2066 – Janek and William talking again

Friday 19th August

Conversation date 20661124

-[How are you feeling, Janek?]-

Hard to say.  I don’t really have anything to compare myself to.  Sometimes it seems I have always been like this, helplessly childish, craving my sleep, wondering why?

-[Which why are you wondering?  Why you? Or why do you feel this way?]-

More just why, full stop.

-[What do you mean just why?  Surely there must be some corollary, some specific ‘why’ you are questioning.  We want to help you, Janek.  We want your condition to improve, we want you to get better.  Maybe if you explain some of what you have been thinking we can help you.]-

Forget the’me’ in this equation, I am not so concerned about me, as you seem to be.  In some ways I am better.  A better thinker; at least when I am asleep.  I find I am doing all my thinking when I am asleep these days.  Only difference is, when I used to wake up those thoughts, those dreams were like slippery eels, they slithered out of my grasp, I could never grab them, I couldn’t remember them.  Now, all I can remember is the thoughts I had when I was asleep. While I am awake I can barely think, let alone remember anything.

-[Would you like to share them with me, these thoughts?  All knowledge is useful; as I am sure you would be the first to agree.  Sometimes progress works not in a straight line but in a series of jumps and fallbacks; I suspect that what are seen at the time as setbacks may actually be the springboards for the future.]-

So what am I, the spectacular failure you see before you, strapped into a wheelchair, still trying to remember how to speak, having my arse wiped daily and scribbling frantically with my right hand; or actually the first of a new breed of super-humans?  See, even I can laugh at my situation.   The ridiculousness, the irony of it all is not lost on me.  You had hoped to create a new Frankenstein, a ‘Super-human’ with remarkable abilities; the first of a new breed.  And you have overcooked the egg.  Three minutes and it would still have tasted delicious – I was left in the boiling water for too long.

-[We are still hoping for a full recovery, there are signs, small signs that you may be getting better.  Your mind is still working at least.]-

You asked what I was thinking, during those sleeping hours, when normally we regurgitate what on waking seems to be rubbish .  ‘Where did that dream come from?’ we say in amazement, as we pick over the fragments we remember on surfacing.   This is different – I can only really think when I am asleep.  I have been thinking a lot of why’s.   In many ways our super intelligence has always thrown up more questions than answers.  Or is it that whenever we get an answer to one question, we immediately want to know more.  The answer, if you will, asks new questions.  But so far the answers we have been getting only tell us how, or where or what or when, when we really want to know why?

-[Oh, I think we know an awful lot of why’s.  We know almost all of the Laws of Physics of the Universe; why when this happens does that occur.  We know an awful lot about human behaviour, why we react the way we do, why we are such poor learners, why we make so many mistakes.  What why’s do you think we don’t know.]-      

The very big why’s of course.  Why the Universe, why life itself, why us?  Those are good for starters I think.  Every so many years we posit another theory about the Universe, its nature, its creation, its direction – and we cling to them as long as the computer maths add up, then when something doesn’t quite fit, a radio telescopes image don’t match the theory, we run the problem again with a bit of new data, and amend the theory slightly.  We know now that the Big Bang was anything but (more a silent seepage of matter), we know that all that nonsense about there being nothing before the Big bang was wrong too, and one day we may find out the precise nature of the Universe, how it keeps re-creating itself every so many billions of years but none of that ‘knowledge’ begins to approach the question Why.  Why a Universe at all, why matter, why atoms, why energy, why time even?