Dreamscapes I

[ I ]

Something to brood over

  Every dream is not alike. Geographically, creatively and even temporally, most dreams differ in large magnitudes. Indeed, the very system of physics seems to differ among different dreams. Every dream could in fact contain a universe of its own. How would you possibly even grasp at something to say '”this is my starting position!”? The solution is the oft-applied (and oft-enforced) guideline of forgetting everything that you know. Welcome. Is it possible, now, to provide ourselves with a set of static variables which are 'felt' by every dreamer? I say 'felt' because I am at a loss for words; these variables could well be completely intangible in our waking state, and sensing them could be beyond the boundaries of our ordinarily espoused senses. Consider now a completely different metric, something which we might not yet be able to define. An example would be the dream-ending trigger of death – something known to anyone who has ever dreamed. Death automatically wakes up the dreamer. Now this is a global static variable, this 'death trigger.' Could, then, the death trigger be quantified? Could it be traded with? Could it be monetized?

  It is remarkable to think of a dreamscape wherein the mind of the dreamer processes data – useful data amidst what is seemingly nonsense (FOR NOW); data which can be quantified; data which might have applications in the dream world or even the real, waking world. The 'DreamCoin,' is the logical, hack-y name for the inevitable outcome, named along the lines of a popular online currency. The similarity between the two is striking; there's a certain almost-shadowy vagueness to them. Both use processing or thinking power to 'mine' information. Stuck as we are on our shrinking planet (FOR NOW), the Internet and the Within (which is enriched by meditation, spirituality, eco-friendly living and the speculated 'network of dreamscapes,' along with an infinite number of recently-revived soulful activities and fads) seem to be the best fields for those looking for exploratory roles in today's life.

  An entire economy could develop based on dream-based services. While not entirely original, the idea of productivity within one's dreaming hours is forever going to remain an attractive and threateningly inconceivable one. Like the white, unmarked territory of most of Africa in Joseph Conrad's seminal Heart of Darkness, the dreamscape 'topology' (in metrics of dream-deaths! in metrics of lucid-dream success rate!) would be fresh adventure, ready for people to make their fortune all in their minds. An assuredly formidable change – an age defining change – will follow.

  The Internet, the already-evolved cousin of our 'dreamscape network' can aid in its formation. Forums could (and already do) discuss lucid dreaming. Simple phone apps and diaries can log dreams. A network can be formed out of a group of dreamers who decide to 'map' the 'dreamscape topology' on their own, probably just for kicks, possibly making their fortune along the way. Not unlike the sheer aesthetic charm (as well as the suspicion that they aid in the development of reflexes and hand-eye coordination) that makes us not think of video gaming as truly 'bad,' the yet-in-development art of lucid dreaming would draw both casual once-a-month dreamers and hardcore 'awake-all-day' dreamers, as well as a particularly harsh crowd of naysayers and jeer-ers. One day, two people may meet in their sleep.

  Lucid dreaming and dream-sharing can turn into a trend: a trend as widespread as the social network revolution, bringing us what can be perceived as a superpower – until, of course, the trend is large enough for everyone to wield the power, making it normative and finally sealing it as the next step in our evolution. All this power is completely beyond the jurisdiction of anything man has yet defined, and starting now, the bored millennial generations can finally find something to truly do when they're restless on their beds at night. Maybe one day, the wildest dream out of the mind of a three-year-old child could prove to be prophecy for the world!

The Meris Touch

The Meris Touch

by Aditya Shirodkar

She spoke to me of The Meris Touch, and it made all the difference.

In all honesty, this story is about a girl: I endlessly rewrite this story to make it anything but the story about a girl, but no mask I weave will cover this visage so flecked by my love for her. I often will myself to just think of something else in this solitude, but every fibre of my being insists on reminding me of Lyra. The stars in the sky take me to the very brink of the galaxy where a pattern was named after her. Romanticism is inevitable when you think of Lyra; the roar of the wind coursing its way through the surf too aptly reminds me of her gliding hands; the dawn on this distal rock with its translucent cirrus reminds me of the wakeful nights and the strewn blankets. I smile when I think of when we will meet again.

January 6, 2842

When this day began, I'd marked it as the happiest day of my life. I was to graduate cum laude that afternoon, and the celebrations had already begun. At seven o'clock, Lyra woke me up with a kiss, and we each broke our fasts - me with my usual oatmeal, toast and cheese, and she with something-or-the-other from an exotic planet, be it the grey coffee from the Barnard's star system or the bacon and eggs from Earth. Always unique; always something new. We drove to college in my sedan, where I'd - finally! - get my degree in Cybernetics, and she would get hers in Earth-era English Literature.

