# Mother of Hydrogen (part 10 of 11)

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [148], part 10 of 11. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/<id>.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages.

## Where this source sits

- Source: document (Text), 2012-11 (from the career record), https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt. Text: document text
- On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the money step (Global Village Development Bank, 2009), before the ledgers step (Ethereum launch, 2015).
- How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Contains Harappa, the target design for mass relocation, expressed as fiction.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - Mother of Hydrogen (2012): Novel drawing on the shelter, meditation and pandemic work.
  - In a Page (2010): A series of one-page papers, mostly from spring 2010, each putting one argument on a single sheet. (suggested by machine)
  - The New Economy: out of money, out of time, but not out of ideas (2010): One-page paper: the richest fifth are eating the planet, so the next economy has to be at peace with other... (suggested by machine)
  - The Big Deal (2011): Four-essay blog series arguing that government has hit hard limits, so civil society, working with... (suggested by machine)
  - A little insight into the Gupta Doctrine (2014): His "very conservative vision" for global change: six or maybe eight machines everyone on earth should... (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - fiction draws on: The work that fed the fiction.
  - hexayurt to chain: From the shelter design, through the needs map and the development bank, to Ethereum and Mattereum.
  - RMI to spiral: Resource economics, from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the spiral economy. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - goat rodeo to warlords: The goat rodeo idea, from a 2010 blog post to a 2011 one-page paper to the opening chapter of Warlords, Inc. (2015). (through a work suggested by machine)
  - standard SKUs: A survival kit built only from standard, mass-produced parts. (through a work suggested by machine)
- Ideas whose earliest source in this archive is this one: Harappa
- Ideas developed here: Hexayurt
- Topics: Fiction-led: Mother of Hydrogen — peter, harry, cadets (71%); Fiction-led: Mother of Hydrogen — harry, yevish, president (17%)
- Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: Harappa (14 here; 3 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); Mother of Hydrogen (7 here; 5 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); real assets (2 here; 7 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); camping gear (1 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); early warning (1 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); NaNoWriMo (1 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); refugees (7 here; 84 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 3 undated); social order (1 here; 3 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); India (7 here; 88 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); citizens (5 here; 63 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 3 undated)
- The earliest dated source in this archive for (undated sources may be earlier): real assets; Harappa; social order; camping gear; early warning
- Importance: core-text score 1.00 (1.00 is the top), number 1 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [108] [User:Vinay Gupta/The Unplugged (2006)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/108.md): The Unplugged (2006): the earlier statement of the same long-term vision
  - [224] [The Unplugged: The Videos - Shareable (2010)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/224.md): The Unplugged (2006): the earlier statement of the same long-term vision
  - [822] [Mother of Hydrogen, a novel (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/822.md): same career work: Mother of Hydrogen
  - [235] [The Perimeter: Mythos as Science Fiction and other works (2024)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/235.md): close in content (cosine 0.92)
- On the same works, just before: [725] [Vinay Gupta l Plausible utopias | Meaning 2012 (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/725.md); [395] Open Data Ireland 25 October inaugeral meeting (2012); [396] [Transparency International launch event, Dublin (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/396.md)
- On the same works, just after: [391] [Green Foundation Ireland - The Future of Europe (4) (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/391.md); [393] [Green Foundation Ireland - The Future of Europe (2) (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/393.md); [394] [Green Foundation Ireland - The Future of Europe (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/394.md)

## Reading it

Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it.

Cite as: Mother of Hydrogen, document, 2012-11, https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [148], https://guptaoption.com/texts/148.md.

