Science fiction essay. The beast versus the monster

Science fiction essay. The beast versus the monster

The howlings of some strange beast could be heard clearly, and most of the residents had left their daily dealings of life and sought refuge in places where they felt safe. Away from the beast! 

I had no idea about what it was because I had never been to this planet before. But from the howlings that were getting closer, my mind could only associate them with a beast. So, I was forced to assume that everyone had run away in fear and were holed up somewhere, where they felt the beast could not reach them.

After a while it became obvious that it indeed was a beast that had terrorised this planet for many decades now.

An insatiable beast that roamed free on this planet and devoured every living thing. Not because it was hungry, as such it was a beast who was always hungry. But only due to one reason. The beast fed on every living thing because it felt they had invaded his territory. 

And on the planet of the beasts, territory of the beast cannot be defined by borders or simple fences. Because before the members of our species landed on this planet, beasts used to roam freely and everywhere here. And it is this memory from the past that compels them to claim new territories every day. 

So, they prowl and they howl. This is what someone told me while she was running away to hide in some suitable bunker. And today I might get to experience it myself.

The howlings grew louder and I could hear vibrations in the air whenever the beast howled. I stayed where I was because I felt there was no need to hide from a beast who knew this territory better than I did or anyone else did. 

I stood there, while the ground under my feet began to tremble and the air vibrated with the beast’s howlings. The beast had already infiltrated into my territory of resistance and it had alienated me from my every bit of courage. I now relied completely on my last reserves of courage; still standing firmly on the ground that was trembling. Still depending on my almost exhausted reserves of bravery and self esteem.

And on the contrary the beast was overflowing with both steam and self esteem as well. The formidable steam of the raging beast was now forming a cloud of his dominance around me, while I felt peevish and insignificant. But I held on to my ground and I did not tremble, I only let the ground under my feet tremble. Because if I trembled, the cloud of beast’s dominance would then feed on me long before the beast notices me.

As the beast got closer, the ground under my feet trembled with stronger and deeper vibrations, until it reached a point, where my feet could feel nothing except the shaking ground; and my ears could sense nothing

other than the howlings of the beast. Now there was no doubt that the beast’s cloud of dominance was making me its victim, long before I became the prey of the beast that was on the prowl.

I was experiencing an incalculable amount of lack of perspicuity, because wherever I looked I saw deserted shops, empty streets, closed doors and windows, stationary cars; and all these assets of this scary landscape, offered me only one chance. To stand firmly on the shaking ground and whatever few moments I had left, invest them in raising the beast within me. The beast that lies in all of us, but we all suppress it for social, cultural and many other reasons. If for no valid reason, but surely for one reason, not to scare away innocent children. Because the beast within each one of us is more ruthless and brutal than the beast I am about to encounter.

Finally, it was time to face the beast outside me because the beast within me had been sleeping for many decades and I was finding it impossible to awaken him for this rescue mission. And the wisdom of the moment dictated that I first deal with the beast that was right in front of me. 

It howled loudly and the ground under my feet shifted a bit, it howled again and the ground under my feet began sinking now. Until it reached a point where I looked like a pony trying to puff itself up a bit so that it could somehow look like a well grown horse. But the beast was not moved even a bit by this bluff of mine. It knew what I was, and what made it worse, it even seemed to know who I was.

A visitor from a different planet who knew nothing about the planet of the beasts. And this made him bolder and it howled with tremendous ferocity, that brutalised every bit of innocence or pity left in him. If there was any of it left anywhere at all.

At this moment I felt like a mouse that had discovered a huge pile of pine nuts and as it began nibbling on them, the pine nuts began falling and buried the mouse alive under this huge pile of pine nuts. The mouse that could not bear their weight, struggled, it was not anymore focused on biting the pine nuts, it only thought about creating some light weighted space that would allow him to breathe a bit. Just a bit, but enough to stay alive.

And this is what these growing howlings of the beast were doing to me. They were forming a pile of fear packets over me, and the pile of these fear packets was so enormous, that now I was even unable to recollect what courage and bravery felt like, let alone displaying it right now in this confrontation with the beast.

But my situation was a lot more pathetic than the mouse caught under the pile of pine nuts; on a flat surface. In my case, the ground under my feet was sinking and the ever increasing pile of the beasts howling was gradually turning into a grave.

And trust me, the mouse was in a tomb with a lot of room to survive, whereas I was in a grave that was not only being subjected to immense weight from above, it was also experiencing constriction from all sides. And there was only one reason for this lack of will preventing me to rise up to the occasion. It was not about courage or bravery at this point, because will precedes courage. And I was trying hard to find the will to be courageous. I was failing to gather enough will to face the beast.