The graduation ceremony was grand, largely in part due to the ridiculous and awesome phenomenon occurring above our very heads. This day had the twin suns of Grace engage in a manoeuvre seen only once every few thousand years - the smaller, hotter and bluer sun blocked out the larger, colder and redder one, resulting in an apparition that was almost angelic in its appearance and magnitude. Bright wings of light shot out from the extremities of this compounded sphere to reach the very corners of the viridian sky of Grace, setting it asunder. The waves rolling into the western front of our seaside campus were rendered incandescent as they passed through a beam of light dragoning its way through the skies; the light struck each wave as if it were its own, like a queen knighting a thousand men, each with a deliberation which will not allow us to label the occasion as routine. More majestic than a thousand queens, this super-solar eclipse knighted my dear as she rose onto a well-placed platform to deliver her valedictorian speech.

We returned to my home beside the breakwater. The tides were still here, but the surface of the water was lit up to seem other-dimensional. It truly was; Lyra and I dove in and found a magical and peaceful and beautiful world which was our own. Gasping for breath as our intertwined bodies finally found their way to the shore; she brushed a lock of golden hair from her face and finally narrated to me the poem which had earned her her graduation certificate. She'd hidden it from me - from virtually everyone, really - because she did not think it was anything spectacular. But all cares were lost in that kaleidoscopic Eden, and her words were, to me, more valuable than any that her Keats wrote in his fury - what could a man from a thousand years past, singular in his suffering, know of a love such as ours?

The Meris Touch

The old magister faintly asked me

"Sea child, do you have no worries?"

I said to him, with sand on my knees

"My worries are washed by the seas"

The old man, aching at his brows

Looked at the water break on the boughs

Nervously asked me, "does it not douse

The fire that rages within your blouse?"

I laughed at him then, and softly said

"Old man, will you lie on your bed

And regret it, when you fall dead

That in your youth, you could not wed

"Every wave, that beckons your heart to

Stay still, and be one with the blue."

Slowly, the man then took out his shoes

He went in old and came out anew.

I can recall the twinkle in her eyes when she was done. The violet in her eyes was complemented by the unreal sky, and as she blushed a maiden blush, I kissed her firmly. We re-entered the waters, which, somehow, seemed even more beautiful.

February 17, 2850

My five-year-long meditation and labour culminated in this single creation. Designated ARYL-4, the robot I had made won every distinction available in the fields of cybernetics galaxy-wide. The design won awards for practicality, functionality and realism, and the AI received the praise of scholars from Earth to Antares as being incredibly human. Nine hundred years have passed since the making of the first artificial intelligence, and we are still stuck with the inherent need to make something like ourselves. I am a proponent of the singularity hypothesis, and I think it is fundamentally stupid to create something as good as or better than ourselves. I did not want something to think for us or to govern us with its advanced intelligence. I did not want to get stuck in some Frankensteinian dilemma, playing God for a new species. My reasons for this creation are far more base and petty.

ARYL-4 was modelled to look just like her, or at least my memories of her when we were in the prime of our youth. For sure, she'd be older and greyer, and her voice would have a tinge of something I hadn't felt before. Far from wanting to change civilization, I made ARYL-4 to try to replicate what it felt like to be with her. Even its touch felt just like hers, and soon, ARYL-4 acquired female pronouns. It feels terrible to write this down, and I vaguely remind myself of a character by a Russian scholar named Vladimir Nabokov who Lyra often spoke of.

But there were problems. ARYL-4 was, at the end of the day, a robot. She lacked the fey charm and the starry eyes that made Lyra my own. Once more, I relapse into my time with Lyra. We were sitting out on the funny mound that seemed to grow out of the soil behind my house. She told me then of yet another one of her Keatsian factoids, this one dealing with his concept of "negative capability." It took me weeks to figure out what that meant, and years to truly apply it to poetry and life in general. What could a mere robot know of negative capability? It was merely a construct; a composition of logic. There is no logic in negative capability.

January 31, 2845

My relationship with Lyra came to an end gradually, and on this day, I find myself looking back at the anniversary of our union. It had been four good years, and I wouldn't regret any of them. Life, it seemed, would carry on. I was terribly wrong, for two reasons. Firstly, even though I had all the money a woman could need, I had a reserved and calculative personality. It took ages for Lyra to get to know me, and such time is not at hand, as it was back then in those blithe days of youthful love. 

