{"id":137761,"date":"2022-01-29T22:07:21","date_gmt":"2022-01-29T22:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/?p=137761"},"modified":"2023-11-04T15:06:23","modified_gmt":"2023-11-04T15:06:23","slug":"blind-men-and-elephants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/?p=137761","title":{"rendered":"Blind Men and Elephants"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nThis is not a story.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\nA story follows a sequence of events, one manufacturing the next. The concern of these pages is a single event, both infinite and temporal, which has been distorted to fit the dimensions of a narrative. To ape Bertrand Russell, it occurs \u201conce and for all\u201d. It also occurs over just a few billion years… <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe date is October 4th, 1959. A huge evening billows over south Michigan\u2019s bare hills, an ochre moon, blazing through scrappy quills, picks out the valley towns and unkempt roads. A sprawling bruise appears on a dark sloping field. Its gaudy colours are a mud blur, but inner lights throw out a gold web of poles and guy ropes. We can hear clanks and hollers on the wind. The Big Top is up, bunting still being stitched to the masthead while kiosks sprout at its roots. Sparks and blurts from a hurdy-gurdy are masked by the silhouettes of shambling beasts.\n<\/p>\n

\nThere is a Frankenstein flavour to the sight: dead parts sewn together and punishingly charged with life.\n<\/p>\n

\nOne man has truly come alive this evening: Ringmaster Leyton Peters shakes off the road\u2019s malaise with an inspection of the righting tents, wading through mud and laden workers with equivalent disregard. \u201cLook alive!\u201d he yells, or \u201cfolks won\u2019t know what hit \u2018em!\u201d He halts to watch an entryway heaved upright, a test flicker of the sign\u2019s bulbs: Pallento\u2019s Circus and Menagerie. You won\u2019t believe your senses!<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\nPeters tugs his moustache: his workers share relieved glances and rush to the next task. So long, Leyton Peters, he is thinking. Arise August Pallento, showman, swashbuckler and exhibitor of marvels that defy the very laws of Creation\u2026! <\/em>Pallento practises his rolled \u2018r\u2019s with his chest puffed–then he scowls.\n<\/p>\n

\nWhy is it,<\/em> he thinks before turning, every trainer I hire smells worse than the animals? <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWell?\u201d he demands.\n<\/p>\n

\nGriggs\u2019 face is haggard, his fingers, lost without an implement of control, scratch his neck like kittens. \u201cRingmaster, it looks like one of the elephants–Sheba, one of the African cows–made a run for it, see. Bashed right through the bars, brought down some lights and rampaged off that way.\u201d Griggs points downhill where the trees at the edge of the field kill moonlight.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cGet after it then!\u201d The Great Pallento whitens. \u201cDarn it, why am I seeing you?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cNo need, sir.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cNo need?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nGriggs fumbles to explain. \u201cSee, it just looks<\/em> like it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

\nThe zoological arm of Pallento\u2019s operation was run on the basis that less light and exposure makes animals more docile. This is not the case, as many previous trainers could attest (if only by seance), but transport was simpler if the beasts stayed caged.\n<\/p>\n

\nDownwind it smelled atrocious. Animals revolted by the reek would surely produce less waste, Pallento reasoned, and by his pomaded moustache he had been spared the truth. Worse for him were the noises–brays, howls and shrieks that scared off sleep. Tonight they are more intense.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe double-stacked cages form a boggy corridor down which he lets Griggs trudge first. The nearest outpost, a hook-a-duck, lies mangled nearby. A clown tries halfheartedly to unbend a metal pole. The mud between them shows a pegboard of wet imprints that hurtle off into the dark.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cFetch a gun.\u201d says Pallento, tracking the fields with a hunter\u2019s eye. Griggs points backwards along the prints, between the shrill chimps and thin snorting lions, to Sheba\u2019s cage. The metal bars now jaggedly extrude it; half the straw lies outside. But within, huddled in shadows, fretful and pale, her one eye rolling timorously, is all one thousand stone of Sheba.\n<\/p>\n

