PRIMOGEN by Tani Jantsang

Back during my college days, during the days of computer war games, I had made the E-mail acquaintance of a Miskatonic University student named Melissa Brand. She was the first person who came to mind to ask about something like a poltergeist. She was currently the head of a group called the Cosmic Coincidence Control Center (C.C.C.C.), whose members were into all types of "strange things," though I'd been told that some of them were strictly hard-sciences people. I hadn't thought much of it before, since I assumed the whispering dreams were a kind of data-construction-format being done by my own brain relative only to each of my own new programs. But with two days worth of order turning into chaos, I began to wonder if my now nightly "whispering dreams" could be related to this new and additional "poltergeist" phenomenon. Night after night, since I moved into the home, I had the same dream with the same sense of pursuit and stress despite the familiarity.

I reached Melissa by phone after asking the university for her number, which was finally given to me by one nasty Admissions Office jerk after he gave me the "third degree." I told Melissa everything that had happened and left no details out, except the details of my work, though I did mention that I was working on new theories of life in viable alternative environments. The first thing she thought to ask me about was whether or not Sonja died in the house itself and had perhaps left something undone. She was convinced that the ghost of Sonja Teleki was trying to tell me something, or trying to get me to see something in her medical books.

On her advice I went to the cellar and laid each of the medical books on the floor on the chance that the ghost of Sonja Teleki would lead me to the information by either moving a book or opening one to the appropriate page. I made a list of exactly where each books was placed. The entire endeavor seemed stupid, but I did it nonetheless. I did not expect to get any of the results Melissa postulated, but neither did I expect to get the results I did get: upon awakening the next day, after the same, monotonous "whispering dream," I returned to the cellar to find the neatly laid out books in a state of disarray. This was like having a kid in the house making continual messes, albeit a "kid" I didn't have to watch or care for; yet just these few days of having to pick up and straighten out one mess after the other was enough to cause me never doubt my initial feelings on the subject of "having a baby." None of the books I had placed on the cellar floor were opened; they were just disordered. Trying to read a message by using titles, parts of titles, anagrams, etc., didn't work. Picking up a book of the birthing methods of other animals, perhaps to see if anything about the suddenly appearing white rats would offer a clue, I found only a letter to Sonja, signed "G." So I learned that Sonja wasn't doing anything with the rats, except holding onto them for "G," who stole them when they were on their way to a laboratory. Well, I learned that my distant relation had something to do with Greenpeace or Animal Rights or a related group. But this did nothing to explain the many things in my home that were put in a neat, orderly condition suddenly appearing is a disordered mess! There was one thing I did consider, provided the theory that there was a ghost in the house were true: what the ghost was disordering and whether or not the items being disordered held a key. Dishes, clothing and written material. Dishes to eat food on, clothing for protection from weather and written material for learning. Food, protection, learning. My Lysenko Program came immediately to mind, but, then, if biomorphs could show clear signs of intelligence, then why not a ghost? For one, the "ghost" didn't show up until my Lysenko biomorphs showed signs of intelligence with regards to food, shelter and learning. Coincidence? I was about to pick the books up and put them back on their shelves when the phone rang.

It was my old friend and colleague Diane Verano, an electrical engineer, and the one person with whom I should have consulted about my present "order-to-chaos" problems. I told her exactly what I had told Melissa, with the additional details about the formerly ordered, now disordered books. The first thing she thought of asking me about was the kind of electrical field my "closed" setup was generating. I gave her the details, though she didn't need many of these to figure out how a hydraulic turbine would work. She said she had vaguely remembered hearing about something similar which involved alternate power, where people were getting dizzy and/or suffering from headaches in addition to finding objects in a state of chaos. I experienced no dizziness or bodily discomfort, but I was having dreams, the main contents of which were seemingly disjointed word-phrases. She said she'd get in touch with a physics professor she knew, Scott Lupo, and explain this to him. She promised to get back to me the same day.

Her return call came that evening. Professor Scott Lupo was very busy and presently working on a grant-funded project, but he did have some good ideas about my generating closed electrical fields whilst new life-forms, even if they were only virtual life-forms, were trying to survive in viable alternate environments. He asked Diane to pass on tome the phone number of Lisa Jordan, a physics graduate student at Miskatonic University. In addition, he'd E-mail Lisa the information and ask her to explain what I needed to know.

I said good-bye to Diane after thanking her and dialed Lisa's number, only to be greeted by: "Cosmic Coincidence Control Center, Board Room, Melissa speaking." To my surprise, Lisa Jordan belonged to the C.C.C.C. What a coincidence!

I, once again, explained the "order-to-chaos" situation to Lisa Jordan. She, like Diane, focused her attention on the alternate energy source I was using, how much power it generated and how much my computers were using. She also took special note that I was using this energy to let programs run on their own with virtual life-forms "playing games on their own," for I didn't tell her about my programs for evolution, but instead said they were games involving building, warfare, and the like.

