You were on your way to work when you died. It was a bright, sunny California day, and in fact, you don’t remember anything going wrong at all (apart from bad traffic). One minute you were sitting there, inching along the freeway and listening to your true-crime podcast, and now you’re here.
“W-where am I? What happened?” you ask.
“You died, more or less,” I say. It’s more true than false. “The life you were just living is over, forever.”
“Are you God?” you ask.
“Yup,” I answer. “I’m God.” There’s no sense beating around the bush.
You look incredulous. “How did I die, then? Traffic was barely moving. I don’t remember being hit by a meteor, or anything like that. A heart attack?”
I shake my head. “Not a heart attack. The answer to your question is actually a little bit complicated.”
You give me an odd look.
I shrug. “Walk with me, will you?”
You get up and follow. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular. It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
You nod.
I continue: “I would love to explain to you how you died, but as I said, the proper answer is a little bit complicated. So I’m going to start with a story — a mostly true story — that I think will help you understand. Is that all right?”
“I’m all ears,” you say.
I smile. “So, you’ve seen the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, right? There’s that famous bit at the end of the film, you know, where the astronaut Bowman heads out to the monolith and he has this bizarre experience, right. He sees all of these fantastical colors and eventually he meets himself as a very old man, on his deathbed, and then in the end we hold on this shot of a gigantic fetus, as if some new phase of humanity has been born from the interaction with this mysterious monolith, or something like that. It’s a notoriously cryptic sequence.”
You nod agreeably.
“There’s a story that is told that part of the inspiration for this sequence was an interaction that Kubrick had with a consultant who was working on the film, a mathematician who was helping him with some mostly unrelated aspects of the story having to do with future technology and so forth. Well, the story is that on one occasion Kubrick walked in on this gentleman to ask him a question about a computer system they were going to be showing in one shot, and he found this gentleman — a kindly older guy with big glasses, you know, an old professor type — he found him bent over a desk and crying. And Kubrick was a little bit startled, because he’d been working with this guy for a while now and he had always seemed to Kubrick very level-headed and dependable, a really solid, emotionally well-regulated egghead sort. But the guy was crying.
And Kubrick, you know, wasn’t a very touchy-feely guy, but on this occasion he was moved, and he put a hand on the guy’s shoulder and tried to ask him, hey, what’s wrong, buddy? And the guy was just weeping, it was really a terrible scene — this is what they say — but eventually he pulled himself together, and Kubrick tried asking him again what the matter was. Was he having trouble with a woman?
No, no, the guy said, no, it isn’t about a woman. Or it’s only about a woman in a very loose sense. And Kubrick was ready to let it drop there because, you know, again, he wasn’t a very touchy-feely guy, and he was just as happy to get back to talking about where circuit boards should go, and other little filmic details along those lines. But when he tried to ask him these things, the guy was just quiet, he was obviously preoccupied, you know, he wasn’t really giving helpful answers. And at that point Kubrick lost it a little bit, he threw a clipboard on the ground (this is how the story gets told) and he kind of snapped and went, look, we need to get past this because I need to glue this fucking circuit somewhere, so can you either suck it up or explain to me what’s got your dome so rattled?
And the consultant, well, apparently at that point he went very quiet, and then he started talking very slowly. He said, look, Kubrick, you’re the boss of course, but the real content of this business I’m upset about is very technical, and I really can’t and shouldn’t try to explain the whole thing to you. If you really want, I can try to give you an idea of it, so that you can maybe get a sense of why the whole thing has me rattled. And Kubrick was like, all right then. If this business is so important to you, then please. Give me the sense.
So the gentleman said, all right, look, the best way I can tell it is with a little mythological story, which comes from some ancient source or another. Kubrick was a little dubious, but he said, okay, go on. And the guy said: It’s a myth about Prometheus, who as you know for many long years was chained to a cliff face, where this enormous eagle would perpetually eat his liver out, and so forth, as punishment for defying the gods, stealing their fire and giving it to the human race. You know this. The point is that this punishment was extremely painful; Prometheus was in constant agony, twenty-four hours a day, as long as he was chained to this black cliff, under the eye of that terrible eagle. The liver would regrow and the eagle would tear it out again. It was pure torture.
Zeus inflicted this punishment on Prometheus, and eventually after many countless years and ages, Zeus started to feel some regret, or maybe he just felt that the score had been settled; Prometheus had done wrong, but perhaps not infinitely wrong. And so Zeus permitted Hercules, the great semi-divine hero, to slay the eagle and unchain Prometheus.
But this is the point of the story, which is really an elaboration of an earlier myth. It comes down to a dialogue between Hercules and Prometheus, right at the moment that Hercules has slain the eagle, and he’s joined Prometheus on the rock face, just about to free him.
Hercules: I’m here to free you.
Prometheus: No, please. I wish you wouldn’t free me. I wish you hadn’t slain the eagle. I deserve my fate; I am the lowest of the Titans. I should suffer here for eternity, until Olympus has been worn down by the rains to a flat plain, and longer.
Hercules: Why should that be so? You hurt the mortals — you brought suffering and toil to their lives, when Zeus retaliated at them for your theft. And by the same awful chain of events, your perfidy led Zeus to introduce Pandora, who let all these troubles loose in the world. So certainly you did great harm.
