparently hosts of themselves, to other hosts who are also hosts. Worlds within worlds within worlds.
It's too much to comprehend! My desire to faint seems a little more justified than Nakomi's.
Still, I muster up the ability to speak to her. "This is Horton. One of the lizard people I keep trying to tell you about. But you won't listen."
Nakomi puts up her muddy hand. "After being deprived of all my senses for nearly an hour, I must be losing it."
"Keep telling yourself that."
Abruptly, eyebrow-ringed Claudia opens the door, fresh towels draped over her arm. She sees us, and begins, "Oh, you were supposed to wait until I came to fetch y—" Horton has caught her gaze. She stands there for a couple minutes, then legitimately faints.
"Well," says Horton. "Should we go somewhere more...private?"
"It fucking talks," Nakomi whispers.
"He can hear you," I tell her. Then I turn toward him, saying, "We can go to my apartment."
"Do you want her to come with us?" he asks, and his politeness catches me off guard.
I turn to Nakomi. "Do you want to come with us?"
"You're going with that thing?"
"Yes. I have a lot of questions for him, and I'd rather not have any more spa staff walking in. I'd also like to get this disgusting sludge off of myself."
Nakomi looks back and forth between Horton and I, and sighs. "Since I'm sure I'm probably going to wake up and figure out that this was a dream or the result of the Vivectica™ I can't remember taking: yes. I'll go."
"We'll need to hold on to each other," Horton says, and Nakomi visibly winces. She meanders over, letting me stand in the middle, likely to avoid touching him. He looks at me. "Imagine your apartment."
I do as I'm told, imagining my living room, and he puts a claw on my forehead. Is he reading my mind? I open my eyes to observe him in the midst of his mind-reading, but he's finished, as he swishes the scepter from right to left diagonally. Suddenly, the three of us are standing in front of my living room's Wall TV. My body feels vaguely like it's just twitched, a big twitch, kind of like when you're about to fall asleep and you suddenly feel like you're falling and it jolts you awake. I feel more awake, and slightly annoyed by it.
"That is not how I imagined teleportation would feel," I say, turning to look at my two traveling buddies.
A dazed expression has taken residence on Nakomi's face, while Horton is taking the opportunity to shamelessly snoop around my apartment. I notice, for the first time, that he has a tail, and he appears to be remarkably in control of it. This is the first time I've really seen him walking around and not just hovering over me or teleporting right in front of me. The kitchen has immediately drawn him, likely because the stainless steel contraptions remind him of the hyper-technological features of his own space-stationy home. With his clawed hand, he touches my espresso machine first and my freeze-drying machine second. "There are some freeze-dried apricots in there," I tell him. "If you're hungry. I'm gonna...shower. Is that okay?"
"Oh, yes," Horton says, now seemingly mesmerized by the fridge.
The water from the shower washes off the rest of the Beauty Sludge™, but it doesn't clear my head. I'm not sure what's real anymore and what's not. Is there really a crocodile-lizard man named Horton in my apartment?
Upon exiting the shower, I towel-dry and put on some comfortable clothes. I return to my living room, where I'm met by Nakomi on the couch (getting sludge all over my throw blanket, grrrr) talking to Horton, who's standing.
"All of the psychiatrists who work at the drug clinic say that the entities we meet on our DMT trips are the personified or zoomorphized or deified forms of our inner demons, or desires, or our internalized trauma—something like that. I've been thinking that you're just the zoomorophized form of Izzy's desire for...something. Or maybe some trauma she's not aware of. I don't know. I still don't believe you exist. Prove to me that you're real."
"I don't know what else I can do to prove it to you, Nakomi," Horton says helplessly (apparently, they are now on a first-name basis).
They both turn to look at me, and I offer no response.
"I need a shower," Nakomi says, clearly exasperated. "Maybe scalding hot water will wake me up from this dream."
Her exit leaves Horton and me alone together.
"I don't quite believe you're real, either," I say to him quietly.
"You humans are very bound by your beliefs."
"Show me something I haven't seen before. Something my imagination couldn't possibly imagine. Something existing outside of my known memories." Without meaning to, I glance at his scepter.
He notices, looking down at the hyper-technological staff himself, as if he realizes what I'm truly asking for. "We have to be careful about traveling between worlds, Izzy. Although both our species breath air, and although the laws of physics dominating our realms are quite similar, such might not be the case with other places. We must also worry about time dilation. This kind of travel is much different than the astral travel you've done before."
"Time dilation? Like how time slows down near a black hole?"
"Exactly. Time operates differently in each realm. In our realm chain, it seems like the smaller realms operate at a much faster time, although I'm not completely positive about that: I have limited experience. My kind don't...travel often."
"Realm chain?"
"Well, my world is located inside of a larger world. Your world is within my world. Together, these three locations form a chain: a world, within a world, within a world. We glephkings are not allowed to travel outside of the chains interconnected with our own realm, nor do we even know how. We will also never physically travel to higher realms."
"Why?"
"We suspect that time in those realms might operate much more slowly, which will mean that a lot of time in our lower realm will pass in just a little time in the higher realm."
I look at my ceiling, pondering all of his words. "Then let's travel to a smaller location. Let's travel to a ... dust speck."
Walking over to a side table sitting next to my couch, I turn on the lamp that sits atop it. With the apartment's limited natural light, we can see various dust specks floating in the light rays that bursts out from the bulb. (I also haven't dusted in a while.)
I gesture at the floating dust, looking over at Horton. He nods. As he approaches me, he says, "If any of the creatures there are hostile, we'll have to come right back."
"Yes. Of course." I place my hand on his scaly arm.
