“I notice you are of levity compared to most,
but in an orgy, you play the prude. This translates to your attitude towards Dreaming.”
“I
tried going through the Dreaming once. I didn’t like it. Too many thoughts were
being thought at the same time, none my own; all those forgotten emotions
trying to get my attention, begging for me to name them back into popularity. I
was never able to deter whether everything being slightly ajar, slightly
unhinged, all the rivers slightly tilted, all the plants slightly crazy, was a
forewarning of my own brain’s degeneration, some early onset of Alzheimer’s, or
is that how everyone sees it.”
“I’m
sorry, I don’t know.”
“Ye,
you’re not much of an oneiromancer, when it all comes down to it.”
“That
would be like chasing my own tail, wouldn’t it.”
“There were a lot sensory nightmares after you died, auditory mostly. I’ve
asked around, all my friends confirm it. I used to be able to close my eyes
from horror, but not the ears. I used to dream of people being cemented into a
wall with only their heads out and then soldiers coming to simply crack the
heads open like melons, while the helpless people screamed and could not move.
I’d look away, but …”
“I
didn’t see my son die. I only heard what they were doing in the room next. And I
didn’t know what I was listening to until they brought me the remains. Then
every wet smack and cracking bone and blood-drowned scream made sense, all at
once.” And then the heart tore in half and he was no more.
“I
wonder,” I said, “is sentimentality a side effect or a derivative of intelligence
or are both of them combined a much needed threshold to higher plane of
consciousness … Because if we assume it’s intelligence what makes us superior
and we continue to seek ‘intelligent’ life on other worlds, will we not
overlook some sort of condition far superior?”
“Suspect
you what it may be?”
“No.
I have no idea. Fidi’s brought this up from time to time.”
“Fidi? Oh, yes. I've met Fidi.
Fidi has a problem being a human. She faces helplessness on a whole other level
of irony. She knows she has the power to kill every living thing within our
species in a single blow, but to make you, humankind, better people, only just
for one second, only just by a little bit, she can not and never will, even if
she disperses.”
“That certainly takes the cake of crappiest burden to bear.”
“She' has asked me to make her
into another thing. After much debate, ultimately we agreed to keep her human
and a child. We conserved her sanity in optimism and naiveté and her precious
gift of mortality, on the pain of not succumbing to the burden you mention.”
“What did she ask to be?”
“Anything else. A whimsical
rock.”
I didn't know that. I suppose
we never talked about things like that with Fidi, because they were private and
I didn't feel like it's my place to wonder about her. Perhaps some day she will
bring it up.
“You get the institutions
wrong, you know?” he argued my denigration of contrived control.
“How so?”
“You're underestimating the
masochism of people.”
“I am giving great lenience to
the morbid fascination of my kin’s self-worthlessness.”
“It is a intriguing phenomenon
indeed. A killed solder’s child cannot wait to go to war. A child molested by a
clergyman becomes a clergyman – and a molester – themselves. Children of violent
inebriates swear off their nurture and yet. The very poison that’s corroded
their spirit in the crib becomes the essence of them, often their only strength.”
“It all feels like we’re backpedaling
away from that higher plane of consciousness that would break the circle.”
“Oh, I don’t know. There used
to be a time when you observed but shadows on the walls of your caves and it was
the extent of your cognizance.”
“There was never that time,” I grinned,
remembering Aranna. “Human passion for art and knowledge is that of a great
white shark: it was born perfect and it has never needed to evolve.”
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