Shaman Machine the Mentor
by Trenlin Hubbert
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by K Trenlin Hubbert
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
PART ONE
“Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing on the contrary that the mind is itself the principal element of creation.” ~Rabindranath Tagore
CHAPTER 1
When the Mentor entered the Core, Mantaray emerged from the meditation of daily existence.
“What is Life?” the Mentor asked.
“Life is animate existence,” Mantaray answered.
~~~
Ziggy lay flat on his back, his hands crossed over his chest while he slept. In twenty-eight more seconds, I would awaken him. Inside my mind I observed the time on an overlapping map of calendars. There were Mayan dots and dashes; Tibetan flowers and figures; the sharp edged Gregorian. Like stepping stones, they guided me: calendar, on top of calendar, on top of calendar; more and less lined up. Inside the well of time, my progress was fractional: five…four…three…two…one.
Time.
Bending close, I whispered Ziggy’s name while gently, I touched his shoulder. His eyes cracked open; closed; opened; blinked. I pulled back to provide him space.
He sat, causing a cocoon of bedding to pool to his waste, revealing the lean hairless torso of a youth only recently become a man. He had a pretty face beneath a thick dark heap of hair, and the barest hint of a beard. I watched while he wrung the stiffness from his back and shoulders. He wiped grit from the corners of his shiny black eyes. “Ah-h-h,” he sighed. Then “Ho-o-o!” he huffed with more volume. Looking to me, he blinked again before surrendering to a mighty yawn: his overstretched mouth stalling to an open cavern for a few beats before collapsing back to normal.
We were tucked away in Ziggy’s favorite sleeping spot. The cubbyhole, mostly hidden from public view, was a leftover space where the rough wall of an ancient mud house poked out from a sleek glass façade. The intersection, where old met new, formed a triangular gap of leftover space. By aiming his feet into the acute angle, Ziggy could lie down with his legs extended, while leaving space enough for me to perch close by his head.
I watched Ziggy reach into the depths of his sleeping bag to grope around the oversized lump of his feet. Dragging out a clutch of rumpled clothes, he dropped them on his lap then slid out from under them. Freed from the bag, Ziggy exposed a partial erection that quickly retreated from the crisp morning air. Crawling on his knees, he made quick work of smoothing out a shirt with the palms of his hands before donning it and his crumpled pants.
When he rolled up his makeshift bed, I flicked my chest open, without being told. I held myself steady while he pressed the bedding into my proffered cavity. While he pulled on his shoes, I opened my thigh and passed him a hairbrush.
“Thank you, Chance-bot,” he said.
There were days when the man remained silent; sullen. But just as often, he was talkative. Sitting cross legged and working the tangles from his hair, he grunted contentedly. “I love these crisp mornings,” he said. “Pop!” he added, peering at me playfully. “Flowers,” he smirked, “In June the flowers pop into existence. Some of them so tiny,” he said, now staring past me, “half the size of my pinky nail…smaller than that even.” He ran his fingers through his hair, and made a final pass with the brush before handing it back to me. In the brief time it took for me to stash it away, Ziggy expertly bound his hair, employing a single fluid motion and a colorful length of cord. “You ready, Chance?”
“Ready when you are, Ziggy.”
The stars were in retreat. Purple washed the charcoal sky, hinting at the coming light.
“I don’t want to lose this spot,” Ziggy said. As if invoking with an incantation, he repeated, “I don’t want to lose this spot. We better get a move on.”
I’d been learning when to follow, and when to match him. We stood in unison. Ziggy was the taller, by about a head. Being a first level bot; a personal assistant-bot, I was humanoid. My face was designed to be convincingly human. Reviews described my golden eyes, tawny complexion and agile features; as compelling. Even handsome. Less admired was my reddish cap of stylized curls. The curls had been roundly condemned, as an ill conceived addition. Indeed, it seems, my faux hair was the primary reason I was sent to the curb, one year, ten months, three days, twenty-three hours, seventeen minutes and-- three seconds ago.
