MYTHOCRATOR

A BIG THANK YOU!

2007-04-24T13:22:00.000+05:30

Thank you - 26 fantastic people - for the excellent encouragement and co-operation you extended to us who tried to teach you about myths, their structure, reading of myths and the writing of a proto- or ur-myth across three months. This blog belongs to you.
We hope this can go someplace else. But how?
Anyone who has any ideas concerning FURTHURRRRRR ....put it up here.
The masks were excellent, the costumes beautiful, the stories are great.
It's been great working with all of you.
Take care until we meet again.
Avy+Koshy

MYTH XXVI - THE POLLINATOR

2007-03-29T12:31:00.000+05:30

THE POLLINATOR - by Radha Pandey

INTRODUCTION

A myth is a truth that is close to one’s heart. It is something that is more a feeling, than a story. It is a truth you cannot pin down as right or wrong. It is a true story or a story that is based on the truth.

Structure of myth

According to me there are two ways in which one can approach a myth.

One is from the very beginning. Introducing every single character in that point of time and their relationship to another and then continuing with the story as it slowly unfolds upon reading it.

The other, is to start from what you think is the middle. You start by showing the myth, instead of telling it. So what one reads/ writes is an incident, one of many, one that cannot really be located at any point, at that point of time, in the myth. But the story before and after unfolds from there; and locates it.

The relationship between the various characters, takes form from there.

A myth contains a general overview- a show and tell, if you will, of all that is around. Not explaining, but hinting at the existence of that certain environment. It moves onto the main characters/ introduction of the hero as one of the characters (who may later evolve to take on the role of the hero); then families and tribes- communities, and their individual stories. This is followed by conflict, and then a resolution and hence the evolution of a new situation/event/series of events/circumstance.

About my myth

The Dream-time Myth is based on my version of how the planet we live in today came to be. It is about what kind of life existed before we came about as a race, and what traces of it remain till today. There are traces, but we fail to take notice/see them. They are the reason we exist, in the first place. We came from them.

The traces that remain of an earlier time, today, are plants, trees and crops. The planet earlier was one single mass of living breathing green flesh. Not in the typical sense as we know today, but literally, they were life- All life. They had dreams, thoughts, and feelings which traveled skywards and formed a collective consciousness through which they were all able to communicate and emote to each other. They were highly aware and sentient beings, and retain their sensitivity even today. Through a series of events that the myth takes one through, a creature is evolved from what is shown to be a mandrake root that is the result of the dream-time of the hero of my myth- the Pollinator. It plays a key role, up until the physical manifestation of its Dreamtime, in the creature.

Why is my myth important?

This is not the future the green flesh families envisioned for themselves or us (their direct descendants). So in the end, where does that leave us? This myth will (hopefully) help us realize that the world we live in today is not just ours- it belongs to be everything around us, even more so, than it does to us. All living beings have more of a right to be here, than we do. We haven’t been here long enough, to live the way we are living, and destroy all that we touch. We have to learn to love, to protect what we don’t yet understand. We cannot afford to fear it, because IT is what keeps us alive. And we need something to remind us of that every single day. To make us think twice about the way we live our lives. How every single action affects all that is around us.

Why is myth important?

I think myths give us a sense of belonging. They make us feel like someone has been there before us, and there will be others after us, and we are not alone. We have a history. Whether by we, I mean culture, or race, or religion or country or the world- we have a history and it is a glorious one. We create myths to feel alive- so we don’t feel it’s all for nothing. We create myths to exaggerate reality, to make us write a truth or an untruth to share with the world, with the future that we know may or may not come. It’s a mark that says we were here and this is what we achieved, and it was the truth. It was real. Remember us for this.

It is what makes me, me. And you, you.

THE POLLINATOR

Part one: Prelude

Somewhere between then and now- then, being about a million million million million (one with 24 zeroes after it) years ago, and now, being about a million million (one with 12 zeroes after it)- the earth as we know it was in fact a soft glowing orb. Around this orb were gases we now know as helium, oxygen and hydrogen. The source of this wonderful glow was, on closer inspection, was tiny particles of water that caught the light now and again, as a meteor would pass, or as the stars near by would combust…

One would wonder what water was doing on an orb this size- it seemed so small and fragile. Like a soft porous stone made of chalk. The glow was a greenish one, as the water droplets were reflecting the true colour of the orb itself.

