The Orange Void

The story goes, a student once asked a Buddhist master whether the identity reincarnated or only the dharma. More plainly, is there continuity of the physical body’s consciousness in some form, or just recreation of the circumstances implying the spiritual dilemmas in conscious beings’ lives?

The master’s answer has been interpreted to mean, “You are asking the wrong question.” Despite its intention to be noncommittal, this answer is generally regarded as a good one. I think I might concur that wrapping this answer up too neatly halts critical thinking and doesn’t actually serve us.

With that being said, I want to tell you a little about Vot the Destroyer. He is a cunning, sadistic, bad soul. Well, maybe, “bad” is too harsh to generally categorize his soul, but he’s at least “naughty.”

He was worshiped as my servant in Ancient Egypt. I’ll confirm a few millenia after the fact that he really was Bast’s servant, my servant, at least. His duty was to protect the food stores from vermin, and he liked his job. He liked his job a little too much, maybe, but the people were thankful and came to worship him as a minor divinity, which did not offend me. His incarnation was mummified and interred in a tomb of some stature, eventually.

He honestly derived a perverse pleasure from carrying out his duties in the flesh, though, to the point that he immediately petitioned me for another incarnation at his death. I had to think twice, because of a sadistic streak in his function. He would become giddy, and hop up and around, and toss his mortal opponents in the air like rag dolls. He was violent when there was no purpose in it, even, for the sake of gratifying his ego. Given how he was loved, though. I more or less flipped a coin, and I acquiesced with a bit of reservation. Each incarnation, he became more sadistic, and more cunning, but he dutifully carried out the role I set to him.

In one of the great plagues of Europe, he killed literally thousands of vermin. He enjoyed it, but I felt I owed him a debt. His previous incarnations had all been dumb, in the sense of language, but I taught him to speak a single word. This knowledge was easily rediscovered in his future incarnations. He could speak a single word of greeting, almost unique among his brothers and sisters.

He was a serial rapist. He had his way with whom he chose, but certain norms were not in place for him the same way, or at that time. I became frustrated with him, and I had many of his future incarnations castrated. For both his and others’ safety, he was often effectively under arrest in his own home.

The irony was, for all the violence, he loved me. I felt bad for him, and I taught him to operate the mechanisms in his confines that kept him out of rooms in his own home, to the surprise of his keepers, and he was marked as different from his brothers and sisters in another regard.

I broke down and granted him a human incarnation, once. That didn’t go well. We don’t talk about that, anymore.

I almost couldn’t think of a better servant of mine to send to watch and guard Daniel, though. “Vot” and Daphne watch over him, today, and they report back on the doings of the Strano household. “Vot” still rapes Daphne, and he still likes to break the necks of baby rabbits mercilessly and fling their bodies up in the air, but it’s really hard to stay angry at him. It’s really hard to call him a “bad kitty.”

The “Many Worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests to us that he will live to see himself worshiped as an immortal god, again. I fear for the galaxy.