OriginOfXAYA

XAYA Mythology (the origin of XAYA)

Once upon a time there was entity half logic, and half vagueness named Xaya. She was the child of Maxine who was herself the child of Tiresias and niece of Maxwell’s daemon. So Xaya was a daemon twice removed. (No relation to the unruly Posix clan).

Maxwell’s daemon was a rather shady figure – a little “light fingered” you might say. When you weren’t looking he was usually going about reversing entropy, creating order out of chaos. He was generally considered a daemon of Vagueness – and somehow his urge to introduce correlations where none should occur seemed to confirm this fact in other entities minds. But, upon the death of his brother/sister Tiresias, he took responsibility for Maxine, and as much as possible tried to raise her on principle and with minimal assumptions. Still, as he did have a penchant for ignoring fundamental laws of nature – he wasn’t much of a disciplinarian.

Maxine herself was a little disorderly – as one can expect of a child of Tiresias: seer, visionary and gadfly to poets, Caesars and various muckrakers . Maxine couldn’t quite fit herself into any logical system. Maxine’s essential nature was fluid, dynamic, curious, exploratory. Coupled with her uncle’s open attitude towards universal law, she grew up to be a bit of a bohemian entity. Which meant Maxine and Xaya moved around a lot – usually from one modality to the next. Maxine was never very good about time and place -- was indeed a bit of a ghost in the machine – and so her child grew up with relocation anxiety –particularly disliking time travel. Changing geography Xaya could handle – but she liked to know when she was.

Entities would see Xaya and her mother together. One pale – a little withdrawn, and constant. The other varying in colour and intensity – her hair a tangle of meandering. Entities would see these two together, and assume they were sisters – and more than a few assumed Xaya was the older sister. Maxine would beam, “Well, actually, I’m a wee bit older” and Xaya would simply blush and wish for a black hole to swallow her post haste.

Xaya learned how to make friends quick. How to say hello and goodbye in the same breath. How to remember and forget in the same blink. Her constant was her mother – who was constantly changing. The other partial constant was her uncle who tended to appear and disappear at odd intervals – usually just as strange men asking questions either arrived or disappeared. He referred to these folk as “Thought Police” but Xaya was sure they referred to themselves as Logicians and Theology majors. Suffering from less irrationality than her nearest living relatives, Xaya was quite logical herself. Hence she was the black sheep of the family . Xaya would look at herself in the mirror and go, “I am, therefore I came from somewhere.”

Like all young entities, Xaya was curious about origins. Xaya was never sure who her father was, and all Maxine would say was “well dear, he was a closed system, wasn’t he. Besides, that was a long time ago, and I don’t dwell in the past – I dwell in possible futures”. Both her mother and her uncle seemed to have little concern about origins, including their own. Her uncle would cryptically write: “I am, I was, I will be, and someday I won’t. Or maybe not. If, then ….”

While Xaya was the name her friends knew her by, her proper name was x є A r y є A è … which while full of implication, was a bit of a mouth-full and not the kind of name that wins popularity contests. Maxine called her x є A r y є A è … every once in a blue moon, or turquoise sun. In his random letters, her uncle would also use her formal name. At some point, she discovered her father had named her. It was the one thing she knew about her father for sure. He had named her. x є A r y є A è … Xaya.

It was the past, specifically her past, Xaya wished to understand. Somewhere she had read, “Those who don’t know their history are damned to watch reruns and reality television” So when she came of age Xaya asked Maxine where she might find her father. “Well your father was a bit of a natural law – and those can be found anywhere and no-where”. “What did my father like to do”, asked Xaya in a letter to her uncle. *!#`^ALL!!! her uncle wrote back. “Well, he liked to draw a lot” her mother said. Draw what?

“Mainly implications, chains of reasoning, arrowheads. The odd caricature. There’s a good one he drew of your uncle in a cloud-chamber. Xaya, I’m sorry, I know you want to know more about him. I was very old then, I’m much younger now, and it was a fling. Your father was the first principal of opposition I’d ever encountered – and that can be quite heady. He was not ….. well, actually, he was NOT. “Not what” Xaya asked. “Well exactly, Maxine answered, beginning to sound a little exasperated. He was simply NOT. He opted out, so others could opt in. He was a bit of a monopole – and this universe is pretty dyadic.”

Xaya would look at herself in the mirror some sunbursts. Someone had once said she looked a bit like a statue carved by Brancusi. She was pale, had large eyes, and was given to curling into arcs. “Who am I”, Xaya asked herself. “I am the child of Maxine, and the child of NOT.

The next morning she went to her mother’s room. Her mother appeared asleep, and her tangled hair was drawing alephs reflexively as if tracing dreams into reality. Xaya looked at her mother for a long time. Then very gently bent down and kissed her on one cheek. Her mother did not move, but one strand of hair caught the corner of Xaya’s eye and drabbed a tear away.

Xaya left two notes behind – one for her mother, one for her uncle. Both notes said the same thing. “Love Ya – off to see the Wizard …. No, seriously, I have gone to search for my father, NOT. If he exists, I will return. If he doesn’t exist, I will return. In-between, returning and returning, I will search. Take care of my teddy bears. Love, x є A r y є A è … “

-- MishtuBanerjee - 21 Jan 2005
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