Science fiction. Strange beauty

 

Science fiction. Strange beauty

“Where is she? Where could she be and how far may she be from this utopian world? The world where reality seeks refuge in moments of paucity that hang on the hooks of magnanimity that actually is a confused state of reality!”

I was totally confused when I heard the stranger say these lines. Where it was unclear whether he was speaking to me or to the walls that surrounded us. But, being the only living thing in that setting who could comprehend the meaning of his words and then make sense of the sentences they formed. I was forced to assume they were meant for me. Each word and every sentence they formed.

Given the complexity of the sentences I also was forced to assume that he thought I had the mind to understand their meaning. But trust me, I could not make out anything, nothing at all!

More than anything else I did not know this female he was referring to. I didn't have the slightest inkling about her whereabouts, and when it came to her identity, it was like walking in the vast field of charcoal on the darkest night, and trying to spot the piece of charcoal that I had dropped somewhere in this field yesterday. 

This was my situation as of this moment. A person trying to locate the favourite piece of charcoal that I had dropped yesterday, and I was out seeking it on the pitch black night. Maybe the stranger did not realise it; and he somehow wanted me and everyone else to realise his emotional and mental state. Maybe these lines were the unconscious and delirious rantings of his every heart beat.

Whatever it was, I was not here to meet the stranger or be his only audience in this corner of the street, where I had to take the right turn and continue walking on the main road. Where after 100 metres or so, it connected with the lane that would lead me to the house of the person whom I was supposed to meet.

I gave him a passable look and continued walking, while my mind tried understanding the meaning of the words I heard him utter, the moment I happened to cross him.

After having walked for 10 minutes I was where I was supposed to be. I tapped on the door and followed my host. She asked me to make myself comfortable. As soon as she discovered that I was comfortable enough, she came straight to the point.

"Where is the transistor that you were supposed to bring for me?"

I quickly nodded my head and took it out. Before I could give it to her, the moment she saw it in my palm she picked it like a sea eagle swooping on a fish. Where the fish has no idea what happened to her, until the eagle’s claws restrain her movement and carry her from her water world into the world of thin air and blue sky. 

Here the transistor was the fish, and my palm was the sea that nurtured the fish and had now lost it forever. So suddenly that we could not even say goodbye to each other. My hand stood frozen in the same position, while my eyes winked more than thrice, because they were still unable to accept the fact about the master act of my host. Where she picked up the transistor with such agility that it seemed almost impossible to my eyes. Finally, as I closed my fingers and my open palm contracted into a fist, my eyes winked once again and this time they accepted the reality. Because now, they were focused on the host’s hand holding the transistor.

And before I could ask her something, she expressed her thoughts, “You may leave now. I will contact your president when I have found out what I am supposed to. Thank you!”

I was once again confused because I was expecting to hear something else. Nevertheless, I thanked her and I left. Almost as quickly as I had entered.

What a lady, what a host! She appeared to do everything so abruptly, and no doubt her fame followed her everywhere. Because she was someone very articulate, to the point, very genuine, unostentatious about everything, with an unremitting zeal to meet her deadlines. And she had proven it to me once again. And my admiration for her increased even more.

"A woman who knows what she wants and never refrains from expressing her mind."

I was trapezing with these thoughts as I walked on the road, and from the distance I once again heard the same lines echoing feebly, 

“Where is she? Where could she be and how far may she be from this utopian world? The world where reality seeks refuge in moments of paucity that hang on the hooks of magnanimity that actually is a confused state of reality!”

I felt a linguistic shortsightedness, when my mind once again found it impossible to understand the meaning of his words. And I wondered, "What was he trying to say and why was he repeating these lines? Had he lost his mind? But how could someone with such precise use of words be termed as someone having lost his sanity? No that is impossible. I am sure there is something bothering him."

These were my actual thoughts when I stood at the corner of the street trying to understand who he was and what he was trying to say.

And definitely a person who could be so expressive with his words should not be termed insane. In reality the people who are unable to understand their meaning are actually the ones suffering from linguistic malnourishment. And that of logical discernibility as well. And right now I was part of this class of people suffering from linguistic malnourishment. 

He certainly meant something when he repeated these lines, because his voice carried a deep emotional vibration. Maybe that is why these words did not travel like sound waves, they travelled more like emotional crests, followed by feeling soaked troughs, and then they attained a vocal pitch, it first communicated with the heart and then with every other sense. Strangely, the heart felt them first, even before the ears could relay them to the brain's auditory filtration centre. I had never experienced anything of this sort before. Never!

This man certainly was not an ordinary lunatic. Whoever he was, he was an extraordinary lunatic, about whom everything was uniquely sane and filled with the extravagance of prudence. Simply many leagues ahead of most of us!

He was a misunderstood concept of true and genuine sanity.

