Chapter 37: Forever and Eternity

Level 38, sublevel 0

The former Air Marshal shook her head in disbelief. "Cobb is alive?"

Peorth said patiently to Skuld. "My dear, that does not seem possible. How can a a living human come all the way up here to this place?"

Skuld addressed the pair like a teacher explaining 2+2=4 to a very slow student. "Simple. Do you know what a set intersection is?"

"Oui." "Uh.."

"It is the set of elements that are in common between two sets. Members of both sets."

"Oui." "Oh.."

"That is what happened here. It is nothing more than a basic set intersection, where our power-set stack of reality levels has intersected with Cobb's own dream state level."

The ex-Air Marshal blinked her eyes slowly. "If you say so.."

Skuld continued to lecture the pair of psychopomps. "I do. It's obvious that this is a simple intersection. And that dream state level of his must be pretty darn deep to intersect with this high a level of reality. Small wonder he's not waking up."

"Okay, fine. So what do we do then?"

Skuld gave an exasperated sigh. "Mother, we wake him up. His dream stack will then collapse and he'll wake up back in his own original physical universe, wherever that happens to be."

"Is that even possible for us to do that to a living person? As psychopomps we only have authority over the dead."

"Sure it is. Keiichi and I have been doing lucid dreaming for centuries. Piece of cake."

Skuld tapped her finger to her chin. "We just need to convince him to wake up. Hmm. You know, I think the four of us, all together, just might be able to pull this off."

Her mom said, "Really? How?"

"Give me a moment to think how to best do this.." A few moments later she said, "Okay, I have a plan worked out." Skuld ordered them all to gather round her in a huddle.

And so Skuld began to explain her plan. "You see, Cobb's whole psychological problem is his hangup over the death of his wife, Mal. He blames himself for her suicide. So what we gotta do is get him to finally let her go of her. Or to be more precise, to let his image of her let go of him. Then he can wake up and return to his children."

She looked at Peorth. "Mal was born in France, so you will play her. Mom, you will play Ariadne. Keiichi, you play Saito. I'll direct the whole thing from off-stage. I'm the best impersonator so I will jump in as necessary with any other character roles as needed: Eames, Fischer, or Arthur."

"But Skuld, what if we have to improvise? How will we know what to say if things deviate from the script?"

"Let me worry about that. Remember, I'm the stage director of this little theatrical performance. I'll transmit your improvised lines to you with telepathy. We are all first class, and Keiichi is bonded with me, so we can stay in contact that way. Just remember to remain in mental contact with me at all times so I can overhear what is going on. Got it?"

"Roger." "Je comprends." "Understood."

"Are we ready, team?"

"Let's move out!" "Apprêté!" "Oh yeah!"

"Great, then, let's go!"

Level 38, sublevel 0, three hours later

Skuld was already standing up. She had her hands on her hips and was panting a bit. "Okay, mission accomplished. He's on his way home now. Wow, that was close call."

Peorth sat up from her cot, then she hugged the teenage girl. "Skuld, that was magnifique! Your improvisation, I am so impressed with you!"

Keiichi stood up as well and kissed Skuld's cheek. "You did perfect."

Skuld's face was turning red from all the praise that she was receiving. "Heh, thanks."

From behind her the former Air Marshal put her hands on the back of Skuld's shoulders. "That was a great op. Your defensive reflexes when he tried to attack you were spot on. Quick and decisive. And you didn't injure him. Fine work, soldier." She then playfully waited for her daughter to salute her as the lower ranking officer.

Instead Skuld protested, "Hey, I know I don't look like it anymore, but I was a four star Air Marshal too, you know. And I was the Daitenkaicho. So shouldn't you be saluting me first instead of me saluting you?"

Her mom smiled, "Ah, but you had awarded me a fifth star, posthumously, so now I out-rank you. And Daitenkaicho was a civilian office. So snap to it, soldier! I want to see that salute!"

