Entry 57: in which I am a trifle disgraceful

Having cogitated awhile, I present Lucy with my cunning plan, the one that features temptation. And it goes like this.

Tempt the lad.

At first Lucy is dismissive, pointing out that the lad cannot, voluntarily, quit the biological entity in which he is embedded.

Quite so, but that is not the point of the temptation.

"What you do, Lucy is to tempt the lad, to, how shall I put it, walk off a high place. The biological entity is reduced to its component parts, and the lad is free to rematerialise in the Realm."

Lucy looks thoughtful.

"I know the lad's not about to take gold in the Intelligence Olympics, but surely even he is going to have trouble swallowing that one?"

"Ah" I say, "this is the cunning bit. Being of deietic origins, he will naturally assume that he is invulnerable. In fact, you could push that very point!"

"Well", he says, "I'm a little taken aback. In effect, you are suggesting that an entity terminates itself ... Isn't that, ethically, a tad suspect?"

"Good grief Lucy. Do you know how many entities, biological, androidal, crystalline, you name it, disappear in your average supernova?"

"You're the boss" he says.

Not before time, I think to myself, and continue "I'll have the Ghost take him out into the desert and into the mountains. Spin the old 'time to fast and reflect' line. And then you step in."

He bows and disappears.

And it's true, I do feel a teeny bit disgraceful. But I shall forgive myself.

Just this once.

Entry 56: in which extraction proves problematic

Tracked Lucy down at last.

(I never really like to ask the Archies where they have been. Seems a bit rude, somehow. I mean they're entitled to dimension-flit; it would just be nice to be told. Oh well.)

Briefed him on the rather agitated state that Mrs G has got herself into, and that she is keen on the idea that the lad be extracted and returned to the realm.

"Well Squire" says Lucy in that rather obsequious manner of his, "the problem is that the boy is embedded in a biological entity, not so?"

"Quite, Lucy - but as Mrs G points out, one is a deity. I mean, hang it all, if one can't extract the lad, what can one do?"

He pulls what can only be described as a wry face - "Not so easy I fear Squire. It's the old metastructure problem".

I become aware of a sinking feeling. Lucy's generally a doer. This is not good news. And certainly not the sort of intelligence that Mrs G will be partial to.

"Come on Lucy, options!"

"The best thing would be to kill the biological entity. That will null the embedded status and the boy will be free to dimension-shift."

One was aghast. "Good grief Lucy, I have never killed a biological entity. Well not knowingly, anyway. Plenty of road-kill as it were, but that's another matter. I just couldn't. I'm far too squeamish. And there is a sense in which ... no, no, doesn't bear thinking about. Why don't we just, well, you know, haul him out of said entity."

Alas, no joy from Lucy.

"Ah" he says, "it doesn't quite work like that Squire. As I said, it's the old metastructure problem".

"Meta thingy, yes, just remind me Lucy".

"Well the simplest case is to consider say the kind of clay tablet that the earthlings are keen on scratching on. They make marks, the marks encode information, and the information can be read by anyone who knows the code."

"Err, keep going Lucy".

"OK Squire, so there we have structure and metastructure. The structure is a clay tablet marked in a certain way. The story is the metastructure. You can think of it floating above the tablet as it were. It is of the tablet, and yet in another sense quite different. In fact, for someone who doesn't know the marks, there is no metastructure, and it amazes them that someone else can actually glean something from those marks.

"Thus it is with biological entities, at least those that have evolved some computational neural circuits. The neurons buzz away - equivalent to the clay tablets - but above that activity there is the metastructure: experience, consciousness and meaning. It's much less confusing in the realm, because we can interpret this as deionic activity, but in the 3rd dimension it remains a matter a metaphysics."

"Now I expect this has some relevance for lifting the boy" I venture.

"Indeed" Lucy continues. "The, how shall I put it, essence of the boy exists as a metastructure reflecting the neural activity of the biological entity in a kind of parallel informational dimension. Now it's true that we could 'lift' this metastructure, but if the nervous activity continues, as it will if we don't kill the entity, the informational dimension would, again, instantly mirror that nervous activity. Thus another metastructure would instantaneously come into being: in effect, Boy version 2."

"So what?"

"Well" he continues "when the entity does finally die either from accident or entropic degradation, Boy version 2 is going to turn up on your doorstep isn't he?"

Me, faintly, "You mean there would be two of them?"

He nods.

"That might be too much of a good thing ..." I suggest.

He nods again.

"Nil desperandum Lucy" I say, "I have a plan ..."

Entry 55: in which the Ghost dishes the goss

Where's an archangel when you want one? No, no, the question is rhetorical. Fact is, I can't move for tripping over cherubim, but Lucifer and the rest distinctly thin on the ground.

Digression to self: Is some sort of census required? I mean, where do they (cherubim) come from? I'm sure there are more every time I look. Or is it that they just move around a lot? Anyway, with Mrs G being a trifle exercised, this must go into the "Sometime" folder ...

No Lucy, but did bump into the Ghost.

"What ho etc.," I volunteer, but skimp on the pleasantries as I can see he is bursting with news, "What gives on the Planet of the Apes, then?"

