“My dear,” the voice rumbled heavily against nothingness, “Must you try my patience once again? I know what you were doing that day. I am not expecting an apology” and as an afterthought “but I dare say it would not be frowned upon to receive one.” Thick smoke streamed from the cigar, rising heavily into the air conditioned room, wafting steadily to the fans.
“I have told you everything I know. We were just children… there was nothing to hide. After that day, I wouldn’t think of touching any of those voodoo things again. We .. just.. looked at it sir!”
Mr. Donaldson could not rest. Even the confession of his daughter could not put to rest the nagging suspicion that there was more to be found than what she could iterate, even under sedation and hypnosis. Every declaration he had gathered proved to revoke his foundation; every chance had failed to produce.
Except for this.
“I understand there was an object that started your vision, it was one of the coins was it not?” Donald pried casually.
Gwen played smart. To acknowledge the coins was to pay homage to the treasury. She must not let her secret be found out. “I only remember darkness, and dreams. To ask me to isolate from that traumatic memory a simple coin, or object such as that is ridiculous. I was possessed by a spirit, maybe it was known as Love, or Curiosity, or another of the demons.” her words hung in the air, as if suspended in the details that were unspoken, perhaps the same silence that bound the jury and audience to their seats, hungering for a more thorough explanation. “After you got the box of coins, everywhere we went you brought the box out, showing the coins off like a trophy. Now, it’s not everyday that one of us finds a box like that at an auction, so it got a bit of attention. I don’t remember who let the price leak, but at first people were wondering who would ever agree to sell that box for such a decent price. Then, of course, they started to wonder if it was cursed. After the incident that night, you have since lost all interest in antiques. It seems that regardless of the truth of it, those coins will always bear the brand you have dished out, and this trial just becomes an extension of that belief. I insist there is no such missing coin! There was no theft! We were just carefree youth absorbed in too much moon shine.”
“Darling, there is only one discrepancy I see, and I am avoiding all immaterial facts, but can you explain why our previous witness described in such detail the selfsame coin you so easily dismiss as non-existent?”
Exhaust spewing from my ears; I steamed at nothing, irrelevant they say. What is the matter with a bit of truth to hide the never ceasing distractions we create? Earning nothing more than a yearning for something else, no satisfaction of your creation just take what’s given, shut up and accept it. Nothing is perfect. We are a sensible society and there is no one that can take that liberty from me.
With a small smile he continued, “even though she is your friend, and my daughter, I would like to call out the primary witness, Natasha Donaldson.”
Some calamity separates us; a place of placing the commotion, A different angle of perception, intervention.
Natasha shone like a gem, her beauty rising into the jury who exchanged glances, being careful to try and act as normal as possible, raising their eyebrows or pointing below the bar to the defendant’s witness with a big thumbs up, or a wink, signifying defeat.
“As you ask of this memory today, the activities of the night in question were quite innocent in nature. Gwen and I had run away for the night into the brush and managed to consume a large bottle of whisky. Although we were naïve to the effect of what we did, in no way should the fact we were passed out in the same place we had been for several hours compromise our position. There is no record of the missing coin being found, there is even less record of the missing coin even Existing. I assure you, neither me nor Gwen would have been mobile to even try to hide or disguise our activities that night, we were completely inebriated, the fact of the empty bottle of whisky should be enough. Of course, that was proven by the independent reports of your Firm, who supplied the analysis of the evidences. Every coin in the box was recovered except one. Maybe I am just a sucker after all the lies and fighting over who was the winner of which game, in ignorant jubilation of the selfsame nothing that brought us together. Drinking ourselves into oblivion and then going out to have some fun, I cannot remember beyond the haze.
In fact, that is the entire point of this trial: to determine the thief. But is it not to determine if the object actually exists? I stand with a summary statement: There is no such object! There is no thief.”
“As a final comment, I would like to make notice that both Gwen and I were searched thoroughly but there is no record of the coin in question. I urge the jury to understand that as far as I can know, there is no such coin. This object is nonexistent. ”
But the casual thought is just something that was not, a memory of persecution, nothing was done; nothing was said. No remembrance for the like. They’ve learned everything they wanted; the dreams spared to all delays. Behind closed doors they shared the stories told, it’s all grown old, grown by the wayside or forgotten; a childhood memory can be something you could never have tied down because it didn’t happen.
