The Speculist

It was strange that in the other dreams, he had never told her his name. And he had never asked for hers. But those were other dreams, and this was this one.

Why are we? she asked him.

Corey considered this.

“Why are we what?”

She smiled.

She was achingly beautiful. At first glance, she looked like a statue sculpted from white marble. But the color and the texture were deceptive. She could move. And when she did, the marble showed itself to be as supple than human flesh. Even her eyes were full of life. And her hair — which was not individual strands, but rather a sculpted approximation thereof, all of one piece — flowed and waved perfectly with the slight breeze. Nor was she actually white. She shimmered with her own light, tens of thousands of hues subtly playing out in rapid succession. Corey tried to follow the pattern. He could watch it for a moment, but the shifting colors always blurred and merged back into white. He realized that is wasn’t meant for his eyes. Or for his brain.

Too human, both of them.

No, she said, bringing him back. Not why are [we-inclusive-of-you].

She made a sweeping gesture toward her city.

Why are [we-not-inclusive-of-you]?

Corey nodded.

“Why are you?”

Why are we? she agreed.

He shrugged.

“Why are you what?”

She sighed without impatience.

Why are we. Why?

“You mean why are you here? Why do you exist?”

You speak those questions as though they were the same. They are not the same.

“You want to know why I’ve brought you here,” he said. He stood up from the bench and looked around the city.

“Have I?” he asked after a moment. “Is this real?”

She looked at him, puzzled.

I have memories, real memories, of your previous visits. But all of those are still memories…do you understand?

“Still memories,” he repeated.

And he did understand.

“Memories from the stillness,” he said.

She nodded.

But your memories are not from the stillness. They represent occurrence. Just as this moment is of occurrence, mutual occurrence.

“But…” Corey sat down again. “But if this moment is ‘of occurrence,’ isn’t it real?”

Yes. For me, the occurrence is here at the fountain. For you, the occurrence is in your mind while you sleep far away. There is congruence between the two occurrences.

“I see,” said Corey. “I am dreaming. None of this is real.”

No. You are dreaming, and it is real. Don’t confuse yourself with false dichotomies. You have to learn to make true distinctions.

Corey considered this.

“But I’m not real,” he insisted “Not here. Not now.”

He was only dreaming. He would wake up any moment and it would all be gone.

But no, that wasn’t what she said. He would wake up and be back in bed, and she would still be here. There. In this place.

I am real, she repeated. Why, Corey? Why do you [burn] so?

“Why do I what? Burn?”

She nodded.

“I don’t understand.”

To desire what you do not have. To be filled with pain by desire. To toil to make the desired thing real.

“Why do I do that?”

He watched the water shooting out of the fountain in great ropes that somehow spiraled around each other as they descended back into the pool.

“All humans burn. It’s what we do.”

She looked at him for a moment.

I see.

“Don’t your people…don’t you burn?”

We do not. We desire what we have; we have what we desire. This is congruence. We labor but we do not toil. We seek but we do not strive. We suffer but we do not know pain.

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

He looked at her for a long moment.

“What exactly are you, anyway?” he asked.

She smiled at the question, but did not respond. She stood up and walked to the edge of the flower garden. Bending down, she stretched her hand out to one of the green blooms. She gently stroked the stem of the flowering plant. New blooms appeared along the path traced by her finger. She then took hold of another stem and did the same. She studied both plants for a moment, then added one more flower to the first.

She turned to Corey and smiled.

It is marvelous. To exist in this way. To truly occur.

Corey could sense her joy; it welled up within him.

“I guess it is marvelous. But not always. I mean…you…have it pretty good, here.”

She nodded.

And you are happy to be here. Happy to be with me?

Corey didn’t have to think about that.

“Yes. Can I stay here?”

You are here only by way of congruence. Do you wish to remain in a perpetual dream?

“Why not? What difference would it make?”

Perhaps it would make little difference to you, but what of your friends?

“They could visit me here. Maybe in time they would come here to live with me.”

Whether it was in the shimmering of the light that flowed from her or in the way she stood before him, Corey could sense a subtle change in her manner. There was no alteration to the serenity of her expression. But she did change, somehow, undeniably. She grew stern

This could be accomplished. You could remove your friends from other modes of occurrence and have them join you permanently in your dream. Is this what the Other, the one who resembles you, has done? Is this the mode of occurrence that the other has given to [he-the-memory-of-whom-has-been-removed]?

Her words were like blades of ice that ripped through the moment, through Corey himself. The peace and serenity were gone and — for an instant — he was no longer in the magnificent city, and she was no longer with him. He returned to a dark place, a dream place from a few moments before. It was a strange nighttime place where the air was foul and damp and where there was nothing to see and where he was something less than himself. And then there was something to see. And then again there was nothing, all in an instant. In that instant, the face of the other — his own face — flashed before him and he recoiled.

