This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Copyright © 2008 Nathan Foster, some rights reserved.
Okay. Why did I even decide to let people read this story? Its merits lie in its honesty, and the lesson it has to teach. It isn't a terribly bad story. But the story I originally intended to convey fell apart like a house of cards, to reveal an even better story, somehow built on stronger footing. Revealing the way in which this new story emerged, I think, is inspiring. In a way, it gives credence to the idea of morality as skill. The story isn't half as interesting as the way in which the story grew, and from where. This is why I consider the commentary so important — why I insisted on hyperlinking to this commentary three times before even displaying the title.
Another reason I chose to publish this story: it is very elegant. All my neurons were on overdrive for this one. But essentially, this story is an exercise in elegant pointlessness. It is artful — it contains great symbology. In fact, the symbology is the best part, especially regarding black holes and tar balls. Why? Because it was ironically honest. I was completely ignorant of their meaning when I wrote it. Only later, after all that had happened, did I realize their significance.
The culture of the Martians was well thought-out. However, it was based on my delusions and my conditions. My delusions involved pride and hatred. I didn't know this at the time, so I minced words — the original draft of the story had the character B5 saying "Greed was the fall of Mars." However, I meant for her statement to be false. The main point I wanted to make was with A3's response: "B5, no. Mars was falling from the start. Conventional physical living is synonymous with impermanence...." You see, A3 is a good character, replete with traditional Buddhist values. (I, of course, am a Buddhist.) Point in fact, A3 is a much better person than I was when I wrote the story. I'm sure he'll get reborn on Earth, away from his doomed planet. But when I re-edited the story a year later, I realized B5's statement should be considered true, and after looking clearly and closely at the story, I felt I had to add the cultural equivalent of hatred — militarism. Thus the line now reads, "Greed and militarism were the fall of Mars."
As for my conditions: I was feeling trapped in a place I did not want to be at the time, but I had no choice. I felt quite helpless and at the whim of other people. Thus the flavor of Mars was one of crestfallen pride and hatred. (Please note: if you are familiar with my other work involving Mars — my drawing "Martian Justice" and my song "Life on Mars" — the concept of Mars represented in these two pieces is very different from the concept of Mars found in "Six." In these two pieces, Mars essentially means "Desert" — physical desert. "Justice" in "Martian Justice" represents the difficulty of deciding between parasitism and idealism in the desert. The idea of "life on mars" is of strict, one-species-at-a-time gardens and landscaping as a desert, versus the lush wilderness which in the future may not exist.)
One more interesting thing to note about the story as a whole: In this commentary I talk about the original and the revised versions. In all truth, to come up with the revised version, I changed maybe less than 15 words. But now, the entire story can be seen from a completely different perspective.
Every Martian knew that their planet was dying from the inside out.
...
"B5, no. Mars was falling from the start. Conventional physical living is synonymous with impermanence...."
...
But when A3 said this, he remembered his conversation with B5. Mars degraded without the presence of a black hole, so that can't be it. "No, that's not why everything degrades," A3 said. "It's just a fact of life."
I definitely played a lot with the idea of degradation in "Six." Things were always degrading. When trying to find the scientist, A3's search degrades again and again. He gets lost, again and again. On his home planet, everything was going to waste — despite how desperately they tried to conserve their resources. ("... A piece of advice — turn off your microwaves and CRT monitors. You never know when those spare particles could come in handy.") Truthfully, this describes one way in which things are impermanent. When one holds dear the form of something, such as a painting, one gradually notices that it degrades: one sees a hole here, some dust there, a smudge there, fading over there, etc. Theoretically, of course, the concept could just go "pop" and disappear. But usually, it degrades.
In the original version, I thought somehow I could convey the idea that if one just invented a black hole, this law of the universe could be circumvented. Ironically, in the revised version, we can plainly see that it cannot. Notice where A3 says: "No, [the black hole is] not why everything degrades [on planet Earth], ... It's just a fact of life." The exact same text appears in the original as in the revised. I changed not one word. But in the original, I intended this to come across as clever, or skillful. What I intended him to mean was, everything degrades, but if you just invent a black hole, things don't really degrade all the way. But now, in the revised version, this statement comes across as the clear, bold truth. Things degrade. End of story. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it: nothing lasts forever.
"There's a black hole at the center of your planet. I want to know why."
"Our planet or your planet?"
This was a very interesting idea: a perfect falsehood. I conjured up the image of a black hole — something into which one may travel, and perhaps get trapped in and never return. In my mind was the picture of a well in some European country, where one would dip a bucket into black juice like the stuff in the movie Event Horizon, and pull out new ideas. Metaphorically, this is where the new ideas come from: the "big new sounds", the "latest fashions", the stuff that pops into peoples world which they want to imitate. It's like a black hole: one dips deeper and deeper into the "new", but no matter how far one goes, there's always further to go. The idea that Earth lacked "wisdom" indicated that Earth people were getting sucked into that black hole. Okay, fair enough. The problem was, I misunderstood my own creation. Ironically, even the ultimate, hardest-of-hard matter at the center of my "black hole" was not solid enough ground to stand on.