Skuld growled at her mom. "Grr.. fine."

Then Skuld gave her mother an over-exaggerated salute, which her mother then briskly returned. Then she hugged her daughter. "Skuld, I'm so proud of you."

Peorth said brightly, "Let us all go to the café and celebrate!"

And so they did.

Level 38, sublevel 1, Paris, night

The hour was getting late. It was finally time for Keiichi and Skuld to depart from level 38.

Skuld was tearing up. "Mom, I wish you could come with us. Both of you."

"Mon ami, we have our own jobs to do. And you have yours."

"Yeah, I know. Big Sis is waiting for us. So I guess it's time for us to leave then.."

"Get moving, soldier."

Keiichi was tearing up as well. "I love you, and I'll never forget you."

"My Keiichi.. my family.." Then the ex-Air Marshal smiled. "Hurry up and go before I lose it."

He hugged her. Then she said, "Just remember my instructions when you hit the barrier. Follow them to the letter."

Keiichi said, "Don't worry, we will."

"Mom.."

"Goodbye."

Skuld and Keiichi then departed level 38. They were standing in the white void. The door before them was to level 39. But the door was marked with warning symbols that read, No physical entry permitted.

This was a dangerous time. They were about to cross the barrier where reality ended and the unreal began, the upper edge of any sort of physicality. Beyond that boundary physicality could not exist. If they entered that door they would become true spirits, without mass, without form, without any physical properties at all, in a strange realm that was on the barest edge of incomprehensibility. They were on the very border, the cliff-edge, of anything that they could understand as 'reality'.

There was no way for Skuld, in her physical manifestation, to pass that barrier.

Keiichi was permitted to pass on principle, being a member of that strange race that for some unfathomable reason was granted the ability to commune directly with the Top. But he did not have the power to convert himself into a spirit to cross that barrier, not on his own.

Skuld had the power but not the authorization. But even in their spiritual forms, where all physicality is removed, Skuld was still not authorized to pass. Meanwhile Keiichi had the permission to pass, but not the power.

To cross that barrier would require a single non-physical being to have both the power and the authority to do so.

It was Skuld's mother who had finally come up with the solution while Keiichi was patiently waiting the 40 years for Skuld to finally end her walk-out strike against her imaginary captors.

They would have to fuse.

"Keiichi, you ready?"

"Yeah."

"Remember, even though we will be one mind, it will be your half that will be the one navigating. I'll slam on the brakes for you when we get over the hump. Then we should be able to split apart again."

"Okay. But can you please explain how can I be the one navigating and you braking if we are a single mind?"

"Well, it's kinda complicated. Our unitary mind will have different components from each of us running different parts of the combined psyche. To oversimply it a bit, I will be running the super-ego and you will be the ego. The id will be merged."

"What? Super-ego, ego, id?"

"It is Freud's structural model of the human psyche. Yeah, I admit I'm hand-waving here. It's because Freud's model doesn't actually correspond to the somatic structures of the human brain. Anyway, the model works like this: The ego is basically in the driver's seat. It is the main part of the psyche that takes actions and makes decisions. The id consists of your primal instincts and urges. The super-ego mediates between the ego and the id. I can't really explain it properly. The point is, neither of us will have a physical body for a while, at least not until we get over the hump."

"The hump..?"

"The hump. The infinite segment of our trip. After we get over the hump then physicality might reappear again, with physical bodies that are probably similar to the heavenly bodies we have now, or perhaps they will re-manifest and we will get the same ones back again. Dunno. Anyway, the point is, we have to pass through a huge and literally infinite expanse of absolute weirdness - complete non-physicality - to get to that point. "

"Ok, so I'm in the driver's seat. Fine. So how far do I go? When do I stop?"

"Dunno. We will be going up millions of levels, billions, trillions.."

"Great."

"Let me worry about stopping us. I'll ride shotgun as your super-ego and I'll tell you when to stop. We may have to stop multiple times so I can take some readings. We don't want to get lost."

