No time like the present

"C, this is serious," I say.

"I concur, V. The Pleasure Zone is in grave danger."

"We still have time, C," says S.

"This is true, S, but there is no time like the present to act decisively."

"C, I suggest we begin by finding common ground with certain members of the Council."

"I concur, S. Bearing in mind that finding common ground is necessary but not sufficient, any common ground that we do find with the Council can only help us in the long term. E, what can we do to facilitate this process of finding common ground?"

The conference spanned the entire morning. We plotted strategy, envisioned possibility, and prepared for the execution of our plans.

All in an effort to save the Pleasure Zone from almost certain extinction.

Today is a day of promise

Her touch is electric.

I turn to greet my companion. Her iridescent eyes never fail to captivate my gaze.

"Christina." I speak her name intimately, aloud, and slide my hands around her waist.

"Christopher, today is a day of promise."

For her, this is a unique expression, one I've never heard from her before, and she conveys it warmly, erotically, telepathically.

I reflect it back to her, in the privacy of our space, a virtual space reserved for feelings and desires: "Today is a day of promise."

I kiss her tender lips, and together, we rise on a pleasurable surge of warmth and gratitude.

I caress the rim of her jaw. "I would be alone, Christina."

In response, she applies a delicate touch to her temple, leaving me alone with my thoughts, and moves aside gracefully.

I go inside to my enclosure and call on my colleagues.

Yesterday, the Council made a move that threatens the peace and prosperity that is everywhere present.

In the Free Zone

As I walk through the living area of my luxurious suite, its interior warms ever so slightly, casting a muted yellow-orange hue. Everything I need, and everything I could possibly want, is literally at my fingertips. For now, from my balcony, I am content just to watch the sun rise.

In the Free Zone, the silence is pure, the ultimate in quiescence. All day, every day. For the remaining persons, like myself, who still carry some trace of the organic human, this silence might pose a problem. But for me, I can no longer imagine what it would be like to live without it.

And for this silence, we have the Synthetics to thank for the peace and prosperity that is everywhere present.

In such a world as this, one might imagine that there is little anyone needs to do, and in a way, this image rings true. Our every need is met with a wave of the hand or the caress of the fingertips. But the image also rings false. In the Free Zone, we're as free to do as much or as little as we aim to do.

In the Free Zone, there is much we can do, if that is our wish.

My wish, for now, is simply to be as I am and let the sunrise saturate my awareness with its beauty and splendour.

I have the best of everything

I wake with a start and take a moment to remember where I am.

I was having a most unusual dream, a dream where I was running to the edge of a summit, lunging beyond the edge, and then falling, plunging into an abyss.

One moment I had a body; the next moment, I had none.

There has never been any conclusion to this recurring dream. I am tempted to get it checked out by a qualified hypnosis specialist, but I can never find the time.

You see, I knew in my heart that I would soon be faced with deciding the fate of more than ten billion souls.

Alone.

Although I am one among a select few who remain in the Free Zone by virtue of my willingness to forgo myriad pleasures, I am still the best qualified person to make executive decisions for the Organics and BioSynthetics who live in the Pleasure Zone, in co-operation with the most advanced Synthetics.

Not long ago, humanity had evolved, at least in principle, beyond the limits of its biological heritage. Many among us had opted to incorporate synthetic enhancements to varying degrees in various amounts, but many more had not. Most occupations had become obsolete. Finding the balance between work and leisure was no longer an issue for most.

Earth had become a playground.

Now, you might think this is a good thing, but as almost anyone knows, too much of a good thing can flip, all too quickly and easily, into its opposite.

I wave my hand above a panel. The platform of my sleeping chamber tilts towards a position perpendicular to the floor until the soles of my feet lie flush with it.

I have a wide-angle view of my place of residence and I can never fail to marvel at one simple fact: I have the best of everything.

And I do mean everything.

Until next time, Christos

The recent preview of my life on a small planet in a solar system on the edge of an ordinary galaxy among billions of other galaxies in one among many millions of galaxy superclusters had gone well enough. I had requested that I spend some time with Sophia, my twin flame, before I took the proverbial plunge.

With Sophia, the scene on the balcony was just one of several rehearsals of my life on a rather dense planet called Earth. The Elders had warned me that Earth was a particularly difficult place to go to fulfill a serious purpose. They told me that many who go there are easily lured into distractions and lose their way.

Now, on the edge of a summit, I know the time is near for me to take the plunge, but I feel uneasy about leaving before I can be sure about my fitness to meet my purpose in a place where the reality of need and pleasure dominate the overall social climate. My question is simply this: am I ready?

"The time is near, Christos."

I nod thoughtfully. "And so it is." Humanity on Earth had reached a point in its cultural evolution where any one of its members could access any and all knowledge relevant to practically any purpose, but its members also had access to the most exquisite entertainment, making many of them immune to effort.