Had it been possible, I could share the memories of the people that were me. Times before me; things that happened score me, strain me, and make me something I don’t remember. Something from a different place, a different time. In a way I can draw the dime, maybe I could refine what we know to be something. Reveal something that could have stiffened like some reality and never thought of before. Now we have and we are ready for it.
Today it’s something that just shakes me, something redirects me, and some kind of fabric connects me to everything else. Testing the boundaries.
Last night I had a dream. I can’t really put it into words but I will try, I remember… well I remember silence, as I meant something nothing maybe for the first time, there was nothing around me nothing to guide me nothing to push me or tell me or command me. For the first time in so long that I had nothing but myself.
In time we consider our reactions, determining a better outcome which in the moment is decided like the flipping beads of an abacus counts the pounds and grains, determining fortunes of merchants and farmers. It was up to the farmer to learn which merchants had proper weights to obtain a good pay for their product. In a similar fashion, Marko had learned to hear binary, to feel the constant network of bits and bytes traversing the globe, freely listening to the streams like a media player with a hacked codec. Although the sound remained an unintelligible combination resembling Morse code after a month long espresso binge, Marko could decipher a common resemblance, a signature of sorts defining the sender and the object, enough to let him decode the rest. His mind worked without batteries, an infliction similar to insomnia where no mental barrier could reach to calm the nerves, to stop the waves. Microwaves, radio and wireless transmissions emitting silent high vibration streams of sound, passing above us like 21st century homing pigeons, clouding the sky like a heavy sandstorm, building up barriers in our sinuses to block the dust. Our minds become numbed to the chaos, our eyes blind to the motion, enabling the storm but also enabling us. We take no retreat, find no shelter to hide within but instead become thick skinned martyrs, walking within the tumultuous barrage of particles without reaction. Numbness becomes a necessity, bred into our civilization like a trait, preceding obedience it becomes our leader calmly training us to believe. Science has proven the existence of thought, Gnosis transmuted in flesh and blood, embodied in QWERTY keys across the globe, clattering. CPU’s sending and receiving the chitter-chatter like telepathy, Morse code emitting from clackers blipping along steel wires.
At 5:00 am human minds are supple, massaged by sleep into a trance like existence. But reaction time is increased, possibly heightened by the disconnection of the logical mind from the reptilian brain, allowing the latter to manage motor skills, shaving, and general “Uh Huh, Good morning and I’ll take a double espresso” statements. It is this part of the brain which also handles cleaning up the mess after a long night and a few bottles of wine so the counters are sparkling and the doors are locked, and which mysteriously plants you in a comfortable sleeping arrangement in the neighbor’s bushes with your pants around the ankles. But as Marko learned, it is also the part of the brain which can engage you in telepathic, omniscient thought. Like a leech sucking on the wires of the internet, intercepting the radio waves from twenty satellites and feeding on the data, listening, piecing together tidbits of a thread to make a piece of cloth and extract an image, a perception. Nothing telling the true recipient, anonymously calculated as the truth, the cipher lost in transmission by design. The answers extracted from supple minds at 5:00 am, on their way to the café for stimulation, subtle responses or movements, subliminal responses to the river of data flowing like air, providing connection strings, encryption keys and passwords to the crazy storyteller begging for change. A stockbroker listening to the ethereal stream for the bulls and bear markets, picking truth from the babble, synching up with active threads, impersonating identity to authenticate with the server, passing a new message, a changed result en communicado. The disguise was consistent; an old rubbie consumed with filth, spouting tales of condemnation and promising redemption, no care for personal hygiene and positively reeking of discontent. No one could question the loyalty to an apparent lack of a cause and no one paid attention to him as he become a fixture of their morning commute, taking place of the naked fig-leafed statues of days gone by, but still listening.
Nikki closed her eyes in disbelief, meditating on the story, and then opening them when the words ceased. Her grandmother was talking in English, the forbidden language. Until this night, Nikki had never heard the words uttered in the sacred caves. To have caused this much attention would definitely require a council to evaluate the event. A shallow glow emanated from the cracks in the brick, signifying morning, and Marko was gone.