\nA pause unites the two men. \u201cIt came back.\u201d Pallento states uncertainly.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cDon\u2019t know, sir.\u201d Griggs scratches. \u201cDon\u2019t know how she could fit back in. Those bars are pretty gnarly, and the prints\u2026\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nPallento understands. There is only one set, stampeding off into the night. He is a pragmatic man, unmoved by mysteries–which are, after all, his stock in trade. Still: \u201cWhere do they go?\u201d he murmurs, sounding more like Leyton Peters than the Great Pallento…\n<\/p>\n

\nThen recovers. \u201cFix those bars. No second chances, Griggs. Next time it\u2019ll be you hightailing it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cYes sir,\u201d Griggs says. Both men gaze down the line of prints as far as moonlight allows, and for once share the same thought.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cShould I\u2026?\u201d Griggs begins.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cNot you. Send someone else. We can\u2019t spare more than one.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nAs Pallento trudges away, Griggs instructs his subordinate Alfie Prue to follow the mysterious tracks, but not to worry if it might take all night.\n<\/p>\n

\nPrue sets off gamely through the dark grass, running until his lungs ache. When he slows for breath a mile later, he squints at the tracks, confused. What they signify he no longer knows. A path? Their shape and pattern hasn\u2019t changed–onward they lead into the night–and yet he cannot recall why he is so eager to chase them. Feeling foolish, the victim of some obscure prank, he turns and retraces his own prints uphill to the circus.\n<\/p>\n

\nIt is only in sight of Sheba\u2019s cage that he recalls what an elephant is.\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nAnd now eight hundred and fourteen years must pass, sparing the reader a lot of unnecessary bad news\u2026<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\nIn the auditorium you could hear a stylus drop. Ten thousand students, most on remote interface, observe a small, balding prelate of the Elephantine Order of Mathematics. The prelate has a personable manner that runs counter to the austere grandeur of the room, his voice rising as the Singapore Dropper loudly rockets overhead. Furnishing the cameras with as much attention as the crowd, Larchin co Deel continues his introduction, brandishing an A4 page borrowed from a very conscientious museum.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cA piece of paper has only two dimensions. Not quite, of course, but let\u2019s imagine it has. Now let\u2019s imagine we live on, or in, or are part of that piece of paper. We too have only two dimensions. Now.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nEnjoying himself, he swipes an object from a front row desk.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cLet\u2019s take a simple 3D shape like this\u2026 what is it?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cA mood ball.\u201d its owner sighs, prompting a chuckle from the young audience. Lecturers and tech. <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cFine. Let\u2019s say this spherical mood ball<\/em> can pass through our world, through this piece of paper. What would we observe?\u201d He presses the ball against the page. \u201cFirst, we\u2019d see a circle appear out of nowhere. Then the circle grows, eventually to the diameter of the ball. Then it shrinks and disappears again, as it passes all the way through.\u201d He hands the device back to its owner.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cBut that\u2019s level one. Let\u2019s imagine a cousin of the sphere with four dimensions moving through our three-dimensional world. Now what would we observe? A sphere popping into existence, expanding, contracting then vanishing? Reasonable so far.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cNow add more dimensions, the shadows of shadows of shadows twisting through our world. Even that we can grasp, at a stretch. But what about time? Space has no monopoly on plural dimensions. Time, we think, has only one, but there may be myriad others. So how might we perceive them?…\u201d <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe lecture ends a success. Deel strides outside, enjoying the city\u2019s approximation of fresh air. He has just enough time for a caffeine injection and a sip of eggwhite before catching the dropper uptown–a literal description, the monolithic city being so tall as to be visible abroad–to a privately-funded gallery on Platinum Plus, where his friend and former colleague Sana co Tharlian is unveiling her latest anti-sculpture.\n<\/p>\n