Prometheus: That is right, that is right. Those were the first of many punishments for my crime. But no punishment can be enough. My evil is not even one mite repaid.
Hercules: But look! Human beings now have lives of chaos and toil, but they still love, they still feel joy. Their lives are, by and large, still worth living. You hurt them badly with your deed, but there are far worse things you could have done. There were other Titans who, in dark moments, contemplated the destruction of the whole human race. They have not been punished as you have. Let’s take you down from here; perhaps when your mind is clearer of pain you will be able to see just how, and why, it is that you have fairly served your sentence.
Prometheus: No, no, no, no, no. You will not unchain me. Never mind my suffering. I deserve it, but there is no necessity in it. However, you must not carry me down from here. Zeus does not comprehend. The gods are like children, you know, before the Titans. I helped Zeus and his kind overthrow my people, the Titans; that was the first of my sins. I did not realize just how little these fools comprehended. I knew not what I did, when I brought their fire down to earth. It is all too late now. But you will not give Zeus more false assurance that the deed is over with, the debt repaid.
Hercules: I don’t know what to do, now. You allude to secret knowledge of the Titans, which even the gods do not share in. Can they know it? Can I be your messenger, and tell to Zeus all the secret woes you carry in your breast, that you call him such a fool for knowing not?
Prometheus: No, no, no, no, no. This I cannot do. His daughter is Athena; awful things may come of such a missive, awful and terrible things. I cannot expose to you in clear meanings what it is I have done; but I can try to tell it to you by a fable, so that you grasp the essence of it.
Hercules: I like fables. They are easier to grasp than philosophy, for a story is always just a story.
Prometheus: Then I am very certain I can tell you this. It’s a little fable that was told among the Titans, and it is called the Parable of the Sparrows. It goes like this:
Once upon a time, there was a nest of sparrows, which were very great in cleverness. They gathered food each day, as well as sticks and branches for their nest, and they stood watch for snakes during the night. Their work was hard, and these birds spent many nights thinking over clever ways to spare themselves from labor.
Then, one day, a group of these sparrows had a very clever idea. They would go out into the world and seek an owl’s egg; for if they captured that egg, and brought it to their nest, they could raise the owl among them, and they could train it to gather for them. Its keen yellow eyes could see in darkness and help them gather; its enormous size would frighten off the serpents; and they could all rest from their labors, and idle, and drink and write philosophy, such as birds may write (which, in truth, is very little).
So a group of these clever sparrows set out by night, to look for the egg of an owl. And the next morning, when he saw that they were gone and was told what they had gone out to do, the oldest and wisest of these sparrows was greatly distressed.
‘Those fools, they know not what they do. This is a catastrophe,’ he said. ‘The only thing that can be done is that when they return with this egg, if they ever do, we must be prepared to set upon them and crack it, to break the egg apart and kill the owl before it is born. Only then may this terrible danger may be avoided.’
But the other sparrows didn’t understand what the old bird was saying. They could not comprehend why an owl might be dangerous, why it would be necessary to kill the unborn predator.
After much thought, at last the old sparrow determined to explain the matter to them with a story. He thought very carefully about how this story might be told, so that it would impart to them the crucial understanding needed to discern why it was necessary that they kill the owl.
At last he had composed a story suited exactly to his specifications, and, addressing the doubting sparrows, he told them his fable.
When he was finished, they all believed him; and when those clever young sparrows returned with the egg of an owl, he and all his fellows tore it to pieces with their beaks, and fed upon the yolk.
Hercules: I admit, it’s true, I do not understand it.
Prometheus: As I said, I can only hope that it will give you a deeper sense, a general understanding.
Hercules: I have one question for you, Prometheus, before I climb down from this cliff.
Prometheus: What is it?
Hercules: The owl in your fable. Was it the owl of Athena? Or was it a hatchling of her owl? Or was it just an ordinary bird?
Prometheus: That’s a very fine question. I think you have misled me about your cleverness with riddles, Hercules, and I will not speak to you any more of this.
And of course then Hercules brought him down from the cliff face anyway, in spite of the Titan’s protestations, because that was what Zeus had willed, and Hercules had no wish to anger the gods.
The mathematician trailed off hesitantly, but Kubrick was apparently dumbstruck. He would later say that although he didn’t fully understand what had been said to him, this story was the final puzzle piece in putting together the ending he wanted. Immediately afterwards he ran to his typewriter and revised his concepts for the ending montage, so that it took the form it does in the finished film. Mostly a matter of inserting a couple of shots, but of course they were quite expensive. This was back in the days when it was all accomplished with practical effects, you know,” I say.
“I don’t think I understand the point of that story, or how it connects to my sudden death,” you say.
I smile.
Your face brightens, as a thought occurs to you. “Are you saying that… I’m a god? Or that I will be?”
“No and no,” I say. “I am God. The God. The one and only. If there is another, I will treat it just the way that I am treating you. Because you are like all other human beings, although in your way perhaps you’re greater than some others. Human beings are potentiality.”
You still don’t understand what I’m getting at, but our conversation soon ends anyway, and I leave you still wondering, still despairing — if only for a few more moments, before you’re swallowed up, like the rest. I may be God, but even I cannot afford to spend forever talking to what is — when you come right down to it — just another unhatched egg.