Science fiction. Time perception and the girl

 

#Sciencefiction. Time perception

and the girl

Life is short on our planet, and that is why we do not invest in hopes that spread beyond the horizons of our lifespans. Maybe it is an evolution at an emotional level, acquired by our clan that lives on this planet. 

The planet that has existed since the first life appeared in the universe, but people living on this planet lead short lifespans that last a few decades. And then one day the curtain falls and the life’s show for that person comes to an end.

And this is my story and I wish to share it before the curtain falls and my show comes to an end too. So, read carefully, because life here is short, but it is filled with so many lively moments that I have not come across anyone who died without a smile. And that is why on this planet we have a famous saying that goes somewhat like this:

If you see the most captivating smile on a person's face, then be sure that person is smiling at the angel of death!

So, you see, there is a lot of excitement everywhere on this planet. And nobody feels ingrate about anything, because on this planet, being alive means only two things: Being happy and being happily alive!

And why do I want to share my story, when you know almost everything about my planet. Simple, that was about my planet but this story is about me living on this planet and feeling happy my way.

So, let me begin.

My mother must have been 27 years old when I was born and my father may have been 35 years old at that time. And the moment I greeted the world, I heard their laughter; because they had been laughing about the joke that my father had cracked. Just a few moments before I was born.

I had been greeted by very welcoming sounds and this jovial tune of laughter still echoes in my ears and makes me smile. An echo that does not travel in a linear direction but in a circle. Where I am in the centre of this circle, yes you guessed it right; because we all are surrounded by the circles of our own lives. And I could not be an exception.

But I had not realised it until I was 20 years old. I do not prefer leaving any fodder for doubts, because eventually they add unnecessary climax to already rushing moments of life and force you to surmise a lot.

So, let me come straight to the point. It is true that I did not realise it until I was 20 years old, because time on this planet travels faster than most of the planets. And I guess it took me 20 years worth of time to come to this realisation. 

As you may have judged it by now, here everything and everyone is bound to one common instinct, that of hurry. But we do not feel it, because we are born in these hurrying moments of time.

However, when we have guests visiting us from other planets, they find it clumsy; and at a certain point they find it too laborious. 

What do I mean?

Being a part of the planet where everyone is lively and cheerful, let me explain it with some good humour.

A couple from a planet named Zaxen visited our planet. They were newly married and it was natural they would feel very passionate about each other. And when it comes to the human mind, humans feel sensations based on their ability to perceive a feeling that is tied to certain set or sets of neurons. 

Therefore, there exists a natural time gap between registering something via one's senses; and then for the region of the neural network dedicated to register a sensation to act upon it. So that it can then relay it as a feeling to the regions of the body dedicated to experiencing it. 

This gap between senses registering something and the dedicated neural networking acting upon it, so that the designated region of the body can experience it as a feeling, varies on our planet.  On most of the planets where time travels slowly, this gap maybe as long as a few nanoseconds, but on our planet where time travels very fast, this gap is as short as a fraction of a nanosecond.

We are that fast you see! Haa haa!

To explain it in more detail let me put it in a simpler way. The moment you touch someone you take at least  a few nano-seconds to feel some sensation. The gap of time that exists between the exact moment of time you touch someone and the time taken to feel some sensation, after you have touched someone, is what defines the rate at which the sensation travels from your neurons to your dedicated regions of the body. However, what you feel and how it makes you feel, will not change. No matter in which time zone you maybe.

So coming back to the guest couple who are visiting our house from a different planet where time travels slowly. The first time the husband kissed his wife, he felt he was experiencing a quicker response in terms of sensations felt by him. He liked it so much, that he kissed his wife more than 4 times. 

He was lucky that his wife was in a good mood, otherwise she might have pinched him or punched him. And then if his wife would have felt a similar rush of sensations. The husband would have been left red faced. But, nothing of that sort happened. They somehow decided to place a restraint on their rush of sensations after four kisses.

