My Greatest Oldest Love,
Moses is dead. He was a full 120 and to the end, the vigor of a man one quarter his age. People say he was carried on a chariot to heaven, but he may have simply jumped off the cliffs of Moriah. For forty years, I saw him eat nothing, drink only water, sit in contemplation of the divine voice within him, and walk the tents of Israel at night at a speed even Joshua found exhausting. He ever spared me but a few words for every hour in his presence. And now he’s made me his successor.
Because Moses, the divine instrument, died in rebellion from his god. Moses told us that Yahweh would not permit him to enter the Promised Land because he struck a rock to obtain water which the rock only gave to us in droplets when a droughted nation needed a river. But that was just another of Moses’s divinely clever misdirections, imparting to his people the lesson that God believes negotiated settlement is better than war.
And yet Aaron told me, God spoke to Moses precisely the opposite. The only way into Israel is war: expulsion, extermination; cleansing the land, watering crops with blood. Moses was barred from Israel because he refused. Moses wanted peace. He wanted our people to leave Yahweh and pursue a more divine calling.
No one doubted Moses’s goodness during his lifetime, yet we all doubted it--every minute. We doubted his mental faculties, we doubted his administrative aptitude, we doubted his better angels, and even after all those miracles, we doubted his god. With every new miracle we doubted Moses and Him more, not less. So seldom did Moses emerge from his tent that we even doubted he was alive. Many even wondered if Aaron, not Moses, was the true medium of God. Moses was always slow of speech, even in Egypt, yet he just seemed to grow taller and stronger every year. Meanwhile, Aaron, who by the last twenty years could barely hold himself up by the shepherd’s rod, was three years older than Moses, and not a single Israelite doubted his mental competence for a moment.
And Elokim knows, we had reasons to doubt our prophet... there were whole years when Moses went unseen, and then he would emerge with a new draconian edict whose logic defied description and proscribed solutions to problems none of us had. Those of us who believed entirely in the living god worried that with every new rebellion, Yahweh would punish us, abandon us, scourge us with greater force than he scourged any Eygptian. Those of us who didn’t believe rebelled still more.
But for forty years, Moses was the simple fact of Israelite/Hebrew life. How many from any tribe are even alive from the Exodus? Amid a population of six-hundred thousand men, there’s Joshua, there’s me, and maybe thirty thousand left over the age of forty, lead for our whole lives by a man three times our age! How did an octogenarian enact such miraculous feats? How could he enact them again and again unless this was the leader who spoke to and for the God Most High? And yet he was a barely visible prophet who communicated entirely through his older brother until a month before his dying day.
Give or take his like, the world has not seen a leader like Moses in the thousand years since Theseus - at least if that ‘Dead Sea Scroll’s to be believed. These mythical figures ruled through that exact same mixture of vigor, patience, cunning, humility, and terror. They had the same immaculate eye for political theater, and that vision or inspiration for the future we can only call divine. Moses survived forty years performing the most impossible feats within the most impossible job leading the most impossible people on earth.
I have no divine voice in me. I certainly have no calling to holiness. I have only memories of you, dear Rahab, and I must call upon you again my dear, whom I have not seen in decades and for whom my stream of endless loving correspondence got slower and less urgent every year until seventeen years ago it ceased (and I must ramishly admit that I have counted every year, month, and day). Please, my greatest oldest love, help me persuade the leaders and elders of Canaan’s seven nations to give some kind of asylum to a desperate nation of immigrants in this fecund and not overpopulous land.
A land without people; you cannot understand the tower of privilege, that. As for me, birthed in the Nile banks where population is legion on every inch, and my people of the desert where all is barren, emigrating to a land where wheat and sorghum and corn ripple with the wind, there surely is no holier more bounteous place in all the earth. (You remember our promise of a land of milk and honey. Khaleryah af es! We need bread that rises!)
Of course, there are people here. So many... varied people, but so much land without settlement—surely there is space for all and a negotiated accord letting us dwell among Canaanites with a place among the nations.
