GOD IS NOT A PUPPETEER

Hand in the Sky — I

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Thales of Miletus

Many said that death was not the end, it was simply a transition.

Most ancient religions believed in the existence of an afterlife. The civilisations behind them—from the Chinese, to the Egyptians, to the Greeks, to even the Mayans—they posited that the spirit of a person continued to roam the realm as much as they had in life; there was judgement, with the presence of the Underworld, and then, the individual must face and finish the trials laid out before them.

Either way, it was a new chapter, an opportunity for growth. Life and death were one and the same, in the sense that they both appeared to be a continuous cycle between two states of being. The human journey existed as the story of how individuals strived to balance them both. As they evolved, so too did their understanding of both life and death, and their commitment to finding harmony between them. It was the intricacy maintained which ensured the perpetuity of it all.

Both were inseparable aspects of human existence; each found its purpose in the other. Many claimed to not understand it at this moment, but the cycle of life and death was essential for their existence as a species. Both were forces of creation and destruction—and it was a truth long known that humans are a part of an unending cycle.

They were born, then they lived, and then they died.

None were exempt from this isochronism. That should be it—for none have ventured further than what had been given to them. For long, the unknowns of being could only be left to speculation, and for most of time, the ancients contented themselves with whatever they could find.

And then, there was you.

You did not believe in gods, much less in anything mystical.

It was a simple truth you had once contended with: you became something for a reason, but it would be through a more technical explanation for things. You existed in the world because it happened to be how nature dictated your biology, or rather, your progenitors'. All living beings had the ability to reproduce, in some capacity or the other—and that, you assumed, was why you have been let out into the world in the first place.

But the meaning of things could be a different matter entirely. To say that creatures had the opportunity to be born just because they were made to create life would present this…unchangeability, to existence—like they were there simply because they lied within a realm of possibility.

However, while you happened to be due to the processes of nature, it was still entirely up to you to dictate the worth of that event—your very birth—and make your life as you willed it to be. The presence of a higher authority hardly necessitated random chance. A cup of wine can be poured into another cup and have no droplets miss the container, but it could also be made so only a few drops splashed around. Intelligent design would be based on natural selection, on the circumstances which led to creation.

Biology dictated intelligence. Intelligent design, however, would be born from evolution. Birth meant existing into a certain form, where development occurred over time. That was not an act of the divine. You saw it as a set of circumstances and consequences, a naturally-occurring set of events; something that happened regardless of what conclusions the human mind made up.

Random chance, or realism.

And so, nothing prepared you for this.

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

A man and a woman fell in love for the second time.

In the heat of a night, they let themselves flourish as they explored one another's bodies. Grasping and gasping, laughing and loving as they kissed and prodded. The days of your conception were some of the happiest, in that couple's lives. They basked in their love, unaware of the parasite they were breeding; only ever glad to touch each other and fulfil themselves.

The man's seed spilled, and then it took root in the woman's womb; and finally, your form began. Submerged in water, growing in its warmth—a being sprouting a head, and then limbs, then a face; and finally, your life crept in.

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Thales of Miletus, first of the Milesian school of thought, proposed that water was the fundamental element from which everything came.

The gods existed in everything; if they were present in one thing and the other, then that meant all things were full of gods. The man suggested the idea of the arche—the unifying force, the source of motion, the source of life. In nature and existence, there must be an arche. To him, water moved by itself, and made life possible; it was brought from earth, and so it explained the states of matter. The earth moved on water, and the earth moved because the water underneath it moved.

That was what Thales assumed to be water: it was present in man, in beasts, in nature, and in science.

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(You start as water, as the warm fluids come from a man's loins. You compose in water, in the snugness of a uterus.)

You were a silent, subtle creature in a realm of its own, moving and dancing within a gentle, warm embrace. Every pulse of your body synchronised with the mother's heartbeat like a rhythm that never wavered, and in the short time you have been inside the womb, you actually started feeling like a life inside of life, instead of a simple form hidden in utero.

The place was damp and tight, and it was hot in the way hair and plastic clung to sweat—but somehow, at the same time, it felt just right—and satisfaction trickled through you as you made yourself comfortable.