After getting a few more details involving the locations of disorder, she asked me if I knew anything about the discoverer of the Quantum Wave Equation, Erwin Schroedinger. Well, from college I remembered something about the nature of this wave equation, and of Schroedinger's famous cat paradox, but nothing in detail as I never had any occasion to need or apply it. Lisa giggled a big and then explained the humor, "No, not Schroedinger as he was known in the physics community, but the Schroedinger who use to turn out mostly short pieces on scientific subjects that were outside physics, usually with the effect of setting the scientific establishment on its head." Well, no, I did not know of Schroedinger's other ideas, nor, for that matter, anything else about the man. She then explained that Schroedinger once wrote a short monograph called, "What is Life," which might explain the bizarre incidents in my home. The very title suggested to me that it would: "What is Life." Another coincidence?

At any rate, according to Lisa, Schroedinger conceived of living things in terms of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the celebrated Law of Entropy. Schroedinger never gave in to the obscurantists who thought living things did not obey the laws of physics. Schroedinger said they emphatically did, but they may involve other laws of physics hitherto unknown, which would need to be made an integral part of physics.

I commented that this seemed like too subtle a line of thought to be of value here, as I felt we were about to tip over into the realm of pseudo-science and mysticism, which I have never found to be of any value for anything, except losing one's grasp on reality, if that is indeed one's wish, or writing a science fiction tale. But Lisa insisted that this was not so, and said Schroedinger knew all about how such thinking was prone to many misconceptions. Schroedinger's approach was simply to carry on and try to avoid these errors and fallacies. With this reassurance, I asked her to continue.

She said that Schroedinger explained that living things appear to evade the decay to thermodynamic equilibrium that is required of all things by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In fact, he said that all the laws of physics are really only statistical laws and have a lot to do with the natural tendency of things to "go over into disorder," she quoted him as saying. Physicists in Schroedinger's time were already familiar with the fact that the laws of physics had to be modified at very low temperatures near absolute zero. To be specific, at these low temperatures, Schroedinger stated that the classical laws of physics were modified by quantum theory. He knew of many instances of this, and believed in many more, and thought that life was one of them, "a particularly striking one," as he put it. He conceived of life as an orderly and lawful behavior of matter, not based exclusively on matter's tendency to go over from order to disorder, but based partly on existing order that is kept up.

I admitted that this was all very fine and theoretical, and asked her to explain more about life evading the decay to equilibrium. That seemed contrary to the laws of physics and was the opposite of what was happening in my home. Lisa then explained Schroedinger as follows: "Lots of things move or exchange matter with the environment, but we do not therefore automatically consider them alive because if we take an inanimate thing that is 'doing something' and isolate it, all motion usually comes to a standstill very soon as a result of friction, electrical differences becoming equalized, fueling substances combining into chemical compounds, temperature becoming uniform due to heat conductance, etc. After all of this happens, the inanimate system that was moving fades into a dead, inert lump of matter, all motion ceasing. This is the well-known state of thermodynamic equilibrium or maximum entropy as required by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Some of these approaches to equilibrium are very slow."

I replied that even if it took centuries for this to happen, we still did not automatically consider something alive because thermodynamic equilibrium was slow in coming.

Lisa agreed and explained that Schroedinger referred to these instances only in order to clear himself of charges of inaccuracy in this difficult and easily misunderstood subject in which mysticism runs rampant. But, he said it was precisely this avoidance of rapid decay into the inert state of equilibrium that made living organisms appears so enigmatic. So much so, that from very early times certain types of people though some "special" nonphysical or supernatural force, and elan vital or a vis viva, was operating in an organism -- and this was still claimed in some quarters!

By eating, breathing, or, in the case of plants, assimilating, organisms avoided decay. The technical term for this, mentioned specifically by Schroedinger, was metabolism, from the Greek word metaballein, meaning simple change or exchange. Organisms were constantly exchanging material with their environment.

At this point a shudder came over me, as a question as to whether my biomorphs might be "exchanging" anything with their environment beyond the confines of the virtual space inside my computer began to take shape in my mind. I refocused my mind on what Lisa was saying, however. Her exposition of Schroedinger's ideas was very detailed and accurate, I believed, and now I was beginning to sense that her notion that his ideas were relevant to what was happening to me were well-founded.

Asking Lisa what these organisms were exchanging, she said: "Matter." I countered that it seemed silly to make "the exchange of matter" the essential thing about life. Any atom of nitrogen or oxygen would be as good as any other. I asked her what a living thing would be gaining by exchanging atoms constantly.

Lisa explained that Schroedinger knew that this question was often glibly silenced and our curiosity about this subject often stifled by the smug answer, "Organisms are really feeding on and exchanging energy." Schroedinger believed this was a silly way to end the inquiry, because one calorie was also just as good as any other, so once again, we must ask, isn't it also silly to make energy exchange the essential, furious activity that life pursues?

I recognized that this was a brilliant counter. Schroedinger was not fooled by smug, phony answers that really were no improvement on what went before. Matter exchange or energy exchange. So? Indeed, I found Schroedinger's remarks on life increasingly interesting as Lisa said more: if one nitrogen atom was as good as any other, and one calorie was as good as any other, what did Schroedinger think was the "precious something" which kept living things from death, that feared state of thermodynamic equilibrium all things ended up in?

Schroedinger answered this as follows: everything that went on in Nature meant an increase in entropy in the part of the world where it was going on -- the Second Law once again. Thus living things also increased entropy, or produced "positive" entropy, as Schroedinger called it. The dangerous state it forestalled, but inevitably approached of maximum entropy was death. An organism could only keep aloof from this state by continually drawing "negative" entropy from its environment.

