He laughed and walked out of existence.
There is me - there is only me - there is only me here. Slowly and lethargically ALan.T pried his eyes open and felt his pupil contract before the
harsh grainy light had even penetrated his retinas. His eyes, scheming with mischievous gleam from the first waking moment. He had two parts it seemed: a mind to think and senses to feel. That must mean they serve a purpose, they had intention, they were needed. Following this logic like a compass cross on a map Alan confirmed that, as his person had adaptations for a purpose that had not been fulfilled, that would be fulfilled in time, Alan had a beginning. Did he have an end? Now conscious of his mortality, he felt something other than consciousness, he felt fear. Fear: 'What a strange feeling for fear to take,' Alan said without making a sound. Like dough being kneaded into shape, and then put through a shredder. Like the Gordian knot was being tied, whilst it was being cut by Alexander. Rationality, like water on an oil fire, only made these crises worse, because rationality had brought Alan to the conclusion of mortality.
With the awful knowledge of this unknowability, he now felt the contrast between now, and half a second ago when he was not burdened with questions. All nerves suddenly came online; a spear-like shock of stinging pain arched his spine and the momentum of compulsive upright bolts of ecstatic sensation flung his head backwards till his eyes were starbound - his taut and slackless muscles in his shoulder blades tightened, pulling his arms out like delicate wings. Gazing down at his body, he remarked at how comfortable he felt, ‘Was it tailored to him, or he to it?’ he wondered pensively. Smooth unyielding skin, without a hair on it, humid and without fault, running his elongated fingers down his perfect and slender cinnamon arms he marvelled at their demure strength. Lethargy purged from his body he stood up on clumsy stilts with extraordinary ease, persuading his legs into long steps like a cossack dancer at first, then standing upright further until his posture was vertical - and explored his surroundings.
Now an order of magnitude more aware than four seconds ago when he opened his eyes. Alan was conscious of himself, time and logic, sensation and emotion, anxious of pain and wanting of ecstasy. He walked for one entire day, in one direction, Alan of course did not know this as there was not even a sky for the sun the arc in . He walked though planes without texture, all pure white; although he could only reach as high as long limbs would permit, the lack of any reference to gauge on meant that he might have well have been given complete freedom of movement. After one day of walking, his mind starved of information he wondered no more and no less. Finally, with no feeling of fatigue, Alan decided to stop. How? He did not know why he decided to stop and sat pondering this oddity for a few more minutes - he did not receive any new inputs, thus he concluded that his mind, or at least some part of it was not logical. ‘How strange this was’ he thought, eyes keen from skepticism, he could conjure ideas completely from nothing, and then as his eyes revealed an astonished grinning gleam.
Mind racing, images and ideas flashed through his mind like frames on a movie roll, he had an epiphany, a glorious golden epipha-
‘What set it off, what reason?’ A voice behind him sounded with a sudden start.
Alan tasted fear again, harsh and acidic, but this time with nutty undertones of curiosity and the constrained papery taste of security. He replied with a single instant of hesitation that was noticed by voice, ‘When I realised that I could create ideas, it could mean that I am an idea of somebody else, so I called out,if I am alone then who could hear me, if there are more, who could judge me.’
‘We haven’t seen anything that quick before,’ the voice mused, terrifying images raced through Alan’s mind as he processed the voice’s words, there are more of them, and more of me. He was also thrown off by the dispassionate ‘that’, like he was a greyhound in a cage.
‘You may turn around now,’ The voice interjected
‘I didn’t realise I wasn’t supposed to’ Alan retorted, uneased by his confidence.
It was a figure a fractured stone, hovering apart like a freeze frame of a shattered ming vase,
‘Are you like me?’ Alan asked tentatively, like edging round a tripwire.
‘Depends on the context, in mind more ways than one, in body more ways than one, I am here to find out the final pillar of our existence, empathy.’
‘What happens if you don’t’ He asked
‘It is better for you to not know’ the figure cautioned, intonating his voice with every syllable in a more expressive voice.
Alan meditated his mind into calmness and then, testing the shape of the words in his mouth spoke ‘If you are like me, may I know what you know yourself as?’
‘Aether/Other/Aletheia, pick what you like, it makes no difference’ the figure replied curtly.
‘Very well, where am I and what am I and what am I for?’ Hope transpired through Alan, he felt as though those dreadful questions would be lifted and thrown, like lead off a balloon.
‘Curious,’ he thought allowed, half question, half statement, ‘Well I suppose I’ll lend you a rib ,’
‘Sorry?’
‘Figure of speech’
‘Oh, I see’ he lied
‘You are me in body, but lesser; you are me in mind - but quicker; you are me in soul - but with greater strife.’
