A couple of nights ago I was sitting in my porch enjoying the dying embers of the day; it was a particularly beautiful night, temperature in the mid-70s and a pleasant breeze blowing from the south. Added to this, a gibbous moon, a couple of days past full, was hanging over the eastern horizon and a few trails of cirrus were vainly seeking to obscure its face. It was an evening of great splendor and thoroughly deserving of a glass or two of bubbly in celebration. Admiration of Nature’s beauty and perhaps the alcohol had put me in a pensive mood. In the background there was some music playing on my iPhone/Bose speaker system, magically connected through a Bluetooth link (whatever that means!). It was playing something by Gounod as I recall, and perhaps for this reason I found myself thinking of Faust, that legendary scholar made famous in literature and music by Goethe and aforementioned Gounod. Initially he was an idealist before becoming disillusioned, as many of us are. He found a way to make a deal with the devil in which he committed his soul to eternal damnation in return for power and knowledge in this life. If memory serves, all did not go well for the good doctor; but I digress…
Perhaps it was this music and those thoughts of dealing with the devil that put me in the mood for what happened next. Out of nowhere, it seemed, I heard what appeared to be a voice, and the weird thing was it seemed to be close by and actually addressing me. As I said, it was a clear, moonlit night and on looking out into my fenced yard I could see nary a soul, nor could I see either of my immediate neighbors to the north and south in their yards; presumably they were safely tucked in their beds, or perhaps communing with Charlie Rose or one of the other late-night TV pundits. So I presumed that the bubbly was affecting my judgment and I had been hearing things and so I continued my contemplations and my sipping.
And then it came once more, louder and clearer this time.
“Good evening, Michael,” was uttered very plainly. “I am sorry to disturb your reverie; could I persuade you to listen to a proposition that I have for you?”
You can imagine the creepy feeling that came over me; a disembodied voice was invading my solitude.
“But where are you? I cannot see anybody in the neighborhood. Should I be scared?’
“Please try to be calm, Michael, and look down near your feet; you will see me there.”
And so I craned my neck, not having any idea what to look for, and at first I could see nothing, but then I caught sight of what appeared to be a tiny doll-sized figure close to my right foot. Could this be what I was being told to look at? I was gob-smacked in the extreme.
As if reading my thoughts the voice came again.
“Yes, I am the figure on the floor near to your feet. I am sorry that what you see is just a caricature of my real self, but it is the best we can do at the moment.”
Imagine my consternation: who are the “we” referred to and what had been done to something to produce this small apparition which was associated with a pleasantly modulated voice speaking in perfect English. I pulled myself together and resolved to play along. If one of the kids in the neighborhood was playing a particularly clever practical joke I did not wish to look stupid.
“Yes, I see what you mean. But, since you wish us to converse and you seem to know my name, perhaps you would be kind enough to introduce yourself.” I ventured.
“Of course, please excuse my rudeness, my name is Mephistopheles.” He replied.
This name rocked me back on my heels, even if only metaphorically.
“You are the devil? The devil you are!” I blurted out in a poor attempt at levity to cover up the sudden feeling of anxiety that had come upon me. Could it be that my thinking of Faust and the devil had conjured up the satanic one himself? And what about the proposition that was alluded to-was I to be offered a Faustian bargain?
“No, Michael that is a mistake that many people make. I am not the Devil; I am a trained lawyer in her employ-the Devil’s advocate, you might say.” There was a hint of a chuckle at this point, in which I joined. At least this miniature fellow had a sense of humor similar to my own.
“What do you want with me, and why did you say it is the best that we can do now?”
“Two very big questions, Michael, but I will try to give you answers that will satisfy you. Let me answer the second question first.”
“Before you start, I think I am going to need a little extra fortification so allow me go to the fridge and refill my glass,. Is there is anything that I can bring for you?”
“I am good, thank you Michael,” came the formal, if grammatically-flawed, response.