"On one level, you will forget everything you know here."

"Yes, I know." And that was part of the problem. Without the benefit of my knowledge and wisdom here, I was vulnerable to losing sight of my ultimate purpose on Earth. My only recourse, if I could remember it, was to undergo a spiritual hypnotic regression there to recover my memories here.

The trees below the summit shimmer like a mirage under a noon-day sun, a signal for me to prepare myself for the plunge.

"Any last words, Christos?"

"Will I see you on Earth, Sophia?"

"I would like that very much." She speaks softly, almost wistfully, into my mind.

I sigh. We both knew that our journeys on Earth carried the possibility of not meeting. I knew this uncertainty to be integral to my purpose.

I turn to Sophia, place my hand on the rim of her jaw, and caress it with exquisite care. "Good-bye, my love."

We embrace.

She steps back, tears welling, speaking these words aloud: "Until next time, Christos."

"Until next time, Sophia." My voice breaks. I kiss her long and tender on the lips.

I walk away from the edge. I turn suddenly and run back to it with all my might, lunging and plunging into vast empty space.

On the edge of a summit

On the summit, the breeze is brisk, cool and refreshing, wafting the scent of pine trees nearby. The sun sets yonder, setting the sky on fire on a distant horizon. Lakes and trees dot the landscape in the valleys below. I sit on a rock and beckon Sophia. She comes over and stands before me, waiting for my question.

But I'm not ready to ask it just yet.

"I carry a burden, Sophia, a burden so heavy it presses me down in the twilight of my youth. I cannot be satisfied with the invention of a purpose that would merely secure the means of my survival, that would merely satisfy all of my needs, both physical and psychological."

"I understand, Christos." Sophia conveys her words soundlessly, from the depths of soul: warmly, intimately, sympathetically.

"I cannot be satisfied with a calling that would merely have me serve the good of others. Good by what standard? Good for whom in particular? I'm rather inclined to think that those who claim to serve the good of others have their own conception of that good." I convey all of this soundlessly to her, but then I feel compelled to speak aloud.

"From a witness perspective, I can allow myself to step back and see my central focus in life, my core concern in life, my ultimate purpose in life, through the ways and means and ends by which I choose to live, love, and learn. My purpose in life is about what I decide to do for me, for my own good, with goals, values, and interests that are mine."

I stand to face Sophia. "Does my egoic stance necessarily preclude what others might think or feel, say or do?"

Sophia smiles, sending me her thoughts: "it might, Christos, but then again, it might not."

"If the feedback I get from others resounds with my ultimate purpose, then I would do well to listen and learn."

"Yes."

"If I leave the most important concern of my life - the ultimate purpose of my life - to what others would ask of me, then I would expect to lose my bearings before long."

"Christos, I trust that your strong egoic thrust to meet your purpose in life is matched only by your deep concern for what others might contribute to that purpose. You stay the course with your daily central focus amidst the comments, questions, suggestions, and requests of others in relation to this purpose."

"Sophia, I couldn't have put it better myself."

"Which, I suspect, brings us back to your question."

I turn away and walk to the edge of the summit.

For a change of scene

I send a telepathic signal to Sophia, indicating that I feel ready to resume our conversation, and wait patiently for her reply.

As I mentioned before, I could not help but feel that our love of power had been kept a secret for a reason. I knew well that the shame associated with the dark side of that love, in tandem with the pride associated with the bright side of that love, kept it secret and alive.

I gaze upon the cityscape, watching millions of lights twinkle in the night, my mind caught inside a delicious reverie.

"Christos."

Sophia whispers my name and I smile, sensing her divine presence behind me. I turn around to greet her with my sacred presence, thinking that it is so like her to show up before she replies to my signals of readiness.

"Sophia, let us dive yonder."

"Let us dive yonder" is my way of saying, "Let us have a change of scene".

As much as I enjoy the cityscape scenario in our simulated reality, what with its balcony and its city lights at night, I sometimes need a change of pace when I wish to discuss a question in depth, which is what I wanted to do now. We tend to be creative with our scenic transitions in virtual reality.

Sophia and I levitate to the top of the balcony railing with our backs to the cityscape. I take her hand. We look at each other and smile.

We dive off the balcony into empty space. The rush of sound is deafening, and the freefall is deliriously terrifying, at least for me. In the midst of our dive, our perception of time all but disappears into the space around us.

When our backs hit a fabric at bottom, our sense of time returns with a jolt, and the fabric stretches for what seems like an eternity until it can stretch no more, catapulting us back up into our next scene: the top of a mountain on a spring-like evening with a commanding but gorgeous and panoramic view.

We land on the summit feet first, touching down in a feather-like motion.