And right now I had the time to know the reality about the stranger, because I had reserved 2 hours for the meeting with the “transistor lady.” And now I had 1 hour and 30 minutes to loiter around. But I have always believed that human life is like summer flowers. Bloom well until the summer lasts, and spread your fragrance of life everywhere, because the summer does not last long. The summer flowers last just for a few special moments and then vanish suddenly.

And being born with this belief, I decided to approach the stranger who was still chanting his hymn.

“Where is she? Where could she be and how far may she be from this utopian world? The world where reality seeks refuge in moments of paucity that hang on the hooks of magnanimity that actually is a confused state of reality!”

With cautious steps I approached him. I did not enter into a conversation with him straight away. I made him feel I was in a position to understand the meaning of his words, by offering him “fake intellectual smiles!” Oh my sense of humour and intellect, did I phrase it well. Yes, “fake intellectual smiles” is the right phrase, because that is what I was doing. And apart from being the summer flower who believes summer is short and does not last forever, I also happened to be someone who was hatefully honest.

And staying true to my instinct of honesty, the phrase “fake intellectual smiles,” will be the honest description of what I was doing.

( By the way they say, when the world will be filled with a lot of evil, honest people will be regarded as a social menace and threat to existing lifestyles. Because their actions will surprise the majority of the people. Who due to their fake marriage with their personalities will be living the lives of someone else. And this person will be looked upon as a crow among the flock of pigeons! Haa haaa! Do not worry, I know what it means. But when you are born with flower-like instincts, you are also born fearless!”

The stranger kept saying his perfectly memorised lines, and I kept listening to them with my, now equally perfected “fake intellectual smiles!” 

Finally he too smiled, and it was a sign that my fake intellectual smiles were working. He was beginning to believe that I understood everything he said. Whereas the truth was different. I did not understand even a word.

Then he stood next to me, and whispered these lines in my ear.

And this time he added a new line.

“Do you want to know about the girl and her charms?”

I did not know what to tell him. Because I believed every woman is charming like a summer flower. The most beautiful creation in the universe. Very poised, patient, intellectually rich if given a chance, invincible; and if it were not for women the world would have been deprived of one of the most precious human feelings and every emotion associated wit it. The feeling of love!

So my mind immediately prodded me and my head shook in agreement. He smiled once again, then he placed his hand on my shoulder, pressing it down, as if he were asking me to sit. And he indeed was, because there was a huge block of chiselled stone. I sat there and he sat next to me, and he continued.

“It was many years ago that I came to this town. Many years ago, yes, I think it was many years ago. Let me think sir! Of course it was many years ago, it cannot be yesterday. Right?

I have seen you a couple of times before as well, so it cannot be yesterday. Right, it was many years ago I came to this town. That time this town was young; yes very young. Now it is old and worn out, almost like a slovenly and tattered, wanton ruffian. But it was not always like this! 

One night when I was walking home, I came across a lifeless body on the street. She was lifeless, there was no pulse at all. So in medical terms she was dead. But something told me she was not dead yet.

I did not want her to be dead, because I had never seen anyone as beautiful and as charming, even in her lifeless state. And then I thought to myself what would she look like if she were alive?

This was my honest thought. Really I didn't mean anything else! Nothing at all. I wanted to see her alive, and I wanted to hear her heart beats. And then witness beauty that could walk around spreading her charm.

I looked around and there was nobody on the street. I held her in my arms and carried her into my room.

I carefully placed her on the table.

After examining her pulse, I concluded she was dead. She was cold. As cold as death can be.

I thought, what can I do? No, no, let me be honest sir. I thought what shall I do? How can such a beautiful and young life be wasted? How? It was not right, it was God’s only sin! That is what I thought then sir!

I have been a bit of everything when it comes to a long list of few things I know and I am interested in. Am I complicating it sir, or you are able to understand me? Since you are silent and nodding your head, I am sure you understand me well and my intentions as well.

I used a technique that I had always thought about when I was a young kid. Not that young, I had cleared my high school then. Yes. High school. I had left high school sir.

For a week I did not attend to any work, I pulled in the curtains of my room and turned it dark so that I could think. And finally, the beautiful girl, the lifeless and cold girl turned warm, and she developed a pulse. Then it was all gone after a week. Her warmth, her pulse too.

I did not kill her sir. You know that I had found her lying dead on the street. You remember that. Right you do! I actually offered her life for a week. You see!

Now she had developed a regular pulse and her body temperature had been restored to normal. Again I realised there was something with her brain that was not reacting to this new life. Because sometimes her pulse would dip and her body temperature would fall as well.

I again tried hard, and finally she woke up, and she was alive now. She was living and not dead.

It took her a week to revive her senses fully along with her memories. And that was it sir. Her old memories sir!

She remembered someone and left. She did not even say goodbye, she just left, although she knew she had died and I offered her a new life. She knew everything, every detail.

She swayed her charm all over me and then left. Suddenly, you see sir! Suddenly!