Having refreshed my glass to the brim, I returned to the porch more than a little apprehensively, sat down, breathed deeply and asked him to continue.
“Well, by the phrase ‘the best we can do’, I was alluding to the fact that what you are seeing in front of you is a distorted representation of my true self. I believe that my friends and colleagues would tell you that the physical me cuts a most imposing figure; the color red suits me particularly well, I am told. What you are visualizing is a poor holographic image of me, and it is poor because our technology for the process of image displacement across universes is still being perfected.”
“Holography? Across universes?” In my fear I seemed to be incapable of making good sentences. “Do you mean that you are from another galaxy?”
“Once more you are confused, Michael, kindly listen carefully to what I say. Transposition from another galaxy would not require inter-universe displacement. The planet whereon I, the Devil, and the rest of her disciples exist is part of a galactic formation in another universe, parallel to yours, in a certain way.”
“But how could you possibly travel from one universe to another? It takes us months to travel to Mars, one of our planetary neighbors!” I asked, in open-mouthed confusion.
“You seem to have forgotten, Michael, or maybe you were not listening carefully, that what you have in front of you is not Mephistopheles the person, but a holographic image of him, and a crude one at that. What has traveled from my universe to yours is a composite of reconstructed wave fronts generated by a coherent light beams scanning across a recording medium that contained my hologram. Since you do not know what the real me looks like, you will have to take my word for it that I am a much more imposing figure than what you see before you.” He said this in a tone that was both haughty and proud.

This talk about coherent light and wave fronts was something that I knew about and it helped to allay my fear.
“Hmm, I see your point about light carrying the image; in about an hour that image could cross about a trillion kilometers, which is quite a distance. I have dipped into Brian Greene’s books about cosmology and these have made me aware of the ideas of the existence of parallel universes, or multiverses. But I am still not clued in as to how light is able to cross from one universe to another, or why, having done so, your reconstructed image is not as imposing as you would wish it to be.”
“Well, Michael, you would also have seen in the Greene books that transference of matter, including light, from one universe to another is forbidden. However, as clever as your present-day physicists are, they are a long way behind ours. In fact, Greene’s, and others’ postulations and theories of the make-up of the universe are rudimentary at best. They are ideas from our distant past. However, Greene has one thing almost right, which is that inter-universe transposition is difficult, but not impossible. However, fortunately for us, it is commonplace in physics that events that are strictly forbidden in theory can be to some extent allowed under appropriate conditions. The proof is what you see in front of your eyes, this representation of me is here because photons from my planet in my universe have arrived here and have reconstructed my image. However, and I repeat, the technique is not yet perfected and thus you do not see me in my full magnificence, unfortunately for you. By the way, speaking of Mr. Greene and your cosmology community, are you acquainted with the books of that Lisa Randall person? She is also a cosmologist, but her uppity name-dropping severely distracts one from her prose.”
“Yes, I read her presumptuously-titled book ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ and I certainly agree with your characterization.”
At that moment, without any warning the air around me seemed to be filled with a light perfume and suddenly the Mephistophelean doll started to shiver and become blurry and then wildly vibrate and suddenly another, somewhat larger, humanoid figure appeared before me. Its face was dark-complected with a full red beard. Long red hair was pulled back into a pony tail. It was wearing a dark red, perhaps blood-colored, suit, and a black shirt with red tie, and a pair of black boots. It had all the appearance of a human male, except that it was about two feet in height.
“Well, finally they seem to have got it right.” He spoke animatedly and everything appeared to work in a coordinated way. “What you now see before you is more like the true Mephistopheles,” he continued, with a note of pride in his voice. “What do you have to say about that, my friend?”
I wondered at these last words, were we supposed to be chums, after such a short and surreal encounter? However, I resolved to ignore them and continue with the main thrust of the conversation.
“Well, that is impressive indeed,” I responded, in an effort to flatter him. “Am I now seeing the true you, or rather a composite image of the true you reconstructed from coherent wave fronts?”