He was the first of his kind, the first to venture into the dark, damp tunnels following hollow footsteps and flickering lights ahead. Many more came after him, but none with the same reasons, searching for morals in an immoral world, looking for honesty in a tower of money, none without the presumption of some glamorous redemption by a hooded, stinking priest, solemnly baptizing the lonesome pilgrims by dipping their heads under the putrid water, if you could call it even that. Marko came blindly, carrying a message he couldn’t interpret, led by a silent, intuitive signal.
Miles away from the dust and heat of the highway, miles from lack of civilization, the darkness reeked of possibilities. Slits of crumbling mortar piecing together a faint image of this netherworld. So close to the hustling, bustling businesses opening their doors to a new day of prosperity. The morning carried a quiet tremor, an invisible entity traversing through bleary eyed executives in Starbucks, absorbed into cars and trucks at fifty miles an hour while crossing the road, finding Marko. Gathering the consciousness in his hat, along with the pennies and dimes, sifting through the details, refining thoughts into white sugar. Dense and sweet. But he was looking for something in the haze; in all the madness there was reason.
Congealed on asphalt like a stub of gum, stuck forever until the street cleaner comes to whisk its remnants into oblivion, he was a fixture. Quietly masking The Search behind a costume. He played the role well. No closer could he be to the center of the universe, watching stocks trading behind mirrored glass, with a hundred stories of guilt to back the market up. Marko understood the frenzy, nothing this good could last. There was a melancholy submissive feeling to the early morning hours, something that he loved to feel. It was a blurred honesty that became an entity of itself, hurried businessmen busy sleepwalking, sharing their dreams unknowingly, opening up their souls to inquisitive minds like a virgin after two hours of sex, finding the things that were hidden and storing them away, filing the feelings like information. But still, he was looking. Nothing yet seemed to point a finger in the direction he was yearning for. After so many years, after so much direction he still was lost.
A coin clinked into his cup. He looked up, dazed, looking like any other sleepless drunk, too stoned to care or too wired to realize. “Sir, your pants are on backwards.”
The casual atmosphere quickly escalated with the amount of people awaking. Soon I was surrounded in a group of silent, obviously nosey, but friendly people nonetheless. Gramma was still ranting about the origins of this species, decanting meaning from gestures, continuing in her diatribe against the modern ways. It was as if no one realized that she was breaking the laws of speech. After all, she had helped in the Origin, she had built the Foundation of their lives.
Nikki whispered “Gramma”, lost in the echoes.
“So many have come before, what makes this one different? Is it a gift, like Marko who came first, called by an unseen passion, a humour of curiosity, or some other thing we haven’t seen yet?”
The questions ricocheted off of the barren walls, cascading into the freshly waked brains like a symphony against stone.
Louder this time, begging attention, “Gramma, nobody else understands you.” And the clamour stopped for a few seconds, long enough to let the echoes extinguish their repetition on unyielding brick. And again she urged, whispering “They don’t know Gramma, they don’t know”.
It was as Marko taught. In the midst of chaos you can find a piece of reality, only visible if you try not to focus on it. The louder the chaos, the clearer the fragment of reality underlying, acting as a mirror to the true nature of Self; The Anti-Matter of what we know to be civilized, reflecting upon itself but speaking the truth. Hidden by common consensus, blurred by a majority vote, still holding on to gaps in the logic like some hound with lockjaw just cannot let go, diving into the icy depths of the river water and never releasing its grip, dying of exhaustion. And Gramma began to laugh.
Besides being bald, tattooed from head to toe, and clothed in some weird burlap bag looking garment, I felt genuinely distraught. My childhood dreams didn’t include this. I have to admit I would have enjoyed being kidnapped by pirates, or shipped to some foreign land and rescued by some burly, second hand warrior on his way to the nearest crusade, but I doubt this was that time. Everything was, undoubtedly, very real and very serious. As far as I could tell, I was going to be speared and gutted, thrown over some boiling hot bricks and roasted for a mid-summers night snack.
“I know Marayek.” Blurted into the grayness, and eyes turned. “Marayek” the voices responded, in some otherworldly tongue. At this, it was over, Gramma signaled a hush of silence, looking at me with her inquisitive eyes. “You know Marayek? How could this be… he died a long time ago.”