When time passed, you slowly gained awareness, and with it came coherence.

It's dark, you thought, but not unwelcome.

You remembered only a little of how you came to be there. If you focused hard enough, you could make out a whisper on your lips, and some words on the edge of remembrance. But you did not bother with those thoughts, not much at all. Or, at least, not yet. For now, you contented yourself in the embrace of this odd little enclosure, and kept your eyes closed.

There was nothing to do and nothing to be, so, you stayed as you were.

(And then, you take shape.)

You drifted in and out of consciousness.

(The water is ever so still.)

Although naught actually happened in your space of nothingness, you found yourself regaining a waking state every once in a while. Sometimes, you roused into bearing with voices you heard. They were distant and muted.

You counted them; and came to the conclusion that five people remained constant. Two of the voices were women—one loud but sweet and the other shrill and throaty, and the other two were men—one with a deep baritone and the other flat but quiet. They all spoke in a language you could not understand.

The last voice was…more difficult to find. Sometimes, when it appeared, it had the most volume—as if it sat right beside you, or right outside the place you slept in. In other instances, it seemed gone entirely. It babbled, for the lack of a better word, in what you assumed was the same language as the others. It was when this one would speak that you shifted in your position, struggling with weird appendages that reached out to nothing in particular as it giggled on, unaware.

They all seemed important, somehow.

The sounds travelled slowly, reverberating all around you, and you supposed that it was not too bad. At other points in time, you even heard music playing. Everything blended into a strange haze of comfort, after that. The walls were soft—the confines of their space much like a well-loved jacket; and you curled up, content with the sense of near-nullity your situation provided.

You liked all of this, and as the whiles passed, you slumbered on.

(The water makes it easy to dream of nothing.)

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

Until finally, you started growing—

Until finally, you kept eating up space—

Until finally, you found that you could not breathe—

And finally, you were born.

(The world shifts.)

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The first thing you registered was the cacophony of shouts, and then a woman's sobbing. The sound of it went before the creeping chill on your skin, piercing your ears just as sensation travelled into your body. A ringing—loud, wailing—came from a vague direction, then something held you firm. The air hit you, heavy with a distinct scent of sweat and chemicals, like the horrible mix of a clinic and a gymnasium.

You opened your eyes, unseeing as the environment bleared into focus. Slowly, surely, it fell into place.

No, you wanted to laugh, no, no, no, no, no.

This was not how you thought of reincarnation. While you were no critic of the Hindu thought, you had no real inclination towards it. You never believed in souls, barely even in consciousness. As a result, you did not lean on the thought of being reincarnated into a new body when you died.

However, you did think of reincarnation in a way that was more physical than spiritual. Humans continued to exist in the matter that made up their bodies: in the energy that they left behind when they passed away. That energy and matter went on; it was reincarnated.

But imagine being born, and seeing and hearing—and—

—and feeling the entire world for the first time, ever.

Everything grated—so deafening, so bright, and so overwhelming—on your senses. There was zero context for any of it. You were simply experiencing everything with no frame of reference, not for the rebirth.

It was absolutely terrifying.

(You do not believe in gods, much less in mysticism.)

The people around you said something in that foreign language again—Japanese, your mind supplied—and you were distracted enough by the unfamiliarity of their words to pause and mind the disparity of things.

The disbelief came, and with it, the mindless scream that tore through your throat.

(And so, it seems, you are alive, once more.)

You were angry, at first.

Suddenly, everything seemed so wrong and too much at once. So, as you squirmed and whined in the arms of these figures, you also shrieked, expressing as much of your frustration as you can with a newborn's vocal cords. You knew very well what happened, and while you would not be the saddest about it, you had been peeved by the abrupt shift in environment.

Infantile amnesia was the phenomenon of people being unable to remember the events of their early childhood. This was due to the way that the human brain developed over time—and generally, it was thought that early memories were not formed in a way that became permanent or easy to recall. A part of you hoped that such happened to you, here and now. You did not wish to look back upon this moment, in the future.

(You do not even want to believe in gods.)

What is this?

