Robot Pirate Ninja

Chapter 1: The Voice

                The first time I heard the Voice of God was when I was at or very near ten years old [ω].  Those of my culture pegged the current year as 1984, and I came to learn later that it was a historic year in many respects.  I was down by the creek behind our house at time, cutting apart a frog with a shard of broken glass.  I say “creek” because many of us romanticize our childhoods, and thinking back to playing down by the creek behind our house while growing up unearths many, many pleasurable memories for me.  I had trudged that suburban drainage ditch (a more accurate description of the “creek”) all the way from the University of Texas at Dallas on down past Arapaho Road and on toward Belt Line, where it disappeared forever beneath the metroplex.   When it rained the “creek” would become a torrent of water not unlike a river, and the true purpose of its existence became apparent.  

                My mother and father had never built a back fence behind our suburban home.  I believe it was attempt to provide their children with a sense of, and appreciation for, the beauty of nature.  They had both grown up in Utah and wished to retain something of a view of the natural beauty Richardson, Texas had to offer.  While it was sorely lacking when compared to the soaring vistas of the Wasatch Front and Timpanogos Mountain, it was an effective distraction for a number of years.  Then, as the inevitable modern sprawl took hold, the developers came in and the grove of trees across the creek that had been the cornerstone of our view became timber, and the field I enjoyed playing ball upon and riding bikes around became segmented into the tell-tale square concrete blocks of a brand new subdivision.

                The frog, poor little thing, had done nothing wrong and was simply one of the few out of the hundreds of tadpoles that had been blessed with the luck, or the genes, or the fate to grow into a full-fledged frog.  I think the impetus for my endeavors had come from a story my older brother had told me of his adventures in junior high school.  Dissecting a frog sounded fun, so I found and captured one in the creek, found my piece of glass, and set to work.

                And the Voice spoke in my head.  Very simply and very straight, “Stop, what you are doing is wrong.”  It was a curious thing to gain consciousness in such an abrupt and unquestionable fashion.  So curious that I dismissed this new and unfamiliar experience as a nothing, less than a blip, a shade behind a shade.   When one has nothing to compare a new experience with, the first reaction is often dismissal, especially when one isn’t expecting a new and profound experience to erupt inside their head.

                I know a few readers are looking back at the first sentence of this chapter and wondering why I would give an explanation like that for an experience like I had.  Trust me on this, thinking that it was the voice of God wasn’t my first reaction.  I didn’t catch onto that little tidbit for a good twelve more years.   It took twelve more years to write about it honestly.

                My first reaction was to dismiss the Voice and keep acting like I wanted to.  Like I thought I was supposed to.

                And so the voice came again, sterner this time.  “Put down the glass, leave the frog.  This is wrong.”

                So I did.  And I tried to ask the Voice “why” and I heard nothing in return.  Not a big fan of the open dialectic, that one.  I don’t think I would have understood it then, but it is wrong to kill for nothing.  It is wrong to take pleasure in abusing control and wasting life.  Even the life of a frog, or a flea, is a sacred thing, and should not be taken lightly.

                It was much later before I could ever explain why all life is so precious in a more coherent sense.  It had taken even longer before I could passionately argue the point that each and every bit of life now is the end/current/ongoing result of millions of lives and billions of years.  Of countless struggles and victories all mashed up into one single vector of force.  A force that I could extinguish without a second thought…well…at least I thought I could.  Much of life is so finely tuned and amazing that we can spend our lives researching and studying and still come up mostly empty, fascinated to the end.  From what I understand, there are even those who dedicate their lives to the study of frogs.  And from what I understand further, those frogs are mostly empty space themselves (that’s foreshadowing for some of the physics discussions that are coming later.)

                Once the dam had broken the flood was on, and the Voice has not been silent since.   It turned out to be a very practical thing for much of my youth.  It was the voice that I would ask for answers to questions on tests in school and my scores proved again and again that it was right, and when I went against the voice, I did so at my own peril.  It was the Voice that would show me pictures I’d seen and paragraphs I’d read, clear as day, whenever I asked.  It made school pretty dang easy, and so we got along fine.  It was the voice that told me where my competitors would kick the ball next in soccer, and where I needed to be when it got there [ ö ].   I made the club team easily with that kind of help.  It felt a bit like cheating, but what the heck, it got me what I wanted.  I learned to trust myself and my mind explicitly.

                It wasn’t until much later (again, those twelve or so years) that the voice changed from something I could use when I needed it, to something that would never leave me alone.   It’s a wonderful thing when such a voice whispers sweet things and happy thoughts.  It’s quite another when it tells you you are wrong, dead wrong, and doesn’t do it with a whisper.  It’s quite another thing still when the Voice, which has never guided you wrong in the past, starts to let things slip that sound a bit crazy (as you are no doubt thinking now), and then starts to guide your actions.

                This was where we began to split, the Voice and I, and when I tried to get it to shut up and let *me* guide my life. 

                As you may have guessed, the bad news is that I lost that battle. 

                The good news is that you get this book.  Oh, and the battle was kind of fun too, as you’ll have the chance to judge while reading the following pages.  The war, so to speak, continues.  One can certainly lose battles and win wars.  History has proven this time and again. 

                But before we get to that, it’s time for math.  Don’t worry, this isn’t real math.  This is God Math.  This is the way God sees the world.  Literally.