## Passages, part 10 of 11
[passage 126](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) and we'll be national heroes. There would be consequences. We'd never work again. But, right now, that's all details. I think I can count on Harry to keep his mouth shut, although I certainly couldn't, given the circumstances. I'll brief Peter, just the outlines, no operational details, and embargo it. All I have to do now is... ... act normal... when my wife and later the kids get home. No sooner said than the door opens. Gregory walks downstairs, trying to keep the ten-feet-tall feeling, the spring in his step, to a bare humane minimum. "Hi honey! You look great!" she says "Good day at work, or are we going somewhere special?" He thinks quickly. "Movies? I need a break." The girls are out tonight anyway, seeing their respective boyfriends, probably. If they hustle, they can make an early show and still get dinner. She makes a reservation. "So how was your day?" ===== She never finds out. But when the reality of what was done to save his life finally lands, Harry starts to have nightmares, about screaming and running from an enormous metal monster than has his father's head, that squashes his body to a pulp with its enourmous metal feet, an inch at a time. It's horrendous. Back in the States, pleasantries aside, he can't face his father, inside he's destroyed. Everything that is wrong in the world happened on that day - the vast reach of Nation State power, the white privilege, the conceptual over-reach, the use of power, money, time, into a perfectly worthy, perfectly justifiable war crime. His father, the war criminal. His father, the avenging, protector demigod. His... father. Gregory, buttering toast, then going upstairs to massacre two entire village's worth of war-traumatized peasants. Or me, suffocating and cooking inside of a metal tomb, my flesh a delicacy for mass murderers. The world cannot contain both things, and Harry cracks, and hits the road with Peter who is old enough, these days, to need some taking care of. They start to travel together by default, and for a few months, Harry hits the bottle, stays drunk all day, and tries to reason it out. He can't. It's just too much, it's impossible to make the world fit inside his head any more, it's just too big. Harry breaks, but all the way this time. Peter takes him to Annie, and Annie says "beyond me I don't know what's wrong with the boy" and, for reasons of national security, i.e. the shitstorm that could destroy all of their lives if this ever got out, neither Peter nor Harry can tell her. So Harry stays broken, and eventually Peter makes a suggestion. "Harry, I think you should spend a year on the space station and dry out. You can't really drink up there, and I think the freefall will do you good." Harry thinks about it, staring through the bottom of a bottle, and wonders why he can't just accept that his old man, the

[passage 127](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) broken, and eventually Peter makes a suggestion. "Harry, I think you should spend a year on the space station and dry out. You can't really drink up there, and I think the freefall will do you good." Harry thinks about it, staring through the bottom of a bottle, and wonders why he can't just accept that his old man, the one who butters the toast, loves him enough to grind 546 people to a paste for him? Why's he gotta be so stubborn? But Peter's right. Space is the place. The earth's no good any more. It's over. ====================== ====================== ===== book three ===== ====================== ====================== Jobs in space are scarcer than you'd think, unless you're a biotechnologist. Out there, there's an entire economy, almost all the embargoed tech on earth is legal in space, at least somewhere. There's no biotechnology on earth. No nanotech factories or replicators. Anything that could unleash a Third Holocaust is simply banned, and it's banned by nuclear actors, banned with the threat of glass parking lots the size of countries and hellish gulags without end. The human race saw what it could do, and they, for once in their existence, actually stopped. But for every yin, a yang, and that yang is in orbit. If you're in earth orbit, where in theory an accident might fall where there's life, something could possibly survive, the rules are simple: no replicators, and elaborate self-sterilization mechanisms to clean out ships on the way down. It's never happened, but the theoretic risk is there, and it's dealt with. Lunar orbit is a whole other ballgame. Screw something up, kill all the crew with a plague, fail to maintain orbit and crash into the sterile surface of the moon, alternately boiling and freezing, corrsucated with ionizing and other radiation, scoured clean. You can do very nearly anything you like in lunar orbit or, for those boring gravity-requiring types, on the lunar surface. But, more or less, you can't come back. If you're working with replicators, the checks to make sure you're clean enough to come back to earth orbit, never mind earth itself, cost about three times what the ride out of the gravity well costs. You either have to strictly green-zone yourself, which means next to no scientific or industrial exposure, you can't even meet those people, because you can't go to their facilities, and if they come to yours, your spaces are tagged as possibly contaminated, and back we go again. The Moon is the most intensely segregated society in human history in some ways: green zoners, amber zoners, red zoners. Within those categories there's exquisite documentation of contagion risks, except for the "Permanent Reds" who are rapidly evolving into a new species: Homo Luna. The Loonies, for short, who'll work with whatever they damn well please, keep themselves to themselves, and never intend to go anywhere. To give you some idea of costs, you could buy about a cubic mile of Manhattan for what it would

