Dreamscapes I

[ I ]

Something to brood over

  Every dream is not alike. Geographically, creatively and even temporally, most dreams differ in large magnitudes. Indeed, the very system of physics seems to differ among different dreams. Every dream could in fact contain a universe of its own. How would you possibly even grasp at something to say '”this is my starting position!”? The solution is the oft-applied (and oft-enforced) guideline of forgetting everything that you know. Welcome. Is it possible, now, to provide ourselves with a set of static variables which are 'felt' by every dreamer? I say 'felt' because I am at a loss for words; these variables could well be completely intangible in our waking state, and sensing them could be beyond the boundaries of our ordinarily espoused senses. Consider now a completely different metric, something which we might not yet be able to define. An example would be the dream-ending trigger of death – something known to anyone who has ever dreamed. Death automatically wakes up the dreamer. Now this is a global static variable, this 'death trigger.' Could, then, the death trigger be quantified? Could it be traded with? Could it be monetized?

  It is remarkable to think of a dreamscape wherein the mind of the dreamer processes data – useful data amidst what is seemingly nonsense (FOR NOW); data which can be quantified; data which might have applications in the dream world or even the real, waking world. The 'DreamCoin,' is the logical, hack-y name for the inevitable outcome, named along the lines of a popular online currency. The similarity between the two is striking; there's a certain almost-shadowy vagueness to them. Both use processing or thinking power to 'mine' information. Stuck as we are on our shrinking planet (FOR NOW), the Internet and the Within (which is enriched by meditation, spirituality, eco-friendly living and the speculated 'network of dreamscapes,' along with an infinite number of recently-revived soulful activities and fads) seem to be the best fields for those looking for exploratory roles in today's life.

  An entire economy could develop based on dream-based services. While not entirely original, the idea of productivity within one's dreaming hours is forever going to remain an attractive and threateningly inconceivable one. Like the white, unmarked territory of most of Africa in Joseph Conrad's seminal Heart of Darkness, the dreamscape 'topology' (in metrics of dream-deaths! in metrics of lucid-dream success rate!) would be fresh adventure, ready for people to make their fortune all in their minds. An assuredly formidable change – an age defining change – will follow.

  The Internet, the already-evolved cousin of our 'dreamscape network' can aid in its formation. Forums could (and already do) discuss lucid dreaming. Simple phone apps and diaries can log dreams. A network can be formed out of a group of dreamers who decide to 'map' the 'dreamscape topology' on their own, probably just for kicks, possibly making their fortune along the way. Not unlike the sheer aesthetic charm (as well as the suspicion that they aid in the development of reflexes and hand-eye coordination) that makes us not think of video gaming as truly 'bad,' the yet-in-development art of lucid dreaming would draw both casual once-a-month dreamers and hardcore 'awake-all-day' dreamers, as well as a particularly harsh crowd of naysayers and jeer-ers. One day, two people may meet in their sleep.

  Lucid dreaming and dream-sharing can turn into a trend: a trend as widespread as the social network revolution, bringing us what can be perceived as a superpower – until, of course, the trend is large enough for everyone to wield the power, making it normative and finally sealing it as the next step in our evolution. All this power is completely beyond the jurisdiction of anything man has yet defined, and starting now, the bored millennial generations can finally find something to truly do when they're restless on their beds at night. Maybe one day, the wildest dream out of the mind of a three-year-old child could prove to be prophecy for the world!

The Meris Touch

The Meris Touch

by Aditya Shirodkar

She spoke to me of The Meris Touch, and it made all the difference.

In all honesty, this story is about a girl: I endlessly rewrite this story to make it anything but the story about a girl, but no mask I weave will cover this visage so flecked by my love for her. I often will myself to just think of something else in this solitude, but every fibre of my being insists on reminding me of Lyra. The stars in the sky take me to the very brink of the galaxy where a pattern was named after her. Romanticism is inevitable when you think of Lyra; the roar of the wind coursing its way through the surf too aptly reminds me of her gliding hands; the dawn on this distal rock with its translucent cirrus reminds me of the wakeful nights and the strewn blankets. I smile when I think of when we will meet again.

January 6, 2842

When this day began, I'd marked it as the happiest day of my life. I was to graduate cum laude that afternoon, and the celebrations had already begun. At seven o'clock, Lyra woke me up with a kiss, and we each broke our fasts - me with my usual oatmeal, toast and cheese, and she with something-or-the-other from an exotic planet, be it the grey coffee from the Barnard's star system or the bacon and eggs from Earth. Always unique; always something new. We drove to college in my sedan, where I'd - finally! - get my degree in Cybernetics, and she would get hers in Earth-era English Literature.

The graduation ceremony was grand, largely in part due to the ridiculous and awesome phenomenon occurring above our very heads. This day had the twin suns of Grace engage in a manoeuvre seen only once every few thousand years - the smaller, hotter and bluer sun blocked out the larger, colder and redder one, resulting in an apparition that was almost angelic in its appearance and magnitude. Bright wings of light shot out from the extremities of this compounded sphere to reach the very corners of the viridian sky of Grace, setting it asunder. The waves rolling into the western front of our seaside campus were rendered incandescent as they passed through a beam of light dragoning its way through the skies; the light struck each wave as if it were its own, like a queen knighting a thousand men, each with a deliberation which will not allow us to label the occasion as routine. More majestic than a thousand queens, this super-solar eclipse knighted my dear as she rose onto a well-placed platform to deliver her valedictorian speech.

We returned to my home beside the breakwater. The tides were still here, but the surface of the water was lit up to seem other-dimensional. It truly was; Lyra and I dove in and found a magical and peaceful and beautiful world which was our own. Gasping for breath as our intertwined bodies finally found their way to the shore; she brushed a lock of golden hair from her face and finally narrated to me the poem which had earned her her graduation certificate. She'd hidden it from me - from virtually everyone, really - because she did not think it was anything spectacular. But all cares were lost in that kaleidoscopic Eden, and her words were, to me, more valuable than any that her Keats wrote in his fury - what could a man from a thousand years past, singular in his suffering, know of a love such as ours?

The Meris Touch

The old magister faintly asked me

"Sea child, do you have no worries?"

I said to him, with sand on my knees

"My worries are washed by the seas"

The old man, aching at his brows

Looked at the water break on the boughs

Nervously asked me, "does it not douse

The fire that rages within your blouse?"

I laughed at him then, and softly said

"Old man, will you lie on your bed

And regret it, when you fall dead

That in your youth, you could not wed

"Every wave, that beckons your heart to

Stay still, and be one with the blue."

Slowly, the man then took out his shoes

He went in old and came out anew.

I can recall the twinkle in her eyes when she was done. The violet in her eyes was complemented by the unreal sky, and as she blushed a maiden blush, I kissed her firmly. We re-entered the waters, which, somehow, seemed even more beautiful.

February 17, 2850

My five-year-long meditation and labour culminated in this single creation. Designated ARYL-4, the robot I had made won every distinction available in the fields of cybernetics galaxy-wide. The design won awards for practicality, functionality and realism, and the AI received the praise of scholars from Earth to Antares as being incredibly human. Nine hundred years have passed since the making of the first artificial intelligence, and we are still stuck with the inherent need to make something like ourselves. I am a proponent of the singularity hypothesis, and I think it is fundamentally stupid to create something as good as or better than ourselves. I did not want something to think for us or to govern us with its advanced intelligence. I did not want to get stuck in some Frankensteinian dilemma, playing God for a new species. My reasons for this creation are far more base and petty.