Secondly, I am not a particularly handsome man. In fact, most would call me ugly at first glance. I've had people - parents, friends, teachers and even girls who I fancied - tell me that looks do not matter (the last variety even had the nerve to say that I was all a girl could need before frolicking on with the members of the gravball team). But, with personal experience, I can safely conclude that first impressions are based on looks, and someone as reserved as me cannot possibly make a second impression.

To say the least, in the years after Lyra, I did not do too well in the realms of love and romance. After Lyra was this girl named Ecksabeth, Beth for short. She was plain, stout and squalid in appearance, but, as far as her personality goes, she was a gem. But like a jockey having to pick a quarter horse after having owned an Arabian, I found something lacking. We broke up months later. Elie was next. She was comely enough to look at, but our conversations revolved around the clothes and leather extras I would buy for her using a considerable part of my considerably large bank cheque. Suffice to say, she didn't last either.

I attempt to keep my career at the forefront these days. I'll soon be embarking on a project to refine contemporary AI to be more human in its decision making. So far, Lyra's influence - or rather, her absence - has not made its mark in any of my works. I wonder if I will ever feature in her poetry. As far as I know, she published nothing other than those old poems in that one magazine back in 2843. Maybe I was her muse. Maybe I'm giving myself far too much credit.

August 11, 2851

Aryl and I visited Earth on this day, the first time for either of us. The New York Conference was the most prestigious technological conference held in the galaxy, and was, undoubtedly, the oldest. Indeed, the very first conference had taken place in the antiquity of human attempts in the fields of robotics and computing. The conference concluded with an awards ceremony, and I was nominated, then, for the George Devol Jr. Award for Robotics, which I won. For some reason, I'd asked Aryl to deliver my speech of thanks. It was a cocky and not entirely original move, for every conference since 2719, with the exception of the Great Tragedy of 2731, had featured some engineer sitting satisfied in his seat, thinking, "Let my creation speak for itself." But watching Aryl rise to the podium gave me a different kind of satisfaction, which I could not quite place.

The conference, like every conference, concluded with a world tour for all its delegates. The Earth tour was celebrated as the best tour amongst all planetary tours, and this was certainly true because of the rich cultural heritage that came with every city and town that dotted the face of the planet. Humanity itself had begun on this planet; if that isn't enough to stir something deep within you, I do not know what is. We moved east over the Atlantic, and found ourselves in the foggy mess that was London. I did not depart our luxurious, supersonic airplane, named the Concorde in honour of an ancient plane with the same name and same purpose. The lavatory was kept busy with the proceedings of our forbidden love, and I'd decided that London could wait another day. So could Paris, Heidelberg, Cologne and Bern; I can come back here at any time.

At Rome, however, I was strangely motivated to leave the plane. The first place I visited was an odd cemetery, to find the symbolic grave that she had doted on. He'd said his name was writ on water, but it was quite firmly engraved in my mind. Why I still gave the old poet this much thought was beyond me. Aryl could not quite understand the situation. I told her to ignore it, for by then I had given up on the thought of shaping her to be like the other one. Aryl, always thoughtful, always supportive, gave me some time alone at the gravesite.

The rest of the week-long Earth tour was a sombre affair. My mind kept drifting into territories not normally associated with a student of science and technology - thoughts of un-enlightenment and the want to jump into some stream that was certainly not on the agenda for this tour grew rebelliously in my mind. Aryl did not press me to divulge what the matter was, and, honestly, I did not quite know myself. She didn't know a thing about Lyra; it was not in her nature to ask. The tour ended on the west coast of North America, and then we headed back to Grace, where my home by the still water was, indubitably, waiting for me.

November 18, 2841

On this day, I asked Lyra why exactly she fancied the sea so much. She told me that I would soon know the answer. I didn't quite get it, but it, perhaps, had something to do with the seas so abundant on this tiny planet. Grace is a planet with two suns and countless seas - it is referred to, by astronomers, as a water planet. After living so many years on Nepenthe, the seas came as a bit of a culture-shock to me: back home, it was wasteland after wasteland, and water bodies were confined to a few large lakes on a planet primarily composed of land. I recall voicing my intentions of going to Earth one day - it would be a fine balance between both these twisted worlds. This delighted her. She was pursuing a course in Earth-era English Literature, and always found a way to twist everything I said or did into some ideal of an old English playwright or the other somewhen a thousand years ago.

