Pa'an

The meadow and the P-space reflectors were gone. Instead, stretching into the distance was a lawn of lush green grass. She bent down to touch it. The grass had leaves so fine it felt like fur. Off to the left a short walk away was a grove of trees in all the colors of the rainbow. Behind her was a small house. She turned and watched a man, an ordinary, fairly young man, walk out of the house towards her. He wore sandals and shorts and a pale blue tee shirt that said “Human” on it in big red letters. He strolled up to her. “Hi. I’m the greeter. Name is Michael. I saw you pop in just a minute ago.”

“Wow,” she said, “Nothing prepared me for this. No clouds, no choir, no dead relatives. Just a great lawn, funny trees and a guy labeled ‘Human’”.

Michael laughed. “We get that all the time. What makes you think there is only one Heaven? Sounds boring, and not very user-friendly. Do you want me to show you around?”

“Sure. Is there anything to eat here? I’ve been looking forward to the taste of food for a while, if time means anything here.”

“Sure. What do you like?”

“Mmm, raspberries. Believe it or not, I’ve never tasted raspberries. Maybe with cream? Is that possible in Heaven?”

“With a little help, yes. Walk with me.” He led her over to the grove of trees and pointed to a red tree with pink leaves. “This one is almost right.”

She did not see any fruit or anything edible. “What do I do?”

“Hug the tree. Think of how good raspberries would taste. Love the tree and ask it for what you want. Each tree can provide a different range of foods, but avoid the black trees. Black means it was unloved.”

Feeling silly, she wrapped her arms around the tree and hugged it. The bark was warm and slightly rough. After a brief wait she could see and feel raspberries and imagine their taste. The mental image was so sharp! As she watched, the tree produced round, red fruit on the nearest branch. They swelled and ripened within minutes. Michael picked a few and gave one to her.

“Try this one.”

She bit into something with the texture of a banana. The taste was incredible! Raspberries and cream! How very strange!

“You’ll get better with practice. Everything here responds to attention, affection and love. But you still have to master the imagery and understand what can be done or not.”

“I was in computers on Earth. Is there anything like a computer here?”

Another chuckle. “I was a historian specializing in Hittites. You’re more likely to find a computer than I am to find a Hittite. Someone may have gone to the trouble of creating a computer, but I have no idea why anyone would. On the other hand, I wasn’t very high-tech on Earth either.”

“Where do I live?”

“Do you want to live in a house, or with other people, or outside, like camping?”

She had to think about that. “I always wanted a little cottage with a white picket fence. Is that even possible here?”

“Let’s go see the village housemaker.”

They walked for what seemed like an hour, but she never got tired. The landscape changed from rolling lawn to hills, and the village was spread around a few of the smaller hillocks. It was a potpourri of styles and nothing like any Earth village. Michael led her up to a fine, small, ultramodern house with lots of glass and sloping angles. “This guy was once an architect. Now he’s our local housemaker.” They walked into a bright tall room with a bearded fellow sprawled on cushions on the floor. He appeared to be in a trance. “Benetti, can you help out a newcomer?” Benetti blinked and stood up. He was very tall and very Italian, with tanned skin, a pretty good beak and long, dark, curly hair. “I was working on the Jacobs’ addition.” It took him a moment to face her and acknowledge her presence. “Good day. Please tell me you like modern architecture.”

She blushed, “Well, not really. I was hoping for something kind of cozy and simple, but I have no idea how one goes about finding a house here.”

Benetti shrugged. “There must be someone left who likes modern,” he muttered. “OK, then, let me tell you how it works.”

“We don’t find houses, we magic them out of the ground. That is, we help YOU magic them out of the ground once you have a VERY clear idea of what you want. If you make a house you don’t like it will make you unhappy. Unhappy houses turn black and die.”

“Do you grow furniture too?”

“No, that is a specialty. Some make their own, but if you want fine work you go to a furniture maker.”

“How do I pay for a house, and for the land?”

“We don’t have anything like a monetary system. Right now it’s mostly on an exchange basis, but there are no shortages so there are no prices for anything. You will still have challenges here, but those are mainly in understanding and using the physics of this place. You are connected to reality here on a very basic level. It will respond to your needs and desires, but if you create wrong things you will eventually run afoul of the law of consequences. Bad karma can create Hell here as easily as Heaven. You become what you love or what you hate.”

She did not need to think about that. The cottage with the white picket fence was a much more pleasant image.

“I have a nice spot for your house.” Michael walked her out into the village next to a huge, spreading tree house. Benetti followed.

“That’s Amadou, your neighbor if you like this spot.”

“It’s lovely. I do like it. What kind of person is Amadou?”

