Diego Faracas has a recurring dream in which a mob of crazed villagers chases him through an ancient Italian forest. As he runs, the old trees wither and die with supernatural speed before him, and new ones sprout from the dry beans that fly from his pockets. Sometimes, these trees bear fruit which blossom into ghosts and ward off his attackers. Sometimes, they release tiny spheres which coalesce into floating black clusters. Usually, though, they simply grow to a height of about ten feet, and begin sprouting their own fractal systems of branches. The mob chases him out of the forest and to a field. Diego can’t explain it, but the field is off limits. Under no circumstances is he to enter the field. He wakes up just before the killing blow. He has been having this dream, about three times a month, since he was twelve years old.
Diego sees a psychiatrist once a week. The dream used to come up in every session, but both men have long-since filed it away as a mere quirk, inexplicable but ultimately harmless. Diego’s psychiatrist is a post-Fruedian who places no undue significance in dreams. Dreams are mental steam, cognitive garbage, visual and auditory remainders. Diego suffers from no debilitating sexual perversions that require a tweed-jacketed charlatan to decipher. He and his psychiatrist talk about stress and anxiety. They tackle his far too critical judgment of himself. But they don’t worry about his dreams.
Diego doesn’t work. He used to be a dentist, but he made his money in the movie industry. Nobody really knows why, but dentists are financially responsible for a considerable number of over-the-top genre films. They often don’t even expect any money back from their investment. Just give them a quick mention in the credits, and drop a copy of the finished product off at their office. Some years ago, Diego invested in a little horror film that was being shot in his hometown. In exchange for his investment, he was given a back-end percentage of the film, and any sequels it may spawn. They’re on movie five. Diego is set for life.
His girlfriend Sandra is a professor at the small university about a mile from their house. She teaches post-war European film. She and Diego met at a local film festival which was displaying his movie. They have lived together for three years. They are happy.
Diego has never told Sandra about his dream. Not out of secrecy, but because he doesn’t find it relevant. He’s used to the dream by now, and nothing bad has ever happened because of it. So, she is just as intrigued as everybody else when he explains it to their dinner guests.
“You never told me this,” Sandra says.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t feel like it’s a big deal,” Diego says.
“You’ve been having this dream since you were a child. Don’t you think it has to mean something?”
“Nah. Dreams don’t mean anything.”
“I don’t know….”
They finish dinner and most of the guests say their goodbyes. The only person remaining, besides Sandra and Diego, is Hank, the university’s philosophy lecturer.
“You know,” Hank says. “There’s something familiar about that dream of yours. I feel like I’ve heard it somewhere. Could you have told me about it before, Diego?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t really talk about it that much.”
“Hmm.” Hank helps them clean the table, and then he leaves. He gets into his car, but doesn’t immediately drive off. The dream is still picking at his memory, like a song he can almost sing but can’t name. He shakes his head and begins to back out of the driveway. Sandra and Diego live next to a park, so the intersection by their house is three-way. Hank checks his rear-view mirror, then looks left and right before driving on. Halfway through his turn, it hits him. He makes a hasty U-turn and speeds back to his friends.
Diego seems slightly annoyed at having to answer the door, but that changes when he sees the expression on Hank’s face.
“Hank, what’s wrong, man?” Diego asks.
“It’s your dream. I figured it out. It’s real. You’ve been dreaming something that really happened.”
“Pythagoras?” Diego asks. He can’t believe it. “You mean the triangle guy?”
“He was more than that,” Hank replies. “He was a very influential figure, for lots of reasons.”
“Okay. So what does he have to do with my dream?”
“Your dream is a pretty accurate description of how he died.”
“Wait, really?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Sandra laughs. “So, the triangle guy was killed by an angry mob?”
“Yeah, he was,” Hank says.
“Why?”
“He was a cult leader.”
Diego and Sandra both say, “What?” at the same time.
Hank laughs. “Yeah. You didn’t know that? I don’t remember why they killed him, exactly, but it had something to do with driving his group out of the area.”
“What was their deal? Did they bow down before triangles?” Diego asks.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Oh.”
“I’m a little rusty on everything they believed, but the main idea was that each number was sort of its own thing. Like, seven isn’t a number meaning ‘one greater than six,’ but more of an entity imbued with the property of ‘seven.’”
“Huh?” Sandra says.
“I know. Pretty obscure stuff. I don’t know if I really understand it, but there it is. They believed that there was this other world, like a realm of pure numbers, outside of this world. A land of raw mathematics.”
“But…that’s this world,” Diego says.
“True, but they didn’t necessarily see it like that.”
“Could you, like, get to this math land?” Sandra says.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what about Diego’s dream? Did Pythagoras really die like that?”
“Yeah. The mob chased him until he got to the edge of a bean field. He refused to run into the field, so they killed him.”
“Why didn’t he go in?” Diego asks.
“Pythagoras was afraid of beans,” Hank says.
Sandra and Diego both laugh. “He was what?” Diego says.
“Well, maybe ‘afraid’ is the wrong word. More like deferential. He just didn’t mess with them. I think there are some historical theories as to why, but that doesn’t feel like something you can know about a guy without asking him. Anyway, that part about not wanting to go into the field is real, supposedly.”
“What about the other stuff? The trees and the ghosts?”
“I don’t know.”
“And why have I been dreaming about a famous dude’s death from thousands of years ago for most of my life?”
“I don’t know.”
“Huh.”
Sandra asks, “Does this change anything, Diego? I mean, knowing it’s real, or at least kinda real, do you feel like it might be important?”
Diego hesitates. He hasn’t had enough time to fully process what his friend has told him, but he can’t deny that there has been a change. If not in actuality, then at least in his perception. He had shrugged the dream off years ago as some random misfire of synapses that, for some reason, got stuck in his memory. Now, though, it’s different. He’s sure he had never heard about how Pythagoras died before tonight, especially not twenty-two years ago, when his dreaming started. But if he didn’t know it, how is it in his head? “Well, yeah. I think it probably does change things, doesn’t it?”
