The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans (16 page)

Turning to our guide, I say, “I think Kizmet’s point is a defining one.”

Mr. Qatal smiles and says, “Allow me to show you ladies a bit of the
new
Bibliotheca Alexandria.”

We follow our guide at arm’s length, listening to his enthusiastic description of the reconstructed facility.

“The design concept is a perfect circle inclined towards the sea, partly submerged in a pool of water,” he tells us. “The image of the Egyptian sun illuminates the world and all its diverse civilizations, even as an inclined roof allows indirect daylight to penetrate. Designed as an arrow, an elevated passageway links the University of Alexandria to the Corniche, just as it was in ancient times. A wall composed of Aswan granite and engraved with calligraphic letters and representative inscriptions from the world’s civilizations surrounds the building.

“The new library has thirteen floors, thirty-five hundred seats, and a capacity of more than eight million volumes, fifty thousand maps, one hundred thousand manuscripts and a quarter of a million videos.

“In addition to its volumes, Bibliotheca Alexandria has four thousand periodicals, thirty thousand audiovisual materials and fifty thousand rare books. These books will never leave the building, but most will be accessible in the library’s spectacular ten-story high reading room, whose pillars soar to a sloping circular roof. The reading room will seat twenty-five hundred people.

“The library also includes a planetarium, museums of calligraphy and archaeology, and a laboratory for restoring manuscripts.

“This library is more than a modern-day archive,” explains Mr. Qatal. “It is a mark of respect for the ancient library, which was a place where the intellectuals of the day once congregated. We have been very careful to observe its design. Each level in the library is dedicated to a different field of study.

“The bottom level of the Bibliotheca houses all books pertaining to the roots of knowledge; including philosophy, history, classics and psychology. The second level includes languages and literature. The third houses books relating to art. The fourth level, which is also the central dividing level, is where all the business and economic books and other resources are located (since business is a central force in the world we live in today). On the fifth level are all books pertaining to social sciences and women’s studies. The sixth level includes science and technology books, and finally, the seventh level includes books relating to new technology. Standing on the top level, the symbolism follows that all information on the lower levels supports contemporary information,” he explains.

“Apart from the main library, the complex includes a Library for the Blind, a Young People’s Library, the Alexandria Conference Center, a science museum, a Planetarium, the International School of Information Studies (ISIS), a Calligraphy Museum, a Restoration and Conservation Laboratory and the Hall of Fame.

“Our goal in creating this new library is both simple and auspicious: we’re trying to revive the very spirit of curiosity, as well as the passion for the pursuit of knowledge that thrived in ancient times. The old library enabled the public to debate, create and invent; the new library endeavors to carry that legacy into the future.”

In Virtual Life, time does not actually exist. Only the present is vital. Of course dates are employed, as well as clock time, to provide a point of reference, but here in Virtual Life the future is always within our grasp (consider those who create a new species specific to and thoroughly adapted for the VL environment) while the past, as it remains obscured in shadow, is also within reach (even the dead sometimes pay a courtesy call in VL). As a result of time’s nebulous nature in Virtual Life, we can experience people and places and events we once thought consigned to antiquity and wholly unreachable.

Traveling through our next and last portal in the
Land Where Lost Things Go
, Kiz and I find ourselves standing on the threshold of the most extraordinary garden that either of us has ever seen. This wondrous ‘hanging’ vinery flourishes on a series of vaulted terraces that rest upon cube-shaped pillars raised one above another. These pillars are hollow and filled with earth to allow even the largest of trees to be planted. The pillars, the vaults, and terraces are constructed of baked brick and asphalt. Each terrace is built upon stone arches twenty-three meters above the ground and is planted with exotic foliage. The ascent to the highest story is by stairs, and by their side are water engines, where laborers are employed raising water from the Euphrates into the gardens. Almost immediately we are greeted by a swarthy man dressed in a splendid robe decorated with intricate embroidery and extravagant jewels. He tells us he is the King and Supreme Ruler of the city and greater environs of Babylonia, ca. 598 BC. “My name is Nebuchadnezzar II,” he informs us, “but my friends call me Majesty. You can call me that, too.”

