Peter Billig
THE COSMOSCOPE
A Saul Vogel Mystery
Vogel invited me to share a bottle of a very exceptional alcoholic beverage:
“I drank this wonderful drink years ago, at my initiation into the Totoraq tribe, and I had breathtaking visions. Expect a unique experience,” and he poured liberally. The bottle had been sent via a vacationing anthropologist stationed with a tribe of Amazonian Indians, the Totoraq.
The stuff was good, we got drunk, but nothing happened whisky would not have provided.
Vogel was disappointed and puzzled. He booked an air ticket to Brazil, took his cellular phone, his WDR (wave-detector-recorder) and was gone. There was no doubt that in his Totoraq period he must have made an important assumption, now proven wrong.
A month later Voss arrived, a wizard engineer, who builds customized gear for Vogel against liberal invoices. His van, a workshop on wheels, took over the garage.
He constructed a UFO-shaped outhouse and furnished it with high-tech equipment. True to his unforthcoming nature, he would tell me nothing. Even though he would let me step inside with the lunch tray, whatever he was building – especially the electronics – was covered, and he would ask me to leave immediately. When finished, he simply disappeared without a word.
“It’s the Cosmoscope,” Vogel told me arriving the day after. “Let’s launch it!”
He unlocked the door. The interior was air-conditioned, the domed ceiling was covered with wiring and electronics. There was a control panel and two adjustable armchairs.
“At my initiation as Totoraq”, he said, as we sat down, ”I had been given that drink and taken to a cave where I had powerful visions. The initial ones concerned the well-being of my tribe, the final one was different. In it, I was sent into a new dimension and stopped by a wall. I tried to jump over, but it was too high. I tried to crash through – to no avail. Recently, when the Totoraq sent me the bottle and nothing happened, I understood the visions had not been in the drink. I realized, too, why they sent it: they wanted me back. I found them deeply in trouble with the neighbors and the authorities. We Totoraq are an independent-minded breed. I was initiated again, into the council of elders this time, given no drink, but taken to the cave. New visions ensued, which gave the tribe fresh ideas as to how to solve the problems, I’m proud to report. My private vision of old was repeated, and again I was stopped by the wall. I’ve got a feeling that surmounting the wall is of capital importance,” and he run his fingers over the control panel’s keyboard.
“The visions were not in the drink, but in the cave!” it dawned on me at last. “You recorded the waves inside the cave and sent to Voss ordering an electronic copy!”
“Let’s play test pilots. Voss was too scared to try it out on himself,” and he punched “Enter”.
The lights went out, a purr was heard and my consciousness sped out of the body into a new dimension. I wanted to scream, but my vocal cords were left behind. I braced myself for an encounter with a danger, but all I did was to stop suddenly in front of a towering wall, stretching into the horizon in both directions. Vogel stopped beside me, attacked the wall head-on and bounced off like a rubber ball. He jumped, stopped just short of the top and set down.
“Didn’t I tell you?” He sounded angry and impatient.
“I associate wall with gate. Have you considered looking for one, Master?”
“We Totoraq are too independent-minded indeed! Which way would you recommend?”
“Left, it works in my dreams.”
Being Totoraq, he went to the right, though, and after some speeding along the never-ending brick-mass we found a defined space dotted with letter-slits by the thousand. Most were open, allowing a flow of white and black balls to pass within. Some were closed and the unaccepted balls, coming out of space in thousands of unending lines, formed heaps at the foot of the wall.
Vogel converted himself into a black ball and leaped head-on into a slit, only to get spat out and land on a heap: “Shit!”
“Easy, Master! The lines of balls make me think of information bits coming as if by cable from different places. You might get in through the slit for information from our place.”
“Good thinking!” and we gave the slits another look. They all had inscriptions in different characters, symbols, pictograms and scrawls. All were outlandish, and we got bored before I saw something familiar: ץראה רודכ – and I showed it to Vogel.
“Kadur ha-aretz, “Earth” in Hebrew,” he said and jumped into the slit. I changed into a ball, too, and followed in. It was a narrow corridor and the balls were moving through in the orderly fashion they had entered. In front, I saw a solitary black one jump others over and I followed the example, not to stay behind. At last, we landed side by side on a spacious, slowly revolving disk, packed with balls. A tube would come from above and suck blocks of balls up and the empty spaces would be filled up with newcomers. Vogel-ball jumped forward into the section to be sucked up and I-ball followed. With countless thousands of others we were lifted from the disk and thrown in the same pattern onto a lattice where we were stopped by the small-sized meshes. Vogel-ball contracted and fell through to the other side, and I followed suit.
