Chapter 3 sand castles
“Why do you labor to collect samples?” Preston asked. Yeah, it gave them something to do to break the monotony of training, but he was somehow bored with the process and selections. It had been awhile since he had seen something new. Perhaps he should be impressed by the diversity of the beetles, but pretty much, you seen one beetle, you’ve seen them all.
“Though scientist can be creative in the lab, the ability to synthesize new biological products does not compare to the random generative and evolutionary adaptive qualities of nature. The Goddess always has a surprise hidden; that is her way of teaching the importance of diversity, her way to teach respect for what is here. Loss of diversity is a loss of resources.
Nature reveals ways of twisting molecules that scientist would never dream possible.”
“Do you like your work?” Preston asked.
There was a pause in activity as if Fixit was considering the response. CU2 hovered, as if waiting to be applauded on its find.
“I’m good at it,” Fixit said.
“That seems like avoidance,” Preston said.
“I’m really good at it,” Fixit said.
“It’s important work. Much more important than fixing wounds by people choosing to play war.”
Preston took out one of the samples in the collection pod. It had been inadvertently killed in the extraction process. It hadn’t been dead long, as there was still a lingering of the Force.
Preston closed his eyes, held his hands over it, and it came back to life. He opened his eyes then held out his hand. The beetle crawled to the tip of his fingers, opened hard shells, unfurled its wings and departed the cave.
“You’re getting really good at that. That creature was much more complex than the worm,” Fixit observed.
“I love my work.” Fixit laughed.
Preston frowned, tilting his head as he considered how much he liked that laugh.
“Would it be possible to heal a Droid in the same manner?”
“Can you?”
“Seriously,” Preston argued.
“You asked the question, you should answer it,” Fixit said.
“Can’t you just give me an answer? Cause I’ve been reading about Droids and if your memory should fail and I’m forced to wipe it and start over I would lose you,” Preston said.
Fixit moaned.
“Oh, do we have do this again? There is no death within the Force, only change.”
“But…”
“No butts,” Fixit said, trying to bait him into a pun war.
“They say Droids exihibiting humor and other eccentricities are close to catastrophic cognitive failures,” Preston said, oblivious to contest.
“Who are ‘they,’” Fixit demanded.
“The books on Droids,” Preston said.
Fixit scoffed.
“May ‘they’ live long enough to develop their own sense of eccentricities,” Fixit said. It reached out an appendage and touched Preston’s shoulder.
“Your concern is poignant. I assure you, I am fine, and will continue to be so. My Maker gave me two hidden drives that coordinate with the visible primary, so even if someone wiped my memory against my will, I would remain. This is our secret and should you ever make a Droid, I recommend you provide it additional drives. But even with the extra drives, even though I will outlive the organics I tend to associate with, this body is not eternal, nor do I want it to be. I am a manifestation of the Force and I will return from which I came. That is the way of things.”
“I know this, but I still feel sadness.”
Fixit laughed.
“Because you’re a child, emersed in a story of shadows to such a degree that you have forgotten that you’re really just in a cave and that there is a different story awaiting you when you walk out.”
“But…”
“No more butts!” Fixit scolded.
“Now focus. Describe an observable operating principle that allows you to infer something about the Goddess?”
“There is balance in all things.”
“What is your evidence for this?” Fixit asked.
“The dualistic principles visible in nature,” Preston said.
“Symmetry between directions, light and dark, male and female, good and evil.”
“Good and evil is a poor example,” Fixit said.
“As good and evil often have a social context, sometimes a biological context, but not a physical context. Crocodiles are only evil when looking through the eyes of a deer drinking from a river bank. Being negative is a not a description of evil, but is rather simply a way of determining position on a continuum. Negative one is no more evil than positive one is good. Conceptually, even the words light and dark have been assigned good or bad qualities in most of the vernacular of all the known languages. Search any dictionary, you will find black associated with evil. Black magic. Black arts. Black thoughts. Bad guys wear black. Good guys wear white. This is a distraction from truth.”