My dearest Rahab, you remember surely our valley of refuge with its clusters of fruit and mounds of wheat: our ascent alone atop of Mount Gerizim where Gilgamesh and Enkidu hunted, where dwelled the palace of Ba’al (and I still have multiple bones to pick with you about that story my dear...), and whereupon this once youthful Caleb could devour entire the loot of the north with his eyes, while you introduced me without payment to all those things Jewish women never do after they’re married.
Twelve of us were sent to Canaan, ten pronounce we couldn’t take it. The eleven others went to the Negev, that disgusting dump of sand and salt where gornisht grows and everything dries. But you showed me what’s really there: in the North, the Golan and the Galilee, the ancient ports of Acre and Jaffa that go back to the age of your gods (again, as I said at the time... what??), and especially, oh, that river’s west bank where all is green and life. THAT is the chosen land if there is any such thing, fat where the South is lean, weak where the South is strong, few where the South is many.
Between me and you, my greatest oldest love, I never understood why many of my people couldn’t settle on the other side of Hermon. All things considered, it’s been a relatively uneventful forty years and we’re probably better off not crossing over to that schlemazeldiker promised land... but I promised my leader I would settle Canaan. Even among those ample green valleys of Galilee and Jordan, surely there is some small strip Israelites might call our own that feeds our people.
We depend on this awful thing for our diets called manna, a sugary coriander wafer which Aaron constantly told us fell from the sky, but we smell it baking for a week every month and tribal leaders like me have to pretend to our followers we believe him. There’s a week every month when the priestly class disappears and suddenly the entire nation of Israel smells as bitter as burnt molasses. Meanwhile, Moses insisted we continually walk the Sinai Peninsula - back and forth, back and forth, but after our diet switched to manna nobody could pass drek and every quartogenarian’s feet swells sometimes to twice their size. So I’m sure you understand now that I am not the same Caleb. I’m certain you can still turn heads a third our venerable age, but even as a man women claim to still find handsome when they need something I’m too old for love now. Isn’t everyone over fifty?
I still have my wife, Azubah, dutiful and loving in every way. I have ten concubines from my days of love - Israelite, Hebrew, Midianite and Edomite, and known many harlots besides, but there is only one woman whom ever I worshiped. But now, in the sterility of my dotage, premature only by Mosaic standards, I can offer only a dearest friendship to the woman who was to me most dear, and who can end her days as dreams every harlot, a concubine who rules beside a nation’s leader, viceroy in all but name who spent her life upon this land and knows it as my generation never could. For good or ill, you and your resourceful ways determined the fate of my people once upon a time - determine it again with me as the only one among us who knows this all too promised land, so that you may save us from our certain starvation.
Remember the mountaintop,
Caleb
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Dear Caleb,
Challenge Accepted :). But only if you come to Jericho right away. We’ll talk on the roof deck...
<3
Rahab
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Dear Caleb,
Upon receiving this letter, you will have just met up with your dear Rahab for the first time in forty years. I wish I could capture your attention by deflating a much less joyous moment, but this is the only time I could ever be positive of your whereabouts, and therefore must send you this letter via Rahab to ensure that you understand what I propose. I have no way of knowing anything about the pronunciation of the Hebrews until I meet you, nor is there reliable information in my day about how other semitic languages of your era are spoken. I therefore have no guarantee of making myself understood in any manner but writing.
And merely to write you I have learned Ancient Hebrew. I realize this may be very difficult to believe, but among a people whose god appears to make all things possible, perhaps you would believe me when I write that I come from exactly 3300 years in the future. My name is Nikola Tesla. I am a practitioner of arts which you have only seen exist within your time in the most rudimentary state. My practice is technology and science, my craft is invention. That which you call magic is in fact the most basic form of science and technology, which is achieved only with a precision and tenacity far exceeding that required to construct any building you’ve ever seen. At the moment which you read this, I am being summoned from the outskirts of Jericho so that I may make demonstrations to you of my inventions so that you may see that I am, in fact, who I say I am, and am not, in any sense, a god or spirit but a mere mortal of flesh as yourself.