We then conversed about the different places we'd visit if we'd ever end up on Earth - I too was well read on Earthly matters, as was almost every one of the one trillion people that populated the inhabited part of the galaxy. Every history course would inevitably allude to Earth and its lost ways. There was, however, a slim chance that any student taking up these courses would ever end up on Earth, due to the prohibitive costs of interstellar travel - why, getting to Grace from Nepenthe itself cost my family half their fortune, and also meant that I'd, probably, never see them again. At the end of our conversations, we'd agreed to make a one-way trip there ourselves, and visit all the famous museums and shrines left behind by her favourite poets and authors, and finally end up retiring at this seaside hamlet called Goa. It's a brilliant idea, really.

Lyra dove into the water beside my house. She beckoned me to enter, and I refused, wondering how anyone could think of entering a water body. She asked me, then, if I wanted to die without ever stepping into the surf. After much deliberation, I finally got in. I spent many minutes figuring out the most rudimentary way to stay afloat, and she then led me onto the breakwater beyond which the waves dashed in all their glory. We stood there, arm in arm, and I watched, open-mouthed, as waves three times again as tall as I was crash into the barrier and spray us with a delightfully subtle amount of water. I completely understood her then: her wayward ways and her starry eyes that seemed to radiate some kind of purity whenever she gazed out at the sea.

March 21, 2855

I was sitting with my feet dipped inside the still water outside my house, when something totally unexpected happened. If anyone should read this, know that this was the moment of my insanity, and of my death. Out of the bulrushes that hid a large portion of the western horizon emerged a too-familiar face of old. The same eyes, the same smile, the same face. It was her; the one with an Earthly constellation named after her, the Lyra-of-the-sea. She had aged, undoubtedly, but she was, essentially, the same girl I met one afternoon in some common class shared by our generally non-intersecting disciplines. She was standing in water three feet deep, and I dropped whatever I was reading and dove as far as I could, and found my way beside her.

We laughed when we were face-to-face. Why had we broken up? I don't know. Matters from ten years ago scarcely mattered, and we were sitting together by a fire as we dried the clothes still stuck to our bodies. She told me how her career had never taken off, and how, like me, all her trysts with love had inevitably failed. She spoke with the same warmth that I'd been so used to all those years back, and I had a feeling that something beautiful was about to begin, when I was interrupted by the other love of my life.

It was a mirror image of what Lyra had looked like ten years ago, and she looked cluelessly at the woman sitting in front of her. I could see the fibre-nerves I'd designed spasm in confusion and what I can only interpret as despair. With a strained voice, she started saying something which I could not quite comprehend, until I got a little closer.

She spoke of The Meris Touch, and it made all the difference. I turned to watch Lyra's face contort with horror as she, too, heard the words she'd once penned down come out of this replica of herself. She fled. Her body was found, lifeless, deposited on the shore of the breakwater built to keep waves from destroying my house.

Aryl ceased to function, shortly. It seemed that she had never been programmed to face something like this before. I hugged my inhuman lover and wept. I was taken away by the police shortly.

---

I was tried on four counts: indirect murder, cloning, sexual intercourse with a non-human, and for utilizing university funds for personal gain. My awards and nominations were stripped away, and I was cast into a prison placed so unfortunately by the sea. I think now of John Keats - cast away and sentenced to die, with his reasons for existence well out of reach. Maybe, if they let me step out one last time, I could walk into the sea and be born anew.

Weather-depression

Rains, and absent parents. The gloom that had drifted its way into Isaac's mind had to go. The movies on television were sour and bleak of their own. It wasn't fair, he thought, that it wasn't appropriate to make fun of a cripple, but was just fine to air the most damp shows amongst the plethora of sad, damp shows before one who was weather-depressed. Every turn on the miserably slow timepieces that adorned the walls of his house made him feel worse. Worst part was, it wasn't even raining right now. It's just that the sky was a stark white, a dreary, awful shade which wasn't even a shade. Morning skies were white, evening skies were white. Afternoon skies, which were supposed to be the brightest yellow were also plain white. Isaac couldn't take it. The fitting music that he played on the speakers that lay a few feet from him was perhaps the only depressing element that he had some control of, but hey, everything was so sad anyway that it didn't really matter which song of unrequited love or song of poetic death he played.

