Unthinkable

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  The doctor did a very strange thing; he pulled out a gunand shot himself through the head.]

  UNTHINKABLE

  By ROG PHILLIPS

  If Nature suddenly began to behave differently, what we consider obvious and elementary today might become--unthinkable.

  In the story THE DESPOILERS in the October 1947 _Amazing Stories_ Iraised the question, "Is there anything absolutely beyond humancomprehension?" In that story I gave humanity a thousand years to givebirth to one man who could comprehend the incomprehensible.

  The incomprehensible is harder to portray in a story than is merely theunknown. If we denote anything incomprehensible by the symbol X, we candescribe what X is to a certain extent by knowing what it is not. Wecan, gradually, gain a certain insight into what it is by comparing itto what IS comprehensible.

  In the last analysis the universe of normalcy is incomprehensible. Wehave made progress in comprehending it because we have isolated it intosmall bundles of events that can be dealt with by the human intellect.

  We have arrived at certain basic pictures of the behavior of theincomprehensible. We have found a certain stability existing in thepicture we have built up. We have searched the heavens and found thatstars are made up of the same elements as the Earth--with a fewexceptions. And with those exceptions we have brought them into theframework of our picture of the Universe by postulating "dense matter."

  We have, slowly, come to the belief that the same laws operatethroughout the entire Universe, just as they do here on the Earth. Thisis the Uniformity Postulate.

  In that story THE DESPOILERS the Uniformity Postulate was not denied.The incomprehensible in that story was the mind of a Despoiler. It, tothe human mind, was incomprehensible; and to the Despoiler, the humanmind was incomprehensible.

  Each viewed the Universe differently due to a difference in whateverlies at the foundations of the thinking processes. In other words,uniformity of the principle of thought was denied there.

  Both the Despoilers and Man had mechanical civilization and science, butdue to their different minds neither could comprehend completely theviewpoint of the other ON THE SAME THING. Each had applied his REASON tothe disorder of nature and constructed what to him was a REASONABLEPICTURE.

  The type of mentality I attributed to the Despoiler may be impossible.It may be that if the human race eventually reaches out and encountersother intelligent races it will find that the basic principles whichresult in thought as we know it are the ONLY basic principles that cangive rise to thinking intelligence, so that wherever we findcivilization we will find creatures that think the same as we do, andhave seen the same pattern in nature that we have.

  There is another possibility besides the encountering ofincomprehensible minds. That is the possibility of encounteringincomprehensible "islands" of reality.

  One thing we have discovered about nature that makes such "islands"possible--or that makes it possible WE are living in such an"island"--is that matter has a habit of "reacting" to some types ofenergy patterns, and "totally ignoring" others.

  Perhaps you can better understand what I mean by the following analogousposition: Kah is an intelligent entity fixed at a certain point. He canonly derive a picture of reality from what he sees. He can only see afoot in front of him. In all his existence he has seen only one type ofthing--rocks about an inch in diameter. He therefore concludes that allreality is rocks an inch in diameter.

  He is unable ever to learn that he is situated at a place where theone-inch rocks leave a screen with seven-eighths-inch holes that letevery smaller pebble and all the sand through, and thatseven-eighths-inch screen is the catch-all for a higher screen withone-inch holes that kept everything larger from coming through.

  His Universe is brought to him by selective screening. He rationalizeswhat his Universe presents him, and postulates that ALL reality isidentical to what he can experience. He can NOT conceive of what isutterly beyond his range of experience and imagination--which is merelythe re-arrangement of reality or of thoughts derived from reality.

  We are perhaps in much that same position. To be sure, our telescopesbring us data from stars that are so far away the human race will neverreach them--but is not our telescope a "screen" that brings us only theone-inch rocks?

  There may be and probably is a vast realm of reality co-existent withthe reality we know, right around us; but it is "screened" from us. Itmay be possible that we know less than ten percent of actual realityaround us due to the screening of our senses and our instruments thatblocks completely, or permits to pass completely, every energy patternthat can't pass through the "holes" of our "screen."

  Going back to Kah, the one-inch-rock-universe observer, suppose that inone batch of dirt dumped at the head of the screening system therehappened to be no one-inch rocks at all? Or, more closely to the storyyou are about to read, suppose, with his mind deeply grooved with thetracks of the one-inch rocks, he were to move to a vantage point wherethere were no one-inch rocks, but larger or smaller ones?

  He would immediately find nature behaving according to an utterlystrange pattern, BUT he could only sort the incoming sensationsaccording to the neural grooves already built up in his mind! In hismind he could only see one-inch rocks or nothing, and since what hewould see would obviously be something, it would either seem nothing tohim, or one-inch rocks behaving strangely.

  His instruments and his mind would interpret by the old gradations andscales and concepts. His Universe would still be made of nothing butone-inch rocks, to him, but its behavior would be strange.

  Perhaps slowly, like a newborn child making sense out of itssurroundings, or a foreigner slowly making sense out of our language, hewould penetrate to the new reality with his mind. Perhaps in the veryprocess his being would change its structure.

  In the end he would be in a unique position. He would have the memoriesof one Reality, and the experiences of a new one. He would have thelanguage of the old with which to describe the new to his oldcompanions. Could he do it so they would comprehend it?

  It would do him no good simply to invent new words to describe somethingbeyond the experience of his old companions. He would have to describesomething beyond their experience with words and sentences they hadcreated to describe only what they had gained from their own experience!How could he hope to make them gain a true understanding of it?

  He might tell them simply and truthfully everything he experienced--andit might come out utter nonsense! It probably would. Unless he couldbring back some of the evidence, either intentionally or unwittingly.

  At first that evidence might present a pattern of utter nonsense andcontradiction with known thought patterns and concepts. It might presentseemingly normal events in nonsense sequences. It might presentimpossible events in seemingly normal sequences. It might even presentdisjointed events in sequence.

  What it would present would be only what the screen of the senses andthe screen of the mind could accept. Underneath would be a perfectlyorderly pattern of events of some sort, behaving according to differentnatural laws in conflict with those we have existed under. Slowly wemight penetrate to an understanding of them, but not at first, becauseat first they would be completely UNTHINKABLE.

  In this story, UNTHINKABLE, an attempt has been made to depict such aconflict of nature and human mentality. It is not the ordinary sciencefiction attempt. It is not new laws working in harmony with old, or newdiscoveries that fit into the old pattern. It is, if you please, anutterly alien bit of reality in conflict with the old.

  The story cannot but be inadequate. It is the froth and foam of thestruggle. It is the parts that fit into the words and phrases andse
ntences. You won't like it at all--unless you have the type of mindthat can reach a little way beyond experience. And though what you may"see" may have no counterpart in all reality, if this story serves toexpand your mental horizons, it has at least found an excuse for beingwritten.

  --ROG PHILLIPS

  Dr. Nale Hargrave tossed his spotless grey hat expertly across the sixfeet of space between him and the coat tree, humming the while acurrently popular tune whose only words he could remember were "Feemofimo fujo, the flumy fwam to fwojo."

  His eyes rested self-congratulatingly on the hat after it came to a safestop, then turned to beam an instant at his receptionist before hecontinued on to his office.

  She smiled after him with an affectionate, indulgent look, gave him aslong as it took her to powder her nose and tuck a few stray hairs intoplace, then pressed the buzzer that signaled to quarantine that thedoctor was ready to