We landed by a computer screen. There was a person in white clothes by the desk, his fingers busy with the keyboard. He had a pair of white wings on his back. The desk stood under the boughs of a fantastic plant in a park bursting with fanciful vegetation, pleasant sounds and delightful scents.
We sprang to the ground and assumed our prior forms.
“Who the heck are you and why?!” the winged one exclaimed with a stern look.
“Humans from planet Earth,” Vogel replied with a bow, “and we come in peace.”
“Earth’s my desk. We call it Y-12/ZBB-22, and humans – ZZ-12Hs. How did you get in?”
“Via your computer, posing as bits,” I said and bowed too.
“Impressive. And you choose to arrive exactly now… What a coincidence!” He was thinking fast. “Come with me, there is someone I want you to meet.”
He led us through the park. We were awed by the abundance of plant, insect, bird and animal species, the likes of which I had never seen before. I wanted to stop and have a closer look, also into the ponds by the path, which were teeming with indescribable life forms, but the host walked too briskly for that, hating to come late to an important meeting.
“We call it his laboratory,” he commented. “He calls it his playground.”
Before I could ask who “he” or “we” were, Vogel, I and the host arrived at a table where an old man with a white beard sat modeling a clay figurine. It had three heads and six arms. The twinkle in his eyes expressed childlike joy of creation. Biting the tip of his tongue, he was giving the final touches to his handiwork. Two others of the kind were on the table, apparently finished.
Two of the winged kind stood by the table, watching the progress of the artist’s work and talking together in low voices. They gave Vogel and me a once-over, nodded to our guide and made a military-like row before the artist. Our host joined in, Vogel and me flanking him.
Somebody coughed, the artist sighed and raised his head.
“Yes, the evaluation,” he said looking right through Vogel and me. “Begin, please!”
“Good news from planet N-73, constellation GNM-88: model ZZ-73B is finally doing fine after third intervention,” one of the winged ones said.
“Splendid!” The artist was animated, but this disappeared, as the other winged one said:
“Nothing good about ZY-31D from planet G-73, constellation SKK-11. The model is still making wars after our fourth intervention.”
“Design a fifth intervener and we’ll evaluate,” the artist decided.
“ZZ-12H, planet Y-12, constellation ZBB-22,” our winged one said. “Fifth intervention has failed. The model is still allowing divisions into nationalities, which is leading to bloody wars. The model is still using violence in politics, causing more deaths. According to the Rules, it means irrevocable exclusion… unless, of course, the Rules be changed…?
“Yes!” the two others exclaimed. “The Rules be changed!”
The artist closed his eyes, deeply in thought, and said in a sad voice:
“I’m sorry, exclusion it shall be! Stop our business with ZZ-12H, close the slit and come back to get your new assignment. You’ll be thrilled: it’s a three-sexed brand-new TRS-99 to be launched on M-99, constellation LTT-27,” the artist indicated the figurines. “You recall: the recycled planet vacated by the excluded model GR-99F, which didn’t make it without our help, even though it bragged it would. TRS-99 will never fail you the way ZZ-12H did, I’m sure.”
It sounded like a tempting bargain, but our host turned to us and said:
“It will be exclusion, gentlemen. Your ass, not mine.”
He did not have to repeat it. We stepped out, bowed and Vogel spoke:
“Sir, as a specimen of the ZZ-12H model I beseech you to reconsider. What we have heard here was all about our imperfections, but nothing was said about our achievements. For example, quite a sizable portion of us have understood, from the perspective of our bloody history, that all ZZ-12Hs are equal, being products of the Master’s hands.” Vogel bowed again. “In this spirit, we have created human rights, international law and global organizations working for peace. We are abandoning the concept of imperial state of one nation enslaving another. In Europe, we’re building a multinational union – and some of the members have been waging war upon each other only recently! We male ZZ-12Hs have begun to give the rights back to the females of our model,” and he looked the artist straight in the eyes.
The artist was visibly attentive now. He returned the look and said to our winged one:
“What interventions have you employed, Gabriel?”
“As instructed, Sire,” was the reply. “The first three, the Buddha-Jesus-Mohammad triangle, were to create unity among the ZZ-12Hs through a common religion. The scientists were to establish unity by (Darwin) enlightening people as to their common ancestry and the floating boundaries between all the species on Y-12, and (Einstein) by proving the relativity of time and matter and giving thereby another point of view. In my opinion, Sire, there is nothing wrong with the ZZ-12Hs, just too few interventions,” and Gabriel laid a wing on my shoulder.
