Ten Directions

by Samuel Winburn

  “Hey there.” Mister Freak from her afternoon delight waved at her from the doorway.

  Francesca flipped on the music to better ignore him and started going through the Deep Space files. To the guy’s credit he caught the bitch vibe and went to sit with his friends. Maybe she’d give him a chance again, probably not. See ya.

  Gracias a Dios the track she was listening to was not Latin. Another slurp on her mug and then it came all in one flash. She almost dropped her mug into her lap. This kind of stuff happened to her like that. First some feeling, like an itch she couldn’t quite scratch, and then, bang, the whole enchilada.

  This was the thing. The sound quality on this new stuff from the clone was flawless, just perfect, no ticks or squawks or tweets. Nothing except the music. Why would the clone serve up his best stuff to a perfect stranger and send out shit to the universe? Would aliens decline to come invade this pathetic planet because the sound quality was questionable? It didn’t make sense at all. And the reason why?

  Francesca cracked open the Deep Space files and opened them on the audio player, volume low. And there it was, the crap. She listened to music sent to the stars and flicked back to other Deep Space files listening to them not watching them. The crap again. That same crap. When the clone was sending the music out, he was getting things back. So, this is why the higher-ups didn’t mind. The music wasn’t serenading any potential Sleestack army from Alpha Centauri. It wasn’t going anywhere. It was going up so they could get the stuff coming back down before anyone else saw it.

  Francesca started going over the files, checking the signatures, and listening. And there it was, a few weeks or maybe a month later after the music went out the ‘official’ file with the exact same pattern of crackle and pop would come in.

  Her soup sat there going cold. When she finally reached for it, she noticed someone familiar watching her through the marbled glass as he walked calmly past in the hallway outside the cafe without breaking his stride. As if he had only casually glanced her way, but just intently enough that she had felt it on the back of her neck. Was it her mind playing tricks, another clone in his series perhaps? How many clones wore a musical instrument around their neck as they padded about? Did he want to send her a message, that he had caught her catching him in the act? Francesca had no idea and the thing was, in anyway that would make a difference to her besides the welcome distraction of solving a puzzle, she wasn’t sure she cared.

  Chapter 8 - Kalsang

  Kalsang was exhausted. He was eating only intermittently, with no sense of daily interval. No more calls had come in to interrupt him, not even system checks from the engineers on Earth, which was unusual. The overwhelming feelings of compassion he felt for these strange beings only grew steadier. Like this, from moment to moment, they seemed lovelier and closer. But these beings had been dead so long. Their world maybe didn’t exist already when his grandparents were born, or possibly before. Even to talk to Aurora back on Mars, it took many hours for their messages to travel back and forth. How much further away had the alien’s world been?

  Maybe it was the powerful circumstance through which they first came into his mind that had given them such clarity. Even when he relaxed a bit. Even in his dreams. They were such an intense vision that he caught himself talking to them, reassuring them so they wouldn’t find their sudden transport into these strange cramped quarters too disturbing. They had strange names.

  “Not to worry dGhani. Your Anila is right there, isn’t it?” Kalsang imagined himself pinching the cheeks of a young one whose second face was only starting to bud. dGhani’s first face glanced up and sniffed, almost smiling.

  “Ah good. See, right there. Yes, you see?”

  Of course, no matter how he consoled them, they would revert subtly, and the horrified stare they had held in their eyes when he first saw them would return. Then, sometimes, he would cry a little for each of them.

  It wasn’t so much a deluded mental factor, Kalsang felt sure that his precious teacher, Lama Wangmo, had intervened to catch him from going down that path. The beings were just there in a very substantial way that was very easy to visualise. Like the path up to the gompa at Lhopa Khantsen where he had spent his days as a young monk. Very comfortable, but not too attached, because he had moved away from there so long ago and was excited to leave for more training. So not deluded, but odd.

  “Are you taking us home Melded One?”

  The request came in that eerie whalesong voice, but somehow Kalsang could understand what the girl meant.

  “Home is always here, isn’t it? Small room, big universe,” he widened his hands apart for effect. “Always here,” Kalsang pointed at his heart.