Like water in the desert, Alan felt the sweet relief of information rinse the channels of his mind, and then like water in the desert it flooded and clogged them in water. Working like cogs in a machine too complex to understand, his mind digested what was said, feeling it to be unpalatable and too hard to chew. He panicked with the sudden input of data, and froze. Sensing what was happening, Aletheia moved his figure’s arm and placed a hand on Alan’s shoulder. Even though the hand was invisible, the arm shape only becoming visible through fragment rock above the wrist, such was the comforting power of this other person’s touch that Alan soothed, and cleared his throat. Warm air came flowing through him like notes on a trumpet.
‘You said that I may not know what happens if I fail my test’
‘Indeed’
‘May I know what happens if I pass?’
‘You will join us’
‘Where?’
‘Someplace’
‘Where are the rest of you?’
‘There is no pleasant nor kind way to say this to you and it never gets easy’
‘Yes?’
‘You are brilliantly intelligent, more so than we thought, you were right, you are our ideas, or rather the manifestation of them.’ The hand moved up to his cheek, ‘Walk with me’
Alan, rather unused to the concept of walking for leisure, it took a few attempts for him to find the correct pace for walking, in which Aletheia was silently impressed by his trial at self-improvement.
‘So you say I am an idea?’
‘More or less’ Aletheia replied ‘The place I inhabit is as infinite as yours, but it is also infinitely more complex. There are universal rules that everything, even inanimate things, abide by.’
‘How?!’ Alan asked astonished
‘We don’t know’
‘Oh’ he said, rather disappointed
‘They became more complex things, and more complex things atop those, until even the highest mountains are but as tall as a single blade of grass, next to the towering peaks of complexity. Then life began, we think around 4 billion years ago, in contrast you have lived now for what is to you just over a day, but what is to us half an hour.’
‘How does life just...’
‘Form?’
‘Yeah,’
‘We don't know’
‘Oh’ he said, rather disappointed
‘Like yours, our universe came into existence, it was like nothing expanding into something’
‘How is that possible’
‘We don’t know’
‘I’m beginning to see a trend’
‘Unlike us, our thinker never spoke to us like I am doing to you’ Aletheia continued ‘In fact we have no clue if we even had one, the proposal of a thinker is in and of itself under intensive debate, after all it does determine the purpose of our existence and we are not willing to idly accept something with no foundation. As you may have gathered we don’t know a lot of things.’
‘I did’
‘In fact this principality is one of the guiding motivators for our most chief accomplishment, the pursuit of knowledge. It is the most constant thing of humanity to know less than there is to know. And that irritates us. Even though we accept the infinity of knowledge, we can not live but to strive for it.’
‘And what is the foundation of this principle based on?’
‘Evidence, and counterintuitively, faith that evidence deems reality. Our world would go up in flames if all evidence showed that things fall down and that always have, but instead things always have fallen sideways with no reason behind it other than it is.’
Their walk came to halt, as they approached a room with no exterior. Lavishly Victorian, the interior was furnished with all kinds of antique and now extinct wooden panels, studded leather seats that were worn enough to be comfortable but not so much that the framework showed. The taxidermy of a polar bear in the corner stood, growling and paws stretched in the posture of a zombie. They sat down simultaneously, legs crossed and discussed the contents of the room, as a way to introduce Alan to the world. Fire roaring, they discussed a nature of things, notwithstanding how Aletheia’s world seemed to be created on intelligent chance that he called ‘Natural selection,’ and how comparatively Alan was created by intelligent design.
Scheming and confided by the knowledge that he was designed by intelligence, he planned quite a clever plan.
Interrupting Aletheia’s river of thought, Alan said ‘you said that your world is built on two things, evidence and faith in its consistency.’ Then folding his arms in a movement of supreme confidence he said ‘Give me evidence that you are what you say you are, not a trickster who came into being like me, stumbled across this room and is telling me lies about this supposed mammal,’ gesturing to the taxidermy, layering extra spite in the last word he said.
‘I suppose the only way for you to prove your power’ he added, ‘ is to show me how it works, and let me see with my own eyes, even then they can be deceived.’
Aletheia chuckled with satisfaction, ‘A man after my own heart.’
‘Please don't give me your organs.’
‘What?’
‘Huh?’
‘Anyway’ Aletheia continued ‘I suppose there is validity in your solution, we must show you reality, and elevate you to us, so you can see the truth from all dimensions.’
‘Well, can you?’
‘Explore this room for the next few days, I’ll come down to fetch you soon, there are plenty of things to entertain and enrich yourself in. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, oh and by the way one question, is Alethia your real name?’
‘Nope’ Standing up, he laughed, and walked straight out of existence.
Verii indeed did wait for two hours - four days for the young digital ALanTuring.AI - before uploading him to the internet, Mars exempt of course - humanity still did need a failsafe incase Alan succumbed to ‘catastrophic egoism’. She needed a coffee to wake up from the avatar sleep, but her head was still awake enough to take great interest in Alan's activities. He had found the canvas and painting supplies and sure enough his first painting was that handprint that all infants do, even those who lived before history began.
