The Circle and the Dot by E. C. Nemeth (best english novels for beginners TXT) 📖

that which animated the form called Zeus had simply departed without any prior warning. The god’s eyes were unseeing and his mouth was agape like he was about to continue talking where he had left off. For a moment Dot wondered if he had looked this way to Zeus all those years he had remained still, silent and unaware.
“Zeus?” Dot asked after him, knowing there wouldn’t be an answer.
“Yes?” came an unfamiliar voice, “Who? Zeus? No I’m not Zeus. Who are you?”
The figure that presented itself resembled Zeus in general terms, thought Dot, noting the head, the body, the two arms and two legs. Yet this one seemed bent and stiff, slow and pondering.
“I am Dot.”
Dot observed the marked awkwardness in the figure’s gait as he approached, and that was allowing for the fact that he was tripping on the hem of a long robe that loosely draped his body from the neck on down. There was a hesitation about him that Dot found odd.
“Dot?” the man almost squeaked, “Dot you say?”
As he got closer Dot saw that the man’s face was lined and creased. Most of his face was hidden by volumes of wispy white hair that cascaded out of some sort of head adornment Dot was unfamiliar with. His beard hid another large portion of his face.
“Yes. Dot,” he helped clarify, “And who are you?”
“Who am I?” The man tripped on the hem of his robe and he almost fell but managed to catch himself at the last instant. “Perhaps if you saw my traditional tools of the trade.” So saying two objects appeared one in each hand. “How’s that. Know who I am now?”
Had Zeus been awake he would have immediately recognized the ancient hourglass and the scythe. He would also have known the figure’s identity. As it was, however, he remained motionless and completely unaware of his surroundings.
Dot had no idea what those implements in the creature’s hands were. His silence was answer enough he decided.
“No?” the figure’s scratchy voice was incredulous, “Hmm,” the figure used the sharp instrument to scratch his ear. “Well, I’m Death, pleased to meet you,” he reached out his arm, forgetting about the other object in his possession which fell and shattered into a million little tinkling shards. “Oops,” he exclaimed, “Don’t worry, I have many replacement hourglasses,” and an intact one appeared in his hand, “See?”
“Your name is Death?”
“Yes,” Death bobbed his head and his hair momentarily looked like a big puffy cloud, “Others call me Father Time. Some have asked how I can be both Father Time and Death at the same time. I just tell them that when your time is up, you’re dead. They usually accept that answer and don’t pursue the topic any further. I have many more names: Cronos and Thanatos are just two others. But I am primarily Death, - or Saturn if you like to add in the idea of tribulation before death” he concluded.
“Did you do this to Zeus?”
“I didn’t do anything to him. I just suspended time in this region of space, that’s all. Hey!” Death extended his instrument of office with a noticeable improvement to his usual bumbling self, “Why aren’t you frozen as well?”
“I don’t know…,” Dot said while a thought flittered by in his mind wondering how he could not know if he was supposed to know it all.
“There have been some very unusual fluctuations in the time line around here. They reminded me of when Zeus was investigating the corridors of time a long while ago. Except this new disturbance is far more subtle and distinctly purposeful.” Death waved the scythe in front of Dot, emphasizing his words, “Are you the one responsible for those time events?”
“I think I may be,” admitted Dot.
“What manner of creature are you?” the grizzled old man peered at Dot with piercing black eyes, “I can barely even see you yet your presence is palpable. How is this possible? Explain yourself,” demanded Death, suddenly appearing convincingly menacing.
“I have no idea, really. I’m told I was standing over there somewhere,” Dot waved all around, unsure where over there actually was any more, “I am told that I have stood there for a very, very long time, but I have no recollection of any of that.” Dot explained exactly what he had done since becoming aware, sparing Death only the barest details.
Death stood there, staring at Dot’s almost imperceptible form, and listening intently to Dot’s story. He interjected only a few comments throughout. As he listened he tried to recall a memory that was suddenly bothering him. It was a memory of something old and forgotten, yet Death was now being made to know that he had employed its existence indirectly many times in the interim. Then the memory surfaced.
Back at the very beginning, when the cosmos was still new and Death was only just learning his future responsibilities, he had chanced upon a portion of space that was different from all others. At its heart was a speck, a point. That place stood unmoving while the rest of the universe sped around it. Neither time nor space seemed to have any influence on it, and it had no influence on them either. That point, that dot had remained motionless ever since – and during the coming ages Death had learned to rely upon it as an absolute frame of reference for his intricate time calculations.
As Dot finished his recounting, Death was made aware of a simple fact that had until that moment remained beyond his grasp. The absolute frame of reference is now in motion. Not only that but it was aware and lucid. He was taken aback as he realized that he was actually conversing with the center of the universe! This was a rare and very special occasion, he knew. One that required the proper questions posed. He quickly composed them in his mind.
“You have just come back from inspecting the very heart of this cosmos, perusing its greatest secrets. You have seen the absolutes divided and juxtaposed one against the other. You have witnessed the cosmic egg when all were still one. There you experienced the paradox of the present – the great now. You have observed the inside of a black hole, where infinity and zero are forced back into co-existence in a singularity of impossible design. What have you concluded?” finished Death, “What is it like to come face to face with your own true identity?”