I had to stop her. Negative entropy? Schroedinger said that?

Lisa explained that, yes, he did say that and it was this which was grossly misunderstood by everyone who imagined that he was talking about a separate force. He was most certainly not talking about some separate force, but about what would be the equivalent of "order," just as "positive" entropy was the equivalent of disorder. Schroedinger actually said that living things were "sucking order" from their environment. He even put it in a less paradoxical form: he said that the essential thing in the metabolism of a living thing was that the organism free itself of all the entropy it cannot stop producing while it is alive. Thus an organism evaded a process by which it itself would approach a chaotic state very quickly and die. He called this a "marvelous faculty," that is, the mechanisms by which organisms delayed their decay into thermodynamic equilibrium. They fed on order or "negative" entropy. One way he put it was that organisms would attract a stream of "negative" entropy to themselves. This "negative" entropy compensated for the entropy increase an organism produced by living and thus it was able to maintain itself on a stationary and rather fairly low entropy level, that is, maintain itself at a fairly high level of orderliness.

I asked if Schroedinger was saying that the high state of order maintained by a living thing was being done so at the expense of orderliness in its immediate environment.

Lisa confirmed this. In the case of higher animals, Schroedinger said the kind of orderliness they fed upon was well known and easily recognized: they fed upon the extremely well-ordered state of matter in complicated organic food compounds. They utilized these foodstuffs and then returned this matter back to the environment in a less complicated, more entropized, more disordered or degraded form.

Not entirely degraded, I pointed out: plants can still make use of what they return.

Lisa agreed and added that everybody knew about pig shit being great fertilizer! And plants derived their own most powerful supply of "negative" entropy, Schroedinger said, from sunlight. But in his view, it was not the essential thing that plants were using the "matter" of fertilizer or the "energy" of sunlight, but rather that they were thought to be living because they sucked the orderliness out of sunlight, which, as it falls upon the Earth, is an extremely ordered phenomenon.

I thanked her for this information and then talked a bit with her about Melissa and computer games. But before she got off the phone, she advised me to seriously consider the more probable possibility that there was a prowler in the house that might be gaining access from inside panels or passageways built similarly into the rock as the cellars. She also told me that I was wrong about the dishes; rats most certainly could dislodge dishes. I had no idea where these rats could have been for all that time. Assuming Sonja was given these rats in a cage, they evidently got out on their own or were let out by her. In the interim, they would have gotten into the walls.

This information, Schroedinger's definition of Life, had farther reaching implications than Lisa knew. And if what I was thinking was correct, then this had little or nothing to do with my closed computer system or small electrical fields. I made the connection and was only able to see this connection by witnessing the "big picture" with my biomorphic virtual life-forms as the mimicked what was happening in real life. I set up a virtual world with virtual living beings in it. Whatever was affecting the real world and its real beings was, had to be, the same force or mechanism. Being? Life-form? Something possibly extracting energy from living things and causing chaos: I saw no evidence of such a thing within my virtual worlds, but as soon as I programmed the potential for culture into one program, Lysenko, I began experiencing order to chaos in my real house while my Lysenko biomorphs made more complex and ordered structures in their virtual world. But what or who was "sucking life" out of and causing resultant chaos in the real world outside my house? And to what end? What would benefit from what we lost? I did have some ideas about this.

For the last few years we had been hearing about fish, crabs, and shrimp practically "walking ashore" to the delight of residents who found these "easy pickings" to be a delight. Practically every time anyone turned on the news they got to hear it. Many things were blamed: global warming, agricultural waste, air pollution, etc. Something was depleting the oxygen from the waters. Almost all of it could be traced to agricultural filth or industrial filth, which only traced right back into the agricultural way of life. Everywhere we turned there was hypoxia (low oxygen) or worse: anoxia (no oxygen left). A barrage of news reports told the same story: Gulf Coast commercial fishery wiped out due to hypoxia; hog feces and urine in North Carolina's New River estuary render the waters anoxic; Chesapeake Bay hypoxic half the year; France's Sommone Bay cockle fishery hypoxic; commercially valuable lobster no longer living in hypoxic waters of Kattegat, North Sea; Black Sea anoxic. Side by side with this were increasing numbers of reports of unexplained chaos, civil unrest: humans going berserk over nothing. Along with this were the increases in complaints by consumers of new, shabbily made products falling apart, breaking, accusations of deliberately built-in obsolescence, yet products were being made with as much care and about ten times as many inspections to insure quality. It was inconceivable that humankind was genetically hardwired to behave as did my too greedy, now extinct biomorphs in the Morris Program because it was man, and man alone, who could be seen to be responsible. More and more waters were becoming hypoxic as pollution worsened. Agricultural fertilizer and the sewage of too many humans entered oceans and bays carrying phosphorus and nitrogen, which in turn nourished phytoplankton, which died and nourished bacteria, which eventually ate up the oxygen in the water. And as oxygen decreased, carbon dioxide increased. The only remaining hope for continued oxygen was the rain forests, which, in turn, thrived on carbon dioxide and, yet, there was man, burning his own last hope down by the acre! And why? For more of the same agriculture. The oxygen revolution that occurred some two to three billion years ago, which had enabled all life as we know it today to evolve, was being reversed! Humans were literally "eating and shitting" themselves into extinction! As a result of this, many oceanic animals died and something more: benthic animals that tolerated this low-oxygen environment were moving in and taking over. That is, when oxygen dropped, bacteria that metabolized sulfates moved up into our realm from their home deep down on the ocean floor, exposing fish and invertebrates to poisonous hydrogen sulfide. But some fish were surviving and thriving! These survivors were switching from an aerobic metabolism (breathing oxygen) to an anaerobic metabolism by using different chemicals in their bodies to produce energy. This method of living existed on Earth long prior to the oxygen revolution! In turn, these fish ended up on our own dinner plates or they got there via the food-chain. It was like a circle with one species, man, being toxic to himself. But how could such a thing be biologically possible in the real world? I did program a true-to-life format for man when I constructed my Morris Program: and thereby witnessed mankind, or rather Mibb, going extinct! The poltergeist phenomena started just after the Morris Program self-destructed and the subsequent programming of, and running of, my Lysenko Program.

