Science fiction. The species from the 4th realm
It was a familiar voice. A voice I recognised, a voice that reminded me of someone I had known and loved not just with my heart, but with the heart of my mind too. And the familiarity of this voice invoked in me the memories that always reminded me of her. Everyday, every second of everyday, and it had been so today too. Until I heard this voice, that sounded like her. And I wanted to disengage from what was occupying my mind, and look around to spot the source of this voice.
Maybe it was she, or maybe it was someone with a similar voice. The likelihood of her presence in the crowded market was slim, and if it were someone with a similar voice, it would only intensify my longings and nothing else. But whatever it was and whoever she was, I wanted to know.
I scanned the corners of the market from where I felt the voice travelled, and after examining every unknown face I tried to determine the vocal notes flowing from all parted lips. I could not single out any voice that would sound like the voice that I had just heard and it had reminded me of her.
So, with a feeling of dejection, I indolently resumed my engagement with the shop owner. Having packed my weekly groceries in my bag, I left the shop and began marching with the crowd, in the crowded market of the town, where I am based right now.
I must have covered 345 paces or more, when I heard the same voice again. I overcame the feeling of hopelessness and I turned around, and there she was. Right behind me!
She was in conversation with someone, whom she knew. From her frank and vivacious expressions, it clearly suggested they knew each other very well. However, it did not matter, yes, it did not matter at all. Because she was someone else. Someone who sounded like her, but other than that she bore none of her qualities, none of her charms, and not at all any of her feminine refinements and intellectual singularity that always made me love her, whenever I spoke to her.
The voice in the crowd just shared a resemblance, a vocal resemblance, and nothing else. And by merely sounding like someone you cannot become that someone. I believed in it, and now I had the living proof who confirmed this belief of mine.
So, I simply smiled and continued walking. But a little faster now, because I wanted to move far away from this voice. The voice that sounded familiar but belonged to someone else. Someone who was not at all like her. And instead of calming me, the distancing echoes of her voice now saddened me. Because it reminded me of the one who spoke with a similar voice, but with a vocal delicacy that is incomparable; and an emotional sensitivity that is fair and unprejudiced. Her true voice, that arose from a real person. She!
Finally I decided to stop walking. I took a moment or two to think, and fill myself with her memories and recall her true and original voice. As it spoke to me silently in my mind, I began walking again; but towards the tea shop where I go often.
I just needed a conversation with the tea cup, the tea, my sips of tea and myself. Sounds complicated! But it is easier when you are dealing with an emotional embargo that prevents you from investing in new memories, because you fear you would lose the freshness of her archaic reservoir of memories inside you. On which your mind thrives and in whose vividness your heart believes and continues beating.
“The tea” arrived, the tea cup rested on the saucer in a stately pose, while the round, open end of the tea cup, interrogatively sought a reaction from my end. Before the hot tea turned cold, and the aroma of the tea got stolen by the cold air of the November month.
But, for me, the tea shop existed, the tea cup existed as well, the tea in it too had a palpable virtue, but in presence of these physical and likeable realities, my own reality and existence had turned abstract. So, the tea longed in the cup to be sipped by me, just like I longed for her in the mind of my heart and the heart of my mind. It could not be more ironic, because there was nothing less ironic than this.
A feeling where you feel like a huge star, with light that reaches far and wide, but it has no world of its own to shine upon or brighten. A star that just keeps burning aimlessly, tirelessly, as its light gets wasted. Becoming the source of light that never finds the right amount of brightness- A light that is lost in the darkness of a different kind, and where it is never found!
Now isn't that strange and quite flabbergasting in a way! Think about it. “A light that cannot be found! Because it is only in the presence of light that things can be found.” I hope you are able to perceive the true emotional landscape that I seek to portray by comparing my circumstances to a light that cannot be found.
Nevertheless, sometimes we all have to momentarily pause these journeys of a lover, and in some cases journeys of lovelorns. It is a reflex you develop automatically because something within you persuades you to do everything possible to live, because this instinct within you fears that otherwise it might lose its own existence and when that happens it will lose the access to romantic rendezvous with her memories and her sensations.
Bloody trickster!
Your heart has become so addicted to her, that it does not care about you, it cares about her and its own affair with her. Where it secretly meets her in these memories, in the neural pathways of the mind, while you are treated as a host who facilitates these romantic journeys of the heart. So, both your heart and your mind, make you finally drink the tea. And when you sip it, the tea and the tea cup say, “Thank God. Finally he sipped!”