The artist seemed shaken, and I said, sympathetic of his predicament, with a sudden boldness, and feeling protected and prompted by the wing:
“The prophets are only dividing us, Sire, each religion claiming the sole ownership of the ultimate truth and fighting the others. And some of us ZZ-12Hs do not believe in Darwin’s theory, and most do not understand Einstein. Way over our heads, Sire, pardon the censure. We could use another intervention, something workable. Should the Rules be in the way, how about a change… please, Sire?” …” I stopped, feeling too bold, and bowed very low.
“New Rules, Sire! New Rules, Sire!” the winged ones demanded in unison and I felt the entire public opinion behind me.
The artist was lost in thought again then he nodded.
“Right,” he said, “the Rules be damned! You fellows tell the others and design some better Rules. Let’s have a General Assembly in, say, a month’s time?”
They nodded, and He looked at me in a dismissing way. I bowed and stepped back.
“Gabriel, design a smart new intervention for the ZZ-12Hs and come to talk about it in a week’s time. ZZ-12Hs can’t be that bungled if two of them made it all the way here,” the artist said, and the angels were enthusiastically clapping their hands now and beating their wings.
“Dismissed,” he said and returned to the TRS-99 on the table.
The others left, not without an appreciative pat on Vogel’s shoulder and mine. Gabriel led us through the park, asking additional questions about the failures of the previous interveners.
We came to an open gate (where we would have arrived, had we followed my recommendation to go left) and said goodbyes, Gabriel working in his head already.
We stood in the open gate and I was wondering how to get home when a sound of a gong was heard: the Cosmoscope was about to reverse the process. In my mind, I thanked Voss.
The wonderful feeling of being back in the body and stretching in my seat, Vogel in his.
“Let’s hope Gabriel will design a good intervener,” he said. “Another scientist, perhaps?”
“I think it will be many concurrent interveners, Master. You know: the Age of Aquarius. The challenge and rescue for us ZZ-12Hs will be to reconcile their teachings simultaneously.”
“Qui vivra verra,” he replied.
“Phone Voss, Master. By now he must think we have died in that contraption of his.”
“You phone him. He complained you never offered him a conversation, you boorish man!”
“What?!”
Vogel laughed, happy to be back, mission accomplished.
“I drank this wonderful drink years ago, at my initiation into the Totoraq tribe, and I had breathtaking visions. Expect a unique experience,” and he poured liberally. The bottle had been sent via a vacationing anthropologist stationed with a tribe of Amazonian Indians, the Totoraq.
The stuff was good, we got drunk, but nothing happened whisky would not have provided.
Vogel was disappointed and puzzled. He booked an air ticket to Brazil, took his cellular phone, his WDR (wave-detector-recorder) and was gone. There was no doubt that in his Totoraq period he must have made an important assumption, now proven wrong.
A month later Voss arrived, a wizard engineer, who builds customized gear for Vogel against liberal invoices. His van, a workshop on wheels, took over the garage.
He constructed a UFO-shaped outhouse and furnished it with high-tech equipment. True to his unforthcoming nature, he would tell me nothing. Even though he would let me step inside with the lunch tray, whatever he was building – especially the electronics – was covered, and he would ask me to leave immediately. When finished, he simply disappeared without a word.
“It’s the Cosmoscope,” Vogel told me arriving the day after. “Let’s launch it!”
He unlocked the door. The interior was air-conditioned, the domed ceiling was covered with wiring and electronics. There was a control panel and two adjustable armchairs.
“At my initiation as Totoraq”, he said, as we sat down, ”I had been given that drink and taken to a cave where I had powerful visions. The initial ones concerned the well-being of my tribe, the final one was different. In it, I was sent into a new dimension and stopped by a wall. I tried to jump over, but it was too high. I tried to crash through – to no avail. Recently, when the Totoraq sent me the bottle and nothing happened, I understood the visions had not been in the drink. I realized, too, why they sent it: they wanted me back. I found them deeply in trouble with the neighbors and the authorities. We Totoraq are an independent-minded breed. I was initiated again, into the council of elders this time, given no drink, but taken to the cave. New visions ensued, which gave the tribe fresh ideas as to how to solve the problems, I’m proud to report. My private vision of old was repeated, and again I was stopped by the wall. I’ve got a feeling that surmounting the wall is of capital importance,” and he run his fingers over the control panel’s keyboard.
“The visions were not in the drink, but in the cave!” it dawned on me at last. “You recorded the waves inside the cave and sent to Voss ordering an electronic copy!”