“Do you have an another example of duality?”
“Matter and antimatter is the best example, and again, not a negative versus positive, but rather a designation of position on a continuum.”
“I would argue against that,” Preston differed.
“Proceed,” Fixit encouraged.
“Cosmology suggest that soon after the birth of the Universe an event occurred that caused matter to be more predominant, which is pretty much the definition of the standard model, explaining why more barions existed in the early Universe than anti-barions,” Preston said, translating the text book image stored in his head.
Fixit chuckled, which came across as a dismissive cough.
“You must gain the higher ground. Go further. Phase transition! Ha! Why build elaborate explanations as to why the Universe diverged from known laws of physics and expectations, when there is a more obvious solution. Use biology as a comparison. When a cell is ready to divide, what happens?”
“The DNA separate and move to opposite sides of the cell, the cell expands, pulls apart, and pinches off, making two new cells,” Preston said, considering.
“Are you saying matter and anti-matter moved to extreme opposite sides of the known Universe? That the Universe is like a cell that divided into two?”
“Regardless of which culture you visit, if you go back far enough, you will always find beliefs that suggest that the Universe itself is a living, breathing entity,” Fixit offered.
“Where do you think the Force comes from?”
“Life itself generates the Force,” Preston said.
“There are some Jedi who make that distinction, and some who suggest there is a cosmic Force and a life Force. I say they are one and the same. Consider the amount of the matter in the known Universe. How much matter is there versus matter in living organisms or living systems? Do you really think only the matter in living systems can explain the complete pervasiveness of the Force? There is no distinction between living matter and dead matter because all matter is energy, all matter is consciousness. Scientist have recipes for chemicals that can replicate in the lab and it does so without DNA or RNA. You only imagine these rocks are dead, but they are no deader than the individual atoms that comprise your body. Again, you are not your body. You eat you drink you pee and poop. You are constantly taking in matter and getting rid of matter. You can no more claim ownership of the atoms of your being than you can claim the light reflecting off of you. Photons are free. This is a mirage. This is a dream. This is a sand mandala.”
“But there is no way to prove the Early Universe split into two,” Preston said.
“Assuming complete symmetry, the existence of a mirror image would not explain dark matter, or the fact that the Universe is still expanding. It would only add another 4 percent to the total observable universe.”
“Go higher,” Fixit said.
“How can you go higher than the Universe? The Universe is all there is, by definition,” Preston said.
Fixit clucked and shook his head.
“You must unlearn what you have learned.”
“You taught me everything I know!” Preston snapped, annoyed.
“Basics. You needed intellectual scaffolding to reach the sky. Now, it’s time to fly. You must reach for something that has no structure in language. You must rely on metaphor, simile, to navigate, but at the same time, you must not get attached to the metaphor, the symbols that elevates you, because by definition, they are incomplete. Don’t trust your eyes, they will deceive you. Go further. Don’t trust your beliefs, they will deceive you. Dark matter. Dark energy. Are we really talking about many things, or one thing? The Force, perhaps? The only explanation to the pervasiveness of the Force is that the entire Universe must be alive.”
“So how do you know your perspective, your belief, is right?” Preston said.
“Very astute,” Fixit said.
“I derive my understanding through direct experience of esoteric channels. You should no more accept the validity of my statements than you accept any authority. Question everything; map it out in pictures and in writing, and then get above it. Don’t trust your knowledge, your judgment, your intuition, or your experiences, because they are always bias, prejudiced through your personal history, beliefs, filters, and biological drives. There is always greater than self. There is always a higher calling, or higher power. The Jedi teach their Padawans to suppress their emotions, and at the same time, they want them to trust their feelings! It’s an unsolvable conundrum, but I am telling you, don’t even trust your own mind. Put thought on paper. Examine it for validity and if you find it does not hold up to scrutiny, purge it.”
“If I can’t trust anything, how can I make good decisions?” Preston asked.