“Hank, this is freaky,” Sandra says. “Do you think we should do anything?”
“Gimme a day or two to do some research,” Hank says. “I’ll stop by here when I’ve thought of something.”
“Thanks, Hank,” Diego says.
Though he fully expects to, Diego does not have the dream that night.
Hank returns to Sandra and Diego’s house the next evening, armed with a laptop computer, a set of nice-looking bluetooth headphones, and a pillow. Diego guesses what he has in mind right away. “You’re gonna try to induce the dream, aren’t you?”
“Not just that,” Hank says. “Let me ask you: do you ever go lucid?”
“You mean when I dream? Like do I know I’m dreaming?”
“Yeah. You recognize it, and then you start to control things.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. You want me to try to change it, somehow?”
“You got it. I want to see what happens if you walk into the field.”
Diego has some Ambien, but Hank says it’s better to go lucid naturally. That way, you know what you’re seeing is a result of your own bodily systems, not a side-effect of the drug. They hang out and watch TV until around one in the morning, when Diego starts to feel sleepy. Hank chugs a coffee and dims the lights. He hands Diego the headphones, and starts pulling something up on the laptop.
“What’s all this for?” Diego asks.
“A method to induce lucidity. I’m gonna play this tone into your headphones. Each ear is a slightly different frequency, so your brain will automatically enter a meditative state simply by trying to make them match up. I’ve done it myself. It works.”
“Okay. But how do you know I’m gonna have the dream? I thought I would last night, but I didn’t.”
“What did you dream about last night?”
“I don’t remember. But I know it wasn’t the Pythagoras one.”
“Well, I’m gonna show you a picture. As you’re drifting off to sleep, I want you to visualize this image in your mind. It’s linked to the Pythagoreans, so I’m hoping that maybe it’ll help nudge the dream out.” Hank turns the laptop around and shows Diego a picture of a triangle. Inside the triangle are ten dots, arranged in four rows like bowling pins. “The Pythagoreans worshiped this symbol. Think about it until you pass out.”
“What if this doesn’t work?”
“Then whatever. Try again tomorrow night. Or the night after. Just keep trying until you have the dream, and you’re able to take control. You kinda need to train your brain to be able to do it, so don’t worry if it takes some time.”
“Okay. Good night.”
“Night. I’ll leave you to it. The tone you’re gonna be listening to is coming from a Youtube video. It lasts eight hours, so you should be good, but if you have to, just restart it.”
Hank leaves and goes to an all-night diner for some pancakes. He never goes to bed before three o’ clock in the morning.
Diego imagines that the triangle is floating directly in front of his closed eyes. He counts the ten dots, in differing order, over and over. The tones playing in Hank’s headphones do sound slightly out of sync, but sometimes it sounds as if they coincide, if only for a second or two, before they start wavering again. When Hank told him about the tone, Diego thought it sounded like a headache waiting to happen, but now he realizes that that is not the case. He focuses on the black curtain in front of his eyes, trying to acknowledge that it itself is a form of sight. He feels his body start to relax, but his mind is as aware as ever. Is this what going lucid means: to fall asleep while staying awake?
He feels himself being dragged somewhere, like he is simultaneously falling into a bed of quicksand and floating, ever so slowly, above his sheets. He begins to hear whispered voices, on the periphery of the binaural notes coming from the video. He eventually recognizes these voices as auditory hallucinations, as they are simply repetitions of his thoughts. The only way to stop them is to focus all the more intently on the tones, and to place his visualization of the supposedly sacred triangle in the front of his mind. A door opens, and Diego feels himself go through it, willingly entering the domain of dreams.
His dream begins, and for a moment he is unready. But the tones still play in his ears, and they help him remember. He takes a look around, to find that he is imprisoned in a large Victorian mansion. He has adopted multiple German Shepherds, and one of them, a nameless, red-furred male, vomits a Civil-War-era Confederate coin onto the ground. An odd dream, to be sure, made even more so by his lucidity, but not what he was going for. That is the only dream he recognizes or remembers that night.
But Diego is not discouraged. Hank had told him it might take time. There’s always tomorrow night. Or, for that matter, tomorrow morning, afternoon, and evening. Diego has no job to get to, and no errands to run the following day. He feels confident that, given his wide-open schedule, he should make it to the bean field relatively quickly.
It takes him a week and a half to go lucid inside the desired dream. There have been moments when he did start to think he wasn’t going to make it, but Sandra was there, cheering him on all the time. He has been lucky to have a partner who is so open-minded, who relishes these sorts of esoteric opportunities.
This time, the trees do nothing out of the ordinary. There are no dry beans in his pockets. The villagers chase him, but they seem slightly hesitant, unsure of the shifting power dynamic. Diego considers turning around and mocking them, but thinks better of it. Who knows how long until he gets another chance to complete the experiment? He picks up a weak jog through the forest, at least going through the motions of the dream, as he knows it. The villagers recognize his changes and react accordingly, now more of a horde of zombies than an angry mob. It’s almost as if they know what Diego is attempting, and are just as curious as he is to see how things will play out. He has plenty of time.
He reaches the border of the field and turns around. The villagers are still about fifty yards away, and seem to be in no particular hurry. He has never spoken to them before, and he considers it now. Maybe he can plead his case, explain that he is not Pythagoras, but a former dentist from the distant future who comes here sometimes in his dreams. He’s not even particularly good at math. But he decides not to. Better not to risk it on the first try. So he waves to them and steps into the field.
It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but pain is the only metric by which he can explain the sensation. This is wrong, he gathers, not in a moral sense, but in this oblique way that somehow transcends even biology. His body, as well as his mind, is out of phase here. He does not belong.
His legs become unimaginably heavy. He has barely made it ten feet into the field before they refuse to move any more. He looks up at the sky and sees that the stars are twinkling much slower than usual. He wakes up.
“Hey, Sandy!” Diego says, waking Sandra up from her own bizarre dream. “I made it! I made it in to the field.”