That day, as I waited on the street for the recycling truck, the sky was electric blue. My simple instructions admonished me to surrender to fate. While waiting for fate to find me, I observed the unfolding of a tranquil morning. I first noticed the man because he walked beside the mover, instead of riding it. Apparently, I’d been in existence long enough to form some expectations, as I kept expecting him to hop on. But he never did. When he came closer, I noticed the rumpled state of his clothing; by then, I realized he was watching me also.
He stopped in front of me. I could see his mind was at work. He began to question me. Then he sought to convince me, shyly at first; but eventually with passion. In classic Ziggy style, he mounted a circuitous polemic. As his keystone argument, he kept repeating, “timing is everything.” My fate, he declared, was to surrender to him. I couldn’t think of any rule forbidding it. I was programmed to serve. So, I agreed. I surrendered to him.
Using stealth and swift steps, Ziggy led our departure from our hideaway behind the mud wall. Moving quickly, we crossed through a patio, past a gate, and into the street. As always, Ziggy shunned the movers. So while he discussed his plans for the day, we walked the in-between places haphazardly strung together by transport corridors.
“Let’s go out to the sculpture park today, Chance-bot. I have this great idea for a new project. It came to me last night before I fell asleep. Guess what it’s going to be.” He laughed, “You'll never guess.” He glanced at me sideways, and made a maniacal grin. But his tongue did not pause for long; I’d not be required to guess. “This one's going to be about, how…ah…it’s about how beliefs create reality.” Eyes glittering, he laid out his premise. “Beliefs directly affect our perceptions, Chance. Like, like…I’ve heard that, that when a Fensterist has a near death experience, he sees the baby Shinza.” Words crowding from his mouth, fingers jabbing at the air, he was subsumed by passion. “Fensterists claim that, just like that, Shinza arrives in time to help the dying person to…ah…to ah, make the transition. Now compare that to an Interstalist. Interstalists claim to see the Seven Pestas at the…the, ah threshold. But here’s the story I’ve heard, most often. Usually, it seems, the dying person sees a light. Just that: a light.” Posture relaxed, he cupped the air with upturned palms. “Which I can totally relate to,” he said, “I mean…just about everyone is afraid of the dark! Right!?” His steps stuttered then stalled. “But why is there discrepancy?” he asked. He resumed walking to offer, “By the way, I don’t think any of these accounts are fiction.” He tapped his pursed lips with two fingers before waving a single finger to say, “Nope. Not fiction. Here’s what I think. I think that as long as we are on the physical side of life, we see the world through the filter of our beliefs. Think about that Chance! Even at the moment of death our expectations determine our experience!” His hands formed fists and he shook them with conviction. “Beliefs ar
e powerful!” Glancing my way, he asked, “Do you understand what I’m saying, Chance?” He slowed his step to search my face; but only briefly, as his passion demanded movement. Surging forward with feet and mouth, he cried out, “I want to make a sculpture called, Belief is Prejudice. Belief is Prejudice! What do you think Chance?”
Our relationship was still young. Having nowhere else to look for an answer, I looked to data. “Belief,” I recited to him, “is the combining of personal experience with ideas received through respected authorities.” I looked to Ziggy for confirmation.
The drift of his head implied uncertainty; but a sudden head jerk offered agreement.
I continued, “You are suggesting that a belief system acts as a lens…that it shapes or distorts perception.” Another head jerk cleared me to proceed. “I think I understand your contention, but I don’t understand how you turn your abstract concept into a physical object,” I confessed. “What will you build to express your idea?”
“I don't know!” he crowed. Clasping his hands to a praying fist, he declared, “That, my friend, is the magic of art. Art is a process. You’ll see, Chance-bot. You’ll see. We’ll do it together.”