Vacations. He'd rather be back in college, where the multitudes of folk, annoying though most were, would give him some relief. But he was here, back too early. All of his friends of old were still stuck in their respective institutions, answering some term-ending exam which would set them 'free'. He couldn't take it. His parents had left for work five minutes ago. Without much though, Isaac located the duplicate key of his mother's car which he had so carefully hidden amongst the old photoframes of ever-smiling and now ever-dead grandparents. He descended his stairs, and drove off, taking the long route to the second gate of his housing colony, for it was manned by the gruff and unresponsive guard Ismail instead of the cheerful Bradley, the latter of whom would definitely announce his departure to his mother, for she had befriended him by bringing him the leftovers of every meal. Isaac drove to that shady little establishment behind a tattered building which was notorious for selling alcohol and cigarettes to underage students, and there he purchased a pack of strong cigarettes. A twenty pack, although he knew he wouldn't even consume a quarter of that. He knew he'd be ridden with guilt soon into his second smoke.

He returned to his parents' apartment, latched the main door, and walked into the prayer-room. There he located the lighter that was used to light incense sticks or lamps before the face of his parents' many gods, and then climbed up a spiral staircase to the terrace above. The skies had cleared up temporarily, and he was going to take advantage of that fact. He wore only a sleeveless shirt, and nothing to cover his privates. He lit his first cigarette. What am I doing? He was done with it, and moved quickly before regret would wash over him. His head was already a bit fuzzy with the haste that he had put into every deep puff. He lit his second, and unconsciously started stroking his penis. The cigarette grew smaller, and his penis grew larger with every puff. Soon, he was in ecstasy. I'm not even thinking of her. He stubbed the cigarette and carefully placed it in the corner with the first. He lit another and started stroking his penis rapidly, as if to make up for the delay that the process of lighting the third had caused. His pre-ejaculatory semen covered his left hand, and the third cigarette soon descended into ash on his right hand. It burnt. That aroused him more.

It was raining. Without any warning, water was falling from the sky. He looked up in wonder. This was the one aspect of the rainy season that awed him most. Water falling from the sky! And there were barely any clouds! A sunbeam hit him square in the face, and he had to squint to understand the rainbow in the distance. He covered his cigarette to keep away the water. He was onto his fourth cigarette before he ejaculated onto himself and the ground below. Regret finally overcame him, and he prematurely stubbed his cigarette. He refilled the twenty-pack with the used up cigarettes, and tossed it far into the adjoining housing colony, although the wind blew it further than he'd have liked. There was still semen on the ground; there was still ash on the ground. His father was no fool when it came to semen and ash. But the hateful rain would cover up for him.

Bleak II

There comes a time when a cigarette won't keep you satisfied. Love, lust, careless hedonism - all lie blind with the arrival of the time of discontent. This phase of youth, where opportunities should abound, is taken away in a flash when the dull epiphany of 'this-is-not-your-life' strikes. Come on, says a voice very distinct, you aren't what you are trying to be. Happiness is not key here: in fact, you aren't truly happy right now. You're stuck in that place where hope does exist, but isn't plentiful enough to throw away all vices and emotions - and yet, temporary absolution does naught to keep your real self content.

When I recall the passion of you and the memories we made, they do not linger as they did. At first, I'd said to myself, "you must record these feelings, you must be able to relive them!" I wish I'd done that, for I cannot achieve those feelings once more. I think of the summers - so high! so very high! - and I cannot, again, recall the vague knowledge of throwing frisbees past the surf while the sky gloriously waned into inconceivable hues which were never the same the next day. Even the songs that made those long drives oh-so-streamlined and oh-so-perfect don't sing the same way anymore.

It is lost, says the voice. You can never reach those same levels of unrelenting joy again. Like a cocaine rush, the very first experience can never be reclaimed. My first kiss threw my very being (to be is to live, and to live means endless surprises) into a standstill - I deserve that again! And so the hope, the just-enough hope, recuperates as I await even more terribly temporary highs in the days to come.