\nDeel\u2019s rumpled academic gown is plainly subpar in this lofty milieu, but he isn\u2019t the kind to notice. With a younger man\u2019s gait he reaches the gallery before the circus-like reveal, and manages to catch Sana\u2019s eye. She barely smiles. Her usual pride is absent, she awaits the showing with anxious frustration. A greying curator expounds on the hidden work, calling it \u2018sublime\u2019 and \u2018magnificent\u2019 in a dreary voice. Sana co Tharlian hears none of it–nor Deel, absorbed by her reaction. It is unlike Tharlian to evince doubt.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe curtain drops at last, and there it is: Tharlian\u2019s anti-sculpture. A complex silicon framework shapes a void of air (so far so tiredly bourgeois), but in this case the shape is not abstract. The vacuum defines some sort of beast, three metres tall, with four tree-like limbs and a fifth overhanging the jaw. Gratuitous ears, a short, ropey tail and jutting tusks round out the piece.\n<\/p>\n

\nDeel is strangely overcome, and is not the only one. The witnesses go quiet, their champagne forgotten, the air humming with off-kilter thoughts. What is lost, what is far-flung and unsettling, has been exposed. A path?\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cProfane! Profane!\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nA loud gentleman barges through the crowd towards Tharlian, who folds her arms. Deel sidesteps in between.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cLet him come.\u201d she says impatiently. \u201cI don\u2019t fear criticism.\u201d Light security check their approach.\n<\/p>\n

\nIf the heckler is embarrassed to be so magnanimously brooked, it does not show. He sports the scarlet gown and dyed-to-match goatee of the Venerable Elephantine Order, a political titan as much as a religious one, and his towering epaulettes denote membership of the highest echelon. \u201cA sacrilegious affront!\u201d he declaims with zeal. \u201cAn offense of the most profound register! Somehow–I don\u2019t deign to grasp your fiendish methods–you have perpetrated an abomination. You are formally directed to destroy it!\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nJust another crank, but his station carries weight with the crowd, who noisily react. The heckler\u2019s gaze falls on Deel.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cYou, academic. Elephantine Order of Mathematics.\u201d He references Deel\u2019s gown. \u201cWill you stand by as the source of your funding is defamed?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nMouth dry, the mathematician declares, \u201cI see a shape, Brother. The EOM has kindly funded my studies into shapes for over twenty years. I have yet to be accused of heresy.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nUnmoved, the VEO prelate continues to rain shame on the artwork even as he is escorted from the building; though he does not, or can not, describe what is so profane about the baffling shape. After him, the event is marred, the champagne sour in the mouths of the guests whose appetite for spectacle is limited to art. In twos and threes they drift out after the cleric.\n<\/p>\n

\nAcross Platinum Plus, under a blazing jumbotron for animal welfare, squats a print cafe of no repute except to Larchin co Deel and Sana co Tharlian. They have met here occasionally for years, and head towards it without thinking. They upload their usual orders and sit while their drinks are assembled molecule by molecule between them.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWhat was it called, the piece?\u201d asks Larchin.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe First and Last.\u201d Sana replies.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI\u2019m not sure but I almost thought I recognised it for a second.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI am not a plagiarist.\u201d Tharlian says curtly.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cNo–of course. It just feels familiar–that cleric certainly thought so. Maybe from a dream.\u201d He breaks off, embarrassed (mathematician first) by his vagueness. \u201cWhat do you see?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI see myself,\u201d Tharlian states, \u201cas in all my pieces. I see freedom and the triumph of life. But it was in a dream I found it, that\u2019s true. Anything glimpsed in those dimensions is ideally expressed, I think, until we try to explain it afterwards.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWhat kind of dream was this one?\u201d Deel is intrigued.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cAn extremely vivid one. I was angry; I was in someone\u2019s sky. I was blundering around, all different bits of me; then I saw bars–thick ones with rust–and other people too, in other cages, but I couldn\u2019t see them. I remember panic, then I realised I was dreaming. How could bars hold me in a dream? I gathered up my might and burst right through them. Out of the trap came pure joy–look, I\u2019m still tingling. Nothing was real enough to hold me. I woke in ecstasy, and the shape of what I\u2019d been stayed with me. The First and Last: it\u2019s all there, Larchin, all life. My best work, whatever they say.\u201d She pauses to sip. \u201cDoes that sound familiar?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nDeel says slowly \u201cI think so.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nBut it\u2019s another dream that slows him, one he has nursed for nearly six years. In it, a warm Sunday bed irresistibly embraces them; there is fresh orange juice downstairs; there is the smell of breathed-on skin; there are conversations which climax in quiet; there is sweat, peace and courage. There is love.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut in adjacent dreams he sees bars too, not the kind he can break. Besides, there\u2019s never been a good time.\n<\/p>\n