“Huh?” Sandra says, still groggy. “You what? Oh…oh!” She is now fully awake. “You did? That’s great! What was it like?”
“Weird,” Diego says. “I couldn’t make it very far before I just kinda…stopped working, but now we know I can go in there.”
“That’s wonderful, honey. How do you feel?”
“Strange. I mean, I’ve been having this dream most my life, and I never thought I could control it. I can’t tell if I’m seeing more of something that was already there, of if I’m…writing it.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Sandra says.
“What do you mean?”
“That you can’t tell the difference between what you decide and what is decided for you. Maybe this is a statement about free will, that the lines between automatic and autonomous are kinda blurry.”
“Do you really think it’s that grandiose?” Diego asks.
“Oh, absolutely. I’m not a pagan, or anything, but I’ve seen enough movies and read enough books to know a message from the gods when I see one. This is a test. Diego, you’ve got to make it through that field.”
The dream starts to come every night, even on nights he forgets to employ Hank’s lucidity technique. Diego gets very good at recognizing it. He makes it farther into the field with every attempt, though even after fifteen tries, he can still only manage about two hundred feet.
The villagers no longer even chase him. By now they know that he is trying to traverse the field, and they very much want to see him do it. Diego even thinks he hears them cheering him on, during one attempt, but he can’t know for sure.
A month in, and he has made it more than halfway. On the horizon, he can see a soft light, a haze just above the stalks. This light is his goal. He believes that upon arrival at the light, all his questions will be answered. He is correct, though he has no idea what awaits him on the other side of the bean field.
Two months and eleven days after his first attempt, Diego walks out of the field and into the light. He has had plenty of time to consider the mortal implications of his task, as the phrase “going into the light” is widely used as a euphemism for death, but he is confident that that is not what is happening. There is a stranger agenda here, one that somehow sidesteps common mortality. Death is a part of it, to be sure, but not Diego’s death. He decides Sandra is right: this is a test. And there would be no reason to formulate a test where to pass would be to die.
The light is amazingly bright, but fleeting. Once it fades, Diego finds himself in a desert. In front of him, the sacred triangle he has been visualizing floats in the air, rotating slowly. He steps towards it, and as he does, it begins to change. The lines disconnect and adjust. New lines appear, and a new symbol is formed. A pentagram. Another person might balk at this sight, but Diego has had time to research the Pythagoreans, and he knows that the pentagram was something of a badge for them, that they used it as a secret code of entry. It appears Diego has been chosen.
As he extends his hand, he finds himself in a concrete room, sitting at the head of a large stone table. Across from him sits a figure so unimaginable, yet so familiar, that an almost palpable wave of deja-vu swallows him whole. The figure has the body of a man, dark-skinned and sturdy, and the head of some exotic, long-necked bird. Atop the bird’s head is what Diego immediately recognizes as an Egyptian Pharaonic headdress, wobbling as the bird pecks at a plate of beans directly in front of him.
The bird man looks up and acknowledges Diego for the first time. “Well, you took your time, Diego Faracas. But what is twenty-two years really, in Thoth’s domain?”
Diego is speechless.
“Can’t speak, eh?” the bird man says. “That’s okay, as no introduction is necessary, on your part. You are Diego Faracas, mathematical genius. I am Thoth, the self-created calculator of the universe, the god of knowledge, inventor of geometry, and ruler of this domain, known to you as Khemenu. I have awaited your arrival with great interest.”
Mathematical genius? Diego thinks he must be going crazy. Time-travelling dreams he can comprehend, but anything harder than basic algebra has always been, and remains, a mystery to him. Confronted with an ancient Egyptian god, it is this inaccurate assessment which gives him real pause.
Thoth, however, is not hindered by Diego’s silence. He continues his oratory. “I imagine you would like to know why I have summoned you here to Khemenu, Diego Faracas. I shall tell you. For millennia, I have governed this land. Here, outside these walls, is the domain of numbers, the world of pure mathematics. It has been my responsibility to maintain the order of the place, to balance the equation, so to speak, so as to keep this land separate from what you call the Earthly realm. Without my constant vigilance, these two universes would bleed together. Needless to say, this would spell catastrophe for both worlds. My domain requires perfection, whereas yours often relies on caprice. They must remain distinct. But my mind is fading, Diego Faracas. The lives of gods may be long, by your standards, but they are not endless. I fear I am nearing the end of my time in Khemenu. Therefore I need an heir, someone of your brilliance, to carry on my important work.”
Wake up, Diego thinks. You can wake up now. This is much too heavy.
“We have met before, Diego Faracas, though it was many years ago, and I admittedly was not in this aspect. I came to you as a man, during the period of time you call ‘the mid-90’s.’ I administered to you a test, within the walls of your place of learning. Perhaps you remember.”
Diego shakes his head. He can’t remember, exactly, but there is something familiar about Thoth’s story.
Thoth says, “You snapped your pencil.”
“Oh,” Diego says. “OH!” It’s all coming back to him now, for better or worse. He has buried this memory deep inside his mind, as it recalls the most shameful moment of his life.
Kevin Bell and Diego Faracas were bitter enemies, the kind that only exist in warfare, Shakespearean dramas, and elementary school. Kevin was better at Oregon Trail, but Diego could run faster, which is more important by grade-school standards. Diego was also better at drawing, playing the recorder, and science fair. But Kevin was something of a math prodigy, so much so that there was talk of him being allowed to take high-school classes as early as the sixth grade. Diego could barely remember his multiplication tables, and to be honest, he didn’t really care about math. It just never spoke to him the way science or recess did. But Kevin loved nothing more than to rub his success in Diego’s face.
Kevin was not a nice child, at least to the other children. He mocked, snitched on, and laughed at his classmates any chance he got. But to the teachers, he was an angel. He knew the perfect thing to say to them to get on their good side. He was a snake in the grass, and everybody under the age of 25 knew it. For whatever reason, he had singled Diego out as the primary victim of his duplicitous schemes. He called Diego “Dingy Maracas,” which, along with being cruel, was just non-sensical and lazy.