ARYL-4 was modelled to look just like her, or at least my memories of her when we were in the prime of our youth. For sure, she'd be older and greyer, and her voice would have a tinge of something I hadn't felt before. Far from wanting to change civilization, I made ARYL-4 to try to replicate what it felt like to be with her. Even its touch felt just like hers, and soon, ARYL-4 acquired female pronouns. It feels terrible to write this down, and I vaguely remind myself of a character by a Russian scholar named Vladimir Nabokov who Lyra often spoke of.

But there were problems. ARYL-4 was, at the end of the day, a robot. She lacked the fey charm and the starry eyes that made Lyra my own. Once more, I relapse into my time with Lyra. We were sitting out on the funny mound that seemed to grow out of the soil behind my house. She told me then of yet another one of her Keatsian factoids, this one dealing with his concept of "negative capability." It took me weeks to figure out what that meant, and years to truly apply it to poetry and life in general. What could a mere robot know of negative capability? It was merely a construct; a composition of logic. There is no logic in negative capability.

January 31, 2845

My relationship with Lyra came to an end gradually, and on this day, I find myself looking back at the anniversary of our union. It had been four good years, and I wouldn't regret any of them. Life, it seemed, would carry on. I was terribly wrong, for two reasons. Firstly, even though I had all the money a woman could need, I had a reserved and calculative personality. It took ages for Lyra to get to know me, and such time is not at hand, as it was back then in those blithe days of youthful love. 

Secondly, I am not a particularly handsome man. In fact, most would call me ugly at first glance. I've had people - parents, friends, teachers and even girls who I fancied - tell me that looks do not matter (the last variety even had the nerve to say that I was all a girl could need before frolicking on with the members of the gravball team). But, with personal experience, I can safely conclude that first impressions are based on looks, and someone as reserved as me cannot possibly make a second impression.

To say the least, in the years after Lyra, I did not do too well in the realms of love and romance. After Lyra was this girl named Ecksabeth, Beth for short. She was plain, stout and squalid in appearance, but, as far as her personality goes, she was a gem. But like a jockey having to pick a quarter horse after having owned an Arabian, I found something lacking. We broke up months later. Elie was next. She was comely enough to look at, but our conversations revolved around the clothes and leather extras I would buy for her using a considerable part of my considerably large bank cheque. Suffice to say, she didn't last either.

I attempt to keep my career at the forefront these days. I'll soon be embarking on a project to refine contemporary AI to be more human in its decision making. So far, Lyra's influence - or rather, her absence - has not made its mark in any of my works. I wonder if I will ever feature in her poetry. As far as I know, she published nothing other than those old poems in that one magazine back in 2843. Maybe I was her muse. Maybe I'm giving myself far too much credit.

August 11, 2851

Aryl and I visited Earth on this day, the first time for either of us. The New York Conference was the most prestigious technological conference held in the galaxy, and was, undoubtedly, the oldest. Indeed, the very first conference had taken place in the antiquity of human attempts in the fields of robotics and computing. The conference concluded with an awards ceremony, and I was nominated, then, for the George Devol Jr. Award for Robotics, which I won. For some reason, I'd asked Aryl to deliver my speech of thanks. It was a cocky and not entirely original move, for every conference since 2719, with the exception of the Great Tragedy of 2731, had featured some engineer sitting satisfied in his seat, thinking, "Let my creation speak for itself." But watching Aryl rise to the podium gave me a different kind of satisfaction, which I could not quite place.

The conference, like every conference, concluded with a world tour for all its delegates. The Earth tour was celebrated as the best tour amongst all planetary tours, and this was certainly true because of the rich cultural heritage that came with every city and town that dotted the face of the planet. Humanity itself had begun on this planet; if that isn't enough to stir something deep within you, I do not know what is. We moved east over the Atlantic, and found ourselves in the foggy mess that was London. I did not depart our luxurious, supersonic airplane, named the Concorde in honour of an ancient plane with the same name and same purpose. The lavatory was kept busy with the proceedings of our forbidden love, and I'd decided that London could wait another day. So could Paris, Heidelberg, Cologne and Bern; I can come back here at any time.

At Rome, however, I was strangely motivated to leave the plane. The first place I visited was an odd cemetery, to find the symbolic grave that she had doted on. He'd said his name was writ on water, but it was quite firmly engraved in my mind. Why I still gave the old poet this much thought was beyond me. Aryl could not quite understand the situation. I told her to ignore it, for by then I had given up on the thought of shaping her to be like the other one. Aryl, always thoughtful, always supportive, gave me some time alone at the gravesite.

The rest of the week-long Earth tour was a sombre affair. My mind kept drifting into territories not normally associated with a student of science and technology - thoughts of un-enlightenment and the want to jump into some stream that was certainly not on the agenda for this tour grew rebelliously in my mind. Aryl did not press me to divulge what the matter was, and, honestly, I did not quite know myself. She didn't know a thing about Lyra; it was not in her nature to ask. The tour ended on the west coast of North America, and then we headed back to Grace, where my home by the still water was, indubitably, waiting for me.

November 18, 2841

On this day, I asked Lyra why exactly she fancied the sea so much. She told me that I would soon know the answer. I didn't quite get it, but it, perhaps, had something to do with the seas so abundant on this tiny planet. Grace is a planet with two suns and countless seas - it is referred to, by astronomers, as a water planet. After living so many years on Nepenthe, the seas came as a bit of a culture-shock to me: back home, it was wasteland after wasteland, and water bodies were confined to a few large lakes on a planet primarily composed of land. I recall voicing my intentions of going to Earth one day - it would be a fine balance between both these twisted worlds. This delighted her. She was pursuing a course in Earth-era English Literature, and always found a way to twist everything I said or did into some ideal of an old English playwright or the other somewhen a thousand years ago.

We then conversed about the different places we'd visit if we'd ever end up on Earth - I too was well read on Earthly matters, as was almost every one of the one trillion people that populated the inhabited part of the galaxy. Every history course would inevitably allude to Earth and its lost ways. There was, however, a slim chance that any student taking up these courses would ever end up on Earth, due to the prohibitive costs of interstellar travel - why, getting to Grace from Nepenthe itself cost my family half their fortune, and also meant that I'd, probably, never see them again. At the end of our conversations, we'd agreed to make a one-way trip there ourselves, and visit all the famous museums and shrines left behind by her favourite poets and authors, and finally end up retiring at this seaside hamlet called Goa. It's a brilliant idea, really.

Lyra dove into the water beside my house. She beckoned me to enter, and I refused, wondering how anyone could think of entering a water body. She asked me, then, if I wanted to die without ever stepping into the surf. After much deliberation, I finally got in. I spent many minutes figuring out the most rudimentary way to stay afloat, and she then led me onto the breakwater beyond which the waves dashed in all their glory. We stood there, arm in arm, and I watched, open-mouthed, as waves three times again as tall as I was crash into the barrier and spray us with a delightfully subtle amount of water. I completely understood her then: her wayward ways and her starry eyes that seemed to radiate some kind of purity whenever she gazed out at the sea.

