A Message to the Ether
There has often been a marked discrepancy between the letters in the word "then" and the letters in the word "now." Considering most things sideways and only this forward to backward isn't very illuminating, a word which has a great many more letters than the combination of then and now, which would be thennow, a word which looks strikingly like minnow, so I must assume that it is some sort of fish. Whence came this fish? Did it rise unbidden from the ether, or has my mention of the difference in letters in the constituent parts of its name brought it from parts unknown? The fact remains that I am right and then is a good deal longer than now, if by good deal I mean one letter. Perhaps I do, and then again, perhaps I'm being swept away by the sheer audacity of the metaphysics of my previous statement, which, without the quotation marks, takes on a rather more interesting tone, its accuracy notwithstanding. Is, after all, then longer than now? Certainly a question of this nature could be debated by scholars from now until now becomes a very long-ago then, at which point if the scholars now were to shout very loudly, perhaps the scholars then could hear them, since then would be now, and now would be then. But the puzzling thing remains: why is the letter extra in then sufficient to cause a heretofore unknown fish to rise from the depths and make itself present on this page? Does it take offense at my treatment of time and metaphysics, even though it arose before I had even made any such statement? In that case, one must wonder whether it can see into the future, and if that's the case, then it must be a very pretty fish indeed, far more interesting than the minnow. I've been told that a goldfish has a three second memory; that is, it can remember what has occured in the previous three seconds of its life, a cycle which means that, as far as memories go, it remembers very little. Perhaps the thennow can remember the next three seconds of its life, and so, while the past is a closed book, it can see what's going to happen within the next three seconds, something which I think we can all agree would be very useful, although moreso to a man than a fish. But what of fish anyway? Maybe we have it all wrong, and the goldfish simply answered the questions intentionally to throw us off the scent (at least, I imagine that they must have given it a battery of questions to test this three second hypothesis, and what is to prevent a particularly malicious fish from simply messing the whole thing up). Perhaps the fish knows perfectly well how long its memory is and is testing us to see if we're smart enough to figure it out without foolish questions. And how can one tell whether someone remembers something anyway? I could claim that I don't remember writing the beginning of this missive to the ages (or rather to an unknown age who will come directly after me), and frankly I would probably be telling the truth, but the point, and it is a good one, is that one would have no way of telling whether I was lying. I suppose you could hook me up to a polygraph, chart all my responses, and test me then, but as asking someone whether they remember something is a form of reminder, unaided remembrance would be untestable in this way. There are, as I recall, studies done on false memories too, usually involving some Satanic ritual when one was young which has supposedly been repressed, in which case how do you yourself know you can trust what you remember? It seems to me that this fish (the thennow, if you've lost my train of thought, and I don't blame you in the slightest) has a very nice racket going, because, after all, if it remembers the future, when the future happens, the fish can be justified in its remembrance and at least it will know that it remembered it correctly. And now we come to free will. I'm not going to talk about free will because frankly I don't care that much about it; it seems to me a bit shabby. I don't have free will over anyone else in the world, and with everyone going about doing what they will, the whole thing becomes a colossal game of chance anyway. And just who was responsible for giving the rocks and trees and forces of nature free will to strike randomly and cut off the free wills of others, I'd like to know? And if someone gave you free will, is it really yours, or is the fact that you have it merely more evidence of control by whomever gave it to you? So I guess I did talk about free will a bit, didn't I, but the point remains that I said I wouldn't and I'm sticking by my promise even as bent as it's gotten. So the fish, probably because of this whole mess, have been largely forgotten and I've burdened you with a mess of gobbledigook about metaphysics and fairies and that little boy I used to go to school with back when I was a child. Well, I guess those last two I didn't really burden you with until just now, and the fish have every right to believe me a great fool, but as I always say, there's no use believing someone else believes something because you'll probably be right, and then where will you be? Right where you left yourself probably, one might answer, and that's where I am. Now if I could remember where I'd left myself, I might have some hope of finding me, and that would show you, and your fishy companions, and this message to the great beyond, such as it is. Firing away now!
Click here to be taken to somewhere not nearly so close to the ether as this, although it is quite close I guess.