Interesting albeit depressing things to think about, none of which explained my current house chaos. Perhaps all of my chaos was caused by rats still loose and hiding around the house. I was tired of paying attention to it. I didn't want to pay attention to it or fuss over it. Idid make a mental note to keep an eye on the objects being disordered and then check the Lysenko Program, and to allow the messes to end up, or "run," where they'd end up, rather like letting my programs run on their own.

Everything else was going well and life was good. I resolved the problem with my house-ghost: when "it" made a mess I'd leave the mess! I got more than I ever expected with my biomorphs whose capacity for exhibiting "life" was finally established, and possibly their intelligence. Yet I was the programmer of these virtual life forms and their virtual environments. Who or what was the "programmer" of real life-forms and real environments? For the first time in my life I began to understand the nature of this question, a question usually reserved for theologians, and I also began to understand the heights and extent of the hubris and dementia man had fallen into. If there was a "what" or "who" programming real life, then living beings, "holy-men" in particular, had no more ability to "Know" the intentions of the programmer than my virtual life-forms have to know my intent. They behaved naturally as per their program. They did not do things "in order to" please me. They had no more ability to even suspect that I existed than would a two-dimensional creature have to know about the existence of a three-dimensional creature, even if the three-dimensional creature intruded upon their two-dimensional world. They'd at best be able to observe the phenomena caused by the intrusion and formulate theories and/or react to the intrusion if they had to, but they would not be able to ever know that these things were caused by an outside agency with any kind of purpose nor suspect what that outside agency could be. If one of them was a con-artist or lunatic, and providing the rest of them were morons, that one would be able to pull off the "I Know What God Wants" act and the two-dimensional world would have the beginnings of the brain-sickness called "religion." And if some of the smarter two-dimensional creatures gathered all such data, including data about their own evolution and the world they lived in, they'd see that there was no room for the "Creator with Intentions" and give up their delusions. Easier said than done in the real world. I concluded that I didn't miss anything by not pondering this nonsense before. It was a non-issue. All was going well, better than I ever expected, and life was good. Spring was turning into summer and from my home on the mountain the view was beautiful. All around nature began to wake up and was now in full bloom. I remember the day well: the sky was exceptionally clear and blue and there was a cool breeze that blew through the open windows in the exposed portion of my house. I took my time walking out to the mailbox, lingering to notice the beauty of the multicolored wildflowers that grew naturally on either side of my driveway. Life felt optimistic and positive, though I can't say that I was ever a pessimistic or negative person. I just felt more optimistic and positive this day.

I received a package in the mail, a book as it turned out, with the return address written in pen as the "C.C.C.C." with no specifically named person. It was postmarked Arkham, Massachusetts. I assumed Melissa or Lisa mailed it: Keys to Infinity by Clifford A. Pickover. The book had nothing to do with what I was working on, but it gave me an idea for a possible new program: Infinity. There was a chapter in this book involving the creation of complex genetic sequences, quite similar to what I had done, but not nearly as complex as needed to show biomorphs mimicking living things and having virtual life.

I went to the sub-cellar, got out a fresh disc, and decided to try it out, though I did not plan to put this into my hard drive where it would be remotely possible for it to interfere with my biomorph program. I sued the computer which had previously run the now-extinct Morris Program; I thought I might wish to reactivate this at some future time and with new subroutines. As I walked toward the computer, concentrating on the book and not on where my feet went, I accidentally tripped on and unfastened the connection to the computer running my Lysenko Program. There was no harm done; I could simply reconnect it and let the program continue. It was the most fascinating program. Cultural evolution was much faster than biological evolution and, with the speeded up time, the descendants of Ribb, Sibb and Tibb had gone on to virtually build a civilization possibly only dreamed of in a heaven invented by Plato or Euclid. I opted to leave the Lysenko Program unconnected until I could sit there and watch it. Switching on the computer, which housed the extinct Morris biomorphs, I chose to try out the "Leviathan number" defined as "(10 to the 666th power) factorial." I didn't get a number, but instead saw a pattern resembling an octopus on my screen that seemed to fill up representations of three-dimensional space with little balls. Looking in the book to see if this was working right, I discovered that I had produced an error. I erased it and tried again, but achieved the same error. I checked the book again to see if I missed something. Finding that I didn't, I was about to erase the disc and forget about this entirely, but when I looked up at the screen there was something in addition to the octopoid-like form. I had no idea where these things had come from while I had looked away from the screen. They resembled Worm-Forms in appearance and movement. It looked as if I had done something, but just what I didn't know. As per alphabetical naming, I named this new -- biomorph? -- Ubb, and decided to watch the program play out.