March 21, 2855

I was sitting with my feet dipped inside the still water outside my house, when something totally unexpected happened. If anyone should read this, know that this was the moment of my insanity, and of my death. Out of the bulrushes that hid a large portion of the western horizon emerged a too-familiar face of old. The same eyes, the same smile, the same face. It was her; the one with an Earthly constellation named after her, the Lyra-of-the-sea. She had aged, undoubtedly, but she was, essentially, the same girl I met one afternoon in some common class shared by our generally non-intersecting disciplines. She was standing in water three feet deep, and I dropped whatever I was reading and dove as far as I could, and found my way beside her.

We laughed when we were face-to-face. Why had we broken up? I don't know. Matters from ten years ago scarcely mattered, and we were sitting together by a fire as we dried the clothes still stuck to our bodies. She told me how her career had never taken off, and how, like me, all her trysts with love had inevitably failed. She spoke with the same warmth that I'd been so used to all those years back, and I had a feeling that something beautiful was about to begin, when I was interrupted by the other love of my life.

It was a mirror image of what Lyra had looked like ten years ago, and she looked cluelessly at the woman sitting in front of her. I could see the fibre-nerves I'd designed spasm in confusion and what I can only interpret as despair. With a strained voice, she started saying something which I could not quite comprehend, until I got a little closer.

She spoke of The Meris Touch, and it made all the difference. I turned to watch Lyra's face contort with horror as she, too, heard the words she'd once penned down come out of this replica of herself. She fled. Her body was found, lifeless, deposited on the shore of the breakwater built to keep waves from destroying my house.

Aryl ceased to function, shortly. It seemed that she had never been programmed to face something like this before. I hugged my inhuman lover and wept. I was taken away by the police shortly.

---

I was tried on four counts: indirect murder, cloning, sexual intercourse with a non-human, and for utilizing university funds for personal gain. My awards and nominations were stripped away, and I was cast into a prison placed so unfortunately by the sea. I think now of John Keats - cast away and sentenced to die, with his reasons for existence well out of reach. Maybe, if they let me step out one last time, I could walk into the sea and be born anew.

Weather-depression

Rains, and absent parents. The gloom that had drifted its way into Isaac's mind had to go. The movies on television were sour and bleak of their own. It wasn't fair, he thought, that it wasn't appropriate to make fun of a cripple, but was just fine to air the most damp shows amongst the plethora of sad, damp shows before one who was weather-depressed. Every turn on the miserably slow timepieces that adorned the walls of his house made him feel worse. Worst part was, it wasn't even raining right now. It's just that the sky was a stark white, a dreary, awful shade which wasn't even a shade. Morning skies were white, evening skies were white. Afternoon skies, which were supposed to be the brightest yellow were also plain white. Isaac couldn't take it. The fitting music that he played on the speakers that lay a few feet from him was perhaps the only depressing element that he had some control of, but hey, everything was so sad anyway that it didn't really matter which song of unrequited love or song of poetic death he played.

Vacations. He'd rather be back in college, where the multitudes of folk, annoying though most were, would give him some relief. But he was here, back too early. All of his friends of old were still stuck in their respective institutions, answering some term-ending exam which would set them 'free'. He couldn't take it. His parents had left for work five minutes ago. Without much though, Isaac located the duplicate key of his mother's car which he had so carefully hidden amongst the old photoframes of ever-smiling and now ever-dead grandparents. He descended his stairs, and drove off, taking the long route to the second gate of his housing colony, for it was manned by the gruff and unresponsive guard Ismail instead of the cheerful Bradley, the latter of whom would definitely announce his departure to his mother, for she had befriended him by bringing him the leftovers of every meal. Isaac drove to that shady little establishment behind a tattered building which was notorious for selling alcohol and cigarettes to underage students, and there he purchased a pack of strong cigarettes. A twenty pack, although he knew he wouldn't even consume a quarter of that. He knew he'd be ridden with guilt soon into his second smoke.

He returned to his parents' apartment, latched the main door, and walked into the prayer-room. There he located the lighter that was used to light incense sticks or lamps before the face of his parents' many gods, and then climbed up a spiral staircase to the terrace above. The skies had cleared up temporarily, and he was going to take advantage of that fact. He wore only a sleeveless shirt, and nothing to cover his privates. He lit his first cigarette. What am I doing? He was done with it, and moved quickly before regret would wash over him. His head was already a bit fuzzy with the haste that he had put into every deep puff. He lit his second, and unconsciously started stroking his penis. The cigarette grew smaller, and his penis grew larger with every puff. Soon, he was in ecstasy. I'm not even thinking of her. He stubbed the cigarette and carefully placed it in the corner with the first. He lit another and started stroking his penis rapidly, as if to make up for the delay that the process of lighting the third had caused. His pre-ejaculatory semen covered his left hand, and the third cigarette soon descended into ash on his right hand. It burnt. That aroused him more.

It was raining. Without any warning, water was falling from the sky. He looked up in wonder. This was the one aspect of the rainy season that awed him most. Water falling from the sky! And there were barely any clouds! A sunbeam hit him square in the face, and he had to squint to understand the rainbow in the distance. He covered his cigarette to keep away the water. He was onto his fourth cigarette before he ejaculated onto himself and the ground below. Regret finally overcame him, and he prematurely stubbed his cigarette. He refilled the twenty-pack with the used up cigarettes, and tossed it far into the adjoining housing colony, although the wind blew it further than he'd have liked. There was still semen on the ground; there was still ash on the ground. His father was no fool when it came to semen and ash. But the hateful rain would cover up for him.

Bleak II

There comes a time when a cigarette won't keep you satisfied. Love, lust, careless hedonism - all lie blind with the arrival of the time of discontent. This phase of youth, where opportunities should abound, is taken away in a flash when the dull epiphany of 'this-is-not-your-life' strikes. Come on, says a voice very distinct, you aren't what you are trying to be. Happiness is not key here: in fact, you aren't truly happy right now. You're stuck in that place where hope does exist, but isn't plentiful enough to throw away all vices and emotions - and yet, temporary absolution does naught to keep your real self content.

When I recall the passion of you and the memories we made, they do not linger as they did. At first, I'd said to myself, "you must record these feelings, you must be able to relive them!" I wish I'd done that, for I cannot achieve those feelings once more. I think of the summers - so high! so very high! - and I cannot, again, recall the vague knowledge of throwing frisbees past the surf while the sky gloriously waned into inconceivable hues which were never the same the next day. Even the songs that made those long drives oh-so-streamlined and oh-so-perfect don't sing the same way anymore.

It is lost, says the voice. You can never reach those same levels of unrelenting joy again. Like a cocaine rush, the very first experience can never be reclaimed. My first kiss threw my very being (to be is to live, and to live means endless surprises) into a standstill - I deserve that again! And so the hope, the just-enough hope, recuperates as I await even more terribly temporary highs in the days to come.