"How can we get lost? You told me that the chain of power-sets is well-ordered, right? So we just go in one direction: Up. We go up. Easy."

"You wish. We need to be careful now. There are loop shunts. I think they start appearing around level one million or so."

"Loop shunts?"

"You ever play the game Chutes and Ladders as a kid?"

"Yeah.. you roll the dice and move your piece along the path. If you hit a ladder you climb up. If you hit a chute you slide down."

"Right. Well, those ladders and chutes in the transverse can form cycles, loops. So we need to be careful to avoid those. Otherwise we could be spinning forever in a cycle that never leads us to Big Sis. We could be climbing up then sliding down again forever and not realize that we aren't making any progress."

"I get it. You don't want us cycling between a ladder and a chute for eternity."

"Ack! It's 'forever', not 'eternity'! Get it right! You know how much that annoys me when you mix those up."

"Sorry. Uh, I forgot. What is the difference between forever and eternity again?"

"Look, I told you a dozen times! Forever is in principle algorithmic. Eternity isn't."

"Oh yeah.. I forget what that means.."

"Keiichi, I already explained this. I swear, the high altitude must be making you stupid or something. Okay, let's go over it again. Forever is in principle algorithmic. It means that there exists, at least in theory, some kind of generating function or description for it. For example, you can express the set of factorials of all non-negative integers like this, written in the functional computer language Haskell:

fac 0 = 1
fac n = n * fac (n - 1)

"The set of factorials is infinite, but there exists a well-formed algorithm that describes how to generate them. A more complex example is the set of prime numbers. For example, here is a function to generate an arbitrarily long list of prime numbers, also written in Haskell:

primesTo m = 2 : sieve [2..]
where
sieve (p:xs) = p : sieve [x | x - xs, rem x p /= 0]

"Now, there is no easy way to predict whether any given really big number happens to be in this set. In fact, it is the hardness of the factorization of large numbers that is the foundation for the computer encryption algorithms that you find on the World Wide Web [SSL and TLS]. When you purchase something from Amazon with your credit card, or when you transfer money from your Fidelity bank account, your computer is actually using the factorization of a large number into two large primes to encrypt your account information.

"So now let us move up to a more abstract level. Let's define the set S of all Haskell programs that return the answer '1'. Here is the question: Is there a generating function for S that can be described using Haskell itself? In other words, can you write an algorithm written in Haskell, like the ones shown above, that will generate the set of all such Haskell programs?

"The answer is no. In the lingo of computability theory, it is undecidable. According to Gödel you could say that the Haskell programming language is 'incomplete', in the sense that it cannot express all expressible truth statements (members of S) within that logical system. So it is 'imperfect' in that sense. Yeah, I know this is easily provable using the Halting Problem, but bear with me here. The point is, any such sufficiently complex system that can be described using finite symbology is by necessity either incomplete or inconsistent. That is a direct consequence of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem: That no such logical system can be both completely consistent (internally perfect) and can find and prove all its truth statements within that system (is complete). Such a system cannot possibly exist."

Keiichi said, "In other words, it is flawed."

"Yeah. Now let us move up to a really ambitious logical system. Remember when I described to you the Standard Model of particle physics, the so-called 'Theory of Everything'? The TOE?"

"Uh, yeah.."

"If you recall, the Standard Model describes the dynamical behavior of the fundamental particles of the physical universe within a quantum mechanical system whose gauge symmetry can be expressed as a function of the Lagrangian, L."

"In other words, it's a model. A system."

"Yes. And so in principle it can be generated algorithmically, although as a practical matter that's actually infeasible."

"Okay."

"So now, here is the big question: Is this model perfect? In the Gödelian sense?"

"It's a finite description, so no, it is not."

"Correct. So could you conclude that, in that sense, that the design of the physical universe is flawed?"

