The Triune Festival of the Pearls by LAW Butler

The Triune Festival of the Pearls

LAW Butler

 

Those who were members of the map were both self-aware and in constant communication with those who lived in the other spheres spread across the planet.  They followed the habits of their culture and obeyed the rules of the map. But the greater purpose of their being, they would only know after their deaths, and this, too, was something they had been taught from birth.

Given the weight and wonder of that knowledge, it was natural that the prelude to their deaths was a celebration.

The Day of Emergence, the Day of Sharing and the Day of Harvest, coming one upon the other, were considered a single festival.  And because their sun had the same glow as the pearl-like spheres on the planet’s surface, the festival had long been known as The Triune Festival of the Pearls. 

The softly iridescent pearls, ranging from the size of a robin’s egg to the two-handed heft of an ostrich’s, formed a haphazard web across every land surface on the planet. They existed meters thick in some places while barely covering the ground in others, but always in clusters.  Each sphere blushed with the faintest hint of pink, blue, green or purple, but those that became separated from the clusters of the map invariably darkened to black and crumbled. 

Each pearl contained a single life form, which referred to itself as a seeder.  No more specific name was needed for the seeders were part of a single living creature.  One thought, one life, one purpose. 

The days of the festival were triggered by the intense sunlight of the planet’s perihelion. That need for the warmest sunlight ruled out those spheres deep in the deposits.  Only the pearls who had worked themselves to the top of the maps were intimately involved in the days of the Triune Pearls.  Rising to the top of the clusters was a slow process, but patience was constant among the entities that occupied the pearls. 

The entire map knew what the festival was, when it was due to occur and how each seeder took part.  There were no secrets and no surprises among the pearls, for the thoughts of each seeder were immediately connected to all others.  Both thought and sensation leapt from one seeder to another at an electric speed. Impulses traveled through the nacre of the pearl to the surface and were transmitted via surface sensors to every pearl in contact with the first and then sent at the same speed to every other adjacent pearl in accelerated fashion.  Knowledge was exponential, not linear. 

Each thought was squared, cubed, and hyper-cubed into tesseracts.  The electrical impulse manifested itself with such strength that it could leap from one cluster to another over distances measured in hundreds of meters.  These arcs across the surface of the map were noted with wonder and carefully avoided by the other living creatures on the planet.  One did not play with lightning.

This is how the seeders, in constant communication, knew, questioned, examined, altered and knew again the truth of all abstract ideas.  For this is what the seeders did.  They thought.  But while they thought as a unit, they challenged each thought as an individual.  In this way, in a kind of philosophical call and response, the seeders elevated all ideas to constant peer-review.  Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.  This was the life of the seeders.

While the pearls may have looked inert, the seeders obeyed all the rules that define a living thing.  While the other creatures living on the planet may have thought of life as defined by form or chemical composition, the seeders knew the truth.  Life means the ability to perform a discrete number of tasks: eat, expel waste, respirate, respond to stimuli and reproduce.  While doing all the above, the seeders existed in a sea of thought. 

On the planet of pearls, the seeders evolved in a way that removed the daily worries connected with the life tasks associated with eating, breathing, waste and movement.  Even reproduction had become enshrined in the Triune Festival, which left seeders the luxury of time—protected time—to elevate their lives to a single purpose.  They thought, not about quotidian concerns, but what lay beyond that.  The seeders were singularly concerned with thoughts of self-actualization.  Their questions were philosophical, all-encompassing and represented the ultimate “why.”

But concepts so heady as the ultimate “why” are bought with a price.  At the Triune Festival of the Pearls that price was paid.  Payment began with a needle sized wormhole from the center of the pearl to the surface. 

During their life, each seeder consumed layers of nacre from the inside of the pearl starting at the center and up to its lustrous cover.  The waste left behind was primarily of a gaseous nature and made the pearl light in comparison to its neighbors.   Thus, these pearls slowly moved toward the top of the map.  Then, as the perihelion drew close, the brighter sun worked a miracle on the pearl’s navel, which softened and expanded. This thinning dimple allowed a ray of light to reach the center of the sphere.  There it stimulated the seeder to begin its undulating movement toward the surface. 

On the first day of the Triune Festival, those seeders in a position to receive the warmth and light began to emerge.  The tiny specs of life pushed through the navel to the sunny surface of their pearl.  And it is then that the last function of the seeders began.  All living things reproduce, because all living things must die.