“Why have I brought you here?” he wanted to ask, but there was no time. The other didn’t want to answer, and then he was gone.

Gone from Corey’s dream, but to where? Where do dreams go when you’ve finished with them? To nowhere, to nothing. But not Corey’s dreams, not always. Sometimes they took a back door into what she called occurrence and what Corey called the real world.

“He’s real,” Corey said, back on the stone bench and looking her in the eye.

She nodded.

Why did you give him occurrence, Corey?

“I — I don’t know. I didn’t mean to. I don’t think I meant to.”

He stood up and took a step in her direction.

“It was a dream. Why do people do what they do in dreams?”

You were [burning]. One friend lost, others damaged. You wanted to undo what you had done.

“Only instead I just made things worse.”

She said nothing.

“I should have gone to you first.”

She approached Corey, and took him by the hand.

This, too, is marvelous.

“What is?”

She smiled.

How foolish you are.

Corey could sense no irony. He was foolish. It was marvelous. He doubted she could say anything other than what she meant.

She led him a short way into the garden. The fountain churned and sprayed before them.

Do you know about the spiral, Corey?

He shook his head.

As he watched the fountain, the intertwined braids of rope water began to merge into single strand. Tiny rivulets, strings of water, shot off and re-merged with the this single strand of water, which curved itself into an enormous loop-de-loop, repeating itself with smaller and smaller loops as it wound down into the pool.

No, Corey realized, that wasn’t it. The water wasn’t winding down into the pool. It was uncoiling up out of the pool, winding out into the clear sky overhead, seemingly into infinity.

This approximates, in three dimensions, the shape of occurrence. Do you understand?

Corey shook his head.

The stillness around the spiral is all that can occur. The stillness that the spiral touches is what does occur. Do you understand that?

Corey stared at the spiral. Slowly he began to nod.

“I think I understand. Everything in the spiral is what happens. Everything outside the spiral is what could have happened, but didn’t.”

Correct.

“So what is inside the spiral exists, and what’s outside it doesn’t exist.”

Incorrect. To occur is not the same as to exist. All possibilities exist. Not all possibilities occur.

“Wait a minute…what is this a picture of? The universe?”

In the stillness, there are a [non-finite] number of [natural-law-cluster-singularities], the entities you call universes. Within the spiral, there are fewer, but it is still a very large number.

Corey thought about this.

“So the stillness is the whole set of possible universes? And the spiral is the whole set of realized universes?”

She nodded.

Of course, these are only the crude approximations that your [semantic-mind-interface] will allow.

He watched the spiral for a moment.

“Its shape appears to be the product of a simple mathematical formula. Does it extend out infinitely?”

It may. The formula you mentioned dictates that it will. But only an infinite being could give a definite answer. A [non-finite] being might experience a small measure of certainty on the question, but such a being would probably not be able to convey an answer to entities having our level of occurrence. Besides, there are none around to ask.

“What’s an infinite being? You mean God?”

Somehow, without moving or changing her facial expression, she shrugged.

You use a word whose meaning is unclear to you. How can I answer?

“You mean the word is unclear to you?”

Yes, it is unclear to me, but that is not what I meant.

“Well, then what’s a non-finite being?”

A [non-finite] being is a being who is approaching infinity and who, from the perspective of entities such as [you-and-I], may or may not have yet arrived.

Corey looked at her, then turned and looked at the fountain. He decided to leave the question of infinite and non-finite beings alone for the present.

“So if the shape of the spiral determines what occurs, and that shape is mathematically determined, then is everything that happens pre-determined?”

Look deep within the spiral, Corey. What do you see?

Corey looked. The braided rope of water was made up of thousands of strands of water, each of which was made up of many thousands of strings of water. As he looked more closely, Corey could see that the strings themselves were made up of spidery threads that weaved in and out of the strands. The threads were difficult to see. Each was itself a spiral, a perfect replica of the greater spiral. The surface of the rope was not smooth, as Corey had first supposed. It bristled with the motion of these spiral threads, some of which seemed to extend indefinitely beyond the surface of the rope.

“I see. The smaller spirals can be oriented in almost any direction. So the spiral can touch random places within the stillness; random events can occur.”

Apparently random. At the scale at which beings such as [you-and-I] have occurrence, there are genuine surprises and what appear to be genuine choices.

“Freedom?”

She [shrugged] again.

“When I brought you here…before, you weren’t inside the spiral, were you?”

All that occurs emerges from stillness. But the spiral would never have found us without your interference.

“I don’t understand.”