"Sure. In the sense that the quantum states are based on the operation of that finite TOE model. Okay, fine. But I still don't see what you are driving at."

"Don't you see, Keiichi? One of the big arguments against the existence of God is that His creation is flawed. God is perfect, the argument goes, but his creation is imperfect. Creation is messed up. And so atheists claim that this apparent contradiction refutes the existence of a perfect God."

"Ah, I see. But we just established that a perfect creation is impossible to create."

"Bingo! Yay! I love it when you get clever." She playfully approached him to tousle his hair, but he jumped back before she could do it.

"Hey, don't muss up my hair! You know I hate that."

"Feh, like your hair can get any more mussed up than it already is. You never comb it."

"Just don't touch it. Anyway, I think I get what you are saying."

"The point is, God's creation is flawed by necessity. It is not His fault, it just is. By logical necessity. It is intrinsically flawed due to its nature of being described by finite rules."

"Got it."

"Now let's get really ambitious. God is perfect. So tell me, Keiichi, how would you describe God then?"

"You can't."

"And why not?"

"Uhm.."

"Before you answer, think carefully about the little thought experiment that we just did."

Keiichi thought hard. "Hmm.. the nature of God cannot be described by any finite logical system."

"Hooray! You got it! You win a kewpie doll! This is what we mean when we say God is eternal."

"In other words, God is literally indescribable."

"Correct. When we call something 'eternal', what we mean is that it cannot be described in finite symbols. Now you are ready to understand the distinction between 'forever' and 'eternal'. An entity that is eternal is something that cannot be conceived using finite terms. This is why Gödel cannot capture God within his nasty logic trap. Because to capture Him that way Gödel needs to first come up with a symbol that fully describes Him, and there isn't one.

"Is that why Jews are so reluctant speak God's name aloud?"

"I like to think so. You see, in a certain sense one can argue that God has no name. For he literally cannot be named by any symbol. More specifically, His conception cannot be labeled or captured in any finite set of symbols that fully describes Him."

Keiichi said, "I am rather amazed that I actually understood that."

"Heh, good boy. I admit these are rather deep concepts, but I think they are important."

"Is that what we are approaching as we climb up?"

"Yeah, I think so. I have a sneaking suspicion that the place where Big Sis dwells is actually eternal."

"Wow.."

"At some point we will cross the line between forever and eternal. That is the 'hump' I was referring to above. The forever hump. You will need to fly us past that point before I can take over flying again."

"Okay. I think I got it now. And you'll stop us periodically to check our progress, and to avoid those shunt loops you were talking about."

"Yep."

Keiichi took a big breath. "Okay. So how do we do this fusion thing? I mean, how do we merge minds?"

"It's easy. We are already mentally bonded, which means we can flip our mental processes back-and-forth between our two different systems - between your brain or my brain. In this case I think it would be best if I flipped myself into yours. You'll have bodily control. Then just walk through the door. Make sure you drag my body with you. Our bodies will both probably dissolve right after we go through."

"Err.. okay.."

"Keiichi, I need to be honest with you. I have absolutely no idea what is actually beyond that door. When physicality ends, I mean. So I gotta warn you..."

"About what?"

".. that things past that door might get kind of, well, weird. I mean really weird. I mean 2001: A Space Odyssey trippy weird."

Keiichi took a deep breath. "Got it. I'll try to be ready."

"Just keep moving upward as much as you can. If it seems that you are getting stuck in a loop, I'll hit the brakes and we'll get our bearings again before continuing. Got it?"

"Yeah. I'm ready. Let's do it. Belldandy is waiting."

Skuld then moved herself into Keiichi's mind.

He lifted up her limp and mindless body in his arms and walked through the door.