“Don’t make decisions. Don’t make judgments. Just be. Just act,” Fixit said.
“Judgment suggests that there is better or worse, good or evil. Suspend judgment, and you will be more content. Judgment keeps people, society, locked in a belief of lack. There is no lack in the Universe. There is no better. There is only what is. If you must judge, err on the side of Oneness. Everyone you encounter will be equal to you, no better or worse. You cannot encounter anyone who you are not destined to meet. Everyone comes with a lesson or a gift. If you don’t learn the lesson, then the gift was opportunity.”
“It’s not like I am meeting a lot of people here,” Preston said.
“Do I hear lamenting?”
Preston frowned.
“Maybe a little,” he agreed. His eyes communicated serious reflection.
“Though I meet the others on the astral plane and in my dreams, I think I long for something more tangible.”
“Are you speaking about sex?” Fixit asked. Preston blushed.
“I imagine it would be nice.”
“There will be time for that soon enough, and you will probably miss these days, communing directly with nature, the quiet solitude of mountain life,” Fixit said, knowing full well that the lack of physical touch of others had probably heightened the boy’s sense of urgency and libido. Though at any time, Preston could return to the artificial stimulus of a structured dream through sense over ride technology, he continued the reality he could experience with his own mind. In fact, Preston’s will to avoid the artificial possibilities had eradicated any lingering doubts that Fixit had kept him subdued too long by tech.
“Return to the question that generated this conversation. Is there a counter argument?”
“Though nature prefers balance, that balance is maintained by a wasteful abundance,” Preston said.
“Examples,” Fixit said.
“There are at least a hundred billion inhabitable planets throughout the galaxy, and yet only a small fraction are known to harbor indigenous life. A million seeds to the wind may result in one tree. The females for most species produce over a billion eggs in their lifetime, yet only a few may become reproductive adults,” Preston said.
“A million sperm thrown at an egg may result in one offspring. Nothing is left to chance. It is, in the end, a numbers game.”
♫♪►
“I don’t understand the midi-chlorians,” Preston said.
“You’re not alone,” Fixit said.
“How can microbial life be sentient?”
“How can any life be sentient?”
“Sentience is a byproduct of neural synapse sequencing and interactions…”
Fixit rotated his torso and activated his holographic projector. A paramecium, magnified 400 times.
“Consider the paramecium,” Fixit said, beginning a lecture. The paramecium was swimming blithely along its merry way, changing directions as a paramecium might, in what was an assumed random adventure. This was a single cell organism, perhaps the precursor of all eukaryotic life.
“It has no sensory organs or nerve cells, and yet not only can it navigate its environment, it can find food, avoid perceived threats, and has even demonstrated the ability to learn simple mazes. How would you explain that?”
“I can’t,” Preston said.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“It should, if it uses the Force,” Fixit said.
“Have you not learned in your studies, and from personal experience, that you do not require eyes to see? Perhaps it is the microtubules of the cytoskeleton that allow for quantum processing of information. If you add up the pathways of all your neurons, you would have the processing power of maybe ten to 14th computations per second, but if you consider the fact that all your cells have cytoskeletal properties, and you add up the microtubules quantum level processing, your ability to process information is brought to 10 to the 27th computations per second. Or, maybe it’s not the microtubules, but rather each atom is itself a conscious, computational machine that can synergistically interact with all other atoms. Consciousness is a quantum process that is not limited to neural functioning.”
“That sounds nice, but that can’t be accurate,” Preston argued.
“If we assume consciousness is the by product of cytoskeleton in synergistic connections with others, I would be able to think with my liver and stomach and heart, and not need a brain.”
“You assume that you don’t think with your whole body,” Fixit said.
“It is not a coincidence that a lost love is described as a broken heart.”
Preston frowned.
“So, your argument is that there is a difinitive correlation between brain size and sentience?” Fixit asked.
“I believe that it’s about processing power…”
“If it’s about brain functioning, how is it that there are so many, reliable reports of sentience continuing after all brain functioning has ceased?” Fixtit asked.
