A piece of Horton's brain is now fused with my own brain, the piece we hope is responsible for his enhanced mind abilities—most importantly, his ability to teleport.

I have his hyper-technological scepter in my hand, but as far as my puny little human brain is concerned (I mean, the parts of my brain that didn't originally belong to Hortons), it might as well be a magic staff.

Closing my eyes, concentrating, I try to "target" the place of no egos. I'm not sure what Horton meant when he said places needed to be targeted with his mind ability. Did he need to picture them? No—because that would have to mean he had been to those places before. He hadn't been here before he came here. He just knew where our world was located, because of the beacon/scale he put inside of me.

Maybe I left a part of myself in the place of no egos when I went there. That's what Horton called it. That's the highest/outermost place I can think of. Maybe there—maybe there, someone, something, can fix this mess.

I hone in on that feeling I had, that feeling when I forgot who and what I was. When I forgot I, me, myself.

Where everything existed all at once. Where everything was a paradox.

Where everything was harmonious, despite being sometimes cacophonous and full of opposing forces.

I lift the scepter up, then swish it downward and diagonally. Take me there.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Surrounding me is that infinite organism/machine/cyborg thing, made up of anything and everything all at once. Eyes. Noses. Gears. Levers. Planets. Atoms. Coffee pots.

But I'm still me.

∞Hello, Izzy. Welcome. It surprises us to see you here—a separate being. Last time you were here, you merged with us. But now, you bring your physical body. Do you remember what it was like to awaken as the cosmic consciousness, Izzy? To lose yourself and become ourself?∞

The voice booms all around me. Not only can I hear it; I can taste, touch, feel, and smell it. And I think my prior suspicion is right: this isn't the outermost realm. This is the cosmic totality. This is the entire cosmos—the grand scheme of things, the infinite scheme of things. And me: I'm just the cosmic conscious having an out-of-body experience. I do remember. And I...I... something, like a force, seems to tug at my body. It wants me to join the cosmic consciousness.

∞Yes, we know you can feel that force—the force that wants your body to merge with us. Stay here too long, and your physical body will merge with ours, and your perception will no longer be filtered through an ego. You will be a part of us again. You won't be a "you," and we won't be a "we." Because you have visited us with your physical human body, the illusion of separateness has remained, but it won't hold for long. The illusion will fade, and you will reawaken. You are but one of the many pieces of the infinite puzzle, but one of many neurons of the infinite mind, but one of many strands of the infinite consciousness. Join us, and eventually you will yet again sleep and experience another place in this megaverse, another world dominated by its own illusions. Join us, and you will once more understand the meaning of life: balance. The infinity is forever a balance.∞

That isn't why I came here. I didn't come here to reawaken as the cosmic consciousness. I didn't come here to join you...and are you even a "you"?

∞For ease of conversation, we will call ourself a "we," even though that language is problematic. "We" implies that there is more than one of us, that we are separate entities operating as a single body of entities. We are more like an "I." But that is misleading, too, because "I" implies an individuality, an apartness from other existing things. You know we—everything (all matter) in this realm—exist as a single entity, with no disparate parts—which is why, we suppose, "we" works best. The only thing we are currently apart from is you, and that's because you came here as one of our manifestations still in its material form. You know very well that these point-of-view terms really make no sense here in this place, from this omniscient vantage point, but these are the terms by which your Earthen reality abides, and these are the terms you understand. Your earthen-reality linguistics uses subjects, too, but here, there are just predicates. For your sake, we will use subjects.∞

I want to maintain my point of view and my subjecthood. I want to save my friend, Horton. I want to fix the chaos that our meeting spawned.

∞In the time you have been here, much has happened. The glephking you call Horton died in his comatose state. The glephkings' realm was struck by tragedy upon the inability of those slaughtered to return. Without their physical return, their realm was out of balance, missing matter, matter which was now added to Earth, matter which manifested itself into forms most similar to those forms it had previously occupied: reptiles.∞

The increased reptile populations.

∞Yes. More glephkings came to Earth, too.∞

How? The beacon is with me.

∞The other glephkings had beacons, too. They were sought out by their kind, and more of their kind were slaughtered. Some were held captive.∞

No... All I feel at this news is despair. Utter despair. 

∞With the chaos that ensued as the results of those increased reptilian populations, humanity's realization that the "natural order" is not what they once thought, and the fallout from the continued human-incited slaughter of glephkings, many of the Mars expeditions were expedited. The rocket on which you were intended to be a passenger left for Mars a month early on Gordon Goby's orders. They tried to find you, but you had vanished. Some assumed you'd been killed in the chaos.∞

I missed the launch?