They spent a few days with us and they enjoyed it. But when they were leaving, they felt they had spent fewer than the number of days they had planned for this trip. And there was a reason for that too. They had decided to spend three days with us. And it was three days based on the time flow of their planet. Whereas on our planet their 3 days meant 5 days. Because here time travelled faster.

If their minds had to experience relaxation or change of surroundings equivalent to 3 days i.e. 3 days worth of relaxed feelings on their planet. Then they would be required to spend a minimum of 5 days on our planet. But they had not taken this fact into account. Therefore, they decided to be content with more kisses instead!

That should explain it with a better clarity when it comes to experiencing time on planets with varying time travel rates.

Nevertheless, if nothing, they certainly happened to fulfil the quota of kisses worth one year, about that I am sure. And my parents and I were confident they would visit again, if not for anything else, but certainly to feel the sensation of kisses that travels faster here.

Even love flows in the form of faster sensations on this planet, because it too wants to experience every sensation in the short lifespan. 

It was after the couple had left that I realised time could actually matter so much. Before their visit I always thought time existed because it had to exist, there was nothing special about it. So, I took it for granted. But, when the couple left, I realised if a kiss in a different time dimension could feel so different, how different would life be if I travelled to a planet where time moved slowly. I thought I could live longer, I could enjoy happiness longer, I could even kiss longer. 

And I had not bothered to ask the newly wed couple about it. Whether kissing too often was good or kissing and feeling something was better. Ah I do not know how to put it, but you know what I mean.

This imagination occupied my mind for many weeks. And one day over dinner, I told my parents that I would like to leave the home planet and travel to a planet where time travelled slowly.

They both looked at me and responded without any emotional climax. “We may have a decade more to live, and we want you to live your life in the most lively and happy way possible. Let us know where you wish to travel and we will make all the arrangements for you. But, do stay in touch with us always, and do visit us sometimes. 

We will ask the planet council to re-engineer your spaceship and grant you permission to go to your desired planet. We want you to be happy, because life is short and no matter which planet you are on, it is the same everywhere. And we want you to realise it. 

So which planet do you wish to go to? Have you thought about it?”

I watched them for sometime and while sipping some water from the glass, I thoughtfully replied, “ I want to fly to the planet that lies in the next galaxy. The planet Asmax.”

On hearing this they were a bit surprised because that planet is known for inducing lethargy in people. Time on that planet moves so slowly that the couple who had visited our household would have got tired after two kisses on that planet. 

And my parents had always known me as someone who enjoys the moments of rush hour, pace, speed, thrill, because they fascinate me. And they were right about it. But I wanted to maintain the same pace and rush, and see how my mind redefines speed on that planet where being a bit slow is normal, and being too fast is considered disrespectful. 

I wanted to feel it and experience time lapse on that planet, while being respectfully disrespectful. Do you understand what I am trying to say?

After 5 weeks my parents referred to this topic on Sunday afternoon and they informed me about their meeting with the planet council members, and gave me the unique travel number issued by the planet council after contacting the authorities of the destination planet. They really had gone out of their way to get this done for me. Because they knew I meant it and I was mentally prepared for it. 

Now they were the ones who encouraged me to go to the planet Asmax and experience moments of time that seem to drag on. Once again time appears to drag on, not to the people who are born on that planet, but to people, who travel from planets where time travels faster. And on our planet it is believed that time travels very fast, faster than 90% of the known planets and galaxies to our community. 

Anyway, on the following Monday, early afternoon, I wished my parents with all the adjectives their son could recall, we hugged, we laughed a lot; and as I left they smiled- You should not forget that we are the people who smile in the face of the angel of death.

Now I was in my spaceship and I was bound for Asmax. I defined the destination in the navigation system of the spaceship and flew towards the planet at full speed.

After 5 days I entered the orbit of the planet Asmax. And began cruising towards its main atmosphere. As the nose of my spaceship touched its atmosphere, my spaceship felt the first sensation of a different time- Just joking, you cannot feel time simply by entering a different atmosphere. Actually my spaceship experienced resistance because the outer atmosphere of this planet is very thick.

I had permission to land on their air base, and as I confirmed my identity with identification code specific to this journey, I was allowed to land on their air base.