“Yes, you are, and moreover, in case you have not realized how scientifically sophisticated we are, note that as the real me changes back home in what we call the transmission cubicle, so my image here changes. When I move my arms, or jump up, or open my mouth to speak, the image in front of you faithfully reproduces these motions in real time. Thus the image on the recording medium is constantly being erased and refreshed in order that you see me as if I were a substantive being, such as one you might meet in a bar and one that you would not think of as an extraterrestrial, for example.”
“I see what you mean,” I said, “but I might think that you were a rather well-formed midget.”
“Yes, but that is how we are on our planet, and I am noted for being one of our taller brethren.” Mephistopheles responded with a rueful air. I found myself feeling a little sorry for him.
“But don’t feel sorry for me,” he spoke as if he had been reading my mind. “On my own world, which I feel that I have to remind you is where I truly am now, I am surrounded by people of similar stature, so I have no sense of being short.”
As he had been twisting and turning I had been looking for any sign of a tail, as I had always thought that Mephistopheles (or was it the devil?) was so blessed. However, I could see no evidence of such a member.
“You know, Mephistopheles, I have just had a thought. I am almost ready to accept the idea of your image being in front of me while the real you is on some planet in another universe, a feat achieved by a kind of super holography, but what about your voice? How does that get here in synchrony with your lip motions?”
“That, my dear friend is an excellent question and it shows me that you are a scholarly fellow who, even when he is confronted by a putative representative of the Devil, who has quite a scary reputation among your fellows, is clear-headed enough to ponder questions of science; most of your fellow Earthlings would be shaking in their shoes by now. The answer, however, is difficult for me to put into words because, being a lawyer with no scientific training, I am not cognizant of the detailed mechanism of voice transportation, but I have been told that you might think of it as akin to a surfing phenomenon. In the cubicle my words are recorded in analog format just as you do here on your planet. Then the bytes, as you call the digital bits of information, are somehow mixed into the visual information stream and are carried along with it, sort of like in what you call a movie, where the celluloid strip carries the visual and audio images side-by-side. Then, at your end, the audio signal, being at vocal frequencies, in some way transfers its energy to the air, and, lo and behold, you hear my voice. To get a realistic representation, our engineers have to intensify the signal before it goes out, otherwise your ears would not have the capability to pick up the minute disturbances in the air.
“Hmm, I see (even though I did not), but first of all I have little knowledge of holography, and, even if I were the world’s expert, your technology is clearly so far in advance of ours that it would still be a mystery. So, for now I accept it, after all, I have the evidence of my own eyes and ears being processed by my brain which tells me that I am conversing with someone with human characteristics. But now I have another question. What you have told me relates to my perception of you and your antics, but when I move and speak, how does that information arrive back to the cubicle so the real you can converse with me in real time? Surely I am not in a similar cubicle here on my back porch, am I?”
“Now I am convinced that I am conversing with a true thinker, you are to be congratulated, Michael, your power of thought is phenomenal. However, you are analyzing the situation in front of you in terms of your own understanding of the nature of science. Unfortunately, Earthly brains, including those of your greatest thinkers, past and present, are simply incapable of understanding the phenomenon of back transfer of information. To cut a long story short, I must ask you to judge from the evidence of your senses that it can be done and is being done. Just have faith, Michael.”
At this I burst out into a fit of laughter, during which I was unable to speak with any degree of coherence. Eventually I was able to splutter,
“Faith, faith, bloody faith. So the Devil is no different from the other lot in resorting to an exhortation to blind belief. I am disappointed in you Mephistopheles. I was expecting rational, cogent reasoning and what do I get?
‘Have faith, my son; the Devil moves in mysterious ways!’ Ha Ha!”
And so saying I dissolved once more into uncontrollable laughter.
Mephistopheles remained unmoved, a pained expression on his face.