And he catalogues the following, none of which I find reassuring:

- the lad is a right smart-arse (this is news?)
- he has grown his hair
- he is wearing sandals
- he has persuaded some lads even dimmer than himself to chuck in their day jobs and follow him around
- he is wowing the locals with miraculous performances
- he is right up the noses of various worthies, essentially by (a) being cleverer than them (this is news) and (b) by messing with the forex desk in some temple or other
- and generally raising his profile past the point where the numbers change from green to red

Now I should explain the obvious.

Obvious point the first: when you step down a dimension you can be as thick as curdled milk and still know more than the threaties.

Obvious point the second: biologically embedded entities can't do real pan-dimensional stuff, which does really come across as miraculous. Thus while the lad can do plenty of mind-control, wake the dead, get the lame walking, that sort of thing, he can't actually grow back severed limbs or give folks three eyes. He can change his density of course, but unless he plans walking on water some time (ha ha) I can't see that being much use to him.

Anyway, even I can see that it's time for Plan B, and the moment I can track Lucy down, I shall set it in motion.

All we need is a little luck and ... some temptation!

Brilliant!

Entry 54: in which Mrs G is emphatic

Mrs God, as everyone knows, can be sweetness and light. If there were lambs in the realm they would gambol at her feet, and quite possibly lick them too.

However, Mrs G is, once more, vexed, no prizes for guessing what about.

Thus, in the manner of one who is not lacking in intelligence, I have been giving her the space she needs at a trying time like this.

Imagine, then, the stinging indignation one felt, when tracked down and accused of (and I quote) "evasion".

"Now look here Mrs G" I began, in a tone of utter reasonableness.

"No, you look here!"

Cut across me. Just like that. Momentarily robbing me of the power of speech. In which no doubt welcome vacuum she continues "This has gone on quite long enough. Go and get the boy! Bring the little sod back and I mean now".

Well I launch into a reasoned description of the virtue of travel, the broadening of horizons, that sort of thing, only to be interrupted yet again.

"Excuse me" she says in a tone one would describe as being on the frosty side of frigid, "which part of my last sentence have you not understood? Where would elaboration be most useful? Perhaps you would like to attempt a paraphrase and reflect it back to me? Perhaps ..."

"Now now dear, let's be reasonable about this." My pleading tone. "The boy is embedded you know, there are natural laws here that don't want to be violated, it's not just a matter of ..."

"Hmmm". Not a good sign, when Mrs G Hmmms. Generally a prelude to biting sarcasm. As now. "Let's get this right, shall we? You are a deity, I think? Yes? Have I got that bit right? Oh good. You are in charge of this ludicrous universe. Yes? You are omnipotent. Hmmmm? That means you can do what you like rather than just bleating about natural laws. Or is there some subtlety I haven't quite grasped? So may I suggest ..."

Fortunately her words were becoming fainter and fainter, something that I can only attribute to the distance that I was busy putting between us.

"Quite so dear" I say over my shoulder, "Look, let me have a word with Lucy. He's good with this kind of unorthodox stuff. Be right back".

Well perhaps this last was a tiny exaggeration. But the idea about getting Lucy involved is a good one.

If I say so myself.

Entry 53: in which I brief the Ghost (again)

I have decided to set aside, for the moment, my unhelpful reflections on the nature of life, the universe and everything. Clearly, since I already know everything, I also know the answer about Me and Mrs G. But equally clearly, the fact that I appear not to have privileged access to this part of my psyche, suggests that the conundrum is better left unexplored.

So how to fill one's time?

What better than to call in the Ghost's debt. What debt? Well he owes me for being a total plonker. That will do.

Anyway. I tell him to hightail it back to obscurity and keep a watching brief on the lad. Who by now is almost certainly reaping the benefits of his distinctly unearthly precocity. One feels, almost with regret, that the lad and woe have a gravitational attraction for each other.

And speaking of gravity, why is it that it is so weak in this iteration of the universe? Something amiss surely?

Anyway, must resist the temptation to attend to that now.

(Besides which it might be unkind to those life forms that have already evolved to rack gravity up a couple of million times to where it should be. I mean, walking along minding your business one minute and being a very flat puddle of strawberry jam the next.)

Ah me. If one only had thumbs to twiddle. Those wretched apes have it all!

Entry 52: in which I ruminate further on the Mrs God thing

Now you must not think that I am obsessed by Mrs God, worthy though she it. It's just this hole in my memory that's nagging away at me.

While cogitating thus I stumbled across a rather frightening possibility. Has there always been a Mrs God? And if that's weird, it is any weirder than not having the faintest idea of how we met?

But this leads to further desperately worrying thoughts. Like has there always been me? It certainly feels like it but that's no criterion.

The alternative is almost worse, which is if there hasn't always been me, then how did I spring into being? Presumably some (even) higher entity created me.

But it gets worse and worse. Did a 'higher' higher entity then create the higher entity that created me? This is getting ridiculous. Even I can see an infinite regress when it's about to run me over.

The only crumb of comfort that I can glean from this is that spotty undergraduates in odd corners of the sentient universe will be beating their brains out over exactly the same thing.

Serve them right.

Entry 51: in which One is astonished

Decided that there has been enough shilly-shallying around the circumstances of my first meeting with Mrs God, so did the obvious thing and waylaid her.

Came straight out with it: "Now look here Mrs G; do you remember exactly when and how we first met?"

To my astonishment this apparently straightforward question was met with peals of laughter and the response "Oh, you are funny!"

And she wandered off cackling to herself.

I mean, for goodness sakes!