I pulled my luggage. That was just two bags, because our community has developed the technology for smart clothes with inbuilt nano layers that allow us to change texture, change material based on the change in seasons; and if you can afford one, few nano layers even alter designs and fittings of our garments.

Therefore, we do not need too many clothes. But that does not mean we believe in being aesthetically shortsighted. Our smart clothes are designed with a lot of attention to detail and they are aesthetically very rich. Let me be accurate, even the most renowned fashion critic from any planet in the universe, cannot spot a point to criticise it. 

So, I began walking towards the main centre where once again I was asked  to confirm my identification number, and with this procedure completed their system was able to identify all my details, including my planet of origin.

Everything was cleared in say not more than 5 minutes, and I was free to roam and live on the planet that was new to me. 

Free I was indeed, but I had to decide in which part of the planet I wished to live and experience time moving at a slower pace. So far I had not experienced the lag in time because I was mentally very occupied.

Finally, I sat at a place where they served some local beverage and I asked the owner of the place to direct me to the destination that I had shortlisted for my stay on this planet.

He directed me to the underground tube and it took me 40 minutes to get there.

(It was 40 minutes according to their time recognition and measuring devices. Whereas my time measuring device certainly did not show it as 60 minutes.)

I came out from the tube and occupied a place in the waiting lounge. I wanted to have the first experience of time that moved slowly. I had imagined it like a fantasy comic book, where people would be doing things in slow motion. But it was nothing like that, they were doing things normally. They walked like us, talked like us, they ran like us, they even kissed like us, but there was one difference though. Just one. Their time measuring devices calculated time differently and if I compared it with my time measuring device, it registered time faster. 

But, I decided to wait for some more time and experience this new time zone. I was waiting to feel something, a sensation that identified time’s slowness. And I had concentrated all my senses on feeling it somehow. I must have been in this state for roughly 15 minutes, when I heard her voice.

And when I heard her voice, time seemed to move faster, faster than how I experienced it on my own planet. She was asking someone who was lounging in the area, about Asvan, the place that I had shortlisted for my stay.

The man did not seem interested in answering her questions. At least in the lounging area, that is a liberty he should be granted without taking any offence or treating it as his social delinquency. The best part being, whether someone granted him this privilege in the lounging area or not, he was aware of it and he exercised this right with complete awareness.

So the girl sat next to me. To the one who prefers to feel the speed, rush, thrill of life even in the lounging area. Because I am from the planet where time travels faster, and since we do not get to live long, we try to make the best of every passing moment. Maybe this was my first encounter with time travelling slowly on this planet. 

From her unsolicited conversation with the stranger, I knew she wanted to know about Asvan, and I knew some details about Asvan already. But, I was careful not to drown her in the rush of my moments of time, moments of time bound to a sense of hurry. So I kept silent, I forced upon myself the discipline of a nursery attending kid, who is asked by his teacher to keep quiet and he obediently places his index finger on his lips, which are desperate to quack like a duck. But at this occasion, there was only one difference, I did not use my index finger, I used the memory of my nursery class to complete the act for me.

So I was silent, experiencing self forced silence after 2 decades and that too on a planet where time travelled slowly.

And now I was experiencing my 2nd encounter with slow and indolent moments of time. It was good to feel alive for longer, but it was better to feel happily alive, even if it was not for that long.

Finally, I pulled out my map where I had identified Asvan. The moment she saw it in my hand, she asked me with lot of courtesy,

“Are you too going there? How is this place and do you live there?”

Good girl! She had asked me two questions and now there was no need for me to be worried about being interpreted as culturally indecent and instinctively insensitive. That often is the case when it comes to interpreting reactions from people who live in different time zones.

And it is us who usually get singled out as cultural black sheep in interplanetary society. Because we tend to rush, that is for the person who belongs to a planet where time moves slowly. Whereas, in reality we are being true to our instinct, that in turn has been conditioned over several generations to meet the requirements of life, essential in time zones where time moves very fast.

