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GTDreamsmith

The Technoshaman's Journey

He was in class when the Idea came to him. It intruded upon his thoughts, disrupting his concentration on the class. His mind was drifting into the Idea's embrace when he realized the professor was still talking, and he had no idea what the professor was saying. He couldn't afford to journey off now, he had a class to finish. He broke free of the Idea and began ignoring it.

The Idea was not pleased. It buzzed around his head like an angry insect, frustrated that he was not paying attention to it. He clenched his fists, driving his fingernails into his palms. He concentrated on the pain, refocusing his senses on the world of the classroom. He focused on the professor, erecting a barrier between the classroom and the rest of reality. But he could still sense the Idea, hovering outside his barrier, beating against it. He concentrated again, discarding this and all his other senses, save the five approved of by most people. His reality lost dimensions, flattening out into the purely mundane. He returned his attention to the professor, free of any distractions. He no longer sensed the Idea.

After class, he walked out into the parking lot and got into his car. As he drove home, he began thinking about the Idea that had come to him. It was a good Idea, it just had a lousy sense of timing. He was somewhat hungry, but more anxious to get home to his computer. He'd start writing the program the Idea expressed, and step out for a bite to eat later, after he had a good handle on the program.

Upon entering his apartment, he went to his bedroom, his sanctum, and tossed his backpack onto the bed. He sat down in the chair before his computer and logged in. He invoked a shell window, created a new directory, and moved into it. Once there, he invoked his favorite editor, Emacs. Emacs took over the screen, filling it, and began waiting patiently for him to enter code. He opened up his senses and awaited insight.

A few billion nanoseconds ticked by, slowly. His fingers remained motionless, poised over the keyboard like hungry lions, waiting for something to pounce on. The intimidating blankness of the editor window remained unblemished by code. The sound of the computer's fans was like a hurricane in the tomb-like silence of the room, unbroken by the sound of tapping keys.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, realizing he'd left out a vital component of his usual summoning ritual. He leaped up and ran into the kitchen, returning with a caffeinated beverage. He popped it open as he sat down, and listened to the hypnotic sound of fizz. He took a swig, then set the pop can down next to the keyboard. His fingers resumed their positions.

Again, a few billion nanoseconds ticked by, and he felt every one. He sighed. The Idea was mad at him for slamming the door in its face. But he knew how to coax it out. He remembered what he could of it, and started typing, waiting for it to come along and start filling in the gaps. This continued for some time, without the Idea returning. He began to worry that it would not return, that it had retreated to the world of the Forms, or moved on to find another person to express it. Still, he continued to type, the gentle tapping of his fingers on the keyboard producing a staccato drum-like beat.

Gradually, he began to lose touch with the world. The first thing to go was his sense of touch. His fingers continued to tap on the keyboard, but he no longer felt them. His thoughts simply appeared on the screen as he thought them, translated directly from imagination to reality. Next, the constant white noise of the fans gradually faded from his conscious awareness. His world was pristinely silent. He had long since lost his peripheral vision. All he could see was the screen in front of him. It seemed to be growing more distant. He had the code firmly in mind, he didn't need to read it off the screen. It flowed from his fingers like a kind of energy, grounding into the keyboard as a representation of it appeared on the screen. He paused, coming to the end of one function and not sure where to proceed from there. He was staring at the screen, but was not seeing it at all. In fact, he was staring through the screen. His eyes were focused on a point much further away, a shining point of light an infinite distance behind the screen. The screen framed it, the starting point of a tunnel. His mind began moving forward, pulled by the irresistible gravity of that distant point. He slid forward into the tunnel.

He was falling. The tunnel started to curve upwards. He accelerated up the curve. He was falling into the sky, a distant star pulling him onward, faster and faster. The walls of the tunnel were silvery and reflective. He was a photon, traveling down the inside of a fiber optic strand at the speed of light. No, faster even than that; he blazed onward, leaving a trail of Cherenkov radiation in his wake. The walls of the tunnel sped by at impossible speeds. Then they too disappeared.

He sped on through empty space. He was dimly aware of a Cartesian grid around him. If he thought about it, he could feel his coordinates. He adjusted the trajectory of his soul. He had been here before. He knew where to go, where to find what he was looking for.

He saw the archway ahead. The perfect arch, a perfect parabola. He breathed its name as he approached it, "y = x²." He slowed as he passed through it into the perfect world.

They floated around him. Eidos, Plato had called them. The Ideas. Some translated this as the Forms, thinking it less misleading, since they were not ideas of the mind. They existed outside the mind, outside space, outside time. They were independent of the minds of men or gods, prior to either. They required no minds to think them. Rather the reverse. They were not the products of imagination, they were the most real things in existence.

The geometric ones were always the first he noted. They were the easiest to apprehend. The Perfect Circle surrounded him, surrounded them all, the equator of the Perfect Sphere that was part of the Perfect Hypersphere that was part of the pandimensional figure that enclosed the entire realm. Perfect polygons formed perfect polyhedrons that orbited in complex patterns. But he was not interested in them, he was here for something else. He floated by them in search of his goal.