Once, Diego lost his digital watch on the playground. Kevin Bell found it and brought it to the lost and found. The school secretary, one of the most fervent members of Kevin’s cult of personality, told him that if no one claimed the watch by the end of the week, he could have it. Diego looked everywhere for that watch, including the exact area under the basketball hoop where Kevin found it, but it seemed to be lost forever. In a last-ditch effort, he went to the office on Friday to see if anyone had put it in the lost and found. As he approached the secretary’s desk, he saw her handing his watch to none other than Kevin Bell. Diego protested, but the secretary explained that she had promised the watch to Kevin, and that Diego should keep a better eye on his belongings. Diego never forgave the secretary for this slight, and his feelings toward Kevin Bell transformed from extreme disdain to ever-burning hatred. No longer was Diego the weak little boy of the past. He was now an instrument of vengeance, hell-bent on destroying Kevin Bell if it was the last thing he did.
The next week, a man with a long, bony neck and a pronounced Adam’s apple came to Diego and Kevin’s class. He explained that he was from the state government, and that he had a special treat for them. They were going to take a standardized test, to find out who the smartest kids in the state were. The entire thing would be math questions. They had all day to complete the test. There was no rush. Diego vowed to finish very quickly, so that he could spend the rest of the day reading his new choose-your-own-adventure book. He was a ninja warrior, and he had learned last night not to go back into the cave in the first chapter, because there was a tiger there, waiting to eat him.
So excited to get this stupid test out of the way, Diego snapped his pencil tearing open the perforated tab holding the pages together. He raised his hand, and the bony-necked man brought him another one. Diego simply filled in any answer that popped into his head. He did not show any work, and he answered “C” for every question during the multiple choice section. Even so, Kevin Bell finished the test in a remarkable twenty minutes. When he got up to turn it in, the bony-necked man, looking pleased, asked him his name.
“Kevin Bell,” Kevin Bell said, turning to smirk smugly in Diego’s direction. The bony-necked man took out a manila envelope labeled with Kevin’s name and put the completed test in it.
“Very good, Kevin Bell,” the man said. “You may go play.”
Diego finished next, about five minutes later. The bony-necked man took out Diego’s own manila envelope and filed the test away. Diego turned to leave, accidentally knocking his and Kevin Bell’s tests on to the ground, and out of their envelopes. In a moment of either quick-witted cleverness, or spontaneous evil, Diego bent down and switched the tests before handing them back to the bony-necked man.
“Very good, Diego Faracas,” the man said. “You may go play.”
That night, Diego had a dream in which a mob of crazed villagers chased him through an ancient Italian forest.
Back in Thoth’s domain, Diego feels the beginnings of a nervous breakdown. Sweat has clouded his vision, and his heart is pumping at a dangerous rate. He says nothing, but shakes his head.
“So, you remember?” Thoth says. “That day, you proved to be one of the finest mathematical minds of all time. Your score was off the charts. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from the test. Most people fail to understand the language of mathematics as you do. For example, the child who completed the test before you only answered seven questions out of two hundred correctly, and that was simply because he got lucky on the multiple choice. He was a frightful idiot, of absolutely no consequence. I first sent you the dream that night.”
“P-p-p-Pythagoras,” Diego manages.
Thoth laughs.”Oh, yes, did you enjoy that? My little joke. Pythagoras was indeed the first mortal to enter the realm of Khemenu. He helped me to maintain order, for a short while, under the title of the shared god Serapis. But his mind was too entrenched in his mortal ways, I’m afraid. Oddly enough, he refused the offerings given unto him by his followers.” Thoth gestures down to his plate of beans. “It is not right for a god to deny offerings. It paints the wrong picture. I told him he had no choice, that he had to eat the beans, but he chose death instead. Stupid. You, I trust, will not make the same mistake.”
“Uh, no,” Diego says. “I like beans alright.”
“Good, good! Now, Diego Faracas, as you are not yet used to the atmosphere of Khemenu, I am afraid I must banish you back to the Earthly realm for now. Over the next few mortal months, we will build up your tolerance to the mathematical world, and then you shall begin your duties as my successor. Farewell.”
Before he can respond, Diego wakes up.
His bed is damp beneath his sweating body. Sandra is pacing the floor of their bedroom, frantically whispering into her cell phone.
“I don’t know, Hank. I think something’s wrong. Should I call an ambulance? Yeah? Okay, I’ll call them. Could you come over and check on him? I mean, if you’re not too tired? Okay, thanks. See you in a few. Oh, Diego! Baby! You’re awake. Yes, Hank, he just woke up. I won’t call the paramedics, but I still think you should come over. Okay. Bye.” Sandra hangs up the phone and scrambles to Diego’s bedside. “What happened? You were shaking.”
“I was?” Diego asks.
“Yeah. You were shaking, and sweating. I thought you were having some sort of seizure.”
“Did…did you say Hank is coming?”
“Yeah, honey. He’s on his way right now.”
“Okay, good. I, um, I made it through the field.”
“Amazing,” Hank says, after hearing Diego’s story. “Just amazing. Do you think it was a real conversation?”
Diego hasn’t even considered the idea that it wasn’t. “It was the most real thing I have ever experienced.”
“Wow. This is incredible.”
“Uh, Hank,” Sandra says, “I think you mean to say that it’s terrifying. If what Diego says is true, then he holds the fate of the universe --two universes-- in his hands. And, I’ve seen him try to figure out a tip. He’s not up to it. Sorry, Diego.”
“Hey, no argument here.”
Hank says, “Yes, that is rather unsettling, but I don’t think it’s catastrophic, just yet. Thoth said you had a couple months before you actually started with your duties, right?”
“Yeah,” Diego says. “But I don’t imagine we’re just gonna spend those months hanging out and eating beans. He’s gonna want some proof that I know math.”
