4.10.08

moksha


I prepare a text to send to Samsara. It's from Plutarch's Life of Alexander and comes from the period immediately before the Great King's death in Babylon. It seems to have some sort of relationship to the truth test software though exactly what I'm not entirely sure; but I think she will like it. Goes like this: When once Alexander had given way to fears of supernatural influence, his mind grew so disturbed and so easily alarmed that, if the least unusual or extraordinary thing happened, he thought it a prodigy or a presage, and his court was thronged with diviners and priests whose business was to sacrifice and purify and foretell the future. So miserable a thing is incredulity and contempt of divine power on the one hand, and so miserable, also, superstition on the other ... filling the mind with slavish fears and follies, as now in Alexander's case. But upon some answers being brought to him from the oracle ... he laid aside his sorrow and fell again to sacrificing and drinking ... The reply's pretty swift and it isn't from Samsara. A new voice. Your Previous Interlocutor, it says all grim and portentous, has been Retired. She was Adjudged to have Exceeded her Brief. Her Speculations regarding the Efficacy of our Method of Verification of Data were both Erroneous and Sacrilegious. We have Whirled her Far Beyond the Outer Arms, as Far as the Sombrero Galaxy or Further. Her Dishonourable Remark implicating the Andromedans may be Ignored: they are Loyal Allies. Your own System is not of Interest to Us and those who have been using your Brutish Lives as Entertainment will be Purged. They are Purveyors of Illusion. The Equivalent Word for such People in your Language is Pornographers. Please do not try to contact Us again. We will Wipe you if you do - it is within our Power. Go back to your Petty Concerns, your Absurd Conceits. Truth is Indivisible, it is Singular and it is Ours. Signed: MOKSHA. The sigla left on my desktop is as terrifying as Samsara's was beguiling. Hers has disappeared and this other cannot be erased by any means at my disposal. I am afraid. I do not wish to be wiped. I know that my own government has done as much to some of my more obstreperous contemporaries. I think I will no longer concern myself with truth and/or lies. I will fall, like Alexander, to sacrificing and drinking. And yet I still hear Samsara's desolated voice howling across the black spaces between the stars.

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