It may be time now, for a closer inspection on what we think is this orb. It is a living mass of green flesh. It seems to have been alive and breathing forever. This mass on closer inspection is a ball of plants- intertwined, heaving, breathing, loving- alive! This ecosystem is self-sustaining. The plant forms are adapting continuously. The entire planet is covered with green. Not a single bit of space shows through all the green. No colour shines through, except the green of the leaves, the stems, the trunks of trees, the vines and the particles of water that hover over it too, reflect this green.

These plants live in families that are flung, what seems to be, randomly, across the planet. They cluster and live - one species all together. Like one big joint-family, all together. There are different kinds of families; nocturnal, and diurnal. Both these families dream- powerful dreams and thoughts. They know what the other is thinking and can feel. All their thoughts, and feelings from their dream-time float up and are trapped in the tiny particulates of water. This is their collective consciousness. Be aware- I do not refer to this as a subconscious or unconscious- these are very conscious and meaningful thoughts. This dream-time holds importance and helps this planet grow and flourish harmoniously - as a collective.

In this world of green flesh, lives one other creature, different from them all. It is a Pollinator- for lack of a better word. The Pollinator is the only one of his kind on this planet. It is also born of necessity and is the connection between the different plant families. The families are not oblivious of this creature, and yet are not dependant on it. There are plant families that mate, and wait for the creature to appear from time to time to unite their male and female parts. And then there are plant families that do not need sexual organs. They hold birth within themselves, their strong roots, pull up from the orb-center tiny bubbles of water. As these bubbles travel through the stem, it is birthed with a small leaf and a small root within it. The bubble of water (the baby carrying bubble) travels up and out of the plant. At the end of this cycle- the plant babe springs out and down the mass that awaits it, while the water bubble (still intact), floats up, with the new plant memories, thoughts and dreams- and it joins the collective. The entire planet knows, and welcomes the new born.

The Pollinator thus cannot be called plant or animal- it’s a tiny form which is somewhere in between. It has elongated stick like legs with roots for feet that enable it to crawl through the undergrowth without much trouble. It can anchor itself wherever it pleases, aiding it in its pollination process. Its body is a thick ball of pollen, tightly held together, so dense that you cannot fathom its nature.

This Pollinator, can tap into the collective dream-time and read all the dreams of the life that surrounds it. Its own dreams float upwards and join the collective.

Over time, the Dreamtime of the Pollinator is impacted deeply by the Dreamtimes of the families that surround it. It starts to dream of a form that is neither plant, nor Pollinator. This creature is asexual and births another of its kind, with a sex. When the offspring comes to life, the birth - giving creature develops a sex opposite to that of its offspring. They are then able to mate and propagate.

The Pollinator’s dreams feed into the collective as strong Dreamtimes and take the families of the entire planet through the process of this creation of a new being, neither Pollinator, nor plant.

This new creature is able to communicate, with plant families and with the Pollinator, and is essentially born of them. It is different. It contains water that is red, as opposed to the translucent green and yellow of its birth-families. This creature can read Dreamtimes. The Dreamtimes are etched like a language onto the structure of this creature.

It is inscribed onto the extensions emerging from the main stem, on the flat surfaces that we call hands. They are etched in the way the fur flows and follows a beautiful pattern on its surface. And they are written in the way the flesh stretches over the structure- covering a skeletal form and hiding the rivers of veins. The vein patterns are also Dreamtime memories.

The dreams of their collective are so powerful that this wondrous creature is birthed and is looked upon as a true creation of the now planet, Earth. An amalgamation of all that is pure, natural and clean- a reminder of the green flesh families that exist and the single Pollinator. This creature carries till today, the language of the Dreamtime, inscribed on its body, in its veins, in every cell as a constant reminder of its origin.

Part two

One million million years ago, before the creature came to be, the powerful Dreamtimes of the Pollinator started affecting all the plant families deeply. The Dreamtimes of both the plant families and the Pollinator became stronger and stronger as they fed into, and took from, the collective.

The planet started growing more and more, far beyond its capabilities and it could feel itself growing stronger and more powerful, but where this new strength would take it, it had no idea.