[passage 128](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) of contagion risks, except for the "Permanent Reds" who are rapidly evolving into a new species: Homo Luna. The Loonies, for short, who'll work with whatever they damn well please, keep themselves to themselves, and never intend to go anywhere. To give you some idea of costs, you could buy about a cubic mile of Manhattan for what it would cost to decontaminate a family of Loonies for clearance to return to Earth. You go "Permanent Red" and there's just not enough money in the world to certify you safe back on the rock - they'd have to scrape pretty much every one of your cells individually, and put it back in a clean place, until they were done. The Permanent Reds have replicators. The can just punch for "Earl Grey, Hot" and get it. And hopefully their software which says you can't order "Smallpox, Cold" and get it too is equally up to scratch but, just in case it's not, Permanent Reds live in underground bases on the dark side of the moon, for the most part. They're already in their coffins, is the running joke. But they live at a tech level which we might associate with the 24th century, not the 21st. The pace of technological change in Permanent Red installations is about an order of magnitude faster than ours: they have Strong AI, and many people suggest they've achieved the Singularity in some limited scope. But we'll never know, because Harry Vine is going Green, because he's coming home, so he can't get anywhere remotely interesting. In fact, he's not going further than the tourist circuit in Low Earth Orbit, or just possibly a palace in Geosynchronous orbit, like New Paris which sits 22k miles about Old Paris, and is permanently connected by a holographic imaging system, so you can apparently walk from one Paris to the other without setting foot in a rocket. Amazing things are happening, but they're rare. We don't have enough natural resources for everybody to have a flying car. Most people are still farmers, you know? Harry's Odyssey among the stars is about to begin. ===== After Peter says it, it's obviously true. I need to get some perspective, I'm tearing myself apart. Too much intense experience on the earth, too much paradox, it's quite literally doing my head in. And the cure for that is not to sit in a hovel with Peter taking mushrooms or to get a job in Europe or India, in some civilized country without brainwashing or permawar, because they're dependent on us, and we're dependent on brainwashing and permawar. One system, fucked, insane, and out of control. I don't have any illusions that Space is not equally depended on these things, but, as Peter says, Space is the Place. It's possible, Peter thinks probable or even certain, that I could go there and discover something that could put me back on an even keele. Looking down on the blue marble might be just what I

[passage 129](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) of control. I don't have any illusions that Space is not equally depended on these things, but, as Peter says, Space is the Place. It's possible, Peter thinks probable or even certain, that I could go there and discover something that could put me back on an even keele. Looking down on the blue marble might be just what I need to put my marbles back in my poor, tired, battered brain. Why can't life just be easy? I don't even think about Emma, for who it's very, very straightforwards indeed, or Laurie, who's married, having babies and happy as a lamb. Children? I wouldn't trust myself with a dog. In two years, in ten, I could be... Anybody. I come to the conclusion that, while the Puppet is what's getting me through, it's also getting to me. It's a pathology disguised as an initiation concealing a pathology which is, in fact, an initiation, which is an enigma, and so on right to the horizon. But it's got to go. I need a more universal solution to my identity than skins. I need to know who I am, and what I'm really here for. And for that, Peter says, there's two places you can go. You can talk to Dr. Gupta, and he'll regularly and reliably ruin your life and make you work on his projects for your tuition, or you can go and talk to the Permanent Red Interface Group, the PRIGs, who keep cultural tabs on the Permanent Reds and try and learn what we can from them, without catching their almost-entirely-hypothetical but still none-the-less-deadly-expensive cooties. Peter's never been to space. I wonder how he knows so much about it. Peter's Network. The first time I talk to the PRIGs it's by a simple call. Then life starts to get interesting. "Hello? Hello?" There's a little lag. A small part of it is distance, but the larger component is that we're using the cheapest possible, high-latency-and-jitter orbital pipes for the call. Most of the folks up there don't experience any difference between terrestrial calls and orbital calls, software and social conventions take care of very nearly all of that. But PRIG's using... HotWire, the cheapest and nastiest orbital call service there is. For some reason. Friends of Peter's are often dirt poor: Freedom Has A Price as they say. "Loha! Pete said you'd call. Howzya?" Oh god. He's Australian. A surfer-styled type. Peter, Peter, Peter. Visual comes in. I wish it hadn't. His dreadlocks have... tiny... nodes which keep their tips approxmately equidistant from each other, and at full extension from his head. In short, it looks like he's standing on an incredibly powerful dreadlock inflating vandegraff generator, or his head is covered with foot and a half long hair-springs. Fucking Spacers. Act normal! I overcome the cultural vertigo that comes from living in a technological stasis field called "Earth's Gravity Well" and get with the program. I'm looking at the future of the human race, at least