And I had told her that her life hangs on the hooks of magnanimity that actually is a confused state of reality! She knew exactly what it meant.

And now I am left wondering what might have become of her sir. It is a troubling thought not to know what becomes of someone you nurtured with your mind and then cared for with your heart. It creates a passage of hollowness where your thoughts wander knowingly. Then it feels like a winter icicle that points at your heart; and as the winter freeze intensifies, the tip of this icicle keeps extending and pierces through your heart. Where the tip of the icicle keeps extending forever, because the 4 chambers of the heart also keep getting larger, just to  accommodate every feeling of pain, every feeling of ever deepening melancholy.

Do you know why it is so, sir? Not that I wanted to be seduced by her or I was an obsessed admirer? Ah not really sir! I wanted to preserve her charm and introduce her to the life of honour and magnanimity that lasts forever. And nobody would have known that she could be a summer flower that will live on even when millions of summers have passed away. I wanted to offer her immortality because I knew its secret.

And now I am worried because in 2 months when her memory has fully generated, she will enter into a memory refresh phase, and when that happens, she will forget everything from her past life. And only I can remind her everything because it is my memory that she experienced when she was going through her semi wakeful state.

Oh God, she will be clueless about the world that will exist around her, and then she will look for me more desperately than I am for her now. Because I will be the only thing she will remember at that stage. And when she will not find anything related to me around her, she will experience a state that I call "memory phantom." Where she will weave a world of imaginary fantasies around this memory. And when that happens sir, she cannot understand anything about the real world, because she will be forced to generate experiences that relate with my memory. And that is where she would need my help sir, otherwise she will force her mind to believe that I am the only memory that her mind recognises. And when this happens sir, her mind will become an endless assembly of photographic memories, but all of them will actually be reproductions of my memory. And it will trap her in this memory loop that never ends. Where she knows that a person whom her mind recognises vaguely does exist, but with no idea about where to find me she will wander in this assembly of photographic memories that she self generates as a means to locate me somehow and somewhere.

I can tell you a lot about photographic memory and how it can invade human cerebral functioning, but let us keep that for some other day. Not now!

But you see sir, she left suddenly because she was a bit haughty. I guess. Perhaps she was yet to realise that we all are like summer flowers. We bloom and then we enter a permanent state of gloom.

That is why sir, I keep repeating these lines like a mad man sir.

But the actual fact is different sir! I am faking this appearance sir, so that I find her somewhere before she confronts the demons that she cannot deal with. Only I can help her deal with them, nobody else and nothing else can!

This is why I keep repeating always:

“Where is she? Where could she be and how far may she be from this utopian world? The world where reality seeks refuge in moments of paucity that hang on the hooks of magnanimity that actually is a confused state of reality!”

And I know people think I am crazy. I am sure when you heard me say these lines, you too must have thought the same. But that does not matter.

And do you know something sir. Humans have always referred to all prophets, many scientists, many philosophers as crazy beings. And there is a reason for this sir. Majority of humans roam in photographic memories, only few of us can separate the photographic memory from other forms of memories. And those who do, they can see and think what the rest cannot. It is a fact about human mind that I can prove sir!

When he completed his story I understood the meaning of each word and every line. Yes, I understood it 100% now. He was a true lover of life and more than life, an ardent lover of beautiful life. And he believed in scientific thinking and logical understanding of all affairs of life.

I took from him the photograph of the girl he was holding in his hand, and I promised him I would find her for him. Atleast I will try.

To know if I was successful in finding her, and then if I was able to find the stranger again, you must read the scifi novel titled: They Loved in 2075. This science fiction novel is about a boy and a beautiful girl who fall in love in 2075. But the girl suffers from emotional redundancy and sudden depletion of sentiments. It is a condition she has developed as a result of her aggressive interaction with the self aware machines and the mechanised world. 

And the boy who himself happens to be a technology enthusiast and believes in reverse engineering the concept of self aware machines so that they can be better integrated with human societies, is trying hard to make the girl regain her lost quotient of human feelings and emotions.

To know whether the existing and awfully corrupt self aware machines win, or the new generation of well designed and ethically superior self aware machines help the boy win the heart of the girl, and also help her to realise her human existence. Please read the scifi novel, They Loved in 2075.

I must return to the stranger now, because he must be waiting, and maybe he cannot wait till 2075. Because sometimes extending hope too far may translate into a reality that is obscure for the person concerned. For the same reason you see!  We all are nothing, but summer flowers. We live brief lives, but if lived well, we can leave behind fragrances in the form of our acts that can make us immortal. 

I am going to meet the stranger now, to learn from him the secret of true immortality. Which is also a virtue summer flowers can possess.

PS. Dedicated to the summer flowers and the beauty that actually resides in all of us. But we all need the right summer, and sometimes a stranger to help us find this right summer. Where this summer flower within us can bloom in its ultimate brilliance!