Bleak I

Drip, drop, his ears spring up
Three a.m. and someone filling his cup
Head is heavy, floor starts to spin
Ignore the intruder, take a deep breath in

Light from one reveals another
C.G. sparks it up, he truly is my brother
Numbing sensation, grin on my face
Can't wipe it out, so a puff in its place

T.B. quivers; this isn't a virgin mix
His eyes crimson, he'll be high till six
I take a drag, it sets my mind alight
Body in a cubicle, soul in flight

I pass it on, three pulls each
But C.G. puts another in my reach
Epiphanies strike in the realm of the spiritual
And so goes on this innately fulfilling ritual

As the light moves closer to my finger tips
I slow down my intake to feeble sips
One puff each is the call
They taxi around, pleasing us all

Flick them into the bowl, it's time to go
Or let's linger on a bit; can't reach the door
Zombie the way out with ashes in our wake
We'll return with another, for I.F.'s sake

But first, I must dissolve into my playlist, the Ultimate Trip
Undulating bass lines cherish me in their grip
Music video playing in my mind
Yesterday's problems left carelessly behind

Knock on my door, time to boom
Red eyes greet me outside my room
Unwavering grins obviate all strife
To the cubicle - I love my life!

(This image is not my property.)

---

Note: This piece has many fictional elements.

Remy on Merlin

The siren emerged from a distal source, as the shout-tower was located a few hundred metres from the main station. "Remy, the tracks bend away too soon," it called. Remy shook his head. He didn't like this train station. It was too big and too populous to be associated with the tracks he was familiar with. His life - his only life that counted - had begun on the hills of Nere, and there it had ended as abruptly as it had begun. Frozen and preserved at the back of his mind, his time in Nere remained to taunt him. I have been through everything that matters; my remaining time alive is just a bonus. Only the steam from a noisy engine could begin to mimic his time jumping tracks, with her watchful eyes smiling at him as he clumsily tried to stand one-legged on a rail.

The train he boarded was crowded, and his cramped seat between two fat tula merchants afforded him no glimpses of the disappearing platform. The seven hour journey was draining, and Remy kept himself hydrated with cans of crystal soda. He sighed. Manfried would be twice as crowded as this train and, being planetary capital, it would never shut up. This would be the second time Remy would set foot in the metropolis, the first time was when he alighted from a spaceship after an even longer and exceedingly more painful journey to almost literally the end of the galaxy.

His first time in Manfried was not a pleasant experience. Merlin was a newly settled planet, with Manfried being the first outpost established only eighty years ago. Hardly a million people populated the planet since then, with ninety-five percent of those people located in Manfried. His visit to Merlin, unfortunately, had taken place during the mass influx of labourers, technicians and the usual cults, which would one day be known as the first step in the "true" colonization of the Sagittarius-Carina arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, et cetera. Remy had had to trudge his way through a mass of dysfunctional security robots hopelessly trying to maintain order amongst the incoming visitors, pilgrims and workers. He'd then needed to explain, in length, to the power-blinded and lonesome tourism officials the purpose of his visit. He'd lost a lot of money on mandatory bribes and sodas, and had then tried to make his way to one of the swelling motels in the main city. Failing to do so, he'd had to commute for three hours to the suburbs of Manfried for accommodation offered by a grocer to anyone who could carry a message to Vern. After eighteen more hours of travel and pointless delays, he'd made his way to Vern and its loud railway sirens.

It was true, though. The biota placed on Merlin eighty years ago had made itself comfortable in the valleys and undulating plains that spanned most of the two primary continents. Manfried itself has boulevards now; lined by trees and shrubs whose hues betray their extra-planetary origin. Merlin was part of the small minority of planets which had breathable air and non-toxic soil, so the Merlin Terraforming Agency was, in practice, an outpost for some company to dig its tendrils into the compact culture of Merlin before it even has a formal currency. Yet, there was something naturally unnerving about the way horses on Merlin were still tame enough to be saddled by a random visitor from off-planet. Indeed, Remy had travelled several hundred kilometres on the back of a wild horse while on his way to the dig site beyond Vern.

The dig was not of the archaeological kind, but was instead engineered by biologists. Seventy years ago, when Vern had first been established as a sort of secondary capital in the southern hemisphere of Merlin, some biologists (many of them great-grandparents of the biologists he’d met himself) had added some Escherichia veni to a hollow portion of the soil, rich with the excessive faecal matter of planet Nappa which the E. veni so often feasted on. These initial E. veni had been subject to directional, non-mutagenic radiation, so that they would all cluster onto one side of the hollow so as to avoid decimation. Two hundred thousand generations of these bacteria had past, and the radiation had ceased to penetrate into the hollow some fifty years ago, yet the E. veni tried to cluster to that one side.

