by Andreas Ingo
”What do you mean?”
”I mean that you have it worse than me.”
Leonide was quite shaken. Not that she believed Aldante. But she saw his grief and despair. It was like he was in a place no one else could enter. As if his distant only was a manifestation of a deeper despair.
”That being inside the glass.” Leonide said, ”What is this creature?”
”I could go into it. But that’s something you aren’t ready for yet. You think you have a life worth living, but you have nothing.”
Leonide thought she glimpsed something in the corner of her eye: An awful creature that moved along the glass pane. But it could have been an illusion.
”I can say it aloud.” He continued, ”You will still discover it soon. The truth is that you have no life. I don’t mean that you are unhappy. I mean that you literally have no life. That you are a biological machine without consciousness.”
Leonide started laughing. Aldante just looked at the hybrid, but didn’t allow himself to be carried away.
”You can check it out for yourself.” He continued, ”Everything is in the very documents of The Foundation.”
”How can I not be alive?” Leonide said, ”I’m standing right here with you.”
”This sentence, ”I’m standing right here with you.”, is just a mechanical repetition of words. It’s your programming, your existence, your thoughts. Your life is just a guise. In fact, you’re a good imitation of life. Your emotions are like a beautiful simulation. Your relationship to The Foundation and your mistress are a masterpiece of biological engineering, and not just that! You’re doing the exact opposite to what you were expected to do! That one thing does not add up! I don’t live, you’re not alive. My friends are dead. My old friends I mean.”
”I think you’ve become dizzy from all of your experiences! All these universes, these variations of the same thing. You’ve confused one thing with the other and flipped the concepts. You need to think in more simple ways and stop looking for evil.”
”That’s what I tried. Don’t think I haven’t tried. But every attempt I made only ends in more conviction. The only thing I would advise you to do is to continue as you have done. You can’t believe me. Return to your mistress: This biological machine that conjures up wonders in your artificial brain. But in the end it’s probably only one thing that matters: To be like me: To realize that you can’t improve the universe. The universe is not available. Not for us, only for real people. The only thing that you want to do when you realize that you are not is to delete the others that actually exist. Just because the lie is so huge that you want to take revenge on your makers.”
”Are you going to kill people?”
”Not exactly. There are no people here. What I intend to do, no words can describe. I will just let you do what you think you feel and leave it.”
With that being said Leonide glanced back at the glassed enclosure and tried to see the creature. But everything was dead and nothing could be seen.
Aldante went away.
10
BACK WITH DAPHNE
The lovers had moved away from the skyscrapers and were in a farming area a few miles inland. The words by Aldante had not sunk in very deeply. They dug with shovels in the loosened soil. Creepers by alien origin were reaching for the top of wooden fences. A breeze came in from the hinterland, and Leonide’s ponytail swayed in the wind.
”It’s something I’ve wondered ever since I came to Amarosa.” Leonide said. She looked toward Daphne with worry in her eyes.
”What’s the problem?”
”It’s like Aldante, my travel buddy, fades away. He disappears into his own imagination. But I don’t think that’s the fundamental problem. He carries something dark within himself: Much like he wants everyone to be dead.”
”What does he say?”
”He says we’re not here. Neither you or me. That we have no consciousness. That we only exist as biological machines, and imitate life.”
Daphne was quiet. Leonide looked at her mistress. It was a singular sight of something highly unusual: The woman had color. Gone was the chalk-white skin from Telga. Gone were those bags under the eyes: Weariness, aversion.
”What do you think?” Leonide asked.
”Is it important what I think?” Daphne asked, ”If you want to save your friend, why do you hang out with me instead of talking to him?”
”I stay away because I can’t reach him.” Leonide said, ”The more I say the more convinced he becomes about his own views.
Daphne poked in the earth. She put down a plant and raked over. Finally, she approached Leonide. The hybrid thought Daphne tried to kiss her, but nothing happened.
”Could it be...” Daphne said, ”That the reason you can’t reach him is because he’s right?”
”What do you mean?”
”Well, that we actually are biological machines, just like him.”
Leonide just glared at Daphne. She thought she was joking. But there was only seriousness in Daphne’s eyes. Leonide continued to stare. She thought of the impossibility of the moment. She couldn’t believe her ears. But then she began to think about what happened on the ship. Could it be that she was the only one who thought like this? Even Daphne seemed to be unconcerned about the issue. The hybrid sought contact but Leonide felt discomfort. She abandoned Daphne and walked away a short distance. She looked at the plants: Green systems of roots that reached for the top of the fence. Here and there she saw a flower in violet. She watched the plants. Or did she really see them? Was it just a process in her head who tried to convince her that this was the case? What would it be like to have an ”I”? Would it feel different from now?
A few days later Leonide spent time with Aldante at sea. She wanted to know more about Aldante’s reasoning: If there was a way out or not.
Aldante wasn’t happy about the thinking process. Thought had no meaning in a world that never existed and which never could disappear. They stopped the Jet propulsion of the boat, which sucked in the air in the front of the boat and sent it aft. It was a landscape sparsely decorated with small islands. There were underwater grounds there: Dangerous rock formations that could be seen just below the surface.
”It’s extremely easy to prove that I haven’t fooled myself.” Aldante said, ”It’s not about official documents or small reflections of everyday life. When it comes down to it, you can’t learn the truth by going through a mental process. This information is just information, whether it’s in your mind or not.”
”So how do you do it?”
”I’m doing nothing. I’ve realized that if there’s no information inside, there’s nothing else either. It’s completely different for people. They experience something we call ’Pure Consciousness’. That means, when all thoughts and feelings have disappeared, when there are no actions, there is still something else.”
”What would it be?”