(Punishment? Privilege? Purgatory? Who knows.)

You hated the implications of what would happen, now.

Waking up was never the hardest part.

It was keeping yourself alive.

(Living itself is never the burden. It is finding something to live for.)

Words from long ago echoed inside your consciousness.

Sleep, and stay asleep. Never wake up. Just sleep, a void crooned, there's no need to come back to the world.

Oh, but you did. And every time, you opened your eyes.

This was no different.

(Why will it be?)

Take me back to the fucking womb, you seethed, take me back to the water.

You did not stop crying until well into the morning.

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It was meant to be nostalgic.

It could have been, in truth. Nothing actually stopped you from enjoying what years you had of your infancy.

The earliest part of your rebirth was an idyllic period of time; much like breathing in and closing your eyes underwater, and staying like that for a minute straight—when there was little to feel but the soft gloss of water on your skin and the muted brightness behind your eyes—where most noise ceased, and you sank with a peaceful descent. There, you lied in that space—like a piece of driftwood lost at sea, or perhaps a fish swimming blind in its tides.

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

For the most part, you did nothing as things passed.

The first few days proved to be the hardest when dealing with regaining physicality; your mind was always too quick for your body, and it, in turn, was too new to even begin doing anything. Your head felt too heavy, your limbs uncoordinated, and you could perform little other functions save for breathing and blinking. That, or bingeing and purging. Time was not of precedence, here—and you have never been patient, but oh, now you had to force yourself to be. Now, you had to temper the irrational agitation that came with this idleness and bear it with as much technique as you could muster. But you were still, technically, an infant—so, you supposed you could forgive your own misgivings.

All the same, you adapted.

You decided to keep a grip on the frustration and use it to propel yourself forward to make some progress, but it went slowly—horribly—much longer than you anticipated it to happen.

Fuck, you thought once, as you mused from your position in what you assumed was your crib, this is boring.

You did not bother to take notice of your surroundings then, even as small as you were and at the mercy of whatever existed outside of your own being. Instead, you attempted to cope through a steady ignorance of what happened.

As you twisted and turned inside the mess of pillows and swaddling cloths, grunting and sighing in the confines of your own flesh, you made sense of the immediate things you needed. Feeding, sleeping, changing, bathing. You drank the bottles of warmed milk held to your mouth, closed your eyes and sighed in slumber, laid still as your diaper and your clothes were taken off and discarded, calmed when you were gently cleaned. You ate, you shat, you breathed.

To add to it, you hardly even cried; instead, you let small noises of complaint leave you here and there. Necessity was the priority, and you acknowledged that. The person taking care of you likely had other things to do, anyway. Overall, you thought you made quite the stellar babe—functioning as expected, and being as low-maintenance as possible.

It went on repeat. The routine lasted for a while.

And that was that.

Gods, it's mind-numbing.

It had not been until what you estimated to be your eleventh or twelfth week that you realised that only one person attended to you, and that perhaps you did not do as well with your self-imposed endeavours as you thought. The trouble came at you every once in a few hours, mostly because of the fact that you were a newborn—and so all you did was restricted by some aspect of movement or the other.

You believed you did good as a babe, until you heard your caretaker speaking to you in a worried hush—and perhaps you were not doing so fine acting like it, so much as you functioned like one.

When your vision cleared and you finally managed to see past the bars of the crib, further than the twelve or so inches you had been limited with; with a slight turn of your head, you glimpsed the room you were in. The space appeared wide, helped by the atmosphere created by the walls and the morning light. Your crib stood by the doorway, just far enough to be out of the way but also easily accessible should the need arise. The bedroom itself was, in some measure, bare, although a few containers—filled with materials for a child or so—laid scattered on the floor.

You paused in your observations when someone walked through the door. It was the same man that had been looking after you for all this time, carrying a black satchel and a few plastic bags. From what you could see, they contained another pack of diapers, along with a box of some kind of medical contraption. You regarded him as he settled into the room.

"Ah—" he looked at you in surprise, "okay—morning?"

This is the one with the deep voice!

