We are asleep. Only when we are jarred awake from our slumber do we glimpse a clear understanding of reality. Moments of fear and pain, come unexpected, unbidden, violently intruding upon our reverie. We are put in our collective places by the great unseen forces which propel us ever onward. It is then we know our mortality down to our bones. Mercifully, we are short of memory, and are soon lulled back to sleep by the monotonous, droning, machine of existence. This sleep, is it not the gendarme of the psyche, not only charged with keeping the blissful peace of ignorance, but also shielding us from the scores of near misses that assail us…brushes with death, disasters averted by seconds in time and mere centimeters in space… we are always just a hair’s breadth from oblivion. It was one such near miss, known only to myself and one Edwynn Westfield, that could well have smashed this world to pieces and rent the very fabric of reality.
It was my sophomore year at MIT, where I was taking a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. The campus environment was too raucous for my taste and I found it difficult to focus on my studies. I had proposed to a fellow engineering student that we split the cost of an apartment near the college that we might minimize distractions. I soon realized that my choice of a roommate was disastrous, as we were ready to annihilate each other after only a few months. One of us had to go, and it was decided by coin toss who would leave. I stayed. I was rid of a pest, but now was faced with having to come up with the entire rent on my own. I did not have enough resources to foot the bill solo for long and would need to shop for a new roommate. I put up some flyers around campus, vowing to be choosier this time, and within three days, the strange being who I would come to know as Edwynn Westfield appeared at my door.
“Are you Jason?”
“Yes, but most people call me Jay. And you are?”
“Edwynn Westfield. But you can call me Wynn. I am here about the apartment. Is this a good time?”
“Sure, come in”
Wynn looked to be in his early thirties, but carried it well. He was over six feet tall, thick black hair, combed back, muscular, but not bulky, and steel grey eyes. I remarked that he looked a little older than most students and asked if he had served in the military prior to MIT.
“Heavens, no, man! I have been living the life of a vagabond, travelling Europe, the far East, and South America. After a near death experience during an Ayahuasca ceremony in Brazil, I decided I’d had enough and returned the States to try and do something with my life.”
“What is your field of study?”
“Physics, with a minor in astronomy.”
“No offense, but you don’t strike me as the science nerd type.”
“None taken. Before I took my little “detour” I had shown some promise in the sciences but I decided I wasn’t ready to choose a career, and chose to not only travel the world, but live in it. I would sometimes stay six months, maybe a year in some places. You don’t really get to know a culture until you live among its people, adopt its customs, speak its language”.
If nothing else, Wynn would make an interesting roommate, and his bearing projected someone who was mature and stable.
“You are welcome to share the apartment, but I will need a financial commitment from you. At least two month’s rent, in advance.”
“How does six suit you?”
And so, a deal was struck.
As it turned out, Wynn proved to be an excellent roommate. Not only was he easy to get along with, but we were also developing a friendship, at least as much as it was possible with Wynn. He didn’t have much of a social life. He never brought anyone around the apartment, never went out after classes except to go running, and never mentioned any family or friends. He was generally quiet and kept to himself, but was friendly and well-spoken when you could get him to talk. I don’t know whether it was his charm or good looks, but my girlfriend Pam took an immediate liking to him. Wynn would regale her with stories of the places he lived and were I the jealous type I might feel threatened, but there was absolutely nothing threatening about Wynn. Maybe that is why I let him take up residence with me without even really thinking about it. Fortunately, Wynn seemed to be working out.
One weekend, while Pam was off visiting her folks in Ohio, Wynn invited me to go hiking with him in the Berkshires. It was late spring, and the weather was perfect for such an outing. Being aware that I spent entirely too little time outdoors, I took him up on his offer. The following day, we arose before dawn, and made the 2 hour trip from Cambridge.
Wynn was an experienced hiker, but sensing that I was not, he mercifully chose an “easy” trail up a low mountain which was part of the Appalachian Trail. After reaching the summit, I could hardly catch my breath, but he had barely broken a sweat. He dropped his pack, and we sat on a section of exposed granite, which radiated a pleasant warmth absorbed from the morning sun. He withdrew a canteen from the pack and passed it to me. It was a stunning view. We sat in silence for several minutes and then he asked
“How did you and Pam meet?”
“Used bookstore. She was looking at a copy of A Confederacy of Dunces. Said she found the title intriguing. I volunteered that I had read the book and thought it was excellent and she bought the book based on my endorsement. I ran into her again at the same bookstore about two months later and asked her what she thought of the book”.
“She liked it?”
“No. No she did not. It just didn’t appeal to her for whatever reason. She thought it was a little crude. But we did end up having an enjoyable conversation. I suggested that we not leave our next meeting to chance and that we should arrange to meet for drinks some time. I’m glad she didn’t hold my taste in books against me.”
