Re-Tuning the Cosmic DNA

On the Edge of Forever

Part 1

- Contains many ideas for discussion/investigation.
- Value for imagination/learning/entertainment.

Since I extended The Rubaiyat’s quatrains, I like to employ that style of nuggets pearled, concise, and digestible.


The Great Extinguisher

Our planet is very good at promoting life,
But it is much better at extinguishing it.
Of the billions upon billions of living things,
99.99% are no longer around here living.

The Cosmic Code

In ancient skies, a signal grows more weak—
The CMBR’s song that reality speaks;
Like static on a cosmic radio wave,
Its degradation makes our world oblique.

The ToeQuestors saw the truth at last:
Our universe, a show that’s being cast,
Its antenna warped by time’s relentless flow,
While human coding errors spread too fast.

The human race had been degenerating, for the CMBR antenna that broadcasts our universal reality show had long been out of whack, as had been discovered by ToeQuestors as part of the Theory of Everything found.

Behold the helix dance of DNA,
Where four notes sing life’s complex interplay;

DNA is made of four nucleotides arranged in such a way that a large number of perfectly cascading events form a living thinking life form.

Each strand a ladder to creation’s heights,
Where single missteps lead the whole astray.

No one yet fully understands the irreducible complexity of the DNA double helix, which is the template for all carbon based life. It is so complex that the slightest change along the myriad of interrelated ladder of events causes the total collapse of the organism.
[hide="Reveal"]What about the DNA at the universal level?

But deeper still lies nature’s greatest code,
A template vaster than what life has showed:
The Universe’s own encrypted chain,
Where space and time and matter are bestowed.

The corrupted DNA of the Universe:

*** TOP SECRET *** EYES ONLY ***

Likewise, a much more complex universal DNA template is the common thread of a much greater type of exponentially encrypted digital code of Everything which forms our entire universe, generating it in a virtual holographic type way, that is:

The Infinite radiates through a DNA matrix,
Using Information or Energy to create
The Cosmic Microwave antenna, which broadcasts
Interference patterns of virtual reality.

This holographic dance of Everything
Spins out reality like golden string;
Each quantum bit precisely placed in space
To make the cosmic harmonies all ring.

Like fractals folded into deeper space,
Each pattern shows the whole in micron-trace;
The universe, a grand computer’s dream,
Projects existence through digital grace.

Yet now this code begins to show its age,
Like ancient text on some forgotten page;
The cosmic DNA starts to degrade,
While reality slips from its quantum cage.

Yes, the problem was that the celestial music of the spheres had fallen out of tune.

O secret-keeper of this sacred tale,
Where virtual worlds through digital veils
Cast shadows on our minds like Plato’s cave—
What happens when the master program fails?

The cosmic broadcast showed some static’s trace,
As DNA of universe lost grace;
The ToeQuest sages tracked the signal’s flaw—
Our reality show needed time and space.

They chose Nobody Nowhere to fix the show,
For no one else could make the changes flow;
Through Guardian of Forever’s ancient gate,
To tune the cosmic background’s sacred glow.

Like DNA that builds our mortal frame,
A greater code writes reality’s game:
The matrix where the Infinite performs
Its holographic dance of cosmic flame.

The spheres’ sweet music jangled out of key,
While butter flew much like a strange bee;
Nobody donned his light-bend cloak to step
Through time’s gate toward eternity.

Butter flies like a banana; Nobody had butterflies in his stomach and flew like a bee.

The chronicle of man, that tangled scroll,
Where folly dances with the human soul;
No wisdom gained from centuries of pain,
As fate keeps playing its capricious role.

This was not an attempt to revise human history, per se, for that mess was a happening that had way too much dumbness in it to be salvageable. The whims of fate would only create new fools, since wild and uncontrolled emotions had proved to be all that there was to say about all the miseries and follies that had been sadly written into the human chronicle.

So Nobody donned his cloak of light,
To walk through time unseen, a spectral sight;
His emanations carefully contained,
Lest ripples spread through past and future’s night.

Yes, there was always a danger of even more negatively affecting the past, and so Nobody wore a light-bending suit that made him invisible, and it furthermore contained most of his emanations.