But, I still carried my nursery boy instinct next to myself. Just to make sure that if she gives me even the slightest hint of being rude or too uncultured, I will immediately place my index finger on my lips. Not to be quiet, but to shut up!

Well I shared all the information, not the information I could, but all that I could think of then. Because I felt she would feel more comfortable after knowing all these details. Afterall she did look a little worried, and since there was no relaxation beverage being offered in the lounging area; and she had already tasted the beverage of complete indifference from the man in the lounging area, I thought it would be appropriate to help her relax with the rush of information that she was so desperate to learn something about.

She appeared convinced with the information I shared with her. And then as I got up to board the tube, I left her with a little bit of wonder. I suppose I did. Because she seemed to be from a planet where time moved very fast, but not faster than my planet. So, she must have wondered about it, especially on a planet where time travels on a bicycle.

But something told me Asmax was going to be a wonderful and lifelong affair. And my intuition was not wrong. She had to sit next to the person who was from the planet where time moves extremely fast. She was sitting next to me.

I was being too conscious about it I guess, because she did not seem to mind it, she happily sat next to me and we had a long conversation.

This was a different experience though. Time neither travelled too slow and neither too fast. It travelled at the sweetest pace, a pace that is enjoyable and one wants to fall in love with it. 

It was at this moment I realised, maybe it is not about time travelling too slow or too fast. It is more about the person who travels with you in these moments of time, that defines the pace of time and the liveliness of the moments of time begotten thereby.

And maybe that is why my parents were always happy, least worried, lively, always ready to dance, because they had found in each other, the person who added the perfect pace to the moments of time. Making every moment of time enjoyable and worthwhile.

The entire journey was so enjoyable that I even didn't realise when the station designated for Asvan arrived, and we deboarded. Once again I showed my unique identification number and I entered the area. And she followed!

I have been living here for 2 months now and I often meet her. No, the correct way to put it would be, we meet often. Because if we had believed in different time zones and different instincts, then either she would have been attempting to meet me often or I would have been attempting to meet her often. But finally, we were living in a time zone where we enjoyed the pace of time equally. It was due to this reason, yes, only due to this reason, that two of us decided to meet often. And now we both meet regularly.

I have written a book on interpreting time, and you must be wondering how come in 2 months! Well, that is something I inherit based on my instincts that have taught me to run, but never hurry or rush. And being with her made it feel so easy that I compiled a book in 2 months. 

Without her I may never have realised that for life to achieve its true purpose, it is important to experience life with a joy that you can share with someone who loves the same pace of life. Because only then you neither feel left behind nor do you feel walking way too ahead. And it is this balance that is essential to experience the perfection of time. 

We have decided to spend the remaining moments of time together on Asmax at the place called Asvan.

If you want to know whether it was easy living here or you want to know how easy or difficult it was to impress a girl who was used to experiencing time at a different pace. Then you must read the #sciencefiction novel, They Loved in 2075.

In this #scifi novel, a boy falls in love with a very beautiful girl, but the world in 2075 is dominated by self aware machines that emote like humans, and the girl has developed a synthetic layer of feelings and emotions; that prevent her from emoting like true and sensitive human beings.

Yet the boy believes in her; he believes she will someday manage to realise her true human instincts and feelings, that will eventually make her fall in love with him. 

This might be a far reaching hope for the boy who is caught in the middle of three wars. Because war torn places offer life spans that do not exceed more than the lifespan of my tribe. And it is true even if you are on a planet where time travels at its slowest pace. Now, for him and her it is a race against time. To know whether the boy and the girl win or the time wins; or the self aware machines win. You ought to read the #scifi novel, They Loved in 2075.

In the meantime let me lounge beside her and feel the perfect pace of time. And to give you an idea about experiencing perfect moments of time, let me make it simple. The difference in time that exists on our planet and Asmax, can actually be reduced to one thing. The girl! And what I realised in her presence and in her absence!

Everything else is a predictable guess. It is only in best selling and thoughtfully written #scifibooks that making a 100% accurate guess is not possible. And one such #scifibook is They Loved in 2075. In this #scifibook the amazement never ceases.