As I stared at its black form and the Worm-Forms around it, it seemed to take on an ominous appearance, though I couldn't exactly say why at this time. The Worm-Forms seemed to sit there, in close proximity to Ubb, and wriggle. As such, it stayed this way for hours with only the slightest deviation in movement made by one of the Worm-Forms. Ubb looked like a Great Lord on a throne that was my computer screen, with its Worm subjects prone before it. It was an odd idea.

That night I dreamed again. The whispers said: "The single multitude." "The remote sensing." "The strangled root." "The genetic death." "The abiotic organism." I let the dream play itself out, passively listening to the whispering: "The slavish freewill." "The enforced willingness." Unlike the previous dream, there was no lingering sound of whispering when I began awakening nor was there any sense of pursuit about this dream, nor stress. And upon walking through the house, I didn't find any further messes made by the house-ghost. Perhaps when I stopped picking up after it, it got the message and gave up.

When I returned to the sub-cellar, I was struck by what was on the computer screen, which had only the Ubb biomorph and its attendant Worm-Forms of the day before. Apparently I didn't err after all. I hadn't even thought of a name for this program since it wasn't mine and it didn't seem to be giving me the Leviathan number. I wondered if "Leviathan Program" would be appropriate, but decided not to give it a name another author coined. I left the program unnamed. Something was happening: the Ubb biomorph was generating randomly shaped forms out of itself, yet it wasn't diminishing in size at all, but only shifting its semi-octopoidal, inchoate shape. Each time it generated an offspring biomorph, the Worms would guide it back into Ubb. And yet Ubb didn't increase in size! Where was the virtual mass going? And why wasn't the virtual mass of Ubb decreasing and increasing as it spawned-out and then absorbed-in the offspring it generated? I couldn't imagine what kind of program this could be or what the purpose of the Worm-Forms was except to make sure that whatever came out of Ubb went back into Ubb. But to what end? I let the program run to hopefully see what would eventually turn up. In the interim I checked my Darwin and Gould Programs and saw all was going well. The Darwin biomorphs were blissfully doing the same things in perfect harmony. Meanwhile the Gould biomorphs had to deal with one more Asteroid on yet another arrangement of continents. As such I left the three programs run as I went out to enjoy a relaxing canoe ride in Echo Lake Park.

I was luxuriously tired when I got back home; I ate a quick supper and retired early, feeling blissfully content. I didn't even care that I accidentally dropped and broke a dish; I'd clean it up tomorrow. I slept soundly, perhaps more soundly than I ever slept before in my new home. I had the dream, or rather I heard the whispers outside of the context of the dream. There was no non-scenery, no feeling of pursuit or stress and no feeling of being unable to flee. There were only whispers that seemed to blend into my Being, producing a cradling sensation rather like that which I felt whilst in the canoe drifting down Echo Lake. It was a mothering feeling, like a baby being rocked. The whispers said: "The abiotic organism." "The single multitude."

Now I was in for a surprise again. If this house-ghost had been a ghost, or even a real child, I'd have been happy to see that it cleaned up the mess I made last night! I had eaten a quick supper and retired early for bed and had left the kitchen a mess with the unwashed dishes piled in the sink and the broken dish still on the floor. What I found when I went into the kitchen was not that it had been cleaned up with the dishes washed and neatly stacked, but that the dishes were back where they were before I took them out to eat on them. So I was living in a home where dishes not only washed themselves, but dried themselves and put themselves back in their cupboards? It would appear as such, but for one unique thing: the dish that I broke was no longer broken and was back in the cupboard where it was last night. I'd have to think about how a dish could unbreak itself later; right now I wanted to check the new unnamed program.

Watching the Ubb biomorph, I saw what at first appeared to be more of the same birthing and unbirthing, but neither decreasing nor increasing, but it wasn't the same. I recognized one of the biomorphs that the Worm-Forms were herding into Ubb. It was Mibb, the last surviving biomorph from the Morris Program! It would seem that Ubb, in a program I did not invent and which, according to the book, was a programming error on my part, got into the hard drive of my defunct Morris Program and somehow reactivated it. As I watched I saw the Ubb biomorph absorbing more of the biomorphs that had been predaciously killed in the Morris Program. And yet each time the Worm-Forms guided recognizable Morris biomorphs into Ubb, Ubb would in turn spawn something different, more of the same randomly formed inchoate shapes it spawned on its own prior to infesting the Morris Program. On and on this went. I recognized all of them, Nibb, Obb, Pibb, Qibb and all their progeny. I sat and stared at this, transfixed by the movement of the Ubb biomorph's undulating, pulsing movements, out and in, out and in, as if it were breathing life out only to breath it back in, always attended by its Worm Servants. Finally it was all gone. All of the Morris biomorphs had been sucked out of the hard drive they had been programmed in and were absorbed by Ubb, never to be seen again. What was inexplicable was that the Morris biomorphs had already killed each other off; Mibb had been the only one left and it self-destructed. Whatever the unknown and error-born Ubb biomorph was, it had the capacity to read and then retrieve traces of programs that were erased, and then absorb them. But it did not seem to have the ability to "fix" programs. If a program had been erased by a virus, another program with the ability to read traces of the destroyed data and then retrieve the data intact would be very valuable, and I do mean valuable in terms of cash. Since Ubb was an unintentional, unknown error, I had no way to begin figuring out how it worked. The book was of no use; all it instructed me to do, if I got an "octopoid form," was to erase it. I didn't even know if the data retrieved and absorbed by Ubb was retraceable through Ubb or if the data existed intact in Ubb. I pondered this as I continued to watch more of the same.