”There you are! Just your question, ’What would it be?’, reveals you! You’ve never experienced anything else. You don’t understand the meaning of the sentence, ’I exist.’”
Leonide said nothing more.
11
THE NIGHT OF LOVE
They had been sitting on the balcony and looked at the dusk. Leonide and Daphne. It was the view of the sea and skyscrapers that rose above the clouds. The clouds had now adopted a purple color. It was like a fluffy blanket that didn’t lay still but actually moved.
The lovers held the hot chocolate drinks that they made in the kitchen a few hours ago. Life was easy and gentle. But Leonide couldn’t get the question out of her head: That nothing mattered, whatever they did.
They said nothing. They watched the lights being lit and turned off on the opposite side. Some young people went out on the balcony and shouted into the warm night. The air hadn’t gone out of the relationship. Daphne was still Leonide’s mistress.
They went in.
They went to the bedroom but didn’t take off their clothes.
They settled down, on top of a black coverlet. They began to fantasize about a possible future.
Soon they were in the capital, in the small variant of Telga and walked along the street. Under the yellow glow: The street where Daphne had been shot.
They met the killers. They crouched down and responded to the fire. Now it wasn’t Daphne who fell but the others. The hybrids called the ambulance, but the men didn’t survive the night.
Suddenly a sound was heard. It was the sound of a door creaking. Maybe it was the front door? Maybe it was the balcony door pushed aside?
And so it was there: The alien creature from the ice planet! From the zoo that hadn’t previously existed. Before the lights turned off they saw the shape in its original splendor: The wolf-like figure, the scales on the upper body. The two heads with fearsome jaws.
The hybrids tried to run. But the muscles wouldn’t move. The beast came down on the women. They fought for their lives but they didn’t get the upper hand.
The two heads were armored with scales of a dragon and the forehead was crowned with horns.
No one knew how it happened. Suddenly they were in the living room. Blood was pouring from cuts in the skin of the hybrids. They approached the kitchen. They got hold of sharp objects: Punctured one lung on the terrible predator.
They thought they had won but an explosion had the skyscraper to roar. Aldante was there. The building began to collapse.
They ran up to the balcony. The door had been pushed aside. They saw the violet clouds pass by when the building fell to the ground. The creature was behind them. It was given a shot and fell down on the floor.
The hybrids fainted. Then they were on their way out to sea.
They were traveling on the Jet boat. Aldante steered. He helped them away from civilization and also from themselves.
Leonide grabbed the steering and threw Aldante aside. She turned abruptly and heard the terrible sound of an underwater ground. The boat capsized. The hybrids were swimming for their lives in the rolling waves of the troubled water.
Leonide realized she had no life. Not even the experiences of the skyscraper had felt real. She was sucked down under the water: Daphne also. Aldante swam with the revolver at his side.
Leonide looked at Daphne. Daphne looked at Leonide. They swallowed water and then they were gone.
12
THE NEW VERSION OF THE UNIVERSE
They were together now. Leonide and Aldante. Surveyor was like a ghost ship that sailed beyond time and space. They had long been traveling behind the tail of the illuminated comet. The ice planet loomed farther away, in all its pristine glory.
They didn’t know that this was the next epoch in their lives unknown. In a universe that didn’t follow traditional laws.
The comet continued forward, turned slightly towards the planet’s orbit but wasn’t to be carried away. This time, it simply wasn’t pulled down, but continued past the planet and out into the darkness. Leonide was working for The Foundation just like Aldante. She realized that they had to explore the comet before it disappeared for good.
No one remembered anything from the past.
They floated weightlessly in the frigid outer space. They used explosive charges, to find the way to the comet’s interior. And then they would analyze the constituents.
What they found was nothing more than a creature. It was not the two-headed creature from before. This was more bearlike. But it had a protective shield with thorns. So terrible was the figure that the impression got the hidden memories to cool. They decided to thaw the creature and put it on the ice planet.
It had become night but the morning star’s first rays reflected from the mountain’s highest peaks. The expanses were white and the snowflakes twinkled like the stars on the firmament.
The being was left alone and came to life. It stood up: Silently, then snorting. It was brown with faint light yellow spots.
Suddenly sounds were heard: Sounds of howls. It was the creatures from ancient times. But these didn’t come with the comet. They had lived on the planet since ancient times, in a fictional reality.
Leonide and Aldante retreated towards the spaceship. The brown creature with the thorny shield, soon found itself surrounded. The hybrids watched the spectacle from a snowy hill.
The black beasts pounced on the brown. The blood sprayed. They let the process take time and left nothing to the cold.
Leonide cried. She remembered the love of the past. She didn’t believe in evil, but evil believed in her. She was a machine, but she was still alive. She saw the futility of the current scenario.
Aldante got to see the truth: The truth about the creature that lived on forever.
It had been traveling on the ice planet through time immemorial. It had killed and been killed. But it was resurrected again. Each time it had become bigger and better. Now, its eyes had completely disappeared. It had become something so terrible that no one dared to dream about it.
The same was true for Leonide. She knew that no one could step in and change the state of the world. Any attempt to save life got the darkness to shine.
But she didn’t want it to.
Aldante didn’t want it to.
No one of the hybrids cared anymore.
THE END
* * *
About the author:
I’m a Swedish guy, passing 35, writing fiction, articles, composing music and more. I travel the world seeking adventures, meeting people on the way. I look at Internet as a kind of hub for greater knowledge: A beast that must be tamed.
I meditate, search for the spark within, and use others as a source of inspiration.
I hope to give something back in the process.
Coming titles by Andreas Ingo:
“The Forgotten Nomad”
“Entropy”
“Newborn”
On the web:
Blog: The zone of free will
Facebook: Andreas Ingo
E-mail: [email protected]