Balls
Preface
“Do not expect me to put my own name on your work, Herman,” Ben, shall I say, attempted to advise. “I'm sure you think it will get published and recognized as if we've done it as a team, as usual. Honestly, considering some of the other stuff you've written alone, I can't imagine this will be any different.”
“Aw hell,” I replied, “Go piss up a rope.”
“I never understood that particular insult at all! Can't even visualize it.”
Even this, I have to explain to the idiot. “It isn't the image. It's the power of the statement. It indicates I want you to go the hell away, and leave me alone. The fact that one cannot do what I've just told you to do, is the beauty of it. You're not the only guy with ideas. If I wanna write something, I should be able to do it, and in peace, too. Just like you!”
“Well then do it,” he said. “Just don't expect, 'cause you happen to be my obnoxious, devil-may-care 'inner writer,' that it'll get published!”
No hay problema, dude. Now go take a nap or somethin'. I got stuff to write.
BALLS
by Herman
The scene is right here on planet Earth, somewhere in a rural meadow on a misty, overcast, drizzly day. It is the Earth year A.D. 1212. Two quite small but very human-like beings have just appeared, apparently out of nowhere, in an extremely advanced craft. They actually are from here, and yet they are not; for their world of origin is what we think of as an electron that orbits continuously about the nucleus of an atom. Their journey has not been long in terms of how we perceive distance, but rather, their journey has constituted an increase in physical size of several billion-fold. Which of course would seem quite impossible to our own scientific community. Yet deep within the dense terrain that now surrounds their tiny ship is another level of existence entirely. For the molecules within everything can be seen as galaxies, and the galaxies are full of stars, not unlike our very own sun. Thus while physicists on our own world think of everything subatomic as mere bits of ethereal energy, of one sort or another, in fact at that level they are quite solid. And within those solid objects is the next level of existence, and on, and on, and on. For fractal repetition rules the structure of all things. It provides only a first glimpse of the true meaning of infinity.
If we were looking right at these two beings and their ship, we most probably would need a strong magnifying glass to make them out. To them that is unimportant. Their objective was just to get here, to determine what macro-object their world actually helps to comprise, at the next level of existence.
“Ya know, Harve,” one said to the other, “This was really a bad idea.”
“What makes you say that, Glen? We actually made it! We're here!”
“Yah, but because of the event-rate differential, because things happen at a much higher rate at our former level, our world may well have ceased to exist!”
“Unlikely,” Harve replied. “You can see it. It didn't go away.”
“Huh! I can see a lot of it! No way I can see Bopix! The point is, we can't even really tell anyone what we've found! Nobody that we knew, anyway! Why in the last few seconds, a few millennia have passed on Bopix!”
“It's great! It means we outlived the ex-wives! But that's why we have to get the message off right away. You're right, things are happening at home much more quickly, but the descendants of our scientists may still be waiting! Let's not make 'em wait another thousand Bopix years!”
Harve immediately swung a keyboard around and began typing. “Remember, this will be relayed almost instantaneously. They're actually receiving it almost as quickly as I type!”
“Go piss up a rope!” cried Glen. “Ya know it will take a hundred of their years for the damned thing to be received! And that's just from one end of a short message to the other!”
“'Go piss up a rope'? I've never understood that particular insult.”
“Never mind. You'd think, if you were the creator of all this, you'd have more imagination than to make one world just like the world it's a tiny part of. I suppose the next level'l look the same, too. Hey. Lemme read that.”
Glen looked over Harve's shoulder and began to read aloud. “Dear citizens of the planet Bopix. We have arrived at the next level. Bopix is a tiny part of a beautiful world that is much like our own. The sun is shining, and birds were singing as our craft emerged from a living cambium layer and passed through the bark of a great, and perfectly-formed tree.” “Why the hell are you telling them that?”
“Because my name's gonna be on it, you idiot.”
“But all the money that was spent will be for nothing! We gave up our lives on Bopix, gave up women, wine and song, so you could lie to them all? What kind of thanks is it, what kind of justification is there for that?”
Harve straightened his glasses and glared at Glen. “Has it occurred to you, they might not wanna know the truth? I mean, how would you feel, if two intrepid travelers to the next level of existence, messaged back that your world was part of a great pile of steaming cowshit??”
Glen sniffed. “Gah! I guess you're right. I wish I hadn't done this, though. After what we've found, and also, because there's no going back. All we can do is increase our size!”
“De nada,” Harve answered, grinning. “I know there'll be someone on this planet who will understand. In another thousand years or so. Let's get going! On, on to the next level. We'll send back a great message. Maybe they'll appreciate knowing what this planet is a part of, at the next level upward. Chances are, the message will be received by some partial clairvoyant, in a dream. Then maybe he'll write about it.”
“I'll go, on one condition,” asserted Glen.
“What's that?”
“No lying! Even if it's something completely disgusting! Even if its just one word! Let 'em know what their world is really a part of!”
“Deal,” Harve replied.
*******