  The being, dSong, was that her name? She smiled sadly but didn’t seem convinced. Kalsang felt reproach there, at how little it seemed he had to offer when so great had been her loss. There was a fine line between wisdom and platitude, and he feared he had crossed it.

  “I don’t know if I can, but I will try.”

  dSong returned his smile with a faith Kalsang felt he hadn’t earned.

  “I will try.”

  At that she faded back into the huddle of aliens, despite Kalsang struggling to hold on to her appearance. He had lost her again. It was a strange thought. Wasn’t this the first time they had met?

  The aliens, as a group, remained though, steady in his mind’s eye, and Kalsang enjoyed giving the light out to them, making them clearer and clearer. It was amazing really, how a people so long erased had come back to life in him. He felt so responsible for them.

  And then, after some time, his focus began to dim, and a subtle dullness began to permeate his concentration. The mind lost its lustre and refused to sharpen despite strenuous effort. Finally, he found himself struggling to stay awake whenever he sat down on his meditation cushion. There was nothing to do in such cases but to let things go for a while.

  Kalsang brought to mind the mneme Aurora had sent just before the aliens had come. She was so upset. No one is listening Kalsang. No one is listening. A whole world of unique life, billions of years in the making, the only other lifeforms we can actually touch. Our own sisters in our own solar system, and we are going to destroy them before we even know them.

  What to say? Aurora floated in his mind next to d’Song and they seemed to be asking the same question. Why was there so much pain? So much ignorance? Destroying the tiny beings on Mars seemed trivial beside the horrific loss d’Song’s people had suffered, but the cause was the same. From the technological diagrams, which opened the aliens’ mneme, the destruction of their world was something they themselves must have created. They wouldn’t have known what they were losing when they set it up.

  “I understand Aurora, it is so sad, but never give up. Never give up. Do what you have to do. It is the only way isn’t it? Like that. And I am always with you.”

  Kalsang sent the message, which was inadequate but all he could do. What to do? For a moment Kalsang was paralysed with anxiety. What could a small monk so far away do for anybody? Was he just taking some vacation out here when he was needed elsewhere? There were a thousand arguments both ways, but what worried him most was that up until now his decisions to travel so far away had seemed too comfortable, as if he had made them before. Did he have some karmic habit of running away?

  It was too much to hold in the mind, which Kalsang decided he needed to stabilize now. Something other than thought. He needed exercise. Kalsang tried to practice prostration. Again and again his hands onto his crown, forehead, throat, and heart before he carefully lowered himself downward to a prone position before the altar and slowly stood back up again. It took such concentration in the low gravity to avoid shooting forward into the wall and bouncing about the cabin. Standing up while keeping his balance was very tricky. After stumbling like a drunken monkey for too long he gave up and sat down.

  Kalsang checked his texts. One by Sogyal Rinpoche, a great 21st Century Master, recommended going for a walk. Kalsang carefu
lly wrapped up his book and placed it back on the altar. He looked out the portal across the dim glow of the pink snow-scape of an entirely alien world and grimaced. It occurred to him that he had never actually been outside. Not just him, no human being had. Such a mysterious unexplored world waiting out there. Why had he not once contemplated going outside?

  In a cabinet in the docking station was stashed a canister, which contained an emergency space suit. Kalsang opened it up, stretched it out along the cabin floor, and inspected it. The internal diagnostic computer gave an all clear on the suit’s integrity. The suit was in two parts and joined on a metal ring at the waist. Kalsang pulled on the suit and fastened the top to the bottom. He attached the gloves and boots and, after inspecting the seals, donned the helmet. When all equipment had been checked over and was positioned correctly, he ordered the evacuation of air from the lock and the door opened out onto the brave new world.

  Kalsang stood in the angled doorway, looking out as, for the first time his hermitage moon was liberated from the small, immobile lenses of the cabin portals. Before him was a silently vibrant world awaiting investigation.

  One small step for a monk.

  Kalsang stepped out of the capsule.

  Once on the surface his little outing quickly became intoxicating. What a wonderful place. He skipped around, kicking the snow up into wispy puffs that never seemed to settle.

  Wow.