“Well, you’ll just have to stall him, until we figure something out.”
“How the hell am I supposed to stall a god?”
“I don’t know. But it seems like it should be possible. I mean, you tricked this very same god, when you were twelve. Get him talking about himself, or something. Meanwhile, Sandra and I will try and work something out here in the Earthly realm.”
“Like what?” Sandra asks.
“Well, for starters, I think we need to find Diego a tutor. I’ll raid the math department of the university, and call in a few favors I have elsewhere. You, Sandra, need to find this Kevin Bell. Perhaps we can convince Thoth to take him in Diego’s place.”
“Ugh, not Kevin Bell,” Diego says. “Anything but that.”
“Diego, it’s the most logical thing,” Sandra says. “I mean, he was the chosen one, not you.”
“Yeah, I know, but he’s my bitter enemy.”
“Still? You’re both grown men in your thirties. Surely you’ve moved past your elementary school feud, right?”
“I mean…”
“Oh, for Thoth’s sake!”
Hank laughs.
“Already making jokes? It’s not your butt on the line here,” Diego says.
“Uh, weren’t you listening, sweetie? It’s all out butts on the line. We need to do whatever we can.”
The theological implications of the situation don’t strike Diego until around noon the next day. Like he told Hank last night, he does not, for one second, doubt the reality of his predicament. An ancient Egyptian god really has deputized him to be the savior of the universe. This means that the ancient Egyptians were right. Their religion was accurate. Does that make it the “one true religion?” Though he seldom practices nowadays, Diego was raised Catholic, and he has to admit he is slightly disappointed by this revelation. The Egyptian pantheon is much scarier than the God he grew up worshiping; they require offerings, have fickle temperaments, and often wage apocalyptic battle with one another. What’s going to happen when he dies? Will he have to weigh his sins against a feather, like he saw on that television show? That seems like kind of a rigged system. Should he make preparations to be mummified, and if so, who does one contact for such a service? And, perhaps most pressing, what will happen if he fails? He hopes Hank and Sandra have figured something out.
Hank has talked to everyone in the math department, but none of them seem too excited to tutor a 34-year-old dentist. Obviously, Hank can’t come out and say why his friend needs the help, so it just sounds weird when he asks. He calls a local tutoring business, but they are booked to capacity. It is SAT season, after all. His next idea is to shoot out a few emails to people he’s met around the country, at conventions and other universities. Later that day, he gets a response he wasn’t expecting.
Sandra, in an attempt to locate Kevin Bell, traverses Diego’s Facebook account for most of her morning. She doesn’t teach a class today until 5, so she has some time to dig around. Diego is not still friends with many of his elementary classmates, and none of the ones that he is friends with are also friends with Kevin. But no good internet stalker would let something like that stop them. She reads Diego’s friends’ profiles, comparing them to what Diego has said about Kevin, building a bridge out of smaller and smaller intermediaries. By targeting intersections, pruning off fruitless branches, and following patterns, she eventually finds what she is looking for.
Diego’s psychiatrist has started to worry. Diego has canceled three sessions in the past month and a half, and the few he did attend were somewhat off-putting. There has been an airiness to Diego that he has never seen before. He seems disinterested in many of the things that used to excite him. He doesn’t seem depressed, but his awkward behavior could be described as manic. The doctor asks Diego if he’s been getting enough sleep. Diego just laughs.
The email Hank receives is from a relatively well-known computer scientist and science fiction writer. Hank is a pretty big fan, and he really only reached out to him as a joke. He had explained Diego’s predicament as abstractly as he could, not wanting to come off as a lunatic. But the writer’s response is shockingly precise.
“Hank, first of all, let me say thank you for sending me this email. It’s always good to talk to fans. I read about your friend’s problem, and I would like to ask you what might appear to be a crazy question. There’s no delicate way to put this, so I’ll just say it: was your friend Diego summoned to Khemenu by the Egyptian god Thoth? If not, keep in mind that I did a bunch of stuff in the sixties that might have done something to my brain. But if so, I think I know how to help. Thanks, Rudy.”
Hank reads the email five times before he decides he’s not imagining it. Rudy knows about Khemenu. He knows about Thoth. And, he knows how to help. Hank responds immediately, asking Rudy how the hell he could have known that. Rudy responds with his cell phone number and an invitation to call him in one hour.
Kevin Bell owns a landscaping business. They do all types of projects, from tiny front yards to 18-hole golf courses. If you’ve seen a patch of grass within a ten-mile radius of town, chances are that Kevin or one of his guys has mowed it. Sandra finds them installing some potted plants outside a bank. She picks out the one she assumes is Kevin, and tentatively approaches him.
“Um, hi. Are you Kevin Bell?” she asks.
Kevin Bell doesn’t turn around, but he says, “That’s what it says on my shirt. Peter, Peter, hey! Peter! Those go around the back! Didn’t you read the map?”
Sandra clears her throat. “Well, Mr. Bell, my name is Sandra, and I have a question for you.”
“You wanna book us, you gotta do it online, or call the office. Good luck, though. We have a gigantic backlog of jobs.”
“Excuse me. I don’t want to book you. And I was always told that you look at a person when you talk to them.”
Kevin Bell turns around now, a look of disbelief on his face. He is clearly not used to being talked to like that, especially by a woman. “Oh, forgive me, miss,” he says, in an overly-dramatic impression of a southern gentleman. “Where are my manners? Of course, let me stop what I’m doing to answer your little question. What is it?”
Sandra feels bad for making Diego seem immature for not dropping his feud with Kevin Bell. In fact, she’s now impressed that the walls of her and Diego’s house aren’t plastered with photos of Kevin Bell’s face with the eyes cut out. This guy is bad enough now, as an adult with responsibilities; she doesn’t want to think about what he was like as a spoiled child. She started this day thinking she would be helping Diego to make amends for the trick he pulled all those years ago. She was going to offer Kevin Bell godhood. Now she wants to offer him a kick to the genitals. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“Thanks for wasting my time, lady.”