\nHiding his mouth with a deep sip, he notices Sana\u2019s lyfeband pulse green. She accepts the call, surprised. When the call ends, she swears like an attack of lightning.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThat pious bastard!\u201d She ends, her arm already seeking her coat sleeve.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nTharlian says through clenched teeth: \u201cSabotage, that\u2019s what. I\u2019m going back to the gallery. Where\u2019s a Dropstop?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWait, I\u2019ll drive.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nThe Elephantine Order of Art gallery on P+ is shut when they arrive. A biometric scan of Sana\u2019s face lets them through the fire door.\n<\/p>\n

\nOut of hours, The First and Last is normally taken to Sana co Tharlian\u2019s temporary workshop above the exhibition room, rejoining its brothers and sisters of six months\u2019 artistic labour. The workshop is vac-sealed, impregnable to radiation, magnetism and ground tremors. As expected, the anti-sculpture is gone from the exhibition room when Sana rushes through, followed by Larchin. Still, the sight of the empty plinth revolving in the half-light sheds a full skin of foreboding.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe droning curator is fidgeting outside the workshop\u2019s sealed door. \u201cI waited for you.\u201d he calls out, panting as much as them with stress. \u201cMiss Tharlian, I promise it has been sealed the whole time. I personally have stood guard since the spike. We never tamper, as you know. There are no cameras inside, so as not to influence the experiment.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWas it a bomb?\u201d Sana interrupts.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what it was, Miss Tharlian, but I heard it from my office. I\u2019m afraid we should expect the worst inside.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nLarchin bends, leaning on his knees, heart throbbing, he thinks, from the exercise. He can barely speak, his gown is cold with sweat.\n<\/p>\n

\nSana begins to resolve the biometric lock. The ratchet grinds back. A shadow of a gust of something intangible escapes through the opening door, forcing Larchin to crouch. Sana shoots him a concerned look.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWhat did they do to it?\u201d he responds, waving her in.\n<\/p>\n

\nShe strides into a scene of such disarray it makes the curator feel faint, peering over her shoulder. The workshop has always been a mess but now it is obliterated; dust and bits of hardened foam still descend in shaky spirals; the main workbench, its iron legs bolted to the floor, has been pounded flat; the pale walls are scarred and battered through. Bits of her brood are scattered among torn wood and chunks of plaster. On her knees she finds fragments of her dearest child, The First and Last, ripped open like the bars of a cage.\n<\/p>\n

\nToo powerful, the rampage that dismembered the room, for men, and too chaotic for a bomb. But to Sana there is no mystery, not even the sealed door. Holy saboteurs. <\/em> There is heat behind her eyelids and a growing rage. The others she can reproduce but not this one. The best she can give is gone, and all that she can love is lost.\n<\/p>\n

\nA confused old man enters behind her, moving midway between stagger and swagger. His eyes are shining. The bars are gone. Freedom and the triumph of life. <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cSana.\u201d he says, \u201cI\u2019m sorry this has happened, but I love you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nThere\u2019s never a good time, is there?\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nAs a pattern starts to emerge, we now travel backwards to a period in which conflict looms, at the dawn of the 22nd Century… <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cMaster\u2026!\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nThe acolyte sits, discouraged. For twelve days the visionary Qu has not opened his eyes, parked under the ginkgo tree in an attitude of supplication. Unfair, the acolyte thinks, that such stupendous ruminations cannot be known, and that the activity of thought cannot be entered in on like a sport. She strokes the dirt where the master\u2019s toe has been, just in case there is something to pick up.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe candle she holds gutters alarmingly.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe master opens his eyes and reacquaints himself with context. A swathe of desert rolls out ahead, prickled by stubborn rocks; behind him stands the city of New Basra, a bombed-out ruin whose survivors proudly resume life after each drone-raid, and whose kebbe is the pride of the fledgling century.\n<\/p>\n

