Edward's Reality, page 1

Edward liked to think about things. He spent most of his free time deep in thought expanding this theory and that theory on the workings of the universe. Sometimes, he followed some-one else’s thought, occasionally he had an original little notion of his own. He never cared very much where the ideas came from, what he enjoyed most was exploring them.

He would take weeks or months or years savouring an idea, following it to its logical conclusion. Or in some cases an illogical conclusion seemed more appropriate.

Edward knew logic didn’t work unless you were in possession of all the facts. That was his main complaint against the human race in general. All those people being so terribly logical when they couldn’t possibly be in possession of all the facts. Edward followed that thought mercilessly. It was one of his favourites. How far could you dissect each little bit of data? What could you break it down into and supposing, just supposing everything you ever saw was just the minutest detail of a vast whole?

Edward supposed everything was indeed just a tiny part of a huge picture. Far too large for mankind to ever see. They were all too immersed in it. You could never step back to get it into perspective.

Edward started to play with the idea about a larger picture. How did it work? What if everyone imagined their own little piece of it, and the world you lived in was an amalgamation of everyone’s thoughts? Seen through your own happy or unhappy aura. Everything neutral really, but good or bad according to the mood you were in when you observed it.

Edward began to wonder if things really existed if he wasn’t there to see them. Where did his room go when he was at work? Where did his office go when he went home? Well, the office would exist somewhere as experienced by the cleaning lady. The building would exist in the universe of a passer-by. But where was it in Edward’s own universe?

Tucked away in a compartment of his mind, waiting to be unfurled for the next day’s use? Edward started to dart round corners hoping to find reality creating itself in readiness for him. He was never quick enough.

Edward lived alone and he started to worry. Now that he was on to reality, he began to mis-trust it. Supposing one day it didn’t work? What if once you understood the mechanics of it, it just ceased to exist? It might be like tying your shoe laces. It was something you did automatically but if you ever stopped to think about what you were doing, you couldn’t do it any more?

What if he got home one day and it just wasn’t there? With no-one else to help create what was behind his bed-sit door, he might come in one day and find nothing there. After a couple of months frightening himself with that awful thought Edward bought a pet. He felt safer. As long as the hamster was there, experiencing his living quarters, constantly re-creating them as Edward himself did, Edward felt safe.

When the hamster died Edward succumbed to sheer panic. His theory had evolved over the few months of the hamster’s short life and he had started to rely on the hamster to help re-create Edward each day. He could only sleep at night knowing that his body was observed by his pet. Then if he forgot to re-create himself while he slept, he was sure the hamster’s mind sustained his existence.

It was unfortunate for Edward that he discovered the demise of his pet one evening after work. When all the pet shops would be closed. Beside himself with fright he prowled the neighbourhood looking for a cat. Edward’s run of bad luck held out. Being introverted and self-absorbed he wasn’t immediately attractive to cats, or indeed to anyone else.

After a fruitless few hours of trying to create a reality littered with approachable cats Edward had to admit defeat and go home.

A more imaginative person might have made the effort to find a warm human being to spend the night with. Edward’s theorising had never got him to the point where he wondered about the effect of alcohol on the human brain. One big gap in his understanding of the world was left by his ignorance of cheap booze. That would have taken him several lifetimes to understand. How ordinary quite rational human beings could throw away principles and dignity for the sake of escaping reality. A reality they created for themselves. A reality they could change with a little effort. But how much easier it is to drink and blot it out. And then wake up to find things even worse than they were before.

Anyway, luckily for womankind, it never occurred to Edward to get someone drunk enough to spend the night with him. Anyway it was bad enough waking up in a body re-invented by a hamster. Edward could consider himself lucky he never tortured himself with the idea he could wake up in a body re-created by a drunk with a hangover.

That night Edward went to sleep alone. And his worst fears were realised. He awoke the next morning to find he really had lost the knack of re-creating his body. He tried so hard to find a piece of the world dreamed up by someone else, but he had forgotten how to re-create other people too.

Edward settled himself to spend eternity in Limbo. He started to wonder if anyone would find him.

All souls were precious, weren’t they? God was omnipotent and omnipresent, wasn’t he? God could step back and see the whole picture. He’d see Edward, wouldn’t he?

As humanity evolved and all the souls started to merge back into being one vast single entity - he would be missed. There’d be a gap in the whole. His contribution would be missed. It wouldn’t be a complete being.

However long it took all the souls in the universe to re-unite themselves, eventually Edward would be missed. Edward sat in Limbo and prepared himself to wait for the rescue party - even if it took all of eternity. But what if they found him at the last moment - an unevolved little soul, having missed out on millions of years of evolution? How would he fit into the great scheme of things?

Edward started to think that perhaps he’d better have a scheme of his own.

What if the angels from his old universe cam to rescue him? How would he know they were beings formed as a result of the imagination of the masses? How would he know he hadn’t created them himself? What clue would there be? He was alone now, everything he experienced would have to be conjured from his own mind. But how could he tell what he’d made up and what was real?

It was almost the same problem he’d had in his old life. And now he was in possession of a fact unknown to most people. He was experiencing Limbo. No stimulus, no other people. Just Edward. Edward and his thoughts.

When the angels finally did find Edward he had no way of knowing whether they’d come from his past reality or whether he’d invented them. He’s spent millennia in Limbo thinking his thoughts. Talking to himself. Creating rudimentary thought forms that improved as he practised making them.

He’d started to watch paths and streams unroll as he moved his consciousness about. He watched his thought forms reacting to the world he was creating. It was their world too. Gradually, it seemed to become quite solid. Everyone took it all for granted and it achieved a sort of permanency. Edward was invisible to his thought forms. He’d quite forgotten to make himself a body. But his presence was felt.

All the ’people’, all the surroundings emanated from his mind.

Sometime he wondered how his thought-world compared to the reality he’d lost. He felt it must be rather a poor effort. But to his creations, it was the only world they knew, and they sensed the unseen hand of Edward in everything. Being Edward’s creatures, a few of them were thinkers. And in their thinking, they were very similar to Edward. And at least one of them dropped into the Limbo of Edward’s created universe.

Where he waited to be rescued, and whilst waiting created his own little world.

And Edward never knew whose mind his rescuing angels emanated from. Edward never knew about his creature who had slipped into Limbo. Edward never knew if the God of his original universe wasn’t simply another Edward who had spawned men in his own image, to ponder the nature of reality.

What a truly dreadful thought, an endless procession of Edwards. And where in the long line, reader, do you think we are?

Somewhere near the top, in a truly complex world? Or somewhere near the bottom, dreamed up by the thought form of a thought form of a thought form……………