Level Nayuta

{ Stop! }

{ Where are we? }

{ Level Nayuta. }

{ Where? }

{ A hindu term that is supposed to represent infinity: 10^60. Not actually infinite, of course. }

{ Still, that's pretty high up, wow. }

{ Yeah. You know it's an interesting coincidence that Nayuta approximates the mass of the physical universe measured in milligrams. It's a remarkably large number for an ancient religion to contemplate. }

{ Still nothing physical yet. }

{ Nope. We are not over the hump yet. Keep going. }

{ That one section back there was really trippy.. }

{ Yeah, around 10^30. I have no idea what that was. Don't worry about it. }

{ You know, I'm kind of surprised that we are fused and yet we can still chat back-and-forth like this. }

{ You're just talking to yourself. }

{ Huh? }

{ Just keep going. }

{ Here we, err, I go. }

Level Aleph-sub n Bet Yodh

"Whoa! Stop!"

Keiichi and Skuld fell down from the sky with considerable forward momentum. Their two bodies skidded fast along a glassy white floor until they finally slowed to a halt.

Keiichi stood up slowly. "Ouch.."

Skuld sat up and looked at herself. "Yay! We have bodies again! At least I think we do.."

"You think?"

"We're way beyond understanding what's actually happening to us at this point."

Then she looked down her front as she muttered to herself, "Dang it, I'm as flat as a washboard..."

"Sorry."

"Hey, it's not your fault."

Then he noticed her new outfit. "Hey, that red and pink longcoat you're wearing, with those big red buttons. It looks just like the one that you wore back on Earth when I first met you."

"Yep, my regression is complete. All I need now to finish my ensemble is my red mallet, sigh."

"So where are we now?"

"Not sure. All I know for certain is that we successfully got past the 'forever' hump.

"I've been flying forever?"

"Yeah. Good job, Keiichi. This is a major breakthrough."

"But it doesn't feel like I've been flying forever."

"I already explained that. After you die there are time-skips in what you experience, like in a dream. The reason is because we are not infinite beings. Our minds have only finite capacity to remember new events, so we have only finite memories during a time span that lasted forever."

"And I notice that you just said 'forever', not 'eternity'."

"You caught that. Good man."

Then Skuld put her hand to her forehead. She seemed a bit unsteady.

"Hey Skuld, you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm fine."

"You sure you're feeling okay? You don't look so good."

"I'm fine, just a bit tired. Let's just sit down and rest for a bit. I think we deserve a break, don't you?"

They both down sat on the glassy white floor. Then Skuld laid herself flat and tucked her arms under her head.

She pretended to be relaxed, but she wasn't. She was feeling ill, nauseous.

She tried to distract him. "It was nice seeing Mom and Peorth on 38."

In his sitting position Keiichi leaned back with his arms braced behind him. "Yeah, it was. They seemed to be doing really well."

"They both looked really happy with their new jobs. I'm glad. That's very important, to have jobs."

"How so?"

"Because, Keiichi, everyone in Heaven must have a job. Everybody. It's required. There is no such thing as unemployment in Heaven."

"Really? I thought Heaven was, you know, where you lay around lazily upon a fluffy white cloud and do nothing but relax all day. Maybe strum a harp. You know, like they show on TV cartoons."

Skuld sat up. She held her stomach a moment, then she gave him an annoyed look. "Oh come on, Keiichi. Not again. That is just another stupid misconception that you humans so often have. It's totally wrong. Heaven is nothing like that. Keiichi, your misunderstanding of Heaven is just as screwed-up as your misunderstanding of Hell. Maybe worse."

"So explain it to me then."

She laid back down again. "Feh. Go read Revelation 5. Everybody is doing something. Everybody is active. It's a busy place. Look, in Heaven you get put to work. Sure, I admit that some of it might seem a bit cliché, like singing hymns in the heavenly choir, but it will still be really interesting. Some people will go to work in other mansions, maybe get assigned roles in physical worlds, perhaps as spirits, perhaps as something else. And those jobs will be really fun and enjoyable."

"Like what, for example?"

"Well, for example your wife and Peorth are now psychopomps. That's a cool job. There are lots of other cool jobs too."