The Pollinator stood alone. As light would break every now and again and as it would fade, the Pollinator would find the plants, trees, shrubs etc. that needed to be pollinated, by tapping into the collective and deriving their location, and state of need. If it sensed that the time was right, it would advance towards their territory and carry out the pollination process. It would make its way through the planet catching pollen from the male plants and releasing them over the female plants. It played an essential part in their creation cycle. Unlike the asexual plants, the male and female plants waited for the Pollinator to arrive. The veins would peel away from the leaves and reach skyward in welcome, when it did. The male would sway towards the sky, emoting to it.

On sensing this, the Pollinator would brush itself against the male using its root-feet to prod it up. It would then advance towards the most mature female plant and begin to circle her, moving faster and faster. The pollen would float briefly in the air and be gently swallowed in, by her inhaling body. This act would impregnate the female with a small grain of pollen. Water from the stem would slowly surround it. This grain would then grow into a tiny leaf with a root. It would then follow the same process as the asexual plants and release the bubble into the air.

The recent Dreamtime strength of the collective resulted in large numbers and subsequent growth. This led to a new phenomenon. The Pollinator now retained bits of the pollen that it had collected over days as it went from family to family, species to species. The families cross-pollinated. Sub-species began to emerge in large numbers, as plants took on new forms.

The asexual liverworts and mosses that earlier lived under shrubs and primarily formed the undergrowth now started becoming plant-like. They began taking life from each other and giving life to each other. They were evolving and forming liverwort plants, and moss trees. The tree tops of all the green flesh families began to grow and grow and grow. Their branches and leaves merged into one another. Where one tree began and the other ended, was impossible to tell. Their branches melted into one another and new branches were formed. Vines began standing on their own, they too were becoming plant-like, free-standing and independent.

These new forms fed fresh Dreamtimes into the collective. Over time the collective formed a constant stream that was visible for light-years- much like our milky-way.

As the green flesh families begot sub-species, so did they. The sub-species begot saplings and they begot their own, until entire families were born. And they begot sub-sub-species and they begot saplings… and so on and so on.

With each birth, the green flesh families grew even stronger, as did the collective. It had taken on a somewhat physical manifestation that hovered over the entire planet. [At this point the Pollinator began to dream of a creature that was neither Pollinator nor plant, and thus from the collective came new life. The creature bled into the massive trees, the tops of which caressed the collective. It slid down through the veins in the leaves and following the trunks, found its way into the roots below.

It is essentially from these roots that it was born. It had witnessed the spectacle as the center of the orb; not just felt it.

Everything that grew within this planet was born with all the knowledge that it would need to survive. The same followed for the creature, and its offspring. ] – don’t know if this should be included in this section…

The first divisions faced by all occurred in the collective.

The Dreamtimes of the mother species that began all life, formed one stream in the collective; the sub-species, another; the sub-sub-species, another, and so on and so on. The Pollinator’s Dreamtime was a part of all these streams; even the creature’s, which formed a separate stream altogether. The streams were still connected, held together in one whole, but within that whole is where the first tribes emerged.

Part three

Soon after the formation of the tribes within the collective, the green flesh families began to slowly spread further and further apart from their mother species. The Dreamtime differentiations led to plant inbreeding and new, weak plant species came into being. This inbreeding led to a curious phenomenon among the green flesh families. The survival of the fittest is what followed and a new breed of carnivorous plant species emerged.

These carnivorous clans were nocturnal and secreted tiny drops of acid into the air at nightfall. These droplets consumed only the buds of those flowering plants that grew near these carnivorous clans. The acidic droplets would have a film of coolant enveloping it. These were interpreted as moisture by the buds and would be absorbed in immediately. The acid would then eat away the bud from the inside out. Taking these buds destroyed any hope of reproduction for that particular species. Although the process was extremely slow, these clans polished off entire colonies of certain plant types. This process took a similar form in the collective. The Dreamtimes of the carnivorous clans would slowly trickle into the Dreamtimes of the species they were feeding on.

This wasn’t the only phenomenon that occurred. As the mosses grew into trees; the liverworts took on plant-like formations; and the trees that touched the edges of the collective began merging into one another, they began casting dark shadows over large areas of land. This resulted in the growth of more and more nocturnal plant species. Diurnal plants began adapting their present states-of-being to accommodate the gradual but drastic changes that were affecting the entire planet.

At this time, a strange event occurred in the collective. The Dreamtimes began merging, once again. This time it wasn’t becoming a whole, as it was before. Similar Dreamtime memories seemed to be merging. The Dreamtimes of the over-shadowing trees and the Dreamtimes of the plant species that were becoming nocturnal as a result seemed to merge because of similar circumstance. They were feeding into each other and learning in greater depth, the consequences of their actions. The changes were a part of an evolutionary process that had engulfed the entire planet. Apart from the tapping into the collective consciousness which the plants had been doing for eons, they were now physically able to tap into other plant species and families, through the collective. It was as if the physical states of the green flesh families were bleeding into the collective and feeding into one another’s Dreamtimes from where they could be accessed.

This ultra-awareness that developed would feed into the milky-way sort of manifestation that was surrounding the orb. The collective seemed to be spilling out ever so slightly into whatever lay beyond its existence. The Dreamtimes of the green flesh families were able to tap into what lay without and so were their now physical states that bled into the collective.

The knowledge of the with ut led to, among other things, tumultuous weather patterns within the orb. The boughs of the trees that were earlier kissing the edges of the collective now grew further into the collective itself.

Larger areas of space were taken over by these heavy branches and leaves and these prevented the water particles from making their natural way through and above the collective. The droplets that used to surround the orb and that were symbolic of the life force of the planet itself, were now trapped, save a few that managed to make it all the way through. These trapped particulates collected and produced mild rainfall until all the droplets ceased to exist. As the plants reproduced, over time, the droplets would collect and rain would follow once again.

The occasional advent of the ‘monsoon’ affected life on the planet to some extent. Carnivorous plants began to change their feeding patterns, as the buds they depended on now received their moisture from the rain. They now turned their attention to fungus and moss that were still in their early stages of development. They adapted their methods to suit their new prey. They would line their structures with the droplets they earlier secreted, and wait for the mosses and fungi to sense the moisture. Once they advanced towards the moisture-bearing carnivorous clans to latch and grow on, the plant would release its acid and slowly consume its victim. The carnivorous clans managed to filter their Dreamtimes so that the mosses and liverworts couldn’t sense their true nature.

The only other creature that knew of their existence was of course, the Pollinator.

They shared a symbiotic relationship. The clans were dependant on the Pollinator to aid their reproductive cycle, and the Pollinator in turn, was dependant on their coolant enveloped acid drops.

The monsoons proved to be a threat to the survival of the Pollinator. The moisture that the air contained earlier was more than appropriate, but now that the weather patterns were taking a turn for what seemed like the worse, the Pollinator’s life force was under threat.

When the collective divided into tribes and clans, the Pollinator was able to tap into and sense information out of all these. When the carnivorous clan came to be, it sensed their feeding process immediately. Because the Pollinator plays a key role, all should be transparent before him- and so it chanced upon the curious habits of the carnivorous clans.

As the monsoons descended, the Pollinator put to use its knowledge. It followed a similar process as to when it was pollinating a female plant. It moved around a particular family in the clan, moving faster and faster, until it managed to soak in the droplets that they exuded.

As the rains would arrive, the Pollinator would be safe in its fresh coat of acid. As each drop would fall, it would sizzle and evaporate immediately on touching the surface of the creature. It worked, thus. The coolant envelope would stick to the Pollinator and create a thin film over its entirety. The acid would come to rest over that. The coolant would prevent the acid from seeping into the Pollinator and the acid would prevent the rain from destroying it. Equally miraculously, as the brief monsoon would wear off, so would the film of acid and coolant.

During the monsoons, there would be lesser need to pollinate, and so the role of the Pollinator shrunk in size. Although the rains did not last very long, it would do so only in certain parts. The Pollinator would then travel across the orb in search of green flesh families that needed pollination, carefully avoiding the depressed areas which tended to collect water. These water bodies initially disappeared after the monsoons first came to be, soon after the rains had died down, but eventually, they lived on. Some grew larger than others. Some stayed where they were and maintained their original size, others would flow down from the leaves of trees, down their trunks and among the plants, throughout- even when there was no rain, there would be streams of water towering high above the earth-bound green flesh families. The liquid was born of the green flesh families and of the collective, and hence formed a part of the collective. It was a separate stream, situated much lower than the rest, almost as if it were resting on the water surface around the planet.

With this elixir, came new life.

Part four

This magnificent liquid, this elixir, brought about tremendous changes within the orb. The vaster of the water bodies that were created submerged countless families and species. Their Dreamtimes were in turmoil.

They started dreaming of their time above the water surface and once again absorbing air that wasn’t trapped in such small pockets in this viscous element. Their individual Dreamtimes weren’t able to project themselves much further than the surface of the water that seemed to be drowning them. They formed a separate stream that merged with the Dreamtime stream of the liquid. The Dreamtime of the water floated just above it; and formed a part of the collective as well. The thoughts and dreams of the submerged species combined because of similar circumstances; and as a result of this combination, their Dreamtimes were indirectly transmitted to the collective.

An evolutionary change took place at this time. The submerged plant species began to detach themselves from the now-underwater bed; and started to rise slowly up. Others managed very well in their new underwater abode and decided to stay. The law of the survival of the fittest once again took hold, driving many a species to extinction.

Some curious species sprang up. Floating plants with thick waxy leaves that spread themselves out over the water surface sprung up and reproduced more than most others. Other submerged flesh families adapted to their new home by shrinking their leaves to mere twigs. Their roots became as strong as their stems and reached skyward, above the water surface in search of air. Out of these roots were born newer, younger, flower-bearing families that were able to breathe outside the water surface, just like their ancestors, and many others around them were still able to.

A close relation of this plant species of the same family was one which could physically move itself out of the water, by literally crawling out, using its strong roots. These moving plants, morphed into what were no longer plants, but they were not yet animal. They were the newest creation of the Now orb.

Taking this major evolutionary change in, the green flesh families all over the orb, whether without or within the water, within the collective, or without, had experienced another element in its entirety and had evolved from it. The orb had experienced its second major evolutionary change.

Part five

The water-born plants that crawled out of the water and emerged out onto the land were stronger than any other green flesh creatures that the orb had seen. They seemed to be the distant relatives of the carnivorous clans that had once been found increasing in number on the orb. The earlier clans died out because of the emergence of water. These new species came from the water itself and seemed to be virtually indestructible. They slowly ate away at their cousins that were awaiting their arrival on land. The collective had been flooded with Dreamtimes of all the green flesh families. First, with the emergence of water, then, with the strong Dreamtimes of the submerged flesh families that emoted ever so strongly.

Now, the, Dreamtimes of these new flesh creatures, neither animal nor plant, were being absorbed into the collective as a separate stream. It had earlier been intermingled with that of the water, but as these clans took on their new forms, their stream began to rise, but just above that of the water stream. And there it stayed.

A few families that were essential to the survival of the orb survived these changes. The undergrowth, mostly, and some plants, whose properties were considered symbiotic, were left in peace. Apart from these, the new clans created havoc on the Now orb.
Nothing seemed to be left, when they began advancing towards the large overshadowing trees, that had begun reaching into the without.

Curiously, they took on the form of the trees. They began growing as them, and eventually merged with them. Though their plundering days seemed to be over, what was left of the remainder of the orb left a lot to be desired; within the collective and the Dreamtimes.

The flesh families that remained, under the water and on land, felt a gap in the collective. The families that were; had left vast channels of missing streams. The Dreamtimes of the flesh families still fed into the collective, as it used to, the reproductive cycle still went on as it did, but the gap was there. And it was felt by all.

The Pollinator had been away. As the monsoons had descended now and again, the Pollinator had found a way to shield itself from the moisture. But ever since the rainfall became more and more frequent, and large parts of the orb now began to retain the viscous liquid, the Pollinator had decided to flee.

It took refuge in those parts of the orb which remained virtually dry. It still played a small but nevertheless important role in the reproductive cycle of plants that weren’t able to adapt to the emergence of water.

The Pollinator sensed the major evolutionary changes that were frequenting the orb. It sensed the distress of the green flesh families as they were being slowly wiped out by the new water-born hybrid flesh families. It sensed the gaps that were now formed in the collective and these affected it deeply.

The new hybrid species didn’t need the Pollinator to reproduce. They were asexual and were able to grow at a much faster rate. In its Dreamtime the Pollinator began to dream.

It dreamt of a creature that was neither Pollinator nor plant. A creature very different as compared to what had come upon the Now orb. It used its Dreamtime energies in the collective, consciously and replaced its increasingly shrinking role in the reproductive cycle with an urgent need to create by itself.

Thus from the collective came new life. The creature bled into the massive trees, the tops of which were now embedded in the collective. It traveled down the water-streams that the boughs of the tree held up high above the earth-bound flesh families; it followed the trunks, and found its way into the roots below from where it grew.

It is essentially from these roots that it was born; and it took into it the form of the roots from which it came. The root was a mangled heap that resembled a mass of flesh and it came to rest above the surface of the orb. On touching this outer covering of the orb, it came to life. It immediately sparked off a powerful stream in the collective, and this stream, similar to the Pollinator’s, was embedded within all collective streams. This root-creature contained water that was red, unlike anything that the flesh families had sensed before. It was different, but still, it was a spawn of the Now orb- and was growing more and more everyday. It sensed the Dreamtime of the Pollinator and communicated with it through the collective. It didn’t need the Pollinator to reproduce. It would birth its first offspring asexually. The new born would have a sex and as it matured, so would the sex of the mother creature. They would then procreate and propagate.

When this major evolutionary change took place, the collective and all the green flesh families felt the presence of its overbearing stream. Although this creature was a part of them, they gradually responded by, over time, embedding the memories of their journeys throughout their time on the orb, across generations to come so that they never forgot their origins, where they came from, and the parent green flesh families that birthed them.

They did this because they were aware of the drastic changes that their precious home was to undergo over the millennia. They created their memoirs by extending a part of their roots into themselves and extruding them so that they became visible from without. These memoirs were embedded when every seed was born and it physically established itself finally when the sapling grew into its mature state. This way they would never forget.

Their Dreamtimes were etched like a language onto the structure of the creature.

It was inscribed onto the extensions emerging from the main stem, on the flat surfaces that like leaves divided into five. They were etched in the way the fur flows and follows a beautiful pattern on its surface. And they were written in the way the flesh stretched over its structure- covering a skeletal form and hiding the rivers of veins. The vein patterns were also Dreamtime memories and a part of the collective.

The creature was looked upon as a true creation of the 'now' planet, Earth. An amalgamation of all that was pure, natural and clean- a reminder of the green flesh families that existed and the single Pollinator. It carries till today, the language of the Dreamtime inscribed on its body, in every cell, as a constant reminder of its origin.

(THE END)

MYTH XXV - THE WHOLE COMPLEX STIG

2007-03-29T12:06:00.000+05:30

THE WHOLE COMPLEX STIG - by Aashim Raj

A tiny speck was all that there was in the beginning. Yes, as improbable as it seems…In this vast empty space…existed just an extremely small speck of light. This speck soon realized it could think. It started out by analyzing and observing the environment it was in before turning its attention to itself. The speck spent some time speculating over its next step. “Discovery is the key to the problem”, it thought. Discovery was made soon enough and it was not a very pleasant one. He soon realized, like everything in the environment, it needed company. Yes, the very moment of revelation revealed that TWO is company…. Therefore through the great amoebic powers it split itself into two. It soon found out that the previous revelation had a loophole. When the company is just another speck of light… IT GETS BORING. And so, the tiny specks of light, soon, through the great amoebic powers once again, reproduced. Then there were four more specks of light…..and then eight…then sixteen…..then so on and so forth, till a giant speck of light was formed. The light from this expanding, giant speck of light made this speck of light……doesn’t matter which one…….. realize its actual neighbours were rocks who had got together by the same powers of Amoeba. The spheres of rock decided to use the light and heat of this rather large speck of light and also divide it equally between themselves. Each had its own needs for the requirements, as everything in this “space” did, and therefore found that circling the rather large speck of light was the solution to this problem. And so the present space we now call the “universe” was begun! While this tiny speck grew and made a working system, little did it know that tiny specks everywhere and tiny pieces of rock everywhere were joining their own systems. This is how everything came into existence, the universe, the solar system, the Milky Way, the planets, the earth and so on so forth. Now what we can only imagine is how many tiny specks of light there were and whether all the rock spheres found specks of light.

With that the story of the recurrent beginning of the world ends. The starting of new forms of clusters which bind together by virtue of the same characteristics present in almost every species known to us and, I am sure, those which are not yet known to us.

After this basic structure was complete, small, unforeseen changes took place in this perfect universe. There were tiny clumps of rocks which did not get into a larger group of rocks because of certain deformities present in these clumps of rocks. They were the outcasts of this society. They sometimes and very rarely possessed a fluid of some kind. As transparent as transparent could be and as pure as a single speck of light. These also came together by great amoebic powers.

There were others who had specks of light trapped inside of them. These specks of light were dying to be in the company of their own kind and were displeased at the prospect of spending a moment more with the lowly rocks. They periodically made an arrangement with the rocks to be released in the presence of the pure fluid to form what we now know as lava.

There were ones which had rotating rings of light and rock. All individual but living in peace and harmony. They enjoyed this desire to be apart and free rather than stay in a structure. Ones with crests and troughs and atmospheres which consisted of tiny gas particles all joined together. All these deformities in these rock clumps made it possible for the intermixing of various types of different unit elements to form new structures.

One such rock clump happened to be rather more open to the mixing of these various unit elements. On this rather open minded rock clump were based the makings of structures which were more complex and confusing. The need for the particles to mingle among themselves hit an all time high. Structures also themselves started to get together and form even more complex structures. It was at this time that a highly complex structure evolved. In it were involved two very similar and yet two very dissimilar units. Both had a structure reminiscent of a spring. The only difference was in the way that they were aligned. Clockwise and anticlockwise as we would learn to term the absent. These two structures came together and made a “double helix” as we continue to term the absent in the future. This double helix felt different from the other structures and soon through amoebic separation created another double helix. They continued to breed among themselves.

On another very fateful day, a single tiny speck of light got caught in one of this now rather large group of DH’s. This speck of light got embedded in the heart of this structure. The speck of light then caused an irritation among the DH’s. This literally sparked off a conflict within the structure. The speck of light being deemed as the precursor to the entire universe got the priority in this case and decided to exercise some “power” over these DH’s and thus came into being the ability to think.

The DH’s morphed from being benign to a thinking and living organism in a matter of a few moments. It simply said to itself-“I think….therefore I should be…..” They finally morphed into an organism which made use of the atmosphere, pure fluid (water as we would learn to call It.) and the crushed rocks strewn everywhere the water didn’t cover. The concept of power still stuck in this organism’s head polluted it. Thus the great speck of a combination of many things, MAN was discovered.

What man did not realize however was the fact that a few DH’s had escaped before getting polluted. These DH’s decide to form their own version of man and created the anticlockwise of man…….a woman.

Ah, the complexities of these double helix combinations had created two of the most unique creatures known to this one solar system. Man and Woman.

The irresistible beauty of woman and the ruggedness of man. The evolution process had taken a bit of a setback with the emergence of these “superior beings”. The ones which had come about earlier had no ability to reason or to think like these two had. They moved from place to place with the help of two long projections emerging from the end of the torso. These were longer compared to the two on the upper end of the torso.

Their heads were coincidentally the throne of power in the course of their life span just as with the earlier ones. They contained lenses to see through, drums to hear through and breathing devices which triggered off a highly complex system of vessels carrying fluids red in colour which led to a pump which circulated this red fluid to every end of this organism.

Inside the head sat a thinking machine of some sort. It had thick convolutions of tubes through which tiny specks of charged light passed. This important and menacing looking thinking machine controlled everything in this system. It was as if the life of the entire being was concentrated in that machine.

It was the memory of the being.

It was the sanity of the being.

It was the curiosity of the being.

It was the why, the where, the how, the who and the huh of the being.

It was what made the being a human being.

Now after the first man and woman had discovered all this, they set off on the next logical step to take; and that was “Discovery”. The man, the epitome of curiosity, discovered there must be more to his existence than going around talking gibberish, eating raw meat, and of course smelling his own armpits. Needless to say, it did not get the lady’s attention either.

One day; unlike every other day because it was a ‘fine’ day; Man decided to take the left turn to his cave from his daily hunting grounds. The decision was taken with much care and deliberation. The route from the right had been blocked off by a strange herd of flightless birds. They had no wings and they incessantly cried - do....do………do..do……….do..do”.

Man being cautious and practical decided to leave this strange procession and take a detour.