"Don—dirty—I—Mom—"

You tuned him out as he spoke that other language. You picked up on a few words, the sparse you already recognised. He mumbled to himself about something or the other, but you paid it no heed.

"Ah—night—red."

The man continued about, shuffling to and fro as he fixed the items in his possession along with the clutter in the room. You watched him. Either he was so caught up in his task that he did not take notice of your staring, or he did not mind it. When he turned back to you, he smiled as he met your curious gaze. Sighing, he walked over to the crib, and took you into his hold. An involuntary giggle left your mouth.

The man kept you close to his chest, and you seized the chance to take him in.

"You—please—okay?" He whispered, hesitant. "I know you're strong."

You scrutinised him.

Up close, he appeared to be young, likely in his early thirties. He was tall (or it seemed that way because of the size difference), with dark hair and dark eyes. His face was sharp and angular, defined, with a strong jaw and a prominent brow. Most striking of his countenance was the way he looked at you with something so open, so vulnerable—gentle in comparison to his apparent edges.

You cooed. Damn, he's handsome.

He pressed a kiss to your temple, bits of his stubble tickling you, and you laughed at the motion; a strange fluttering erupting in your heart as you leaned into him. After a few seconds, he laid you down onto the mattress, careful not to jostle your head. You let out an exhale, pleased by the sensation of being held by this gentle giant, and then keened as you saw his eyes shine.

When he set you onto the bed, he proceeded to perform some kind of physical examination—he tilted your head, pressed his fingers to your chest, and felt around your limbs. You moved around, snorting. At your small amusements, the man smiled again, and finished what it was he was doing.

"I think—fine," and here, his demeanour reflected a reluctant relief, "doctors—but I—at the hospital."

With how little you understood of what he said, you settled for blinking at him. Predictably, he took no notice of this, and kept on with his musing. He bent over and rummaged through one of the bags on the floor. Your stomach growled when the smell of milk powder hit your nose. The man immediately moved to stare at you, and you giggled. Seconds later, he joined in on your laughter.

"Silly, silly." He murmured, shaking his head.

Many more days passed by as the two of you continued with this routine; with him doing the occasional check-up, ascertaining with actions you did not bother minding. Perhaps it was to monitor your health, or something along that line.

As the time moved, however, you became substantially aware of how…solitary, your current situation was. During the instances where you counted the lapsing minutes and seconds, your attention was drawn to the subject of your musing: the man with the kind eyes. He had to be your father—or, at the very least, either a relative or a particularly dedicated guardian. Your problem lied with the fact that he was the only one attending to you at all times.

Honestly, not that I'd know much about him yet, you pondered, but wouldn't he have other things to do?

You have never seen neither hide nor hair of any sign of family—or anyone else, really. Such a thing struck you as odd; you assumed that the voices you once heard inside the womb were your other relatives, or something of the sort. Where had they gone, now? Why was it that only this man made himself known?

Where's the mom? You sleepily questioned yourself once, as you were rocked back and forth after feeding. Not that I hate what this dude's doing—honestly, A-plus for effort, because I know babies are annoying—but I'm getting curious.

But, despite that; all else was fine for a while, even with the mystery you had to contend with.

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

Don, the man would always begin, and you guessed it was an important word.

Every time he peeked over your crib to track you, or when he went along with some mundane task that you had to be nearby for; he whispered it with a fragility, with a certain fear, like you would blink out of existence if he did not think of you enough. You thought it was sweet, and you always reached out to him when he uttered it. Though, with how frequent he said it, you assumed that was…your new name.

Who the hell names a kid 'Don'? You groused. It's like the start of a horrible pun.

You glared at him when you realised what it was and he called you by it, but even so, took it in stride. Eventually, you started associating that word with yourself.

'Don', you pouted, seriously, what the hell?

Don, dear, he would mutter when he catered to your needs, sweet girl.

Don, eat.

Don, how are you?

Don, wake up!

It was…endearing. Charming. Heartwarming.

(You close your eyes and flash a gummy grin, stupidly in love with the idea of him giving his affection so freely.)

Everything passed by in a haze, and you learned that this man was indeed your father. This sort of affection could not be faked—you knew it. He held you in the way only a parent can: watchful, protective, happy, and most of all, loving; in a manner that belied the receiver of the attention being someone who came from their own flesh and blood.