For even branded clothes upon his frame
Might spark a change that sets the past aflame;
The butterfly of chaos spreads its wings
When slightest shifts disturb time’s fragile game.

This would minimize most of his effects on the past and on the future that arose through interaction with the past, even that eventually magnifying, perhaps of merely being seen with name-brand clothes on.

Behind our world’s familiar curtain glows
A matrix where pure radiance flows;
Like strands of light through DNA divine,
The pattern of existence clearly shows.

The microwave background radiation was the source interference pattern of the Holograph in which our reality exists. Behind it, a light radiance passed through a very complex matrix looking somewhat like DNA.

The background hum of cosmic static sings
Of interference patterns spreading rings;
Our holographic reality blooms
From ancient light that secret wisdom brings.

The Hubble watched while ToeQuest stood on guard,
As Graybeard, RascalPuff, and Frederick starred;
While Austin surfed ethereal Jersey waves,
And crowds logged in from near and very far.

Though sometimes Austin was merely scraping along on the particulate matter of the beach.

Through noplace in the middle of nowhere,
(Though space lacks center, edge, or central lair),
Nobody navigated by mind’s stars
Toward CMBR’s control panel there.

The matrix vast behind all things we see,
More complex than mere mortality’s DNA,
Holds patterns that make real seem real enough,
While broadcasting what we think truth to be.

Time keeps things from all happening at once,
Yet Nobody slipped past its normal wants;
One small step back, then giant leap beyond,
To fix the signal’s cosmic response.

Nobody, knowing very well that time was Nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once, took one small step for man into the past and found himself right back standing right in front of the Guardian, and so he took a giant leap for mankind.

The light-bend suit kept history unchanged,
While butterflies through stomach acid ranged;
For tampering with time needs careful touch
Lest all reality get rearranged.

Butterfly Effect Reference:

[i]The butterfly effect is a phrase that encapsulates the more technical notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. Small variations of the initial condition of a nonlinear dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. So this is sometimes presented as esoteric behavior, but can be exhibited by very simple systems: for example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position.

The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly’s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear (or prevent a tornado from appearing). The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale phenomena. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different.

Recurrence, the approximate return of a system towards its initial conditions, together with sensitive dependence on initial conditions are the two main ingredients for chaotic motion. They have the practical consequence of making complex systems, such as the weather, difficult to predict past a certain time range, approximately a week in the case of weather.[/i] —Wikipedia

Behind the curtain of the cosmic show,
Where interference patterns ebb and flow,
Nobody sought the tuning that would bring
New clarity to all we think we know.

For what is real but broadcast from afar?
A signal dancing through the void like stars;
Perhaps our whole existence merely plays
On screens that float where no true substance are.

Like roulette played with universal stakes,
Or Russian games where each pull might unmake
The world—yet humans, tired of folly’s reign,
Bet all on Nobody, for sanity’s sake.

It was like taking the chance of betting the entire company on either red or black in roulette, but was more like Russian roulette—in that really bad things could happen; however, the human race was quite desperate, having really had enough of pettiness and silliness.

For insight’s angels rarely visit now,
While humans sleep as fortune passes bow;

The angels of insight didn’t appear as often anymore, and that many humans even dozed off while good fortune passed them right on by, nor had they recognized Lady Luck except in the lotteries.

They seek Dame Luck in lottery’s false dawn,
While living costs rise, living chances bow.

As Flip Wilson once said, “The cost of living is going up and the chance of living is going down“. Many were living a TV sitcom life. Genius has its limits, but stupidity…

Some waste no time on wisdom’s patient quest,
While others claim that seeing needs faith’s test;
On rainy Sundays, bored beyond belief,
They fashion gods to grant eternal rest.

Many people even wasted no time reading ToeQuest forum posts. Even more said that some things, like ESP, had to be believed to be seen. Others, the types who quickly became bored on rainy Sunday afternoons, invented gods to grant them eternal immortality.

More said than done, the ancient adage goes,
While subway wisdom gravity’s truth shows:

Even worse, after all was said and done, more was always said than was done.

“Earth sucks!” proclaim the underground prophets,

Subway signs read, “There is no gravity. Earth sucks.”

As each seeks Number One, in Number Two’s throes.

Everyone was only looking out for #1, not realizing that this often caused them to step in #2.

