“Men may begin and end in many ways,” says Anubis. “Some may start as machines and gain their humanity slowly. Others may end as machines, losing humanity by pieces as they live. That which is lost may always be regained. That which is gained may always be lost. -What are you, Wakim, a man or a machine?”
“I do not know.”
“Then let me confuse you further.”
Anubis gestures, and Wakim’s arms and legs come loose, fall away. His metal torso clangs against stone, rolls, then lies at the foot of the throne.
“Now you lack mobility,” says Anubis.
He reaches forward with his foot and touches a tiny switch at the back of Wakim’s head.
“Now you lack all senses but hearing.”
“Yes,” answers Wakim.
“Now a connection is being attached to you. You feel nothing, but your head is opened and you are about to become a part of the machine which monitors and maintains this entire world. See it all now!”
“I do,” he replies, as he becomes conscious of every room, corridor, hall and chamber in the always dead never alive world that has never been a world, a world made, not begotten of coalesced starstuff and the fires of creation, but hammered and jointed, riveted and fused insulated and decorated, not into seas and land and air and life, but oils and metals and stone and walls of energy, all hung together within the icy void where no sun shines; and he is aware of distances, stresses, weights, materials, pressures and the secret numbers of the dead. He is not aware of his body, mechanical and disconnected. He knows only the waves of maintenance movement that flow through the House of the Dead. He flows with them and he knows the colorless colors of quantity perception.
Then Anubis speaks again:
“You know every shadow in the House of the Dead. You have looked through all the hidden eyes.”
“Yes.”
“Now see what lies beyond.”
There are stars, stars, scattered stars, blackness all between. They ripple and fold and bend, and they rush toward him, rush by him. Their colors are blazing and pure as angels’ eyes, and they pass near, pass far, in the eternity through which he seems to move. There is no sense of real time or real movement, only a changing of the field. A great blue Tophet Box of a sun seems to soar beside him for a moment, and then again comes black, all about him, and more small lights that pass, distantly.
And he comes at last to a world that is not a world, citrine and azure and green, green, green. A green corona hangs about it, at thrice its own diameter, and it seems to pulsate with a pleasant rhythm.
“Behold the House of Life,” says Anubis, from somewhere.
And he does. It is warm and glowing and alive. He has a feeling of aliveness. “Osiris rules the House of Life,” says Anubis. And he beholds a great bird-head atop human shoulders, bright yellow eyes within it, alive, alive-oh; and the creature stands before him on an endless plain of living green which is superimposed upon his view of the world, and he holds the Staff of Life in his one hand and the Book of Life in his other. He seems to be the source of the radiant warmth.
Wakim then hears the voice of Anubis again:
“The House of Life and the House of the Dead contain the Middle Worlds.”
And there is a falling, swirling sensation, and Wakim looks upon stars once more, but stars separated and held from other stars by bonds of force that are visible, then invisible, then visible again, fading, coming, going, white, glowing lines, fluctuating.
“You now perceive the Middle Worlds of Life,” says Anubis.
And dozens of worlds roll before him like balls of exotic marble, stippled, gauged, polished, incadescent.
“… Contained,” says Anubis. “They are contained within the field which arcs between the only two poles that matter.”
“Poles?” says the metal head that is Wakim.
“The House of Life and the House of the Dead. The Middle Worlds about their suns do move, and all together go on the paths of Life and Death.”
“I do not understand,” says Wakim.
“Of course you do not understand. What is at the same time the greatest blessing and the greatest curse in the universe?”
“I do not know.”
“Life,” says Anubis, “or death.”
“I do not understand,” says Wakim. “You used the superlative. You called for one answer. You named two things, however.”
“Did I?” asks Anubis. “Really? Just because I used two words, does it mean that I have named two separate and distinct things? May a thing not have more than one name? Take yourself for an example. What are you?”
“I do not know.”
“That may be the beginning of wisdom, then. You could as easily be a machine which I chose to incarnate as a man for a time and have now returned to a metal casing, as you could be a man whom I have chosen to incarnate as a machine.”
“Then what difference does it make?”
“None. None whatsoever. But you cannot make the distinction. You cannot remember. Tell me, are you alive?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I think. I hear your voice. I have memories. I can speak.”
“Which of these qualities is life? Remember that you do not breathe, your nervous system is a mass of metallic strands and I have burnt your heart. Remember, too, that I have machines that can outreason you, outremember you, outtalk you. What does that leave you with as an excuse for saying you are alive? You say that you hear my voice, and ‘hearing’ is a subjective phenomenon? Very well. I shall disconnect your hearing also. Watch closely to see whether you cease to exist”
… One snowflake drifting down a well, a well without waters, without walls, without bottom, without top. Now take away the snowflake and consider the drifting…
After a timeless time, Anubis’ voice comes once again: “Do you know the difference between life and death?”
“ ‘I’ am life,” says Wakim. “Whatever you give or take away, if ‘I’ remain it is life.”
“Sleep,” says Anubis, and there is nothing to hear him, there in the House of the Dead.
When Wakim awakens, he finds that he has been set upon a table near to the throne, and he can see once more, and he regards the dance of the dead and he hears the music to which they move.
“Were you dead?” asks Anubis.
“No,” says Wakim. “I was sleeping.”
“What is the difference?”
“ ‘I’ was still there, although I did not know it.”
Anubis laughs.
“Suppose I had never awakened you?”
“That, I suppose, would be death.”
“Death? If I did not choose to exercise my power to awaken you? Even though the power was ever present, and ‘you’ potential and available for that same ever?”
“If this thing were not done, if I remained forever only potential, then this would be death.”
“A moment ago you said that sleep and death were two different things. Is it that the period of time involved makes a difference?”
“No,” says Wakim, “it is a matter of existence. After sleep there comes wakefulness, and the life is still present. When I exist, I know it. When I do not, I know nothing.”
“Life, then, is nothing?”
“No.”
“Life, then, is existing? Like these dead?”
“No,” says Wakim. “It is knowing you exist, at least some of the time.”
“Of what is this a process?”
“ ‘I’ ” says Wakim.
“And what is ‘I’? Who are you?”
“I am Wakim.”
“I only named you a short while ago! What were you before that?”
“Not Wakim.”
“Dead?”
“No! Alive!” cries Wakim.
“Do not raise you voice within my halls,” says Anubis. “You do not know what you are or who you are, you do not know the difference between existing and not existing, yet you presume to argue with me concerning life and death! Now I shall not ask you, I shall tell you. I shall tell you of life and of death.”
“There is too much life and there is not enough life,” he begins, “and the same goes for death. Now I shall throw away paradoxes.”
“The House of Life lies so far from here that a ray of light which left it on the day you entered this domain would not yet have traveled a significant fraction of the distance which separates us. Between us lie the Middle Worlds. They move within the Life-Death tides that flow between my House and the House of Osiris. When I say ‘flow’ I do not mean that they move like that pitiful ray of light, crawling. Rather, they move like waves on the ocean which has but two shores. We may raise waves anywhere we wish without disrupting the entire sea. What are these waves, and what do they do?”