“Let’s play test pilots. Voss was too scared to try it out on himself,” and he punched “Enter”.
The lights went out, a purr was heard and my consciousness sped out of the body into a new dimension. I wanted to scream, but my vocal cords were left behind. I braced myself for an encounter with a danger, but all I did was to stop suddenly in front of a towering wall, stretching into the horizon in both directions. Vogel stopped beside me, attacked the wall head-on and bounced off like a rubber ball. He jumped, stopped just short of the top and set down.
“Didn’t I tell you?” He sounded angry and impatient.
“I associate wall with gate. Have you considered looking for one, Master?”
“We Totoraq are too independent-minded indeed! Which way would you recommend?”
“Left, it works in my dreams.”
Being Totoraq, he went to the right, though, and after some speeding along the never-ending brick-mass we found a defined space dotted with letter-slits by the thousand. Most were open, allowing a flow of white and black balls to pass within. Some were closed and the unaccepted balls, coming out of space in thousands of unending lines, formed heaps at the foot of the wall.
Vogel converted himself into a black ball and leaped head-on into a slit, only to get spat out and land on a heap: “Shit!”
“Easy, Master! The lines of balls make me think of information bits coming as if by cable from different places. You might get in through the slit for information from our place.”
“Good thinking!” and we gave the slits another look. They all had inscriptions in different characters, symbols, pictograms and scrawls. All were outlandish, and we got bored before I saw something familiar: ץראה רודכ – and I showed it to Vogel.
“Kadur ha-aretz, “Earth” in Hebrew,” he said and jumped into the slit. I changed into a ball, too, and followed in. It was a narrow corridor and the balls were moving through in the orderly fashion they had entered. In front, I saw a solitary black one jump others over and I followed the example, not to stay behind. At last, we landed side by side on a spacious, slowly revolving disk, packed with balls. A tube would come from above and suck blocks of balls up and the empty spaces would be filled up with newcomers. Vogel-ball jumped forward into the section to be sucked up and I-ball followed. With countless thousands of others we were lifted from the disk and thrown in the same pattern onto a lattice where we were stopped by the small-sized meshes. Vogel-ball contracted and fell through to the other side, and I followed suit.
We landed by a computer screen. There was a person in white clothes by the desk, his fingers busy with the keyboard. He had a pair of white wings on his back. The desk stood under the boughs of a fantastic plant in a park bursting with fanciful vegetation, pleasant sounds and delightful scents.
We sprang to the ground and assumed our prior forms.
“Who the heck are you and why?!” the winged one exclaimed with a stern look.
“Humans from planet Earth,” Vogel replied with a bow, “and we come in peace.”
“Earth’s my desk. We call it Y-12/ZBB-22, and humans – ZZ-12Hs. How did you get in?”
“Via your computer, posing as bits,” I said and bowed too.
“Impressive. And you choose to arrive exactly now… What a coincidence!” He was thinking fast. “Come with me, there is someone I want you to meet.”
He led us through the park. We were awed by the abundance of plant, insect, bird and animal species, the likes of which I had never seen before. I wanted to stop and have a closer look, also into the ponds by the path, which were teeming with indescribable life forms, but the host walked too briskly for that, hating to come late to an important meeting.
“We call it his laboratory,” he commented. “He calls it his playground.”
Before I could ask who “he” or “we” were, Vogel, I and the host arrived at a table where an old man with a white beard sat modeling a clay figurine. It had three heads and six arms. The twinkle in his eyes expressed childlike joy of creation. Biting the tip of his tongue, he was giving the final touches to his handiwork. Two others of the kind were on the table, apparently finished.
Two of the winged kind stood by the table, watching the progress of the artist’s work and talking together in low voices. They gave Vogel and me a once-over, nodded to our guide and made a military-like row before the artist. Our host joined in, Vogel and me flanking him.
Somebody coughed, the artist sighed and raised his head.
“Yes, the evaluation,” he said looking right through Vogel and me. “Begin, please!”
“Good news from planet N-73, constellation GNM-88: model ZZ-73B is finally doing fine after third intervention,” one of the winged ones said.
“Splendid!” The artist was animated, but this disappeared, as the other winged one said:
“Nothing good about ZY-31D from planet G-73, constellation SKK-11. The model is still making wars after our fourth intervention.”
“Design a fifth intervener and we’ll evaluate,” the artist decided.
