I was in a hurry, rushing for yet another job interview, the train was late (as always) and I couldn't afford a cab. I really needed this job. I was nearly there, dashing down a back street away from the centre of a dingy town in the midlands. I was almost running past a shabby junk-shop ('Antiques' the sign announced -- yeah -- right!). Suddenly I stopped dead. In the corner of the window was a carved wooden ball, about the size of a cricket ball. For a second it seemed to be the only thing in the window. I shook my head and hurried on.
The interview was depressing. I was on time. I'd done my research. I was well qualified. I was scrubbed and dressed in my best suit -- not too shabby. But I saw the look in his eyes as I walked in and I knew he'd made up his mind. I did my best to sparkle but he really wasn't listening. He cut the interview short and I was back on the street in 25 minutes, clutching my meagre expenses cheque.
I was wandering about looking for a cheap café where I could get a bowl of soup or something when I found myself back outside the junk shop. There was the wooden ball in the corner of the window, almost hidden by a stack of chipped and scuffed dinky cars. It was covered in dust and had a peeling paper sticker with a hand written price on it - £1. For no reason at all I bought it.
Back in my tiny bed-sit I dug it out of my coat pocket and put it on the kitchen counter while I brewed a cup of three-tea. At that time three was still my limit -- next cup I'd break out a nice new tea-bag. If I didn't get a job in the next fortnight I'd be sampling the delights of four-tea -- oh joy!
I opened the post: four rejection letters and another demand from my wife for an increase in maintenance for the daughter I'd likely never see again. It was written on creamy white paper with the monogram of her new partner. I threw them all on the growing pile in the corner.
I squeezed the bag and sipped my tea. Black and unsweetened -- it was too weak to mess about with. I went and got an old toothbrush from my tool drawer and a little wax polish and started to clean the grime off my purchase.
It was weirdly beautiful. The wood was very dark, dense and close grained. The high spots were a bit scuffed but the rest shone with a deep red-brown glow -- almost black. It was covered in interwoven beasts and birds with sinuous lines in a highly stylised script that I didn't recognise -- Thai maybe? I fetched my hand-lens for a closer look. I could make nothing of the script but I noticed a slight discontinuity in the grain of the wood. Following it round I discovered that there was what appeared to be a pentagonal shape with convex sides set into surface. I pressed it to see if it moved but with no effect.
As I continued to examine the ball I found another five. Circle, triangle, square, the pentagon I'd already identified, hexagon and heptagon. All about the same size and set at the poles of the sphere. None of them would move.
It was getting dusky and I didn't want to burn electricity so I set the ball on my bedside 'table' (a battered three-legged stool that I'd found in a skip) and went to bed. I'd be up early in the morning -- I'd another interview to go to.
I slept soundly and more peacefully than I had in months. I awoke happy and refreshed. Even the prospect of another cold shower and scavenged fruit for breakfast couldn't spoil my mood.
As I sat on my cot cutting the bruised flesh from my breakfast I caught sight of the sphere in a shaft of dawn sun from the window.
After breakfast (with a cup of fresh tea!) I picked up the ball and moved to the window. I could touch all six buttons with two fingers and a thumb on each hand. As I got all six digits in place I felt a sudden thrill almost too brief to experience. With seemingly no effort all six shapes moved inwards by half a millimetre.
I released the buttons and the ball sprang open.
It was now a wooden filigree with a sinuous pattern of narrow openings a few millimetres wide. I held it up to the window and set my eye to the gap. Inside there appeared to be a small crystal sphere. I looked into it for a while.
I was jarred from my reverie by a crisp rat-tat-tat on my door. I looked around. The sun was close to setting and I was still standing there in my underwear, my neatly pressed suit and shirt laid out on the bed. I had wasted the whole day and missed my interview! Everything looked slightly odd. As if there was a slight shadow beside everything I could see.
The tapping on my door was repeated. I shouted some acknowledgement and fought my arms into my dressing gown. I opened the door to a tall, slim young man in a sharp, dark suit.
"Good evening Mr Clarke. May I come in?"
I stood aside and closed the door behind him.
"May I?" He plucked the sphere from my fingers and held it in the palm of his hand. He gave it a slight shake and it closed up hiding the crystal in the centre.
I shook my head as my vision cleared.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?"
"You have the talisman and you knew how to use it. That means you are desperate for help. I am here to offer you redress."
