Handbook of the Gods
By R
(As we believe this once was written by Ray Kemp, a former friend of L. Ron Hubbard)
BY WAY OF EXPLANATION
A couple of summers ago, I and my family went on a touring vacation. We covered territory in the USA, England, several European countries and the Caribbean. I mention this since, as you will see from what transpired I prefer not to have exact locations publicized for the amateur detective.
Being of an inquisitive turn of mind, I have always been an interested amateur in Archeology and Paleontology. Nothing startling has ever come of my work in these areas, of course, but a few minor finds. A Roman Villa in Malta, a two thousand year old coin operated Slot Machine in Athens are about the extent of my finds, just enough success to keep my interest going.
Anyway, in a certain country, I had left the family to go off on a shopping expedition and had hiked out into the countryside, ignoring the roads, just ‘following my nose' as it were. The sun was shining, blue sky, and cloudless as I sat on a convenient rock admiring the view and following the flight of several birds as they chased invisible targets above the trees. As I twisted around following the flight patterns I felt the rock upon which I had been sitting, shift under me, not in a rolling movement which could have come from an off balance, but in a twisting pivotal motion. Surprised, I investigated, and found that the whole rock, some six feet in diameter and four feet high could actually be spun around slowly by my weight against one edge.
I was able to turn the rock three complete revolutions when it suddenly tilted up hill, revealing a small chamber in the ground below. This chamber, some three feet deep, cut out of the rock strata itself contained a box, which as I gazed down at it, I first thought to be of Gold. By it's size I had expected it to weigh about twenty pounds or more if it were Gold, and at least needing a two hand lift if it were made of even a lightweight alloy.
When I lifted it out, I found that it needed only one hand, and no effort at all. Like an object under water, or like an object in space, once it started to move it seemed to want to continue it's motion. Momentarily nonplussed by this phenomenon I clumsily let go of it in mid air, and for a moment it seemed to just sit there weightless before slowly gliding to the surface of the ground.
Closer examination revealed a simple, featureless surface on all sides. With no apparent openings or seams.
I pushed, poked and prodded with no result, but as I turned it over in my hands for the umpteenth time, it suddenly came apart, diagonally, as though it were made of two pyramidal halves.Inside, were some fifty or so pieces of what again appeared to be gold foil, the largest such sheet being about five inches by nine, with rough edges on the two adjoining sides and smooth, seemingly cut edges on the other, opposite sides.
I remember that one thing struck me as I looked at the contents, although they appeared to be of different size, they were all of the same proportion.
(I learned much later that this proportion was that which is known as the ”Golden Section”, an almost mystical standard of perfection of a plane, much treasured by the early Greek architects).
The laws of Treasure Trove, differ in many parts of the world, but the laws pertaining to illicit removal and smuggling of artifacts, are remarkably universal and at best I would be hung up for months in red tape and governmental inquiry.
I decided therefore to photograph everything immediately, and as a size reference I used a pen that I had in my pocket.
Photographing the foil pieces, I noticed that at certain angles the sun caught the surface reflecting, or highlighting, I could not be really sure which, a set of markings, in a script the like of which I had never before seen.
Fortunately, as well as my 35mm camera I have a habit of carrying a polaroid camera with me, so as to take a 'test shot' of a view or a building that I want to detail. Using this , I was able to find the angle that best showed up the writing, and by the time I had finished I was confident that I had captured any and every marking there was.
When I lifted a test shot of a particular view I want to catch, and I was thus able to find the angle needed to get the writing to show up on film.
While shooting the cache itself I discovered in a recess another, larger sheet of foil rolled, as a scroll, but without ties, and which had the property of laying flat without curl yet, like some of the modern 'memory' plastics returning to its tight roll when tapped at the edge.
I must have spent a good three hours before I had finished, and replacing everything as I had found it, started to close out the cache by twisting the rock into position. As I did so there was a sudden rumbling sound and the rock slowly sank into the earth until it was almost level with the surrounding hillside. No further efforts on my part could budge it.
I mentioned the event to none of my family, and waited until I returned home to develop the films, and get a set of enlargements made.
Remarkably, although the pictures turned out to be very clear and sharp, the writings can not always be seen. It is not imagination, some people can see them sometimes as can I, but others are apparently unable to determine any markings on what look to them like photographs of gold foil. Because of this it took me months to painstakingly copy onto paper the ‘writings' as I came to call them, and then a long series of letters and visits to various universities and museums to try to get the script identified, but all to no avail.