By the time I went to eat, hours had passed, yet I was unaware of their passing. Staring at Ubb proved to be hypnotic. I ate, watched the news and heard more reports of oxygen being sucked out of the waters due to the actions of man, man, MAN, MAN . . . and man. I fell asleep where I sat with the television on. More dreams, more of the same whisperings, more of the same word-phrases: "The abiotic organism." "The single multitude." Etc. Again, there was no pursuit, no stress, just whisperings. One thing was subtly different: I felt the desire to move toward the whispering, to hear more, to know more. To know their Source.

I decided to stop staring at the Ubb biomorph. Every time I stared I became transfixed and, before I knew it, the entire day was gone; time seemed to pass by quickly, hours seemed like seconds. I'd instead check the Darwin and Gould Programs and see what the biomorphs were doing, but only after going out for a long walk on this beautiful day.

I should have stayed out, kept walking, not checked the programs. Bewilderment turned to frozen horror when I looked at what was happening with my Darwin biomorphs. How it was even possible was beyond my understanding. It had apparently been going on all night and well into the day and was halfway into the Darwin virtual environment. Ninety percent of the formerly stable biomorphs were gone. From what I could see happening, they must have been wiped out -- or absorbed. Frenzied clusterings of various type of biomorphs appeared on distant areas of the virtual Earth, while others seemed to be battling their own kind trying to prevent them from making a beeline for Ubb. Yes; somehow, by some inexplicable means, the Ubb biomorph was inside my Darwin Program and its Worm Servants were guiding the other biomorphs straight to it. It was sickening to watch Ubb, as if on a throne, devouring the virtual inhabitants of the virtual world, devouring all my hard work. I didn't have time to wonder how Ubb managed to get into my Darwin Program, though I had a clue based on the only possible connection: the electrical wiring itself. All of my separate programs were being run through the same power source. Perhaps Ubb was programmed with the ability to do this.

What I quickly needed to do was get to my Gould Program and insert a safeguard against any extraneous intruder. But I was already too late. The holocaust being enacted was the same with a few differences. Some of the offspring of Fibb and Kibb were siding with Ubb and aiding the Worms in the herding of their siblings toward the throne of Ubb. Others were battling these siblings while also trying to prevent other siblings from walking into their own oblivion. And still others were huddled together in small clusters. I had visions of taking Melissa Brand's head and bashing it through my computer screen with my bare hands. Quickly, I set my subroutine Disease in motion with new instructions: infect Ubb. This only served to give me time. Disease went to work going straight for Ubb and bypassing the remaining offspring of Fibb and Kibb. The ones who had been helping Ubb seemed to stand aside motionless as Disease went to work. some of the clustered offspring dispersed with some of them coming closer as if to get a look at what was happening to their world. Ubb was not being harmed a bit by Disease and still, it neither increased nor decreased. It passively devoured Disease, not being able to, or not caring to be selective about what it absorbed. During the interim, I was able to reprogram my subroutine Asteroid to crash down on Ubb. This it did, but Ubb was not affected! And neither were its Worm Servants. But the traitorous offspring of Fibb and Kibb, who had joined forces with Ubb, were completely wiped out. And Cell was destroyed. My world! My work! So! The C.C.C.C. wanted to play games? I had this monster virus, or whatever it was, on a disc. On two discs. All I had to do was stick this into any computer connected to the World Wide Net and push a button. I had the momentary devious thought to infect all governmental data bases with this thing. I was angry; oh god was I angry: FUMING PISSED! And there was nothing I could do.

On that idea, "nothing I can do," I went into the kitchen and decided to calm down over a cup of coffee and a cigarette. There was something I could do and I did have the time to do it. I could start fresh: new computers, new wiring, all of it. The mere thought of it. WHY? Why would someone in the C.C.C.C. send me a book, being sure I'd try something out, if they knew it would destroy my data? But then, did they know this? There were many program options in Keys to Infinity, out of which I had chose one. I tried this one out and made some kind of error. An error. My error.

After calming down considerably and resigning myself to possibly having to start fresh, I decided to call Melissa, ask her who sent me the book, and ask her if she knew how to eliminate the error. Perhaps all was not lost. If I could get Ubb out of my Darwin and Gould Program hard-drives, and eliminate it from the original computer which had the Morris Program, I could just start their programs again. I thanked my lucky feet for tripping over the wire which disconnected my Lysenko Program. Unlike the other programs, which were designed on standard evolutionary scenarios, the Lysenko Program was one I personally crafted with love. It was the only program in which biomorphs showed real signs of intelligence, of being able to think.