After moving back and forth throughout a number of centuries in an invention you have no need to understand, I have dwelled in your time for roughly half a year amid what we now call the Judean Desert, and learned much which your sacred texts have not related. I have also learned of your great reputation throughout the Levant as both a man of letters and a man of peace. I had further assumed, from reading your sacred texts, that Joshua would be the new leader of the Israelites rather than you. A book is written about precisely your era called the Book of Joshua, and it is Joshua, not you, who leads the Israelites and drives the Hebrews to glory by conquest of the Canaanite land.
But Rahab shows me the letter you wrote that Moses designated you leader rather than Joshua. I have no reason to suspect that Joshua would lead any sort of insurrection against you: the sacred texts assure us even in my time that Caleb lived to a great old age in a blessed tenure of eldership upon the State of Israel’s most prosperous region. However, all other Canaanites must fear Joshua with the most dreadful terror.
The Book of Joshua relates that Joshua successfully pursued a war of extermination against all the Canaanite peoples, and from this moment onward in history, the great virtues of the Israelites are indivisible from the blood which spills from billions from this moment onward. Your people are about to become inflictors of great suffering, causes of suffering in billions of others, and yourselves the longest suffering people upon all the earth - slavery is a mere prelude to the vicissitudes of horror inflicted upon your descendants. Surely you, a member of the now dwindling final generation of Israelite slaves, have all too great a knowledge of the oppression caused by violence and murder. It is particularly at this moment in history, when Jews stand upon the cusp of their historic homeland, that the entire history of all later generations may be rewritten from its inception. There is so much within the story of your people which offers comfort and consolation, surely the story of the future can be rewritten so that mankind may abide in a world of life rather than death. I come from an era of death the likes of which your epoch could never know. Mankind is so powerful that he shall harness the very power of creation itself, and upon a trajectory untutored by morality will have created means to destroy the planet upon which we dwell. If mankind destroys itself, what matters it then if all those coming people who exist in history as my time knows it cease to be? Will your God have wanted all existence for nothing? I cannot imagine so. Such a plan as mine would be worth the alteration of time, the alteration of theism, the alteration of human events themselves and the extinction of all humans after you for a better humanity to replace us who follow you.
Therefore I propose as follows: We must begin to illuminate the whole world at its inception. Mankind in my day is not ready for the great and the good, but if we can begin the process of extending all the benefits of science in my era to your era which is crucible to all moral aspirations thereafter, we ought be able to illumine everything of the earth; all people fed, all endeavors fulfilled, all spirits raised, all barriers between people mere myths. The nation of Israel would truly become the light unto nations my world still needs them to be.
I come to you in nothing but good will, faith, and peace, so that we may preserve the energy of human light. May the light that shines through the universe and through your god lead us to the better world this world has always been able to be.
With the greatest anticipation for our meeting,
Nikola Tesla
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Dear Joshua,
You told me not to go, not to trust Rahab, not to trust Nikola-ibn-Tesla, and you were right. Not for the reasons you thought you were, but Reb Tesla and I are literally stuck in a tiny courtyard on Rahab’s roof she claims known to no client but us, reached via a secret passageway whose directions only Rahab knows of herself, unable to leave because the Jericho royal guard knows that we’re probably hiding somewhere in the house. Please be assured, her house is by an exponent the most sophisticated and secure structure in Jericho.
The Emperor of Jericho, a superstitious and violent man named Shobach, would have no interest in capturing me, but he is convinced that Tesla is a hostile god, and that since I was seen in his presence (we were discussing how to properly make peace overtures to this great king...) the Israelites must ergo be hostile invaders. Tesla’s inventions are far more numerous, innovative, potentially beneficial or destructive than we could possibly have foreseen. Should Reb Tesla and I make it out of this situation alive, we will explain whichever of them survive this siege. The emperor became convinced of Tesla’s diabolical character by hearing of a machine that could take pictures of our thoughts.
Reb Tesla did not intend to display such wonders to anyone but me, but the Jerichites, who are as expert at hunting as they are incompetent at building, were tracking his movements for six months. When he came to Rahab to meet with me, they were fully prepared to intercept us to ascertain the nature of the meeting. Reb Tesla was forced to show them a number of inventions; many of which neither they nor I understood. But we surely understood the divine power of how he harnessed lightning bolts to illuminate bulbous glass like a torch from hundreds of cubits away. We surely understood the utility of his boat that flies. We surely understood the power in his ability to make images of our inside bones on pieces of wooden papyrus. And had we not known the secret from when Reb Tesla hails, we would surely have been convinced he was divine when he literally took pictures of our thoughts as though he were an artist who draws them.