\nChristian forces flock like ravens to its airspace: clumsy and separate. A ceasefire is stomached, until all sides find the compromise more sickening than the crimes. There is no way for authorities to keep track of civilian deaths (before mandatory lyfebands), but the wounded populace and the frenzied officials keep their own charters. Agendas embellish each.\n<\/p>\n

\nMaster Qu Ecko was born of millionaires in the export of oil. His birth name was Farid al-din Abi Hamid Muhammad ben Ibrahim Attar, after a certain mystic poet, but his chosen name is of sufficient vagueness to imply a more universal profundity. At twenty-one he rejected a gig at the filial firm in a stand against nepotism, and was proudly exiled. Now the self-styled Wise Vagrant is starving, with all due aplomb, fifty feet outside the city gates. He has witnessed truths that boil the universe down to nothing: what can he supply to the acolyte as comfort or to justify rebellion?–the state militia is already entrenched. Shapes and symmetries, patterns among flames, are all he cares to ponder. The plight of his adherents irks him little.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cMaster, there will be another raid tonight. You must take shelter.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Wise Vagrant says nothing, engrossed by the simple pleasure of sunlight.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe acolyte asks hopefully, \u201cWould you have us fight? Shuri\u2019s father hides weapons in his basement, he is willing to arm us. We all swore to defend you, master.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nQu hears her with a sullen heart. The problems of the present age he wishes to reject: Temporal distractions from considerations of totality. He wants to say, honestly, I cannot save you. Death and suffering are fragile burdens it is easy, with practice, to ignore. <\/em> To perceive the scope of all things–his aim these twelve nights–makes her need for justice seem trivial. Sooner or later we all die; the specific sentence is like which water is in a particular raindrop. And yet, a human heart beats in him.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cReturn by nightfall,\u201d he mumbles helplessly. \u201cI will have answers then.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nThe acolyte stoically nods and leaves. But the proud scion has no answers, and he wilts as her candle rounds the city gates.\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nThe drones return at sundown. A glinting horde speckles the waning sun, three or four hundred, whistling over the sirens. The streets drain, shelters are bolted from the inside, children play games in the dark. Street and house lights go out like a falling shadow.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe acolyte reaches Qu under the ginkgo tree. She brings twelve other men and women sashed with ammo, dressed in red to camouflage against the evening sand. The Wise Vagrant hasn\u2019t moved. Legs crossed and hands tucked under knees he grimaces and sweats, his eyes welded shut as he enters a lucid dream\u2026\n<\/p>\n

\nHis eyes open.\n<\/p>\n

\nThere is a faint disturbance as if the sun, the sand and the approaching swarm are painted on a backdrop that has just been tugged.\n<\/p>\n

\nThen erupts a shoal of churning patterns, sensed by the eye the way an ear senses a change in pressure. Some sections block a patch of grass two metres away; the moon crawls over others like a mite in a meadow. The pieces burst and coalesce, vanish and appear, with mercurial erraticness; the watchers taste bark. The whirl starts to accrue flesh and colour.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe first drones to meet the emanation vanish or explode, creating a fiery nebula that outshines the dying sun. The awesome spectacle is lost on the citizens who hide and on the drones whose cameras short out on impact. Only the thirteen figures by the ginkgo tree witness the last revelation: the cloud of fire, falling slowly, shapes a vast evolving beast of unguessable size. The form staggers, howling, taller than nature and abhorrent to it, passing through endless dizzying permutations. Then it disappears, like smoke. Burning drones fall through the sudden void. All is quiet, eventually.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWhat was that?\u201d the acolyte breathes, after a full minute.\n<\/p>\n