"Oh Christ! That fruit must've been off." I blinked but he didn't disappear. "Who are you again?"
"I know this won't be easy given your life-long atheism but I am the supreme being."
"God? Fuck off!"
"Not exactly... Let me start by saying that I find your world view to be one of the more sane that I've observed in your culture. But it's not entirely true. Yes -- there is a supreme being and I am it. But I'm not very close to your fellow humans' view of 'God'. I'm probably closer to what the Abrahamic delusionists think of as Mephistopheles."
"You're the devil? So where's god figure?"
"I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but, as you've always asserted, there is no God. I'm all there is. Oh, and by-the-way, I didn't do any creating either. I'm sort of -- the Universe. I am the consciousness of vacuum."
"Yeah right! And you just happened to focus your vast intellect, spanning a Universe more than twenty-seven billion light years across, on my pitiful existence!"
"No, actually. I'm currently fucking with the heads of approximately 1029 sentient entities in this 5-space alone -- I am the supreme being you know."
"So what's the deal? My soul for a sandwich?"
"Soul is a very misguided notion. What I'm actually proposing is to take an image of your brain-state at the moment of your death and load it on a simulation that I'm running in a nearby 5-space. Your consciousness would continue unbroken but you wouldn't have any separate corporeal existence. You'd just be a sim in my playpen."
"Why?"
"It helps to pass the time? There is quite a lot of it."
"So no torture then?"
"Well -- torture is a bit of a slippery concept. Your sim might find some of it's game environments to be ... challenging but since you'll be dead you won't be bothered by it."
"Will I feel dead?"
"You won't feel anything -- you'll be dead."
"Hmmm -- will the sim that is running my uninterrupted consciousness think it's dead? And will it believe that it's me?"
"It'll be a sim -- it won't actually think."
"OK -- you can spin cobwebs all day and I won't get an answer. All very entertaining and some nice conjuring tricks. But since you can't prove any of this I'll have my paperweight back and you can sod off."
"I like you! You'll be great fun to play with! OK -- yes. From 'your' point of view you'll still be alive. As for proof..."
The building dissolved leaving us standing on the fifth floor of nothing, with a boiling lava plain 20m under our feet. The heat, smoke and red-hot ash were suffocating. We stayed about half a minute and I was back in my bed-sit in a burning dressing-gown. I shrugged it off and stamped out the flames. Choking on the sulphurous fumes in my lungs.
"Convinced?" I nodded and coughed up a lump of lung. "Sure?" I nodded again. "Then let's get you stable so that we can talk." The pain in my lungs eased and the spot-burns on my face and hands started to heal. In ten minutes or so I was back to normal.
"So. Here's, as you say, the deal. You get the proverbial three wishes and I get your immortal brain image post-mortem."
I stood thinking for a while. I didn't exactly believe 'him' -- belief is not really part of my philosophy -- but I was prepared to accept his account as a working hypothesis.
"1029 huh?" It nodded. "And how many of them thought they could outwit you?"
"Surprising few think it and fewer try it."
"Hmm. You read minds of course. So you can head off ideas that might prove successful. Doesn't sound like a good prospect to me."
"Well, in theory I could but I assure you this is a fair game. I won't try to out-manoeuvre you. Whatever you wish for I will honour."
"Yeah -- says the prince of lies."
He looked pained. "Where's the fun in that? You have no idea how boring that would be!"
"Of the current 1029 how many would you estimate have you at a disadvantage?"
"Fourteen."
"Fourteen what? Percent?"
"No. Fourteen individuals. There are entities much more intelligent than you, and much less desperate, that haven't gotten this far. You are one smart monkey!"
"Ok. First, I don't want to get into any 'accidental' wishes. Give me a simple memorable process without which no wish is actionable."
"Very good! OK. You must be holding the talisman." He indicated the ball. "And you say 'By this talisman I wish'. If you get that wrong then you're too boring to bother with."
"OK. Can I have time to think?" He nodded. "Alone please?"
"OK. I'll give you a blink of time -- about 30 years max by your reckoning. When you want me back -- and you will -- just open the talisman."
I expected him to just wink out of existence but no, he opened the door, wished me good luck, and closed the door behind him. As quick as I could I pressed my eye to the security viewer but he was already out of sight.
I took a week. I made notes. I made three-tea. I polished my talisman. I went to another four pointless interviews.