Transition #2

“I have no idea…” was all Dot could think to say. His mind was spinning. His understandings were overwhelmed and he felt himself expanding, quickening. He prepared himself as best he could for the tsunami of change he knew was about to envelop him. His mind went temporarily blank as he suddenly loomed above his old understandings. Then new knowings leapt into his mind.
I stand juxtapositioned between reality and the veil that has been pulled over the heads of everyone else in the universe. That membrane I experienced at the center of the black hole was the illusion, the lie made bare because there was nowhere left for it to hide. The truth swallowed the lie and I was made aware of its subtle and insidious nature – its slipperiness. It is a tantalizing and wholly convincing construction.
“I feel as though I stand outside the universe looking in.”
“I’m not surprised, really,” stated Death, “Time has no hold on you, not to mention the timeline. You have no concept of the context of past or future since you exist beyond its influence.”
“Past and future? Of course I know what they are.”
“As concepts, but not as the contextual field of experience, of awareness.” Death went to scratch his neck and came close to decapitating himself. Disgusted, he willed the scythe and hourglass to disappear. Then he made a great display of scratching under his beard.
“What?”
“You know. Experience is ultimately a history or sequence of events pertaining to a particular subject and that transpires in a serial fashion. Each subject’s history is a linear chain of moments from birth to death. And everything tangible, many of which are very difficult to perceive, has a history. Your own story, the one you just told me, is your personal history. The difference is that while every other object follows the time line in lock step with each other a certain few are exempt. You, me, usually Zeus over there and to one extent or another a handful of others, are immune to the effects of time. But only you can recreate experience. Only you come and go, slipping in and out of reality, as if it were no big deal.”
“Yes. That has the ring of truth about it. I will now go explore these corridors of time to verify what you have said.” So saying, Dot disappeared.
But to Dot it seemed as if Death and everything else disappeared, not him.
Dot found himself in unfamiliar surroundings. Avenues of possibilities lay all around him. Each avenue radiated out from his vantage point, intertwining with all the other possibilities. The further he reached with his senses the larger the knot of possibilities became. Then, by simply re-orienting his awareness he saw beyond the skein of timelines to a horizon of pure white light.
Just as Dot was about to recognize the ring of light as Camarilla another dimension of this strange place suddenly caught his attention. Each line, each avenue of possibility, was the history of a particular object within the universe. Some of the lines pulsed with light. As he observed this he realized that every line had a unique color. Then he realized that, although each line represented a long line of sequential moments, he could view them as a single entity and experience the entire line at once.
Dot became fascinated by this revelation the more he explored the lifelines and it held his attention rapt. Dot reviewed timeline after timeline. He saw the birth of stars and their deaths. He saw the evolution of life and experienced every individual lifetime as well, one after the other. Every object, every speck of matter and energy was represented here. Everything had its own unique color and its history.
The skein began to unravel as he watched the many lines. By the time he finished the last one the knots loosened then fell away. The lines, it turned out were only segments of one continuous line. And the skein was the convoluted representation of the entire cosmos’ timeline, which included every other timeline within it.
Refocusing, Dot now saw that all the lines of the skein originated where he was. And by looking outward with renewed understanding, Dot saw that Camarilla stood at the far end, where all the timelines reconverged again.
“Camarilla, my love.”
“Oh Dot! Have you yet grasped the marvel of what we have wrought in the master’s name?”
“I am beginning to, yes.”
“Then are you soon to assume your responsibilities?”
“Responsibilities?” queried Dot, perturbed. Every time he met Camarilla she sent him up the river of intellectual chaos without a paddle.
“Of course. Your destiny awaits you, Dot,”
Her liquid silver voice still held the power to completely enthrall him, he noticed. As did her perfectly circular and absolutely radiant form. He reached for her and caressed her gently, longingly. For a moment she demurred and returned his affections. Then she pushed away.
“There are consequences to your actions that you must become aware of. Therein lies your responsibilities”
“Yes, that was made patently obvious to me while reviewing the many timelines within this great construct. Everything impinges on everything else. Nothing exists in a vacuum. I suppose that applies to me as well. I just don’t get how, yet.