Bleak I

Drip, drop, his ears spring up
Three a.m. and someone filling his cup
Head is heavy, floor starts to spin
Ignore the intruder, take a deep breath in

Light from one reveals another
C.G. sparks it up, he truly is my brother
Numbing sensation, grin on my face
Can't wipe it out, so a puff in its place

T.B. quivers; this isn't a virgin mix
His eyes crimson, he'll be high till six
I take a drag, it sets my mind alight
Body in a cubicle, soul in flight

I pass it on, three pulls each
But C.G. puts another in my reach
Epiphanies strike in the realm of the spiritual
And so goes on this innately fulfilling ritual

As the light moves closer to my finger tips
I slow down my intake to feeble sips
One puff each is the call
They taxi around, pleasing us all

Flick them into the bowl, it's time to go
Or let's linger on a bit; can't reach the door
Zombie the way out with ashes in our wake
We'll return with another, for I.F.'s sake

But first, I must dissolve into my playlist, the Ultimate Trip
Undulating bass lines cherish me in their grip
Music video playing in my mind
Yesterday's problems left carelessly behind

Knock on my door, time to boom
Red eyes greet me outside my room
Unwavering grins obviate all strife
To the cubicle - I love my life!

(This image is not my property.)

---

Note: This piece has many fictional elements.

Remy on Merlin

The siren emerged from a distal source, as the shout-tower was located a few hundred metres from the main station. "Remy, the tracks bend away too soon," it called. Remy shook his head. He didn't like this train station. It was too big and too populous to be associated with the tracks he was familiar with. His life - his only life that counted - had begun on the hills of Nere, and there it had ended as abruptly as it had begun. Frozen and preserved at the back of his mind, his time in Nere remained to taunt him. I have been through everything that matters; my remaining time alive is just a bonus. Only the steam from a noisy engine could begin to mimic his time jumping tracks, with her watchful eyes smiling at him as he clumsily tried to stand one-legged on a rail.

The train he boarded was crowded, and his cramped seat between two fat tula merchants afforded him no glimpses of the disappearing platform. The seven hour journey was draining, and Remy kept himself hydrated with cans of crystal soda. He sighed. Manfried would be twice as crowded as this train and, being planetary capital, it would never shut up. This would be the second time Remy would set foot in the metropolis, the first time was when he alighted from a spaceship after an even longer and exceedingly more painful journey to almost literally the end of the galaxy.

His first time in Manfried was not a pleasant experience. Merlin was a newly settled planet, with Manfried being the first outpost established only eighty years ago. Hardly a million people populated the planet since then, with ninety-five percent of those people located in Manfried. His visit to Merlin, unfortunately, had taken place during the mass influx of labourers, technicians and the usual cults, which would one day be known as the first step in the "true" colonization of the Sagittarius-Carina arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, et cetera. Remy had had to trudge his way through a mass of dysfunctional security robots hopelessly trying to maintain order amongst the incoming visitors, pilgrims and workers. He'd then needed to explain, in length, to the power-blinded and lonesome tourism officials the purpose of his visit. He'd lost a lot of money on mandatory bribes and sodas, and had then tried to make his way to one of the swelling motels in the main city. Failing to do so, he'd had to commute for three hours to the suburbs of Manfried for accommodation offered by a grocer to anyone who could carry a message to Vern. After eighteen more hours of travel and pointless delays, he'd made his way to Vern and its loud railway sirens.

It was true, though. The biota placed on Merlin eighty years ago had made itself comfortable in the valleys and undulating plains that spanned most of the two primary continents. Manfried itself has boulevards now; lined by trees and shrubs whose hues betray their extra-planetary origin. Merlin was part of the small minority of planets which had breathable air and non-toxic soil, so the Merlin Terraforming Agency was, in practice, an outpost for some company to dig its tendrils into the compact culture of Merlin before it even has a formal currency. Yet, there was something naturally unnerving about the way horses on Merlin were still tame enough to be saddled by a random visitor from off-planet. Indeed, Remy had travelled several hundred kilometres on the back of a wild horse while on his way to the dig site beyond Vern.

The dig was not of the archaeological kind, but was instead engineered by biologists. Seventy years ago, when Vern had first been established as a sort of secondary capital in the southern hemisphere of Merlin, some biologists (many of them great-grandparents of the biologists he’d met himself) had added some Escherichia veni to a hollow portion of the soil, rich with the excessive faecal matter of planet Nappa which the E. veni so often feasted on. These initial E. veni had been subject to directional, non-mutagenic radiation, so that they would all cluster onto one side of the hollow so as to avoid decimation. Two hundred thousand generations of these bacteria had past, and the radiation had ceased to penetrate into the hollow some fifty years ago, yet the E. veni tried to cluster to that one side.

Genetic memory was the term that had been decided upon by the Vern biologists. Genetic memory is the reason why every single person stemming from Earth’s Israel still felt uneasy while looking at a holoform of the Concentration Camps, they stipulated. “DNA is the most protected and valuable resource in this universe. The fraction of objects that possesses this compound is so small that all the gold on Goldrush wouldn’t be able to buy a microgram of DNA, if DNA would be thus suitably priced. But it isn’t, and herein lays the very instability of humanity – we place a higher value on things that do not truly belong to us. DNA is us. And DNA remembers. If my soul could have a material form, it would be not my DNA, but rather the DNA of all my forefathers. As such, the soul is continuously evolving with the birth of every new generation.” So said the lord philosopher-biologist Reswyn Peck, and so bowed all of his follower-biologists and pursuer-biologists, without even gathering the implications behind his words.

Remy scowled. When the respect for a man precedes his teachings, the respect for the man becomes his teachings. Remy knew that only too well. Nice new that, and Nice bowed and surrendered herself gracefully to the Fleet. “Remy, you aren’t from here. You can go back home.” But she was home. She will forever remain home, and when I am done blasting a hole through the genetic memories of my lords and ladies, I will return to her.

Reswyn Peck knew that DNA was upgrading itself with the rise of every new generation, and that nothing from the past was truly lost. Reswyn Peck knew that DNA was the ultimate weapon and torture device. Being an independent group, the Vern biologists shared their observations with the rest of the scientific world only after much deliberation and review. The Vern biologists were now rotting inside a pit with E. veni feeding on them to fulfil their last rites. Reswyn Peck had died when ancestral pain had seeped through his gouty knuckles to his gouty heart. Assistant-biologist Beatrice Salomon too had writhed and succumbed, with her frothing mouth still wrapped around gouty little Peck.

If only you had accompanied me. We’d have found a place far away, even farther than Merlin, where we’d raise hills out of the horizon and lay down railway lines through twisting valleys. Remy knew he had to get off planet as soon as he could. The “inflammable” DNA they’d extracted from the bacteria in the pit couldn’t survive long in the blanks (microorganisms devoid of genetic material). The genetic memory was active in this DNA, and using it, he’d managed to trigger the same in the DNA of the Vern biologists.

Remy Raoveti - celebrated biologist, anthropologist and soon-to-be heretic. He’d have cults forming around him by the time he’d be halfway through teaching humanity a lesson. Youngest winner of the Deutschenwaldow Prize, number one on the ’89’s Top Ten Rising Stars, and Mass Murderer of the Century, I give you… Remy Raoveti!

Remy could see the Angled Spire of Manfried rise out towards the setting sun, in a bid to touch it at its coolest. The smells of the city reached out to him, but they were different; they were warped due to the steadily rising inflow of off-planet visitors with their queer, off-planet smells. This, too, angered him, although he knew not why.

