Be Our Guest: Mike Van Horn

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This is the first Guest Post resulting from our new outreach project, Be Our Guest. Every month, we’ll provide a new short list of possible topics to jump start your creative juices, just in case you need a little boost. Choose a topic from the list or make up your own and submit your post as a .docx to stranscht@sbcglobal.net. There’s no deadline, but we will publish them in the order we receive them. Thanks for choosing Writers Co-op.

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Creation Story

by Mike Van Horn

Inspired by “The Song of the Ainur” in the Silmarillion, companion to Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien. 

Zarbva got comfortable on the Stone of Storytelling. She motioned for us to take our places seated around the fire. She pulled her robe close around her and drew on her long-stem pipe, sending puffs of smoke to mingle with the smoke of the fire. Firesparks leapt upward joining twinkling stars in the heavens above. She spoke slowly and softly, forcing us to listen intensely.

“There was no duration—time didn’t exist.

There was no extension—space didn’t exist. 

There was no entropy—nothing to spread from or into.

There was only an eternal (meaning outside of time) tension. A quantum intention.

In this eternal quantum balance, a cosmic Hum, I call it

Everlasting and instantaneous

Unchanging yet full of wild potential

Vast harmonies, each note embodying a potentiality. All in perfect balance.”

She took a puff.

“Until it wasn’t. 

“One note in the Hum’s harmony made a random quantum shift from one octave to the next

Throwing off the harmony.

Cataclysm! From harmony to cacophony. 

Each note in the eternal harmony tore apart, rending the Hum.

Timespace first of all. Then all the myriad notes, embodying a relationship, a force, an energy level, a mass, a particle

Moving apart in the newly emergent timespace.

The disrupted quantum force repelled them at unimaginable rates, beyond the restraint of any counterforce. Timspace grew and grew.

Not until long nanoseconds had passed did their inherent natures begin to manifest.

Time became. Space became.”

She paused for one deep puff.

“Know now, the eternal cosmic Hum had of course suffered many such bouts of imbalance.

Wild quantum potentials caught in various permutations of their cosmic songdance when a discordance arose. Slight quavers in the cosmic Hum.

When disrupted, the cosmic Hum threw off these permutations. 

“Some formed viable timespaces, most did not.

A leap outward, then a collapse inward, disappearing into the Hum.

Or a balance of particles so perfect that they experienced complete mutual annihilation, leaving  only fading radiation.

Or expanding so rapidly, no particles could cohere into larger bodies.

Did the Hum want progeny? This is not for us to know. It merely existed, doing what it must.

“There was one, after so many abortive disruptions, where the forces and particles created by the disrupted harmony, expanded into timespace just rapidly enough, yet slowly enough, so that over time, over distance, particles–both massive and massless–coalesced into objects that created a new balance of contending forces. We call this our Universe–galaxies and stars swirling in a new stately dance.

“And eventually, planets, ubiquitous junior partners to the stars.

Some planets built a balance of energies, masses, and varieties of particles that allowed a new force to emerge. A force that fought against and slowed entropy for a time. These entities evolved, following the same set of laws that underlay the stars and galaxies. 

This phenomenon we call Life. We are its beneficiaries. 

“But we, in our youthful naiveté, and unknowing what had gone before that allowed us to exist, we in our hubris devised divine beings in our image that we said created it all overnight just for us.” 

Zarbva looked into the heavens through the cloud of smoke from her pipe.

“Let me finish the evening by singing a hymn we sing to keep ourselves humble. This is for us who have leapt across the cosmos pulling together beings of diverse mien, age, and dreams. 

"The Universe remains cold and uncaring;
To it, we Life are a nothingful scum.
We Life, we always crave meaning
Where no meaning can ever be found.
So let us tell all of our stories  — 
The most valuable thing that we've found — 
To relate our trials and our glories
And build our short lives around. 

"The stories of Life on all times and worlds
Stretching from star to star to star
And connect us one to the other
And remind us just who we are.

"We Life, we are One — 
Our eyes, our touch, our love.
We delight in the depth of our differences
And thank the bright stars above

"They have bestowed the gift of existence
Oblivious to our dreams, trials, and glories
Yet make it possible — even necessary
That we sit together telling our stories.

"Amen"

Zarbva looked around to see who was still paying attention. “Pass the grog, please. Throw another log on the fire. Hold my hand. Retain the warmth.

“As you go forth, remember this well. If it hadn’t been for that discordant note disrupting the Hum—that smooth quantum harmony—we wouldn’t exist.” 

*      *      *

“But wait!” I ask the Mistress, perhaps rudely, while stirring up a rising torrent of sparks by poking the fire with a stick. “How do we know the Universe doesn’t care about us? Surely if all the phenomena in our universe are inherent in the pre-Bang harmonic Hum, that would include the potentialities and patterns for emerging life forms, would it not? Maybe our stories that build up as we expand across the galaxy have an appreciable and important impact on its evolution. 

“Or are you saying we are merely an incidental epiphenomenon that just happened to appear in this iteration of the universe, like a rash on our backside?”

Zarbva’s puff of pipe smoke almost obscured her head for a moment. Finally she spoke. “Perhaps we should leave that question for another evening.”  

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Photo credit: Ryan Hutton (Unsplash.com)