Chapter 25: The Tree Of Life

The chapter changed, of course. But that was one small detail. The big change was my per­ ception of time. Like everyone else, I had spent my life stuck in a single moment of time at a time. The time at any time was called ‘the present.’ The times yet to come were called ‘the fu­ ture.’ And the times that I had already experienced ‘the past.’ Like everyone and everything else I was dragged, helpless, from past times through future times through the present moment. But when God snapped her fingers I was no longer stuck in one moment of time at a time. I was outside of time. I could see in four dimensions: three spatial directions plus time. “Like a Tralfamadorean,” said the metanovel!” “What’s that?” asked Mom. “The Tralfamadoreans were fictional characters created by a science fiction author named Kurt Vonnegut,” I said. “Oh I know Kurt,” said Mom. “He’s dead, isn’t he.” “Yes,” I said. “He died in 2007.” “He was 84,” Mom said. “Same age as your Dad. I beat them both by ten years. Not that I’m keeping score. But I did win.” “If you know Kurt you’ll want to read Literary Near-Immortality, on page 58,” said the metanovel to my Mom. “And also Reality And The Flow Of Time. It keeps moving around, but it’s on page 69 this time. I wasn’t listening. I was outside of time. I looked at the chair in front of me. I could see it in the usual way and I could see it in a new way. I could see it moving through space and through time, from place to place and time to time in my office; further back I could see it move from a store to my office, from a factory to the store, see it being assembled in the factory, then see its parts, still earlier in time, converging on the factory. I looked at my hand. I could see it in the present and see where it had been and how it had moved in the past. I could see it shrinking, becoming a baby hand, then shrinking to become an fetal flipper, an embryonic limb bud, a cell in a gastrula, a cell in a blastula, a single celled zy­ gote; then further back I saw it split, and became a sperm and an egg, and further back the sperm became a part of my father’s body, the egg became a part of my mother’s, then further back my father and mother each changed to children, to embryos, to zygotes, to sperms and eggs. I could see individuals in past generations change from adults to zygotes, then split and be­ come gametes and join the bodies of the parents that had created them. Evolution reversed itself and I could see parents who were barely human, then no longer human, then no longer primates, then no longer mammals; I could see back further to multicelled creatures, then single-celled creatures, then living things simpler even than a single cell. I could see the entire tree of life: me and all of my ancestors, back to an early replicator that was so simple it could not compete with living things today. And I could see all of my ancestors’ descendants, which included every creature on earth. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies “Is that what you mean?” I asked God. “That I am related to every human on the planet and to every living thing?” “I’m just showing you my greatest invention in four dimensions,” said God. “You’ve known the facts of evolution. But like your limited understanding of Big Bang theory, you haven’t real­ ized its implications. Evolution isn’t a just-so story about how species came to exist; it’s a mechanism that reveals your relationship to life.” God was right. I wasn’t isolated. My family was all around me, and it was huge! It covered the earth, from the highest mountains to the driest deserts; some of my relatives lived miles un­ dersea, near 400 degree thermal vents. Some lived in the freezing arctic. Some of my relatives were whales and some had been dinosaurs. My body was filled with distant family members: in­ testinal flora and fauna, symbionts, saprophytes, and parasites, helping me, living with me, and living off me. On every surface tiny relatives lived; the woods were full of distant relations— trees, moss, birds, insects. My relatives—seaweed, fish, and crabs among them—filled the Salt Pond outside my house; relatives floated in the clear autumn air, some as big as birds, and some smaller than dust. My family was everywhere. I’d seen myself as an isolated individual connected to a few friends, to my wife and daugh­ ters, brother and sister, and through them to other family members and other acquaintances. I had seen myself living in a small town in Maine, weakly connected to the distant, bustling cen­ ters of civilization. Now I saw myself as God wanted me to see myself: the at the center of Her universe; and product of Her evolution, a family member connected to the rest of my family— every creature that lived, that had lived and that would ever lived on earth. At the center of the universe. A mistake; Surrounded by family! The geniuses of history were all family members; every artist and every musician was a family member. Every brilliant innovation over the entire history of humanity came from one of my relatives, all the result of mistakes, and all made by mistakes. There were black sheep in the family, too, both literally and figuratively. Adolph Hitler was part of my family. So was Jean Kambana, former prime minister of Rwanda, who helped organ­ ize the slaughter of a nearly a million Tutsi, and Pol Pot, responsible for 2.5 million deaths, and Slobodan Milošević responsible for a mere few hundred thousand. The literal and figurative black sheep were a minority of my relatives because so few of my relatives were mammals. Most of my relatives were hard working, some of them working in factories, some in offices, some of them visiting flowers for nectar and mak­ ing honey, and others turning milk into cheese. I looked around. No matter what happened to me I was always at the center of the universe and I was always surrounded by my family! And I was always a mistake and an accident! Even if things were going badly for me, even if I was having trouble enjoying what was hap­ pening to me, other family members were prospering, creating, expanding. All I had to do was look around me, from the center of the universe and connect to my family. I was never alone. All I had to do was stop taking myself so seriously and enjoy the pleasure of others. There was al­ ways something I could enjoy. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies At the center of the universe? Surrounded by family? What’s not to enjoy? Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies Enlightenment “This is wonderful,” I said. “This is bullshit,” said my inner critic. “A bunch of new age bullshit. I suppose you think you’re enlightened now,” “He’s not enlightened,” God said. “He’s not quite as ignorant as he was a few chapters ago, but there’s plenty of ignorance left.” “Not surprising,” said my inner critic. God ignored my inner critic. “You’ve got a few more areas of ignorance you need to replace with knowledge.” “What are they?” I asked. “Wait,” God said. Self-Referential Metanovel Writing for Dmmies