Jesus and Christ - стр. 30

***

It was almost the same scenery all around. "Something about it has changed, it's become more natural or something," Ruthra pondered. The contours of the body of water and the trees were a little different… and the time of year didn't seem to match either. The heat felt more intense, and the grass that had been more abundant before was now, sparsely sprawled along the outskirts, scorched. Ruthra surveyed his surroundings out of habit. Silence. He walked scripted to a tree near the oasis and… was surprised: there was a carpet spread out under the tree. A small, worn one. Ruthra looked around for someone to lay it for a while. When he could find no one, as he had on previous occasions, he called to the invisible watchers, and when he heard no answer, he lay down under the tree, now on the rug, and waited. He thought about existence and time, about the worlds that must necessarily be in the vast expanses of the universe, and not just one. He thought about where everything began, about the root cause that served as a spark for the Big Bang of consciousness, about infinity, about what never appears and never disappears. This was difficult for humans to grasp, for our minds are accustomed to operating in dimensional units – whatever infinity we visualize, we are still defining something grandly great, but we cannot grasp the concept of eternity. Never… to think of it – something that never began and never will end.

Suddenly there were muffled footsteps. Ruthra stood up and looked around. The same Bedouin who had been in the last production was walking across the steppe in his direction. He came up and sat down on the carpet without greeting, and began to talk as if Rutra were his old acquaintance.

– I know everything you're gonna say ahead of time. Or almost everything.

Seeing the rather surprised look on Ruthra's face, created by his own statement, he continued without letting him object:

– Your doubts are valid. Everyone would have those doubts. Believe me, you were chosen for a reason. Think about it. If a person appeared here who was unfamiliar with your invention – the method of moving consciousness through space – then obviously the whole mission would be thwarted. The person would either be in constant disbelief, doubt, or fear, expecting a trick. Or he or she would consider us or himself to be crazy, at least insane.

– What are you talking about? And who are you, anyway?

– Everything you see is real.

– I can see it's real. What's the big deal?

– Think about it… if children were born with such awareness of the world as a child of five years of age, and this awareness was activated as independent breathing in the process of childbirth, wouldn't they be surprised at this metamorphosis? And isn't it strange why it is not so, because all the vital functions of the organs are working, but memory is not. If you were born into this world you are now in, it would be to you as your own, natural and only one. It wouldn't surprise you. So what makes you think that someone somewhere doesn't think the same way? Now think again: you humans have already mastered the technology of cloning, but you cannot yet clone a dead person. You can't make a child from his material, who would later have all the memory of the original person. Nor can you create a person as an adult and put a prearranged memory into him.