He glanced the form of Beauty, but looked away quickly, afraid that if he looked too long, he would never be able to bring himself to leave. Justice drifted by, and he wondered idly if Themis, the Greek goddess of justice, was an anthropomorphization of this Idea, or a lesser spirit that participated in this Form more than most, a shadow of Justice itself. Perhaps this Idea was what the goddess worshipped. He realized he was getting distracted, an easy thing in this place. He focused his mind upon his goal.

He was looking for the algorithms. They were here too, in their most perfect forms. He headed into areas of greater complexity, looking for the Idea his program was attempting to instantiate. He had glimpsed it before, but he couldn't hold it in his vision. He needed its help, and he knew it needed his.

Philosophers had debated the mind-body relation for ages. Dualists said the mind was nonmaterial, but materialists puzzled over how a nonmaterial thing could affect material things. How could a mental event be the cause of a physical event if the mind was not physical? He didn't know the answer to this puzzle, nor did he really care. It worked, that's all he knew. As dual-natured beings, humans bridge that gap. We are walking conduits between the physical and nonphysical worlds. Through these conduits can the worlds interact. He knew this. And he knew the Ideas knew this as well. That was why they came to him and people like him. Some of them wanted to affect the physical world, wanted to be expressed into it, so they sought a conduit through which they could work. Thus, they needed him, or someone like him, as much as he needed them.

But he was keenly aware of the "or someone like him" part. He had ignored this Idea, offended it, refused to hear its call. An Idea will only bug one person for so long before it gives up and moves on to find a different conduit. When it feels its time has come, it will find a conduit, by hook or by crook. But Ideas can only be expressed imperfectly into the physical world. There are no perfect circles on Earth. And deep in his soul, he knew that although he could not express it perfectly, he knew this Idea better than anyone else. By expressing itself through him, it could be expressed more perfectly than through any other conduit. He called out to it, expressing his desire. He called out to it, expressing his love. He called out to it, expressing his sorrow.

A moment later, it was before him. It dominated the world, filling it, surrounding him. It was huge and it was beautiful and it was angry. Its ire with him was an oppressive, suffocating force. He apologized again, expressing his regret for his foolish actions. He offered himself, like a human sacrifice to appease an angry god. He offered the use of his body, a precious conduit into the world Ideas could not otherwise touch. It was all he had to offer, and the only thing the Idea desired.

Suddenly, he was in the Idea's embrace. They sped back down the tunnel to the middle world, leaving the upper world behind. They passed so quickly he couldn't see the tunnel walls, just streaks of light as they went by. And with an abrupt jolt, he was back in his room, with the computer before him.

His fingers burst into action, typing furiously as the Idea expressed itself through him. He watched, fascinated, as the program began to take shape before him. He felt dissociated from his body; he was watching it move without his conscious control. A wave of nausea passed through him, as it always did when the Ideas rode him like the loa of voudun. The momentary disorientation passed, and he resumed his contemplation of the program taking shape. He gasped at the beauty of it.

The Idea faltered. It had perfect conception of itself, but knew not how to express itself in the imperfect language of the computer. But he was an experienced programmer. He suggested a way. The Idea concurred. Typing resumed.

The skeleton of the program had long been completed, now they were simply fleshing it out. As they moved further from the abstract into the concrete details, the Idea relied on his aid more and more. They worked together on the program, a collaboration between Idea and Man.

He gradually came to realize he was now the one in control of his body. He was the one doing the typing, while the Idea now hovered around him. They had slowly shifted places without him noticing. He nodded in appreciation. "Thank you. I can take it from here." He felt the Idea's approval, but it remained present, watching, anxious to see the final result. He could feel its excitement, as well as his own, as he worked out the final details, cleared up the last few unresolved problems. Finally, the program ran.

He leaned back in his chair and sighed. The Idea drifted away, satisfied. As the last of the Idea's tendrils disentangled themselves from his mind, he became fully engaged with the middle world. He was exhausted, starving, and about to burst his bladder. As he got up to head for the bathroom, he noticed the first rays of the sun coming up over the horizon. He was flabbergasted. Had that much time really passed? He would have guessed an hour or two, but he realized now that fourteen hours had passed since he'd sat down and started typing. He couldn't remember most of it.

Upon leaving the bathroom, he glanced back and forth between the kitchen and the bedroom. Exhaustion won out over hunger, and he flopped into bed. As he drifted off to sleep, heading for the world of dreams, he mused that he spent more time out of his body than in it. He drifted outward, looking for a new world to explore...

[This story was originally published here, but it also appeared on Themestream on 2001-04-11 as the fifth and last article I ever posted there. It was, in fact, the last article anyone ever posted to the Shamanism section, and one of the last in the Paganism section, as Themestream stopped accepting submissions a couple hours after it was uploaded. I assume there was no causal connection between these events...]