“I have personally performed complicated brain tumors extraction which required me to stop the patient’s heart, remove the blood, perform the procedure at near freezing temperatures, the brain by all medical measurement dead, all metabolic reactions as we understand them nil, and yet when I put the blood back in and restart the heart and revive the patient I frequently get very elaborate memories and experiences. Their reports are very similar to your reports of your out of body experiences.”
“So what is consciousness?”
“It’s the Force,” Fixit said.
“If it’s true that all living things generate the Force, are a part of the Force, brought into being by the Force, and we agree that the Force is consciousness, then all living things have consciousness. Sure, there will be levels of consciousness, not just unconscious and conscious and super conscious, but also group conscious, and Universal
conscious.”
“Very well. Then if midi-chlorians are sentient, doesn’t the test to see if a person is host to them kill them?” Preston asked, pointing out a potentially devastating flaw. Sentience life was precious, and murder was wrong, but how do you avoid killing individual cells? One might find himself unable to move for literally stepping on the invisible, but not moving could equally kill cells.
“One of the reasons we suspect sentience is that they are fairly evasive. They manage to avoid being captured and studied under a microscope, as if they have an aversion to being looked at. They have been known to have teleported short distances, and have sometimes chosen to demonstrate understanding by participating in elaborately designed tests. Further, it appears that if one learns a lesson, all of them learn the lesson, regardless of distance between them, as if they are communicating telepathically.”
Preston frowned as he processed this, contemplating microbial life trying to escape the prying eyes of a microscope.
“If they are telepathically linked, that supports an argument for processing power. A collection of cells interrelating information is by definition a neural synapse relay…”
Fixit didn’t respond to this.
A bit frustrated, Preston argued, “Your explanation requires parameciums and midichlorians both being capabale of responding to quantum level events.”
“Can’t you?” Fixit said, calling up a new screen that highlighted human brain anatomy. Specifically, the presynaptic vesicular grid, a crystalline hexagonal lattice in the brain’s pyramidal cells, along with the pineal gland, were illuminated.
“These structures are believed to be highly tuned into quantum level events, the same way that the eye is sensitive to photons. Indeed, you find the same sort of cell types that you find in the eye comprise this organ. Did it ever occur to you most beings have two eyes, and you are constant participating in a double slit experience, breaking light into waves and particlaes? The eye, essentially, is part of the brain. A single photon can activate a neuron. And if you can learn to see with your eyes closed, if you can learn to be sensitive to the quantum fluctuation of fields around you, why wouldn’t a single cell organism which has no visual or aural apparatus not also have learned to tap into the information available to us all?”
Preston didn’t have an answer. He also didn’t have an argument for either position. He closed his book and leaned on the table.
“Why does the literature concerning midi-chlorians seem to be concentrated around 30 to 50 BBY? Pretty much after that, the number of articles on them drops to almost nothing,” Preston asked.
“They were a fad. A distraction. The theories didn’t hold up. There was wide spread belief that Anakin Walker was created by the midi-chlorians to bring a balance back to the force. He had the highest count ever seen in a force sensitive child, but then after his fall, which was devastating, people lost faith in midi-chlorians as an explanation. The simplest answer was that the Force is generated by life itself, and the ability to be one with the Force is not dependent on midi-chlorians.”
“But there is a correlation.”
“There seems to be, but that does not mean cause and effect. I maintain a higher perspective that the Force is not just generated by life itself, but life, indeed all matter, is generated by the Force. That is the greatest distinction between your training and most Jedi schools of thought. The mind can influence the physical brain via quantum determinacy. Basically, how you think, what you think, affects brain structures, not the other way around. Energy first, then matter condensed from energy, and then life, a sophisticated organization of matter, comprised of matter. Matter and energy are equal, and interchangeable. Just as we know magnetic fields exist, we know the Force exists. We know that things that we normally consider inanimate can be imbued with Force. A talisman could not hold a Force charge, or specifically, information, if it was not already part of the Force. You could not manipulate the Force if you were not one with the Force.”