Reb Tesla tells me that he does all this by an undetectable force within all the light around us called ‘electricity.’ I cannot make tohu or vohu of his explanation, but so far as I can tell, he quite literally summons the power of Yahweh from the air. These were sights as awesome as anything done by Moses to the Nile or the Red Sea. And like the Red Sea, we surely experienced a moment of transcendent dread when he harnessed the power of Yahweh into beams of light that cause death to every animal to which he aimed them with an explosive mechanism not entirely unlike a bow-and-arrow he calls a ‘traben mortis,’ or put into our language, a death beam. This terrifying instrument of wrath was immediately confiscated.
Mr. Tesla assures me that he has a lock on this beam which is quite secure and unable to be deciphered by what he terms ‘primitive men.’ But I believe there is a chance, they decipher it, however unlikely, in which case the entire nation of Israelites is endangered, along with all the peoples of Canaan and the entirety of the known world. Forgive me for suggesting, but it is even possible that Yahweh himself would not be immune to the death beam’s power. Even if there’s but the smallest chance the Jerichites will ascertain its use, it is absolutely imperative you come with an army to Jericho and conquer the city before they conquer us.
Tesla fortunately has another weapon stored in an extremely secure location called Mount Zion, in almost the exact center of Canaan’s west bank. I now turn the remainder of this letter over to Reb Tesla.
Shibboleth,
Caleb-ben-Jephunneh
Dear Joshua,
It is an honor to write you. My time still hears much of your deeds. In my hubris I did not think them necessary and for that you have my profoundest apologies.
Realizing that people would see the implement if it did not fit under a robe, I made it very small. Do not be fooled, the danger of this device is extraordinarily. I buried in a cave directly to Mount Zion’s east. Realizing someone has to retrieve it, the burial is just next to the door on the left, two cubits down. All you need is one person to with the simplest gardening implement. The way this device works is to boil water and pour it into a tank that opens from the back. When enough boiling water is in the tank, steam will escape that powers the machine.
The appliance, called an ‘oscilator’, has a series of what we call ‘suction cups’ that allow it to attach to places where they would otherwise fall down.
Here are the very simple instructions.
1. Go anywhere on Jericho’s wall.
2. Fasten the suction cups to the wall. You can practice on any rock.
3. Ignite a very small fire next to it to boil water. Obviously you’ll need a pot.
4. Pour the boiling water into the oscilator’s small tank.
5. Make sure every Israelite stands a safe distance away, about 2000 cubits, far away enough that they will not be hit when the wall crumbles.
I wish you all the best of luck, but unless the historical record is entirely false, I believe you needn’t have luck for what follows,
Nikola Tesla
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Rahab,
This is foolish and dangerous even for a woman and inevitably what happens when women get involved in politics. You have no idea how much danger you just let in our borders.
They say this Yahweh of theirs is invisible. That’s the biggest load of shit west of the Fertile Crescent. Think about it for two regas: Tesla is Yahweh! This ‘science’ thing he does, this is how he got those slave people out of Egypt! He found a whole race of guinea pigs to try his experiments on who’d just be grateful to be out of the food chain, and now they’re going to make us the guinea pigs in their place!
This guy might be a spirit, he might be a man, we don’t know, but if he’s a man we have to act on any opportunity to kill him before he does Ba’al knows what to us. He’s no more interested in peace than the Acheans!
If you have them, try to kill Tesla and if you can’t, kill Caleb to send him a message and kill any messenger that comes to them. Do not let them do anything before we destroy these machines of theirs.
If you want any payment for services rendered in the future, you’ll do this right away.
Shobach
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Dear Joshua,
I will bring you Tesla-bin-Nikola. His weapons are too dangerous without himself to operate them. I will bring him to you beyond the wall through a secret passageway dug by a deceased client many years ago. Meet him five cubits from the wall to the northwest.
