Eta and the Earthling, Canto I

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Eta and the Earthling, Canto I

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Eta and the Earthling, Canto I

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Contents

Eta and the Earthling, Canto I

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I.
      
Once, the Earthling peered across a vast ocean of sand and asked, "Why - across the clustered cosmos - are mollusk civilizations most common?"

Eta smiled in patience. "You speak mistakenly, but your mistake is cousin to truth. It's correct that when geonauts dredge fossils from the ribbon of endless earths, the shells of whelk-folk are so numerous as to appear prosaic. But their prevalence isn't owned to their dominance, only the calcium of their shells, which decomposes less quickly than the gelatin of their peers, and the silt of their watery hearths, which gathers in soft eddies and shrouds their remains like a bed cloak. Do well and abide this truth, Earthling: the present is but one vista to the past.

Eta and the Earthling, Canto I

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II.

Once, the Earthling stared at a garden snail and asked, "Is consciousness real, or merely an illusion?"

Eta smiled in patience. "Imagine an autumn breeze unlatching an acorn from its branch and casting it into a river. Does the acorn fall to the left or right bank?"

The Earthling frowned. "If it landed in the river, then the answer is neither, or rather, the answer is in between."

Eta let a moment pass before continuing. "Take care not to erect prisons out of your words, Earthling, lest you confine yourself from enlightenment's reach."

Eta and the Earthling, Canto I

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III.

The Earthling held a ptychosaur bone in their hand and mused, "What poor creatures! They roamed their planet in sovereignty for millions of years, yet now only through their dusty skeletons do they remain."

Eta responded. "The ptychosaur might speak with the same pity of Earthlings, who have prospered for but a tenth as long as its people had, and who wrongly imagine themselves above the fields of ruin."

Eta and the Earthling, Canto I

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IV.
      
The Earthling put down a hoary tome and asked, "Why-across the clustered cosmos and despite their venerable ages-have no civilizations of the Coven attained consummate knowledge, or reached final enlightenment?

Eta smiled in patience. "I sometimes forget that your people know not of the Mu Door."

The Earthling was intrigued. "What is this door you speak of?"

Eta answered, "The Mu Door is the threshold beyond which a civilization ceases its quest for erudition, having lost the motivation to make further inquiries. It's natural to assume the Door lies at the end of the path of knowledge, but, in fact, the Door is reached far sooner.

Eta and the Earthling, Canto I

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V.
      
Running two fingers over the holes of a flute, the Earthling mused thusly, "When I read a book of tales, or watch a photoplay, or listen to the flitting melody of a flute, my heart sings to its rhythm - at least for a time - and my mind is lost to the truth it conjures inside me. Might it not be that the very waking world is another such conjuration, a dream that distracts me from the hushed place I truly inhabit?"

Eta let several moments pass before answering. "That - in the terms you seek - we cannot know. But the answer is undoubtedly yes, for what is an experience but a simulacrum of an older experience, and what are our realities if not themselves approximations of a truer reality."

Eta and the Earthling, Canto I

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VI.

After reading the history of Iota Draconis on a light sculpture, the Earthling exclaimed, "Curious! Each Hypatian bears a glassy protrusion from its left clavicle. What is its function?"

Eta paused and then answered thusly, "The nearest meaning in your language is 'friend'."