Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,240

have been asking lately is that the world was created before I got here. When you see a thing that was made wrong, or does not make sense, it is not that I did it wrong. It is because Beta-El did not know what he was doing, or else had some perverse humor that led him to make things thus.”

“Why do you not then fix what Beta-El got wrong?” the man asked.

“It is a long story,” said El, “but certain aspects of the world, once baked in, cannot be baked out—cannot be undone or removed without doing at least as much harm as good. But, in a larger sense, my children, the answer to your question is you.”

“We!?” exclaimed the man and the woman in unison.

“You,” El confirmed. “The Land is home to many more souls than you know, of whom many got here during the Before Times, or Beta Epoch. Others arrived after me. Even the best of them are crufty, which is a word you may take to mean that they have been around for a long time and have many baked-in qualities from beta or even alpha versions of themselves.”

“Am I to understand that before even the Beta there was an Alpha?” the man exclaimed.

“There is a saying, ‘Turtles all the way down,’ which I would not expect you to understand, but the point of it is that to speculate along these lines is idle,” said El. “The point is that you are the first two souls that were created anew in the Land with no trace of what went before, save a certain necessary commonality in the organization of your minds. And when you came into existence I saw that it was good and resolved that I would raise you as my own and better you and optimize you in a manner that, as much as possible, was free of old traces.”

“How were we made then?” asked the woman. “For the manner of your narration suggests that you came upon us already made, or in the process of being made?”

El said, “An analogy might be made to seeds here.” But his eye seemed to fall upon the fountain.

“Seeds made by Beta-El?” the man asked.

“In a manner of speaking,” El said, and seemed to glance up at the sky. “The making of new souls is not a small matter and we shall not be able to encompass it in this conversation. Perhaps it is best to say that the Beta Gods, proud and primitive though they might have been, recognized their own shortcomings, and at the twilight of their epoch the greatest of them put forth their best efforts to bring new and better souls into existence, untainted by Beta or Alpha. And, though their efforts were imperfect, I have, through long and patient efforts of my own, improved the results beyond all recognition into a man and a woman I am proud to call my children. The task before you now is to go on bettering yourselves by refining and wielding your powers of intellect; and when from time to time you happen upon some curious feature of the world that does not make sense, you ought not exasperate yourselves in labyrinthine wondering as to why it is thus, but simply know that it was an error of the Beta Gods that I have chosen not to undo, for the reason mentioned—”

“Backward compatibility,” muttered Scribe of El as her stylus danced over her tablet.

“—and instead you ought to devote your powers to considering how the Land might be more perfectly organized going forward. To do otherwise is to suffer your minds to be tainted by the errors of the past, which is an abomination, since the whole point of making you and confining you to this walled Garden was to avoid such tainting.”

A lengthy silence ensued, which the man ended by pointing out that all of what El had just said was new to them, and that some time might be needed for him and the woman to consider it fully.

“Very well,” said El. “But what you have just spoken puts me in mind of another detail. For you to refer to her as ‘the woman’ and her to call you ‘the man’ is awkward. The time has come for you to have names like other souls.”

“What names would you like to bestow on us, O El?” asked the woman.

El pondered it for an unexpectedly long time. “There are names that I could suggest,” he finally