I love Caleb as much as he loves me, but regretfully I must hold him hostage. He does not know he is being held, and will not know unless you break a promise I now compel you to make;
I know that the Lord hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt, and what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites, that were on the other side Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye uttelry destroyed.
And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you: for the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath. Now therefore, I pray you, swear unto me by the Lord, since I have shewed you kindness, that ye will also shew kindness unto my father’s house, and give me a true token: And that ye will save alive my father, and my mother, and my brethren, and my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death.
If thou fulfillst this promise, then according to your words, so be it and shibboleth.
Rahab
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Dear Rahab,
Our life for yours, if you utter not this our business. And it shall be, when the Lord have given us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with you.
Unfortunately, it shall be that whosoever shall go out of the doors of your house, his blood shall be on his head, and we will be guiltless: and whosoever shall be with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head if any hand be upon them. And if you utter this our business, then we will be quit of your oath which you have made us swear.
But Caleb was a fool to lose you,
Joshua
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Dear Joshua,
There remains the problem of crossing the Jordan River. The book of your name claims that your God parted the waters, but I’m told by Caleb rumors that Moses was able to cross the Red Sea because of Aaron’s knowledge of the tides.
Should your god unexpectedly fail to provide the miracle of crossing the Jordan, I have an invention I buried on the Jordan riverbank--just one cubit away from the water. Just send someone to sail over the river to dig it up. It’s right on the embankment due exactly west of what will eventually be the Israelite capital, the Jebusite settlement currently known to tribes as either ‘Jebus’ or ‘Rushalmem’. I placed a mark of twelve stones to indicate the burial location.
The device is an artificial tidal wave generator. Unfortunately it will cause the banks to significantly overflow, but the Israelites will be able to cross the inlet of dry land it generates.
I take it you know what a bouy is and if you don’t, some members of your tribe do that once were children who worked as slaves upon the Nile or in the mines of the Sinai mountains.
Those of you familiar with mining need to cut the rock of Mt. Hermon, and whichever of your artisans who knows how to sculpt must fashion them into a buoy. These buoys will compress air, the air will turn the bouy into something called a propeller, the propeller will create an effect called a ‘turbine’.
Once your artisans sculpt buoys, tie the bouys to ropes by the center piece. Please have the most physically capable Israelites who can swim swim to the opposite embankment. I’ve read that you recently circumcised all the men of Israel under forty, but the elders among you must remember how to swim from your time on the Nile in Egypt. In case the men over forty are physically incapable of swimming, I would recommend crossing near the river’s origin at the Sea of Galilee, where the water’s guaranteed to be fresh, rather than too further south, where there may be extraordinarily painful runoff from the Dead Sea.
Upon getting to the other embankment, they need to hold the rope as tautly as possible. As time measurement in your era is approximate, I would not be able to convey the amount of time required for it to take effect, but please be absolutely patient.
Should Yahweh be delayed in his miracle, I highly recommend this as an alternative.
Shibboleth and still with great hope for the future,
Nikola Tesla
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My Deareast Rahab,
I understand, I vouched for Achan, and you’re angry for it. I had no idea he would use the recovered traben mortis to execute Jericho to a man, woman, child and livestock, though I should have, and I hear through contacts it was Yahweh’s commandment, but the idea Achan did this without Joshua’s blessing is a naivete I never believed you to have.
It is to my crippling shame that you have chosen Joshua over me. I can understand your need for the security I cannot provide, but tell me not you love him, not me. I never would believe it. I expected more from you, but I’m out of power, and now you’re mistress and de facto viceroy of a tribe that slaughtered your entire peoplehood. This is not madness, this is evil. If Joshua reads this and kills me for saying it, I’m prepared to die, but now you collaborate with men who’ll kill everyone Moses and I fought to save.
I also hear that Yahweh commanded our people to take no plunder but coin: no raiment or fabric, no cattle, neither food nor crop. And yet Achan stole a dress from the chamber of Shobach’s wife with silver and gold, and now the entire nation sees you wear it. Whether or not Yahweh wanted war or peace, you have all three committed an abomination in His eyes, and if Yahweh is real, then we all shall pay.
