“Gosh!”
“I said you must talk in whole sentences.”
“I only said gosh!”
“I do not understand slang. I have a vocabulary of over 100,000 words, but the nearest I can find to gosh is gospel.”
“That means the story of Jesus.”
“Are you a Christian, Sophie?”
“I don’t know.”
“As a rule not knowing is a step toward new knowledge.”
“Socrates would most likely have said the same. Or Descartes, for that matter.”
“Socrates was a Greek philosopher who lived from 470 to 399 B.C. If you wish to know more, press F7. Descartes was a French philosopher who lived from 1596 to 1650. If you wish to know more, press F7.”
“Thank you, that will be quite enough. Can I ask you something else?”
“I am glad that this was enough. Go ahead and ask!”
Alberto laughed quietly. Sophie wrote:
“Who is Hilde Moller Knag?”
“Hilde Moller Knag lives in Lillesand and is exactly the same age as Sophie Amundsen.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know how. I found her on the hard disc.”
Sophie felt a hand on her shoulder.
“I have fed the data program with the little information we have about Hilde,” said Alberto.
“What else do you know about Hilde?” wrote Sophie.
“Hilde’s father is a UN Observer in Lebanon. He has the rank of major and continually sends postcards to his daughter.”
“I want you to find him!”
“I can’t do that. He is not on any of my files and I am not coupled to any other data base.”
“I said find him!!!!!!!!”
“Are you angry, Sophie? So many exclamation marks are a sign of violent feelings.”
“I want to talk to Hilde’s father!”
“You have difficulty controlling yourself. If you wish to talk about your childhood, press F9.”
Alberto laid his hand on Sophie’s shoulder again.
“She’s right. This is not a crystal ball. Laila is only a data program.”
“Shut up!” wrote Sophie.
“As you wish, Sophie. Our acquaintance lasted only 13 minutes and 52 seconds. I shall remember everything we have said. I shall now end the program.”
The letter C: once again showed up on the screen.
“Now we can sit down again,” said Alberto.
But Sophie had already pressed some other keys.
“Knag,” she wrote.
Immediately the following message appeared on the screen:
“Here I am.”
Now it was Alberto who jumped.
“Who are you?” wrote Sophie.
“Major Albert Knag at your service. I came straight from Lebanon. What is your command?”
“This beats everything!” breathed Alberto. “The rat has sneaked onto the hard disc.”
He motioned for Sophie to move and sat down in front of the keyboard.
“How did you manage to get into my PC?” he wrote.
“A mere bagatelle, dear colleague. I am exactly where I choose to be.”
“You loathsome data virus!”
“Now, now! At the moment I am here as a birthday virus. May I send a special greeting?”
“No thanks, we’ve had enough of them.”
“But I’ll be quick: all in your honor, dear Hilde. Once again, a very happy fifteenth birthday. Please excuse the circumstances, but I wanted my birthday greetings to spring up around you everywhere you go. Love from Dad, who is longing to give you a great big hug.”
Before Alberto could write again, the sign C: had once again appeared on the screen.
Alberto wrote “dir knag*.*,” which called up the following information on the screen:
knag.lib 147,643 06-15-90 12:47
knag.lil 326,439 06-23-90 22:34
Alberto wrote “erase knag*.*” and switched off the computer.
“There—now I have erased him,” he said. “But it’s impossible to say where he’ll turn up next time.”
He went on sitting there, staring at the screen. Then he added:
“The worst of it all was the name. Albert Knag ...”
For the first time Sophie was struck by the similarity between the two names. Albert Knag and Alberto Knox. But Alberto was so incensed that she dared not say a word. They went over and sat by the coffee table again.
Spinoza
…God is not a puppeteer…
They sat silently for a long time. Then Sophie spoke, trying to get Alberto’s mind off what had happened.
“Descartes must have been an odd kind of person. Did he become famous?”
Alberto breathed deeply for a couple of seconds before answering: “He had a great deal of significance. Perhaps most of all for another great philosopher, Ba-ruch Spinoza, who lived from 1632 to 1677.”
“Are you going to tell me about him?”
“That was my intention. And we’re not going to be stopped by military provocations.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Spinoza belonged to the Jewish community of Amsterdam, but he was excommunicated for heresy. Few philosophers in more recent times have been so blasphemed and so persecuted for their ideas as this man. It happened because he criticized the established religion. He believed that Christianity and Judaism were only kept alive by rigid dogma and outer ritual. He was the first to apply what we call a historico-critical interpretation of the Bible.”
“Explanation, please.”
“He denied that the Bible was inspired by God down to the last letter. When we read the Bible, he said, we must continually bear in mind the period it was written in. A ‘critical’ reading, such as the one he proposed, revealed a number of inconsistencies in the texts. But beneath the surface of the Scriptures in the New Testament is Jesus, who could well be called God’s mouthpiece. The teachings of Jesus therefore represented a liberation from the orthodoxy of Judaism. Jesus preached a ‘religion of reason’ which valued love higher than all else. Spinoza interpreted this as meaning both love of God and love of humanity. Nevertheless, Christianity had also become set in its own rigid dogmas and outer rituals.”
“I don’t suppose these ideas were easy to swallow, either for the church or the synagogue.”
“When things got really tough, Spinoza was even deserted by his own family. They tried to disinherit him on the grounds of his heresy. Paradoxically enough, few have spoken out more powerfully in the cause of free speech and religious tolerance than Spinoza. The opposition he was met with on all sides led him to pursue a quiet and secluded life devoted entirely to philosophy. He earned a meager living by polishing lenses, some of which have come into my possession.”
“Very impressive!”
“There is almost something symbolic in the fact that he lived by polishing lenses. A philosopher must help people to see life in a new perspective. One of the pillars of Spinoza’s philosophy was indeed to see things from the perspective of eternity.”