“Why didn’t you just ask Pam to move in with you after whatsisname left? You two obviously love each other, you spend all your free time together, and she often spends the night.”
“She doesn’t want to upset her parents. They are beautiful people, but they are very devout Christians. They don’t believe in sex before marriage, let alone cohabitation. I have to sleep downstairs on the couch when we both visit”
“Is Pam devout too?”
“No. I think on some level she considers herself a Christian but doesn’t attend church or subscribe to a particular set of views. We don’t talk about religion much. It just isn’t that important to us.”
“And you?”
“I consider myself to be an Atheist.”
“That’s interesting.”
“It is? How so?”
“I guess I just assumed you might be an agnostic. You take a very scientific approach to everything, you’re very slow to pronounce judgment on anything, and very open minded, so I figured you would lean more toward agnosticism.”
“It is because I am a scientist that I don’t believe in a deity. There is no reason to believe in something for which I have seen no proof.”
Wynn furrowed his brow and stared at me, seemingly at a loss for words. I decided to take the opportunity to turn the interrogation toward him.
“Well, Wynn, now that I have bared my lack of a soul, what is it you believe?’
“I believe in the existence of gods.”
I had come to accept that Wynn was a bit eccentric and would ordinarily have thought he must be pulling my leg, except that this was not the brand of humor Wynn would tend to engage in. He was serious.
After an awkward silence, as if to anticipate the next words out of my mouth he said
“Yes, I am being serious.”
It was now I who was at a loss for words. He continued.
“It might help if I were to qualify just what I mean by ‘god’. In my travels among and studies of various cultures I have learned that almost all have some sort of creation myth. Now, and you are free to object, the typical atheist response to this observation would be ‘With so many different myths, doesn’t that make them all suspect?’”
I concurred.
“But what if we took the opposite view? What if they were all true? True except for one thing. What if they had the order reversed? What if the universe came into being first, and then the gods? I am not talking merely about man creating a superstitious belief in a thundergod. I am talking about some type of force, which we do not yet understand, gaining a type of sentience. And moreover, that we can discover a way to bring this sentience about.”
“You are proposing that it is possible to create a god?”
“For lack of a better description, yes. Take, for example, Moses. It is told that he went up in the mountains to converse with God and came back down with the ten commandments. But what if that wasn’t the whole truth? Moses was a powerful wizard. What if he, using his magical powers, created the god Yahweh to watch after his people and keep them in line when they strayed?”
“Wynn, those are just myths. Even many bible scholars don’t believe in them, anymore.”
“They may have been embellished, but what if there was a grain of truth concealed within the myth? A secret for mastering the forces of the universe.”
All this was very disturbing to hear, and I was beginning to question Wynn’s sanity, all the more painful because I had really come to like the guy.
“Assuming this was possible, or even desirable…why?”
“Most of the old gods have gone their way…the Greek Pantheon, The Roman Pantheon, the Norse Gods. There a very few who still wish to invoke these gods, but they have very little influence these days and that is how it should be. Yahweh, however, for various reasons has managed to persist, much to the detriment of humanity. He is like the monster in Shelley’s Frankenstein. He got too powerful to control… got off his leash, so to speak, and has been causing untold pain ever since. He was god created for the needs of a primitive people 4000 years ago and is not an appropriate god for humans living in the 21st century. I want to displace him.”
“Not that I believe a word of this…I most emphatically do not…but just how do you propose to accomplish this task?”
“Through magic. My travels were not just some attempt to delay adulthood indefinitely. They were a quest for knowledge. I studied various advanced meditative and tantric techniques in India and Tibet, I poured over various ancient manuscripts in the British Museum, I apprenticed with a shaman in South America, learning the techniques necessary to tap into the power which creates and moves all things seen and unseen.”
“You, I, all that exists, are held together by electromagnetic force and can be driven apart and reconstructed using that same force, if only one knew how. We are not separate from our environment. We are a part of it, inextricably connected to it. We are already plugged in, so to speak. The infrastructure is already in place. We only need to flip the switch that closes the circuit, and I think I have found that switch.”
“And what makes you think your god won’t ‘get off his leash’?”
“My intent is to create a god that can be trusted to act autonomously.”
I had to check myself at this point. I felt myself being drawn in by all of it. What Wynn was proposing was insane yet his sincere belief in his mission made it almost convincing.
“Do you want to see a demonstration?”
“Uhhh…” was all I could muster in response to his question.
“Be very still and quiet.”
Wynn crossed his legs, closed his eyes and began breathing slowly and deeply. This continued for several minutes after which I began to feel a hand on my forearm and yet there was nothing visible in contact with it. The ‘hand’ began to squeeze my arm, harder and harder until it became painful.
“Wynn, stop!”