“Michael, we are not at all like the other lot, as you call them. First of all, they are not of my universe, but of yours. It is your kind that have invented them for whatever reason, presumably as a vehicle for power of a few exercised at the expense of the many; you wrap them in mysticism, imagery, ritual and rites; you invoke the existence of a supreme being, a God figure who is omniscient and under whose gaze you are eternally confined. And that is the least of it; the practitioners of your religions start on your children early in life and instill a fear of this God’s retribution into them. In this way they have you captured, hook, line and sinker; you allow these persons to promote themselves to a rank that is only just below that of the God that they have invented, and give them control over you. They even convince you that there is an afterlife in which you can enjoy the fruits of your sinless life, or be condemned to eternal damnation-in the company of their Devil-if your sins are above a certain threshold level.
We are not like that; we are completely secular in our outlook, the Devil that I know is a mortal person who has been elected to the position by a popular majority, just like your President of the United States; she serves a term equivalent to six of your years. There is a parliament, also elected, that debates issues and enacts laws, and if people break the laws, punishment is meted out as befits the nature of the crime. Thus there is a police force to apprehend law breakers, just as you have here on your planet; one difference is that our force is made up of what you might call humanoid robots. There are no afterlife consequences of anti-social or criminal behavior-you serve your sentences, pay your fines and that is it. Moreover, there is no death penalty or prison as such; if a crime is too heinous to pay for by fine or public service, you will be transported on a one-way ticket to a penal colony on a nearby planet.”
“Well, that sounds humanistic and somewhat Utopian,” I responded, “Nevertheless you are asking me to have faith that some technological process that you cannot explain, actually exists.”
“But that it is very different concept, Michael, you are actually witnessing this manifestation of me with your own eyes and ears, and in your philosophy, this means that it is a real and not imaginary phenomenon. So the fact that I am not personally capable of explaining the full technical detail of the phenomenon does not mean that others are not capable, and that the phenomenon is thus wrapped up in the mists of arcane imagery.”
“Well, my friend, I think that we have a misunderstanding here. You say that because I can see and converse with this holographic representation of you, then I am in the presence of something real. But I can see and hear and even talk to images on a computer screen using an application such as Skype; does that mean that what is on the screen is real? We could lose ourselves in a debate about that. To see and to hear are necessary but not sufficient criteria of reality, what about the sense of touch? If I put my real finger in the space where I see you are and attempt to poke you, what will I feel, and what will you feel? And if I prick you, will you bleed?”
“Ha Ha! a very nice turn of phrase, Michael, twisting Shylock’s question to make your point. Of course your poke will be unnoticed as neither of us will feel anything, and there will certainly not be blood, since what you are seeing and hearing is a hologram, a sophisticated one, but still a hologram; the real, real me is in another universe very distant from your finger!”
“Right, but in some of our Earthly religions, people in some extreme circumstance have reported experiences that are referred to as visions, wherein God, or some other mystical entity appears before them and instructs them in something. One famous example is the temptation of Jesus by the biblical devil, as recounted in the gospels. After forty days and forty nights of fasting, who would not be hallucinating! From our conversation, I am beginning to think that such visions might be similar to what I am experiencing now-an encounter with a purported hologram of a person of extra-terrestrial origins. So perhaps I am having a good old vision, albeit a high-tech one, possibly promoted by the interaction of alcohol with my brain.”
“Well, Michael, I am beginning to see that not only are you a thinker, but you are also a skeptic. You are not willing to accept the truth that is in front of you. You agree that you can see and hear me; you cannot smell me or taste me, I trust, and there is nothing to feel or to stick a pin in. You must therefore agree that I am not a person, as such, and therefore what you are seeing and conversing with is an image of some kind. Does it stretch your credibility too much to allow that you are seeing what I say you are seeing, viz., a holographic representation of my true self that resides on a planet that we call 42, as that is our number in the planetary sequence starting with 1 which is nearest to our sun, Shat (this is the best I can do to make a word out of the sound he uttered to give the name of his sun).”
