EL
Bernadette Miller
Compressed in a grapefruit-sized singularity, EL waited in darkness. Suddenly an explosion hurtled the embryo in all directions, stretching space within it so that it began creating itself, as a fetus creates itself by multiplying cells. El’s fierce atomic force fused its murky soup of particles to form working parts: heavier particles, gasses, and dust. And from these working parts came El’s organ-like structures, twirling galaxies of stars and planets that glowed from gamma rays, x-rays, and infrared, illuminating a universe that resembled El’s past existence before being sucked back into that dense place from whence it started, only to burst forth anew, the same yet different. These were the cycles of El’s births, deaths, and rebirths.
But now, in this particular space-time, in a particular solar system in an arm of a spiral galaxy, Earth’s swirling gasses condensed and spun around a sun, past meteorites, dust storms, and solar winds, attracting El’s attention.
The vibrant Earth excited with its boiling center and smoky crust cooling with rain. Ah, it was alive, even as EL! Yet, something was missing. EL felt no peace, for it desired that which has no name.
Then, probing the universe with its intelligence, electromagnetic waves, EL reflected with sightless eyes upon itself, as if gazing at a mirror, and discovered its utter aloneness.
Agitated, its entire being shook, inflating itself into a vast entity, its organs ever farther apart as it continued expanding. But mere physical growth failed to satisfy, and EL determined to create something like itself, though it knew not how.
Soon, it rejoiced at the chemical compounds mixing in the Earth’s warm ponds that engendered one-celled animals--other living beings! Perhaps now it might have something with whom to communicate. EL sent its radiant energy toward the Earth to analyze these marvelous bacteria, loops of DNA in jelly-like cytoplasm, engulfing other tiny creatures to sustain energy, their bodies dividing to reproduce more miniatures. But in their struggle to survive, they ignored EL as if it didn’t exist. Finally, each floated, lifeless, to the pond floor, recycling the planet even as EL would eventually recycle itself by contracting back into that dark place of its birth.
Then, EL experienced a silent weeping at its failure. Alone for eternity! Hearing no sound other than one’s own... Weeping by oneself, dreaming by oneself, perhaps doubting one’s very existence for lack of verification. Why exist if one’s ignorance must revolve solely around oneself?
Now El’s despair rippled throughout itself, and it wondered if it would ever find another living being with whom its intelligence could exchange information: similar traits which would reassure, differences which would establish its identity amongst others of its kind. For many eons, EL observed the indifferent creatures, and it longed for kinship, filling with anguish at its dilemma of uniqueness.
Again probing the universe with its radiant energy, EL discovered it must first appreciate being alive, so it turned its attention toward the Earth with its newly-blue atmosphere, green meadows lush with wild flowers and fruit-laden trees, majestic snow-capped mountains, glittering lakes, and the shimmering aurora borealis.
This time, El’s silent weeping arose from awe; it had experienced beauty within itself.
For billions of years, EL spent its youth exulting in pleasure, creating innumerable species of living beings, and it pondered no more on its early quest. But near the start of EL’s maturity, the pleasures jaded, replaced by renewed loneliness. EL yearned again to share with another of its kind.
Probing the universe, EL learned that its image was changing. Youth had conveyed the impression that time stalled during the past billions of years. Instead, those years now appeared as fleeting as snowflakes, and EL realized that in order to find another of its kind, it must first strive to understand itself.
With renewed vigor it explored its creations, reluctantly eliminating species in order to select those who might someday communicate with it, but none revealed El’s essence. Finally, EL started aging, its anguish deepened at its seemingly-impossible task and never-ending solitude. Was its quest merely a pursuit of shadows? It reminded itself that, however ardous the task, the labor would prove worthy.
When mankind unexpectedly evolved from the apparently fruitless primates, EL experienced an inexplicable pull toward these brutish creatures who gathered, grunting, in their caves, fashioning tools and burying their dead, intelligence and feelings that might someday resemble El’s! Encouraged, it soon developed primitive man’s DNA to construct within the brain an advanced neuron wiring plied by electrical impulses; perhaps, someday, men might perceive their creator.