Wynn opened his eyes and turned to me.
“Do you believe me now, Jason?”
I wanted so much to say no. I wanted so much to wave this off as a form of hypnosis or that I was drugged, but what I experienced was so real.
“How?”
“I have been conducting experiments with creating what the medieval sorcerers would have called familiars. These are semi-autonomous, sentient beings which can be directed to perform tasks and gather information for the sorcerer. At this point it is only a matter of scale to create a god.”
Still not believing I was having this conversation, I asked him how it would be possible to create an entity with the powers of a god.
“Amplification. These forces are, at their core, a form of energy. And like other forms of energy… light, sound, electricity… the signal can be increased, if one has the right equipment.”
There was no hint of uncertainty in Wynn’s use of the word “if”. It then occurred to me that, what if, during all that time Wynn spent in his room with the door closed, during which I assumed he was studying, he was building some sort of apparatus in furtherance of this plan of his. Clearly, it must have been consuming him for some time now. I could only wonder what psychological toll these experiments might be taking on him. His plan seemed to me like a recipe for narcissism and megalomania, and yet how obsessed must he be to carry out this plan; to travel the world, to devote hours upon hours developing these powers. And if Wynn was megalomaniacal, what could happen if he were wielding the powers of a god? Would he destroy anyone, any institution, any country that opposed him?
About this time I began to notice a change in Wynn’s demeanor. Instead of the friendly and affable person I had come to know, he appeared cold and aloof, and there was something decidedly sinister about his countenance. I was beginning to fear for my safety and wanted to leave.
“Wynn, the sun is starting to go down. Shouldn’t we be heading back?
“Afraid of the dark, Jason?”
There was a tone in his response which suggested something more ominous than just an absence of sunlight. What sort of power was he planning to set loose? Then it occurred to me, who was Yahweh’s adversary? Was Wynn planning to conjure some dark Satanic power to topple his nemesis?
“I just think it will be safer to descend the mountain while we still have light. What if we get lost?”
“You think I am mad, don’t you Jason? You want to stop me. I trusted you. I gave you a glimpse of what is possible, and you cower in fear. I assure you my little demonstration was but a fraction of what I am capable. I did not spend the last fifteen years of my life, searching the world, extracting its secrets, to let you, anyone, stop me.”
I did not like the direction this conversation was taking. Would Wynn go so far as to kill me? He was far more physically powerful than I and could easily make me disappear in these surroundings. I had to try to diffuse this situation.
“Stop you? From what? I don’t believe a word of this. It’s just a bunch of nonsense.”
“Is it now?”
Wynn again closed his eyes and began breathing deeply. I decided this would be a good opportunity to run. I was barely to my feet when I heard it. There came a sound of crackling branches and though I could not see it, something very large was cutting a path of destruction through the forest. I could see tree tops parting then falling one by one. It was only a few hundred feet away and approaching rapidly.
“Does that look like nonsense to you, Jason?”
In a panic, I ran from the summit and could hear Wynn’s maniacal laughter as I stumbled down the trail leading back to the vehicle. Then the laughter abruptly stopped, cut short by a horrible scream, and after its last reverberation, silence.
Driven on by sheer terror, I managed to reach the head of the trail, tripping on roots, tumbling down inclines, my skin and clothing torn by protruding branches. After reaching the vehicle I collapsed to the ground, my back falling against the rear tire. What now? Somebody might notice Wynn’s disappearance. I had to come up with something plausible to tell the police. The truth was obviously out of the question. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself.
I eventually told the police that Wynn and I began our descent of the mountain too late in the day, and the sun went down while we were making our way back. We somehow became separated in the dark. I was leading the way and assumed Wynn was behind me, but he apparently diverged from the path at some point. When I noticed he was no longer behind me, I backtracked to see if I could find him but could not. The police believed my story, and didn’t question me further.
There was a search for Wynn along the path up to the summit and neighboring area but no trace of him was found. After Pam returned, I told her of Wynn’s disappearance. She had grown fond of him and was quite heartbroken. I too, miss that part of Wynn who became my friend. While going through Wynn’s effects, I found a soldering iron, various electronic parts, some test equipment, and a rectangular box with some knobs and a digital display. Was this his god-maker? I smashed it to bits and threw the pieces in the Charles River. As with Victor Frankenstein, Wynn’s creation became too powerful for him to control. Got off his leash, to use Wynn’s own words. And what of his creature? Does it still roam the Berkshires, or did it too, die, unable to sustain itself without an influx of power from its creator? And what would have happened had Wynn succeeded in his mad plan to create a new god? What disaster awaited us had Wynn not been thwarted? I know not. As with all near misses, I can only breathe a sigh of relief, and hope to be lulled back to sleep by the monotonous, droning, machine of existence.