"You had a question, Christos."

I raise my hand to caress her cheek. "Yes."

Our secret love of power

"I would be alone to consider your question."

Sophia touches my temple with sacred intent and blesses my third eye with a tender kiss, cutting our telepathic link and leaving me alone with my thoughts. She walks away with a knowing smile.

Her question resounds: "Do we stop the world with our love of presence or do we engage it fully with our secret love of power?" I knew it contained essential clues to my purpose.

Our love of presence and our secret love of power. I knew enough that she did not mean our love of presence or our secret love of power. She spoke from, and for, the perspective of humanity at a juncture in its evolution when it was evolving beyond its biological limits.

Sophia is well aware of our schizophrenic relationship with power: the power to manipulate, deceive, and exploit with one hand and the power to persuade, enlighten, and create with the other. Abusive power and authentic power. As we evolve away from abusive power toward authentic power, a very fine line was being drawn between them. I could not help but feel that our love of power had been kept a secret for a reason.

But what might this reason have to do with my purpose?

I release my question to the Universe, allowing myself the pleasure of a cool and caressing breeze in the bosom of a separate peace.

Do we stop the world?

Out of a peace so profound rises an inkling of purpose from the depths of this presence to the moment in which we find ourselves. “This presence is pregnant with life,” I tell Sophia soundlessly, in the silence of our peace.

She half turns her head. “This presence is pregnant with life, Christos, but also with law, and with mind, and with spirit.”

“With law, with life, with mind, and with spirit,” I say, adding continuity. “This presence is forever giving birth to an evolutionary disclosure of matter, life, mind, and spirit – an ever-widening circle that promises to reveal more of itself with the passage of time from within the depths of space.”

Sophia turns around inside my embrace to face me. “Until the circle is whole.”

“And complete,” I add, after a pause.

“In the meantime, Christos, with bodies as vessels, we might dwell in the peace of this presence from time to time, to contemplate the objects of this world with sacred intent through sacred encounter.”

“And with bodies as vehicles, Sophia, we can soar on the updrafts of this presence, and celebrate the objects of this world with divine intent through divine experience.”

“And remember, too, where a sacred encounter is a religious encounter, a divine experience is a …” Sophia pauses to reflect. Or was she playing with me?

I smile knowingly. “A spiritual experience.”

“And so, a person fit to live in this world is a person who …”

I laugh away my delight. “Is a person who … celebrates the divine dimensions of mind and spirit without neglecting to cultivate the sacred dimensions of law and life.”

Sophia embraces me, and as I experience a rush of pleasure inside her embrace, I am pleased to know that we have come to harmony through yet another act of intercourse.

I rest content, happy to feel the love of Sophia, until our everlasting embrace gives way to a rather potent query from Sophia: “Do we stop the world with our love of presence or do we engage it fully with our secret love of power?”

A pervasive presence

"At the moment of creation?"

"No, Christos. At the beginning. At the moment before creation."

I frown. "Before?"

Sophia sighs inside my mind. "At the moment before creation, which is now and forever, is a presence, contained and complete, changeless and formless."

"I understand."

"A presence, Christos. A presence that pervades all that you presently see and hear, taste and touch, sense and feel – a presence that pervades and a presence that pervades itself, not unlike a motherhood without end."

Sophia steps through the doorway onto the balcony and parks herself in front of me, backing into me gently. Her body is soft and pliant and I catch my breath, wrapping my arms around her waist; the feeling I experience with her is exquisite beyond belief.

Her words sound in my mind – warm, soft, steady, and resolute: "though there can be no name for it, this presence is, in potential, the sum and source of all, by which the fill of life becomes manifest and by which the spirit of life becomes obvious."

"Sophia, please stop. I need a moment ... I need a moment to absorb your words of wisdom."

She remains silent, and her silence becomes an all-pervasive silence that rises from within us, spreads out between us, and envelops us both. A profound peace pervades every part of us, a peace so profound that it makes further communication momentarily impossible.

At the beginning

“Tell me your purpose.” She says that in a quiet way, in a gentle way, in a way that invites me to open my heart to her.

“Sophia, my heart might tell you one of my true aims, my soul might tell you another of my true aims, and my spirit might tell you yet another. Who am I to say where my true purpose lies?” She turns around to look at me, frowning, as if to tell me that I’ve let myself off the hook too easily with my glib answer.

“What do you want, Christos? Knowing who and what you are, knowing what you have, knowing what you do, and knowing what you’ve become, what is it that you want more than anything else in the world? What is it that motivates your days and nights, what is it that compels you to prevail in spite of hardship, what is it that takes you into the depths of your soul and to the heights of your spirit?”