DNA apparently had some kind of ‘field’ which stored genetic memory. Activating this required some changes in the current state of the DNA, both conformational and totally virtual. Remy did not care what exactly went about when this happened, all he knew was that humans would DIE on exposure to their genetic memory, simply because their mind was evolved enough to decipher exactly the contents of these memories, but not quite evolved enough to absorb such knowledge. Maybe that was the original purpose of DNA and evolution, for a certain being to evolve until a point wherein it could digest its genetic memories safely and thus transition into some kind of “singularity” being or something. Remy did not care – much. He did care enough to make sure that this “singularity” would remember Nice and her affable ways.

The train stopped, and Remy descended onto the platform in a hurry. The sooner he’d get off this planet the better, as authorities would soon realise that the Vern biologists were missing and would maybe somehow stumble upon the dig site. The burial site, Remy reminded himself. Was he halting the growth of science by this act? This gave him some pause, but a passing engine drove an image of Nere on a beautiful summer day into his mind. Nere, with the pretty house and the dipping-pond, with the smiling faces of Rory and Neville, Ava and her grandmother. Would this pain be imprinted into his genetic memory? Would his descendants be forced to watch him rip himself apart from the inside with every waking breath? Then this was his curse to them. Descendants. Children. Nice and I had once talked about having children, children who would jump onto me every time I returned home from a long day at work, uncaring that I’d be soaked with perspiration. If there are children without Nice, then may they be cursed.

He made his way to the spaceport with, surprisingly, very little delay. His reputation permitted him to carry the biological samples on board, and soon he was off. The earliest flight to Assez was five days from then, so he’d decided to hop on a long flight to Vaha, in the system of Canopus many thousand light years away. The journey was superluminal, but would still take him several years. By then the mishap on the secluded planet of Merlin would be forgotten, with “incorrect safety measures while dealing with the deadly Escherichia veni” recorded as the cause of the deaths of fourteen biologists.

Five hours into the flight, Remy started to feel the breezy upliftment that he often associated with superluminal travel. He knew that this would soon transition into a mind-numbing hurricane of illusory wind, so he decided to strap himself into the fugue pod adjacent to his seat. Superluminal travel couldn’t even technically be called a form of transportation, as it mainly involve the spaceship, or, rather, individual fugue pods of the spaceship linked within a primary matrix, disappearing from existence here and materializing there.

This was largely due to a modification of classical quantum tunnelling – a large distance impossible for even light to cover in a few minutes was somehow traversed through by the spaceship-matrix. In essence, the “large distance” acted as a limiting energy state which could be breached by the tunnelling. Remy did not know the details, and he doubted that he ever would. His activities in the past few days would certainly curtail his freedom to explore unknown territories of life, let alone science.

After reading projected magazines in his pod for an hour, Remy decided to get some sleep. Within the pod, it was eerily silent, something often attributed to for the scarring of weak human psyches. Remy took a while to get accustomed to this enforced silence, and as he drifted into that plane of thought which is suspended between the conscious and the unconscious, steam from an engine clouded his mind. Long after the noiseless engine faded from view, the smoke finally dissipated.

When the sunlight glinted off her teeth and the cool midday breeze ruffled her hair, he was in heaven. Tears welled in his eyes, and he smiled. The crook of her elbow found its way around his neck, and she turned, taking him with her. The unprecocious naiveté in her eyes beckoned in the direction of the hills far away, fencing the horizon. Railway tracks meandered and were lost, out of sight, at the summit of one hillock. Her head bobbed up, and she caught him staring at her, his eyes full of tears. She was to be left behind today, as he went on to greater adventures. Yet he was the one crying.

She said, “Remy, the tracks bend away too soon.” Swallowing the sorrow in his throat, he replied, “but they go on forever.”

“Does that mean they will never bring you back?”

“No, that means they will always be there to bring me back to you.” He smiled. How cheesy that had sounded, how cheesy it still did.

“Take me with you.” Was that a question or a command? He’d never know.

“I… You know I can’t. How I wish that I could, but you can’t move like this.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” She smiled, and played with his hair. “But I will be with you wherever you go, won’t I?”

“Of course you will.” Remy smiled, and finally wiped off the tears streaming down his face. He kissed her once, twice. He then turned and left, leaving her behind; she with her mechanical body rooted to the ground and the wind ruffling her hair and the cables that connected her to the soil. Once more an engine passed, and took him away with it.

Train, Set and Match

It's over. A long summer, a glorious summer. I wish it would never end.

I'm writing this at midnight on the 30th of July, 2013. Tomorrow is when I leave for college. Tomorrow I leave behind my friends and Cidade beach. Tomorrow I quit doing questionable activities and driving at 120 kmph on eternal Goan roads in heavy rainfall. I leave behind the sea and sand and fields around pleasant walkways. I leave behind family, I leave behind home. I leave behind that shady KA-registered Maruti with the frisbee in the back. Tomorrow is going to be bittersweet.

I love my college. I love campus life. I love the independence I get in my 3x3 m room over there. I'm excited to see what this new year brings - I'll have juniors, I'll be studying something that I haven't bothered to explore before, I'll be playing as much basketball as I can handle. Yet those lonesome stretches and our hidden cove on the beach will be missed. The eerie, dark Bambolim lane will be missed. The 24 hour cafes and pastry shops will be missed. The beaten-up Santro I've driven thousands of kilometres in this holiday will be missed. The faces of my friends separated by states will be missed. The windy house in Miramar and the painting easel will be missed. The guitar teacher I spent exactly 33 hours this summer with will be missed. The poker sessions and pointless gym hours will be missed.

Why can't anyone see that sometimes you just need the ability to pause? Every few years, take a year off. Grow up in ways other than attending classes and scoring grades. Live life to its fullest in order to make up for the hours you've lost in routine. Travel, explore, rediscover. These aren't words I'm tossing around to add to a word count. These are words I'm tossing around as an ode to days better spent elsewhere.

Always the summers are slipping away. Always.

To the Festival with a Lad of Ten

Look up at the moon, boy
For I need some rest
This weary road has taken its toll on me

We'll be there soon, boy
I know this road best
We must walk the mud road out to sea

We'll arrive at noon, boy
In town there's a fest
I'll get you a top and a candied bee

And even a b'lloon, boy
Let's see if it stands your test
I wager you'll rub it until its air breaks free

You know you're a goon, boy?
You should still be at your mother's breast
So hold your tongue or leave me be

The Raindrop that Falleth

The Raindrop that falleth
And fell through my rose
The rose was a roof under stary bed
The Raindrop hit me in the square of my chest
I saw images later describled biblicle but better
That led the fellows to declare that day my godhood
The Raindrop that awake in me happiness
"On that maximus that your study derives you
This is the moon with undulating plains, even trees and distant hills in view
Yes this is the furthest happiness that holds cannot hold"
My life lived a book today

I wept later, for I would not ever behold as good as that holy day
The Raindrop that falleth was neard by some
Like the turn through the cars endless wheels
But never in that amassed happiness
Althino hill happiness
Would they near the Raindrop and breese
Will you find the god at the top of the tunnel
The true image of god or what you dream him
This whole life a videogame
I know not if this is poem or real

I lived a life in just a car ride
For the Raindrop that falleth fell through me

---

Don't even ask for the origins of this 'poem'.