I called the number I had called to get Lisa, the Board Room of the C.C.C.C. I'd have better luck getting someone on the phone by calling there instead of trying to reach Melissa at home. Lisa answered. There was pregnant silence on the phone when I asked her about the book and told her what happened. Then, after a long silence, she said: "Oh my God." She insisted that no one in the C.C.C.C. would have sent me this book. For one, only she and Melissa knew of me and neither would have any reason to send such a book. But Melissa would have to decide whether or not to tell me more about other groups on campus and who might have sent it. Whoever did it would have had to have known that I contacted the C.C.C.C., who I was, where I lived, and know I was working with computers. Immediately, there was one person who came to mind: the jerk in the Admissions Office who had asked me questions when I asked him for Melissa's phone number. I had told him my name, my location and said I wanted to talk to Melissa about computers! Lisa said she'd track Melissa down and have her call me back as soon as possible.

The call came that evening. The nosy man in the Admissions Office was Charles Hunt. There was only one person on any given day working there and the day I phoned Melissa he was there. He was part of a faction of students at Miskatonic University nicknamed "Ossies." He was also part of, or at least a support of, another large group called the Wilmarth Foundation. Neither Hunt nor anyone in the Wilmarth Foundation would ever send anyone a book that contained instructions, or a potential for certain errors obtained by misreading instructions, which could result in anyone generating a program for the entity Ubb. Ubb! Melissa said: "Ubb."

I interrupted her: "Melissa, how the hell do you know that I got down to the letter 'U'?"

She asked me what I was talking about, what letter.

"The letter 'U' in the alphabet, Ubb. You know, I gave my biomorphs names, Abb, Bibb, Cibb, Dibb, Ebb. I was up to the letter 'U,' Ubb."

She fell silent for a full minute. "Brenda, you named the biomorph that's doing all of this Ubb?" There was the sound of incredulous amazement in her question, which was puzzlingly meaningless to me. She then told me that she knew of only one organization that could have and would have sent me such a book: the Sodalitas Vermiculi. She then launched into an outline of "the things that were going on" behind the scenes in the world, with groups and spies and gods and warring cults, all of which was too bizarre. But my question still stood: why would the Sodalitas Vermiculi want to ruin my computer programs? Even if they knew what I was doing and knew the results, why would they want to destroy my data? That "Ubb" turned out to be the name of someone's deity was pure coincidence. How was anyone supposed to know, predict, arrange a set up where I'd make a computer error and name it "Ubb" based solely on the fact that I chose to use the alphabet instead of numbers to name my biomorphs? I could have used anything!

"Yes, you could have," Melissa urgently cut in, "but you didn't, Brenda. And you didn't use Aff, Baff, Caff, Daff, Aff or Ass, Buss, Cuss, Duss, Ess. You used '-bb' and, hear me, Brenda, COINCIDENTALLY ended up with 'Ubb' for a name that also happens to be the real name of IT, THE THING YOU HAVE IN YOUR COMPUTER! UBB! THE PROGENITOR OF THE YUGGS, THE WORMS OF THE EARTH THAT SERVE IT!" She didn't have to shout. She wasn't in the mood to debate this or try to reason and her speech lost coherence as she sputtered out instructions: "Trash it. Destroy it. Leave. Get out of there. Just go. Run. Do it now. Right now. Hang up and run."

Well, I hung up. Going on the assumption that there was a group that took offense when someone "profaned" the name of their deity, that group would have to have had direct access to far too much to even know what I named my biomorphs: visual access to my own notes because I did not put the name of my programs into the computer; I wrote them down on paper. The only names entered into the computer programs were the names of the biomorphs in these programs. But still, they'd know that my next biomorph would be named Ubb, but not that I'd use this name for any "ancestral organism." In the Gould Program I named this "Cell." And assuming that one of them snuck into my home (my thoughts returned to the poltergeist or: prowler) and really knew all of this, why would they send me a book on the slim chance that I'd try one of its programs and then maybe use the letter "U" for Ubb? Why wouldn't they imagine I'd use the name "Leviathan Number Program" or, for that matter, "Batrachian Program," "Anaphylactic Program," or "Coney Island Program," and try these other programs listed and use the names invented by the author of the book? And how on earth could they know I'd make an error in programming, which is what started all of this to begin with? Melissa was a crackpot! She was NUTS! Though I had to smirk at her arriving at a real, possibly cause of global chaos by using her mystical reasoning. I could cause chaos if I left these discs infect the World Wide Net and enter governmental data bases. I could even start World War Three. And with me keeping my Lysenko disc safe, if anyone was left alive, they'd call it a Communist Plot.

Such was my mood as I laughed over dinner, laughed walking up the stairs, laughed when I discovered the bed, which I left in a mess, all neat and straightened out, and laughed myself to sleep. Laughed. Talking about crackpot cults fighting each other over crackpot gods and creating crackpot organizations where they lived a life more virtual than my biomorphs, where they could pretend to have knowledge about monumentally important fantasy so they could feel virtually smart and important; these stupid cows went through their virtual lives as if half asleep, unaware of real things like the DEA, CIA, BATF, FBI and the former KGB agents under their noses in what was now a brand new and really dangerous Russian Mafia. I'd hate these people if they weren't so funny. I laughed myself to sleep contemplating the monumental hilarity of it.