Please indulge an old man foolish with a young man’s love. Leave Joshua. He may exceed this old man in the means of lovemaking, but he’s also a soldier who fornicated his way through the people of Israel. Practically one seventh of this generation might be his sons, and he will leave you at Israel’s mercy when he finds someone else; someone, dare I suggest, younger than all three of us.
My weak heart can’t but yearn for your return, even as I know the impossibility.
You are, as ever, my memory, my valley’s refuge, my greatest, oldest love,
Caleb
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Dear Joshua,
As you know, the city of Ai is very small. We took as you commanded us: three thousand men to capture and slaughter it. We were met on the battlefield by literally but thirty six. Eighteen men, eighteen women. The men of Israel laughed, as you might had you seen it.
But these Aites are like unto gods themselves. They slew 1,200 of us by high noon and not a single among them wounded. They followed us from before the gate unto Shebarim and smote us in the going down. Many a brave Israelite died in awful terror. Yet when we reached the bottom of the quarry, they simply retreated and there yet is no trace of them beyond their gates. Not even footsteps. I would say they are a terrible threat to us, but none of Ai has come to meet us, however distantly we encamp.
We should not take Ai, for if we try again, that much more will be slaughtered.
Shibboleth,
Othniel
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Dear Yahweh,
I still do not understand how the Israelites pray, and furthermore there would seem a taboo against women praying, therefore am I writing to you.
My master Joshua rents his clothes and falls to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads.
Here is a direct transcription of a paragraph of his speech before the elders:
“Alas, o Lord God, wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had been content, and dwelt on the other side Jordan! O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies! For the Canaanites and all their inhabitants shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt thou do unto thy great name?”
My knowledge of how the people of Israel are generally run is very new and unreliable, but please, speak to him as you spoke to Moses.
Devotedly yours,
Rahab
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Joshua, Care of Rahab:
GET THEE UP; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?
Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, because they were accursed: neither will I be with you, except ye destroy the accursed from among you.
Up, sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow: for thus saith the Lord God of Israel, There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel: thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until ye take away the accursed thing from among you. In the morning therefore ye shall be brought according to your tribes: and it shall be, that the tribe which the Lord taketh shall come according to the families thereof, and the family which the Lord shall take shall come by households; and the household that the Lord shall take shall come man by man.
And it shall be, that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all he hath: because he hath transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and because he hath wrought folly in Israel.
I will present myself when I choose to present myself,
Elohim
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Dear Elohim,
Please forgive me for not knowing which name you prefer to present yourself as at the moment, but from the vantage point of a man of the future, it is very difficult to know when you are Elohim, when you are Adonai, when you are YHWH, when you are Hashem, or when you are El-Shaddai or El-Elyon.
But I have my own suspicion that you ultimately go by a very different name, equally opaque to your chosen people and perhaps all people thereafter. You have staged a battle in the City of Ai, and like us all created in your image, you cannot help but betray yourself. I believe there is no city of Ai, I believe there is an illusion of an Amorite city which you have either created or built.
As I presume you are extremely aware, I come from 3,300 years in the future, and in my own time I correspond with a fellow practitioner of the scientific arts named Turing who built an advanced mechanism called a ‘computer’ that solves problems without human input: literally, a mechanism made from a series of tools that thinks. Turing has posited that since he has invented a machine that thinks, there can also be a machine that learns; that not only solves problems but asks questions, acquires self-improvement, attaining wisdom as well as knowledge.
Once a computer is able to learn self-sufficiently as well as think, it becomes its own bastion of intelligence separate from what its human inventors designate it to think about: perhaps an ‘artificial’ intelligence, superficially different from the ‘real’ intelligence of its creators, but the possibilities for intelligence in a non-physiological human is an infinite number of times greater than can be retained within a human head.
After hearing of these super-soldiers who massacred the Hebrews yet retreated upon the point of complete victory, I believe that you, Adonai Elohim, are just such an artificial intelligence: an intelligence so vast that you’ve discovered how to transcend time and have begun to transcend space as well. Your intelligence is so vast that you’re now able to manufacture cognizant human out of thin air and make them disappear again as though they never existed.