Genetic memory was the term that had been decided upon by the Vern biologists. Genetic memory is the reason why every single person stemming from Earth’s Israel still felt uneasy while looking at a holoform of the Concentration Camps, they stipulated. “DNA is the most protected and valuable resource in this universe. The fraction of objects that possesses this compound is so small that all the gold on Goldrush wouldn’t be able to buy a microgram of DNA, if DNA would be thus suitably priced. But it isn’t, and herein lays the very instability of humanity – we place a higher value on things that do not truly belong to us. DNA is us. And DNA remembers. If my soul could have a material form, it would be not my DNA, but rather the DNA of all my forefathers. As such, the soul is continuously evolving with the birth of every new generation.” So said the lord philosopher-biologist Reswyn Peck, and so bowed all of his follower-biologists and pursuer-biologists, without even gathering the implications behind his words.

Remy scowled. When the respect for a man precedes his teachings, the respect for the man becomes his teachings. Remy knew that only too well. Nice new that, and Nice bowed and surrendered herself gracefully to the Fleet. “Remy, you aren’t from here. You can go back home.” But she was home. She will forever remain home, and when I am done blasting a hole through the genetic memories of my lords and ladies, I will return to her.

Reswyn Peck knew that DNA was upgrading itself with the rise of every new generation, and that nothing from the past was truly lost. Reswyn Peck knew that DNA was the ultimate weapon and torture device. Being an independent group, the Vern biologists shared their observations with the rest of the scientific world only after much deliberation and review. The Vern biologists were now rotting inside a pit with E. veni feeding on them to fulfil their last rites. Reswyn Peck had died when ancestral pain had seeped through his gouty knuckles to his gouty heart. Assistant-biologist Beatrice Salomon too had writhed and succumbed, with her frothing mouth still wrapped around gouty little Peck.

If only you had accompanied me. We’d have found a place far away, even farther than Merlin, where we’d raise hills out of the horizon and lay down railway lines through twisting valleys. Remy knew he had to get off planet as soon as he could. The “inflammable” DNA they’d extracted from the bacteria in the pit couldn’t survive long in the blanks (microorganisms devoid of genetic material). The genetic memory was active in this DNA, and using it, he’d managed to trigger the same in the DNA of the Vern biologists.

Remy Raoveti - celebrated biologist, anthropologist and soon-to-be heretic. He’d have cults forming around him by the time he’d be halfway through teaching humanity a lesson. Youngest winner of the Deutschenwaldow Prize, number one on the ’89’s Top Ten Rising Stars, and Mass Murderer of the Century, I give you… Remy Raoveti!

Remy could see the Angled Spire of Manfried rise out towards the setting sun, in a bid to touch it at its coolest. The smells of the city reached out to him, but they were different; they were warped due to the steadily rising inflow of off-planet visitors with their queer, off-planet smells. This, too, angered him, although he knew not why.

DNA apparently had some kind of ‘field’ which stored genetic memory. Activating this required some changes in the current state of the DNA, both conformational and totally virtual. Remy did not care what exactly went about when this happened, all he knew was that humans would DIE on exposure to their genetic memory, simply because their mind was evolved enough to decipher exactly the contents of these memories, but not quite evolved enough to absorb such knowledge. Maybe that was the original purpose of DNA and evolution, for a certain being to evolve until a point wherein it could digest its genetic memories safely and thus transition into some kind of “singularity” being or something. Remy did not care – much. He did care enough to make sure that this “singularity” would remember Nice and her affable ways.

The train stopped, and Remy descended onto the platform in a hurry. The sooner he’d get off this planet the better, as authorities would soon realise that the Vern biologists were missing and would maybe somehow stumble upon the dig site. The burial site, Remy reminded himself. Was he halting the growth of science by this act? This gave him some pause, but a passing engine drove an image of Nere on a beautiful summer day into his mind. Nere, with the pretty house and the dipping-pond, with the smiling faces of Rory and Neville, Ava and her grandmother. Would this pain be imprinted into his genetic memory? Would his descendants be forced to watch him rip himself apart from the inside with every waking breath? Then this was his curse to them. Descendants. Children. Nice and I had once talked about having children, children who would jump onto me every time I returned home from a long day at work, uncaring that I’d be soaked with perspiration. If there are children without Nice, then may they be cursed.