"Such as?"

"You mean besides the obvious ones like worship and praise, stuff like that?"

"Yeah."

"Well, nobody really knows exactly. Oh, there are some tantalizing hints. Take Revelation 2 for example. It describes the saints helping Christ to rule 'with a rod of iron'. The greek word is poimanei, which is derived from the word for a shepherd, poimen. Paul uses the same word in Acts 20:28 to describe overseers. So apparently some people in Heaven will be given positions of considerable authority and power."

"Wow."

"Whatever job you get assigned, I'm sure you will be happy doing it."

"So what is Belldandy's job? Up there, I mean?"

Skuld's eyes sparkled. "It's wonderful. She's a seraph, a very special kind of angel. There are only seven seraphim. Four are always in rotation around the Center. Anzus is one too."

"The seraphim?"

"The word literally means 'the burning ones'. They are described in Isaiah 6 and Revelation 5. They have six wings that always cover them so you can never see them clearly. And they are super hot. Not a destructive fire, but different kind, a purifying inextinguishable light, a life-giving light, with a kind of clarity, a brightness that illuminates everything."

"Have you seen Belldandy in her seraph form? Or Anzus?"

"Oh goodness no. I could never approach the seraphim. Nobody from Asgard can. They are too powerful. I'd burn up."

"Wait, so how can I approach Belldandy if she's a seraph?"

She shrugged, "Dunno. I'm sure she will have worked something out for you."

Keiichi remained thoughtful. "Yeah, she will. We'll be together in eternity. I wonder.. will I see you or anyone else after that happens? Will I ever see you again? Or Peorth and your Mom?"

"I think so, somehow."

"You do?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Yeah. I agree. Belldandy will find a way."

Then he asked, "Skuld, how are you feeling? You don't look good at all. Is the age regression affecting you?"

"Naw, I'm fine. I can handle it. I'm just feeling a little weird, that's all."

"Weird? How so?"

"Well, I still have all my adult memories, but they feel strange now. I remember our marriage, how we fought the Last Battle, how we defeated Fenrir. But those memories all feel.. foreign. Like they are somebody else's memories, not my own. Am I making sense?"

"Yeah, you are. I think it is because those memories were created by your adult personality. But that adult personality is different from your child personality, and so that is why those adult memories don't feel like they are part of you. Because the adult 'you' then is different than the child 'you' now."

"It's weird. I remember giving birth to Thoriko and Lindy, but it feels like it was all a dream, that it didn't happen to me, but to someone else, and I just went along for the ride."

"Heh, actually that is exactly how I felt when you were giving birth. Ugh. I was already bonded in your head, so I felt you giving birth as a spectator. That was rough. I still can't believe how women can stand that much pain."

She chuckled, "Good. It's about time you men finally understood what childbirth feels like."

"Oy, I think that scarred me for life. I'm glad you only did it once."

"Heh."

Skuld finally sat up and said, "Okay, I think I'm ready. Let's go do the final push to the top. We need to hurry now."

Keiichi asked, "Why?" Then Skuld felt unsteady. She stumbled and fell on one knee.

"Skuld!" He ran over to help her stand. "What's wrong? Are you ill?"

"Just a little altitude sickness."

"Huh?"

"Nevermind. We need to hurry now if I am going to get you delivered to Big Sis."

"But.. you just said we had literally forever to do it. Why the rush all of a sudden?"

"I said nevermind that. Let's get moving. Stay close to me. This last part might be a little bumpy. Hold on."

"But.."

Skuld grabbed his hand and launched herself upward. Up and up and up and up they flew. Up through the ladder of transfinity, faster and faster.

Skuld grimaced.

She repositioned Keiichi in front of her, pushing him, shoving him upward, pushing him with every fiber of her being.

Then she began to scream.

She was shoving him up as hard as she could, hoping that by sheer momentum that she could somehow catapult him up to where he needed to be.