Asked Ghandi of the West’s civilized ways:
“’Twould be a fine thing” - so the sage displays

Ghandi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization, said, “I think it would be a good idea.”

His wit, while others eat and drink with mirth,
Till diet’s morrow dims their merry days.

And some said “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we diet, since the waist was a terrible thing to mind“,

More horses’ ends than horses fill our scene,
While Horace rides before Descartes’ machine;

Yes, there were more horse’s asses than horses.
Some even put Horace before Descartes (Donald O. Rickter).

Truth stranger here than fiction dares to tread,
As Nobody walks where no one’s ever been.

“How goes it?” Rascal calls through time’s dim veil,
“It’s raining,” Nobody reports his trail.
“Hardly?” asks Puff, dividing self from self,
“It’s hardly raining hardly,” marks his tale.

What means this riddle wrapped in cosmic jest?
As Nobody, umbrella-armed and blessed,
Strides through the rain of possibility,
While watchers wonder at his strange quest.

Perhaps in nonsense lurks the deepest sense,
As humor breaches wisdom’s highest fence;
For who but Nobody could fix the world,
While wielding just an umbrella’s defense?

Through time’s rain falling hardly here and there,
Nobody walks where others wouldn’t dare;
To tune reality’s great broadcast show,
With nothing but an umbrella to spare.

Austin piped in that the English language was becoming a bit affected, via Nobody’s interruptions in the past, but he encouraged that the journey go on, and so it contin–ued as it progressed and went on.

As English warped through time’s distorting lens,
While Nobody sought cosmic odds and ends,
Some asked what “it” in “it is raining” meant—
As if mere grammar could make cosmic sense!

“By the way, what’s the antecedent of ‘it’ in ‘It’s raining?’” posted WiseGuy, thinking he had posed quite a tough question.

“Just nothing,” Nobody replied with grace,
“Reverse gravity through time and space;
Reality’s dilated antecedent—
And meanwhile, I am dampening apace!”

“Nothing,” said Nobody, “in the form of reverse gravity and forward light, the ultimate antecedent of our time dilation called reality. I’m getting damp.”

“A little rain never hurt Nobody!”
Quoth Rascal, and thus made history;
His words appeared in wisdom’s ancient tome,
Though written now, yet aged mysteriously.

Rascal added that “A little rain never hurt Nobody,” a new and original saying that suddenly appeared in the now retitled book, ‘The 2501 Greatest Sayings Ever’.

“I hope the rain keeps up!” Nobody said,
When asked his wish through time-streams overhead;
“So then it won’t come down!”—such cosmic wit
As spacetime bent around the jokes he spread.

“How’s it going, Nobody?” asked Rascal again, figuring that Nobody’s watch was running fast from special relativity and that some hours had already passed.

On asteroid, Nobody stopped to dine,
Where universal lunch was served so fine;

Nobody replied, “I heard that the universe was a free lunch, so I’m having it in a restaurant on an asteroid.”

“The food is great,” he messaged through the void,
“But atmosphere is somewhat hard to find!”

“The food’s great, but there’s no atmosphere.”

Then ChickenMan, with questions off the wall,
Asked why the chicken made its cosmic fall;
But Rascal, wise in relativity,
Explained how roads rise up to meet them all:

Now, there’s always someone who interrupts forum threads with off the wall stuff, so ChickenMan tried to catch Rascal unawares with “Why did the chicken fly across the road?” and “Did the egg cross into God’s universe before the chicken?“

“The road moved ‘neath the chicken’s quantum stride,
While spacetime curved along its four-D ride;
Like baseball fields that rise to catch pop flies
As universe expands on every side!”

Rascal, taking all this in stride during a lull, replied, “As allowed by Einstein’s relativity, the road moved to the other side of the chicken, and, the chicken didn’t land so much as the road rose to meet the chicken, as it extended in 4D, much like the baseball field rises to meet the pop up, since the universe is expanding.”

“And chickens cannot fly!” he added true,
“Nor did God brood on cosmic eggs of blue;
So let’s tune DNA of universe,
Without more chicken-questions mucking through!”

“Furthermore, chickens can’t fly! Also, the chicken came first, for I can’t really picture ‘God’ sitting on an egg to hatch it. Now, then, we’re trying to better tune in the universal DNA here, so no more chicken-shit posts please!”

