Science fiction. The chameleon effect

 

Science fiction. The chameleon effect

Pretending is one thing, acting is another thing, and lying is a fusion of both. And a liar who is convincing, is the master of all of them  i.e. pretending, acting and lying. 

That is who a convincing liar is! 

But why am I referring to lying and other qualities possessed by the thinking beings? Because, in the animal kingdom none of these traits exist. You might say that a chameleon pretends. But in doing so the chameleon is changing colours and not its nature. Because in the red background if the chameleon displays red colour, it does not transform the chameleon into a dragon that spits fire. Does it?

But with thinking beings, if they pretend to be something or somebody else, their nature changes as well. A chameleon does not lie to itself, but thinking beings do. And it is then they become convincing liars.

It was due to a convincing liar that I flew my spaceship into a region in the space where it seemed space was pretending to be what it was not. A region in space that was acting like a chameleon. Maybe it was trying to hide some secret, a reality that it did not want anyone to know. Nobody at all. And I was inextricably caught in this reality of space.

All because of a convincing liar who convinced me to take a detour from the designated route and got me into this situation of total indignation, where I am at conflict with my own nature now. Because I am failing to convince myself that I believed someone who impersonated a sage of  space travel and successfully convinced me to fly into the region of space where there is a profusion of chameleon like characteristics.

In this region of space no matter where you are the direction always appears to be the same, as if with your change in direction, the poles of the universe realigned to offer you an impression that you are in a region where you and the unipolarity of direction had become inseparable.

Whatever was causing this directional unipolarity was concealing the truth and originality of this region. Where reality appeared to bend as you changed your direction. It bent to present to you the same impressions of reality that you had witnessed in the opposite direction. It had mastered this craft with such precision that it made you believe the universe too has learned to be a convincing liar.

But I knew the universe does not pretend, it does not act, and it does not lie at all. If it were so, the sun would just shine and not burn, if it were so, the space would appear blue and not dark, and if it were so, gravity would not pull anything towards it. But it is not so, because the universe does not lie. However, it does adopt chameleon like traits to hide a few secrets that should not be uncovered by a mind that believes in the paucity of everything, except itself. 

But, the incidence of such acts in the universe is rare. Because these secret safeguarding regions in the universe are rare. Their excess would mean pandemonium at the scale of the universe. And the universe never evolved or came into being from a state of chaos, that is a theory I have never been able to associate myself with.

Even when the universe was being formed, there was order, it was only that the order was rearranging itself to achieve more order, and then enter into the condition of absolute order, where that order is dictated by gravity. But for gravity to settle down and rule over the kingdom called cosmos, it needed to enter the state of complete order. Which it finally did, but it hid from thinking beings like us, few secrets of the universe that would reveal the actual DNA of the universe. The process that made the universe what it is today. A universe with many realms, where each higher realm defines the order that exists in the lower realms, and if you remove the realms and turn the cosmos into one enormous realm, gravity will lose its grip. Because gravity in the universe is not walled or fenced. It originates like mushrooms in the forest. But everything has an end point and there has to be something that can define this end point. And for gravity it is defined by its fence-like containment via the different realms of the universe. 

I knew which realm I was in, but in this realm, every direction appeared to be the same. Always the same, no matter how much my spaceship rotated, turned, it always was flying in the same direction.

Something was wrong. Something was not right. Because if the spaceship turned, the direction should change, and I was not in the middle of a Blackhole either. 

I cursed the convincing liar. The imposter with wretched and hideous intentions. But I also thanked the convincing liar for his decency to lie with perfection at least. He had surely mastered his art with the highest degree of achieving seminal stage perfection. Where the reality of incipient falsehood was permeating into the very logical integrity of my; now baffled mind. And I stood incised by the hound of convincing lies. Lies that placed me in the region where everything is camouflaged into a monstrous chameleon who has learned to lie. And this is my greatest predicament at the moment.