Highs and Lows

<This post is not intended to be fluid. Fluidity was lost somewhere along the way, probably in between 'there is nothing to do' and 'this was a lot more fun when i had work to do'.>

This void in me knows no bounds. After an eventful year as a freshman in college, I'm back home. And I'm left empty. This has been a year of information. Living with hundreds of other like minds and reaping fields of sown wealth from a matrix of file sharing, there has always been something to do. Difficult course matter makes studying always a good option if you ever seem knee deep in time. So many things come your way on a daily basis: scheduling the perfect time to break your fast so as to have garnered enough sleep - yet to not be so late as to lose out on the last morsels of this timed meal, choosing wisely which hour could use a bunk, choosing wisely whether you should watch a TV show that meets its DC release an hour before an exam, choosing wisely whether to eat something before play or to just go empty and go all out on dinner, choosing wisely whether to eat dinner or to fast until the night canteen opened, choosing wisely an hour to hit the bed so as to get either six hours sleep or eight, nothing in between.

Music was another aspect which developed massively, with the possibility of downloading entire discographies in minutes, and deleting them in seconds if they didn't match up to most compelling band names. Bands you thought you knew well would force themselves upon you with the insistence of your peers, and leave you wondering whether you'd actually ever given any of their songs a listen.

This campus offered me a new life. New people to be surrounded by, new opinions to get perturbed by. New personas to explore, new personas to reject. Even after a year there are more people to be amazed by, or to be let down by. Each person an endless stream of himself-ness or herself-ness. It's like an endless stream of endless streams. Drastic changes in character accompanied different settings. The quiet library worm is a beast in the regular group hangout spots. Who knew moving house a few kilometres would make you a sociologist and psychologist?

Here, there are distractions aplenty. Every week usually had some kind of special night or event or exam or match or online page or controversy. There's always someone to vote for, always something to watch, some beginning to witness the creation of a future symbol. And if this gets overwhelming, you can project yourself inwards alongside the rustling leaves of a truly beautiful day.

Now I'm back home and I'm broken. I don't have access to endless lines of information. The people here are people I've known for eighteen years. Everything is so static, so welcoming, yet more than a little bit disappointing. Yes, I am happy to be back, but even my large to-do list seems tiny in comparison to the time I have before me.

I seem to be suffering from information withdrawal. I match the symptoms shown in Steven Wilson's Fear of a Blank Planet record. The fact that I don't have to bother about life's trivialities such as waking in time to break my fast gives me even less to do. During the harsh heat of April and the grueling exams of early May, I thought being released from the excessive workload would relieve me. But it's just left in me a hole instead. The things that seem 'fun' during exams, like browsing through meme pages on Facebook, seem decadent and drab right now. I guess the exams serve as a sort of foil. My father always told me to take with the sweet a little bitter. I'm currently drowning in rich milk chocolate.

Thoughts Inspired by a Watchman

A friend's birthday, and for the first time in a long while (a week), it was the night mess for me. I've been trying to maintain a healthy sleep cycle, the norms of healthy being 'early to bed and early to rise'. Anyway, on my way back, I noticed the hostel watchman reading off of a small book, perhaps the size of a dictionary. Whether it was a dictionary, or a religious book of sorts, I know not, nor did I ask, for Hindi isn't my forte ("kya pad rahe hai aap" - did I say that right?). The thing that piqued me was how this good man was up at an hour when most of our watchmen are, ironically, sound asleep, reading. Under the dim white glow of a tube-light high above, he sat against the wall cross-legged, and squinted queerly at the small font whose language I could not discern from my position.

The joys of reading! How I wish we could put aside all these troubles, this routine, to just sit in a corner somewhere with a book in our hands! The simplicity, the sheer priceless simplicity of the entire matter! How much I'd give for those holidays to last forever - holidays when I'd be up until four o'clock with a thick A Song of Ice and Fire book or one of the Dune sequels (irrelevant, but I'm talking hardcore Frank Herbert, not his son, the usurper!). A few of you may find the idea dull and boring, but a few more would relish it. One of my dreams, alongside flying and Mars-to-stay, has always been the idea of owning a wooden-floored library, with a thick floor-rug and a sinfully padded armchair, lit only by yellow lights reminiscent of the kerosene lamps of the 1860s.

So a watchman made me profess my love for something on the less technical side. I'll further my claim by saying that I have a deep regard for the arts. Yes, I said something almost blasphemous to the modern-day engineer. How does art - something so careless, so fragile, as to be unbound by physical laws - make its way into the heart of an engineer-to-be? It's simple, there never was a distinction in the first place. The science I fell in love with was romantic, poetic! Mathematics were art, nothing was defined but the obvious. Obvious, naturally-occurring traits developed into transcendental 'laws', all the way from approximately 3000 B.C. to the present day. And what is art if not something so complicated made of something so simple? A few brushstrokes can depict the state of your mind, and a few notes can sing its song.

I wistfully look at how everything has been made so mechanical that we take little pleasure from it - no more visualizing your engineering graphics diagrams, instead follow a set of steps! No need to tackle a problem purely by utilizing basic concepts, for there will always be another who has practiced ten similar problems who can race you to the solution. Yes, competitiveness does indeed have its flaws. We pray more for a number than for joy and hope et al. Not that any of this is bad. No virtuoso is created by giving a man an organ! Yet, I feel that something is missing, something profound enough to discredit any overthought I may have indulged in while writing this text.

It's simple really, and often something that is found amongst the captions in a multitude of seaside, coconut-tree pictures: live life to the fullest! How this rant-like monologue turned into an adolescent life lesson oozing with clichés is irrelevant, but if you do wish to know, here goes: "drill into that problem like it's hiding an oil well beneath it!", "delve into the deepest crevasse of your mind to find the elusive, ever-lost x!", "kick that ball like it's an annoying pigeon on your air conditioner (no offense EPAC, PETA)!", "slide into that solo like it's dripping acetone on a sultry summer noon!", "kiss her profoundly; let an image of you be imprinted upon her momory forever!", "eat that gatta curry like it's a boar from an Asterixian banquet!" You have no problems, brother. Only seas and oceans of unbidden delights.

Anger

I have never been so angry. Frothing, unbridled rage burrows into me. I am angry, hating, loathing my own principles of leading a life. I believed in minimal efforts to get as far as possible. I'm drowning in my own cavern of lies, every day spitting to deepen this monumental karst hole, binging on vanity and self-deception. Wanting to be good at everything, I'm failing at things that matter most, still telling myself that I can pick myself up due to sheer, stupid pride. Need to put some reigns on myself, punish myself. How vain am I to not want to enforce simple restrictions when I've succumbed to the most obvious of temptations. Only an idiot thinks himself capable of more than his fellows because of a few effortless successes, and I am he.

Here I am trying to 'channel' my anger into a safe medium when I am so close to just breaking this computer with a hammer I conveniently have so very close. I tell myself I am cut out for it all, and now the taunting voice goes, "where are the results?" And where are the results indeed. Must end this charade, I'm a broken tool with a superiority complex.

The Sleepwalker

Amr woke from a dream.

Its heightened rate of passing scenes was echoed as translucent screens flowing into the golden sunlit passage before him, blurring out bright moving colors - colors which fused with the dream-images to sometimes blot them out, sometimes enrich them. Cool wind blew, shaking at the suspended images, setting them into a timeless disarray finally lost when coherent reality flooded in. The last scene he managed to get a glimpse of sent through him violent ripples of deja vu, for it was so resemblant of the actual street ahead of him, with its pillared walkways and glistening hardened cow-dung tiles. When he finally blinked away the last few remnants of his fast-fading sleep, his eyes widened, and his face gave way to an expression displaying his shock. His eyes blurred again as dismay took over. I've been sleepwalking again.

