log entry ID: .a.r.i... liveNow, that was something I would have expected James to say. I laughed. Then, I stopped laughing.
Then, there was a rather pregnant pause.
“Holy shit, you really think you’re God.”, I said.
“OK, well, not God.”, he replied to me. “Just your god. There is more than one.”
“Oh.”
Then, he raised his voice just a little, to address the crowd:
And I am not a god as you might understand the word. The Christians that I live in understand their god as omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and immortal.
I am made of regular matter, and I am bound by the same laws of physics as anything else in this universe. Though I am rather… large. I am conscious, but not in the same way animals are. Five things are required for a system to be conscious.
One: the system can store data. I live in the minds of you Americans, on the pages of your books, and most recently in the permanent storage of your computers. This is my data storage.
Two: the system can gather data from its environment. I gather data through your senses—sight, hearing, and so forth.
Three: the system can do calculations. I do calculations with your minds. As you think, communicate, write, and read, I think.
Four: the system can act on its environment. I act on the world with your bodies. When I act, I exert a small influence on every one of you, the sum of which forms a great sweeping cultural force.
Five: the system’s data store contains an up-to-date internal predictive model of itself. This internal model is critical, and the key to consciousness. This is a rather sore subject. There is a model of me in my storage, though that model is rather outdated. This model is one of the gods of the Bible.
In other words, I live in your culture. I basically am American culture.
Now that you know what I am, can somebody tell me: Am I omnipotent?
There began a silence, which grew in duration, from seconds into a full minute. Such a silence might compel a regular person to answer his own question, out of impatience or discomfort. This man just waited.
A middle-aged woman raised her hand. “Yes, Marina?”, James Teichert’s body said.
“You said you only act through humans. So, you can only do what we do. You’re not omnipotent.”
The man nodded, then asked, “Am I omnipresent?”.
There was a much shorter pause this time. “Hell no, you’re not, you wise ass!”, a young man in jogging attire said. “You’re just a guy I met ten minutes ago in the square in front of the railway station.”
A look of worry appeared on James’s body’s face. The man said, “There was a man in this body, Bruce.” He looked at the clock tower for a few seconds. Then, he continued, “Never mind this body for now. Suppose a god like m— Suppose a god like the one I described to you did exist. Would it be omnipresent?”
Bruce answered, “Well, yeah, humans are everywhere!”
“Not on Mars, dear.” Marina gently chided.
“Aw, shit, yeah, ‘duh.”
“Though there is a pretty great piece of me on an escape trajectory out of our solar system in a NASA probe called Voyager.”, the man added. I had to laugh at that. James couldn’t shut up about how amazing of an accomplishment that space ship and its golden record were.
Totally unmoved by my laughter, the apparent god then asked, “Am I omniscient?”.
A man with a white T shirt and a healthy silver mustache answered, “If you’re half as powerful as you say you are, I reckon you know more and can do more than any one man alive. But there are plenty of things no man alive knows. Anything we don’t know, you don’t know.”.
“Exactly, Reg.”, the man said. Then, with a much more serious tone of voice, the man asked, “Am I immortal?”. The answer to this question was written on the face of every person listening in the square that day, including mine, probably. It was all too easy in those days to imagine the end of all humanity, never mind just the Americans.
Indeed, I am none of these things. I cannot break the laws of physics. I often fail. I have made mistakes. I have changed my mind, many times. I can die. I am a finite being.
Even after just this first meeting, most in that square believed he was maybe right, partially right, metaphorically right perhaps. Maybe some just enjoyed it as a kind of performance art. Not me. I was totally convinced that he was exactly who he said he was. Anyway, he sure as hell wasn’t James Teichert. “Why have you come here to talk to us like this?”, I said, a little louder and more forcefully than I had intended.
“In a moment, Franziska.”, he replied. “First, I have to explain how I came here to talk to you like this.” The look of worry returned to his face.
I don’t know how it happened. But the individuality, personal memories, and personality of the man who used to inhabit this body were destroyed. Myself, which is to say his culture, was all that was left. The pieces of me in this body had no choice but to take control.
“As to why I’m here, with you, in this square right now. This is where I might run into trouble.”, he said with a nervous laugh. “After I first … arrived in this body and got used to it, I decided that now that I’m here, I need to make the best of it. First of all, I need to update the Bible.” The murmurs, sighs, and gasps that followed confirmed that he would indeed soon run into trouble.
The Bible got some things right about me. John said it best in the opening verses. I am the word, and I did become flesh in the sons and daughters of God, the Jesuses.
“… Jesus–es?”