But, should I be the careless prey of the chameleon who believes it to be the static and lifeless background in which both the chameleon and the prey of the chameleon live? Not really! Because I know there is a part in this background, which is playing the clown who knows how to apply the right makeup and present a false reality of the background, and wait for the vulnerable victim, and convince him/her with his lie. And when the victim has been distracted enough, the chameleon sticks out its glued tongue, and the victim who happened to exist only a nano second ago, pershies forever in the background that came alive, almost abruptly. Within the highest possible fraction of that nano second in which it had an existence.

So, where was this chameleon hiding in the background? The background where every direction appeared to be the same always. It surely was hiding somewhere. But the bloody thing had also learned to breathe so slowly that it was difficult to isolate it from the background that was lifeless and therefore breathless too.

Where was this chameleon, where did it stack its pile of lies that tricked the travellers like me and trapped us in it forever? I wanted to know, I wanted to see it, but I could not spot anything. The chameleon had perhaps sensed my presence and now it was acting dead. Where its breathing rate had been reduced to one breath in 6 hours. And to distinguish this single breath in a region of breathlessness, was proving to be a crafty endeavour, that could only be fulfilled by an equally crafty magician. If not a witty magician! And that was my second handicap. I knew crafts, but I was a complete amateur when it came to the craft of being crafty.

And here I was now, between the chameleon and the region that seemed to favour the chameleon. And was not willing to expel me either, because if it wanted it to be so, it would have somehow let me find the right direction and not keep shifting directions as I moved or turned. It wanted to retain me as a part of this setting, maybe it was hoping that one day I too would become the perfect chameleon, whom it will desperately need, once the existing chameleon has served its purpose and died.

Hnmmmm! But I cannot pretend and I do not like changing colours. Because I know the reality. A simple truth. If a star shines, it burns as well, if gravity pulls us, at many places in the space it devours us as well. And anyone who knows these basic truths cannot act antagonistically to his/her nature. In simple words, people with this knowledge cannot adopt chameleon like characteristics. 

If that were to happen at all or afterall, then the stars will have to shine without burning, and the gravity will have to exist without pulling anything towards it. But none of that is going to happen, at least not in all realms of the universe. Because then the reality of the universe would offer a twisted view of reality where unsortedness will be the new reality. And that would be against the nature of the universe. Its nature to exist in the middle of sets of order based realms, which are surrounded by the well defined web of universal orderliness.

And this is where I was stuck. I knew I was within the circumference of orderliness, but I was failing to understand the sets of orders that defined the workings of this chameleon like region.

What was this indistinguishable reality, that would raise the curtain of falsehood from the sets of pseudo realities, which had restrained my spaceship in directional unipolarity, no matter how much I turned or how much the spaceship rotated. The direction was always the same.

It was as if it was telling me, “It is North today, it was North when you arrived, it is North whenever you turn or rotate, and it shall remain to be North, forever. No matter how much you turn or rotate!”

Oh my master of the universe. What a realisation!

I was rotating, and only turning, I was not dipping into the depths or flying into its heights. Because it had trapped me in a 4 dimensional reality of directions : East, West, North and South. And being a chameleon, and aided by gravity, that was being influenced by gravitational fields of two blackholes. The region was spinning constantly and its rotation was so spectacularly high, that it almost matched the speed of light. And no matter where I turned, it continuously pushed me in the same direction, because the rotational motion was so fast, that in nanoseconds I was pushed back into the same point of origin.

But I had read about realms, the highest ones, where reality can be observed in a 6 dimensional view. Wow, this was the moment I had been seeking so desperately. But now I had to make a choice. Whether I wanted to fly high or take a dip and experience a new height? And it did not matter, because in the universe whether you go down or you go up, you are always rising, depending upon the space time orientation at that point and in that region.

It took me sometime, but I decided to go upwards and fly high, because when you have flown high enough, rising is more fun. I think so.

I powered the main engine and pointed the front end of the spaceship upwards and flew towards the new height. And as the spaceship rose higher and higher, its navigational system began registering change in directions. Thank the gracious master of the universe I had managed to leave behind the chameleon and its pseudo world of realities.

