An Ecology of MInd (33 page)

“You know me extremely well," continued Michael, "but you only know a small part of me and some of what you think you know is wrong.”

Chris blinked in surprise.

“While I am the Michael you know, I am also much more. I was actually born approximately thirty-five thousand years ago, roughly in the area of what is now
Slovakia.”

“You mean like a past life or something?”

“No, I mean as in, I was born about thirty-five thousand years ago. Just listen to the story I tell you and try not to judge yet. I will give you proof
that I am not insane or making a joke a little further into the story. If when I am done you do not believe me, feel free to have me committed for
psychiatric evaluation.”

“I was born into a small tribe of what you would call Cro-Magnon. It was before agriculture and writing, and we lived a hard life of hunting and gathering.
Nothing seemed overly special about me during my early years. One day when I was twelve and out in the forest on my own, I was struck by lightning.”

“Twelve would seem very young to your way of thinking today, but I had already completed my manhood ceremony and joined the hunters of the tribe. After the
lightning strike, other than feeling a bit woozy for a few minutes, I was fine and seemed unhurt."

"When I got back to camp I found a larger tribe of Neanderthals was attacking my people. We used to have occasional contact with groups of them. Contact
had never been friendly, but it seldom went beyond posturing and brief skirmishes. This time though, they were slaughtering my whole tribe. They killed my
mother, father and everyone I knew.”

“When I tried to help defend the tribe, they shoved a spear into my guts and left me for dead. I had a wound that would have normally been fatal, but I
didn’t die. The lighting strike did something to change me. I only recently discovered what the lighting had done and why, but at that time, I had no
understanding of what had happened to me."

"I found that I could mentally cause my body to heal itself. I also found that I could alter my body to make it impervious to all harm. I could make myself
stronger, faster and have unlimited endurance. I found I could alter myself so that I could crush rocks with my hands if I wanted. At that time, my powers
were limited to just my own body, but that would change over time.”

“I was devastated, left totally alone with the murder of my family and tribe, and I wept for a long time. I was also very angry and swore vengeance. I used
my new abilities and began to hunt down and kill all Neanderthals I could find. It took me centuries, but I killed them all.”

“It took a long time because I was totally focused on my revenge, but I eventually realized that I did not die or even age as I should. I finally realized
that as far as I could tell, I was immortal.”

“When I had finally killed all the Neanderthals that I could find I had lost the purpose that drove my life. My body was invulnerable, but my emotions were
still the same as before the change. I wandered for a bit but loneliness eventually led me to join a tribe. My abilities made it easy for me to take
leadership of a tribe by combat. Many of the members of the tribe feared me. Others in the tribe wanted my power. I took a wife. She was a wonderful woman,
and I came to love her dearly. When I was away, a group that had been plotting against me captured her and used her to demand I serve them. They used
threats and the torture of the one I loved to control me.”

“It was during a task that they had assigned me when I discovered that not only could I make my body strong and invulnerable, but I could change my shape
and appearance at will. I killed and took the appearance of one of my enemies and returned to camp with his appearance and a plan to rescue my wife. When I
got to where they were holding her; it was too late. She had just committed suicide so that she could not be used against me. If I had gotten there even an
hour sooner I probably could have saved her. In my grief and anger, I killed every member of the tribe for what they had done, or for not helping my wife.”

“Over the next few thousand years I used my powers of altering my appearance to join tribes and live with them. I tried very hard to blend in. I even used
my powers to pretend to age. Sometimes this would work well for many years. Other times defending myself or others I cared about caused me to be exposed as
more than human. If my abilities were exposed, it usually resulted eventually in attacks or threats against those I cared about.”

“I had noted over the centuries that I gradually could affect things beyond my body. It started out as something I could do only a very small distance from
my body. I could shape things or even make copies of things, but I was unable to copy living things in a way that they lived. They always resulted in dead
copies. My understanding of them was limited to how they looked, and I did not understand their inner workings, so my copies were totally incapable of
life.”

“I was living with one tribe for a number of years when I came up with a primitive idea of agriculture, largely because I tended to think with a longer
time frame than the humans around me. People in the tribes at that time dealt mostly with the present worries of survival and not much beyond that in the
way of long-term planning. With me, it was different. I was continually faced with the same situations over and over and could more easily see longer-term
trends. It was shortly after I had introduced the idea of agriculture to the tribe that I discovered a new ability that would change much in my life.

“I decided to try an experiment with a new thought that I’d had for a while. It seemed very dangerous but perhaps I was cocky because I had not found
anything that could hurt me physically in thousands of years. As I said, as time went on I could copy or duplicate items but not living things. I had noted
that my powers seemed strongest on myself, and I could intuitively do things with my body that I could not do on things outside my body. I decided to try
to duplicate myself. And I was successful. At that time, I became a multiple being. Each version of me could act independently but shared a single
consciousness and was constantly aware of what the other me was doing at all times."

"Both versions of me could alter their appearance and seemed to have the same abilities. This opened up new social situations for me. One of me could live
as a normal human and blend and seem to age with those around. In cases where defense or action had previously required me to expose myself, the other me
could be an outside force to take action and let my other self maintain a camouflaged existence. It was not perfect and did not work every time, but my
existence was better.”

“I tried to make a third copy of me but found I was unable to. I did not seem to have sufficient power at that time to create more than one other me.”

Through this narrative the expression on Chris’ face did a number of transformations. They included, confusion, skepticism, and finally pity that a
brilliant mind like Michael's could have been lost to this insanity.

Chris suddenly jerked in surprise as he noticed the room across from him and behind the leather couch seat that Michael was sitting on seemed to change. It
flowed and became a featureless curved wall that merged with the floor and ceiling. It seemed to be a white wall of some kind of softly glowing material.
The effect continued to spread until it flowed to cover the door and window of the room, sealing them both inside.