And right now I was this ever obliging host for my heart and my mind as well. While I too believed in what they believed, because based on my biological construction I can only exist through them. However, at this stage I lived for them. And that is when; if you hear a voice in the crowded market that sounds like her voice, you are reminded of her, you are led into the memory passages where her memories are strewn everywhere. Just like Chinar or Maple leaves strewn on the floor towards the end of autumn and beginning of November.
And like the sound of dry leaves crunching under your feet, the memories, her memories, brush against your face, your hands, in simple words they brush against you; and you let the heart love what the heart of the mind cannot live without.
Because without the mind and heart, one would be like a wind that never blows, a star that never shines, an emotion that never gets expressed. A state in which a person is all this, but herself/himself!
So, I sipped my tea until there was nothing left in the tea cup. And the hollow and empty tea cup offered me temptation kissed glances. The empty tea cup hoped I would ask for a refill, and it could once again hear the heart beats that always sang her song, the echoes ringing in my mind, that always called her name, the tea cup had fallen in love with all these voices of emotional rawness and purity within me. The bloody tea cup, the damned tea cup; it too like my heart and mind, just used me as a host to satisfy its cravings. But I suppose, love does this to us, so I neither blamed the tea cup nor my heart and mind.
Nevertheless, I chose not to go for a refill. Because on this planet where I live, as the evening draws closer, it moves closer to two moons that create a tidal shift, resulting in dust storms and heavy winds. And I do not know about others, but I surely do not want these fond memories; her memories strewn all across the floor of my mind, to be swept away by these malignant winds. Ah then I will lose everything!
A star that has no world to shine for, now will have no light as well to shine with or shine in. That will be tragic. So, I decide to leave before the winds blow, and rob the callous ones of their precious and dear possessions.
I briskly walk towards my room, and the moment I open the door, heavy winds begin to blow and they sweep away everything that comes in their way.
But this evening was different. The wind tossed whatever stray objects it could find in its way. And suddenly there was light, lot of light. The evening wind howled like a sad demon, and with every howling sound, the brightness of the strange light increased. To the extent that it seemed our star that offered us heat and light, had been forced to completely burn out tonight.
I rushed to take a look and I could not believe what I saw. A huge spaceship had landed on our planet and we had been invaded. We now were an occupied planet. And the scenes outside offered a grim picture. Everyone was running, screaming, scenes that reminded you of the dooms day. And I sat there at ease. Because I had nothing to lose. I had my most precious possession in the safe keeping of my heart that was further secured by my mind. Her memories, that is all I owned.
And this is something nobody could invade. I believed so, until tonight. Because all this was about to change.
We had been invaded by a species from a planet that lies in the 4th realm of the universe. And we live on a planet that is located in the 2nd realm of the universe. Our technological and scientific achievements were completely dwarfed by the scale and superiority of their technological advancements. They knew the secret of the universe that species living in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd realm cannot even fathom.
They are invaders of a different kind. They do not fire missiles or use weapons to win wars. Their systems seize the sum total of mental wavelengths generated by the entire population residing on the target planet. And when that happens whether you choose it or choose it not, you become their obedient and ever obliging subjects.
My late grandmother referred to this species as the species who wanted to wage war with the Gods residing in the 7th realm. She feared them, although she had never encountered them, but she had heard of them from her grandparents and it had been predicted long ago that when they descend on our planet, wind will howl, night will be lit up like mid day, and a metallic world would alight upon the planet from the sky. It will be so big that it will block the sunlight in that region.
That was my grandmother’s story about the species visiting our planet from the 4th realm, and her story had come true. But I did not care what they did or what they did not do. I somehow wanted to preserve her memories within me, because without them I would be a colourless and an aroma less flower, if not a lifeless one.
The night advanced, with chaos growing with every passing moment. And in the morning, I saw men and women whom I often saw in the crowded markets, being paraded in front of the spaceship. They walked away from it with a blank expression, because they did not relate with the reality that surrounded them now. Their minds had been hacked.
It was then I saw the army of cyborgs marching towards our colony, and it was my turn to come out and be hacked. I came out of my room, and joined the long line of men and women waiting to be tagged with new memory patches.
I appeared before the spaceship, the person incharge and representing the species from the 4th realm, held my head and directed it towards a capsule. After a few seconds he asked me to leave. They had completed their process of hacking my mind.
But, my memories were still mine, my memories were intact. Perfectly intact and only mine!
I went back to my room and acted normally i.e. for the species of the 4th realm. Unlike others, I pretended, I did not know anything.
On our planet nothing was the same anymore. Because only I remembered everything, the rest of the population remembered nothing. And I had to pretend to be like them.
