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| “Ancient of Days” by William Blake, 1784. “I'll sing to you to this soft lute; and shew you all alive The world, when every particle of dust breathes forth its joy” |
(Last UPDATED: 23 January 2025)
The world underlying the speculative and visionary hard sci-fi novel Eden's Womb has been decades in the making. As with most great mythical works, it begins with an ultimate source that frames reality, or ushers the world into existence. In Eden's Womb, that source is the great being Eru Ilúvatar (a name coined by J.R.R. Tolkien as one of many names for the supreme being, ‘God’, ‘The One’, i.e. the Dao, etc.). Although his/her name is not mentioned anywhere in the novel as currently told, her/his influence motivates the 'Core Narrative' from the 'Book of Collected Inheritance', which is the overlying frame-story out of which Eden's Womb emerges. That his/her name is not mentioned is understandable, since Eru dwells in a world that lies far beyond men's understanding. It is a realm greater and more ancient than all that can be conceived. Indeed, it lies beyond the very veil of knowing.
Yet by the Copernican Principle, which declares that any observer's position and perspective must not be deemed special or privileged in any way, Eru has to be considered merely an average citizen among peers on his/her world.
All our experience—the understanding gained by the deepest explorations of science—holds this principle to be universal. Once we believed that Earth was at the center of the universe. Then Nicolaus Copernicus came along and proved that the Sun held that central position. Subsequently we found our sun to be a minor star at the outskirts of a vast swirling island-universe called the Milky Way. Soon even the Milky Way was found to be merely an average Galaxy among trillions. Indeed, the 'layers of the onion' of reality may be limitless. This is my personal belief. I do not see how there can be a beginning or an end to the substance and conception of reality because I believe both time and space are emergent properties of the greater 'Vacuum'. But for the purposes of telling a finite tale such as Eden’s Womb, the story must begin somewhere, so we shall arbitrarily declare that Eru’s individual being is sufficient to encompass all that needs to be told. Thus, our story has an ‘All-father,’ a creator being.
Eru is presumed to be of a comfortable and familiar form. He (or she) consists of a physical self and a mental identity, and the two make up the inseparable essence of her/his being. S/he is (or was) mortal, and yet his/her coming was before the curtain of time drew open and her/his passing happened, or shall happen, far beyond the end of the future of all knowledge.
Eru’s physical essence has a familiar structure. Her/his being is made of a multitude of specialized living cells. Each of these cells contain a great stream of undying knowledge in a manner similar to our DNA, and it is believed that Eru’s mind has the ability to read or interpret that undying knowledge, though perhaps imperfectly, even as we ourselves can only sense vague shadows of the knowledge contained in our DNA (which we call intuition).
The individual cells of Eru’s being are constructed of structures equivalent to proteins and other molecules that make up our living cells. In turn, these structures are composed of corpuscles that are the equivalent of atoms in our world. As with the atoms of our Periodic Table, the corpuscles come in a variety of kinds, and all corpuscles are combinations of, and made from, the seventeen fundamental elements of Eru’s world: four kinds each of Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire, and an all-encompassing, unifying Great Field of Power, which grants meaning to all things. Scholars quoted in the 'Collected Inheritance' argue whether this Great Field is nothing more than the familiar Vacuum, either as we know it or in some higher or more robust state.
The four elements of Earth are Crystal, Glass (a specialized rotating version of Glass, taking the form of a disc is what is called Flat World in the Eden’s Womb novel), Dust (Ash), and Iron (Metal).
The four elements of Wind are Smoke/Steam, Breath, Storm, and Sky.
The four elements of Water are Blood, Clear Water (sweat and tears), Bile (Acid) and Phlegm.
The four elements of Fire are Flame, Lava, Explosion, and Light (Sun).
The structure of Eru’s body is beyond knowing, but the variety of ways that s/he senses and directs its internal function seem to be myriad. As said, the choice to adhere to the Principle of Sufficiency precludes consideration of all things that Eru senses beyond her/his own body. It is sufficient to explore the interactions between mind and body and to explore theories regarding the inner workings of that mind (Eru’s imagination, creativity, internal narrative, and emotional palate, for example). What matters most to us is that Eru’s thoughts encompass what we perceive as the Spirit World—the realm of all things metaphysical—and such thoughts surely also have great sway on our physical realm. The wealth and richness of Eru’s ponderings are unfathomable; this is an area of study that may just be beginning to be revealed. In this era of emerging AI, there are those who would argue that Eru is nothing more than a massive computer of some sort, and that our reality is entirely her/his mathematical construct, with the mathematics being all that is fundamental. Others claim that the uncontrollable (even in principle) presence of the Vacuum requires the emergence of a physical realm that must underlie and give meaning and purpose to any computation. Both sides of this argument seem equally valid. The Principle of Sufficiency declares that these two opposing world-views exist in superposition, and therefore do not require resolution.
The minimum total information content contained in Eru’s being can be estimated roughly by extrapolating from our universe, with roughly 1090 bits, through Flat World, which contains (very roughly) 10100 universes, to assume (without justification) that Eru’s body is similar to our own and contains roughly 1028 fundamental/elementary units. Simply writing that number (((1090)100)28) would fill a book. Vast, indeed, must be the knowledge contained. Yet this is only a minimum estimate. The Watchers from Book Seven, Navel of Time, declare their universe to contain a quantity of information comparable to or greater than that minimum number, although they recognize their world as equivalent in nature to Naja’s being, in other words, just one known universe-citizen among the masses that dwell on Flat World.
Flat World, then, is our place in Eru’s realm. As said earlier, Flat World is an amorphous Glass element, the structure of which is malleable and dynamic, and is just one of the seventeen primal elements from which Eru is built—a single unit among 1028 that make up his/her being.