\nQu\u2019s eyes sparkle with the light of all things. \u201cThe shadow of something far greater.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt saved you.\u201d The acolyte utters with awed conviction.\n<\/p>\n

\nQu replies cautiously. \u201cThat was its effect. We must not think-\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt protected our saviour!\u201d The acolyte is gaining steam. \u201cYou raised it. We saw it. It saved you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt saved us.\u201d <\/em> Qu corrected, exasperated. \u201cBut you can bet it wasn\u2019t even aware-\u201c\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cYes, Master. It saved us all!\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cNo, we should not ascribe-\u201c\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cBe not modest, Wise Vagrant.\u201d said the acolyte, adopting the pious tone Qu often used to deflate her enthusiasm for rebellion. But she has grown taller. \u201cYou conjured it. We all saw it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cBy its nature, what we\u2019ve seen must be unknowable.\u201d Qu protests weakly.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThen we shall know it! Friends, we must tell the people: Though we are outnumbered, outmatched, there is might on our side. A god was summoned in our defense–let every home ring with the news!\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nQu sulks as his followers rejoice with fits of relieved laughter. Their eyes open to the acolyte, who begins to lay the groundwork for an uprising that one day will be referred to as the Red Tusk. Qu tries not to listen. His hopes of being left alone to fathom the universe are apparently fulfilled, making him grumpy.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe only fighter not completely spellbound is Shuri, whose father provided the group with guns. Alongside weapons in his basement he stored books, which are weapons of another sort. Very suddenly she recalls the shape of that lumbering tumult from old print encyclopedias. Her memory of those pages seems oddly fresh, and she is amazed that so awesome a creature as that–elephant, <\/em> yes!–could be so poorly represented by the authors.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut Shuri\u2019s gospel has been lost by the Elephantine Order.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd now we must migrate to the earliest time so far, when life on Earth had not yet started. We call this \u2018before recorded time\u2019 or \u2018the Archean period\u2019 depending on outlook. The surface is a tepid, unambitious goop surrounded by tedious ocean, and the sky is a febrile haze… <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nIt is easy to see why the elephant is upset.\n<\/p>\n

\nFirstly, it is alone on Planet Earth. Only one being knows such solitude, and it is the one that has just discarded a baffling new lifeform at this point in time and space.\n<\/p>\n

\nBefore the elephant can be lonely, it must contend with being suddenly alive. And all the standard-issue bewilderment that follows birth is compounded by an instant surge of parallel sensations: the pain of a barbed crop, the odour of burnt silicon, the image of a shrinking, fiery sky, the need for freedom, the triumph of life and countless others, most of them anathema to its senses. On top of which, it has manifested at the very bottom of a swamp.\n<\/p>\n

\nFirst, it assumes it is not meant to move, that it and the gloop are one. Then it feels the urge to breathe. Struggling with unpracticed limbs it manages only to become stuck in the turgid mire. At last, upside down, it perceives a dim glow fighting through the scum at the surface: a huge evening billows overhead, forever unseen. It drowns, at last, gratefully.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd what an end! A cargo of strange bacterial grist begins to carry through the swamp. In the blink of an all-seeing eye, it will give rise to its own kind, to the lesser species in whose dreams it first appeared and the groping belief of that species towards an understanding of the unknowable. This has been managed already. This is <\/em>being managed.\n<\/p>\n

\nWho knew this traumatised alien corpse, unknowingly summoned, formed, fleshed, replicated, made extinct and forgotten (passing right the way through) would be the catalyst for the development of you and me?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is not a story. A story follows a sequence of events, one manufacturing the next. The concern of these pages is a single event, both infinite and temporal, which has been distorted to fit the dimensions of a narrative. To ape Bertrand Russell, it occurs \u201conce and for all\u201d. It also occurs over just …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106925,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19981],"tags":[19982],"class_list":["post-137761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-tcl-34-winter-2020","tag-the-colored-lens-34-winter-2020","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/106925"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137761"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137764,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137761\/revisions\/137764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}