You see, for me, the black hole was just an escape. The perfect escape. If I could just make it to the center of a black hole, no one could touch me — no one could hurt me. Since it was an escape for me, it was an escape for the Martians too. In the original concept, I imagined that there really was a black hole at the center of the earth, A3's mission really was to go figure out how to make another, and the coal really did contain the secret to building said black hole. This is how deluded I was. Now, when we read the revised version, we can see quite plainly that there is no black hole. When A3 says to the pedestrian that he didn't find what he was looking for, he really meant it. All the martians believed there was one, but they were all deluded. This is quite a shocking insight, considering how dedicatedly and purposefully I tried to make it seem like the black hole really existed in this story.
When Fred gave A3 the coal, I meant it to be a heartful gift. In the revised version, we see it factually as an attempt to ward off a crazy man, and symbolically as something akin to "coal in the stocking" at Christmas — in other words, a symbol of shame. In the revised version, A3 gets it. In the original, he doesn't. B5 says: "You are in a dangerous place, A3, talking so positively about black holes. Their very nature is ignorance, and fear." She said these exact words in both the original and the revised version. I changed them not. But in the original, again, I meant them to be false. In the revised, as A3 points out, they are still false — at least factually. But ironically, they are symbolically true. My conception of a black hole was just an escape. It's very nature was ignorance and fear. Again, in the revised version, A3 gets it. In the original, A3 doesn't. (Or maybe, A3 got it right all along, and it was I who was mistaken.)
"... a sea of black tar-balls patiently waiting for a chance to suck something under."
This was not conveyed very well in either the original or the revised version, but my idea was that the whole Martian society, all of which existed in the one town in the cave, was sinking into the tar. The reason why it is not clear is because I was afraid of the idea, and didn't want to write about it. The tar was originally supposed to be another symbol of impermanence. In fact, it was a subconscious representation of my own karma about to ripen. All my deluded ideas, my sincerely believed deluded ideas, inherited from other people who sincerely believed the same delusions — delusions of hate, delusions of paranoia — would culminate in a litany of horrible experiences and a dream that was so real it could not rightly be called a dream. The substance of the dream: I was a time traveller doing especially dangerous work, running from hellish time paradoxes, making special time projects — stuff like that. I found myself in a room with marble-tile floor. My time-traveller friends left the room and shut the door. No matter, I thought, they had done things like this before, and I would find a way out. I was looking at the floor when suddenly, the floor fell away into nothing, and I fell into exactly what I had been trying to avoid: inescapable, unremitting, terrifying, and completely unbearable AGONY. Pain. Torture. I couldn't even wake up from the dream. I struggled exactly like an animal fallen into burning tar, only the agony! It wasn't just in my legs, it was everywhere, in full, monstrous force! I cried out to the Buddhas to save me from my terrible fate, and thank God, they listened — a voice reminded me that I was asleep, which gave me the avenue to wake up. But I woke up terrified. Could you imagine if I had died instead of just gone to sleep? Hell, it would've been unbearable enough if I had never heard of the Buddhas. I would have gone to hell. I'm here to tell you, hell is very, very real, and it is pretty much just as bad as they say. Such horrible visions, I believe, are the fate of these characters, the Martians, when they enter the afterlife, assuming A3 can't save them.
God help me — I didn't even kill anyone, nor did I steal, nor lie, nor commit adultery — all it took was hatred against an enemy. The enemy didn't even have to exist. Just hatred was all it took to send me to hell. Needless to say, after the dream, these delusions I threw out the window immediately.
"What is your purpose?" B5 asked.
"To barter with the humans; to trade technology for wisdom, of which they are much in want. We must be an excellent example, for we are to synthesize our own black hole. We turn to face a new day, a new sunrise, and a new mode of activity."
Well, he had to say something.
In the revised version, in addition to the sardonic irony, I can really feel his desire to be an Earthling. I can feel his deep, heartfelt wish to return to the Earth. I can also feel his allegiance to his friends. I can feel how he wants to save them, to inspire them, to free them from fear and delusion. In the original, none of them were wrong in the first place. None of them made a single mistake. It was all just cruel happenstance. But in the revised version, it is the deep, sorrowful realization of a shattered worldview. It is the heroic and perhaps futile attempt to solve all the riddles, to fix all the fractures, to save each and every Martian from a perhaps deserved, but still tragic fate. And in the case of this quote, like so many others, in the revised version, I changed not a word.
Words, words words. What does it mean when the exact same words can mean something completely different? I think it says something about reality. Words are only as good as the intent behind them. And when dealing with something as capricious, as dangerous as the mind, one has to choose words carefully. Sometimes one has to dig deep into the muck to find the truth. But when truth is found, it shines ever the brighter. Sometimes the muck is the truth. But when it is seen this way, even the muck turns to diamonds. Truly, we are all rich. We just have to look.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Copyright © 2008 Nathan Foster, some rights reserved.