He turned, and looked behind him. There was the fruit vendor, shrieking his odd call: "boort-aah-kul! Aayaaha! Boort-aah-kul!" Besides him was the shoemaker, who had charged him nine fils for a pair of wooden sandals. He remembered the transaction with some clarity, he remembered how the shoemaker had spat with disdain when he'd suggested a price of six fils. Further along was a tent he knew he'd walked through. If he went back there he knew he'd find the jolly man with an exposed hairy belly sitting behind a saffron milk counter, laughing at the japes of the mustached, reedy man next to him who would undoubtedly still be staple-fixing cans of sugarteak juice. Amr had purchased a can before the man had staple-fixed it, preferring to avoid the hassle of gnawing at it later with his teeth. The man had smiled, for every staple-pin saved meant a profit. The tent had a sorry lot of jambiya dancers - just half a dozen. Most tents of this size normally paraded over two dozen, along with other missing entertainers like snake charmers and scimitar weavers. He'd walked out of the tent, without pausing to gaze at the dancers who offered to slide a kukri into their ears for a dinar or two, his parched throat absorbing every milliliter of the sweet, cool sugarteak juice which he had drained in a matter of seconds.

Awake and afraid, he walked to a stall with a thatched roof - undoubtedly thatched with palm leaves, for the stall dealt in all kinds of products derived from desert palms - from woven mats and decorative stump-stools to hair oils and facial hair-removing gels. He paused for an instant, pointed at a stool and twisted his face into a tired semi-wince, looking at the shopkeeper. Looking at his garb and drained state, the shopkeeper nodded. Amr grunted as he seated himself on a stool embossed with glass pieces painted to look like rubies, onyxes and aliyas. He asked the shopkeeper for the date, and he just received some sort of guttural rumbling as a reply. This is obviously an Arabic culture, but certainly not what I'm familiar with. I've probably traveled half the world in these few weeks of distorted realities. If 'weeks' still means the same thing as it did during my last waking. It's physically impossible to travel a hundred miles on foot every night, yet every time I wake I'm a thousand miles from where I started.

The last time Amr was awake, he was on some kind of frigid, barren island, mottled with some reddish patches which he later identified as large crabs whose pincers really hurt. There was no one there who he could even approach to inquire the current date. Or the season, for it certainly was cold. For a minute he even wondered how he'd gotten there - he suspected he'd somehow mimicked a feat of Jesus, a particularly popular character from one of the Old Religions, by walking on water. Or maybe it was even colder then, and the water had frozen enough for him to walk all the way to the island. Later, when a shelf of hoarfrost had fallen on his head from a tall conifer, his mind had been brought back into enough focus to remember that there had been a boat. Yes, he'd arrived there on a boat which seemed to be a cross between a dinghy and a throne. He couldn't remember where he'd gotten there from. Or maybe he could back then. But he couldn't remember if he could remember it then, so, still seated on that most uncomfortable stool, he decided to let the matter rest.

And then, as it had done countless times before, his lungs caved in to this intense feeling. A feeling of great longing. An image of endless suffocation passed before him. He was in a sea, an unnatural sea. Green light dawned in a distance which stretched on into time. He longed to be submerged, but in that future miles away, he fought the deathly embrace of a thousand others. He smiled when teeth bit into the skin of his weeping self, and suddenly, when a hand forced its way into his mouth and his groin was punctured by a toenail six feet long, he fell into a deep slumber with his eyes wide open. Amr stood up, blessed the shopkeeper in the only Arabic he'd ever care to know, and walked into the dusty marketplace.

---

This is part of a story unfinished, a sort of preview to something greater.

The Endless Obsession

At this sundown I shall once more witness a fury, a passion, an embroidery of sparks and blazes and beams, upon a slowly-moving backdrop, constructed of those which define the heavens in their eternal guise of permanence. At this sundown I will laugh with glee, the purest and finest of glee which is felt in moments of awe. I shall bask in the rays of my Geminids, which fail not to entertain and delight with a natural simplicity that resounds through the night sky.

With the completion of our FM Radio Astronomy Project, which detects the scattering of meteors as they impact our atmosphere, right on time for one of the annual meteor showers, the Geminids, I readied myself for something I'd never witnessed before. A meteor shower in all its glory. I knew that tonight was just a glimpse of what is to come in the wee hours of Friday, but in all the honesty that so defines my character, I must say that I was blown into a state of such awe and near-catharsis.

A few friends and I headed to the desolate and dark cricket grounds on our campus, and set up our FM Radio Astronomy antenna and other apparatus. We had with us the astronomy binoculars we'd purchased together, and a camera with tripod. After the apparatus was secured, few of our watchers would exclaim in delight as the first few meteors of the Geminids struck the sky, while keeping a count. We then set up chairs back to back, forming a sort of pentagon with each person looking on to one-fifth of the sky, and gazed up. Meteors rained, slowly building up pace. We yelled ourselves hoarse for every single one, and in particular at the really slow-burning beauties which struck the sky on occasion. The count soon grew to massive, unexpected proportions, with meteors everywhere. We ended the night with a total of 127 meteors on count, and this was just on the eve of the eve of the peak day of the Geminids. Oh the triumph I felt tonight, there is rarely anything this sweet.

The most glorious moment of tonight was definitely what we called the 'fireball'. I was trying to locate the Messier's Object M50 in the constellation of Monoceros using the binoculars, when a huge red ball filled the apertures. It was so fast moving and sudden that I pulled down the binoculars, gazing ahead with my mouth wide open. A huge orb was plunging straight out of the night sky, and my heartbeat just ceased for a few seconds. The orb burned a bright bluish-green before extinguishing magnificently, nearly touching the horizon. For a minute I even thought that this was how we died! The moment left such a chill in me - a chill which couldn't be bested by even the frigid winds of 2 am in the middle of a lakeside cricket ground!

                                             The startrails of the night, with our observation group ghost-like with reflected light.

I leave you now with a song which I often characterize with eternity... and if the stars are not eternal, what could possibly be so? Selkies: The Endless Obsession, by Between the Buried and Me.

Unfading Memory

I sit there. Like Lyra for Will, I sit there. When I caught your eyes I said nothing.

"Does my touch burn you?", you asked. I fumbled for a reply. 

I relive two days in my mind, I wish to relive them for real.

"Before it starts, let's go for a walk." "No", I replied. "Don't regret it later." I contemplated for a few minutes. "Let's go", I said.

"I can't say this right", I said. "Wouldn't it be easier if you had your mask on?" "Yeah it would."

"I am the after party." Said some guy's t-shirt. We laughed at it, and said, "nice shirt!" He replied after a delay, "thanks!"

"You're too far away." I stumbled at the meaning, were you being metaphorical? Then it struck me you weren't, so I got closer. My hand around you, your head on my shoulder.

I caught your eyes, I said nothing. During the concert I cried, cried like Erik Lensherr did when he found his 'point between rage and serenity.'

You still are the best thing that ever happened to me.