“Same to you.”
Hank calls Rudy back exactly one hour later. Rudy picks up on the first ring, as if he has been waiting for it to go off.
“Rudy Rucker.”
Hank, much to his surprise, is starstruck. “Mr. Rucker, it’s-”
“Rudy, man. Call me Rudy.”
“Okay. Rudy. This is crazy. I didn’t think you were going to respond to my email.”
“Well, Hank, to be honest, I wasn’t, at first. I read it and kinda thought it was some crazy dude trying to freak me out. No offense.”
“No, of course.”
“But then, I remembered something that happened to me some time back. Like a few decades ago. I was creating a computer program to test out different cellular automata rules, and this guy comes in to the office and starts asking me questions. I didn’t know him, but I figured, what the hell? So I told him what I was doing, explained all the math involved. He was pretty impressed. He left after like an hour or so, and I didn’t think anything of it. That night, I had this crazy dream where these people were-”
“Chasing you through a forest until you got to a bean field?”
“Yeah. How did you know that?”
“My friend Diego has been having that dream for most of his life. It’s what got him in to this mess.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. Anyway, I realized, as I was running through the field, that-”
“Wait, you ran through the field?”
“Yeah.”
“First try?”
“I wasn’t really trying. I stopped at the edge of the field, but I saw the people coming to kill me. So I hopped in. It felt weird, at first, but I got the hang of it. Then there was this light, and, well, it sounds like your friend knows what comes next.”
“Yeah, he said that the light turned into a sacred triangle, then into a pentagram, and that when he touched it, he was inside this crazy room with, well, you know.”
“Thoth,” Rudy says.
“Yeah. And Thoth told Diego he had to take his place as the god of mathematics, or something.”
“Yeah. That’s what he told me, too.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him I would think about it. It sounded pretty heavy, but it was also a unique opportunity. I didn’t want to leave my wife and kids. I didn’t know if I would have to live in his world full-time, or if I could just clock in when I went to sleep.”
“What happened after you told him you would think about it?”
“Nothing. I never got the dream again. I think he realized that my heart wasn’t in it. If I was god material, I wouldn’t have hesitated.”
“But Diego didn’t make it look like he was interested, either.”
“What did Diego say?”
“Actually, now that you mention it, I don’t think he said much of anything. He mentioned Pythagoras, and told Thoth that he liked beans.”
“See, that was his problem, right there. Gods take that kinda stuff very seriously. Those beans he eats are the souls of his followers. They’re offerings. Thoth must have taken Diego saying he liked beans to be a sort of confirmation that he would do the job.”
“Great,” Hank says. “So now Thoth expects Diego to do it. What if, when Diego goes to sleep tonight, he says that he’s not interested?”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. This Thoth dude is pretty intense. If he thinks Diego was willing to be his successor, then he would consider him turning it down now to be heretical. Very self-absorbed, these gods.”
“So what is Diego supposed to do? He’s actually pretty bad at math. He only got Thoth’s attention because he cheated on a test.”
“Yeah. That makes it even worse, because it would mean Thoth got tricked. Gods don’t like getting tricked.”
“Yeah, probably not.”
“But,” Rudy says, “I had an idea, when I was chosen. I almost agreed to take the job, to see if it would work, but we didn’t really have the technology then. It was more hypothetical than anything else. Now, though, I think we might be able to pull it off.”
“What is it?”
“A supercomputer. We build a supercomputer in Khemenu, hook it up to all these monitoring devices, and let it do the math for us. It’s probably the only way Thoth’s plan could work anyway, because I think he overestimates the power of the human brain.”
“But how could even a supercomputer handle all that math?”
“Oh, that’s easy. Especially in Thoth’s place. All his math is perfect. Our math, in the real world, is gnarly. And even here we’re pretty confident that we could eventually build something that would simulate at least part of our universe. Our world is what we call a class-four computation, meaning that it looks random, but it’s actually predictable, if you look at it for long enough to see a pattern. Khemenu is more like a class-two. It repeats itself and has a much more conventional output pattern.”
“Okay…”
“I know, I’m lecturing again. My point is that a supercomputer wouldn’t really have that hard of a time handling Thoth’s math.”
“But how are we supposed to build a computer in a dream world?”
“Well, you and I can’t, ‘cause we can’t get there. It’ll have to be Diego. We know you can take things with you to Khemenu, seeing as Diego brought with him all his clothes, and, like, his bodily organs, and stuff. What we’ll do is give Diego the instructions and have him build a little more every time he goes to sleep.”
“But that could take years.”
“Not really,” Rudy responds. “When I met him, Thoth told me that time works differently in Khemenu. You don’t notice it in small bursts, but it’s inversely exponential. The longer you stay there, the slower time becomes. So he could potentially build the entire thing in one night. It would just feel a lot longer to Diego. It sucks, but it’s probably better than our universe getting destroyed.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“So then, Diego would only have to go to Khemenu for routine maintenance.”
“Like the world’s most important IT guy.”
Rudy laughs. “Yeah, exactly. They all think they’re gods, anyway. But in Diego’s case, it’ll be true.”
“Rudy, this all sounds like it might work, but, um…”
“How are we gonna pay for it?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re not. They’re building new supercomputers all the time, and the old ones are getting decommissioned. Sometimes they’ll recycle some of the parts into the new one, but sometimes they just turn them off and leave them. I know a guy at a university in New Mexico who’s in the process of upgrading right now. I’d be willing to bet that he would give me enough parts to do the trick. I mean, it’s not like we’re trying to predict the lottery, or anything. By supercomputing standards, we don’t need a huge one. You’ll have to come get the parts yourself, though.”
“That’s not a problem. Listen, Rudy, thank you so much. I think we might just save the world.”
“Here’s hoping.”
The school day is over, and Sandra and Hank race each other back to the house, to tell Diego about the day’s work. Hank lets Sandra go first, seeing as he thinks his news is bigger.
“Well,” Sandra says, “I found Kevin Bell.”