You learned to accept it, in time. Not that you had much of another choice, if you were to keep going as it was.

When he talked and you occupied yourself by sifting through his words, you managed to get prompted on understanding the things he said. On some nights, when he took you out of the crib and laid with you in bed, he would point to a few things, and you made vague noises in reply. You attempted to mimic him, verbalising as much as you could without truly saying anything.

Look at this. Be careful.

You. Me. This. That. We.

This is red. This is white. Pillow. Milk. Daughter.

Yes. No. Stop. Blue. Black. Green. Dad. Us.

"You're—you know?" The man said, when he gradually caught onto the fact that you were picking up on his cues faster than he likely assumed. "So quick. It's—you're just like Rai-Rai. We've been—and it's so—! Your grandparents would—and it's not—"

You listened to him absently, too distracted by the new toy he brought you, which now dangled in front of your face.

"It's amazing. I think you—family—Rai-Rai might—he'll be happy to have—"

I have no idea what you're talking about, you squealed when he gave you an orange teething ring, I just want this thing.

You put the toy into your mouth, unfocused. Oblivious to your thoughts, his excitement became apparent as he gestured around with a hand.

"You're learning—Sachiko—hospital—out—"

He continued talking as he grabbed something from the nightstand, but upon seeing what it was, you froze. The teething ring fell from your grasp, forgotten. Beside you, your father fiddled with a brick phone.

Christ, is that—?

You screamed.

Why the hell am I back in time?!

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Many have debated on whether or not Thales rejected the gods.

While he was quoted for the notion that they existed in everything, it has been a point of contention if this was meant in the context of energy itself; of it being the very thing that all were composed of, instead of aspects of avatars from the Greek pantheon, which was one of the primary beliefs at the time. Along with this was the fact that he supposedly put emphasis on the significance of logic; to his pupils, like Anaximander, he stressed the value of rational thought.

The world could not have simply come from the gods themselves. There must have been a common source of life in all things. He labelled this the unifying principle of diversity; that, by natural consequence, there was a material cause of being. The Greek pantheon—forces of the innumerable, sometimes intangible, aspects of life—while it gave people a perspective on how natural phenomena happened, it did not explain how the world came to be.

Aristotle stated that Thales desired a rational—logical—interpretation of creation. And so, the arche was born. It dealt with the origin of things. A first principle, a beginning. To Thales, it was water. Vital to life and living, it existed as a fount of nourishment.

Even with the idea of the soul and the cosmos, other philosophers have noted that the man likely attributed their creation and persistence to something that related to water. While none of his own original works survived, evidence pointed to his ideas leaning towards this notion.

──•~❉᯽❉~•──

You missed the water, sometimes.

You yearned to have it again—the womb, the sleep, the darkness. Where nothing existed and nothing had to be done, where you did not even need to breathe. Where you floated in a small expanse of emptiness simply because you could, and that was all to it. While you would not deny that a part of you felt relief at living once more—and you were not so arrogant to think rebirth remained to be anything less than a privilege—you still sighed for an end to things.

(Your memories come back to you, slowly. They flash with images of fire and mud, of a long winding road that sat atop a seaside cliff. You ride a motorcycle, and then the dream sequence fades to white, and you wake with a hypnic jerk.)

Your new father took you outside of the house, eventually. He placed you in a dark brown baby carrier and held you on the front side. He planned to have a walk around the neighbourhood, you thought. Distractedly, you regarded the world with a quick eye. The water would not have been this vast nor pervasive, you mused. It had been a cushy little thing that forced you to curl up and keep your head in your hands.

When you comprehended the world before you—a slightly fuggy air, a mix of the crisp morning breeze and the smells of a city, added with the incessant circling of noise from all corners—you buried your face into the crook of your father's neck, resisting the urge to vomit.

Ugh. Too much.

As it happened, the man sensed your discomfort. He likely felt you struggling not to heave.

"Oh? Is it—for you? We can—quiet." He murmured, gently stroking your hair. You leaned into his touch, but still made a whining noise. "We'll—later. Your mother and brother—from the hospital."

