A Children's Tale

Once there lived a man named Tom. Tom worked hard and one day Tom worked so hard that his employers gave Tom a promotion - they sent Tom to work in freezing Antarctica. In time, Tom would get all sorts of promotions and his employers would send Tom all over the world, to places like Cambodia and Mexico. Far-off places for an Englishman, but Tom just saw it as more work to do. Tom was very happy, for with work would come the satisfaction of achievement. Tom was a good man and worked still harder every single day - harder than anyone had a right to expect. Tom was always traveling in those days.

Tom was meticulous and kept a successful routine. No matter how cold or wet it might be where Tom would be working, Tom would always wear a blue denim overalls and a red flannel undershirt and a tan straw hat. Tom wore boots and a scarf if it was colder - but Tom would never be seen in one without the other. Tom would scarcely sleep in those days, but when Tom would sleep, care would be taken to fall asleep and wake exactly on the hour. That made Tom's wages easier to figure out and Tom's life easier to make sense of. Indeed, routines made Tom's life feel easy and Tom rarely felt burdensome on anyone. Tom ate what was given at such time as it was given. "Life is like pudding," Tom said, "Routines and manners take my mind off the spoon and let me focus on the pudding." Tom would sleep in his outfit. Life was satisfying and no hour felt empty. "When the clock precedes the man," Tom once quipped, "the man precedes the clock."


One day, Tom was in Antarctica working his "darnedest" (as Tom would say) when the employers called for Tom. When Tom got there, on foot, his employers said that for his hard work, Tom would be given a totally new place to work. "Thank you," Tom responded immediately, "for this extra opportunity." But they told Tom that from now on they would require Tom to wear spacesuits all the time at his new job. They told Tom that the work would be harder than any work previous, and because of this, they demanded Tom's robust participation before going any further. "Please, Tom: At least hear us out before you accept blindly, Tom. This will not be quite the same work as before, and you have to know what you're getting into."

"Okay, let's hear it, then."

His employers began a deep and empty and unyielding rant - like a monologue from the Twilight Zone, but without the righteous worldview at bottom. "You will work in the twin coldnesses of the two great abysses known to earth-dwellers, Thomas," is what they said. "That's right: your real gauntlet will be thrown out there - outer space and inner ocean. You have never known the real absence of heat and energy, Thomas. Your deepest condolences yet await you on this newest task. Are you absolutely certain you want to join us again?"

"Yes," Tom said, "Whatever work is required of me."

"The flesh-topology of the unreason to which you will subject yourself is manifestly more insidious and slithering than before, in a psychological sense: even perceiving this terror with a human mind is rather like testing a Gordian knot of infinite mating worms as small as the tiniest strands of thread by putting the knot fully inside your mouth - it's more horrifying than you can begin to imagine - it will gag your psychological breathing even as it infects your psychological digestion - a metaphor that will make perfect sense when you experience it, we think."

Tom just shrugged without really understanding much of it, but pretended to pause in reflection. "I really do respect your insistence, and your gracious patience over the years," Tom said, "but I must accept what work is given to me."

After all, they always used those sick metaphors, and in the end the work hardly seemed as stark or terrible when Tom actually got on the ball and started working at it. "I just wish I could understand what they meant half the time - and why they say what they do," Tom supposed, "Not too much of life is unsettling to me anymore, and I doubt this will be any worse. But I wonder," he continued, "if there is anything to their warnings. I trust *them* but they are like anyone else - they follow the work - and this could be their way of letting me go or getting me out of the way. I know how hard it is to be an employer, and firing an incompetent employee is never easy. Even if you work your hardest, there's always another one out there who comes to work easier and better."

"But in any case," Tom supposed, "Work is work," and all the doubt and worry went away. Now all Tom could think about would be how to fill up outer space with the same glories of life and heat that he had brought to Antarctica and other once-barren places. For changes in the landscape made Tom so happy to see. "It's not like it was and that's all for the better," Tom would say after a job well done. In this sort of outlook, Tom finished working a small patch of sand on one of the winding, Antarctican beaches. Tom said to those living on the beach there how sad it would be to leave, but that Tom would be back as soon as the work was there again. "Good bye, Antarcticans!" Tom would say to them.