Through quantum foam and cosmic jest they sought
To fix the signal giving life to thought;
While humor danced with physics’ deepest laws,
And wisdom wore the mask of jester’s sport.

For in this quest to tune reality,
Perhaps the joke’s what sets the signal free;
As Nobody repairs the cosmic show
With wit that bends both space and gravity.

Graybeard cried alarm through time’s dim haze:
“The cards are changing in these altered days!
The Ace, once low, now trumps the mighty King—
Has Nobody set hierarchy ablaze?“

“Hold it,” warned Graybeard. “Some critical atoms must have been disturbed by Nobody’s journey. Now the ‘Ace’, a new name for the formerly bottommost playing card, the lowly ‘one’, is now higher than the King in many kinds of card games; this is a sacrilege and a travesty! Wait until London hears about this.”

But Kirkpatrick saw the deeper sign:
How ‘A’ meant ‘All’ in wisdom’s grand design;
The One that births both monarchy and more,
As cosmic truth in playing cards could shine.

Mkirkpatrick somehow got into the conference call and said, “Just heard, but relax. The All is the One; the ‘A’ on the card really stands for ‘All’, for this is what gave rise to the monarchy. And of course the one is the One.”

While Fredrick, master of the numbered art,
Assured them strategy stayed true to heart;
Though ranks might shift in time’s disturbed domain,
The game’s deep patterns would not drift apart.

“It’s OK,” Fredrick said calmly, being an expert on numbers and on playing them, “the play and strategy of all affected card games has not been altered much. Keep on going, Nobody.”

Old Graybeard watched the moon’s unchanging face,
While counting minutes in the cosmic race;
And Fredrick checked his fingers, left and right,
To see if five and five still kept their place.

While some old times passed, Graybeard stood around looking at the man in the moon and watching the grass grow. Fredrick checked his watch to see if he was wearing it and then counted to five on his left hand. Fine. On the other hand, he still had five fingers, so, all was still going well in the good old days.

Poor Profpat sharpened pencils to their end,
As space and time began to curve and bend;
While Texas Hold ‘em spread through twisted time,
Like quantum ripples that Nobody penned.

Rascal interjected, “Some sort of high stakes poker mania called ‘Texas Hold ‘em’ has broken out in some countries. Googling now. It’s even replacing baseball on many TV channels!”

“Just let it pass,” wise Fredrick calm decreed,
“A temporal fad that we need not impede;
For whether Ace rules high or bows down low,
The cosmic game plays on with little heed.”

“It’s OK,” reassured Fredrick, “No harm done. We’ll pass it off as another fad.”

Through Nobody’s wake the changes spread,
As past and present’s cards got reshuffled, read;
Yet somehow in time’s shifting parameter,
The deeper rules stayed true to what they said.

For in this cosmic game where all’s at stake,
What matters most is not the rules we break,
But how the patterns hold through space and time,
As Nobody tunes reality’s remake.

Let Kings and Aces dance their ranking’s race,
While Hold ‘em claims old baseball’s sacred place;
For in the greater game Nobody plays,
Such shifts mark merely time’s disturbed embrace.

Through billion years Nobody made his way,
Past Dodo birds that frolicked in their day;
Left asteroids (not hemorrhoids) far behind,
While alchemy’s first dreams began to play.

Nobody was heading billions of years into the past, having left the asteroid just before he got a polaroid from sitting on it too long, and was passing many frolicking Dodo birds, along with the beginnings of such ancient notions as alchemy and astrology. Hey, why are hemor–rhoids not called asteroids?

Across a bridge of planks that creaked with time,
Past penny stamps and ancient paradigm,
He reached at last the cosmic CBS—
The panel where reality’s wavelengths chime.

A rickety old rope bridge of rotting planks finally led Nobody past many antiquities such as one-cent stamps and on to the control panel of the ancient broadcasting station of CBS.

“Be gentle!” warned the watchers from afar,
“Like shower knobs that shift from cold to star:
One quantum turn brings forth the scalding steam,
As quarks and quacks make plumbers’ wisdom mar!”