After emergence, all the seeders rested through the night, and then, on the second day, the Day of Sharing, they began to move again.  That movement was guided by the rules of both biology and physics. 

It was known to all the seeders, for higher thinking implies higher preparation, that galaxies cluster on what appear to be the surface of cosmological bubbles.  Soap bubbles coalesce along the rim of connected bubbles, sharing some space side by side, while leaving huge arcs of the bubble untouched.

Whether cosmic or terrestrial, all spheres have curved surfaces, and the seeders used this curve to tumble toward the confluence of their sphere with others.  Here they joined with others of their kind in intimate clusters.  Here they shared both what they were and what they knew and created new life.

By the time the sun began cooling the surface of the pearls, the seeders had acquired enough energy to expel small numbers of fertile spores which drifted over the spheres, sliding along the surface of the bubbles, sifting slowly to the lowest tier of pearls.  Wherever the spores encountered a pearl’s navel, one which was open and receptive to new life, they slipped through into the nacre, closing the navel behind them.  There gravity moved the spores to the center and there they began their growth to maturity.  It was then that each new seeder would enter the philosophical conversation of the map with all the knowledge of its parents as well as insights of its own. 

During all of this, the seeders remained in communication across the map.  That communication included soft, quiet farewells to each seeder resting on the surface of the pearls.  For the harvest was to come, and it would begin with the coming of dawn on the third day. 

The harvest involved seeders and pearls, but it was primarily the work of the builders, the surface creatures of the planet who had a symbiotic relationship with the map.  Both builders and seeders celebrated the Triune Festival of the Pearls.  All knew the function of each day, and all reverenced what had been and was to come. 

The builders were giants compared to the pearls.  Fewer in number and formed to be able to do physically what the seeders did mentally—that is, test the limits of what could be done—the harvesters gathered around the map at the day of emergence.  Once the emergence began, there was singing and poetry shared on the first day and dance and laughter on the second.  But the third day was approached with gentle sympathy.

As the sun rose on the third day the harvesters approached the map, moving carefully against the spheres.  Triggered by a pheromonal release, each of the harvesters began to draw their limbs into their bodies.  As the creatures reconfigured themselves into a disk shape, they slowly lowered themselves onto the pearls.  Their coarse, loose skin molded itself to the surface of the map. 

The sun was at its zenith when a kind of sigh breathed itself out of the creatures on the map.  Then all was still.  Under the harvesters an oily slick seeped from the pores in their bodies, the waste product of a slow, steady metabolism.  It covered the pearls, softening the shells which also became porous to accept the ooze.  Heavy now, those pearls sank slowly toward the bottom of the map.  The seeders on the surface, having expended their energy in spore production, moved in the opposite direction.  They rose through capillary action up the line of oily seep into the bodies of the harvesters.  As they entered the body of the hungry beings one last thought emanated from the seeders toward the waiting map.  The message was always the same, “They accept the learning.” 

The Festival of the Triune Pearls ended with the setting of the third sun.  As they cooled the harvesters began to extend their limbs, stretching again into beings capable of rapid movement and the deft handling of tools both simple and complex.  With tender care, the harvesters moved away from the precious pearls and then they would rest, for they had both expended a heavy load of waste and taken on a dense load of seeders.  Seeders were tiny, but rich in nutrients and were assimilated only slowly into the harvesters’ receiver organs.  The seeders were consumed over days, breaking up their chemical composition and becoming part of their new hosts, but not before their purpose was revealed. 

A great gift was given to the harvesters.  The life of the harvesters on the planet was one of exacting discipline.  Happiness was possible.  Gaity was allowed in small doses.  But theirs was a life of constant work and minimal time for thinking beyond the problems of a demanding and perilous life.  The life of the seeders was one of no physical labor but constant thought: the kind of thought that leads to rules of governance, ideas of honor, ethics and a group ethos.  The kind of thought that creates knowledge for the sake of knowledge and knowing for a higher purpose. 

As the seeders slowly disseminated among the harvesters, they also gave them the knowledge that the map had accumulated.  They gave the workers the conscience of the planet. 

There was the true purpose.  The seeders did what the harvesters could not.  The harvesters received mental nourishment from the seeders while replenishing the energy of the pearls.  Symbiosis.  Life in all its forms, for all its needs and with all its purposed was respected, renewed, and celebrated at the perihelion—at the Triune Festival of the Pearls.