“Uh oh,” Diego says. “How was he?”
“Let’s just say I don’t envy your childhood, and leave it at that.”
“Told you. He’s an ass.”
“True. And, because he’s an ass, he will never be a god, like you.”
“I’m not gonna be a god, either.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Hank says. “I might have stumbled upon a solution.” He explains Rudy’s supercomputer idea to them. They both agree that, considering the situation, it seems logical. But it will take days for Rudy to acquire the parts, and a few more days for Hank to drive out and get them. Diego still has to figure out how to stall Thoth, without arousing his suspicion.
He skips the field entirely, this time. Once he falls under, he finds himself already seated at Thoth’s table.
“Welcome back, Diego Faracas!” Thoth says. “I trust you find Khemenu more bearable, today?”
And surprisingly enough, he does. He’s not nearly as nervous as he was last night. He thinks he can even talk, this time. “Your realm is wonderful, uh, Mr. Thoth.”
“Just Thoth. And it will soon be your realm, Diego Faracas. Which reminds me, what would you like your name to be, once you have achieved apotheosis?”
“Once I what?”
“Become a god. My successor. We can’t have the god of mathematics calling himself ‘Diego.’ You require a name which demands respect.”
“Oh. Well, I haven’t really thought about it. Can I take a while to think it over?”
“Of course! We have time before your duties commence.”
“Okay, cool. Can I…ask you a question?”
“Certainly. I am an approachable god. Not like that jackal Anubis.”
“Alright. Um, I don’t know how to say this…”
“Relax, Diego Faracas. Speak freely.”
“Okay. Are you and your…associates…the only gods there are?”
“What do you mean, Diego Faracas?”
“I mean, is it just you guys, and all other religions are, like, wrong?”
“Oh, I see. A crisis of faith. Ease your mind, friend. I am no more or less ‘real’ than any other divine being. You see, gods are not subject to the constraints of the physical world. We can simultaneously exist and not exist, and more than one of us can take up the same space. So, in a way, I guess you could say that, by the standards of my existence, all religions are true.”
“Oh.” Diego isn’t sure if this answer has made him feel better or worse. It’s probably whatever I want it to be, he thinks. Which strikes him as a lot of responsibility. “I have another question.”
“Lets hear it,” Thoth says.
“Can I take things from the Eartly realm here, to Khemenu?”
“Like what things?”
“Oh, I don’t know, books, a change of clothes. A computer.”
“What would you, a mathematical genius, need a computer for?”
“Have you ever heard of the internet?”
“Of course. I invented it.”
“Oh. Well, gods gotta cut loose, from time to time, right?”
“Oh, yes. Though I find nothing beats taking on the aspect of an Eartly animal and wreaking havoc upon humanity. You know that gorilla that escaped from the zoo a few years back? That was me.”
“Yeah, that sounds cool, and I’ll probably do that, too, but, you know, for days when I don’t feel like wreaking…anything, I would like to have a computer.”
“You do not need to ask my permission. Once you are lord of Khemenu, you make the rules. Now, I feel our time is running short for today. Shall we finish the visit with some light fourier analysis?”
“Oh, gosh, Thoth, I would love to, but I really must be going. The atmosphere, you know.”
“Of course, Diego Faracas. Until next time.”
Diego wakes up.
It goes like this for the next four days, with Diego asking questions and avoiding any actual talk of mathematics. Thoth is a surprisingly trusting deity; he does not doubt, for one second, Diego’s worthiness. Sometimes, Diego feels guilty for leading Thoth on the way he is, but he is in too deep now to do anything about it. The world hangs in the balance, and Diego is going to have to save it, one way or another. Besides, Diego reasons, better him than Kevin Bell, anyway. There are more important things than being able to do complex math in your head. Things like not being a prick. Diego will be a benevolent god. If, that is, there even is a universe to lord over once Thoth leaves.
He seems tired, tonight. Nostalgic for the good old days, when he sprang into life from the breath of Ra, and created all of existence from his cosmic egg. His ibis head has started to gray, around the eyes, and his human body seems worn, moving with an arthritic hesitance. He sighs as Diego arrives.
“Soon, Diego Faracas,” he says.
“Soon what?” Diego asks, though he knows the answer.
“Soon this aspect will fade, and I will no longer be lord of Khemenu. I feel it approaching.”
This is bad. Rudy has gotten his friend in New Mexico to save him some computer parts, but Hank isn’t able to go get them until this weekend. It is Tuesday. Thoth doesn’t look like he has another five Earthly days in him. “No, don’t say that, Thoth. You look great. You’ve got plenty of time left, man.”
“You flatter, but you are incorrect. I shall pass on shortly.”
“How shortly?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? I thought you said you had months to go!”
“I…miscalculated.”
“Oh, shi-”
Diego wakes up.
“Deeg, wake up!” Sandra says. She is shaking him.
“What?” Diego asks.
“Hank just called. He got hit by a car today. He’s fine, except he broke both of his legs. He’s not gonna be able to get the computer parts this weekend.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Why not?”
“Thoth just laid it on me. He’s gonna die tomorrow. We have to go get those computer parts tonight. Right now.”
“But that’s like twelve hours away.”
“I’m thinking more like nine, if we speed.”
It doesn’t make the news (because most existence-altering things don’t), but all over the world, things start to get just a little bit more perfect. Every thousandth leaf becomes a perfect oval. Several hundred thousand people grow, almost imperceptibly, so that they measure exactly six feet tall. In Tokyo, one little girl’s ice cream scoop morphs into a uniform sphere. Khemenu is leaking.
They make it in just over ten. It is actually kind of fun, a road trip starting around midnight. They get greasy drive-thru burgers, listen to some of their favorite albums, and talk. If not for the specter of universal destruction looming overhead, it would have been their best vacation to date. They make it to the University of New Mexico just as the day’s first classes are finishing up. Students head back to their dorms to sleep, or to eat their gigantic bowls of Lucky Charms, not knowing that a god walks in their midst. Well, a god-in-waiting.