“ZZ-12H, planet Y-12, constellation ZBB-22,” our winged one said. “Fifth intervention has failed. The model is still allowing divisions into nationalities, which is leading to bloody wars. The model is still using violence in politics, causing more deaths. According to the Rules, it means irrevocable exclusion… unless, of course, the Rules be changed…?
“Yes!” the two others exclaimed. “The Rules be changed!”
The artist closed his eyes, deeply in thought, and said in a sad voice:
“I’m sorry, exclusion it shall be! Stop our business with ZZ-12H, close the slit and come back to get your new assignment. You’ll be thrilled: it’s a three-sexed brand-new TRS-99 to be launched on M-99, constellation LTT-27,” the artist indicated the figurines. “You recall: the recycled planet vacated by the excluded model GR-99F, which didn’t make it without our help, even though it bragged it would. TRS-99 will never fail you the way ZZ-12H did, I’m sure.”
It sounded like a tempting bargain, but our host turned to us and said:
“It will be exclusion, gentlemen. Your ass, not mine.”
He did not have to repeat it. We stepped out, bowed and Vogel spoke:
“Sir, as a specimen of the ZZ-12H model I beseech you to reconsider. What we have heard here was all about our imperfections, but nothing was said about our achievements. For example, quite a sizable portion of us have understood, from the perspective of our bloody history, that all ZZ-12Hs are equal, being products of the Master’s hands.” Vogel bowed again. “In this spirit, we have created human rights, international law and global organizations working for peace. We are abandoning the concept of imperial state of one nation enslaving another. In Europe, we’re building a multinational union – and some of the members have been waging war upon each other only recently! We male ZZ-12Hs have begun to give the rights back to the females of our model,” and he looked the artist straight in the eyes.
The artist was visibly attentive now. He returned the look and said to our winged one:
“What interventions have you employed, Gabriel?”
“As instructed, Sire,” was the reply. “The first three, the Buddha-Jesus-Mohammad triangle, were to create unity among the ZZ-12Hs through a common religion. The scientists were to establish unity by (Darwin) enlightening people as to their common ancestry and the floating boundaries between all the species on Y-12, and (Einstein) by proving the relativity of time and matter and giving thereby another point of view. In my opinion, Sire, there is nothing wrong with the ZZ-12Hs, just too few interventions,” and Gabriel laid a wing on my shoulder.
The artist seemed shaken, and I said, sympathetic of his predicament, with a sudden boldness, and feeling protected and prompted by the wing:
“The prophets are only dividing us, Sire, each religion claiming the sole ownership of the ultimate truth and fighting the others. And some of us ZZ-12Hs do not believe in Darwin’s theory, and most do not understand Einstein. Way over our heads, Sire, pardon the censure. We could use another intervention, something workable. Should the Rules be in the way, how about a change… please, Sire?” …” I stopped, feeling too bold, and bowed very low.
“New Rules, Sire! New Rules, Sire!” the winged ones demanded in unison and I felt the entire public opinion behind me.
The artist was lost in thought again then he nodded.
“Right,” he said, “the Rules be damned! You fellows tell the others and design some better Rules. Let’s have a General Assembly in, say, a month’s time?”
They nodded, and He looked at me in a dismissing way. I bowed and stepped back.
“Gabriel, design a smart new intervention for the ZZ-12Hs and come to talk about it in a week’s time. ZZ-12Hs can’t be that bungled if two of them made it all the way here,” the artist said, and the angels were enthusiastically clapping their hands now and beating their wings.
“Dismissed,” he said and returned to the TRS-99 on the table.
The others left, not without an appreciative pat on Vogel’s shoulder and mine. Gabriel led us through the park, asking additional questions about the failures of the previous interveners.
We came to an open gate (where we would have arrived, had we followed my recommendation to go left) and said goodbyes, Gabriel working in his head already.
We stood in the open gate and I was wondering how to get home when a sound of a gong was heard: the Cosmoscope was about to reverse the process. In my mind, I thanked Voss.
The wonderful feeling of being back in the body and stretching in my seat, Vogel in his.
“Let’s hope Gabriel will design a good intervener,” he said. “Another scientist, perhaps?”
“I think it will be many concurrent interveners, Master. You know: the Age of Aquarius. The challenge and rescue for us ZZ-12Hs will be to reconcile their teachings simultaneously.”
“Qui vivra verra,” he replied.
“Phone Voss, Master. By now he must think we have died in that contraption of his.”
“You phone him. He complained you never offered him a conversation, you boorish man!”
“What?!”
Vogel laughed, happy to be back, mission accomplished.
Copyright © 2007 Peter Billig
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