A few more minutes of him walking and you attempted to block out as much of the sonance as you could. Still, though, from your position on his chest, you glimpsed a few sights of this new place. You passed by several shops, most of them standing out with brightly-coloured light signs.

As your father kept going on, you saw that there were many buildings and bystanders around you. They stood high, looming over you like a giant concrete forest casting shadows onto a newcomer. The mid-morning light did nothing to temper the way you perceived it. It only added to the effect. When the two of you rounded a corner and passed by a particular landmark, you paused.

The building you were looking at was still under construction—likely only at six to ten floors—but you recognised enough of its base design to realise what it was, even with only the barest parts of its curved form. Distantly, you knew its architecture would be tall, and it would start resembling a gothic cathedral when the two towers were built.

Oh, it came to you, we're in Tokyo.

(A soft pain—in the back of your mind, still a dull ache, but already threatening to eat at you—stirs you into clarity.)

It did not comfort you all that much. You were supposed to go here for your birthday, to celebrate your eighteenth year of life; and you had been only one month away from fulfilling that wish. A brief spike of indignation curled your lips. Somehow, with just the appearance of this place, you already felt mocked.

You should not be so bitter over it, you knew. The rational half of you scoffed as you palliated your own emotions. You did not even want to reach eighteen years old, before, but you had to admit that you pined for the experience of having something to be joyous about, even if it was a temporary reprieve.

(You remember when your father asks you where you would like to go for the summer. An international trip, he says. Where your family could get out as one, as a whole, and make another set of vibrant experiences you once lost due to a pandemic.)

You swallowed the lump in your throat, shifting around in the baby carrier to find a way to breathe easier.

It's unfair. I was only—I had—we—I could have—why, why, why—

"Your—later," your father's voice shocked you out of an imminent crying fit, and you jerked to look at him with wide eyes, "Rai-Rai and Sachiko—today."

Oh? Who are Rai-Rai and Sachiko? Ah! You giggled. Are they family? Is it finally time? Strange name though, the first one.

Your father smiled at you, indulgent. He proceeded to point out various things in the area as you calmed down. In the middle of doing so, however, he stopped—and you turned to him in askance when he frowned, squinting up at the sky.

"It's—today."

You did your best to copy him, slanting your eyes to whatever it was he was looking at.

You blinked in rapid succession as something cold freckled your face. One drop. Then, two. Then, three, and four, and seven, and thirteen—until finally water started pouring down and the sky quickly turned grey. The man holding you yelped, moving to take cover in an instant.

"Don!" He ran over to a nearby bus stop, and you squealed at this development.

(You think of that seaside cliff and recall a summer breeze on your face. You can still feel the splatters of the sea water, coming in from your right; you are laughing as the sun beams down and everything is cast in a yellow-white glow, and you do not care for the cars chasing you at high speeds. Everything collides, and t he water swallows it all. Then, water fills your senses, and it is all you can think of.)

(The salt burns in your eyes, in your nose, and in your throat. You try to cry out—but it all only worsens, and then your head is pounding with the pressure—and in a blink, as you watch the bubbles come from your mouth, you are gone.)

Only seconds ago, the city presented itself as a jumble of tones and clamours, but when the water came to you as small tears from the sky—light, almost gentle—you supposed you could forgive the bustle. The rain should have been incongruent with the way you wanted your reprieve to be, with how it fell and covered only the surface level of things, unlike how a body of water consumed and drowned those that entered it. You also knew it could have devolved into a thunderstorm.

But here, now, it felt like an apology—a reminder of your sentience, yes, but so too a symbol of tranquillity.

It was a nice contrast, you thought. At least, to how things came to be. Nothing outside of the bus stop the two of you took refuge under mattered, at the moment. Here, everything stilled, and the commotions you turned your head away from were muted.

Your father huffed in slight annoyance as the downpour continued. He adjusted you on his hip, minding the way you tried to look out into the city now that the rain came along.

"We'll be late—told them—hours ago."

Fruitlessly, you held a hand out to catch a few droplets of water.