Rudy’s friend is one of those laid-back, old-dude professors who says whatever is on his mind with a confidence only tenure can provide. He is almost a cliche: hair pulled back in a ponytail despite the fact that he’s balding on top, t-shirt, jeans, New Balance sneakers, and his ID hanging from a lanyard, like a freshman. Sandra and Diego find him in his office, drinking coffee and watching a TED Talk on Youtube.
“Excuse me, Professor Rawlins?” Sandra says.
“Yep. What’s up?”
“Um, my name is Sandra is and this is my boyfriend-”
“Diego!” the professor shouts. “Rudy told me about you! Man what a trip, huh?”
“Uh, yeah.” Diego says weakly. “Hi.”
“Nice to meet you two! Come in. I thought your pal was gonna come instead, guy named Hank?”
“He broke both his legs.”
“Woah, no way! Is he alright?”
“I think so. Just kinda sitting in bed, I guess. But look. We came because we don’t have much time. I figure Rudy explained my situation to you?”
“Oh, yeah. You know, he told me this crazy story years ago. Told me that he had been summoned to this math realm, that he was offered the job of god, or something. I always assumed he was telling stories, but, you say it’s real?”
“As far as I can tell, yeah.”
“Damn. Wild.”
“You have no idea. Do you have our computer parts?”
“Oh, yeah. And I did you one better. I hooked ‘em up for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, from what Rudy was saying, all we really needed was a machine that could do complex math, as it applied to the weather.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right,” Sandra says.
“So, I made you one. I threw together a few processors, added on a couple doo-dads, barometers and stuff, and bingo! One universe-balancing computer.”
“Do you think it’ll work?” Diego asks.
“Probably. Only one way to find out, though. You gotta take it to the other side.”
“How big is it?”
“I commandeered one of our tool sheds.”
“How am I gonna take that with me?”
“I had an idea. And let me tell you: the administration is pissed.”
And for good reason, Diego thinks, as he sees the gigantic chalk pentagram surrounding the small metal building. It looks more like a Satanic shrine than a world-saving invention.
“So yeah,” Rawlins says. “I figure the outline will let whatever force brings you back and forth know that this shed is part of the bargain. Go to sleep inside, and you’ll take it with you.”
“Honestly,” Diego says, “that makes as much sense as anything else that’s happened in the last few months.”
“Perfect!”
Now Diego realizes how tired he is. The drive has taken it out of him, and he could easily fall asleep right now. Well, he thinks, no time like the present.
He enters the shed and lies down, in between two rows of computer cabinets. He falls asleep almost instantly.
He wakes up not in the concrete room, but in the shed. Outside the thin metal walls, a storm rages. The door to the shed opens, and he sees, for the first time, the environment of Khemenu. Whatever he was expecting, this is not it. Words do not do it justice. He is not sure if he is seeing with his eyes or with his mind. But, he thinks, what is the difference, really? All he knows is that the world is in turmoil. Earth is leaking. The perfection of this place has become tarnished. Its uniformity has begun to spoil. If something doesn’t happen soon, things are going to get very gnarly.
Thoth is in the desert, on his knees, arms stretched toward the heavens, wailing. He is doing everything he can to hold off the universal bleed, but it is not enough. He looks down and sees Diego, standing outside his shed.
“The time has come, Diego Faracas! You must begin you duties! Prepare your brain! Wait, where are you going?”
Diego rushes back into the shed. He wishes he had had the professor show him where the power button was before he fell asleep. If he can’t get the computer turned on soon, he will have failed.
“Diego!” Thoth exclaims. “What are you doing?”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Diego mutters to himself. Where is that power button? It doesn’t seem like it would just be a single switch, like his computer at home. This is a supercomputer, after all. It is dark inside the shed. He hurries over to the door and flips on the light. To his immense relief, this also turns on the computer. It makes an odd whirring noise, before settling on the basic electronic hum of the twenty-first century.
Almost immediately, the storm begins to subside. All will soon be perfect in Khemenu, once more. Diego collapses to the ground and laughs. It is accomplished. Except he didn’t do anything. He lied to Thoth this entire time, and he allowed his friends to do all the work for him. He’s no god. He’s barely a human.
Outside, Thoth is exultant. “Yes! Diego Faracas! You did it! Hahahaha!”
Diego feels lower than dirt. He decides he has to let Thoth know the truth, no matter the consequences. Gods don’t lie. Gods don’t cheat. He approaches Thoth somberly. “No, Thoth. I didn’t do it.”
“What do you mean? The two worlds are no longer unbalanced. You are successful.”
“It wasn’t me. It was never me. I didn’t ace your test. I switched it with the guy who finished before me. Kevin Bell. He was the real chosen one.”
“What?” Thoth, as much as possible for a man with the head of an ibis, looks surprised.
“Yeah. That shed over there houses a supercomputer. It’s what’s really doing all the work right now, not me. I was that frightful idiot you mentioned. Of absolutely no consequence.”
“I…I don’t know what to say,” Thoth says.
“I understand.”
“Except that no lord of Khemenu should have such a low opinion of himself.”
“What? Didn’t you hear? I’m not the lord of Khemenu. That computer is.”
“Actually, until I die, I am the lord of Khemenu. And I get to decide who takes my place.”
“But I’m not worthy.”
“We are gods, Diego. Our worthiness is self-evident. Whatever else you were before now, you are that no longer. You passed the test. Existence is saved. That is what is important. Not how we got there.”
“Oh. Wow. Okay.”
“Besides, Kevin Bell is an asshole.”
Diego visits Khemenu once a week, for maintenance. He’s gotten pretty good at fixing the computer, though he often has to call Rudy or Professor Rawlins for tips. He sometimes brings his friends to Khemenu, for epic dream parties. He invites the other deities, but they don’t seem to trust him yet. He still hasn’t thought of a godly name, but he thinks “Diego, Lord of Mathematics” sounds just fine.