At one time I thought I had managed to get them identified, but the person, an eminent professor of antiquity, finally sent me his report explaining that the writings were from extraterrestrials from Mars, and that he knew one of the writers personally.
I also described the hillside to a friend of mine who was visiting that area and asked him to get me several views of it. When he returned with the film, I was able to identify the exact spot, but no rock was visible anywhere.
A few weeks ago I received a visitor in my office in the normal course of business, and it happened that I had been doing some work on the pictures and my written copies earlier, and had left them on a side table near the visitors chair.
It is my habit to record my conversations with people in my office (with their permission), since we often make preliminary discussions covering many aspects of their needs and I can refer to the full conversation later thus devoting my attention to the client without having to worry about remembering what may be important from all the things we discuss.
In the middle of the interview my visitor's eye fell on my pictures. He did what they refer to on stage as a double take, picked one up and, in a complete change of tone asked,
"Where did you get this?", pause, "have you been home?".
Somewhat at a loss, I ignored the second question and started to tell a shortened version of what I have here recounted. I could have said anything to him, or nothing, for he paid me not the slightest attention, reaching for picture after picture, comparing it to drawings, and, at first I thought simply mumbling aloud as people sometimes do when engrossed.
Suddenly I realized that he was not just mumbling but, so far as I could see he was reading! Back and forth picture to drawn copy he went, oblivious to me and the environment, reading out loud quietly, almost inaudibly, but obviously doing some form of translation as he went, for he would refer back to a picture or a drawing and change a word, then apparently read the whole piece, or put two pieces together, and rephrase what he had just said. I watched in fascination and listened to what I could hear, making notes as he put one or more phrases together. By the time he came to the enlargement of the scroll that had been separate from the pieces in the box, I had recovered enough to turn the gain control of my recorder up to full, realizing that his earlier quiet words may not have been picked up, since I usually set the recorder for a more formal conversation.
My intercom buzzed. It was my secretary, who had placed a transatlantic call that I had wanted earlier, and had my party on the line. I decided to take the call in the outer office so as not to disturb the client now absorbed in my papers, though in truth I probably could have stood on the desk and screamed without attracting his attention.
I took the call on my secretary's phone, cutting it short. I was out of my office no more than two minutes at the most, yet when I returned no trace of my visitor existed. Gone too were my photographs and papers. My Notes were still in my hand, I had picked up the tablet as I left the office. Later we replayed the tape and as I had feared the earlier mumblings of my visitor were completely inaudible. The end of the tape where I had turned up the volume was distorted almost beyond understanding, but I have managed to get a sound studio to filter out and get most of that part audible.
What follows therefore is probably fragmented, being based on that part of the tape we were able to get copied, and the hasty notes I took with me out of the office.
I can make no claim for its validity nor its accuracy or completeness, but as I read the manuscript I have put together I am plagued with a constant thought ... What if ......?
California 1977
FROM THE TAPE
Greetings Brother God, (or close translation)
You asked why this segment of the Universe is looking so empty these days, well let me try to explain.
In the beginning ... or to be more exact, just prior to the Beginning there was or were Human beings. They had been well created by we Gods, who were pleased with what we had created. Of course like everything else created by a Committee, there had been long arguments about what should and what should not, go into a Human, and there was that dissenting opinion as to the exact shape and anatomy, but this was resolved by the simple expedient of making two models Man and Woman, both to be Human. So Humans were given an environment (they seemed to need one) made from an old leftover planet in that Sol system some of the gods had used earlier and this was stocked with other life forms brought in from all over the playing fields, there being no real indigenous specie to that planet originally.
Human watching became quite an occupation among us, in fact with some it became a preoccupation, since, as we had all had a hand in the original creation, each unto his own whim, no one God was ever exactly sure as to the source of some particular attribute that any human displayed. I must admit that this randomness of behavior by Humans exactly fitted all the precepts of what constitute a game, fifty percent Random, fifty percent Predictable, an ideal situation really, and those of us who took and compared notes had much enjoyment when one particular behavior action was finally traced and identified. I recall the pleasure and excitement when we identified my part, I called it "persistence" ... we had a celebration among the suns that you wouldn't believe .... but that is really another story.