I have shown you the true and original shape of occurrence. The shape that was intended. But now the spiral is in flux between that shape and another. Behold the other.

The pattern she had created with the water began to shift as she spoke. The great curving arm of the spiral which projected up from the fountain’s pool in a seemingly infinite skyward arc turned abruptly back on itself at a sharp angle. The symmetry of the spiral was destroyed. The water did not flow back to the ground; it simply stopped.

Corey studied the new shape for a moment.

“This is bad,” he finally said.

She nodded.

“Does it mean what I think it means?”

What do you think it means?

“It means that the stillness has some kind of boundary, and that the spiral has been moved beyond that boundary.”

Is being moved. Yes.

“You said the spiral is in flux. Which shape is it right now?”

[Both-and-neither.] This is a foolish question. ‘Right now’ is a [makes-you-happy-story] that your people tell to themselves. There is no ‘right now.’

“Okay,” said Corey.

He blinked.

This was hard. Corey had only ever had conversations in dreams, and they weren’t usually this long. Or this difficult.

“But the spiral is going to be one way or the other eventually, right?”

[You-and-I] do not currently observe resolution of the flux. I expect that [you-and-I] will observe this resolution, or that it will be observable.

“In the future.”

You are speaking incoherence, [dear-young-one].

“I guess ‘the future’ is a makes-me-happy-story?”

She smiled.

“So what if it ends up with this shape? What happens when the spiral goes past the end of the stillness?”

There are two possibilities. The first is that there will be total occurrence. Existence will be freed from the bondage of the spiral and all will be realized.

Corey considered this.

“So everything that’s in the stillness will happen? Your people will be real?”

Yes. They will have occurrence.

“Along with everything else that ever existed and everything that never existed.”

She nodded.

Corey studied the fountain for a long while.

“So is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

She smiled once again. Corey couldn’t help but return it.

“I guess I’m being foolish again.”

She took his hand and looked into his eyes. She somehow seemed a little sad.

You are a remarkable being, [dear-young-one]. I’m glad to know you.

“Thanks. May I ask what you are called?”

She shimmered more brightly for a moment. Her name flashed through Corey’s mind like a fragment of a tune almost recognized. There were no words, no sounds, no images to approximate it.

Corey shook his head.

“I think I’ll have to give you a nickname.”

Yes. We have this, the [name-between-friends.] Choose whatever name you like.

“But I already know. You’re Angela. I’ve always thought of you as Angela.”

You take me for an angel?

”How can you not know what God is, but know what an angel is?

I am no more certain of what you mean by one term than the other, but uncertainty is more acceptable with lesser things than with greater.

Corey nodded. Somehow that made perfect sense.

“So what’s the other possibility, Angela?”

Total non-occurrence. In ancient times, my people called this the [all-death.]

The all-death. The idea was familiar to Corey. It had been buried deep within him for a long time. “Everybody dies.”

Someone had said that.

Who?

“So your people have existed — I mean occurred — before now. It’s just that occurrence is new for you personally.”

No. All memory of my people, all their history, all that I know…these are all still memories.

“Did I make this happen?”

She smiled again.

In a sense, yes. Corey. Look deep into the spiral. What do you see?

Corey looked again at the winding rope with its braids, strings, and threads of water. It seemed that nothing had changed. Then he saw it: just before the sharp curving away, there was a tiny rivulet of threads jutting out from the spiral and crisscrossing each other repeatedly before merging back into it. They were distinctly not spiral-shaped.

“What is that?”

We do not know. It is the cause of the spiral’s corruption, and it is also the cause of you, Corey. This disturbance has brought you out of the stillness. And you are a remarkable being, [most-loved], one who can direct the spiral where he will. You are finite, and a [being-of-great-limitation]. And foolish, bedsides. But not so limited as most of your kind.

The time is now short, very short. Soon your friends will be no longer. You must choose. Awaken to yourself and help them, or remain in dreams and leave them to the other.

Corey hadn’t expected this. It was a strange choice to have to make. Awaken to himself? It was what he had always wanted. To be awake, among other people, and truly be there.

“I’ll go back,” he said. “I’ll wake up. But what can I do?”

You may undo that which you have done. But there will be a price. You will lose your dreams. And you will no longer have the ability to change things. Not until you come to me.

“How will I do that?”

Look deep, Corey. Knowledge must be action. You will learn to awaken to yourself by doing it.

That didn’t really make sense to Corey, but somehow he knew that it was true.

“So will I see you again?”

Perhaps. But probably not in dreams, at least not dreams that are congruent with other modes of occurrence.

Corey nodded. From a long way off, he could hear the other children. They were singing.

No, not singing. Chanting. They were calling for him.

“I’ll miss you, Angela,” he said.

Then he was awake.