Chapter 23: What Are You?

“You said I didn’t know where I was,” I said to God. “I didn’t. Now I understand where I am. No matter what chapter I’m in, I’m always at the center of the universe.” “That makes you less ignorant than you were before,” said God. “But you still don’t know what you are. Knowing what you are will also make it easier to enjoy life. So what are you?” I thought for a while. “I’m a human,” I answered. “That’s your species,” said God, “But it’s not what you are.” “I’m a living thing,” I said. “That’s your category,” God said. “But it’s not what you are.” I thought for a while. God was getting at something. I knew She was. But I didn’t know, and I didn’t know what She was getting at. “I don’t know, and I don’t know what you’re getting at,” I said to God. “What am I?” “Think!” God said. “You are the same as all living beings. What are all living beings? From viruses to mammals?” Again I thought. I still couldn’t figure out what God was getting at. “Evolution,” said Charles Darwin. “Think about evolution.” I thought again. What was evolution? I thought. It’s inheritance, variation, selection and it­ eration. I was originally a zygote. The zygote was the result of some blind sperm carrying a semi-random assortment of my Dad’s genes accidentally running head-first into an egg carrying a semi-random assortment of my Mom’s genes. I inherited from my Dad and Mom, and there was variation due to the largely accidental selection of genes in the egg and the sperm that acci­ dentally that united with it. Sexual reproduction produced a lot of variation. That was just one of many reasons that sex was cool. We evolved from simpler, pre-sexual creatures. If they divided they’d both have the same genes. So where did the variation come in there? I thought back to what I had learned about bio­ logy. Transcription errors. Cosmic rays. Variation in simple creatures came from damaged genes and transcription errors. In sexual creatures there were three mechanisms at work: accidental re­ combination of genes, accidental changes to genes, and mistakes in replication. In asexual repro­ duction only two. Then I saw it. I saw it and I laughed. “I’m an accident,” I laughed. “That’s right,” said God. “I’m a mistake!” I said. “It’s evolution. Variation is either an accident or a mistake. Every evolutionary step is the result of one or more mistakes and accidents.” “That’s right,” God said. I hated making mistakes. Every time I made a mistake I got upset. “And you’re always making mistakes,” my inner critic. “Because you’re an idiot.” “No,” said God. “People make mistakes because I designed them to make mistakes. Mis­ takes help people. Without mistakes perople would be boring. Mistakes help people evolve and create new things. Mistakes underlie all art and human creation. Mistakes help creations evolve. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies “Since I’m a mistake,” I said to God, smiling, “I’m just a mistake making a mistake accord­ ing to the design of the universe.” “That’s about right,” said God. “It changes the way you look at things, doesn’t it?” “It makes things less serious,” I said to God, “but doesn’t it make life meaningless.” “One thing at a time,” God said. “We’ll talk about life’s meaning later. Right now I want you to understand how to enjoy life.” It would be easier to enjoy life knowing I was at the center of the universe. It would be easy to enjoy life when I didn’t take things so seriously—seeing myself as a mistake and an accident who sometimes had accidents and made mistakes. I looked around me in wonder. The world had changed again. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies