We made Contact

“The sky crumbled.. the stars shattered under their own weight.. the screeching noises burned like an inferno and blood boiled off the streets.. the ground was obliterated and the oceans turned to dust.. We made contact.. we finally made contact.. why did we do this to ourselves..”

That’s the only thing I could make out from that weeping woman’s voice in that tape. ‘We made contact’.. what kind of contact was she talking about? Whom did they contact that caused such mayhem?

There was something deeply intriguing and piteous about the way that woman was speaking.. what diabolical distention transpired inside this unknown planet that led to the creation of this tape? I had to find out.. I absolutely had to..

After a little tinkering, I found that this tape had some more information recorded in it. I guess it came from a voice recording device which she had used for her vocation. I put it into the translator and transcribed the entire thing. This is what came out of it.

***

“If a butterfly flaps its wings in the southern hemisphere, then two years later it can cause a hurricane in the northern hemisphere”

This is how he began his address to us, talking about the vagaries of chaos theory, and with that, trying to mesmerize an audience dominated by 20-year olds, some of whom would consequently start their thesis under him.

He had a certain charm to him, quite possibly that of a troubled genius, but there was something more too.. One could see how those numerous lines on his creased forehead deepened as he spoke. His voice not only had gravity, but also emotion, emotion that indicated that he cared about the words he spoke, and maybe, sometimes too much for his own good.

He was definitely not a person who was supposed to be found at such a downbeat university. He clearly deserved a spot amongst the elite academicians of the Ivy Leagues. His remarks were incisive and his tone had this alluring accent, that would make one beg to hear more of his speech. But only if he spoke more. That was the thing about him, he was a reluctant speaker. On the rare instances that he would speak, no one else could. His voice would overpower the entire ambience of the room and if you closed your eyes then, you would almost presume that there was a divine presence in that room.

I wasn’t a physics or math major. I wasn’t even in the same college. A friend of mine had told me about this mystical professor of hers, whom she said I would have loved to listen to. She wasn’t too far off.. I actually enjoyed every word he said and just like every other journalism major, who has that itch on stumbling upon something interesting, I too wanted to find out more about him…

Later that night, I knocked on his office door. He responded with a firm “Hmm?”.

“May I come in, Sir?”

“Hmm”

“I was present in your lecture today and even though I’m from a non-science background, I felt an incredible interest in the theories you proposed..”

“Hmm”

“Errr.. You might be wondering what I am doing here in your office at this odd hour and most probably I’m wasting your precious time. So without beating around the bush any further, let me get to the point.. I want to interview you, and I believe that this interview will be interesting enough to satisfy my degree requirements. ”

“So was that comment on my lecture just contrived coyness to create a context for this offer, or was it an earnest remark?”

“Uhh.. it was most certainly an earnest remark.. I mean you were wonderful and I can show that to the whole world how..”

“Your powers of articulation disappoint me.. I would rather die in oblivion than to be packaged and presented in a glorious spotlight which I’m undeserving of.”

“Oh no no.. you misunderstood.. I mean it wasn’t your fault.. and it’s just like.. I think we got off on the wrong foot..”

“I appreciate imagination and absolutely loathe, trite hackneyed clichés.. You have 12 words at your disposal. If by virtue of them you can convince me then I would certainly consider your offer, otherwise I would need to escort you to the nearest exit.”

“Hmmph… In all my life, I have never met a guy like you”

“It’s extremely generous of you to refer to this old bag of bones as a ‘Guy’.. haven’t heard that in a while..”

“Only coz its true.. not all journalists who..”

“When would you like to commence?”

“Anytime that you wish to!”

“I play Billiards every Friday night. You can join me there.”

“But.. err.. I don’t play.. I mean I don’t know how to play!”

“Don’t you worry about that. The only game I play, is the A-Game..”

***

We started with the game and true to his word, he cleared the table in his first round. I was amazed at how well he anticipated the game and how he almost knew beforehand where the balls are going to be positioned after their motion ceased. He was electric. After he was done with it, I got him a drink and said:

“You are a special person.. I guess you know that.. so why are you wasting your time here? You should be in some top scientific congress or the Presidents committee or something. Why are you squandering your talent here?”

“You want to know why I teach here? Why I work in a small office when I should be delivering lectures at science congresses? Why I care about so deeply, and work so meticulously, on something as obscure as the implications and consequences of the flapping of a butterfly's wings?

It’s because I had once endeavored to save the world.. and not like your average teenager who has a fetish for it.. I dedicated my entire life to it and had almost achieved it.. if only for....”

“Wait.. Save the world? Save it from whom? Butterflies?

“Even worse.. Save it from itself..”

“That doesn’t make much sense. Why exactly did you want to save the world?”

Because I was angry.. and outraged...

Why were You so angry?

Because I believed that our society is Hobbesian. I essentially saw people as bad creatures.. They have no faith in the power of humanity. They have all been failed by other people many times in many different aspects of their lives and take it out on others. For most people this rule of paying it forward is good enough to keep their life in balance. But not for me. Hence I wanted to revamp the way this world runs.

How did you try to do that?

I duplicated the human thought process.

Do you mean artificial intelligence?

You may term that as that, but it’s not actually that. You see the human thought process is highly random. There is so much randomness in our behavior and how we respond to different stimuli.. that stock markets or weather systems look like a joke compared to it. Essentially, modeling the human thought process is just a highly non-linear and extraordinarily convoluted problem of chaos theory. For centuries now, Psychologists and sociologists have been trying to figure it out but to no notable success. I knew there was something wrong in their approach and I had to fix that.

And what was wrong in their approach?

Vision. A Korean proverb says that if the human body is sold for 100 bucks, 80 bucks is just the price of vision...

They all lacked vision.

Vision meaning, hindsight, foresight and also most importantly, the bird’s eyes view. Basically, you can never model the vagaries of a dynamic system while you are a part of it. You have to get out of it, look at it from a higher standpoint, understand the intricacies and flaws and then get back into it. All this time, all these philosophers tried to predict human behavior from the data they gathered, but the data was always insufficient and incongruous, coz the boundary conditions and the initial conditions weren’t known. Now to model the behavior of a chaotic system, the knowledge of the initial and boundary conditions is required to a very high magnitude of precision. If you model it without them, then your results would be as chaotic as the system you are modeling. Often this was the reason that most great thinkers took their own lives. Their thoughts formed a deadlock. They couldn’t think anymore. And a person who can’t think anymore is already dead. The body is still warm and moist, but that is of no use to anyone. Hence they accepted the fact that they failed and bailed out. I knew this beforehand and hence took a different route…

I discovered, human intelligence is the cause of all problems in this world.. and hence I had to factor out the human intelligence variable from my model. The reason being, unlike every other things nature created, this one creation, was imperfect. So I set my initial conditions to be the point in time when human intelligence was zero.. by zero, I mean human behavior was a purely end-to-end, knee-jerk reaction type mechanism. Now, as far as the boundary conditions were concerned, I had to limit the expanses to which the human mind could foray into. Because many a times, what gave people the illusion of intelligence, was the fact that they could predict things in a manner others couldn’t. What this actually was, was a trite coincidence we prefer to refer as 'luck'. I know everyone can’t be lucky all the time, but then that’s exactly what probability says, a few people would be lucky in majority of the cases, like winning a lottery, only this time the grand prize was the aberration of intelligence. And these few people started thinking they are more intelligent than others. Hence their deviance in thoughts increased and as they passed on their ideas to others, they initiated a kind of chain reaction. And as you might now, a gamma decay is the most random process in this universe. The most. Mind that. Even I with my supreme intelligence can’t model it and even a million of my clones working together for all eternity, couldn’t. So you can see where the chaos in human thought arises from. Hence, the trick here was to create a controlled chain reaction, ideally a linear one, but a process with non-linearity of a couple of degrees would also work fine. So I created a system with these controlling conditions put in place, created a grid pattern with a band of colors that corresponded to the degree of intelligence in a thought, Blue being the most unintelligible one and red being the complete opposite. When different thoughts mixed, they produced a new color, and those colors upon further interaction created a new one. Now the thing was that these thought patterns were so designed, that they should be attracted to bluer shades and repulsed from the red ones..

But wouldn’t that eventually create a system of low or maybe no intelligence?

Yes I’m coming to that.. that’s the trick, that the reaction has to be sustained, and neither should it attain a state of exponential decay, nor exceeding critical mass, to blow up the entire system. I used a clever little trick for that. Morality. Humans are notorious for immoral behavior. Probably the only species that indulges in it..

You know why?

The other species do not even have a concept of morality. For them killing another creature is a form of survival instinct. They don’t kill someone for pleasure or because they think of it as a 'game'. Now morality is the second most important contributor to 'thought chaos' after intelligence. How morally or immorally a person would behave in a situation, is so hard to determine that I couldn’t dare to predict that. But one thing I can always predict, which is when given a choice to do something moral or immoral, there is always a little voice that urges you towards the immoral before you can even consider the consequences of the moral option. Modeling that perfectly was essential for me, as that turned out to be the stabilizing agent. Interactions with red areas was deemed 'immoral' and those with blue ones 'moral'.

And after some simple psychoanalysis, I could determine the coefficient of morality, as to how many instances of moral behavior can be expected and upto what degree. The distributions, if chosen correctly, fitted together beautifully, and a perfect state of morality was attained. Some thought elements would always interact with blue ones.. Most with 'kinda' blue ones.. Some with blue-ish ones.. some with cyan, some with purple, and a fraction, with ruddy, cardinal, Red. It took some calibration, but eventually it turned out to be so elegant a model, that I couldn’t believe my eyes. Was I a genius or was this creation the outcome of the great chaotic thought system we are all a part of? I didn’t know, but I knew one thing was for sure, a chaotic system has enough entropy for it to last till infinity. If a sub-process could negate the chaos, or in other words, add stability to it, the super-chaos-processes would try to subdue it. Maybe even annihilate it. But that didn’t happen in this case. This was clearly a way out of the chaos. The society I created was perfect. And I mean I go loony just thinking about it.. Even if the sub-parameters hadn’t been quantified, I would have still pursued it to my deathbed.. It’s so easy to get obsessed by your creation and the will to make it perfect can overpower your greatest ambitions. Hence I stopped perfecting it further, and once I had reasonable belief in the system’s stability, I moved onto my next task.. Implementation. This was so much easier said than done… What I needed for this task was a colony of people, whose memories I would erase, then set them off in a place secluded from modern civilization, feed their thought process through my developed model, and see how they actually behave. The risk here was, my resources were very limited.. if the system got unstable and my subjects started killing each other, or on the other hand, became so brain-dead that they couldn’t properly perform the most basic bodily functions, then I would be doomed and wouldn’t be allowed to perform another test, on grounds of a public massacre..

Where did you get you ‘subjects’ from?

I got the test subjects from military camps, underground agencies, third world countries and etc. etc. I set the entire thing up and there was a certain government body that supported me in my endeavors. The first day of the experiment began smoothly, and then disaster struck.

What happened?

The weather went bad. I had to do these experiments on a certain location which was an island. Now islands have pretty bad weather. So my subjects started falling ill because of it, and coz in the initial stages they lacked the intelligence of how to protect themselves, we had to go in and construct temporary shelters and camps for them. Now obviously, we the top authorities wouldn’t do this, so we called in staff from other parts of the globe, made sure not a single one of them knew the language of the other and constructed the entire camp up. Now the dilemma was what we do with these people who had a fair idea what was going on here. Well, since we already had the numbers, we thought why not get more data by creating more subjects.. So that’s what we did.. Erased those guys up and started fresh again. Only this time we faced another problem. The newer subjects, were as unintelligent as the older ones, but they had a bonus with them.. They had ability.. they were trained to do certain kind of work which didn’t require intelligence, but just a lot of training.. You know like how people who are not naturally ambidextrous can still play the Piano.. and how workers, with no knowledge of architecture or the greater design, still created the Great pyramids? Similarly, it was ability, something your intelligence has no part in determining, that screwed us up for the second time. One thing led to another and by the time we could stop the subjects, a lot of them had been killed by the 'able' ones.. Who could take a stick and wield it like an axe to knock down someone without any knowledge of the physics behind it.. Anyways that’s not the point. The point is, that the experiment kept getting messier and messier, more and more gruesome, we kept going over budget and behind schedule, and I could see two forces at play here.. one was that of the involved bureaucracy.. a section of whom were worried about the consequences of this experiment being discovered and the 'moral' implications they would have to face and the effect it would consequently have on their political status. As much as this force was tangible, I was as equally unaffected by its outcomes, because I was more interested in the dynamics of the second force at work. You might have guessed it.. "Universal Chaos"

This chaos was really smart.. it knew that it couldn’t stop me in my tracks analytically, as my model was perfect and the sustenance was spot on.. And Chaos could in no ways, without bending its self-imposed laws, violate the premises of my model. So it took the other way round.. it had so many other chaotic systems at its disposal, that it kept using them one by one to keep offsetting my models from its desired path.. Because it knew.. that even my model was essentially a chaotic one.. and any little change in its initial conditions, would cause a huge change in the final outcome.. Just like if I strike this ball at a point that is just a cats-whisker away from this one, my eventual board setting and even the outcome of the game would be entirely different..

So you mean to say that the Chaos theory is a 'it'? And that 'it' consciously messed up your diabolical experiments?

I wouldn’t have believed it if someone else told me about it and sometimes I find it hard to understand how could something so imprecise have such well crafted processes.. I started believing in terms like "meant to be" and "destined" et al. but still a part of me refuses to believe what happened and what is happening..

What is it that’s happening?

Well.. We never stopped the experiment.. In that little island.. those subjects are still present and living (I hope) a random kind of life.. who knows what kind of intelligence they might have developed or if they still dwell as cavemen.. I have no way of monitoring their daily processes..

Wait.. I don’t get it.. What exactly happened at the end?

Well the project got trashed.. all contacts from that island were cleaved, all deployed personnel revoked, funding removed, and I was most disgracefully rebuked.. All my grants were cancelled and I had to step down from my esteemed, tenured, state professorship.. The subjects were supposed to be brought back, but I convinced them that it would be a bad idea and somehow coaxed them into letting the experiment run.. and that no one would know about it.

Hmm.. that’s really sad.. but as much as I have known you till now.. I know you are not the kind who would accept such a harsh decision so easily.. There must be something that you would have done to turn things in your favor.. A man as calculative as you can’t leave things uncertain..

Hehe.. You’re right.. I was wrong to have underestimated your powers of analysis in the outset.. Yes I did figure out a way to stay in touch with them, albeit I don’t know how well it fared out.. but I know it eventually will..

What exactly did you do?

You know how I told you my subjects were moral creatures and a majority of them would behave morally so that their intelligence can be controlled? Well.. while leaving that place, I pulled the plug on morality and made them completely immoral.. so that their intelligence would increase to unexpected bounds.. And I’m pretty sure, that once they discover by virtue of their limitless intelligence, that they are not alone in this planet, they would try to make contact.. and I would come to know about them. The price I had to pay for it was that the results would be entirely unpredictable.. but you know.. there’s a certain joy in seeing an experiment go wrong when it was actually intended to go wrong.. Gives you a sense of control.. albeit a false one.. but at least you know you didn’t entirely screw up and that, maybe if things would have turned out better initially, who knows, you might have ended up changing the world! If they don’t make contact, then that would mean my predictions were wrong.

So.. doesn’t it worry you sometimes.. What might have transpired there? I mean even someone from a non-statistical background can say that this 'system' can have infinite possibilities..

Yes.. You are right.. It does both- bother me, and have infinite outcomes.. And I had worked on modeling this problem for quite some while.. I came up with a bunch of distributions that nearly estimated the approximate behavior.. and what I found was that in all cases.. the subjects would turn out to be more intelligent for their own good.. and I deduced, after a point, all of them would be supremely intelligent, and the great irony lies in the fact, that if everyone is a genius.. Then no one is.. And they being immoral creatures, would only choose one path.. that of self-annihilation.. So I don’t really expect them to be still alive.. But if they are.. then that would mean I screwed up and that I was wrong all along and the only option left for me then.. Would be suicide.. it’s too much of a burden to live with you know.. too much of a trauma when something you believed in your entire life, even when the whole world kept saying otherwise, turns out to be wrong.. The anguish is just unbearable.. I would most certainly..

Hey.. Shut up you.. Why is it that all you geniuses are so self-obsessed? There are other things to live for in life.. and it’s not just you guys who are subjected to unbearable stresses of expectation.. We all are.. it’s just the same for us too.. We bleed too when you gash us.. it’s just that you guys are so caught up in your abstract epiphanies that reality becomes a joke for you.. You keep predicting stuff right? Then tell me.. What are the chances that a 20-something journalist can fall in love with a 50 something escapist, esoteric and eccentric professor? Slim right? Yet this great anomaly has occurred and you can’t do a thing about it.. if you can’t live for yourself.. Live for me.. I am here to share your burden.. Even alleviate it.. and who knows.. Your past knowledge may somehow interact with some other co-incident inspiration and you can regain your seemingly lost prestige.. And you know how you said that nothing in life is certain.. I beg to differ.. I can say this with utmost confidence, that you will miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.. Give love a shot dear.. Trust me.. it’s worth it..

****

This was the last tape we recovered.. The entire planet was wiped out minutes after this conversation took place.. And as strange as it seemed in the beginning, this confirms the fact, that the attack was initiated, from a little speck of an island, inside this very planet… “Humans”.. what a queer race they were.. too good for their own good.. waging wars on each other suspecting them to be foes, while never realizing the fact.. that their greatest enemy.. was within them…

Lux Aeterna

I was so happy then.. I often look at the pictures of those times to relive those memories..

Where did you get these pictures from?

I… I.. don’t remember.. I know I shot them but I can’t seem to recollect… maybe I had them developed…?

Hmm… nice.. Lux Aeterna again..

What’s Lux Aeterna?

The light that never fades out.. The eternal Light..

What’s that got to do with my mental condition?

I’ll tell you.. but let me tell you a story first…..

“It was foretold of Simataura, a place bristling with creatures beastly and ominous, that death will elude its inhabitants, and they shall end up scavenging their own children and kin, to feed their perpetually burgeoning hunger for blood. They fed on their progeny and reproduced only to further the quantity of measly morsels they would consume. They fed on natures finest creations and slowly grew as tall as Redwood trees, but with hearts smaller than a locusts pellets. Then they had wars, for their mothers were no longer able to procreate at a rate abreast with the rate of consumption, and they killed each other for the ghastly purpose of feeding their cadavers to their partners. Such became the nature of these creatures that Nature itself shuddered to acknowledge their existence.

But then Nature decided that it all had to end, and it bestowed upon them Lux Aeterna, the eternal light, the light of love.. for now these creatures could love each other and most importantly, love their offsprings. They could no longer eat them because even the sight of anguish on their posterity’s faces would cause an unfathomable pain in their chests. Hence they started to feed upon much lesser beings, slowly diminishing in size and valor, but growing from inside, spiritually, and humanely.

The Lux Aeterna was to remain eternal and never be doused by even the most fiendish of forces. And as history would have it, Simataura begun to be known as Sumatra, the island where the oldest human remains have been found to date…. The island where supposedly the human race began….”

I don’t know what to make of this story…

Well… you can call this myth or a preposterous piece of history, but the truth is, that the ability to love was once devoid of us humans. It’s in our genes to be unable to love and although these genes were suppressed for ages and almost disappeared few centuries back, they returned after the spawning of the Industrial Era. Busy work schedules, increasing need of personal space, lesser human interactions and unprecedented self-importance led to the hardening of our hearts and in some cases, even to paralysis…

Paralysis? How can not loving someone cause paralysis?

The reason is strange but all too true.. The mind is the center of all bodily functions.. so slowly the mind grew devoid of love for others and the sphere of affection began contracting.. it collapsed to our own bodies, and then shrank further, eluding the body parts one by one, where eventually, the only thing the mind cared about was itself.. it refused the body and would function only on its individual requirements. This led to sporadic paralysis and even periods of intermittent comatose states in some cases.

Whoa!! This is crazy.. Do you know someone who suffered from this?

There’s no easy way to say this but… uhh..

Oh God.. Don’t tell me.. I had this.. this.. syndrome?

Yes…

So how did I come out of it?

Well, there were a number of people suffering from the ‘Simatauran Syndrome’… and then a company called “Lux Aeterna” came into existence.. it cured such people by targeting their reactive minds and enabling them to love again. It successfully eradicated this syndrome in a few years, but then because its treatment processes were not certified, they eventually shut it down.

So… you mean to say they did this to me??

‘They’ did this to ‘You’? YOU did this to YOU! They cured you damnit.. redeemed you from almost certain paralysis.. True.. there were some side effects but that’s way better than being a vegetable all your life..

‘Some’ side effects? I feel like killing myself everytime I see those eyes looking at me in my dreams. I hallucinate about them.. obsess about them.. they ravage my thoughts and soul..

Don’t worry.. You’ll get over it.. I’ll help you.. that’s what I am here for..

I don’t want to get over it. I’ll find her..

Are you crazy? How can you find something that doesn’t exist? They just fed your brain with gooey-signals and impulses to recreate the illusion of love. God knows what legerdemain they pulled off.. but one thing is for sure.. none of it was real…

Let it be.. I am going to find her out.. I’ll find out who she was if it’s the last thing I do in life.. thanks for your time Doc..

***

Hey.. its been two years since I last saw you... What have you been upto?

Many things actually.. I tried innumerable things to track her down.. I asked people around.. put-up ads on e-bay.. developed a face recognition software.. hacked into the government records.. what not….

Any luck??

No… no….. no luck whatsoever..

So are you finally over her?

No.. not at all.. I can never be.. I was so happy then.. those pictures maybe fake according to you.. but look at how happy I am.. is that fake too?

Well it’s just the mental image of your happiness.. you imagined you were happy while your body was predominantly paralyzed all throughout.. I’m sorry to say this but its fake..

But then what about the things I am feeling now? Is that fake too? Is the fact that I’m seething with rage right now fake? Are the dreams that I have every night fake? Is that burning look in her eyes and the way it hypnotizes me also fake? And if they are fake, then I don’t know what’s real anymore.. Sometimes I feel so happy just thinking about her that I have to cut myself and bleed to judge whether I am on the dimension of reality or not... How could something so powerful be fake? The torment, the anguish, its not fake Doc.. it’s all too real.. and it doesn’t change anything if You believe in it or not.. I can feel it.. it’s my reality, not yours…

OK.. then tell me.. if you do get to meet her again.. What is the first thing you would like to do?

I.. would.. thank her.. thank her for giving my life back to me.. for making me feel so alive again.. and….

Very Well.. come with me..

***

What is this place?

No questions asked.. none answered.. sit down and close your eyes.. when you feel that your head’s about to explode.. tell me.. OK?

Hmm-hmm..

***

So.. did you meet her?

Hmm..

What happened? Did you ‘thank’ her?

Not really.. I felt strange when I saw her..

Strange as in?

As in.. All these years I kept thinking.. how long will I keep searching for her? How far would I go? How far should I go? And everytime I thought this.. I would dispel these thoughts by telling myself that finding her is the only way I can bring happiness back into my life.. but now that I saw her.. I didn’t even feel like talking to her.. she was so different from what I remembered her as.. her eyes were the same but they didn’t have that fervor.. her facial features.. everything was same but in some queer way.. so very different.. I.. I.. dunno..

Have you read the ‘Lord of the Rings’?

Ya.. well.. I’ve seen the movie..

Ok.. so tell me.. why do you think.. out of all the mighty warriors that existed.. an insignificant hobbit was chosen to be the ring bearer?

What’s that got to do with my situation??

It has plenty… you see.. the ring gave its bearer all these amazing powers.. so whoever wore it.. got addicted to it.. it had this magical aura that would leave everyone who caught even a sight of it, spellbound.. anyone who fantasized about great power or even marginally flirted with the idea of being immortal, couldn’t escape its hypnotic charm and would eventually sacrifice all they had to stay with the ring forever.. even if it meant to give up their own lives.. Now my question for you is.. Does this sound hyperbolic, or all too familiar?

I.. I………

You know.. When you try too hard to own something.. or gain possession of something.. you hold on to it too tightly.. so much so that you can’t let go of it anymore.. because in reality.. it’s not You who owns that ‘thing’.. it’s that ‘thing’ that ends up owning you.. Does this make any sense to you??

Hmm…

Now imagine yourself.. standing on top of a fiery volcano.. with that precious ring in your hand.. you need to throw it in the fire to protect humanity’s existence.. but then you have this unbearable urge to stay with the ring.. what would you do if you were a greedy human instead of an unaspiring hobbit? Could you let go? Tell me.. Could You?

N.. No..

But if you absolutely had to throw it in.. what would you do? Would you consider going along with it into the hellish fire-hole as a valid option??

Ok.. very well.. I get it Doc.. I should have let her go.. should have gotten over her a long time ago.. and shouldn’t have wasted so much time obsessing about her.. but how does that explain what I felt when I saw her there?

Hehe.. it’s all too simple.. Your greedy genes ensure that your mind is still its own selfish self.. when you were hooked to Lux Aeterna few minutes ago.. you saw her again.. and your mind was shocked to see the less than perfect image of her.. she wasn’t as amazing as the image your vivid imagination had painted.. but yet.. she was there right in front of you.. the fruition of many years of intense struggle.. but yet.. she was imperfect.. because.. everytime you had second thoughts about whether or not you should continue this wild goose chase.. your mind tricked you by painting an even prettier picture of her.. eventually amplifying her beauty and charisma so much.. that it became impossible for any living creature to actually conform to such incredibly high standards…. Then.. your mind was caught in a dilemma.. whether to stay in this illusion with that semi-perfect being.. wondering if it was all worth it.. or.. to get back to reality and start living your self-indulgent life again.. allegorically speaking.. it had to choose.. whether to wear the ring and jump into the fire.. or give it up and live a docile life again…

So… does that mean.. I’ll never get to see her again?

Well technically you can.. You still have your memories.. you can just remember whatever fragments there are left of her in your mind.. but the thing is.. Would You really want to??

1969

““This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know upfront... This is absolutely not a love story.”

*

“1969 was the year when I first fell in love. And I hate Bryan Adams for making a song out of it..”

“Hehe.. why so?”

“Well.. what the heck.. coz it reminded me of you..”

“ME?? Really?”

“Cummon.. don’t act all surprised and stuff.. it’s as if you never knew..”

“I swear I didn’t.. I mean if I would have.. then.. might be..”

“Might be what? Given my cloddish feelings some irrelevant consideration?? I mean why did you never think about me ‘that way’? Was I so extremely repugnant that I would never even stand a chance to be with you even in your thoughts? I mean come on.. You must have thought sometimes about me…. at least once? You must have considered me as an eligible candidate amongst the long list of contenders desperately vying to be your boyfriend?? Anyways.. does it even matter now.. ”

“Now don’t say that..”

“Then what do I say? That I still love you like I had when I was 15 or 16 years old, and still think about you every night before going to bed while staring at our ‘Class of ‘69 pic?”

“Please don’t get angry.. I didn’t mean to..”

“Don’t change the topic.. my anger is not the topic of discussion here.. We were talking about something else.. what was it? I forgot.. ”

“I asked you about who is the person you hate the most..”

“Ohh.. ya.. so you called me here after all these years just to ask that? Now that you know.. what do you plan to do about it? ”

“Nothing.. forget it.. sorry for bothering you.. I just thought that now that we finally live in the same city we should meet up sometime and chat a bit.. both of us lost our spouses this year.. I thought it would be a good way to.. you know.. share our feelings of loss..”

“Ooo… Since when did you start cultivating emotions and became so considerate?”

“And since when did you become so irate?? I mean I always remembered you as a jovial and spirited fella’.. Someone who always found a way to liven me up when I was down.. ”

“Ohh.. WOW!! So that’s all that I am to you? That’s all I ever was? Your special Idiot?? Well.. this just in.. I humbly renounce this coveted post.. I won’t be your idiot any more, it’s not my duty to make you smile..”

“Come on.. don’t say that.. you were and will always be my most special friend.. the fact that I am sitting with you here right now should tell you that..”

“I’m honoured!!”

“Please.. don’t be such a jerk.. Coz I know you are not.. and you suck at sarcasm.. anyways I called you here to tell you something..”

“I’m all ears.. Ma’am..”

“Hmmm… There’s a reason why I asked you about the person you hate the most.. I don’t know if what you said was true.. but the person I hate the most.. is myself..”

“What? Are you serious? I spent all my life trying to find someone who didn’t like you or love you.. and I found not one person fulfilling that criteria.. And now I find that person sitting right in front of me.. Lucky me!”

“Heh.. so typical of you to say that.. but seriously.. for the past few months.. I have been thinking a lot about my past life.. and the more I think.. the more I hate myself.. I mean I married thrice.. lost my kids custody.. could never be a good wife or mother.. and when I finally found someone I could feel safe with, I lost him coz fate can never see me truly happy.. all the mistakes I did, they are coming back to haunt me now.. I feel so totally at loss.. feel so utterly alone.”

“Hey.. wait a minute.. ain’t I supposed to be the ‘Sorry Soul’ here? It’s weird to hear such things from you…. In school, we would all yammer about how we all would end up all old, alone and unwanted.. while people like you would still enjoy the attention of every passerby and even remote acquaintances.. Infact.. even though I loved you like an imbecile.. I secretly hated you for the amount of attention and affection you got.. I hated you coz I was so invisible to you.. coz You made me feel so humiliated every single time when my fantasies didn’t manifest into reality.. when my little loving gestures went unnoticed.. when you failed to read my signals, my sighs, my deep breaths, and my eyes..”

“See.. even you hate me..”

“Wait.. let me finish first.. this world is not meant to run on your whims and fancies and so ain’t I.. You know why all three of your husbands left you? Lack of communication…. Wait.. let me finish dear… Even though you might have loved them or something.. I am pretty sure you wouldn’t have ever gone out of your way to express it explicitly.. whereas your hubbies would have surely done everything humanly possible to showcase their deep love for you…. Those little green catty eyes of yours, you can win over anybody with just a blink of them.. but you can’t answer every question through them.. you have to use your mouth sometimes and articulate an answer in so many words.. The world would be a much happier place if girls would learn to say ‘Yes’ a lot more to guys, and would also be a lot less confusing if girls smiled lesser and spoke clearly more often. You can’t just leave everything speculative and uncertain, and through that, leave people conjecturing if that expression meant ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or ‘Whateva.. I don’t care..’. It was this lack of warmth in your expressiveness which drove all these people away from you.. People feel insignificant when you don’t acknowledge their efforts.. didn’t anybody teach you that? ”

“I am a horrible person.. ain’t I?”

“Horrible? You are a Manic Pixie Dream Girl for Pete’s Sake! Call me a fool if you may.. but every time someone asked me about the girl of my dreams, my thoughts stopped at you.. I try to imagine girls with various combinations of desirable features, but it seems as if it all optimizes to create a figurine that resembles you horribly too exactly.. I would be the last person to call you ‘horrible’ in any respect.. although ‘Insensitive Scuzzbag’ would be more apt according to me..”

“Why do you have to be like this? I made you suffer didn’t I? Then why are you still sitting here trying to cheer me up?”

“Firstly, yes.. you did make me suffer.. I underwent a shitload of suffering coz of you.. You have no idea how difficult it is to be a boy.. you girls are so naturally adept at handling emotions professionally, but for us guys, having an unsaid emotion buried in our heart is like having to run a marathon with a steel spike stuck in your foot.. it’s like.. if you could wish for one thing in life.. it would be to get it out of there.. somehow.. and fast!!”

“I am sorry for it.. for all of it.. really.. for being so inconsiderate and so..”

“Hey.. don’t worry about it.. it’s OK now.. I mean now I don’t even care about what happened in the past.. and I was just kidding about the whole ‘Insensitive Scuzzbag’ thing.. don’t take it seriously..”

“You know what.. a wise man once said, there is always a little truth behind every "Just Kidding", a little emotion behind every "I Don't Care" and a little pain behind every "It's OK".. So don’t try to pull off that ‘I’m all fine and dandy’ act with me.. I can see right through it..”