“Yes, Mephistopheles, it seems that we are at an impasse, as I am inclined to think that you are simply an image, a sort of vision, born into my brain as a result of my consumption of alcoholic beverages and the magical beauty of the evening. But suppose that, for the sake of argument, I accept your premise and you are indeed what you say you are. Now taking this to an extreme, might I hypothesize that all the visions of saints and others recorded in the history of Christendom are holographic representations similar to what I see in front of me?”
“You have a nice point there, Michael, but this cannot be a valid conclusion since we are still perfecting our holographic technology, as you yourself have witnessed in real time and thus the visions in your historical record cannot be related to this technology.”
“Hold on there, my friend (I have now fallen in with his chumminess) you are making the rather conceited assumption that your team is alone in this technological masterpiece. You state that you live on an alternate universe from mine, and I am prepared to give a measure of credence to that. But is your universe the only other one out there? Greene talks about there being multiverses, and allowing him to be roughly correct permits me to assert that saintly, and other, visions could actually be witnesses of holographic representations from one or more universes other than yours, that developed the technology independently and in advance of your chums. And thinking on from that, one is able to speculate that the Christian God and the Moslem Allah and so on, are real and exist in one or more alternative universes, such as you and your devil supposedly do. And these extra-universal deities communicate to everyone in all the universes by a version of your holographic method, appearing as what we call visions.”
“Michael, there is no doubt that you have a remarkable intellect. Since I myself believe in the holographic technology, as I am part of it, then maybe you are correct that it exists elsewhere in the multiverse, and in one of these (at least) there exists an entity that attempts to impart its religious beliefs to other components of the multiverse through visions created by holography.”
“Well, old chum, I think that we are getting into very deep water here and I need some time to think it over; I also need another drink. So, for now I accept that you are what you say you are, after all, the evidence of my own eyes and ears is being processed by my brain which tells me that I am conversing with a gentlemanly human type. Excuse me for a moment while I repair to the kitchen. There is now no point in my offering sustenance to something as insubstantial as something akin to a figure on a TV screen.”
In the kitchen, as I poured my next drink, something dawned on me and I quickly returned to the porch to confront him with it, but going out of the door I noticed that he seemed to be a little blurry, perhaps because of my alcoholic state. When I asked about this visual difference he reassured me that it was probably a minor problem in the cubicle back on planet 42 and to think nothing of it, so I continued with my thought.
“Something occurred to me while I was in the kitchen. You used subject and object pronouns in the feminine form when referring to the Devil just now-are you telling me that the Devil incumbent is a female?” I was about to offer some humorous remark connecting “female” with “devil”, but he responded too quickly.
“Yes Michael, the population of our planet, like yours, is currently divided roughly equally between two genders. This appears to be a trans-universal, though outmoded way of propagating the species. But it was not always like this, a few decades ago the then Devil and her party in power decided to do away with citizens of the male gender, since males were deemed to be more trouble than they were worth and the population could be maintained at the appropriate level by what you call cloning. Accordingly, males were rounded up by the robot police and transported to a nearby planet in our system, where they simply lived out their normal, petty lives and eventually died out. Cells for the cloning process were genetically engineered to generate only females and the few mistakes were flushed down the nearest toilet. But at some point, the population, now completely female, began to grow rebellious because there were no males over whom to exercise dominance; the ladies found that something was missing from their lives and so there started a bring-back-the-males political party (BBTM) which gained a very large representation in our parliament. Of course, since the males had become extinct, nobody was sure how to achieve the desired end. It seemed to be simply an expression of a typical female attribute; to always want something that is unattainable. Then the Devil of the day revealed that not all the males that had been rounded up had been transported; her predecessor and some influential women had saved a few of the prime specimens and had set up camps on formerly uninhabited islands where the lady owners could bring their favored lady friends for so-called ‘stud weekends’. When the rank-and-file of the BBTM party got to hear of this they demanded, and eventually got, equal access to the studs, which meant a lot of grueling work for the men, who were at that point being kept in good carnal condition by injections of hormone cocktails. With the passage of time, nature took over and babies of both genders were being born and raised, so that in a couple of generations the gender gap had been virtually eliminated, and we were left with the situation that we have today. I heard just the other day that there was a now a new political movement forming, based on the idea of once more transporting the males and relying only on cloning. As in many things it seems that the ladies appear never to be satisfied.”
“Amen to that; so is the Devil always female, then?”
“Yes, the whole of the government and the intelligentsia and the professional classes are women. After the days of the transportation there were only females on the planet, except for the few males at the secret stud farms and they played very minor roles in the body politic, their influence being limited to pillow talk. After the male renaissance, the females ensured their continued sociopolitical dominance by passing a law that enforced mothers of male offspring to nurture them during their first six months of life with special, government-supplied baby food that rendered the young males intellectually feeble, while at the same time enhancing their physical attributes. So these days the majority of males on my planet are useful only as manual workers and objects for sexual gratification. If they think at all, the men think this is a perfect arrangement since all manual work is done by robots. A side effect of this situation is that some mothers enter their young sons in pageants and other competitions that award prizes for the best-looking figure and musculature. There are many competitions for displaying the strength and combat abilities of young men. Winners of such trials at the national and international level become major celebrities and are sought out by aging politicians and corporate leaders as trophy mates and arm candy.”
“I see, you have a brave new world of a very different type from the Huxley version. It seems to be a major case of role reversal to what we have here on Earth.”
“Oh yes, your society is a very old-fashioned one, especially in the Judeo-Christian concept of monogamy. Ladies in my world can have as many male companions as they can afford to keep, and nobody cares. In fact, a woman’s status in society is judged by the number of mates she can support-a sort of harem in reverse. The Devil, being the First Lady, has a male entourage provided by the state, and they are all prime examples of masculinity. They spend their days locked in combat with each other for the prize of being chosen for a night in her company.”
“Sort of like a queen bee! The guys have to fight to fuck, as it were.”
“Precisely, although I am somewhat irked with your use of that f-word.”
“You mean ‘fight’?” I responded, tongue firmly in cheek.
He gave me a disdainful sneer, “You know what I mean.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that, but here on Earth, or at least in this part of it, cuss words have become liberally sprinkled into most conversations. But to change the subject, having learned all about your society from you, I am left with one major question. It seems to me that you are both a male and someone of a high intelligence; could you be one of the Devil’s male concubines?”
“Certainly not, my friend; I am an ‘Outlander’.”
“What is that?”
“I will try to explain; what I have described to you so far is a general picture of my planet, but as on your Earth there are several divisions-nations, if you like. The nation where the devil and her government hold sway is named Crst, which might translate into your language as Devilstan. It is the richest and most resourceful of the group of nations, comparable to your USA within our planet’s context. There are several other nations, all smaller and less resourceful than Crst and these days Crst exerts hegemony over the lot of them. The ruling class of all of them being female, nobody appears to want to contest the dominance of Crst. Anyway, I originate from one of these smaller nations, Frt by name, but on Crst all the outlying nations are somewhat dismissively referred to as the Outland, hence I am an Outlander. Fortunately for me, on Frt we do not manipulate the new-born babies as they do on Crst and elsewhere, thus males can be naturally intelligent and I am the result of that policy”
“Well, you seem to have done alright for yourself, having become the representative of the Devil to Planet Earth, or at least to my porch; what about explaining why you are appearing here tonight. Have I been specially selected for this contact or is it simply dumb luck that your hologram landed here in my porch?”
“Well, I was just about to get to that, but I see my project manager signaling to me that we have been running the cubicle too hard and we have to quit for the day; I will make every effort to come back, or I should say for my image to be sent over tomorrow, in order that I can answer your questions and put forward my proposal; goodnight Michael, I have very much enjoyed our conversation.”
And with that he faded to black and five days later I have not had any follow-up visitation.
Maybe it was the bubbly after all…