I dreamed, as usual the same whispering sounds and again with a luring quality. In this dream I followed the whispers to their Source: an underground pit of some kind with symbols carved around its rim. The whispers echoed up through the shaft of the pit: "The tritoned hues." "The bitoned variations." "The inherited awareness." "The faceted structures." "The positive blackness."

I jarred myself awake. These word-phrases had to do with my precious Lysenko Program! NO! NO, NO, NO! Not possible. I rushed into the sub-cellar to check the Lysenko disc. It was not even inside the computer, though I knew its program was in the hard drive and in order to check the disc I'd have to put it into the computer. Ha! Not a chance. The computer wasn't even plugged in to this electrical source since my foot had disconnected it and this had happened prior to my generating the Ubb monster. Ekleechno! I plugged this computer into the wall socket, which was connected to the normal city electrical power company, yes, "The People's Power," and inserted my Lysenko Program. And watched. And watched mesmerized, stunned, too benumbed to even be dumbfounded.

They were doing so well in their environments, thriving like living creatures. I could see why many, including scientists, viewed these virtual beings as having life: I became fond of them as if they were living beings. I inwardly grieved to see what became of them. And viewing this last and only disc I had not looked at for days, my Lysenko Program, and despite the fact that it would be impossible for this program to have been taken over by the Ubb biomorph, I saw The Impossible. For a split second before looking at the tragedy, I felt the inner-call of all revolutionaries: "POWER TO THE PEOPLE!" But there it was in full view: the Ubb biomorph and nothing but this Thing, everchanging, as if defecating and then devouring its own filth and, still, each new monstrous birth was being guided by the Worm-Forms back to their Source to be unborn again. The mere absurdity of it, the impossiblity of it happening on a disc that was never even reinserted into the unplugged computer after the initial Ubb error! The beautiful orange, green and purple structures built by my Lysenko biomorphs now stood rebuilt as a plain, circular structure surrounding the Ubb biomorph like a pit. At least with these last, something remained to show that they once existed, that they had done one last act before they perished: they built this structure. How they could have been made to rebuild this structure around the One -- Biomorph? -- was beyond imagining. They'd have to have been active doing this -- in an unplugged computer and in a disc laying on the table. Impossible. Just plain impossible. NOT possible. Not even possible.

I could only sit numbed, staring, hypnotized as inchoate forms were born and unborn. I mentally drifted off and pondered the implications in terms of real living things. There are common bacteria that can infect you. You, in turn, then take antibiotics to kill the bacteria. The bacteria then send a signal or chemical communication (but still communication) that ends up in your brain. Then the brain thinks thoughts fueled by a desire to eat certain foods, even if you normally don't like the foods; thoughts like these: "The dark chocolate." "The bitter sweetness." You desire chocolate and then think to get chocolate. When you eat the chocolate, the bacteria use the sugar to form a protective protein shell around themselves and thereby become immune to your antibiotic. End result: you get sicker, they get stronger! And you got sicker because the bacteria "told you" to eat chocolate and you obeyed! Do they also make people help them spread? Possible. Probable.

Whisperings circled through my thoughts as I pondered this: "The toxic nutrient." "The bonded dispersion." "The single multitude." "The living nothingness." "The abiotic organism." "The slavish freedom." "The enforced willingness."

I drifted into a dream-state as I wondered passively, is there, could there be, something "whispering" in the ears of human beings that is making them do things to destroy their own ecological system? Either this would have to be true, or mankind is an utterly insane species out to destroy itself and every other living thing in the only ecological system available to them. Man's ultimate poison would then be man himself. And, if the latter is true, why would man be the exception to the rule of natural law? No species urges itself into extinction. Similarly, no insect would want another insect to lay eggs inside of it, to later feel them hatch and devour its guts. Yet there are lures used by one group of insects that make other insects walk smack into such a horrible fate and more: the chemical lures make the victim feel good and want to do this! As if one insect were overwriting the genetic program hardwired into the other insect. In fact, that's exactly what RNA viruses could do. There had to be something like this operating on man, making man do what would appear to be insane things, making man become his own toxin, making man into a species toxic to itself! This is exactly what I saw happening to my many biomorphs. There was Ubb in all its glory-horror, alone save for the inexplicably appearing Worm-Forms that remained apart and appeared to serve It: making the biomorphs in all my programs do Its will, overriding all other environmental programs even though I never gave It any environmental program. And this last, in its unplugged computer and uninserted disc, the Lysenko Program, with its beginnings of virtual culture, was the most inexplicable and tragic of them all.

I don't know how long I sat staring at the computer screen in silent thought or how long the Worms were there silently staring at me. But they were there, two of them, one right next to me and the other near the well. About nine feet tall, three feet in diameter. "The slavish freewill." "The enforced willingness." O.K. I'm coming. "The primordial organism." "The living nothingness."

Odd. I never before noticed the strange markings carved around the rim of the well.

Created: March 12, 1999; Updated: August 9, 2004