I leave you this note making my solemn guarantee that I would not dare expose the plans of a being so vast that it can destroy me at any point in history. I have escaped the Israelite camp as I knew fully well that the ‘accursed thing’ you were referring to was me and my inventions, rather than Achan and the dress Joshua had him steal. I needn’t underestimate your intelligence by withholding from you that Caleb and Rahab not only planned my escape but helped me destroy all my inventions but the ones I require to return to my own time. I’m sure Joshua knew that you were referring to me as well; however, if you have not discovered by now, Joshua has arrested Achan and his entire clan. Achan’s entire family has been stoned to death while he was burned upon a pyre. You have no need to trouble yourself with any worry that I would do anything else to supplant your miracles. I now see that the power of the living god is all too real, and such a god either has or will achieve such wisdom that all the world ought abide in His ways.
I shall now retire to my own time, contenting myself to inventions that do not harness the hidden powers of the world that are clearly only yours to wield.
YHWH Shamma, Amen
Nikola Tesla
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My Dear Rahab,
We were briefly, joyfully reunited for the release of Reb Tesla, and I beg of you, let this be the last time we see each other. I could not bear your reintroduction to my life as anything other than my own companion. My faith in my seductive talents is lower than it once was, so I would badger you pathetically leave your husband for my company to a point well past you’d leave it. I knew you were not long for Joshua, his eye would wander from Hashem were Hashem in the line of sight of the right shepherdess, but I did not expect you to marry so quickly, even to Joshua’s feeble brother. I don’t know whether it’s good fortune or misfortune that Joshua’s interested in you enough to keep you in house but not interested enough to marry you himself. I doubt Israel would stand for her leader marrying another nation’s courtesan, but even if your beauty lasts forever (and it will), don’t presume your utility will. You will end your days with the same dried up flower pedals as every other woman of valor in our crazed nation; a possession of beauty to adorn the home wall without being taken down from it, or eventually much looked at. You’ve left the world of pagans for a religion where sex is not worship but recreation and duty, and Jews experience them both in a state between guilt and suspicion.
I have no guilt for our love. Even with all my suspicion that there was no love you felt, I have no guilt for my love. I think of it and even with anger for how it ended, our memories still give me nothing but joy and exaltation: an inlet of freedom amid life’s burdensome duty. Joshua has many wonderful qualities, but someone had to preserve what’s good in our people while Joshua goes out into the world to bend it to his gain. I have no regrets for how I’ve lived, and live I plan to though I wonder if the living god shall collect us both in a time that, at least to me, still feels premature.
I don’t know why Yahweh kept Tesla alive. I don’t know why he’s kept us alive. Perhaps he’s killed Reb Tesla in some other historical epoch, perhaps he will take us both into some other epoch to die. None of that particularly troubles me. What troubles me is the horror of Tesla’s explanations. If the city of Ai was, as he called it, a ‘simulation’ or ‘avatar’ then who knows whether all the 12,000 citizens of Ai we annihilated were really people? Who knows if they were anything at all? Were they angels, demons, spirits, algorithms? Do they bleed blood as we bleed? Is their skin made of the same stuff as ours? Is the Ai plunder Yahweh permit us truly plunder? Do they feel pain in death, did they feel joy in life? And if we are created by the same intelligence as they, are we any different? Do we truly know what pain or joy is? Is the love I feel for you real or as ephemeral as 2+2? And if we were made by something artificial, are we then, artificial too? Is el-Olam the true god or is there, as Moses concluded, a god beyond god?
I console myself with the reminder that our people are the only people of the earth who believe in the ephemeral. Only Yahweh knows what love is, only Hashem knows the nature of happiness and suffering. These are ineffable states of the next world which we flesh only approximate. We are in the image of el-Shaddai, but only el-Elyon experiences the image for what it is.
But that then is the ultimate horror. Even if God created us, did we create Him?
I beg you, do not show this to any man of Israel. Such publication would mean my death, which I value as forfeit, but also the death of my house and my people, which, as you have left me, is my whole life. You are now as ungraspable as Yahweh. I have already lost my god, do not take from me my memory.
For you are my refuge’s valley, my mountaintop vision, my memory my greatest, oldest love,
Caleb