Then, as the ground under my feet had sunk to the lowest point, and the howlings of the beast had incised my will deep enough. I found out that I was caught in an inextricable game of will and forced cowardice. Where something was trying very hard to tame my instincts, to turn me into a frail object, and to force me to accept it as the eternal reality of my life. And then live all my life believing that I am this somebody else!

But was the beast outside me responsible for this? Could it be that the ferocious howlings of the beast had turned me into an indolent laggard? Or was it something within me that needed to be stirred up; because it had been tactfully conditioned by a few to believe in vulnerabilities that did not exist, to believe in the incidence of momentary cramps of fatigue that was actually an evil magician’s trick? Whatever it was, I knew it was something that would define my fate under this growing pile of beast’s howlings and the sinking ground under my feet.

I took a deep breath and I remembered the worst nightmares that I had encountered in my life so far. And there were so many of them, infact too many; that nightmares felt like too humbling a feeling. So, it did not work in my favour. I had thought I would gain some inspiration from it, but for a person who is born inside a nightmare, seeking a moment of self confidence from it is unlikely. Because this person is so used to dealing with nightmares that his mind treats them as the norm of life.

Almost like the daily tick tock sound in the clock. That normal and usual!

So I needed to look deeper within me, and find a monstrous nightmare that I had dealt with. Because to deal with a beast, one always needs a monster. But I had always led a life of principles, morality, civility, character, honesty, all virtues that in the present world mean nothing, but emotional plaque that should be spit out in the spit bin somewhere.

And this made my quest to find the monster within me even more difficult. And once again I was unable to find a monstrous nightmare. Because being born inside a nightmare, all nightmares felt the same, no matter how much power they possessed to inflict fear and terror in me. When the nightmare passed, I always forgot it, and only remembered the best lessons it taught me. Because it is the only way to survive when you are born inside a nightmare. If you ponder too much on the nightmares their recurrence will either turn you into a monster or it will kill you. 

But sometimes, in extreme situations, when you are surrounded by mean looking beasts, the only choice left is to somehow find this monster somewhere. 

It is a sordid feeling, but situational realities that seem to be conspiring to erase your native instincts, lead to incipient courage and valour. And right now I was in this situational abjectness, where incipient courage was going to be my sole force that would help me sustain my true instincts. And I would retain them at any cost and defend them with the last spark of life left in me. Because without them I will be someone else. And with someone else, come infinite possibilities, which can even relate with monsters and beasts. And a few of us do not wish to be either a beast or a monster!

Trust me, nobody likes downgraded mutation. A word to the wise!

So, what shall I do? 

Maybe that is the wrong question. Right now I should rephrase it and ask myself the right question. And in this moment that would be, what can I do?

I thought, I meditated a bit on it. Yes, you can meditate in the middle of so much disturbance too. Because true silence is not experienced by ears, it is felt by the mind. So I allowed my mind to be silent, and nothing existed for a few moments. The beast had disappeared, his howlings had been silenced, and his ability to sink the ground under my feet had been rendered ineffective.

And at this moment, the particle of thought infiltrated my mind and it set my mental landscape on fire. With flames so big that you could feel their blazing fire from infinity as well.

On this planet, these beasts existed when human species had not arrived here. But what did these beasts consume in order to survive, because we did not exist then?

And yes, there it was. The moment of revelation that helped me to understand the ruthlessness of the beast.

You see, beasts satisfy hunger and in mating season they satisfy a desire. But with humans it is different. We do not satisfy hunger, we only satisfy desires, endless and limitless desires. Our desires have hacked our every instinct to such a degree that we are unable to differentiate between hunger and desire, between need and desire. Because unlike beasts we do not experience seasonal desires, we perhaps are the only species living within a desire, where our only task is to keep breeding desires, and thus the unbreakable chain of desires continues- A desire within a desire, within another desire, and another desire, and it never ends.

When members of our species landed on this planet they found this land filled with uncountable bounties. And the beasts who actually owned this planet and only preyed on one animal, were seen by members of our species as an enemy or a potent deterrent in their quest to fulfil limitless desires. 

On this planet this chief prey of the beast was named by the members of our species as ZenDeer. But the members of our species found them very palatable and they consumed them in such huge numbers, that all ZenDeer went extinct. So what should the beast that is hungry now do? And of course they did the obvious. They found members of our species tastier than ZenDeer and they began preying on them wherever they found them and whenever they were hungry.

When I realised this, I screamed as loud as I could, “You should stop hiding behind the walls of false hope. You better wake up and face the wall of reality. Get a few ZenDeer from the reserved area and feed the beast before it feeds on us. You careless and insipid cravens!”

