Lower than the Angels

Chapter 3, Time

Tengri pondered the fact of Emergence for a moment, then said, "It turns out that both Raven and Eagle are creatures of time, even though Ravens are aware of the Q, while Eagles may not be."'

 Kore said, "I know that's true, but how does it work in the Q?"

"Well, as we know, the physical universe is divisible into four main features, matter, energy, space, and time. The Q, the spirit universe, is the sum of these, with the first two existing within the last two, and only time being native to the spirit world. The rest are figments of spirit."

Kore nodded to indicate that she understood and said, "And even time takes on a different character for spirit."

Tengri said, "Exactly. We as physical beings measure time by the rotation of our planet. This is clearly a very parochial view, since every planet has a different rotation.

"In the spirit realm, time is simply the sequence of steps through event space. And every event is potentially only one step away from any other."

Kore said, "But each step is a tiny emergence. Time measures emergence! Now that you put it like that, I know it really does work that way. So please, tell me why you stress that we are creatures of time."

"Well, we don't really know why we exist, but we clearly do. So we assume the existence of a creator, who we usually call God. And we assume that God created what we call time along with the rest."

Kore frowned and said, "I'm getting a little lost here."

"Our concept of God is that the Creator alone is outside of time, having created it along with everything else. Nothing means nothing. Period. Not nothing but time."

"Okay, that makes sense."

"Still, we can consider eras in the physical universe as marking time. In the earliest era of creation, energy appears before matter. And matter first appears in a high energy state. A dense energy state, in which matter is susceptible to decomposing back into energy. In other words, we can say there was an entry point to the universe, and that at that point time was zero."

 "Time was zero. What does that mean?"

 "It means that nothing had happened yet. An infinite number of possible events may have been created, but none of them were connected. There weren't any links between events."

"Oh, I get it. When we look into the future, we see possible events. So we can guess that all possible events must already exist in the mind of God. But when we see more than one, God leaves it up to us to choose among them. "

"Exactly. What we call history is the sequence of chosen events. But each of us, in fact each being of any type, even a being who chooses to animate an elementary particle, gets to choose only for itself. Each being has a unique history, a unique path through possible events."

"So are you saying that space came before time? Since all possible events were already there?"

"Not exactly. Remember, we're talking about the spirit realm, the Q, since that came first. These events are simply thoughts in the mind of God. Before any choosing could happen, God had to create spirits who could be aware of their own choices"

"Spirits like us?"

"Yes, but more primitive spirits at first, subdivisions of God's own spirit self that knew only one thought."

"Just one?"

"Probably. But remember, that thought would be linked to all other similar thoughts. And the new spirit would be aware of those possible thoughts, and the links to them, and would choose one link to follow."

"So the spirit would then see new links connected to the link it chose to follow, and could choose to follow one of them. And so on. Creating its own path through the Q, its own personal history. I know how that works."

"Exactly. And each link could only be to another spirit, who had been created with another first thought. So each time a spirit chose a new link, it would come to know something of another spirit. As spirits added links, their awareness of other spirits would grow. But no two different spirit's memories of other spirits could ever be exactly the same."  

"Because their paths were different. Tengri, I think you've got it right. Close enough for me anyway. I mean, I'm handled on where the Q comes from. But what about this?" She waved a hand around to indicate their physical surroundings. "Didn't we start out wanting to explain where this comes from?"

Tengri almost laughed. Through his grin he said, "You're right. And most of the explanations we've had for that haven't amounted to much more than your handwaving, have they?" He hitched his shoulders around a bit as if to shrug off the handwaving. "But there's a whole history to explain, and I was trying to start at the beginning. This," and he waved his own hand around, "has been the biggest mystery. But now I think we know that something else came first."

"And what was that?"

"Dark matter."