“Benetti chuckled, “You misunderstand. Amadou isn’t the person living in the tree. Amadou IS the tree! People here can be what they want, once they figure our how to do it.”

“Wow, and wow again. How do I get started on my house?”

Benetti picked up a stick and, using no more than his finger, shaped it into a point. “Drag this around the boundary of your plot and then around the outline of your house. If you want me to do it for you, I can draw the outline of a small bungalow.”

“Let me try…” She dragged the stick in a precise straight line with perfectly square corners to define a yard, then incised the small foundation plan inside it. The stick left a perfectly clear furrow of dirt. Benetti raised an eyebrow at Michael. “That is better than I expected for someone with no training who just arrived here. Now tell me about your house in whatever detail you have.”

She did. A lump proceeded to form out of the ground. Benetti prodded the lump from time to time while Michael looked on. Ever so slowly, the lump became the outline of the house.

“It will take some time for the house to form. I’ll come back in a while to see how it’s going and take care of things like the placement of doors and windows, but you must stay here and keep thinking of it.”

“I’ll stay with you, if you like,” said Michael.

“I’d appreciate that, but don’t you have other duties as the greeter?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m a split. My prime is at the gatehouse.”

“A split? You can make copies of yourself?”

“Sure, we all can. It’s easier than you imagine. The join can sometimes be a problem, though.”

“Hah, you’d be surprised, but I know that.”

“It’s harder for me because I have to concentrate on a single architectural plan for a fairly long time, and those joins give me a headache.” Benetti pointed a long finger at his temple.

“You can get a headache in Heaven?”

“You can give yourself a headache, yes. This universe cooperates with you. Where we came from everything is ruled by effort, scarcity and catastrophe. Things are easier here, but you still have to master the rules. Some do better than others. The Pa’an discovered this universe almost by accident. At certain times and places, the physics of this universe leaked through. Improbable things happened. Miracles. That was their clue.”

Yes, she thought, I think I remember at least one miracle.

Michael waved his arms in a circle. “Look around. How many houses and people do you see here?”

She turned in a circle. Truly there was no one in sight but Michael and Benetti, and not that many houses. Where were the two billion people who came through the reflectors?

“After a while, people get tired of being human and become…something else. Whatever they want. Some come back. Some travel, and I mean travel to other planets. We are the remnants, doing a service for the stragglers.”

“Wow, and wow again. This is all beyond my wildest imagination.”

“We hope you will love it here and stay with us, for at least a while. It would be nice to have some new company. What did you say your name was?”

That was odd. Michael never asked her before.

“Aura. Please call me Aura.”

End Notes

My many thanks to Chandra Wood, and my SF group, Richard Lowe, Don Walker, Jim Warner and Arnold Heister, who patiently moderated my overzealous scientific brain dumps and gave me good edits. Thanks to the unnamed physicists at the University of Maryland who actually worked on high density plasmas. Thanks to my little dog, Scupper, who inserted himself into the book, as usual. It takes a dog to humanize a human character.

The SHARPIE is an actual computer design that, to my knowledge, has not yet been built. The ETA algorithm at its core is as described. Both are my inventions starting from M.I.T. A.I. lab under Minsky. No, I don’t think Skynet will just start up by itself. Raising an AI is a lot more complicated than that. I’m influenced by Doug Hofstadter’s book, “I Am a Strange Loop”, for which I named the recursion cycles.

I have actually travelled to most of the places where the action occurs. In a few cases, such as Andorra, I must give credit to Google Maps, Wikipedia, and a few friends who told me about Pyrene’s domain. Fascinating place!

Thank you to my friends Deepak and Elexi for the loan of your first names. Thank you, Nalini, for introducing me to the culture and customs of Hindu India.

Of course I hope you find the characters interesting and that the story carries you along with it. But more than just entertainment, I believe that science fiction is a proper venue for philosophical themes. The focus on panor is intentional.

Humans have the ability to coordinate in large numbers for such things as building a skyscraper or waging a war. We have an unfortunate tendency to shoot ourselves in the foot, sometimes by creating power structures that raise tyrants, sometimes by falling into chaos and mischief. The ideal of a system that does not inhibit individual initiative and still allows efficient cooperation has yet to be realized. Therefore I invented panor, and showed how it empowers the Pa’an to overcome incredible obstacles, master cosmic projects and yet remain benign.

The p-Web comes from a paper on causality I wrote a long time ago. Since then some physicists, such as Hawking and Susskind, have theorized on whether causality is violated in a black hole. Black holes are fascinating objects. My idea is to create a configuration of black holes that will not tear you apart when you pass through. We’ll see what’s on the other side when we get there.

Or you can ask the Pa’an.