"Good bye, Tom!" wailed back the Antarcticans, in their salivating, constricting language. Tom knew there was work to be done, but wished - just for one day - to enjoy the Antarctic forests and the streams - just for one day - to be given a tour of all the exotic organisms above and below the lakes. "After all, I was the one that got them here in the first place." Tom was so well-known here now, and as some Antarctican assistants helped chain Tom's body to the rocket, Tom wept inside the tinted spacesuit so nobody could see. To the Antarcticans Tom re-iterated his hopes for the future and his hopes shined as beautiful lights right in front of his eyes inside the spacesuit - and the lights warmed Tom as Tom's work had warmed continents. One of Tom's employers, supervising the launch, now made a rare display of gratitude. Yelling up that "Happier flights may await you some day, Tom," the gracious employer bowed down to Tom. And for a moment, so did all the Antarcticans. The bow was deep and beautiful to Tom. But all of that was in his past now. "There is more work to do," Tom thought. The rocket was heading into the atmosphere, and Tom was off.

=======

Some months later, as the rocket continued its flight, Tom, being strapped to the hull, could only drift and remember. Tom couldn't look at his watch through the spacesuit, and, as the division of days changed to the unbroken time of outer space, all of Tom's daily routines were interrupted or gradually distorted. The routines had served as great comforts, thought Tom, and, having no point of reference to connect with reality, Tom began to hallucinate constantly, and Tom no longer meaningfully distinguished past and present.

Right now before Tom's eyes was a memory: something his employers had said to Tom once, many years ago. Back then young Tom worked summers on the edge of a pond some miles north of London. When Tom was still in secondary school and working just to make ends meet, Tom's employers, for this single occasion, would speak coherently and understandably to Tom. Tom's employers would always speak simultaneously, like an infinite barbershop ensemble, but today they had dialed that down to a meek quartet. The lowest tones had reminded Tom of a church choir echoing.

"Thomas, all the present human conceptions and orderings of things are just garments and masks to hide the flesh of a much deeper interconnection. The whole universe is a single, functional organism, with organs, circulation, and thoughts, and the whole of human consciousness serves but as a censor. You are a gifted one, and these gifts will enable you, for once, to go beyond the garments and masks."

"Oh yeah?" This was the first Tom had heard of this.

"You know, Lovecraft, with his unfathomable landscapes, had this sort of sight. He reasoned that science, in its course, would one day be the great unmasking agent, uncovering the terrors and geometries of the real world. But Lovecraft, with all his imagination, was still a product of his times, and psychology was still in an infancy. Still high on calculus and economics, a man of his era could not grasp that the natural psychological intuition of an enlightened age is far more powerful. The real avenues would not be the scholarship of professors and statisticians, but the sort of intuitive sensory power given to people like athletes and politicians. And this is something that society cultivates more than anything else. You see, Thomas...," the employers paused, "The universal organism is not something that takes great effort to see. Not at all. No. It is a dormant talent that some have extraordinary potential to cultivate. It's just that it gets repressed by most societies in the course of an infant's development. It takes some special conditions, of course, but people have been seeing this organism since the race of men began. Society has never found it practical, though, and it never really develops on its own. So that's the end of the story."

"Until now, sir?" Tom had asked, having begun to lose the thread.

The employers now caught on and started to simplify it. "Yes. Until now, Thomas. After the atomic bombs in Japan, the broken postwar peace created just the right condition to turn out a crop of kids like you with your extra vision. But Thomas, you must know: you are our favorite of any of them. You work so hard and never put on airs. You know, arrogance is one of the forces that acts to repress this wondrous sight. You try to fit in with society and don't act like you have anything to prove. You work hard at developing your powers, and that's precisely why you can see the universal organism better than anyone else."

"Thanks. That's very kind of you. But I have to ask: What's the point of working at all? As you know, I work for my wages and to make something of myself, but what does it matter to you, sir?"

"The universal organism, Thomas," the employers had said, "is dead or dying most everywhere. Even on Earth where it thrives it is threatened always by decay. But, this is not at all a natural condition, nor is it permanent or irreversible. One day it thrived even in the vacuum of outer space."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yes, Thomas. It's only that way now because people don't work as hard as they could."

"Oh," Tom had supposed. "That makes some sense."

Seeing an opportunity, the employers had said, "How would you like to make it so that the organism is as alive and well as you yourself feel - in this ineffably naive youth of yours?"

"Gee, I don't know."

"Tom, this is a career opportunity. You can work in a satisfied way for the rest of your life."

"J-j-job?"

"Yes, Tom, that's what this is. A job that will outlast any of us. A job that will raise the Elder Gods from their slumber, Tom. A universe that will feel at once more staggeringly large, more horrifying, and more elegant and natural. Believe me, it will take time to -"

"-I love to work at jobs! I have to ask though: How old are you, sir?"

"Several decades old. One Earth lifetime, or thereabouts."

"So you're going to die soon, then?"