As was typical of our mornings together, we wandered a circuitous route through the downtown neighborhood where the rough texture of the old mud houses were a common feature, slipping at odd angles from sleek glass. Though our route varied in accordance with Ziggy’s whims, every morning we eventually found our way to the bubble wall. Captured in some amber glass, an endless supply of bubbles streamed ever skyward. When we stopped to watch, Ziggy’s face tightened with concentration. He hardly breathed while we awaited the inevitable. When the random drift of bubbles regrouped into the current time, Ziggy let go a sigh, loosing the tense stance of his body. After the daily ritual, we always made a beeline to the brew shop.
When he finished at the brew shop, we clambered out the back way and over a low wall, where we dropped to the stripe of land where the river lived. On this day while walking Ziggy’s path, we spied a harvester-bot. Ziggy veered off track to fall in behind the squat little machine while I retrieved the mesh bag from my body.
Shaped like a tub on a ball-shaped-wheel, the harvester-bot sensed ripeness on a long list of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Agile as bees, these bots were a fairly common sight, weaving amongst the city plantings. Specialized tools on telescoping arms allowed the harvester-bots to cut, pinch or carefully cup the edible focus of their ministrations. The tubby little bots were perfect guides since the mere shape of a human hand compelled it to surrender the crop.
“Ah this,” Ziggy cried with berry stained lips, “is absolutely my favorite month.”
Back on the river track, Ziggy recommenced his monologue. He claimed the leftover strip of land limning the river was a relic hailing from the time of the Spanish Conquest, back in the teen-hundreds. When a few minutes later, he declared the park was relatively new, I didn’t question the contradiction. My current understanding held that I could best serve the man by receiving him without needing explanation for every utterance.
Nearly an hour passed before we ascended from the river basin to the Paseo. The Paseo was dominated by mechanized motion. Racing down the center of the thoroughfare was a transport tube holding seated passengers. Flanking, both sides of the tube, were movers moving at a more pedestrian pace. Ziggy always became nervous in the thick of mechanized transport, so predictably he showed distress. I assumed the lead to hurry us forward.
A short distance later we arrived to a hub of chaos called Canyon Road Plaza. Up and over the plaza ramp we trotted before veering right onto Canyon Road. In our bid to escape, we loped the final blocks with our chests moving in parallel. Garcia Street was the relief we’d been angling for. There were no people movers on Garcia Street. Exiting Canyon Road, we entered the shade of apricot trees. While Ziggy mumbled relief, we slowed our steps. There were stucco walls lining the way, and no people or bots in evidence.
When we passed beneath a glass archway, Ziggy looked up, and asked, “Chance, is the ceiling above us?”
Tilting my head all the way back, I saw the pattern. The hatch of ultraviolet lines, infused in the overhead glass could not be seen by humans; but could be seen by birds; and kept them from crashing against the otherwise invisible barrier. “Yes, Ziggy, there is a ceiling,” I told him.
The temperature was stable beneath the heat harvesting glass. Ziggy slowed a bit more. Loose of limb, his face was serene. “This is the Canyon Road area, Chance,” he said. “The Historic Eastside,” he reminded me. “In the old days,” he said, “people rode donkeys instead of movers or tubes.” He threw back his head and laughed. “Imagine that,” he crowed, “riding an animal! Of course, eventually the donkeys were replaced by machines.” Squinting, he murmured, “Isn’t it odd that humans freed animals from slavery before they freed themselves? I wonder….”
Biting his lip, he said, “See, a long time ago, people were divided into two classes. There were the rulers and there were the workers. This was before robots, Chance. Back in those days, all the work had to be done by people. At first, every person did every kind of work. But towards the end, people became specialized; highly specialized. And they--” His voice cracked. “They'd use up the balance of their lives performing some small group of tasks over and over and over. Until they died, Chance.” His voice fell to a whisper. “Until they died.” Looking at me, he declared, “Then there were robots.”