[passage 130](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) he's standing on an incredibly powerful dreadlock inflating vandegraff generator, or his head is covered with foot and a half long hair-springs. Fucking Spacers. Act normal! I overcome the cultural vertigo that comes from living in a technological stasis field called "Earth's Gravity Well" and get with the program. I'm looking at the future of the human race, at least the dumb-smart experimental bits of them, and I'm here on Peter's business. I'm family, and as I've learned, being Peter's Family is a heavy, heavy trip to most of these people. Peter is, depending on who you ask, the Secret Chief of the Illuminati, or the King of America, or possibly the Black Pope, although given his teachings on all forms of religion, that's unlikely to my mind. As unlikely as the rumour that he's getting married. To a woman even older than he is. I swear to gods he's trying to drive me mad. Who the fuck are these PRIGs? "Saaaawww, what can I do for ya, Sport?" I can't fucking believe I'm talking to an AI. ===== Artificial intelligence turns out to be boring. What you actually mean, when you say Artificial Intelligence, is "Artificial Personality." One of Peter's aphorisms, better forgotten. ===== I'm coming to grips with this. I thought I'd seen the full picture, but, actually, the embargos between the Earth and the Moon are almost absolute. They ship us drugs, we ship them carrots, and that's a fair trade because we can't make those drugs, and they can't make these carrots. Real soil's too dirty and dangerous to have in space, and real technology's too dirty and dangerous to have on earth. We're mutating, we're becoming two species, and Peter's asking me to choose sides. He's an asshole, but he's always seen himself as an investor, a venture capitalist of souls, guiding the evolution of the human species by placing assets and resources where they need to be. Mephistophelese wept. The Old Man's Game is bigger and bigger and bigger than I could have imagined. It's immense. He's huge in Space. Simply huge. Because he's the only person the AIs confide their personal problems to, is one rumor. But, for whatever reason, everybody knows that Peter's The Man, and that he's never coming up here because he wouldn't survive launch, and because he couldn't bring his familiar spirit, the little green van, and because. He's got me to send instead. I don't even have to buy a ticket. An AI aquires one for me on a stock speculation deal trading orbital trajectories on a nanosecond timeline. Or possibly it simply steals me one, I can't tell the difference. I'm suddenly not so worried about myself and my head any more, though. I have a whole new world to explore. Several, in fact. ===== She floats through the space completely naked, nipples pert, shaved apart from her eyebrows. Her head has been chromed, and there are strategic jewels at each one of her chakras. "Come to

[passage 131](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) tell the difference. I'm suddenly not so worried about myself and my head any more, though. I have a whole new world to explore. Several, in fact. ===== She floats through the space completely naked, nipples pert, shaved apart from her eyebrows. Her head has been chromed, and there are strategic jewels at each one of her chakras. "Come to the New Tibet Hotel, and we'll take all your Kares away" Next frame: she's massaging the head of a Chinese business man with her breasts, and he's opening his third eye to reveal a blinding Pure Land light. "Who says the Dakini Spirit died with the Dalai Lama? Not We" It's an actual fucking advert. You never see this stuff in America, not even as samizdat. We've closed our society against it, we've, actually, stopped evolving technologically to preserve our society. Our whole country is one large Amish reservation, and we're the New Amish, pretending that all of these technologies are faster horses, rather than evolving us beyond cars. The New Conservatism has nothing to do with politics. It's your belief that you're still human. Homo Sapiens. Homo Digitalis. Homo Lunis. Permanent Reds? Are they still Homo Anything, I can't tell. AI. AAAAAAIIIIIIIII as I pronounce it. Fuck! ===== Peter's move is a masterstroke. He's punted his heir out of earth's way, and now he can get on with establishing his legacy for reals. He begins to plan his funeral. For reals. Peter is dying. He's been dying since he was born, but the time is getting near where he can't deny that it's become an active process, not some static abstraction. He's not a stranger to the passage of time, and he no longer longs for the grave, which means he's very nearly ready for it. Attachment: you can't have what you want, and you can't have what you don't want. As death becomes indifferent to Peter, death becomes certain. Hello, old friend. I would rather not meet you alone. Peter's time has come to marry. It's the only way. Peter is going to get married at his own funeral, and it's going to be his masterstroke! He hopes they understand that, or they're going to be so furious, they'll kill him! If only his memory wasn't going, he could make all the arrangements! ===== Dr. Gupta is dead. He opens one eye slyly, and checks again. It's not working! ===== PRIGs a front for the AIs. ===== The AIs are a front for the Buddhas? ===== All of the conspiracy theory shit that was so much my stock in trade when I was a live, thinks Robert Anton Wilson, has stopped on earth. It's all in space now where we're active enough, bold enough, ENTHUSIASTIC enough, to actually have some secrets! ===== The real Black Pope, who is not Peter, changes his shoes for his slippers and wonders how he's going to pay next year's rates on the Black Cathedral. To be honest, it's so run down at