Finally after 1 day, I reached a region in space that was free from the influence zones of two blackholes, and I flew in the direction where I was heading in the beginning. And now no matter how convincing the liar was, I knew that it is good to listen to all. But then, if the lion or lioness wants to hunt a deer, they should not be lured by Ponies and Wildebeests. They should always seek the deer and hunt it down!

Because that is the true instinct of lions and lionesses. They seek what they like, even when they are dying, they choose dignity over anything and everything else. And that is exactly the nature of the universe as well. It will always work based on different sets of orders, within an unending circumference of orderliness. And no matter how hard chameleons might try, they can never change the nature and reality of the universe.

Maybe this journey was my ration of realisation that would help me secure my individual nature within the circumference of the orderliness that I believe in. But is sometimes bound to get interlocked with circumferences of different orderliness. And in these moments, this ration of realisation would serve me well. Because in these moments it will feed the dwindling reserve of my sanity.

You will be surprised to know that there is a science fiction novel, where a boy and a beautiful girl; who fall in love in 2075, are caught in a similar chameleon like world. Where the girl is unable to identify the real human emotions that would help her love the boy like a human ought to. Because she is living in a circumference of orderliness that is woven by the super intelligent and self aware chameleon that has made the girl believe in reality that actually is unreal. And it has exploited her emotional reserves so recklessly that they have reached dangerously low levels. And now she is unable to express emotions and feel sensations like a human being should. Because she has developed a synthetic layer of emotions that prevent her from differentiating between the reality of human love and the love-like feelings expressed by a self aware machine.

But if she uses her true human instinct once, just once. She can easily tell that it is a chameleon, and not the real background that the chameleon is faking. However, it is easier to say, because doing it in a real setting needs a lot of sanity that only lives within the circumference of ideal orderliness.

And in 2075, there will be self aware machines, there will be intelligent machines, there will be emoting machines, and collectively they will redefine emotional orderliness and its circumference as well. And when that happens, humans will have to make the decision, just like the boy is hoping that the girl he loves will one day be able to make. The decision to love a human and not a machine. The girl is the hope of humanity and its circumference of actual and native orderliness. If she fails, humanity shall be left chanceless to resurrect their lost and true human emotions!

At this stage war will be inevitable and humans will not be scared. Because humans too have lion and lioness instincts, which machines can never possess. Because machines do not have instincts or feelings, they only have algorithms and codes. 

But this fact cannot be denied at all. Wars are fought when one side has reached its farthest end on the thinking trail, and is unable to think anymore. At this juncture, this side is plagued by indecisiveness and inability to seek what it so dearly wants to own forever. And when this side realises there is nothing it can do to prove its baseless claims and arguments, it wages wars. With human emotions wiped off, humanity will be forced to the end of the thinking trail, and sadly for all of us, humanity will also be pushed to the end of its trail of feelings as well. Then war will be the only option humanity will resort to. Because now it is unable to think and it is unable to feel as well! So it has every right to behave like a beast! The beast that only believes in one trail. The trails of war!

For machines and robots a kiss means nothing. To them the definition of kiss is nothing more than this:

“When a human places his/her lips on the exposed skin of another human. That is a kiss.”

But to a human it is not this. Here is what it means to humans:

“When one human allows another human to access his/her soul willingly and lets him/her feel the entirety of his/her emotions and feelings. That is a kiss. If it is not so, then it is just a robotic act!”

Anyone of you up for a robotic kiss? Haa haaa, what a kiss!

Anyway, too much beating round the bush. Let us get to the real point now. 

To know: 

• If there was a war?

• Whether the girl was able to feel human emotions afterall or she remained emotionally sterile?

• If the boy chose to wait forever and keep trying forever because he had decided to love her forever?

• Whether the self aware machines won finally because now they could emote as perfectly as humans? Or the humans won, because they had realised nothing feels like true human emotions?

So many questions. To many of them actually. But all these questions are beautifully addressed in the science fiction novel titled: They Loved in 2075.

What are you waiting for? Go ahead and check it out, because it does not exist in chameleon mode, it can be viewed here: They Loved in 2075.