“Oh.. my my.. You can? When were you gifted with this special ability? Coz back in ‘69 you didn’t seem to have even a fraction of it in you.. Could you never sense it when I would ask you for a coffee and you would reply “Umm.. no.. actually I have to get ready for this big date with this hot-jock I met last weekend.. What should I wear?”.. Wear a black mourning gown for all I care..”

“You remember him? Wow.. he turned out to be such a jerk.. I felt so stupid after the entire episode.. and yet.. I can never forget it.. can never forget him… can never forget the fact that I had the first kiss of my life that night.. and that too with whom.. sheesh..”

“You kissed him? But you said you didn’t kiss a guy in high school?”

“I.. lied..”

“Why? You could have told me.. didn’t you trust me?”

“I.. don’t.. know..”

“You know, that particular wise man also said that “There is always a little knowledge behind every "I Don't Know".. maybe you skipped that.. so don’t try to pull off that ‘I’m all confused and innocent’ act with me.. I can see right through it..”

“I don’t know.. it didn’t feel right.. to be absolutely blunt and frank.. I never felt so safe about telling things to you.. coz you would keep blurting your own intimate secrets to me.. I thought.. you know.. you might..”

“You know what.. thanks a lot for saying that.. but the truth is.. I’d never opened my heart so wide for anyone before you and I never have since then… I shared everything I had, just so that you could relate to that one thing which tells you in some divine sense that we are meant to be together forever.. coz all that it took me to believe so.. was your carefree smile…. And friendship is a two-way street.. you had a share in it too, why couldn’t you for once forget, that I was the one who reached out and asked for your friendship, togetherness and somewhere down the line.. even tacitly for your affection.. and love.. You should have…”

“Listen.. I am very sorry to cut you off in between.. but I think the sedatives are setting in..”

“Sedatives? What sedatives?”

“I have been trying to tell you all along.. I have been suffering from bouts of depression for the past few weeks.. and I decided to end it this morning.. and took an overdose of my sleep medication.. I was about to take a second batch, but while I was searching for them, I saw your envelope, and thought, I must meet you before going away forever.. you know, to relive those past times we shared.. and I am so happy I did.. so happy that I got to live my last moments with the person who knew me better than I myself did.. so happy that…….”

Then she fainted.. I, a retired, weak and old man approaching my sixties, had two choices then:

1. Either I rush her to the hospital, spend a major fraction of my pension money on her treatment, and relocate her with me and my family, only to see her sorry, sympathetic smiles every day, feel the warmth of a friend emanating from her but not that of a beloved (let’s face it, she never loved me and never would, do what I may), and maybe to see her find her soul-mate in yet another douchebag and let her drift away.. far away from my life.. once again.
2. Or, I hold her tightly in my arms till the moment I can savour the warmth of her body alongside mine.. let her live out her last moments pleasantly, in complete satisfaction, engrossed in a deep slumber which would soon engulf her forever, and keep her memory etched in my mind in the picture-perfect manner that she had chosen, to part with me and this world.

I didn’t have to give much thought to it, and nonchalantly chose the second option. She died in my arms that evening, and I can never forget that day. I had a picture taken of the two of us, (by a helpful kid) with her head resting on my shoulder, and I kept it next to our ‘Class of ‘69’ photograph. I had a formal burial organized for her, all three of her previous husbands came, along with their respective offsprings, and everyone was utterly surprised to see a stranger (apparently she hadn’t mentioned about me to anyone, all her life..) do so much for her. I plan to be buried alongside her, and have already mentioned it in my will.

I often look at those two pictures on my bedside, and think of the amazing journey my life encompassed in the meanwhile.. about the weird and bitter-sweet times that I spent with her.. in school and on the park bench that day.. it’s one of my favorite pastimes now and sometimes even keeps me awake all night.

I also wonder if what I did that day was the right thing to do. Obviously, in a sense it was selfish and immoral. I had a chance to save the life of a person who had trusted me in her last days, and I was bounded by all my religious obligations to acknowledge that belief by saving her life, even if it cost me heftily, both financially and emotionally. I know whichever way I try to defend it, I had sinned, and a part of me knows that pretty well. But, it was she who had chosen to end her misery that day, and in a way, it also ended mine with hers.. coz now I no longer have to check the passenger list on a flight to see if her name is there, so that I can go and sit beside her, I no longer have to buy the latest directories to see if her number is listed there, I no longer have to check my mailbox to see if she had replied to any of my mails, and most importantly, I don’t have to check the obituary columns every day, to check if she had died an untimely and/or unloved death…

Some people live out their lives without really knowing what the word ‘pain’ truly means.. and if she wanted a peaceful exit then I had no right to deny it.. I had always succumbed to all her whims and fancies all my life, how could I not do so in her last moments?? End of story…..