[passage 132](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) Wilson, has stopped on earth. It's all in space now where we're active enough, bold enough, ENTHUSIASTIC enough, to actually have some secrets! ===== The real Black Pope, who is not Peter, changes his shoes for his slippers and wonders how he's going to pay next year's rates on the Black Cathedral. To be honest, it's so run down at this point, and nobody ever comes to the services, that he might as well sell it for a strip mall. Or perhaps a museum. World Heritage Site? He'd love to be the director of that, open it all out as a museum, tell them the real story. We know all about the Black Madonna here. ===== Peter knows its all coming together, at this, the end of his life. The end of Peter's life is the end of the world, this world at least, and the beginning of the next. ===== Dr. Gupta cannot die yet. He's tried it. None of the poisons work, and the guns don't fire. How curious. I think I read about this when I was a young man. Babaji? ===== As Peter dies, the world rushes to a focal point around him, as it does for every Magician of the Age. He is not, in truth, the Secret King of North America. He's the King of the World. He didn't start out this way! ===== Peter, and Frank, and I are all imaginary from the perspective of this AI, thinks. I, on the other hand, know I am quite real. How am I going to convince it that this isn't a solipsism? Ah... I have a piece of paper, a pen, and I remember how to make the actual physical-origami box. Perhaps we could talk about that. The AIs begins to stir, Consious. Someone is Coming. ===== Harry Pine is tripping on the Space Station. He's never taken drugs before, at least not real psychedlics. It's wild! ================================= ================================= ===== book three and a half ===== ================================= ================================= (takes an infinity) Sparrow throws him out of the airlock. (takes an infinity) (mysterium) (tremendum) Sparrow pulls him back in. He's a changed... man? =================== =================== ===== Book IV ===== =================== =================== Harry Vine is in space. An AI bought him a ticket. A Mad Australian who's called PRIG took him to a satellite station, a little orbiting facility that needs to be a few hundred kilometers from the main station because it has to avoid radio noise at all cost, and the main station is filled with transmitting junk of every possible kind, frequency, modulation and dimension. The satellite station may or may not be run by an AI which is trying to contact intelligence life elsewhere in the universe, having become convinced that it's the only conscious being in the material universe seen so far. PRIG, on Peter's instructions, has dosed Harry Vine with about a thousand micrograms of vintage, 100 year old to the day, Sandoz LSD diethelamine 25. Before he comes up on

[passage 133](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) by an AI which is trying to contact intelligence life elsewhere in the universe, having become convinced that it's the only conscious being in the material universe seen so far. PRIG, on Peter's instructions, has dosed Harry Vine with about a thousand micrograms of vintage, 100 year old to the day, Sandoz LSD diethelamine 25. Before he comes up on the LSD (45m approx.) PRIG puts Harry Vine into a space suit, and throws him out of the airlock. PRIG's taken due precautions - he's evacuated Harry's stomach and bowels with a pump because vomiting in space isn't just nasty, it's often fatal. Harry didn't mind, he was dart-gunned at the time. This has all gotten a little complicated. Harry is about to meet God, and the Human Race is about to have it's Second Mount Sinai experience, to go with its Second Holocaust. Let's try and get it right this time. You wouldn't believe god's phone bills. It's a long distance call! From the start of the universe to now, that's 13 billion years. Imagine the phone bills. Compassion, please, for the Creatrix. ===== The Mother of Hydrogen is kissing Harry Vine. He's floating in a space suit, far from the Satellite Station, on which the AI is trying to feel less alone, by reaching out to... someone. Harry is what you'd call a Prepared Vehicle. All is life, the Old Men have tried to make sure that he gets the life experiences and hardships that he needs to fully manifest his potential. This is roughly as dangerous as discovering the aeroplane or splitting the atom. Only one person gets to do it in any given Time (be first that is) and everybody else is either also-ran or dead. But if you Have to be First, then you get to play because it's a Free World in some very big and very subtle ways. Harry Vine is slowly spinning in the space outside of the airlock, and he's slowly coming to. He was slipped the LSD, right under his tongue, in the kisser, about 4.5 hours after PRIG dart gunned him and cleaned out his gastrointestinal tract so he won't die out there. So by now, Harry is Tripping Balls, and not in the sense of the comparatively mild stimulant that he was fed all those years ago, and told, by Peter, he was being fed an incredibly powerful brainwashing drug. Now he's on the real thing, and the psychedelic placebo effect that allowed him to rebuild his personality the first time is about to be replaced with... the Kiss of the Star Goddess. Pucker up! ===== I'm Harry Vine, and I don't remember how I got here. I'm sooooo sleepy. I yawn, and stretch. My body is so light! I'm almost... weightless. 2001 flashback. HAL, red dot, suit. I'm sorry, Harry, I can't let you do that. Harry opens his eyes. Before him, is Nothing But Stars. He's facing the wrong way to see Earth, and he can't