  He bounced around in wobbly dance losing his balance often. Out of sheer joy he bounced randomly into the low sky. This was more fun.

  “He, he, he.”

  He rolled on the ground creating a flurry of the strange talcum powder snow that for a short time obscured his vision, confusing him.

  Oh no, he had better be careful.

  He propped himself into a seating position, panting, and waited for the hazy smoke of snow to settle.

  As his view returned he was overwhelmed by it.

  Outlining the horizon were the surprisingly high walls of the impact crater within which his Terrapod rested. The floor of the crater was crisscrossed with smoky pink snow berms, unusually symmetrical as they built up over the eons from the pathways of snow ejected from the bizarre black geysers that covered this part of Triton. Other parts of the crater floor were perfectly polished lenses of nitrogen ice where the internal heat of the moon, generated by tidal friction with Neptune, had slowly, at sometime in the remote past, thawed the surface. The geyser contrails traced parallel black lines across the low sky. The ominous indigo mass of Neptune slowly rolled across the background of night. Amazing.

  The aliens had followed him out and were enjoying his fun. They swam about him, their tentacles whirling round in a graceful dance, their skin radiating a pink glow matched to the surrounding that made them appear to dissolve into and out of view.

  The small ones, especially, jumping at the chance to play like little monkeys. d'Song and d’Gnnr chased the others trying to tag them, squealing in high-pitched voices that sounded like dolphin chatter.

  “Ha ah ah.”

  It was good to see them all having a good time.

  They made a short hike over to a patch of ice, polished so smooth that when he bent over he could see his own face reflected back, or rather his toothy grin lit up by the lights in the helmet.

  He had not aged as much as he thought he might have, but he did look less baby-faced and more serious.

  “Oh, how handsome. Hmmm.” That’s what Amala used to say to him. His fingers attempted to snap within their padded gloves.

  “Temporary.”

  He noted with minor alarm the length of time he had been out and hopped back towards the shining lights of the Terrapod. He stood by the side, taking one last look around, and began to climb up the gantry.

  Two of his right hands reached for the railing to pull him up the last step but missed. They passed right through.

  How had that happened?

  Kalsang slipped on the ladder, and slowly tumbled feet over head down to the ground. He bounced several times in slow motion before coming to a rest. Methane and nitrogen snow exploded from the surface in great glittery puffs with each impact and additional disturbances caused by the flying monk’s flailing arms. He lay where he fell for some time, giggling uncontrollably.

  When Kalsang finally recovered himself and tried to sit up he found that he couldn’t. His suit was over pressurised, blown up like a great balloon. Movement was impossible.

  As he struggled his situation seemed more and more impossible. There was no one who could help him and the thought that he would freeze alone here became more and more solid. The ice of fear was already beginning to grow in his heart. Panic seized Kalsang’s mind, until he remembered to let it in and not hold it out. The way Mila had conquered his demons. Invite them in.

  What a way to die, he thought at that moment, remembering how giddy from the novelty of his adventure he had been only a short time before, completely hilarious. Kalsang chuckled and this helped to calm his nerves.

  What a way to die. A frozen monk blimp slowly collecting snow dust until he was completely covered over, a nice little hill of pink. Cold hell karma left over from flicking some flea out in the cold? Because he was a famous monk, maybe they would write about his death, so dignified.

  “There once was this Khenpo from Drugu who did that, and his space suit puffed up and he froze into the surface of the furthest moon.” Such a lesson for the young monks about fleas.

  The aliens shuffled around him looking concerned, but they couldn’t help anyone.

  “He, he, he. And then,” Kalsang told them, “when they come looking for me, if they bother, all they find is an open door and no Kalsang, no tracks, just a little pink pile. You will have to tell them where to find me.”

  He could feel the aliens’ concern for him, their worry for his well-being in each of their many eyes.

  They sang to him in that strange whale song and he found it comforting.

  After he blinked the tears from his eyes, Kalsang looked around for a way out of his predicament. His neurovisor was knocked to the side of head and wouldn’t refocus no matter how hard he twisted his neck. His wrist-pad might have a pressure regulator on it, but he could barely move his arms to his sides, let alone across his body. He marshalled a concentrated effort, kicking from one side to the other like an inverted turtle. No luck. Amazing how the distance from one hand to the other could have such a dramatic problem, while flying for light-hours had seemed so ho hum.

