Jaime sits on the leather couch in Bob’s office.

Image Credit: Amancay Maahs

JAIME: Thanks for getting that paperwork over so quickly.

BOB: Don’t mention it.  It was the truth, and I really didn’t have a choice.  How was Pawnee?

JAIME: Depressing.  Screams, crying.  It was pretty sad.

BOB: I’ve made some recommendations in the past.  It’s not an easy thing to do.

JAIME: What happens to most of those people?

BOB: They all get medication.  Some get better for a while.  Most are in and out of there and jail for however long they survive.  The part that you saw there?  The hospital and others like it has many other functions that are not so extreme.

Bob sips from his coffee.  He looks into the mug to see that it’s empty.

JAIME: That’s pretty dim.

BOB: You are not religious.

JAIME: No, I am not.

BOB: Remember what you said a bit ago, about the waitress in the restaurant?

JAIME: About thinking the world was going to end after September eleventh?

BOB: Do you believe in “End Times?”

JAIME: Eschatology is merely people’s expression of their uncertainty over their mortality.  They simply cannot comprehend the idea that the world could go on without them.  Cultural attachment to it is just the sociological effect of the same.

BOB: Do you have a system of beliefs?

JAIME: I have a rational outlook from which I derive principles.  There are definitely patterns in nature, but they don’t necessarily serve any purpose other than what they explicitly reveal.

BOB: What sort of patterns?

JAIME: Simple patterns and complex ones.  None of which I’m really qualified to talk about.

BOB: Do you believe in truth?

JAIME: Truth.  There’s something that transcends science and religion.  A pattern and a spiritual reality.  But there’s only one truth.

BOB: What’s that?

Bob gets up and grabs his cup.  He takes another mug from his desk drawer.  He looks at Jaime.

BOB: I promise it’s clean.

JAIME: I trust you.

Jaime stands and stretches.  Bob fills the mugs from a half-full pot behind his desk.

BOB: So what is this one truth?

JAIME: Aristotle.

BOB: Go on.

JAIME: There is a man who was at one time revered in the scientific world and the religious one, and for many of the same things.  In some ways, he still is.

Bob returns and hands Jaime a mug.  They both sit.

BOB: I won’t argue.

JAIME: He believed in causes.  That everything was becoming unto its final cause.

BOB: Okay.

JAIME: I think that’s basically true.  You look at anything and it is becoming.  I think we are all rolling downhill to something.  The universe is becoming.

BOB: What is the universe becoming?  That’s if it’s not the final cause.

JAIME: I think it’s fairly obvious.  God.  Perfection.

BOB: So there is no God, but the universe is becoming God?

JAIME: Look at the advance of time and the universe.  Look at the advance of technology and civilization.  All the pieces are falling into place.  Once humanity realizes the inevitability of this, they will become.

BOB: Become what?

JAIME: Humans in their present form are the stuff that will make humanity. When they figure this out, they will willfully participate in this inevitability.  They just have to figure out what role they play.

BOB: Do you know what role that is?

JAIME: Some would say humans are different because of their intellect.  Eventually, if not already, computers or artificial intelligence will do all the calculations.  I think humans are different because of morality.  The potential for it, at least.  Humans will become the conscience of God.

Bob sips again.

BOB: You believe all of this?

JAIME: I don’t know that BELIEVE is the right word.  I think that time, the universe, evolution and civilization are directional.  But not necessarily directed.  This is the only meaningful explanation I can devise from this pattern. It is my untestable hypothesis.  More like wishful thinking, I guess.

BOB: What do you BELIEVE then?

JAIME: Beginnings, middles, and endings.

BOB: Another contribution of Aristotle.  Poetically speaking.

JAIME: Everything ends.

BOB: That is a fact.

JAIME: This is the truth.