But early men, becoming conscious of the Unseen Presence, at first cowered in terror in their caves. Then, wearing lion skins, they gathered about a roaring campfire and with outcries of supplication bore a child with slit throat to the pyre, roasting it like a wild boar turning on a spit, and they chanted magic spells to ward off danger to their tribe as they partook of the hideous feast.
“Oh, Great Lion God, keep us safe, our women fertile, and our caves warm and secure. See how we appease Thee with our finest offering. Do not destroy us for we are Thy friend and seek to merge with Thy spirit.”
Then EL knew its ugliness by its creation’s ugliness, knew its cruelty by its creation’s cruelty, and experienced grief.
For countless millennia EL felt a silent weeping for its unspeakable creations. Yet, anxious to learn the extent of its possibilities, it again probed the universe with its electromagnetic waves and learned that each attribute of itself contained an opposite. Thus, the very truth it sought might also expose the distressful. For the first time EL experienced dread at uncovering the unacceptable, its own evils.
Still, its yearning to create others of its kind forced it to develop man’s intelligence, its only source of hope. Soon, EL glimpsed unendurable, yet fascinating aspects of itself. Its hairy creations choked each other without remorse, yet tenderly placed flowers on a loved one’s grave and drew figures on cave walls to hunt again the animals that climaxed their lives, feebly imitating their creator.
Now, EL determined to evolve in these creatures a perception that would reveal itself. Still failing, EL learned from its intelligence that it must first dissolve the fear of unpleasant truths about itself in order to reawaken that joy of creating that transcends good and evil.
Its will revitalized, EL encouraged specific DNA to arise within its animal creations. On Earth, child-like humans with loincloths, drums, and spears grappled with the Unseen Presence. Tribal priests finding no answers, even as EL had not reached the ultimate truth of itself, tried placating their creator with adoration, leading with outstretched arms for EL to hear their cries and calm their fears.
“Oh, Great Sky Spirit, we beg you to send rain to our parched village so that our crops may grow and our tribe not starve. Do not avert your smile and abandon us to catastrophe. Look upon us as your children, submissive to your commands, only do not turn your face from us, for without your protection we perish.”
EL filled with love for these innocent creatures who needed it as children need parents, though it still could not communicate with them, its space-time being too vast for man to grasp. Yet, it strove to enlighten its creations, hoping that one day they might communicate.
Then with feelings akin to pity, EL perceived its creatures humbly erecting altars and offering grain: that fruit of their harvest that they’d strained under a burning sun and with aching limbs to produce so that EL would not harm them. And painting their faces to please EL, they bared their bodies and encircled the village fire, chanting mysterious words to soothe EL, and raised their eyes toward the starry sky as though EL dwelt there. To ease their frustrations, they later described EL in “holy” books, claiming that EL wrote them.
Grieved at man’s inability to understand the Unseen Presence, EL longed to receive what man could not give, nor could man receive what EL longed to give--shocking EL at realizing its own limitations, even as the universe, though lacking boundaries, is limited in space-time.
Yet EL stubbornly pursued its evolutionary goal. Over thousands of years, while civilizations rose and fell, EL glimpsed further contradictions within itself--armies clashing while philosophers, scientists, and artists grappled with truth, struggling, like EL, to comprehend the brain’s complexity.
Despite these accomplishments, EL re-experienced that silent weeping. “Will I ever discover another, such as I, who can share my solitary process of becoming?”
Then there emerged from man fascinating revelations of EL. From cathedrals came intricate music and EL glimpsed its own harmony of stars whirling in orbits through galaxies studded like diamonds, the rhythm of billions of suns pumping radiation through itself like multiple hearts to feed El’s enormous intelligence--a gigantic orchestration of all those beats, tempos, and cadences arising from its working parts. On earth, painters revealed the brilliant colors of this multi-hued energy, scarlet, cobalt, aquamarine; playwrights revealed El’s own dramatic truths; and astronomers described structures that duplicated patterns in ever-larger structures to form the expanding universe that was EL.
Grasping then its delicately-balanced unity, EL finally understood itself within man’s awakening intelligence, and it knew peace.