As his scepter begins to swish downward diagonally from left to right, Nakomi comes out, asking, asking, "Izzy, do you have any shamp—"
But she disappears, and I feel that twitch again, and suddenly, Horton and I stand in the middle of an unrecognizable world, atop a knoll overgrown with some sort of pinkish moss, or fungus, or mold—or maybe it's none of those things. From this vantage point, we can gaze down at what seems to be a city of sorts.
The sky, if it can be called a sky, is a mellow yellow color. There appear to be buildings here, making up the city skyline. These buildings are made of some cloud-like substance: fluffy, colored in neutral cotton-candy hues, wispy at the edges—as though the material is living and moving.
Between the buildings are zigzagging and looping walkways, I guess, overgrown with the same moss/fungus/mold on which we stand. I can see movement on those walkways.
I run down the knoll for a closer look, and Horton runs alongside me. The two of us get close to one of the walkways, and hide behind a living tree. This description is also lacking—I know—as all trees are living. But this tree is visibly moving. A seafoam color, the whole thing looks cottony, and the things branching out from its trunk(?) look vaguely like cirrus clouds, wisping outward and then contracting and then repeating their dance.
We peek out from our hiding place. Creatures that I can best describe as the distant cousins of tardigrades and sea monkeys line the walkways (but that description is lacking; these creatures are creatures I have never encountered before, creatures my imagination could not possibly have conjured). Noises spout from observable mouths. They are talking to each other.
"What are they saying?" I whisper.
"I don't know their language," Horton replies.
"This entire world is contained within a dust speck? I'm never dusting again. I'm never cleaning again."
"I suspect this world is quite small and quite simple: a single worlded-system. Your universe seems much larger and complex: it's a system with various microsystems."
Microsystems, I think. Galaxies. Solar systems. Planets. Continents. Countries. States. Cities. Apartments. Living rooms. Dust specks.
"But look!" I cry, spotting a bright white orb shining in the sky. "They have a sun, just like we do. Maybe they have their own solar system?"
"I suspect the sun is your lamp, Izzy. See how it's shaped?"
Against my better judgment, I stare directly at this world's sun without sunglasses, finding that it is indeed lightbulb shaped.
"That's crazy. My lamp turns off automatically every night at ten-thirty. What happens to this world when it gets dark?"
"Remember, Izzy: this world is moving much faster than your world. Nighttime in your world might not happen for thousands of years to come in this world! Even if it does, this world doesn't abide by all the same laws that your world does. The sun going out might not have any negative consequences."
I contemplate his words. "So...if my world moves faster than your world, does that mean that a lot of time passes in my world in just a short amount of time on yours?"
"I think so. Truthfully, our contact with humans has been brief. That's how it always is when other entities contact us. The contact occurs for a period and then ends."
Maybe because those entities' worlds die.
"The first time I saw you was not that long ago for me, you know. Not long at all. That's why I knew I had to find you."
"But why does time flow normally during astral travel? Why can I travel to see you astrally, observe you in a way that seems time is flowing normally for you, yet not miss out on years of my life on Earth?"
"It's a paradox. I don't understand it either, Izzy. I don't have all the answers, either."
A noise sounds to our left, and one of the tardigrade-cousin-looking things makes itself known. It's talking to us in that unrecognizable language, full of pshhhh and ptsaaaa and pkeeeee, and full of even more sounds my human English alphabet's letters cannot capture.
"Is it acting hostile?"
Horton takes my arm. "I sense fear, but not hostility. But still, just to be safe, we should leave. I never meant for us to make ourselves known. We might just have inadvertently altered this world in some negative way."
Maybe they'll view us as gods, or demons. Maybe they have no concept of gods or demons. But they can build, can't they? Or perhaps those aren't buildings...
There's no time for further investigation; the creature is coming closer to us, its flustered noises growing louder. I nod at Horton, and he swishes his scepter. In no time at all, Nakomi is in front of us, saying, "Poo."
"Poo?"
"Do you have any shampoo?" she asks, like she didn't notice we just left.
"Under the sink," I say back, my mind slowly exploding with the knowledge of infinity. The infinite chain of worlds. The infinite chains of interconnected worlds. Our world exists within a world. The world contains worlds. Those worlds contain worlds. Simple one-world systems, and complex multi-world systems.
The more I think about worlds, my knowledge of the existence of those worlds increases exponentially. To infinity.
Paradoxically, the more I know, the less I know. Because each world is different. And I know next to nothing about just how different a world thrice removed might be.
subchapter | life versus nonlife
The distinction between life and nonlife is not as clear-cut as most people believe. Scientists have failed to create a definition that includes all organisms we believe to be "living" while excluding all things we believe to be "nonliving." By some definitions, fire—which consumes oxygen and other forms of energy and grows—is alive. By other definitions, organisms like tardigrades and "sea monkeys" (brine shrimp), which undergo lengthy periods of dormancy, possess no "living" features and thus don't pass as living, despite the fact that most people will insist they are living creatures. (Many microbiological lifeforms fall into this ambiguous gray area, including viruses, bacteria, and parasites.) Then there is the case of that period between life and death: when an apricot is plucked from a tree, is it alive? Is it dying? Is it dead? Some of the machines we create are capable of many of the things that those things we consider to be "living" are capable of. How much does a machine need to be capable of before we consider it living? Digital organisms, made up of digital bits, currently exist; those digital organisms can mutate and evolve on their own. Are they "alive"?
Many scientists believe that coming up with a clear definition to distinguish life from nonlife is futile. Some eventually include that either nothing is alive or that everything is, believing that this distinction between life and death we live by might be nothing more than an illusion. Perhaps the true nature of "life," whatever that may be, is too complicated for humans to grasp.
Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: AzTruyen.Top