The tea cups changed, the tea got replaced, because according to them nobody shall ask for it since they had no memory of it left in them. But I looked at the tea shop, and I missed not the tea, not the tea cup, I missed the way they all reminded me of her. More than anything, my heart and mind wanted to entertain her memories over the sips of tea, where they used me as a host for their escapes into the world of their love, their fancies, their passages into her smile caused wrinkles on her face, ah they missed this trajectory of beautiful wanderings of love.
But I had to act like a person with a hacked mind, I had to act dumb, I had to act insensitive, I had to act unaware about my own existence, I had to act emotionally sterile, I had to act like a machine! And I acted very well! But my heart and mind could not act, somehow they could not.
So, one day, when the night was not windy, when the species from the 4th realm were not seeking us for the time being, I used my invisibility cloak, and walked into the spaceship.
It was a super machine, a wonder machine, it was flashing with thousands of screens, and on one of them they had voice recognition and voice simulation applications running scans of the entire population.
I had once recorded her beautiful and clear voice and I knew the exact wavelength of her sound waves. I fed it into the system, and I was able to locate her. She had disappeared suddenly one day, and according to their system she lived in the 7th avenue, sector 7 of our planet.
I ran towards the 7th avenue and when I saw her, my heart beat sank, my mind sobbed, because she did not remember anything, her mind had been hacked by them long ago, the day she disappeared. I went close to her and tried to speak to her, her voice was the same, but she did not know what words to speak, she did not know what to say.
The radiance in her eyes was the same, the smile was the same, she was the same, but she did not recognise me and she did not know my name. In a way everything was the same, but it was not the same as well. Or was it?
Maybe it was. Because you cannot steal aroma from the flower. Can you?
I went back to the spaceship with my invisibility cloak, and I began looking at the command centre of the spaceship. I wandered in it for 4 hours, and finally I was able to locate it.
For their systems I was still in my room, because I had left the wavelength equivalent of my mind in my room, and as long as the device flashed it, their systems had no reason to assume that I was somewhere else.
They even had invisibility detection scanners all over the spaceship. But to save energy they had turned off many features of the spaceship, which they thought were not necessary on planets that belonged to species living in the 2nd realm. But there are surprises on every planet, and my invisibility cloak had been passed on to me by my grandmother, who had inherited it from the one who had told her about this doomsday, and the advent of the species from the 4th realm.
I carefully walked into the command centre. It was occupied by highly intelligent beings of this species. There was no doubt that they knew everything about the realm of the Gods and one day they would wage a war against them too. Because they had the knowledge and the technology as well.
I slowly walked closer to the screens making sure I did not rub myself against any of them. And there I spotted the main screen that was managing the seizure of the sum total of mental wavelengths present on my planet.
There was an option to deactivate it, provided one could execute the command directly from the core system, not remotely located systems in other parts of the spaceship. But there was a problem, the being operating the core system had no reason to leave his place and go elsewhere.
What could I do? What?
At the entrance of the command centre there were a few systems placed over the metallic shelf that was a part of the spaceship’s main body. I went closer to them and pushed them down. As they crashed on the ground, everyone got up and began looking around.
I quickly hit the deactivate key. And then I hit another key that terminated the spaceship's link with the mothership that was stationed somewhere in our galaxy. And when that happened all the beings present in the command centre panicked and wondered what could have caused it. And this prompted them to activate all sleeping features of the spaceship.
I ran as fast as I could and went to my room. And it took me 5 minutes to get there. By the time I reached there, I realised that everyone on the planet will regain their memories for 20 minutes. The time the spaceship will take to restore its connection with the mothership.
Wearing my invisibility cloak, I ran towards her house. Towards 7th avenue. As I stood in front of her, she spoke in the same voice that had once melted my heart away, it felt the same, because she remembered me and my name as well. And I told her everything about the invasion by beings from the 4th realm.
And I taught her the trick to prevent her mind from being hacked. 20 minutes passed, and we were asked to line up in front of the spaceship.
And once again nobody knew nobody. Only she knew me and I knew her.
What happens next?
To know if we helped others to live their lives of love and lives of self realisation, you must read the science fiction novel titled, They Loved in 2075.
Where too there are two lovers, where too they have been separated, where too they wage a war. But to know whether they win or lose this war, and if at all they are able to love each other like humans do. You must read the science fiction novel, They Loved in 2075.
If you have ever loved someone, maybe you know the answer already. But it is good to be sure. And to be sure, there is only one way and that way is: They Loved in 2075!
Written in hope that we all shall find our deeply desired and strongly wished for ways that lead us to the ones we love. Because some of us seek them with the hearts of our minds and with the minds of our hearts!