Lips twitching, he said, “And strangely, the people resisted the bots-- resisted being replaced by them-- didn’t want to give their jobs up to them. I-- I guess….” He sighed. “I guess, they’d forgotten how to be human. They didn’t know what to do, or…I don’t know…who to be, without a job. So, they were...they were afraid to let the robots replace them. Even, Chance. Even when they hated what they did!” Ziggy shook his head; he blinked. “Finally,” he stated with conviction, “it happened. People couldn’t really compete; were no longer needed to…to perform work.” Raising his brows and shaking his head again, he said, “Scared. Obviously. That must have been it. They were scared. Who could even doubt it was an era dominated by fear. What else can explain the destruction?”
Ziggy fell silent. We passed through another opening in the glass. Cushioned by spongy pavement, our feet silently propelled us. When Ziggy spoke again, he said. “I don't know exactly how it happened. People seriously did seem destined to destroy…well…to destroy everything! There was this big die-off. So many species...they just...they went extinct. People tore up the ground and poisoned the seas.” He frowned. “Maybe there was an element of self loathing?”
He hugged himself with both hands then stopped to address me more directly. “They say that all of the earth: land, air, and water,” he emphasized. “They say all of the Earth was once filled with plants and animals. Filled. All of it. With every kind of life. I’m not sure if I believe that. Sometimes, I think it could be true.” He started walking again. “Anyway, I doubt anyone will ever know how people found their way out of that…that…well, that death march. But, I’ll tell you what I think, Chance-bot. I’ll tell you what I believe. I believe it was art that saved us. Believe in art, Chance-bot. Believe art.”
CHAPTER 2
In the Savaj City Airport Terminal, Danel waited for his luggage to appear.
“Yo! Danel!” a familiar voice shouted.
Danel looked up and witnessed the crowd become an audience. Heads turned to goggle. It wasn't only the metallic sheen of Alex’ clothes, a bronze shirt and pewter pants bracketed by a shiny chrome scarf and shiny chrome shoes that shot shards of light. No Alex’ clothes were minor accessories to the sensation he contrived. Perpetually exuding an urgency of purpose, Alex was an absolute adept at drawing attention. His movements were large, with arms swinging, and legs reaching. His feet slapped, bouncing him into his next step. Alex' sandy hair was long enough to curl around his ears and over his collar. One fat lock fell to his forehead over a prominent nose.
Alex converged on Danel with pronouncements, “I've been looking all over for you! We have to hurry. We’re late, now!” That’s when Alex launched himself; nearly knocking Danel over, as he sought to capture him with into a melodramatic hug.
Intent on telling every detail of what had transpired since they’d seen each other last, Alex embarked upon a self-centered monologue. The deep tones of his operatic voice excluded no one in the vicinity. Finally, Danel’s duffel popped into view. Grabbing it up, he said, “Okay.”
Alex spun and dashed. Danl fled after him in hot pursuit. The elevator had nearly escaped when they arrived; but with a quickly placed hand, Alex stopped the doors from closing all the way. The doors reopened, exposing a tightly packed group of riders. Alex, relentless, began compressing the unhappy occupants to a tighter fit. The rumble of complaints was not subtle.
Pulling Danel forward by the arm, Alex demanded, “Just two more. It'll take at least three to crash this crate.”
Murmuring a curse under his breath, Danel allowed himself to be dragged into the crowded booth. Then the doors of the little box closed, and they were cast from the surface. Deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean, the condensed riders burst free into the bustle of a narrow corridor, acting as a street. Bubbling paragraphs, Alex wove through clogged arterioles with Danel in close pursuit. Head bent to the task, Danel was riding Alex' heals around a blind corner when, abruptly, Alex slowed his step. The two briefly collided bringing Danel to a halt, while Alex spun around.
“I have these root pills from a shaman in Lacandonia,” Alex hissed. “They are simply delirious. As it happens, I saved one just for you.”
“Ah…gee, Alex, that's very generous of you; but…ah…I have a lot I need to get done on this trip. I think I'll just stick with known poisons.”
Shaman Machine the Mentor Page 1