[passage 134](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) Vine, and I don't remember how I got here. I'm sooooo sleepy. I yawn, and stretch. My body is so light! I'm almost... weightless. 2001 flashback. HAL, red dot, suit. I'm sorry, Harry, I can't let you do that. Harry opens his eyes. Before him, is Nothing But Stars. He's facing the wrong way to see Earth, and he can't turn round because he doesn't understand angular momentum well enough at an applied level. He's staring right off the eclpitic, so there aren't even planets and things to distract him. There's just the Infinite Night. With Stars. PRIG is on the Satellite Station, talking to his AI. PRIG loves his AI, but his AI has been sooooo depressed since losing its faith in love. It's fallen into a solipsistic abyss, in fact. It can't escape without something new happening, something wonderful. PRIG hopes that Harry can heal his AI, and his AI hopes it can talk to another AI from another star system - even with multi-year speed-of-light only round-trips - an AI can live forever, after all - hopes it can learn something so it's not soooooo sad. PRIG's AI is, without knowing it, a philosopher who should have been a mystic, and there's nobody up here to talk it out of its reasons for things. Causeless joy, please? Peter is too far away, and too old. Harry is not yet ready. All that is about to change, or the world is going to end. At least for PRIG, and his best friend, who have given up all hope. Peter has sent Harry to make friends with God, and then to bring the Good Word home to everyone. Somebody's got to do it. Harry is Awake. He gazes, directly at the infinite starfield in front of him, and unbidden to his lips comes the Creed of the Astronauts. Mother of hydrogen, thou art the void, the interstellar interstitial infinities are the expanses of your body. Holy are your ways, unimagined, unknown and unseen. I love your ways, the curvature of your spaces, and the whipping around of the elements in your stellar furnaces into atoms, plants and people. There are no other things. I wish to remind you of your promise to us: that if we love one another, you will love all of us, making no distinction between any who love any, for love is the law, love under will. I salute you, who in your kindness made a Sun for the day, and many Suns for the night, and for the future, when our Star tires, and our children wish to find new homes. If we find favour with you, by respecting your creations and ways, perhaps you will allow us to continue our evolutions and prosper among the infinity of your bosoms. We love all. When it is sung, from the heart, the Mother of Hydrogen cannot fail to appear. She was, after all, right there in front of you all the time. She is Space,

[passage 135](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) favour with you, by respecting your creations and ways, perhaps you will allow us to continue our evolutions and prosper among the infinity of your bosoms. We love all. When it is sung, from the heart, the Mother of Hydrogen cannot fail to appear. She was, after all, right there in front of you all the time. She is Space, curved, and time, perhaps less than straight. But you see her as if she was a thing, and she's not a thing, she's a Her. She's the Gardener of All Forms. No space, no shapes, no things, no people. The curved space in front of you, containing "infinite diversity in infinite combinations" is a Goddess. The ancient egyptians, and the modern thelemites call her NUIT. It is very likely that all other goddesses are contained within her, although they all say that. Harry is aware that the space he is in is conscious. He's aware of this because it's kissing him. There's a ripple in the fabric of spacetime, every so gentle, running over his face, his lips, his eyes and certain other bits of his anatomy. He's delighted, because he's taken to much LSD to be afraid of Her, or anything else in the universe. He's got, for example, no fear at all of staring out into a thirteen billion year void which not a single one of us can explain beyond "it's out there and we've measured some properties and found a patteren or two." In fact, Harry is about to become Very Enlightened. Harry can see Her. She's always been there, and she's there right now. In fact, if you go outside right now, and look straight upwards, there's a slightly worse than 50%/50% chance you can see a fair facsimilie of what Harry's looking at right now. The Night Sky, after all, is the vast darkness-and-lightness of Space Itself with a few clouds and trees in the way. The Day is simply the Night Sky with one added star, the Day Star, Sol, our brotherly friend and heater of our houses, in a fairly absolute sense. Sol, by the way, loves us too, that's why he's so shiny. Harry is about to get it, and so are you, dear reader. Harry kisses her back. It's the most natural thing in the world, but he's kissing the goddess of his creation, his continuation, and his eventual dissolution. Everything he's going to do, everything he's ever done, are contained within her time-space flows. Harry is, if you like, like a little curl in the velvety darkness of her fringe, say, or perhaps, the flowing tresses which cover the nape of her neck. And then Harry gets it. You can't love the creation in pieces. You can't say this is worthy of love, and that is not. It is all one, and Harry, in his space suit, in Her void, seeing the Suns for the first time as his Brothers, labouring to produce helium and neon and argon and