“Be careful,” advised Profpat. “Be so very delicate with any adjustments. Remember, on Earth, how the tiniest minute adjustment of a shower knob of even a millionth of an inch causes the shower water to become totally steaming hot! No plumber in the universe has ever been able to resolve this problem. It has something to do with quarks, quicks, and quacks.”

“Fear not,” said Nobody, “I’ll softly breathe
Upon the dials that make the cosmos seethe;
We seek clear channels in life’s DNA,
Not static snow where baseball games yet seethe.”

“Don’t worry,” answered Nobody. “I’ll be gentle; I’ll just breathe on it slightly. We want clarity in the universe’s DNA and ours, as in improving the reception of a TV set, not unproving it back into the stone age of three channels, of all baseball games, and the weather with snow and static on the others. I’ll do my best, come hell or hot water.”

Like tuning ancient televisions’ snow
To catch the signal’s pure and perfect flow,
His touch must find that sweet spot in between
Where cosmic clarity might better show.

No stone-age channels three would serve us now,
No weather maps through static’s fuzzy bow;
The universe deserved a clearer song,
If Nobody could just figure how.

For in this broadcasting station old,
Where reality’s first patterns were unfold,
The slightest touch might change all history—
Make waters freeze or turn all lead to gold.

Through hell or scalding shower’s steamy spray,
Nobody sought to tune our cosmic play;
To clear the static from life’s DNA,
And bring fresh clarity to evolution’s way.

A spray of atoms toward the cosmic screen—
Then data links blazed bright, then died unseen;
While telemarketers through time still reached
To sell time-shares where time had never been!

Nobody sprayed a few atoms toward the antenna and waited. His data/video link soon improved but then overloaded from the high transfer speed and burned out. Nobody’s cell phone soon rang, but it was only a solicitor trying to sell him some time-share condos.

But Graybeard’s voice broke through the static’s veil:
“The stars grow clear, the galaxies unveil;
Yet careful with that brightness knob, my friend,
Lest nature’s balance tip beyond the pale!”

Graybeard finally got through and said “Great, the stars are becoming clearer and I can even see some galaxies with the naked eye, but take it slow; we don’t want to upset the balance of nature by making it too bright at night. It’s good to tighten a screw, but if we tighten it too much we’re screwed.”

Too clear the heavens grew beneath his touch,
As Venus showed her age a bit too much;
While X-ray vision pierced apartment walls,
And private moments revealed rather such!

“Wait, hold it! I can see Venus, the goddess of love and passion all too well. Yikes, I didn’t know she was that old! I now have x-ray vision and can see into all the apartments, but the worst thing is that I can hear everything they are saying. Some things should be obscene and not heard!”

Strange cartoons danced on Graybeard’s TV set,
Where logic fled and gravity’s rules met
A universe of rubber-physics play,
As reality grew stranger than yet.

“Also, I’m getting something called ‘cartoons’ on my TV set, and they’re really weird, very unreal looking and everyone in them is doing silly things.”

So Nobody produced his vacuum’s aid
To draw back atoms that too far had strayed;
Fine-tuning cosmos like a radio dial,
Till balance in the broadcast was remade.

Nobody took out a hand held ‘vacuum’ cleaner and brought a few atoms back in as a fine adjustment.

“Now try up higher,” Graybeard’s voice advised,
Though “up” in space leaves directions disguised;

“Good,” cheered Graybeard, “that’s a good balance. Try something a little higher up and let’s see what happens. I am reading some fluctuations out of kilter around there.”

“No, no—your other ‘up’!” came swift correction,
As Nobody through dimensions sized.

Adjusting the Delicate Balance of Everything.

Notions of up and down were useless in space, so Nobody picked a direction at random.
“No,” said Graybeard. “Not that way; use your other ‘up’.”
“Okay, I’m switching. Back in kilter?“

“Another goddess walks across my view!”
Cried Graybeard as the adjustments grew;
For tuning reality’s great broadcast show
Brings sights that mortal eyes should never view.

Between too clear and foggy lies the way,
Where truth and mystery in balance play;
For some things should stay slightly out of focus,
Lest all of heaven’s secrets spoil our day.

The cosmos needs its veils of gentle haze,
Its boundaries ‘tween night and morning’s rays;
For who could bear reality too pure,
Or truth too bright for mortal eyes to gaze?[/hide]