As time passed, or, since you are such a stickler for exactitude, as time arrived created, we noticed that more and more the Humans, and by this time they had multiplied certainly beyond my expectations, were demanding our attention and advice.
As first the appropriate God would answer and give the advice the Human wanted. Sometimes a God would not give the advice wanted, but the advice actually needed, though we noticed that that was not too popular, and then again there was the danger that if one of us spoke to a Human more than once, he then set up a sort of private communication line, forbidding his other Humans around him to ask a question except through him, after payment of the appropriate fee of course.
A bunch of these guys actually set up a whole area of the planet with the idea that they played on the field once, and that they had better be good (whatever that is) and only act and behave according to this group's set of rules or they would have to sit in a fire, or sing songs for the rest of time.
... something like that, I really wasn't too interested, it was such a petty game, but I remember "%"%"%" (name unintelligible) telling me that on more than one occasion he had to actually pull a human out of the game for a while to patch him up, sometimes with a complete new body, so badly had his fellow beings damaged him.
Not that such a thing really mattered of course in the overall view since when one's body wore out the being went immediately to the nearest body building human, usually one of the Woman type, and took up a fresh residence as soon as the newly forming body was ready to survive in that environment. A very good system really, since these humans played hard and rough and needed to take a break from time to time, though I never have understood why they couple that with the idea of starting anew with no carry over from one body to the other.
What really disturbed most of us was the way in which these askings for advice became almost incessant pleas for intervention. They called it Worship, and I don't know which of us gave them that Attribute but it really was unfair, and about a gigasecond ago I stated so at the convention just after one of us had bought this intervention thing and caused half the damned planet to be put under water.
I said then and I still believe, that this worship thing is only going to lead to more and more dependence on us, whilst the original game had been to create an entity that was totally self-sustaining, immortal, and of free will. Of course I must bow to the opposition in that if we have given them free will, then they can choose to worship or not as they wish, but I still think we should not encourage it by invitation.
Much of this is academic now anyway in light of recent discoveries. You remember %ff%ff%ff (again unintelligible), and his sense of humor thing? Well at a recent enclave we were discussing whether or not he had put any of it into Humans, some said yes, but others thought if he had then it wasn't working very well, so we approached him to find out. Would you believe he sure did put in the Humor, and how!
It turns out now that right at the beginning he placed a ringer in the whole game. He substituted our Humans replacing them with volunteers among the lesser gods. Oh the bodies and all the trappings were ours all right, but the actual entities that we have thought of all this time as humans are in fact Gods playing the part of humans at his invitation. When this news got out it created an uproar that could be heard among the galaxies. As a matter of fact it even blew up a couple of them, and for the first time to my knowledge a demand went out, after a vote of course, for examination of the golden book, the handbook of rules of any game to check out the whole thing.
But that is not the end by a long shot. It then turned out that our friend had not only switched the experiment, but he has also torn up the golden book, spread it around and hidden the pieces among the lesser gods masquerading as Humans on that bedamned planet.
As far as I can determine there are in fact no Humans at all on the planet. They are all gods pretending to be human, and if we want to get to find the original rules we have to go through the same process, which is to drop ninety nine point nine percent of our natural knowingness, jump in and act human according to how we think human is, and while there "being Human", locate the rules, reassemble them, and then decide whether the game is all according to how we viewed it originally.
You really cannot help but admire %ff%ff%ff%ff, he has certainly made a game within a game out of a game hasn't he? The Potentials for getting mixed up are almost infinite, yet so too are the Potentials for restoration. I mention this because I am leaving shortly myself, it was agreed that we shouldn't all go together. I observe that it must be a fairly difficult game because although most of us have left, no one has reported back in yet. No one has stated which one percent one may keep, so I have arranged to retain recognition of the rules when seen, and the ability to put them in one place and recall where they are from lifetime to lifetime. This last is very necessary as the current trend of Humans is to promote what thing will shorten their lives best. In their communication system they even advertise what the disease of the year is and how well it is ending their lives, so I must retain the consecutiveness of self awareness necessary. I think I can get this whole thing handled in a couple of hundred such life times, and in many ways I am excited about the game to come.
If you care to join me I'd love to have you along, so bring this with you and then we'll recognize each other, I have keyed my recall to it.
See you very soon then, either there or here, whichever we create to meet.
Affection,
(unintelligible).