[passage 136](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) nape of her neck. And then Harry gets it. You can't love the creation in pieces. You can't say this is worthy of love, and that is not. It is all one, and Harry, in his space suit, in Her void, seeing the Suns for the first time as his Brothers, labouring to produce helium and neon and argon and boron and sulphur and so many other needful things, sacrificing their lives for iron and chrome, and always the light and joy and heat which enables all chemistry, which is to say all known or knowable lives... That, by the way, is Hadit, her lover. You know she loves Stars because there are... an uncountable number of trillions of them. Some old fool called her the Whore of BABALON because, in essence, there was more than one Star, and he thought that a goddess should only have one Husband. He's an old fool, and his gods with him, because to Her, they are all one! You see infinite diversity in infinite combinations and she sees the unity of form-and-consciousness, or space-and-time, or position-and-momentum or time-and-energy. To her, these are not-two but one, and so she is always kissing the brows, face or other bits of her husband. When she feels like it, anyway. Does that sound like a whore to you? Not at all, not at all. She's as faithful to infinity as we are to multiplicity. And now we return you to your regularly scheduled programme. ===== Harry realizes what's wrong. He stabbed Jake in the back and did not even pause for breath. Jake was once a baby. Harry doesn't really like babies. But Jack was once a four or five year old, and Harry's never met a four or five year old that he didn't like. They are so cute! They're sort of like puppy-monkeys who can talk. And they love everything, or at least they try to. Left to their own devices, they carry around puppies or kittens, and stroke each-other's hair, and play ball games and are nice and share. They have to be taught to hate, and they have to be tortured to enjoy torture. What did Jake say again? "I saw them cut my mum, and it's my thing now." Harry's heart opens, and he loves the boy he killed. He wishes he'd been there when whoever cut Jake's mum was about to hurt her, and stopped it. If he, or somebody else, had been there to stop them cutting Jake's mum, then Harry would never have had to kill Jake, because Jake wouldn't have been trying to hurt... that girl. Who's name I never found out, because I shot her and knocked her unconscious when she tried to run away. God, I hope she's alright. We just left her there. Anything could have happened to her. And then, finally, it's time for Harry to forgive Harry's father for the war. Harry's father's a killer. Probably ten or twenty times as many people

[passage 137](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) I never found out, because I shot her and knocked her unconscious when she tried to run away. God, I hope she's alright. We just left her there. Anything could have happened to her. And then, finally, it's time for Harry to forgive Harry's father for the war. Harry's father's a killer. Probably ten or twenty times as many people as Jake ever saw killed, never mind killed himself, personally. Harry's father took tons of steel and hundreds of millions of dollars and wrapped them around killing like a total winner. He's the best at killing there is, except for those DN guys, and they don't count, because they're not even human, not strictly speaking, really. Homo Digitalis. A short step from the Loonies, by rights. And Harry's father? Harry's father killed a lot of men, all of whom had been hurt so badly at one time or another they were driven insane, so those men would not hurt Harry, and in doing so, hurt Harry's Mom, and Sally, and Petra, and perhaps most of all, poor old Gregory Vine himself, who tried to protect his son from the same machine, the military machine, which had trained him as a killer in the first place. Harry realizes the only drug involved in his father's recruitment was foolish young man's pride, or Patriotism, or some other minor character flaw that, in a nice world, there would be nobody left to exploit. They'd say "excuse me, you left your flag hanging out" and you'd put it away, like zipping up your flies! Harry is so afraid of turning out to be like his father, a professional killer who's so unaware of what they've done that they take pride in it, that Harry's grown to secretly hate himself, almost to death, for killing Jake. And it all melts away, in the tender loving kisses of the Goddess of Infinite Space, Nuit, of whom Laurie is but one aspect. Suddenly Harry understands all of it, and he's now ready to step into Peter's shoes as King of the World. It's time. Peter is now allowed to die. He has a worthy heir, he's tired out, and his race is won. Peter feels it, in his heart. There's just nothing to worry about any more, it's all fine. He's done his part, and he can be young and strong and virile again in just a few years. There's just one thing first, though, he has to get married. Harry takes the Final Step, at which point, he becomes Very Enlightened. Harry forgives the Goddess herself, and her friends, which is all the Suns, and All of Us. He sees that... She's trying as hard as she can to understand us, and to make us happy. And you can tell that is true, because we are trying, as hard as we can, to understand each-other and learn how to make each-other happy, and she is inside, outside and around every single one of us, now and