Bowing before the monarch, Kiz and I both acknowledge his graciousness.

Of the
Seven Wonders
of the Ancient World
, only the oldest one,
The Great Pyramid of Giza
, built between 2650 and 2500 BC, is still around in PL. The other six have long since vanished, but of the original seven relics, only six can actually be documented with certainty. The one that remains shrouded in legend and mystery (its origin, its actual location, and its final destruction) is the
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
.

The
Colossus of Rhodes
was built by the Greeks between 280 and 295 BC. A giant statue of the Greek god Helios, it stood nearly as high as the
Statue of Liberty
in New York Harbor. An earthquake destroyed it in 224 BC.

The
Lighthouse at Alexandria
was a Hellenic construction erected in the third century BC in what is now Egypt, and at one hundred thirty-five meters high, it was the tallest man-made structure in the world during its time. Sometime between the years 1303 and 1480 AD, an earthquake claimed it for antiquity.

The
Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus
(Persian and Greek) was built in the year 351 BC. It stood approximately forty-five meters tall. By the year 1494 AD it had been badly damaged by earthquake and was eventually dismantled.

The
Statue of Zeus at Olympus
, built by the Greeks in 435 BC, occupied the whole width of the aisle of the temple that was built to house it, and was forty feet tall. Its true fate is unknown, but it is presumed destroyed by fire or earthquake.

The
Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
was built in 550 BC. Dedicated to the Greek goddess Artemis, it took one hundred twenty years to build. Herostratus burned it down in the year 356 BC in an attempt to achieve lasting fame.

“The PL Babylonian civilization endured from the eighteenth until the sixth century BC,” His Majesty explains as we ascend the steps leading to the gardens’ upper terraces. Behind us the panorama of a glorious city unveils itself as the sun rises once more over the Mesopotamian desert kingdom. “It was urban in character, although agricultural rather than industrial by nature. The empire consisted of a dozen or so cities, surrounded by villages and hamlets. At the head of the political structure the king—Yours truly!—wielded more or less absolute power, though working underneath the monarch, governors, administrators, mayors and councils of city elders were in charge of local administration.

“The Babylonian way of life underwent very little change for more than a millennium,” explains King Nebuchadnezzar. “One of the most important aspects of the culture was the remarkable collection of laws often designated as the ‘Code of Hammurabi’, which provides a comprehensive picture of Babylonian social structure and economic organization.

“The Code of Hammurabi is the earliest legal code known in its entirety. The divine origin of the written law is emphasized by a bas-relief in which the king receives the code from the sun god, Shamash. The code itself begins with direction for legal procedure and the statement of penalties for unjust accusations, false testimony, and injustice done by judges; then follow laws concerning property rights, loans, deposits, debts, domestic property, and family rights. Sections covering personal injury indicate that penalties shall be imposed for injuries sustained through damages caused by neglect in various trades. Rates are fixed in the code for various forms of service in most branches of trade and commerce.”

“A society based on the rule of law… What a concept!” comments Kiz sarcastically.

Nebuchadnezzar wags his finger at Kiz and lectures: “Whatever your experience of justice might be in the present, Babylon, at its zenith, actually practiced judicial equality. For example, the Code of Hammurabi contains no laws having to do with religion. The basis of criminal law is that of equal retaliation. The law offers protection to all classes of Babylonian society; it seeks to protect the weak and the poor, including women, children, and even slaves, against injustice at the hands of the rich and powerful. Hammurabi counsels the downtrodden in these ringing words: ‘Let any oppressed man who has cause come into the presence of my statue as king of justice, and have the inscription on my stele read out, and hear my precious words, that my stele may make the case clear to him; may he understand his cause, and may his heart be set at ease!’

