Caino's Alphabet, E

     Early the next morning three trussed-up figures revealed themselves in the light of the sun.  
Two were battered yet breathing, 
but a third lay deathly still beside 
his comrades and the ashes of the fire.  
Caino awoke suddenly to 
find himself lying huddled against this corpse.  
He jumped to his feet 
and the morning light showed him 
two more figures lashed back to back 
against a nearby tree.  
It was his monks.  
Caino set to work and untied them. 
    Once free of his bonds, Aaron rose 
and embraced Caino in silent gratitude,  
but Bartholomew remained still against the tree,
his once jolly face now frozen 
in a pale mask of death. 
    Aaron searched the kidnappers thoroughly.
Amongst other things he found food, 
a skin of wine and a small metal box 
which he examined with interest 
before secreting it into his robe.  
    Caino helped Aaron dig two shallow graves 
after which Aaron officiated over a brief funeral 
for Bartholomew 
and one briefer still for his kidnapper. 
    Caino was puzzled by the lack of ceremony.  
He had assumed that the monks, 
given their preoccupation with death, 
would attend to the deceased with more ritual.  
His thoughts drifted back to the old hunter 
who he had watched die the day before, 
regretting that he had neglected 
to provide the old man 
with even so simple a ceremony as this.
    “Is that it?” Caino asked.
    “There’s no need for long farewells 
amongst we who build the house of the dead,” replied Aaron, 
tamping down the freshly turned soil with his foot.  “We’ll meet again soon enough… 
these rascals who took us 
were also once of our sect,” 
he remarked thoughtfully, 
regarding the kidnapper’s shallow grave.        “When the Machine becomes complete 
there will come a schism within our Science,” 
he added, in a voice slightly tinged with regret.  
    “What do you mean by when?  
If you haven’t made it yet, 
how can you know you ever will?” asked Caino.
    “The Machine will not be realised any time soon, but it is nonetheless an inevitability.  
The presence of these rascals, for instance, 
proves it, but I digress.
    “The schism amongst us will arise 
from one of those unlooked-for discoveries 
so common in our science.  
When the Machine begins its work it will, 
instead of one, receive a multitude of Minds 
from each individual self.  
At first, we will think these to be duplicates 
collected in error, 
but later we will find them to be proof 
of a world of many Paths in one Place.”  
    Caino listened with interest 
as it dawned on him how this all might relate 
to the friend that was his alone.  
    Aaron carried on, 
“every decision of consequence 
you make in your life splits your Path 
and peels off a new version of you.  
Some Paths will end ill, 
as did poor Bartholomew’s here, 
but on others, he will continue on, 
in this same Place—but on other Paths.
    
    “To know that our dearly departed 
live on invisibly beside us is a comfort in itself…”  Aaron paused, his eye again falling 
upon the rough grave of the fallen kidnapper.  
“This rascal also no doubt lives on in other Paths, 
his true self as well as the poor fellow 
he has possessed.  For us though, 
their lives are both ended.  
Aaron turned to the two surviving kidnappers 
and his eyes narrowed in 
accordance with his frown. 
    “Some of us will value these many Paths; 
others will seek to preserve only the longest.  
They would sacrifice all other Ends, 
no matter how worthy, 
on a cold altar of simplicity and efficiency.”  
    Caino, hearing a groan, looked over 
to see one of their prisoners stir but Aaron, 
caught up in his speech, 
ignored this and continued to speak.
    “Those who will value simplicity above all else
will hold a secret council.  
Ordaining their cult as a ‘Second Science, 
they will pervert the Machine’s power 
to gather Minds and force their own 
into the bodies of others, 
across vast time and space, 
corrupting our order in retrospect.  
The Machine will be seized from the future, our brothers and sisters slaughtered—
or captured and driven 
to complete our good work to wicked ends.”
    Aaron paused, and producing the small box 
he had taken from his kidnappers, he added, 
‘it is good that you retrieved that satchel, 
and better still that we acquired this little box. Without it, we could end up like the poor folks 
that these rascals possessed.”  

    It was at this point that a voice
came from the captive who earlier had stirred.
“We… had no choice.  You would have ruined it all…
had to be stopped.”  It was the girl who had awoken;
Aaron and Caino turned towards her 
as her weary voice steadied and strengthened.  
“You fools would have ruined the Machine 
to appease your misplaced ideals. 
 No vessel can hold the sum 
of every Mind’s many Paths!”
    “The Machine will be infinite.  
Its limits will be surpassed as they arise,
”sniffed Aaron.
    “Your faith is a blind one. 
 We who have seen the Machine to come—
we know its capabilities.  
For it to absorb every possibility 
of every Mind that ever was, it would have to be a universe in and of itself. 
 You would risk drowning it in redundancy 
to satisfy your foolish morality,” 
the Second Scientist paused, 
challenging Aaron to reply.
“You think our morality foolish?  
It was out of morality that we chose to build 
the Machine for all mankind, 
not only the chosen few-” began Aaron.
    “That was a noble act,” interrupted the girl, 
“but limiting the Machine’s work to a chosen few 
is the only way all those vestigial Paths 
could have been preserved.  
There was a choice—a limit on Minds 
or limited Minds— but you would steal 
the whole house from the dead for your scruples.”  
    “And you steal the bodies of the living 
for your cult; that’s where your lack 
of scruples has taken you,” countered Aaron.
    “We take only from doomed Minds 
of vestigial Paths,” replied the girl, 
now sitting upright. 
    “Doomed by the whims of your cult!” 
retorted Aaron with growing agitation.    
    …And on and on it went.