He made his way to the spaceport with, surprisingly, very little delay. His reputation permitted him to carry the biological samples on board, and soon he was off. The earliest flight to Assez was five days from then, so he’d decided to hop on a long flight to Vaha, in the system of Canopus many thousand light years away. The journey was superluminal, but would still take him several years. By then the mishap on the secluded planet of Merlin would be forgotten, with “incorrect safety measures while dealing with the deadly Escherichia veni” recorded as the cause of the deaths of fourteen biologists.

Five hours into the flight, Remy started to feel the breezy upliftment that he often associated with superluminal travel. He knew that this would soon transition into a mind-numbing hurricane of illusory wind, so he decided to strap himself into the fugue pod adjacent to his seat. Superluminal travel couldn’t even technically be called a form of transportation, as it mainly involve the spaceship, or, rather, individual fugue pods of the spaceship linked within a primary matrix, disappearing from existence here and materializing there.

This was largely due to a modification of classical quantum tunnelling – a large distance impossible for even light to cover in a few minutes was somehow traversed through by the spaceship-matrix. In essence, the “large distance” acted as a limiting energy state which could be breached by the tunnelling. Remy did not know the details, and he doubted that he ever would. His activities in the past few days would certainly curtail his freedom to explore unknown territories of life, let alone science.

After reading projected magazines in his pod for an hour, Remy decided to get some sleep. Within the pod, it was eerily silent, something often attributed to for the scarring of weak human psyches. Remy took a while to get accustomed to this enforced silence, and as he drifted into that plane of thought which is suspended between the conscious and the unconscious, steam from an engine clouded his mind. Long after the noiseless engine faded from view, the smoke finally dissipated.

When the sunlight glinted off her teeth and the cool midday breeze ruffled her hair, he was in heaven. Tears welled in his eyes, and he smiled. The crook of her elbow found its way around his neck, and she turned, taking him with her. The unprecocious naiveté in her eyes beckoned in the direction of the hills far away, fencing the horizon. Railway tracks meandered and were lost, out of sight, at the summit of one hillock. Her head bobbed up, and she caught him staring at her, his eyes full of tears. She was to be left behind today, as he went on to greater adventures. Yet he was the one crying.

She said, “Remy, the tracks bend away too soon.” Swallowing the sorrow in his throat, he replied, “but they go on forever.”

“Does that mean they will never bring you back?”

“No, that means they will always be there to bring me back to you.” He smiled. How cheesy that had sounded, how cheesy it still did.

“Take me with you.” Was that a question or a command? He’d never know.

“I… You know I can’t. How I wish that I could, but you can’t move like this.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” She smiled, and played with his hair. “But I will be with you wherever you go, won’t I?”

“Of course you will.” Remy smiled, and finally wiped off the tears streaming down his face. He kissed her once, twice. He then turned and left, leaving her behind; she with her mechanical body rooted to the ground and the wind ruffling her hair and the cables that connected her to the soil. Once more an engine passed, and took him away with it.

Train, Set and Match

It's over. A long summer, a glorious summer. I wish it would never end.

I'm writing this at midnight on the 30th of July, 2013. Tomorrow is when I leave for college. Tomorrow I leave behind my friends and Cidade beach. Tomorrow I quit doing questionable activities and driving at 120 kmph on eternal Goan roads in heavy rainfall. I leave behind the sea and sand and fields around pleasant walkways. I leave behind family, I leave behind home. I leave behind that shady KA-registered Maruti with the frisbee in the back. Tomorrow is going to be bittersweet.

I love my college. I love campus life. I love the independence I get in my 3x3 m room over there. I'm excited to see what this new year brings - I'll have juniors, I'll be studying something that I haven't bothered to explore before, I'll be playing as much basketball as I can handle. Yet those lonesome stretches and our hidden cove on the beach will be missed. The eerie, dark Bambolim lane will be missed. The 24 hour cafes and pastry shops will be missed. The beaten-up Santro I've driven thousands of kilometres in this holiday will be missed. The faces of my friends separated by states will be missed. The windy house in Miramar and the painting easel will be missed. The guitar teacher I spent exactly 33 hours this summer with will be missed. The poker sessions and pointless gym hours will be missed.

Why can't anyone see that sometimes you just need the ability to pause? Every few years, take a year off. Grow up in ways other than attending classes and scoring grades. Live life to its fullest in order to make up for the hours you've lost in routine. Travel, explore, rediscover. These aren't words I'm tossing around to add to a word count. These are words I'm tossing around as an ode to days better spent elsewhere.

Always the summers are slipping away. Always.