I sigh and walk away from her. Her questioning is relentless, but not unwelcome. We both know how important it is to articulate a central purpose in life that would organize and integrate everything that I am, all that I do, everything that I have, and all that I seek to become. I walk through a door onto a balcony overlooking a cityscape at night. The sky is clear and a cool breeze teases my face. I cannot escape from her here; our most intimate of links keeps us in constant contact. I tell her, in the privacy of my own mind, in no uncertain terms, that I am ignorant: “Sophia, I simply do not know.”

“You do know; you simply have yet to put it into words.” I close my eyes, feeling a rush of desire in response to the intimate, erotic tone of her words – words that flow like warm honey into my awareness, as they always do when we separate from each other spatially. My sensitivity to the cool breeze heightens. Goosebumps run up and down my back like a caress.

“Where do I begin?” I reply weakly.

Soft laughter bubbles up inside me. “You begin at the beginning, my precious one.”

What is your purpose?

She pulls away slowly, looks at me with a query in her eyes, and asks: “What is your purpose?”

Again, I smile. “My purpose is to love you.”

She frowns. “To what end?”

My smile disappears. “I have more purchasing power than I know what to do with; I have more freedom than anyone has a right to have; and I have the peace of mind to occupy a place in a position where I can allow myself to be, have, do, and become whatever I will or desire.”

She turns away, walks back to the window. It’s her way of telling me that she’s not satisfied with my answer. We’ve had this discussion before, her and I, and never once have I given her a straight answer. I know what she wants, but I just can’t bring myself to give it to her. I need something for myself.

I walk to her, place my hands lightly on her bare shoulders. She tenses and then relaxes. I could wrap my arms around her, embrace her, and cherish her with my embrace, but I decide to simply stand behind her, gaze through the window with her, and wait patiently for our conversation to continue.

A balance made fine

From inside the warmth of her kiss, her words pour into the heart of my soul:

"Such a fine line it is that separates those who would sustain the promise of myriad pleasures for their own sake at the expense of a lasting love from those who would sustain the promise of a lasting love at the expense of myriad pleasures. Might there not be a balance to be struck between the two, or better yet, a balance that would take the best from both? Such a question, I believe, is worthy of both lovers of myriad pleasures whose variety is endless and masters of a single lasting love whose depths and heights are as bottomless and limitless as they are sacred and divine."

I crack a smile in spite of myself.

What am I to do?

Sophia stands at a window in darkness. Glints of light flash on and off her face as she gazes at a full moon. She is dressed provocatively – gloriously and magnificently provocative, a goddess in human form. She is divinely present to me even as her gaze is elsewhere.

I have never heard her speak a word out loud, but that’s only because she speaks to me from within, through a technological link, connecting nano neuro net to nano neural net with amazing rapidity and transparency. In spite of this link, I prefer to speak out loud: "I need your advice."

"You wish to hear my advice."

I smile, very much liking how she corrects me in this subtle way that she does. "Yes. I would ask you a question."

She turns to look at me, her face a picture of serenity. "So ask."

I laugh softly, with intense delight, always loving the way she says that. "I have access to everything I could possibly wish to know. What am I to do with this access, Sophia?"

She approaches me. No, she glides towards me, and my pulse quickens. She stops in front of me – so close, I can see her pupils dilate. "If you have access to everything you could possibly wish to know, why ask me anything?"

Her logic is impeccable, as it always is when I ask her a question. "I would hear your point of view," I say.

"You tell me you have access to everything you could possibly wish to know, and yet you ask me what it is you wish to do with this access. Tell me, Christos: you already know what it is you wish to do with this access, so why not tell me here and now what it is you wish to do with it."

Her reply is saucy and spicy, and beyond brilliant, and I resist a powerful urge to ravish her right then and there, wishing to make the most of this most unexpected of encounters. "Having access to everything I could possibly wish to know is one matter; setting a purpose for this access is another. Knowing what I know, and knowing why I wish to know it, are two completely different and separate species of knowing."

"You always know what you know, but you don’t always know why you wish to know it."

"I always know what I know and I don’t always know why I wish to know it. Obviously, when I do know why, I know both what I wish to know and why I wish to know it."

"But if you have access to everything you could possibly wish to know, do you not also have access to why you wish to know everything you could possibly know?"

"Sophia, if I had access to why I wish to know everything I could possibly know, why would I even feel my need to ask you my question in the first place?"

She raises a finger to my face, caressing it with exquisite care. "Having access to everything you could possibly wish to know, what is your answer to your question?"

"Maybe I'm not ready to receive the answer."

"You are ready."

"Maybe I'm ready but not willing."

"You are willing."

"Maybe I'm ready and willing but not yet able."

"You are able."

I step close to her and touch my lips to the impossibly smooth skin of her cheek. "You give me no recourse."

Her fingertips press gently into my arms and my resistance all but melts in the face of her kiss when she touches her lips to mine.