A Matter of Perspective
by
Mark Yohalem
(misterfrosty@noir.org)

	Man discovered that his world was a sphere, and not a plane, by traveling from one extremity to the next. Thus he found that he did not fall off, and learned the true nature of the planet. 
	Time, too, is curved, but no man shall ever live long enough to prove it. Rather, many cling to the absurdity that it, like the fanciful world of old, is flat and straight. Eventually, they reason, we will all fall off it. 
	But time is curved, and all that has come to pass has happened many times before, and will happen many times over in the cycles to come. Perhaps things happened differently before, perhaps they will happen differently later -- for though time is curved, it is an imperfect sphere, along which they are many deformities. 
	Consider this, then, one such possibility. 

	Within a world of ash and fire, below the sky of smoke, below the seas of magma, were elements of great weight: uranium and plutonium, and others for which this cycle has not yet found names. 
	The world was isolated and distant, pulled upon by two separate, jealous stars, and went for a long time undetected by humanity. 
	But then, as coincidence would have it, three beings spied it on their sensors: a Narodine prospector; an Alitheian Navigator; and a Myrmidon riding a distant spore of the lifeseed. 
	The Narodine was named Richard Cornin; the Alitheian Benign Cause; and the Myrmidon Sictok. Each set course in his different ship, and each arrived in the binary system at precisely the same moment, coming out of hyperspace -- another imperfection of time -- at precisely the same moment. 
	It was a rare moment for the three enemies to be staring at each other -- or, at least, at the projections of each pilot’s ship -- across so little space. For a moment, none spoke, and each readied his weapons. 
	But then, Benign Cause raised the others by voice, and said to them, “This is foolish. Mankind was given a voice to speak, a mind to reason, a heart to feel. Let us resolve this matter without turning to arms. Each of us wants the planet, and each will plead for it in his own fashion.” 
	After pause, the others agreed. 
	But who would go first? The Alitheian feared that if he went first, the Narodine would follow him with some heresy which he would not have an opportunity to refute. The Narodine, for his part, thought it the better matter of courtesy to differ. And who knows what the Myrmidon thought. 
	At last Richard Cornin agreed to plead his case, and this is the argument he rendered. 

	Okay, so let’s get a few things out of the way first. Two things are constant in the universe: scarcity and entropy. No matter what you do, there’s not gonna be enough for everyone to have what he wants, and whoever gets shorted is gonna face the coming chaos. 
	So it’s really a question of who does the best with what they get -- because the most important thing with scarcity is making the most of what’s out there. And here we’ve got this planet, full of all sorts of goodies each of us wants. But why do we want it? What are our reasons? 
	You’re going to make your arguments, but we all know what’s on the table here. Alitheian, you preachers want to attain perfection in your closed-off floating worldships. So what happens if you get the planet? You gather up all the valuables, hoard them to yourselves, and maybe -- I doubt it -- you manage to help get a few people a little closer to perfection. 
	And the rest of us get swallowed up by entropy. Too few people benefit. 
	Now, Myrmidon, consider if you get the planet. Your people strip it of resources, transform it to your purposes, and then go on to another world. Ad infinitum. But your expansion rests on precisely the opposite of scarcity and entropy; for if things are scarce, eventually you’ll reach an outward limit of where you can expand. You’ll be left over-extended, dependent on incoming resources that will no longer be present. You’ll crumble. 
	The Narod has a different standard. We know that we cannot defeat entropy. An old fighting rule is that you don’t try to block a blow, you deflect it. So, we deflect entropy. We give our people the maximum amount of freedom, and use our power only so much as is necessary to prevent total anarchy from erupting. 
	We will take these scarce resources, and all entropy to distribute them -- the chaos of the market. But our markets are also subtlely guided, so that unlike the ever-expanding Myrmidon or the hoarding Alitheians, we will neither exhaust our resources fighting chaos, nor waste them on an elite few. 
	The principle of maximizing utility clearly dictates that we should receive the planet. 

	Did his argument persuade the others? 
	From the Myrmidon there was no reply, and from the Alitheian, only an occasional snort. 	When the prospector was done, Navigator Cause said softly, “Now, my Myrmidon brother, will you plead your cause?” 
	But the Myrmidon gave no response. 
	“Very well then. Listen well, and be enlightened. I will bestow upon you God’s truth.” 
	And this is the truth he bestowed. 

	You have presented your temporal constants, brother Narodine, as befits your carnal nature. But we Alitheians know of other truths, and now I shall share them with you. 
	God endowed man with four principal gifts. To raise man from the the mere physical things, He whispered in our ears, “Be free of will.” And so it is that we may choose. 
	To raise man from the animals, He whispered in our ears, “Seek out knowledge, and in it find truth.” And so it is that we are curious, and that we may deduce from our curiosity rules and principles. 
	But He gave man one final gift, which long have the Narod and the Myrmidon and the other children of man forgotten. Before us all, with the voice of a teacher, he instructed: “These are my laws, know them. Let no man be rewarded less than his desert, and let none be enriched more than his share. Raise up no man above others, save when he speaks with my Voice, and set no man below you, save to enact my Will.” And then He expounded the many lesser rules, which are kept in the scrolls of wisdom. 
	This was His third rule. 
	But God sees the End and the Beginning, even as man sees only the Here and the Now. So with these gifts He gave a warning: “Know that I have given you not only two gifts, but three, and that each may be enjoyed only when conjoined with the others.” 
	And then He was silent. 
	But man forgot these rules, and each took for himself not only his fair share, but whatsoever he could claim. And the wealthy were exalted as idols, and raised up, not for speaking His voice, but for denying it. These false prophets used the gift of deduction to justify their sins, and with the voice of the Adversary, convinced men to follow their way. 
	And so was the Earth shattered, and man cast forth a second time from Paradise. So God set man to wander the desert of space, for forty days. 
	And in the void, God whispered in the ears of many men, but they did not listen, for they had been deafened by falsehood and by suffering, and many deafened themselves, from shame or from pride. 
	For this, God became wrathful, and said unto them, “Now you will wander not for forty days, nor four times forty days. Now you will wander not for forty years, but for four times forty years.” 
	And it was so. 
	And after eight score years, God again whispered in the ears of men, and at last found those who would listen. These elect he gathered to Him, and placed them in his great temples, and said unto them, “Gather unto you the faithful, from high and from low, from near and from far, for my children have become scattered. At the appointed hour, when all are gathered, I shall come to you once more.” 
	This is the truth with which I answer your truth, brother Narodine: your temporal universe is one of chaos, for it is the chaos that man has given unto himself. But there awaits the faithful a heavenly universe. It little matters what is left when the faithful leave this place in our worldships, for the happiness of mortals is but a grain of sand before the vastness of the happiness in Heaven. 

	Did his truth enlighten the others? 
	The Myrmidon gave no response, and the Narodine merely snorted and chuckled. 
	But this did not matter to Benign Cause, for he was speaking not to them, but pleading his case before a higher authority. 
	Now two had spoken, and they both implored the Myrmidon. 
	“Come on, Myrmidon. We’ve both made our cases. It’s your turn,” barked Cornin. “We agreed to this.” 
	“Brother Myrmidon, let all words be spoken before judgment is made. This is the way of justice and truth.” The Alitheian bowed his head. 
	Sictok heard there words, and this is the answer he gave. 

	. . . 

	The planet orbited two suns, and about it orbited the ruined hulks of two spacecraft: a sleek, Narodine exploration vessel, and an otherworldly Alitheian proselyte. At some distance, its engines maintaining its position, was the Myrmidon spore. 
	Did the others listen to his argument? 
	If they had any objections, they were silent.