“To ensure that the legal, administrative, and economic institutions functioned effectively, the Babylonians used the cuneiform system of writing developed by their Sumerian predecessors. To train their scribes, secretaries, archivists, and administrative personnel, they adopted the Sumerian system of formal education, under which secular schools served as the cultural centers of the land. The curriculum consisted primarily of copying and memorizing both textbooks and Sumero-Babylonian dictionaries containing long lists of words and phrases, including the names of trees, animals, birds, insects, countries, cities, villages, and minerals, as well as a large and diverse assortment of mathematical tables and problems. In the study of literature, the pupils copied and imitated various types of myths, epics, hymns, lamentations, proverbs, and essays in both the Sumerian and the Babylonian languages.”

Now absorbed in King Nebuchadnezzar’s compelling account of Babylonian culture, Kiz and I sit with His Majesty on a stone bench in a particularly lovely area of the hanging gardens where a waterfall cascades over a stone trough into a pool filled with water lilies. And with time itself now hanging forever in the balance of Virtual Life, we are free to savor this moment, this ecstatic and crucial juncture in human history. How utterly sublime it feels to immerse oneself within a culture whose tentacles extend even into our present tense, our peculiar compartment of human history, whose pigments color our cultural bias and lend us a model for our own code of social justice! Yet, nothing lasts forever, and cultures—no matter how urbane or lofty they aspire to become—seldom, if ever, transcend or reconstitute themselves.

“The Babylonians also had an advanced number system,” Nebuchadnezzar tells us. “In some ways it was more advanced than the present system. It was positional in nature, with a base sixty rather than the base ten of the present system. Consider that the number ten has only two proper divisors, two and five. However, sixty has ten proper divisors; so many more numbers have a finite form.

“And the Babylonians were the first to divide the day into twenty-four hours, each hour into sixty minutes, and each minute into sixty seconds. Needless to say, this form of counting has survived for four thousand years!”

Once King Nebuchadnezzar has finished his initial introduction, as well as a basic lesson in Babylonian civics, he invites us to accompany him on a tour of the magnificent garden. His offer is of course a welcome one, but what neither Kiz nor I understand is that the King’s choice of transportation is decidedly unorthodox.

“Gracious ladies,” King Nebuchadnezzar invites us, “please step aboard my flying carpet.”

“Really?” says Kiz.

“Have no fear,” says our host. “This magic carpet will transport us quickly and ever so smoothly, ever so gently to the Enki Harbor. From there, we can visit the Hidden Gardens of Amytis, the Nineveh Baths, and finally, the Tigris Theatre and the Queen’s Marketplace. Take my word for it, ladies; it’s a spectacular tour!”

Cautiously, Kiz takes a seat on the curious conduit, and then I, too, sit tenderly upon the hovering textile. Once we are relatively comfortable, King Nebuchadnezzar steps confidently on board. There is of course no steering mechanism, and no power drive. Everything operates at the king’s command. “Enki Harbor, with speed and dispatch!” calls Nebuchadnezzar, and at once we are airborne and on our way to a destination once inhabited by an ancient eon’s elite, and more recently only imagined in the mind’s eye of those so inclined—those in a far different epoch, and a far different land.

High above the celebrated city we soar, its true brilliance revealed not only from the heights at which we now travel, but also from the historical reference we necessarily employ. Resplendent in texture and color, the city’s marble foundations and cerulean ceramic facades gleam in the desert sunlight. The fertile Mesopotamian plain is alive with plants and animals all refreshed by the ever-flowing waters of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. The markets are alive with commerce; schools filled with eager children echo the lessons of the Age; devout men and women kneel at the feet of Ishtar, the goddess of love and beauty, and of war!

“It is almost impossible to imagine that a city such as this one existed four thousand years ago,” I say to Nebuchadnezzar. “Even in the present epoch, we do not match the grace and beauty seen here in Babylon.”