He was a green hand, not yet experienced. Yet he would be given the 333rd lay of the profits from the whaling ship, should he choose to accept the adventure. He had applied to John H. Jones, Agent of the Cold Spring Whaling Company, sending a letter back in time 174 years. He was not sure if it would be received. But a response came, as time and space do not matter.
Cap’n Enos accepted the lad. What water would they sail? The South Pacific? Acheron? The North Atlantic? Styx? What whales to be sought? What strange Leviathan to be slain? Time? Space? No, both nonexistent. So: Death?
The breach of the whale could be fearsome in life. But what is life? To suffer? Could the great whale not only save the soul and take on the harpoons and spears of existence and reduce them to mere instruments of a simulated death, and could not the great whale prove the immortality of the soul and reduce the existence of space-time to merely, again, a simulation?
“The universe is infinite, and there are infinite universes; and as there is one dimension, there are infinite dimensions,” said the oracle of the bow, named Captain Hubert. “The whale is in all time. Is infinite. How is one expected to slay the whale, much less catch the whale?” The lad had no answer in himself.
The boat must be in all times, in all space, in all dimensions. The boat must become one with the whale and exist outside of all space-time. It ultimately does not matter. The vessel is of no shape. The universes spin around the scrimshaw.
The ship sails outward from this dimension into uncharted land. But land is not land. It is formless and void. The two-dimensionality of water becomes the infinity of nothingness. The infinity of everything. The voyager has no form. The lad becomes consciousness.
Instruments to whittle away time become meaningless in the absence of time.
An anchor is not a cable of heavy iron. It does not keep the ship tethered to one place. The anchor is the harpoon. It becomes tethered to the whale. It becomes tethered to the universes.
The lad becomes tethered to the infinite with the harpoon, as though there is a tether! The blubber always shifts. The whale always shifts. A sure shot is never quite what it seems to be.
As there is no time, time is eternal. Many have sought to kill the whale. To capture the whale. To harpoon the whale. To anchor themselves. Whaling stories invariably exaggerate the truth. In essence, here, Nathan Swain merely killed representations of the whale, so saith Ishmael. He was not close to the truth.
The lance is an instrument of death, and therefore life. Once anchored to the infinite, life is nothing. However, is not meaningless; it is the opposite. It is the most meaningful of all things. The lance brings the whale to death, but as we have become the whale outside the universes, the lance pierces us. The lance has pierced the lad. He becomes part of the infinite.
The lance is a majestic, yet crude, instrument. It’s force comes from God Himself. Its design was ordained from God. It allows us to become the infinite. To slay the Leviathan. The lad has Him on his side.
Whale oil surrounds us. It surrounds our placenta, our known universe. Tapping a small amount of this oil allows us to see into the fifth dimension, light. What comes from light? What lies beyond light?
“And he is anchored in the infinite. He has slain the Leviathan. He is one with the universes. Outside of your dimensions,” said the oracle known as Captain Gregg. “The lad has sailed away. He has received his 333rd lay. But he will never know it. But in this, he has always known it. You must be content with that. That is all to be said.”
Whalemen wanted. The voyage does not conclude. Will you be content with that?
[For Casey]
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