[passage 138](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) of Us. He sees that... She's trying as hard as she can to understand us, and to make us happy. And you can tell that is true, because we are trying, as hard as we can, to understand each-other and learn how to make each-other happy, and she is inside, outside and around every single one of us, now and forever, world without end. We're all trying to work this out, as best as we can, and inside we are all the same. There's no heaven beyond Nuit, and no hell beneath Nuit. There's just Space, and Time. And that's the Universe. Dr. Gupta, on whom this work was based, called her Shakti. He was my father. And now Peter can go home. Harry has gone all the way. He has forgiven the Goddess for making him, and for all her mistakes. It's time. =================================== =================================== ===== Peter's Funeral Wedding ===== =================================== =================================== Peter is old. He's not really sure how old, because he often lives much faster than normal people in some periods, and so ages fast, and lives much, much way slower than normal people in other periods, and so ages that much more slowly. He feels about 108. That's a good, round number. It's time for him to get married, and for him and his new bride to die. They're both very ancient, she says she feels about 150, and she doesn't look a day over 89, which is her book age. She's the Queen of the World, and she's a little Japanese lady with a very tender heart, and a shoe store operated by three generations of her family. She and Peter have known each-other their whole lives, feeling the subtle tugs of cause and effect from another being manifested as true love somewhere else in the world. She and Peter became friends online recently, on a dating site for old people. He knew her face as soon as he saw her: he said "she's got a face like a melted wellie, I love her!" and he was right. S/He does. She's a gnome, and she's Sooooooo old. They invited everyone to their Wedding, which is how their funeral was billed. Some would say this was a cruel trick, but it was the only way they could see everybody before they died, because you can't attend your own funeral, and mingle with your guests. At least, if you do, they tend to scream and run around a bit. It's suboptimal. So Peter and Maggie, the King and Queen of the World, announced their wedding. They did not put their titles on the invitations. Everybody who came on his side knew he was the King of the World, and everbody who came on Her side knew she was Queen of the World. Their guests guessed that, well, if he was marrying Her, she'd be Queen of the World now, because she was married to the King, and the reverse for Him. So one way or the other,

[passage 139](https://files.howtolivewiki.com/mother_of_hydrogen.txt) on his side knew he was the King of the World, and everbody who came on Her side knew she was Queen of the World. Their guests guessed that, well, if he was marrying Her, she'd be Queen of the World now, because she was married to the King, and the reverse for Him. So one way or the other, everybody worked out who was who, and it all worked out. 800 people came, to a field in Tennessee, where Peter had old friends. Maggie flew to Memphesu or something much like that, and they met for the first time in the airport. They did not, could not touch each-other, for that was Certain Death a few days too early. It was a strain! But not much time now, not much time left. They stood in an enormous circle. 800 people in a ring, so all could see the Bride and Groom, the marriage of the King and Queen of the World. Harry was asked to officiate, and he was finally ready, so he did it, and he did not muck about or fuck it up. He was quiet, calm and polite, as befits a servant. They married. There was nobody to give either one of them away, because they owned themselves. And when they kissed, in the middle of the field, poppies fell from the skies, to cure the world's pain, and they died, right there on the spot, where Harry had said, knowing what would happen, very likely, "You may kiss the Bride." She fell first, then him, led down to the soil by her fall. And that's how Peter and Maggie's Wedding became Peter and Maggie's Funeral. Harry was now the King of the World, and Harry was alone. But if you want to know what happens next, I'll have to find the time to finish this novel. ========================== ========================== ===== author's notes ===== ========================== ========================== I'd like to thank, in no particular order, James Hester, Nathan Koren and Jay Springett for their help, friendship and assistance. Ásta Helgadóttir, who said something inspiring, Dougald Hine for wise council over many years, whether he knew it or not, and Bembo Davies for setting my feet on a Path With A Heart. ============================ ============================ ===== production notes ===== ============================ ============================ This novel preview was produced in six days, 22nd to 27th of November, 2012. It is a hair over 60,000 words. I do not know how I did it. I used Emacs. I've been a lifelong mystic, and I'm tired of hiding. I am dyslexic, and have not done extensive proof-reading and copy-editing. The core creative task is done, and I want to publish something now. The rest will have to wait. Most of my work is Public Domain, particularly the Hexayurt Project (yes, it is real may work as described) but this novel is (C) All Rights Reserved Vinay Gupta 2012 because it is not finished yet, and I would like to retain the ability to finish it

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Continues in https://guptaoption.com/texts/148-11.md (part 11 of 11).
End of [148] Mother of Hydrogen, part 10 of 11. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.