For you see, Skuld had a very good reason for doing it.

It was because she had realized something, a fact that she had kept hidden from Keiichi ever since their arrival at level Aleph-sub n Bet Yodh.

It was because she now realized that she was not going to survive the trip.

A/N:

Christopher Nolan's film Inception (2010) explores the notion that there can be nested levels of reality. In the film you will find that there are actually seven levels (not four) depicted. Working from bottom to top, the seven levels are Limbo, the castle in the snow (white), the office building (brown), the rainstorm (blue), seeing his children (the spinning top), Cobb's real world (which I suspect we never actually saw), and the audience watching the film.

What? The audience counts as a reality level? Oh yeah. Nolan intended that the audience watching the film to most definitely count as a level, and it is very much is a part of the film's mechanics. How do we know this? Because at the very end of the title credits, just before the lights in the theater turn back on, we the audience begin to hear softly the music of Edith Piaf's song Non je ne regrette rien playing in the background. From watching the story we know that this specific song is a clue, the 'kicker' music, that warns us that it is time to wake up, to pop up a level of reality. Nolan is quite deliberately playing that song at the very end of the film to tell us, the audience, that it is time for us to leave the fantasy realm of that film and pick up our popcorn bags go home.

One of my favorite pieces of music by composer Hans Zimmer in that film is called Time, and it is played at the end of the film when Cobb meets his children (or thinks he does). There is a wonderful live orchestral performance on YouTube at Inception "Time" Played Live by Vie Gasmos (5:56).

The melody starts with a single piano, then a single violin is added, then two more join in. It slowly builds with french horns and drums to a soaring crescendo, then it ends with the solitary piano again on a single note (played by Hans Zimmer himself).

Nolan had the film at the top of his 'to-do' list for years trying to find a movie studio to let him make it, but no studio would touch it, thinking it was too cerebral for a mass audience to follow. So Nolan had to first make The Dark Knight films to gain enough notoriety and reputation as a successful film director to finally convince a studio to green-light this expensive and intricate production as a vanity work. It turned out the studio was wrong and the film did quite well financially. Definitely a great and thoughtful film that merits repeated viewings.

A/N:

I am now doing my usual practice of going back to earlier chapters to fix plot holes and to better align the story with the ending. Most of the changes are minor. The exception is chapter 33, where I re-wrote and greatly expanded the bottom half. It is one of the most important chapters in terms of this story's main thesis, behind only chapter 32 (Third Impact) and the final chapter (The Five Secrets Revealed).

A/N Update (2014/07/07):

Hans Zimmer's main theme for Christopher Nolan's latest upcoming SF film, Interstellar, has appeared on YouTube at Interstellar - Main Theme [Extended] - Hans Zimmer (4:08) by Agent Sambora. Zimmer created a slow melancholy and understated melody that portends a cerebral film not unlike Inception.

Interstellar has received a lot of positive buzz in both Hollywood and the SF community. I heard a rumor that Matthew McConaughey's character might be going on a long cosmological journey not unlike David Bowman's in 2001, but with Nolan's more spiritual style. He might even go all the way to Hell and/or Heaven like in Disney's underappreciated SF film, The Black Hole (1979).

That rumor got me really pumped, and so I based a lot of Keiichi's journey on what I imagined Nolan might be doing with this film.

However the first trailer disappointed me because it makes the film sound like a lame environmental screed. 'We wrecked the environment and run out of food, so we'll go find more in spaaaaace!' Oh dear. It can't be that bad, can it? In fact it's so bad I'm wondering if it is a fake-out to misdirect us from the actual story. We will see.

A/N Update (2014/11/11):

I saw Interstellar today and it is awesome. It is the best SF movie I've seen in years. Highly recommended.

I got inspired and wrote a quick one-shot, The Dying of the Light, right after seeing the film. It touches on some of the same themes presented in this tale, but in a more geeky SF way.

-HuuskerDu