Nakor laughed, then he said, ‘You’ve talked about this big ball thing blowing up to make the universe, right?’
Pug nodded.
‘So, what if everything was inside that ball?’
‘We assume it was,’ said Pug.
‘Well, what was outside the ball?’
‘We were,’ said Pug quickly, ‘and the Garden and the City Forever.’
‘But you come from within that big ball,’ said Nakor, and as the others watched, he stood and began to pace, animated by being on the brink of understanding. ‘I mean, you were bom ages into the future from the creation, but from stuff inside the ball, if you see.’
‘What about the City Forever?’ asked Miranda.
‘Maybe it was created far in the future; what do you think?’
‘By whom?’ asked Pug.
Nakor shrugged. ‘I don’t know, and for the moment I don’t care. Maybe when you’re a thousand years old you’re the one who makes the City Forever and sends it back to the dawn of time so you and Macros have someplace to sit to watch the universe being born.’
‘Baby universes and thousand-year-old magicians,’ said Dominic, obviously trying to be patient and losing the attempt.
Nakor held up his hand. ‘Why not? We know traveling through time is possible. Which brings up, what is time?’
They all glanced at one another and each began to answer, but soon all fell silent. ‘Time is time,’ said Dominic. ‘It marks the passage of events.’
‘No,’ said Nakor. ‘Humans mark the passage of events. Time doesn’t care; time just is. But what is it?’ He wore a delighted grin as he answered his own question: ‘Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.’
Pug’s eyebrows rose. ‘So in the ball everything was happening at once?’
‘And then the universe changed!’ said Nakor with glee.
‘Why?’ asked Miranda.
Nakor shrugged. ‘Who knows? It just did. Pug, you told me when you found Macros this last time, he had begun to merge with Sarig. Was he Macros or was he Sarig?’
‘Both for a short while, but he was still mostly Macros.’
‘I wish I could ask him, “As you were merging, did you lose your sense of being Macros?” ‘ For a moment Nakor looked genuinely regretful, but then his grin returned as he said, ‘I think it safe to say that the more you become one with a god, the less you stay you.’
‘Then I understand,’ said Dominic.
‘What?’ asked Miranda.
‘What this madman is driving at.’ The old Abbot put his finger to his head. ‘Mind. The spirit of the gods, the “everything” he talks about as “stuff.” If everything was occurring at once, before this creation, then everything was everything. No differentiation.’
‘Yes!’ said Nakor, delighted at the Abbot’s observations. ‘So, for reasons we will never know, the totality of creation acted to differentiate itself. This “birth” of the universe was a means for the universe . . .’ The Abbot’s eyes widened. ‘It was the universe attempting to become conscious!’
Tomas’s eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t follow. Humans are conscious, as are other intelligent races, and the gods are conscious, but the universe is . . . it is, that’s all.’
‘No,’ said Nakor. ‘Why humans? Why other thinking creatures?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Pug.
Nakor’s expression turned serious. ‘Because becoming mortal is the means by which the universe, this “stuff” I talk about, becomes self-conscious, self-aware. Each life is the universe’s experiment, and each of us brings back knowledge to the universe when we die. Macros attempted to become one with a god, and learned that the further you get from mortality, the further you stray from that self-consciousness. Lesser Gods are more detached from “self ” than mortals; Greater Gods even more so, I wager.’
Dominic nodded. ‘The Tear of the Gods allows the Order to communicate with the Greater Gods. It is a very difficult task. We rarely attempt it, and when we do, often the communications are incomprehensible.’ The old Abbot sighed. ‘The Tear is a valuable gift, for it lets us work the magic that proves to those who serve us that Ishap is still living, so we can worship and work toward his return, but the nature of the gods, even that one we worship, is far beyond our ability to know.’
Nakor laughed. ‘Very well, now if this universe was born the day Macros, Pug, and Tomas were watching, what does that say about the universe?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Pug.
‘It’s a baby,’ said Nakor.
Pug laughed. He couldn’t help himself. ‘The universe is several billion years old, by my calculations.’
Nakor shrugged. ‘That may be a two-year-old universe for all we know. What if it is?’
‘What’s the point?’ said Miranda.
Tomas said, ‘Yes. While all this is fascinating, we still have some problems to solve.’
Nakor said, ‘True, but the more we know about what it is we’re involved with, the more we have a chance of solving those problems.’