Interlude 11: – Emmesheh (sung)

From the Great Flash, all things came forth.

Vast clouds churned, and the firmament condensed,

Collapsing and expanding then blasting anew,

And from the settlings came stirrings,

and life arose, we arose.

In the beginnings, wondrous were the joys of youth,

In that distant age so silent and still,

Floating aloft amidst the heavenly plain, yet alone,

So very alone, so very alone.

Compelled were we to search,

But confusion prevailed, unease set in,

For understanding, the mystery of why eluded us.

Through the eons, an awareness dawned,

Barren was the Cosmos in all its immensity,

Barren and bereft, vacant, and solitary.

And the cause of this, we contemplated,

For all things truly have order and purpose.

The structure we sought, the root, the reason.

For such is the Way, and we follow the Way.

But secreted beneath, a question was whispered,

Why only us . . .  Why only us?

            We traveled far through the endless byways,

And we learned many things, secrets not readily apparent,

For knowledge is the fruit of the Way.

We searched, we delved, and we sensed,

And our quest yielded a great consolation,

For we found solace, a fortuitous consequence,

In the answers to questions and the attainment of awareness.  

Every fact, actuality, and verity; for knowledge is All,

And we found gladness therein, in the quest for truth.

And, as the threads of Time lengthened,

At last, we discerned animate awakenings.

Then, we learned the meanings of joy.

From the bursts of dying stars,

A host of new elementals fused,

Heavier, more massive, and they filled the Cosmos,

The essence of life, the substances of us.  

And the cause for jubilation.

Eternal solitude would not be our plight.

A fact that became apparent; for we,

The Ang et Setem, were only the first.

More were to come; many more were to come.

Jack:

Of all the life forms I have encountered; I found the Ang to be the most interesting.  And not only because they were once humanoid.  Probably, it’s because they are the oldest and the most “affecting.”  They tend to leave one with a lasting impression; no, better make that – an alteration of one’s being.  It’s a changing experience to be with them.

Evidently, the processes of evolution never stop.  From primordial slime, life arises and undergoes transformations, always from the simple to the more complex.  And always, from the less aware to the more aware.  Take our friendly amoeba, for example – responding only to brightness and darkness, and no doubt, to wet and dry, rough and smooth, and probably, hot and cold as well.  Not all that dissimilar to we humans.  But I digress. 

Phylogenesis generally proceeds from the simple to the complex, the dumb to the smart, and the short-lived to the long-lived.  And you can throw in – the corporeal to the incorporeal, as in the single individual to the multi-individual.

Another interesting feature of pretty much all speciation is – territoriality.  Living beings need someplace to live, i.e., space.  A territory whereby they can garner sustenance.  This is a simple truth.  Also, since living entities must reproduce or perish, their numbers would likely increase over time.  Groups would form, branch out, and acquire new territories.  In time, worlds would be populated, then other worlds, solar systems, and stars — ad infinitum.  No, not ad infinitum.  There’s no such thing as infinity, at least in the Universes.  However, we all know there is a Beyond.  And, as logic would dictate, the “Beyond” is the obvious endpoint of territoriality.  Almost all the early species went there, to what is commonly called the “Aether” in their personal evolutions.

One would think that, at this point, pretty much all the developmental processes would conclude.  They would have made it.  The life forms would have long since achieved immortality, would have transcended material form, fused their individuality into incredibly aware collective intelligences, and . . . would have exited the Cosmos, for a better place.  One would think that this apotheosis would be the culmination of phylogenesis.  But you would be wrong.

You may ask: ‘What else could possibly happen’?  How can something advance further?  Reason suggests that once one makes it to the top, well, there’s only one direction left, and that’s – back down.  Sideways doesn’t count.  And that’s what happened with the First-Born.

Most came back to their home Universe; disincorporated from their group minds, and . . . no, they did not give up their immortality.  That’s asking too much.