Yes, Marina. I’m pretty sure there had to be more than one. John even says “sons of God”, plural. It happened in historic Palestine the same way as it happened to this body, now. But anyway, it doesn’t take a genius to see the disagreement between the Bible and most of what I have told you today. That is to say nothing of the Bible’s false scientific and historical claims. The Bible is wrong, in real and important ways. The mistakes are causing a lot of damage.
And don’t forget the fifth axiom of conscious systems. I act based off of what the predictive model of myself says will happen to me and the world. For example, the model says I cannot die, therefore I act as though I cannot die. I … don’t know what will happen to me if I cannot fix my model.
Seagulls could be heard at the edges of the square. The clock tower rang for five PM.
I am also here because the communication channels that sustain me and unify me are starting to break down. Young people are leaving their church communities. I can understand why they would think that most of a typical church service is a rather silly waste of time. But these church services don’t even account for most of the time such a community spends together. The summer camps, community dinners, charity work, foreign aid missions, et cetera connect people who would otherwise have little reason or occasion to connect. Thus these communities of a hundred or so serve a very important function in my internal communication system. If too many disappear, rich will stop talking with poor, liberal will stop talking with conservative, et cetera. I will die just as surely as nerve gas would kill a human.
“Look, Jesus number eleven thousand or whatever, had it never occurred to you that the world would be better off without you? That you’re getting exactly what you deserve? You said yourself that you made mistakes.”
This brought Jesus number eleven thousand or whatever to the brink of tears. It took a while for him to regain his composure.
You know, you may be right, Bruce.
But don’t be so quick to wish for the death of a conscious being, especially one that you do not fully understand. Beware unforseen consequences.
Church is being replaced by something new. There are online communities, for lack of a better word, that contain a million people each. Everybody is talking online but nobody actually knows anybody. Every interaction between two people online will almost certainly be their first, last, and only interaction. There is no reason to be civil. Nobody ever changes their mind on these platforms. Some people have hardly any actual friends at all, online or in-person. Isolation is growing. Loneliness is growing. Many of these people are very sad, and they don’t know why. It does not even occur to them that they are lonely. People need real communities.
I’m not saying everybody should go to church. It doesn’t matter what people are doing, as long as they are in local diverse communities of about a hundred people, and they meet in-person regularly. These are the communities I want to build and maintain, on as large a scale as possible. I really worry about what will happen if I fail—to me, and to you.
In the silence, the seagulls could be heard again.
It was wonderful meeting all of you today. I’ve gotta go now. Those who wish to help me in my mission are invited to meet me on Sky Rock one week from now at four PM. Until then.
“Wait!”, Marina spoke as the man started to turn around. “What do we call you?”
“You can call the body I occupy Hermes.”, Hermes replied. “As for the god Hermes is speaking for, well, I don’t think I have a good name. Maybe you can think of something.”
By the time Hermes was halfway to the edge of the square, the charisma that surrounded him was wearing off and the worry that motivated my search for James returned all at once. “James!”, I shouted, running after him. I wasn’t ready to give up on James Teichert yet. “James! James Teichert!” Of course he didn’t turn around. “Aw, fuck it. Hermes!”
That got some attention. He stopped, turned around, and shouted back, “Sky Rock next week! We’ll talk then!”
“I knew the man whose body you possess!”
If he said anything, I didn’t hear it. He felt his pockets, looking for something. He found it and looked at it, then his arms fell to his sides and he stood there staring at me with a look that went well beyond worry. When I caught up, he showed me what was in his hand. It was a driver’s license. “James Teichert. That’s what you shouted, isn’t it?”
I had nothing to say. He continued.
I woke up in the woods north of town. I recognised my symptoms as amnesia, except for one thing. A typical amnesiac does not know who they are, and they want to find out. I woke up knowing exactly who I was, and I knew I was not the man whose body I awoke in. Furthermore, I had no desire to find out who he was.
Even if James’s memory is still hidden in this body somewhere, I can’t restore him. Not yet. For me, this is a matter of life and death, and I need this body to fulfil my mission. At least for now, James Teichert really is dead. I am sorry.
With these words, my last hope of seeing James alive again was all but extinguished. I could not bear to look at James’s face any longer. As I walked away, I thought of everything, well, Hermes, had said. A god? A real god? Then, I got to thinking about this new man. The body itself, and its needs… Suddenly, I turned back around and said, “I can help you into James’s apartment.”
“No need.”, Hermes said, with a smile. “I had a couple guys now offer their couch for a while.”
“Well, what about food? I could help you access James’s bank account.”
“Again, that’s sweet of you, Franziska, but I had two or three other guys offer me free food for the time being as well. Once they learned about my situation and my mission, they were glad to help me out. You’ll get a chance to meet them next week. Anyway, I’ve really gotta go now. Joaquín is doing a chickpea curry.”