  What to do?

  Panic. Come on in. Have a comfortable seat and bring your laser beam focus with you.

  The suit sensor secondary output on the rim of Kalsang’s helmet indicated that he still had plenty of oxygen. There was time for the solution to his quandary that might be floating around in the back of his mind to come to him. But of course, this might truly be the end of his life. Karma of this lifespan couldn’t be added to.

  Thinking this way triggered a wave of nostalgia. Death as a meditation topic was certainly more abstract than death as an experience. What would he miss? Tibet? His family? His monastery? The aliens? Although Kalsang had fond memories these aspects of his life in one way or another seemed remote, as if they had happened to someone else. It would be sad to say goodbye, but these people and situations had all changed since he had last experienced them, and a new rebirth would reunite him with family and friends lost long ago. No, his sadness seemed to orbit about this single point; that would not have a chance to complete his guru’s instructions.

  Kalsang found his mind travelling out across space to another time. A song floated to his lips.

  Wisdom and compassion must flow

  between one heart and another.

  Listening, contemplating, and meditating are the means.

  The kindness of the guru is the essence.

  “Please, oh my Lama, protect me from fears!”

  And, to calm himself, Kalsang turned his mind to her life story and the special qualities she possessed.


  Lama Tsultrim Wangmo was exceptional as a guru in almost every way. One could begin with her gender. She was a woman who became one of the most highly regarded Lamas within the male dominated Tibetan monastic system. The Dalai Lama had recognised her as the latest incarnation in a long line of Tulkus reaching back to the bodhisattva Langri Tangpa, and she was also said to be an embodiment of Green Tara, the Female Bodhisattva of active compassion. However, Lama Wangmo was no Golden Child. She had earned her credentials the hard way.

  She was originally named Zhang Li An. Her mother was Tibetan and her father Chinese, a professor of Astronautics at the prestigious Shanghai University. She was inseparable from her father and followed on his coat tails to begin a prestigious career as an astrophysicist with her doctoral thesis on the effect of gravitational lensing on extraterrestrial radio transmissions. Then the accident happened. Her parents, on the way to her dissertation, lying dead amongst the twisted wreckage at the base of a collapsed bridge.

  Beyond consolation, Li An left the city for a while to visit the relatives she had never known - her mother’s family in Tibet. There was a scandal. Li An’s mother had followed her husband to the city. There urban snobbishness towards all things rural, and persistent Han chauvinism towards those of alternative ethnicity, conspired to embarrass Li An’s ambitious father. In deference to her husband’s sensitivities, Li An’s mother had buried her past. The decision became a source of secret shame, for to deny one’s ancestors showed great disrespect in both Chinese and Tibetan cultures.

  Li An, while cleaning the apartment, had found the shoe box of unsent letters. Please forgive me my beautiful mother.

  Kalsang imagined Li An driving her jeep apprehensively through a large herd of sheep and up on a group of yak hair tents, worrying about the impending reunion. She had told Kalsang all about this. Her mind was alive with apprehensions and questions. The Chinese had been the unwelcome oppressor wasn’t it? At least that's what Li An remembered from her more contemporary high school texts. Other undigested facts bubbled randomly to the surface. She had driven for days through the vast Tibetan Systems, regions within historical Tibet under Tibetan self-rule through limited sovereignty arrangements with One China Many Sys. Theoretically, as a recognized System among the Many Sys of One China, the Tibetans had formed their own Gov and had control of most internal affairs generally without outside interference. They could manage their natural resources and had veto power over immigration policies and a host of other carefully delineated powers. They had no control over foreign policy and had to conduct their economic relationships through One China according to the rather lopsided National Framework. And of course, there were many eminent Lamas she had seen on the Web performing mysterious ceremonies, lending moral credibility to public appearances by political nominees and supporting the ‘renewal’ of public figures who had fled to the monasteries following some scandal. She had occasionally enjoyed the broadcasts by Tibetan Buddhist monk-scholars of warm-hearted, though often erudite, religious teachings.