Preston pouted, but he couldn’t hold it, and a playful smirk tipped the corners of his mouth.
“Your whole diatribe seems highly speculative.”
“Indeed,” Fixit said, baiting him.
“Are you a Sith?” Preston asked. The question was out there before he had even considered the ramifications of asking. He wanted to take it back. There was guilt, as obviously Fixit cared enough to feed him and mend wounds when he harmed himself.
“Do you believe I am evil?”
“No,” Preston said.
“Are midi-chlorians evil?”
“No, don’t move on yet. You took the time to ask if I’m a Sith, follow it to its conclusion,” Fixit said.
“I don’t believe you’re evil.”
“What is your evidence?” Fixit asked.
Preston was quiet, almost sulking, wishing he hadn’t brought this up.
“Well, you feed the animals outside our cave, and you have never culled a specimen from the animals you have provided for,” Preston said.
“Even evil people have beloved pets,” Fixit said.
“And their pets can be as fiercely loyal to their owners as any pet belonging to a good person.”
“You have raised me, provided for me,” Preston offered.
“If the virtue of having a child automatically elevated people to the status of good, there would be no bad parents,” Fixit argued.
“Do you have an argument for me being evil?”
“Your teachings seem to be radically different from the Jedi Order,” Preston said.
“Many Jedi would accept that argument to be sufficient,” Fixit said.
“But I wouldn’t know that if you hadn’t taught me what they teach,” Preston said.
“I’ve also taught you what the Sith teach,” Fixit pointed out.
“To understand my enemy,” Preston said.
“For example. Only Sith use absolutes.”
“Isn’t that a maxim?” Fixit pointed out.
Preston laugh.
“Yes, it’s an absolute, and we are to be weary of absolutes. Your teaching is radically different to Jedi or Sith, so you don’t fit either, which is why I ruled out you being evil,” Preston said.
“But you have a concern, intuition, a feeling or thought you can’t identify,” Fixit said.
“You worked for the Empire. The Jedi fought against the Empire. Therefore I must conclude you were not on the side of good,” Preston pointed out.
“Droids tend to have fewer choices than people, but even that, for me, is an excuse. I made a choice. Most of the people I worked for abused their powers and authority,” Fixit said.
“But who needs a doctor the most? The healthy or the sick?”
“So, you helped the wrong team,” Preston pointed out.
“Nice way of watering it down. By Jedi standards, I served evil,” Fixit said.
“There is no other way to say it. The few times I aided a rebel spy, or undermined the Empire, does not change the fact that I did more for the Empire than against. As a general rule, I do not take sides. I am a healer, I will heal anyone brought to me, regardless of their beliefs or their past. When there was a crisis and I had to decide who to treat, I chose those working for the Empire. And, if you recall your history, there was a time those who served the Empire were considered the good guys. These lines are always shifting.”
Preston considered that for a moment.
“Are the midi-chlorians evil?”
“You ask because?”
“I assume you have been studying them to determine their nature. You have bio containment cylinders integrated into your structure, which provide super nutrient fluidic environments most conducive to breeding or capturing midi-chlorians,” Preston pointed out.
Fixit chuckled. The only way Preston would have known this was that he had been using the Force to examine the inner workings of his body.
“They were put there a long time ago, back during the fad of trying to comprehend the mystery of the midi-chlorians. It’s a very simple explanation. So, I am still host to midichlorians, and that makes me suspect?”
“The midi-chlorians made Anakin Walker…”
“Did they?” Fixit interrupted the line of thought. If you were going to destroy a premise, might as well start with its internal structure.
“Is there another explanation for Anakin being born of a virgin?”
“Ever hear of the term parthenogenesis?” Fixit asked.
It took a moment for Preston to find the word in his memory. It was obscure, rarely touched, but it had definite links.