“What the hell!”

The room around them began to alter further. It transformed into what looked like some sort of Greek or Roman temple with marble pillars and floor. The
furniture in the room shifted, and Michael appeared to be sitting on a large marble throne. The comfortable leather armchair Chris had been sitting in,
transformed into what seemed to be a smaller version of the throne Michael was on. Michael’s clothes transformed into some sort of Greek tunic with sandals
laced high up his calves.

The walls melted away on three of the sides revealing a scene similar to one Chris had seen when he had toured Greece. He could see a large body of water
across a rocky landscape that could well be the Mediterranean and there was a cloudless sky with the sun blazing to his left.

“I told you that over time I became able to control things beyond my body. I actually can control all matter, right down to the subatomic level. There are
limits to how far I can exert total control, but those limits are much greater they were a few thousand years ago. My abilities also extend beyond my
radius of total control over matter, but are reduced over distance.”

“What you see close to us is real, but the open space around us is actually only about a mile across with a smooth wall that is made to appear like the
scene you see. Think of it is a movie projection on a screen if it helps. You are physically here. We actually are about two miles underground, directly
beneath your house. I moved us out of your house about ten minutes ago by shifting the whole room we were in down and replacing it above us as we moved.
This is very real, just the more distant landscape is an illusion.”

“This can’t be.” Chris exclaimed in confusion.

“Yes, it can and is. I told you I would provide proof that my story was not just wild ravings or imagination.”

Michael’s body shifted and he became in succession, an old black man, a young Asian boy; a middle aged European woman, a dog, a tiger, an owl and back to
Michael’s shape. Chris stared, totally stunned by what he saw.

“Oh, my God,” exclaimed Chris in total shock.

“I told you I would provide proof. You can argue that you are dreaming or hallucinating, or that I have drugged you, but at least you can see there is more
going on than me just being delusional. Take this as proof of something and let me continue with my story. As I said earlier, you are in no danger. Chris,
I am still the same Michael you know as your friend and former foster child. You just did not know that I am also more than that.”

“I moved us to ensure our privacy, to give you some evidence other than my word, that what I say is true. This setting, while rather theatrical, will act
as an ongoing reminder of that as I continue with my story.”

“A few thousand years after I had copied my body, powers and consciousness, both my bodies were living in the island kingdom that was the foundation of the
legend of Atlantis. It was where the current island of Santorini is located in the Aegean Sea. The island of Santorini and the few smaller islands around
it are the remnants of a much larger island that used to have a thriving civilization. It was the cultural and economic centre of the Mediterranean at the
time. It did not live up to the Atlantis of legend, but it was a pleasant land."

A massive volcanic eruption totally destroyed all but small portions of the original island. The volcanic explosion did not harm either of my bodies. Being
immersed in lava provided a strong energy source, just as the original lightning bolt had provided an energy source. Both my bodies being immersed in the
lava caused an increase in my abilities. I noticed a slight but definite increased range to my powers beyond my body. I tried again making a third body,
and this time succeeded.”

“Now I was a multiple entity with three bodies, and I had discovered the effects of large energy sources. Previous growth in abilities was very slow,
probably due to small energy sources like food calories, heat from fires and sunlight. After some experimentation, I altered the shape and size of one of
my three bodies and kept it immersed in the lava. It acted as an ongoing energy source to increase my abilities further. A non human shape that exposed
greater surface area to the lava worked better at absorbing the geothermal energy so that is what I created."

"It still had full abilities and independent action, as all my bodies do, but for the function it was fulfilling, it did not require human form. I used it
as more of a drone of sorts. It can change at any time into a human or other form. Its form is a result of function and not ability. I actually moved the
drone deeper into the earth and molten rock. It is still there today located at the Earth’s centre and absorbing energy.”

“It was at that point that my abilities began to grow and extend further beyond my body at a much faster pace.”

“As time went on, I was many people. Some were worshiped as gods while others were laborers or beggars of no note. I lived many different lives and learned
many skills. As you can guess I have thousands of years of experience as warriors of various types, but I also gained other skills, farmer, blacksmith,
stonemason, scribe, merchant, gambler, the list is long."

"I was Hammurabi and wrote the first code of written laws. I was Diana, goddess of the hunt. I was Abraham and started a religion with a single god as an
attempt to stop people from fighting over different gods. You know how well that worked out.”

“I was also Jesus. Not the original, but the one that is remembered. I had heard of a man with some ideas that sounded interesting to me. He was living
alone out in the wilderness. By the time I found him, he was dead from disease. I assumed his identity and expanded on his ideas. With my abilities at the
time, the miracles of walking on water, turning water into wine, feeding the multitude with a few fish and pieces of bread and appearing to raise the dead
were easy to create. I thought that changing the local religion so that it taught peace, and love would hopefully help cut down on the violence in the
world. Again, another idea that in practice did not work out as planned.”

“The death, torture and fighting done in Jesus' name disgusted me. Since trying to unify humanity with religion failed I tried a different approach. I used
force and unified a large part of the world as Genghis Khan. That approach actually worked out much better than forays into religion. I was also
Quetzecoatl, Leonardo DaVinci and many more. Often I was people of no historical significance as well."

"Through all that time, I had no children who were fathered by me. I was sterile. Many of the historical figures that were me had children and numerous
others that were not noteworthy enough to make it into history did as well. Sometimes they were needed for dynastic reasons, at other times my wife just
badly wanted children. Any children I had were obtained by unconventional means. At times, I arranged for surrogate fathers to sleep with my wives. Later,
I learned how to use my abilities to steal the sperm from others during their lovemaking and to implant it into my wives. Some wives just took matters in
their own hands and had kids without me arranging it."