∞Yes. Of course, Mars was struck by an asteroid twenty years later, and although some humans lived, there wasn't enough room on the remaining transports to take all the living humans back to Earth. Some humans were left there to die in the colonies, which no longer functioned as they were supposed to after the asteroid strike.∞

So I would have died or been left for dead if I had gone.

∞Indeed. Humans have always been able to use certain psychedelic substances, like DMT, to visit us, but the variation your friend synthesized was far potent than previous variations, allowing for more connectivity between the systems of the cosmos. That sort of travel—astral travel—has always been safe for humans, and for all creatures of the megaverse. Physical travel is not as safe, as you've seen, and it can have dire consequences. And your life on Earth, as perceived through the illusion of your ego, is not as exciting as you once wanted it to be. Join with us.∞

I can feel the lure of the cosmic consciousness. Its offer tempts me. Earth seems to have nothing left to offer me. Upon acceptance of the offer, my physical body would melt into the infinite visuals that surround me, mixing and dispersing. The ultimate evanescence of my personal experience of this thing called humanity.

I would be all-knowing. All encompassing. Infinite. All the paradoxes of the cosmos would be laid out for me to take in simultaneously. Everything would make sense.

True, I have experienced it once before, but the experience was so fleeting, and part of me was still tethered to my human body, just as I am now.

Yes, I am still tethered to my humanity. I can't leave, not yet, not even now that I realize that, in the grand scheme of things, my life back on Earth might not matter. It's not that it's insignificant; it's just that I know now it will go on. I will go on, and so will Horton. Another me, a sort of a recursion of me, will likely pop up somewhere else in the megaverse, as will another recursive version of Horton. Another recursive version of our story will pop up. The microcosm that is my universe will go on, until it doesn't, but even then, it will merge with the cosmic totality, before it awakens as something else, something dominated by other illusions...

But I can picture Horton, curious Horton. That where called Earth, in that when called 2050, calls to me.

I am literally examining the grand scheme of things, and still, I want to go back. I want to save Horton. My human emotions might be the result of various illusions, but I'm emotional enough not to care. For now. My emotions are leaving me. I must hurry.

Put me back.

∞You've been here for a while. Fifty years has passed.∞

Then put me back fifty years ago. I want to be a Horton, too. I want to save my dust speck. I want to save my Horton. Help me to do that. However you can.

∞You've acquired more compassion. But can't you see that the world is a mish-mash of everything? A balance. Death and destruction and life and creation. Terror and euphoria and everything between. It always has been, and always will be. Saving Horton won't change that.∞

Then why do you care?

∞We don't care. We are laying out information; that's all. Information is coming in, and information must go out.∞

Are you nothing more than a machine? Is the cosmos nothing more than a machine?

∞The cosmos, like everything else, is a machine. But that doesn't mean it isn't living. We will grant your wish, Izzy. You will remember none of this.∞

That's fine. If I needed to lose knowledge to save Horton, so be it.

subchapter | time

The passage of time is experienced differently by everyone. Time can fly; minutes can crawl. Add temporal illusions to this mix, and you see just how individualized time can be.

Light takes time to travel. When we look up at the sun, we are actually seeing the sun as it was eight minutes ago; this is because the sun is so far away from us, and it takes time for its light to reach us. Our perceptions are affected by time.

Imagine this: you are watching your sister make a cup of coffee. For the purposes of this thought experiment, she is using a transparent coffee mug. She first pours the coffee into the mug, and then she pours some macadamia nut milk into the coffee. The milk and the coffee mix together, in a dance of Brownian motion.

Now, imagine this: you are traveling backwards, faster than the speed of light, with some magical viewing scope, your sights are still set on your sister. Because the light from earth takes time to reach you, and because you are traveling backwards, you will see the mixed cup of coffee unmixing; you will see the macadamia nut milk going back into its container; you will see the coffee un-pouring itself back into the coffee pot.

While the details of this thought experiment are not physically possible, at least not yet, the experiment proves that the sequence of events that we order into three distinct categories—past, present, and future—is relative to the observer. This boils down to Einstein's theory of relativity, in which the sequence of events depends on an individual's point of reference.

Einstein, knowing this, believed that these three distinctions of time are nothing more than illusions. What if everything is happening all at once, and perceptions of past, present, and future are lies?