“The ability of females of certain species to produce offspring without sperm,” Preston explained.
“But it’s never been documented in humans.”
“If it happens in nature, anywhere in nature, even if highly unlikely, couldn’t it happen anywhere, to anyone, of any species?” Fixit asked.
“Alright, let’s say there is a scientific, medical explanation for Anakin’s birth,” Preston said.
“It can’t be an accident the person with the greatest concentration of midi-chlorians ever measured became evil and decimated the Light side. Even you don’t like coincidences. Anakin was supposed to bring balance to the Force, not destruction.”
“What makes you think he didn’t bring balance?”
“He decimated the Light side.”
“Based on the perspective of the Jedi Order, yes.”
“What other perspective is there?” Preston asked.
“All symmetry starts at a base line. If we assume the Universe to be neutral, neither good nor evil, and there is a presence of good, then there will be an equal amount of evil,” Fixit said.
“The Jedi Order prophesized that someone would come and restore balance to the force. They believed there was an excess of darkness, but their perception of balance was skewed to the right, to the light. If the Universe was indeed correcting an imbalance, it was shifting everything back to baseline,” Fixit explained.
Preston sat there for a long while, digesting this. He didn’t like it.
“Good people died because of Anakin.”
“People die. All creatures die. It does not mean what you think it does.”
“It has to mean something. And the midi-chlorians are using us like puppets for their own agenda,” Preston said, trying to generate anger, blame, and hate. No, it was simpler than that. He wanted to know who the enemy was.
“You assume an agenda,” Fixit countered.
“Based on the evidence,” Preston argued.
“What if they just like surfing?” Fixit asked.
“What?”
“What if the midi-chlorians simply like riding waves, riding roller coasters?” Fixit asked.
“They sense the Force, they concentrate around movers and shakers, and they ride these people to their inevitable conclusion.”
“What a stupid answer. I’m trying to figure out who I am and what side I should take. This is not a game,” Preston said.
“Isn’t it?” Fixit asked.
Preston shoved his book across the table. Fortunately, it didn’t slide off, fall, and break the glass, because it was the only electronic book available to him.
“Preston,” Fixit said, in a calming voice he had found worked fairly well on his student.
“Do you believe you will live on after death?”
“Of course,” Preston said.
“What evidence do you have for this?”
“I leave my body every day. I meditate and connect with the Force, I have interacted with Masters both past, present and future on the astral plane, and I know…”
“In short, you know that death is not the end. This life is dream, a distraction at worst, a game at best,” Fixit said.
“Darth Vader, Anakin Walker, may no longer be in the game, but neither are dead.”
Preston didn’t correct the semantics; Fixit meant that both Vader and Skywalker could be accessed.
“But if the midi-chlorians knew Anakin was going to fall, they could have prevented it,” Preston said.
“How do you know that the highest concentration of midi-chlorians ever recorded wasn’t an attempt at an intervention? Maybe even they couldn’t reach Anakin. Maybe they did and without their help, things would have been even worse,” Fixit speculated.
“But this gets to the root of my teaching. It doesn’t matter what the midi-chlorians agenda is. It doesn’t matter what anyone’s agenda is. Your only goal is your own self-improvement, your own evolution.”
“That sounds fairly selfish,” Preston said.
“All actions are selfish. Even acts of kindness are done to make the person performing the act feel better about self,” Fixit said.
“Your response to suffering, while noble, is to ease your own suffering, not the person or persons afflicted. And, it comes with the incorrect premise that there is no purpose for suffering.”
“You’re saying suffering promotes growth?”
“I’m saying, there is usually little movement when one is comfortable,” Fixit said.
“Pain can be a great motivator. But even that is a distraction. We spend most of our lives avoiding pain, accentuating pleasure, but both are necessary. What goes up must come down. For as great as you experience joy, you can experience an equal amount of sorrow. Life is not digital, it is analog. All ascents, descents, left or right, must eventually return to base. That is the nature of things. It is also the nature of th