And someone, who had been lying there like a mouse under the pile of pine nuts, and still breathing, rushed as fast as she could and roped in a few ZenDeer and fed the beast.

The howlings stopped, the sinking of the ground under my feet stopped too, because the beast had had his fill. It looked at me and howled one more time, but now the ground did not tremble and the air did not vibrate with cynical feelings.

The beast had vanished into its reserved territory of ZenDeer that was now assigned to the remaining population of the beasts. And before me now stood the crowd of people who were trying to tame the beasts within them. Because I had tamed mine, when I had encountered my first monstrous nightmare in my childhood. So I might be someone born in a nightmare, but I decided not to be born into a nightmare, because that would make me a monster, who can never be tamed. No matter how many ZenDeer you fed me with.

That realisation has been within me for many decades now and it continues to bear me company even on this planet where I am a visitor. Just a visitor, trying to identify beasts and tame them with domesticated monsters.

This may sound too philosophical, but before we are anybody else we all are philosophers. Daily life philosophers, experienced philosophers, highly educated philosophers, master philosophers and Socrates like philosophers. Whatever the case might be, philosophy precedes all our professions that we come to be associated with in our later lives. So it will not be wrong to say that every scientist too has been a philosopher, every doctor has been a philosopher, and without philosophers even God would not have existed. Although God would have been omnipresent, it was philosophers who aided our realisation in this direction.

Anything that has never been experienced before, invented or discovered before, has always been felt or realised in the form of a philosophical thought. That is why we have theory and practical science. Big Bang was a theoretical idea, until few scientists philosophised on it adequately, promoting a debate that led to scientific probing and then proving the theory based on verifiable data and equations. That is the power of philosophy.

And on this planet it was this philosophical moment that saved me. Let us not forget that. Drinking a sip of well thought and harmless Philosophy is better than getting drunk and falling prey to vices. But there too, it is all about will and our choices.

But too much philosophy is also not good, because it alienates you from the realities of life. It makes you think beasts do not exist, whereas the fact is they do. And when you see one, a philosopher might recommend, standing still and letting the beast pass. But if the beast is hungry you are likely to be his meal. But a person who believes a bit in philosophy, a lot in science, and also in practical logic, would weigh the nature of the beast and act accordingly. Not just stand there and wait for chance to feed the proceedings of fate. No way! That is what a practical person will never do. And finding this balance of philosophy with practical logic is rare, and only few master this skill.

And my encounter with the beast was my first lesson in this balanced philosophy and practicalities of life.

But, if you want to experience something more beautiful and deeply inspiring, then it is only through true romance. A feeling that science recommends to soak yourself in, and a sensation that philosophers will not be able to explain even in many infinities of time. And if you wish to experience it without the trouble of being a philosopher or a scientist, then you must read the romance science fiction novel, They Loved in 2075. 

In the romance scifi novel, a boy falls in love with a very beautiful girl, but in 2075, most of the humans are unable to express love, because they do not feel anything. 

Do you know why?

Because they are dealing with beasts of different kind. They are dealing with technologically advanced monsters that have become self aware and they are interfering with human feelings and emotions. To the extent that they have forced humans to evolve a synthetic layer of emotions, which is machine like and not at all human like.

And the girl has developed a very strong layer of these synthetic feelings, yet the boy tries, keeps on trying, while waging war against the machines. And hopes she too will someday love him the way he loves her.

Who wins? The boy? The machines? Or both, the boy and the girl together? To know, read the scifi novel, They Loved in 2075.

To end this scifi driven philosophy let me add this, “It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen!”

Thank you for listening and reading through this blog post, it was an absolute privilege to speak and write! And please do not confuse the fact that humans should not have desires. It is good to have desires and feelings, that is what makes us human. But the problem begins, when you see someone who does not have a loaf of bread to eat. Whereas you have two loaves of bread to eat. But instead of applying butter on two loaves, you apply butter on each loaf on both sides. So the desire to always have two loaves of bread buttered on 4 sides is a wrong desire to entertain, when you see someone who doesn't even have a dry loaf of bread to eat. Again, eating two loaves of bread buttered on all 4 sides is fine too, if you sometimes share one loaf of bread with this person who has none. Sometimes, not always.

PS. Dedicated to the dying population of Lions and Lionesses and Tigers and Tigresses. Who are seeing a decline in their population because we are busy buttering two loaves of bread on all 4 sides, while the only prey of these graceful hunters has been consumed by us entirely before they could even spot it in their wilderness of nothingness. That is, as of today!