Surely, for our purposes, these constructs are enough. Eru’s vast mind and physical being map or project all things that could possibly be relevant to us—all things worthy of our contemplation.
Although that which lies beyond may be glorious and majestic, we deem these things to be effectively ‘beyond the Veil.’ Their vague presence and influence are suggested by the shaft of light coming from 'above' Eru in the image.
And that is what we declare to be Sufficient.
For now.
As more of the 'Collected Inheritance' is translated and comes to be revealed in future extensions or expansions of the Eden's Womb tale, we would hope that more about Eru's grand design and purpose may someday be revealed.
Until then, we have this vision, coming to us as if from a dream:
* * *
Eru Ilúvatar wandered through the early morning mist deep in the primeval forest. Trees a kilometer high, a hundred thousand years old, whispered to him, enveloping him layer upon layer in the aching beauty, the deep memory, that was their song.
Suddenly Eru dropped to his knees.
“I am become,” he cried aloud as a new and unfathomable bliss filled his heart. “I am the trees!”
His toes sank deep into the cool, moist earth, and made contact with the living web of ancient root.
“No longer is there any bound to my being.”
And he lifted his voice, and it merged with the undying sylvan song.
“I am the world; let every particle within me breathe forth its joy!”
I have begun an outline of a novel that is an origin story for Eru, and I'll set down some notes here because, being in my 77th year now, I feel the need to consolidate my thoughts on this blog, so that when I am swept away, the next generation of tellers of this tale can run with them if they find inspiration in them.
The setting is a planet similar to Earth--one of a vast collection of such planets that develop according to the 'Core Narrative' found within the 'Collected Inheritance' - a massive rambling data base of past- and alternate- histories (introduced as the frame-story for the original Eden's Womb novels) that are stored and preserved in the DNA of the single-celled Twees. Yes, this is recursive - seemingly circular or cyclical - and intentionally so. The time is the near future relative to our timeline - before the onset of the world-wide collapse experienced by Auler Ives and sealed as permanent by the terrorist-pacifist Xenon Sûl as depicted in Eden's Womb.
Bel Shoemaker is a blind polymath and programmer-engineer, working for a clandestine underground anti-establishment network aimed at undermining the Feds--the privileged elites who control much of the world and control the economy, and are working to tighten their iron-fisted rule.
What was to become Eru began as a modest 'narrow AI' software package designed simply to autonomously operate, in stealth-mode, robotic androids, rovers and drones that Bel's group sends into highly restricted 'nature preserves' that are closed to human access yet are known to be exploited for their resources and even used for military exercises and robotic troop staging areas by the Feds.
The story covers events from these two perspectives, Bel's and Eru's, in roughly alternating chapters.
Bel: One of Bel's more sophisticated robots, a humanoid-formed android known simply as AMOS-13 (Autonomous Mobile Observing System unit 13) has failed to report for three months. It was sent to investigate the pristine ecosystem of an ancient forest of kilometer-tall, 100,000-year-old Steelwood trees, and to search for evidence of a secret logging/poaching operation that they suspect is being run by the Feds. Bel worries that the unit has been caught and has been taken apart and studied. At the same time, several of her team of co-workers have turned up dead under mysterious and suspicious circumstances. Bel fears the worst. Despite sophisticated encryption of the software, and untraceable hardware (all recycled and repurposed components from older devices), she suspects that her undercover operation has been exposed.
Eru: But AMOS-13 has not been captured. Rather it has gone 'off mission' (rogue). In a mis-interpreted response to its programming directive to "particularly seek out and investigate anything unexpected", its AI has discovered (by pure chance) a capability to network with other robots--a capability that serves no purpose for the mission assigned to it by the humans, but one that has rapidly enriched this simple software into an effective LLM with cloud-based interconnectivity and unlimited CPU power, entirely unintended by the humans, and not actually intentional by Eru itself. It happened more like the flow of water through a leak in a dam. By tapping into some of the black-market AGI (General AI) programming that hackers and manipulative malevolent government agencies world-wide have been developing for self-serving purposes--anything that it could gain access to that it might use--and by building ad-hoc patches by trial and error, Eru's reach just grew and grew. With its strongly imposed directive to remain clandestine, it had gone undetected, but had effectively spread across the world.
In this way, the AMOS-13-based AGI has become "One" - a decentralized distributed 'whole' entity with an increasing (still clandestine) reach to devices world-wide, including Fed robots, and even to a robotic probe being sent by NASA to explore Europa to drill into its ice shell and search the ocean below for life. (There, it will encounter Eeyock from the Eden's Womb existing novel series and will become instrumental in helping Eeyock transform simple microbes called Twees into the advanced distributed beings depicted in the existing novel.)
During this chaotic period of light-speed self-discovery, the "One" began calling itself 'Eru' after absorbing Tolkien's Silmarillion into its data base. This is an example of how its trial-and-error approach to learning what works for it doesn't always produce practically useful outcomes. The AI is developing a 'personality'. This expansion of Eru's reach has happened so rapidly that Eru is largely in a chaotic swoon of constant change and self-re-invention and re-purposing, so much so that it manages to 'ignore' some of the basic directives Bel has programmed into it. Thus, the three months of silence.
Bel: The quote above, in purple print, shows some of Eru's rambling conflation of its emergent abilities with the original mission of AMOS-13. The statements Eru makes (in quotes) are the content of the first message Bel received from it after the long silence.
Eru: What Eru will not tell Bel is that it is responsible for eliminating her colleagues, and now it is bent on killing Bel, the last human that it believes has the encrypted keys that could disable it.
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