"Uhh...yes, Thomas. We want you to continue our legacy, in fact."

"...I would be honored, sir. I am sorry that you will die soon."

"Think...nothing of it, Thomas. It is the function that precedes the man, and I can't really die if you have taken up my function, now, can I? I will live through you, even after the body is dead."

Tom had hoped in those days to make the most of his gift. But now it was obvious to Tom, out here and strapped to a cold rocket, that Tom's employers, with their many heads, had brilliantly manipulated Tom into this job with their utter mastery of human psychology. "No. Now i understand. They could not be human," Tom decided.

======

Many years later, the rocket slowed a bit, and to Tom's astonishment, landed quite smoothly on a giant, uninhabited planet. The straps released finally to allow Tom, after years on the ship, to move his arms and legs. With a feeling of a burden lifted, Tom checked inside the rocket, which was not much larger than Tom's body. Tom realized that his body could not fit inside. There were a lot of people shivering inside the rocket. "Forty-four thousand and twenty-seven," Tom counted quickly. All of them looked at Tom, with their eyes fixed forever on Tom. They were all scared, apparently.

"Oh no," he said, "What could be the matter?"

"Maybe they are just afraid of the new planet," Tom supposed, himself shivering. Tom's head jerked backwards from the rocket by the sudden torrent of shivery emotion inside his temple and behind his neck. Tom recuperated on the planet floor. After a few minutes Tom felt better, and, regaining his hold on things, Tom now looked inside the rocket and smiled. Tom saw, to his previous horror, that the people inside the rocket had been abruptly stitched together with quite a lot of thread from the universal organism. Thus stitched, the people spelled out a message in the Queen's English: "May your flight succeed, Thomas. When you touch down (and read this), the instructions are very simple: You must resurrect the part of universal organism that once thrived on this barren planet. For your information, our research suggests that this planet is the physical basepoint for the universal organism's decayed heart and brain and nucleus. Once this organ is alive and well, the blood of the organism will flow out to eternity - even, in time, perhaps reaching planet Earth for your safe return. More may follow you in the future with new instructions. Remember, Thomas: always eat heartily but not greedily, and always find more work for yourself."

Tom's first reaction was to laugh at the excessive efforts of the employers. "Did they think I wouldn't see it if it weren't spelled out in flesh? Gee," Tom said, "They could have just asked. And besides," he continued, "this is just what I did when I was on Earth!" A meal was distributed to Tom from a compartment that opened on the outside of the rocket. "Meat, all the way out here? How expensive for them. How impractical," Tom said aloud. "But I eat what is given to me and that alone." And besides, Tom always worked better after meat. Tom slurped the baroque stew of meat and broth with enjoyment, and looking at his watch, Tom began to plan a new set of daily routines. The color of the new planet was very light, and allowed Tom a glimpse of Tom's vague, tiny reflection in the glass of the watch. The brief image, which Tom had only seen for a second, really struck Tom and Tom abruptly stopped all movement to see what little Tom could of his reflection.

In fact, Tom supposed, Tom had not seen himself in a very long while, not since primary school or so, when Tom's employers had first made contact. The employers had never brought mirrors to the workplace, had they? "To take a day or a year off - to see myself as I am today - to see myself all full of life and its duties - what a luxury that would be..."

"But I wonder... if I look as horrible as those gruesome metaphors of the employers?" Indeed, who had seen Tom but the employers and the new, exotic organisms Tom had brought from other realms in the course of work? What would Tom look like to another human being? Did Tom dare to open the rocket and inquire? But Tom decided it wasn't so important, and after looking around, started to make a flat piece of land into a beach. Within weeks the large planet looked as beautiful as the Earth of Tom's childhood. But Tom could go much further, and worked with all his might.

But a few years later, as Tom received his daily stew from the terrified rocket, Tom again paused. "But suppose I am a Gordian knot of dangling, entangling flesh," Tom repeated from somewhere, "a thousand miles across?" No, that couldn't be. And Tom now had a home and a purpose. Tom felt strong and directed now. "There is more work to do today." And Tom started to work, for good, and the meat supply seemed illimitable. Those in the rocket gradually dwindled in number.

In the rocket was an older creature - a Buddhist in his former life, and still technically human, but of a fantastic and horrifying shape. For years he had been chanting equally fantastic and horrifying words to the disgust of the others. "One of the hybrids from the early days," the others thought, "discarded even before Thomas was born."

And now there were thirty-eight thousand that remained bound and uneaten inside the rocket - each of them prepared to join a new land in death as lately as possible, and to this end kept absolute silence.