rated and moved a short distance away.
The other god stayed in its accustomed location, from which it had never moved. The one god moved to contact the new thing and learned that it was a new god. Thus was initiated the fourth attribute;
increase. The one god communicated to the third god all known information,
and then communicated the new development to the other god.

The gods multiplied. The community of gods expanded.
If the place was infinite and eternal, then the community of the gods
could expand endlessly and forever. The gods ventured out into the
place. Billions upon billions of gods, in all directions. Then,
a god moving into the void encountered a god coming out of the void, a
thing that had never before even occurred to any of the gods. If it
had ever occurred to them, even as a speculation, then it would have been
assumed to be impossible. The traveling gods who had encountered one
another communicated and learned that they were of the same community
of gods. Thus the fifth attribute came into existence, limitation.

The attribute of limitation revealed that the place was boundless, but not infinite. Like the simplest analogy, a circle, it could
be traveled forever, without end. But it was finite. A circle, though boundless, has a finite length. Word of the new attribute spread but the community of the gods continued to grow. The behaviors of endless time don’t change easily and, anyway, there didn’t seem to
be any urgency in the situation. The unoccupied expanse of the place
was vast.

Eventually, the leading edge of the community of the gods, as it
expanded, approached what might be viewed by analogy as the antipodes
of the point of origin. The point of origin had been and, incidentally,
still was, occupied by the one god and the other god. The one god
had never moved far from its accustomed location and the other god had
never moved at all.

As the leading edge of the explosively expanding community of the gods approached
the antipodes, it imploded into the remaining unoccupied part of the place.
The leading edge no longer existed. It had disappeared when there was
no longer any unoccupied part of the place. The community of the gods
no longer had a boundary. It began to be compressed. The gods
were forced not only together, but into one another. That, of course,
caused unintended reproduction, an unanticipated consequence. The compression
continued. At the instant when identity itself, the third attribute,
was on the point of being extinguished, when the billions upon billions of
gods were about to be squeezed into a single entity, the place was rent asunder.
At the point of origin, opposite the antipodes, all forces and vectors, cancelled.
A sixth attribute came into existence, physics. At that location, survival
was possible. The one god and the other god, in their accustomed
locations, survived.

The one god and the other god observed a different place than the previous
place. No explanation for it was ever discovered, but it seemed to
have been, in some subtle way, beyond the original place. The lifeless
fragments of the billions upon billions of gods, shattered by the event,
moved away into the new place. The one god and the other god recognized
their ignorance. Did the new place have the same attributes as the
previous place? They would need to be cautious. The new place
was like the previous place, but different. It contained the shattered
remains of billions upon billions of gods. The nature of those remains,
or the results of their presence, were unknown. The gods knew that
they would need new tools and new methods. They communicated.
They considered.

The gods devised a plan. The one god touched the other god, once, gently, and then moved back to it’s accustomed location, where he waited. The other god spoke. She said, “Let there be light.” and light became the seventh attribute.

At the opposite end of the place, at the antipodes, as at the point of origin,
all forces and vectors had cancelled. At the antipodes, as the place
had been rent asunder, survival had been possible, and one other god had
survived. Later, that god viewed with fell ambition the new and glowing
place.

Letter to the Editor Dear Sam

For about five years I have been attending a mostly libertarian discussion group. The purpose of the group is to recruit and educate libertarians. The membership of the group has fluctuated, but there are rarely more than four people who attend. People will show up for a meeting or two, and then attend erratically, or quit. The meetings have a sort of open discussion format. This means that our discussions have rarely been deeply educational. Most of the time, there is superficial chit chat about current events, and general griping about