Musings of a Tired Man

I want to smash my phone, sit in a room and paint nature's perfect creations. Connectivity is a double-edged blade. On one hand, you are always in touch with someone, on the other, you are always in touch with someone. Just today I was frustrated with how my internet wasn't working, how my phone was almost out of balance. It's obsessive, really, how connectivity controls our life. Whether its a portal to an plane of information, or it's a personal moment, contacting a single person, it is very crucial in our age. But picture a world reset. Picture all satellites going down! All wires wilting away! All beacons crashing down! Would we truly have lost something? Yes and no. It'd definitely slow down our daily activities, it would definitely cause entire corporations to come crashing down, but after that, would we survive? Yes we would. This near instantaneous contact with other human beings was never a part of our being! If it was so, we'd be telepathic, would we not? Imagine a world of being free, where your boss can't harass you, where your teacher cannot alert you at any time for a late night lecture, where your friends cannot bother you when you truly just want to be alone!

This is how I feel at times. Maybe how I feel right now. But humanity is a self evolving species. Unlike other species, we have no tusks for defense, no fur for warmth, no pheromones for communications. But we have the ability to make changes to our lifestyle. We've invented the gun for protection, woolen wear for warmth and various devices for communication. Thus we've reigned supreme. We can be every animal on this planet, and more! This is our boon. So when you're feeling let down, when you feel like smashing your phone and just sitting in a room and painting nature's perfect creations, think of this with pride. As much as I hate to admit it, there will be a time in a future not so distant when our entire minds will be shared with one and all to see. Think of this not as a bane, but as an asset of our ever-evolving species. So suck it up, and appreciate these stupid phones.

One day we may even evolve into a race consciousness, and that sounds scary. The next paragraph is going to be for science fiction ramblers like myself, so you can skip it if you will:

How would you like it if you were merely a cell in a gigantic organism called humanity? I'd be petrified right now. But oh the unity! Oh the invincibility of this being! I was learning about cells a few days ago, and this is the first thought that came to me: Cells are living creatures, disjoint, connected just by veins, arteries and other passages. We too are living things, with roads, canals and airways being our modes of connection. Cells use neurons for communication, we use phones. Our postal services could be the Golgi apparatus, our factories the mitochondria! So who knows, we could just be the second tier of a multi-tiered organism! Formed in the distance future, this would parallel how life started as unicellular organisms and eventually evolved into multicellular beings. Just think about this. Then read More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon and Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov.

Yes, I truly am in a most thoughtful mood. I'm also in a reminiscent mood. I leave you with these words from the song Rest Calm by Nightwish:

"Every little memory resting calm in me, resting in my dreams, smiling back at me. The faces of the past keep calling me to come back home, rest calm and remember me."

Good night, and sleep as dreamily as I do.

Emotion et al

Today I'm going to write of whatever comes to my mind. Firstly - the computer and internet. Take a step back sometimes, and look at your screen. No, I mean look at it - look at the frame, look at the objects besides it (a pen stand, a fruit basket and a handkerchief in my case). It's a window - to everything! Who'd have ever thought a century ago that amidst a bunch of pens and apples, a foot away from the nearest wall, is a window. A magical, mysterious window suspended by a hinge. You look from the back and you see a black surface with a logo on it, but look from the front and you can see concerts from around the world. You can read articles written by unknown people from around the world, as you are reading this one. Look away, look at your room. You may be in some dingy basement, or in a tiny 3m x 3m room in some hostel in some college, or even lying in the sunset, with red rays emblazoned on the shores. But look back at the screen, and you're in an entirely different world, maybe even in multiple worlds. Ctrl + tab, and I'm reading about the city of Constantinople on Wikipedia (another unappreciated website, by the way), Ctrl + tab again, and I'm reading Painting for Beginners. What I'm stating may seem obvious or unappealing to some, but just take a step back, and look.

- - -

Ikuinen Kaamos ('an eternal polar night'). Probably not heard of this band, but if you have, a pat on the head for you. This stuff is incredible @ the EP, or rather half-album, Closure. Listen to this stuff. It has emotion leaking all around it.

Speaking of emotional music, a lot of Japanese anime music is highly underrated. Just listen to Rain from Fullmetal Alchemist, or the violin solo from Sailor Moon. Very good stuff here.

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Dan Simmon's Hyperion, one of the most readable books you'll find. This is science fiction at its best. The Canterbury Tales in a futuristic setting, this story is all about totally unmasked horror. While you probably won't be shuddering yourself, you can only imagine the bleak thoughts of the pilgrims who head towards an almost certain doom. Set in a time wherein a human hegira has taken place from earth, resulting in the colonizing of a hundred worlds. Hyperion, unlike the works of Isaac Asimov, quite shamelessly throws in a variety of alien life into the many colorful worlds, although humans still remain the only sentient species. Or not, if you factor in the mysterious AI that have escaped human control and now maintain a cordial relation with our race.

The entire setting of Hyperion is just so colorful and vibrant, although the story itself is bleak and depressing, that you immediately succumb to its wonders. And the pilgrims themselves have so much to divulge, each one being more mysterious than the last. From a tortured priest and an infamous soldier to a likable old father and a brawny detective, each character has his own tale. And each tale is ultimately linked to the enigma that is Hyperion, a world that houses the Time Tombs, structures that emit 'anti-entropic fields' and travel back through time. And guarding these tombs is an inexplicable monster - the Shrike - a demon of blades. Described to be covered in spikes and razorwire, this time-defying monster has known to kill anyone who ventures too close to the Tombs. Already interested? Go buy it, this is one book that is worth every penny.

Wink at the Moon

Rest in peace, Neil Armstrong! You gave me dreams, now shattered, in my childhood. I can only imagine what it must have been like, watching the Eagle land on television. I hope a manned mission to Mars will happen in my youth, that could be the highlight of my generation.

Colonizing Mars.. ah something I place alongside the classic ideals of World Peace and World Government - will I live to see this? I hope I will, and I believe so as well. Today has been lost for me in my old dreamscape of reading articles on terraforming and imagining myself on desolate barrens or amidst thick acid-rain riddled clouds in a floating city.

Sometimes dreams cannot be. I'll never see myself as the ruler of Earth at the top of a spire, the tallest in the world, sleeping in a glass dome, watching the stars. Normalize! I need to normalize my thoughts, to a level not too high, but high enough to be considered as an achievement. So what if I won't have my spire. I can always have a telescope. I can always have a home out in the country. I can work hard and make some difference to this planet. And in all this, I can be modest and quiet, as was Neil Armstrong. Gain not pride in doing something better than others, gain pride in doing it as well as you can!

Why do I speak of this? I am currently in front of a computer, procrastinating whatever work I've got on my hands. Why do I do this? Why am I still typing? I am doing so because in writing this for all to see, I wager a piece of my pride. I may procrastinate, but I shall not commit hypocrisy!

Imagine being someone as iconic as the first man on the moon. Wouldn't you want that? I would, and I pledge to work towards being an icon myself - an icon for what I stand for, if not for anything else!

Fallow

Forgotten azure skies

Over glistening snowburdened landscapes

White gives way to colorless purity

Which tears down the soil in its agile grace

Breathing life into the past

Where the valleys were green

In an untouched mastery

Of what was once right and

Of what was once whole

Behold a world

At last left in peace

Showing us its recovery

From a horrifying dream

And leaving us with a fond longing

To return and churn it once again into obliteration