The Anomaly of Cause

Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges & the Bible

In the libraries of Buenos Aires, where I spent countless hours studying the Kabbalah and the works of Swedenborg, I encountered a peculiar manuscript that spoke of causality's reversible nature. The author, whose name has been lost to time, posited that effects precede their causes, a notion that, while seemingly absurd, has haunted my thoughts ever since.

Consider, if you will, these curiosities: The Wright brothers constructed their flying machine in 1903 because millions of travellers in our present time required swift passage across vast oceans. Elon Musk's obsession with Mars colonisation exists because, in some distant future, humanity has already established a thriving civilisation among the stars. The ancient Egyptians built their pyramids with such precise astronomical alignment because future archaeologists would need to discover these mathematical marvels to advance their understanding of ancient civilisations.

These temporal paradoxes led me to investigate a most remarkable case, one that I believe illuminates the very nature of causality itself. I speak of the Anomaly, as the cosmic engineers later termed it, though at the time of its discovery, no one quite knew what to make of it.

The case first came to light in the autumn of 1978, when a group of theoretical physicists at Cambridge noticed an inconsistency in their quantum calculations: a sort of mathematical impossibility that suggested the existence of a being who had no causal origin. This being, they discovered, was already walking among us, his existence preceding his own cause, like a word written before the invention of its alphabet.

I managed to track down this individual, let us call him J, in a modest flat in Jerusalem. He lived alone, surrounded by books of prophecy and mathematical treatises. What struck me immediately was the profound sense of displacement that seemed to emanate from his very being, as if he were somehow out of sync with the fabric of reality itself.

"I have always known I was different," he told me during our first meeting, his eyes reflecting a peculiar mixture of wisdom and confusion. "My earliest memories are of searching for my parents, not because they had abandoned me, but because they had never met. Yet here I am, flesh and blood, speaking to you."

The paradox of J's existence became even more fascinating as I examined his case more deeply. Hospital records confirmed his birth, yet when traced backwards, his supposed parents had never crossed paths. More curiously still, he possessed knowledge of events and concepts that seemed to come from nowhere, such as speaking ancient Aramaic without having studied it and understanding principles of quantum mechanics without formal training.

Throughout history, there have been numerous accounts of inexplicable phenomena surrounding his life: water transforming into wine through no known chemical process, the spontaneous multiplication of loaves and fishes that defied conservation of mass, and most remarkably, a documented case of cellular regeneration three days after clinical death.

The cosmic engineers—those mysterious entities whose existence I can neither confirm nor deny—eventually classified J as a "causal anomaly," a glitch in the universal matrix. Their solution to this paradox was elegant in its simplicity: rather than attempt to resolve the contradiction of his causeless existence, they chose to amplify it. They made him the most significant figure in human history, ensuring that his influence would ripple backwards and forwards through time, creating a sort of causal loop that, while not solving the original paradox, made it an essential feature of our reality rather than a bug.

Thus, the man without a cause became the cause of everything. The cosmic engineers labelled him as Jesus of Nazareth in their vast database of human history, and suddenly, the paradox made a peculiar kind of sense. His teachings, which seemed to defy logical causation ("the last shall be first," "die to live," "give to receive"), were perhaps not philosophical contradictions but rather accurate descriptions of the universe's true nature.

In our final meeting, J shared with me a thought that I believe captures the essence of this temporal mystery: "In a universe where effects can precede their causes, the very concept of origin becomes meaningless. Perhaps that is why I was chosen—not despite my paradoxical existence, but because of it."

As I write these words in my study in Buenos Aires, surrounded by volumes of theological and philosophical works, I cannot help but wonder if perhaps all of causality is merely an illusion—a comfortable fiction we have created to make sense of a universe that operates in ways far more mysterious than we can comprehend. The case of J suggests that what we consider logical impossibilities might simply be our limited understanding of the cosmic order.

And yet, I must confess that even now, as I conclude this account, I am uncertain whether I have truly encountered this remarkable being or if, like so many other mysteries of our universe, he exists simultaneously as both truth and fiction, cause and effect, beginning and end—a perfect embodiment of the infinite library that is our reality.