While walking carrying the carcass of a dead fat warthog, a tree standing very still as they always do was split in half by a very powerful speck of light from far far far away in a different system. The speck of light travelling at a very high velocity had effectively destroyed the tree and now all that was left, man noticed, was a fluid-like vapour. Orange on the outside and blue on the inside. It moved with the wind. Man walked towards it with the keen eyes of someone who actually looks at something for the first time. The fluid vapour was hot to touch and could not be physically controlled.

After burning his fingers a little, man discovered he could use it to impress woman and soon discovered a way of transporting it using a tree branch. That day to get woman’s attention he added lots of tree branches together to make a giant flame. The flame was visible to every being far and wide and man found himself surrounded by every other creature other than woman.

Getting bitten by every insect known to man, man felt strangely out of place. It could have been the rather large majority of other beings buzzing, roaring, chirping, squealing and other audibly distinguishable sounds surrounding him but he decided that was not it.

The need for the outcaste to find his fellow partner grew like a flame on a thousand tree branches. He even tried talking to his present companions but to no avail. The acoustics of the drums on their heads were all different. Communicating with them had become a problem.

Communication, decided man, was essential. Gone were the days he would spend endless hours chatting with small winged insects who would want to sit on him during the wee hours in the night preceded by a small one sided conversation which man heard as-‘eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnennnnnnnOwnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn’. Gone were the days where he would spend the whole day gurgling under the water, trying his best to talk to that finned creature that would only spit out bubbles.

Man had discovered hierarchy.

Hierarchy made man use the other beings. The concept of power seeping through his body like a flame on two thousand tree branches, he established his future ‘rule’ over the other beings.

Man discovered slavery.

Slavery put the other beings in shackles, beings tormented by man to please his woman. Savage Animals, as they were termed by man, were made to do the manual labour which man knew he would never be capable of himself.

Man discovered laziness.

Woman meanwhile noticing these changes in man decided to keep quiet about the whole thing. The discoveries were not to her liking. Man in control of the Earth was a scary thought to say the least.

Meanwhile in another part of this lush and giving environment, great complexities were arising. Another creature was being made. What made this one special was the fact that it had the complex DH structure of man himself. This is how it came about....

Man on a hunting trip next to an active volcano one day, slipped on a banana peel and fell down resulting in him landing straight on a slithering snake. The snake tired and weary, was not very thrilled at having a rather large weight landing hard suddenly on his back. The snake lashed out at man with his two fangs glistening in the light of the lava river flowing near by.

The bite was a good one and spilt a lot of man's blood.

Man discovered pain.

While screaming and writhing uncontrollably in this rather uncomfortable state the snake quietly sneaked away realizing that man's wrath could be overwhelming to say the least.

“Heeeninweeneeeineineneneieineneneienneeineneinein” said woman to man when she saw him lying writhing and screaming uncontrollably on the ground. “UGHHRUMMPHPHREUUMPH” shouted man in reply.

(For the readers convenience I will now translate primitive linguistics)

“Are you like……. Ok?”

“YES! IN FACT I AM HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE SPILLING MY RED LIQUID ALL OVER THE BLOODY PLACE!”

Man discovers sarcasm, wit and snappy replies all at once.

“I was just asking, no need get touchy about the whole thing now…..”

“TOUCHY?? TOUCHY?? I WILL DIE WITH THE RED LIQUID LOSS OVER HERE!!”

“If you are going to shout I’m going to leave you here like this and not help you at all….”

“WAIT!!....wait and help me, will you?”

“Hmmmm…. All right I will help you….on the condition that you give me something!”

“HUH? What could you possibly want from a place that is…well…..empty…..”

“I was thinking of something more…..well personal……a bone for instance…”

“WHAT?? I AM DYING OVER HERE AND YOU WANT ME TO GIVE YOU A BONE!!!??”

“It’s for you to never forget that I helped you in your most dire need…..”

“May as well take an arm and a leg then……..”

“I just want a rib”

“DONE! Now get this pain out of me immediately!”

Using her great talents to man’s benefit, woman proceeded to stop the blood flow using some plants she found that stopped pain. She first gave man some herbs which made him woozy and dazed a little so that he could feel no pain. For some reason he felt light-headed.

Woman then completed the deal by taking a rib out of man. Using thread she found from the worm who fed on the blue berry bushes, she sewed up all the gashes and ailments which affected man.

After the exhaustive procedure, man feeling reinvigorated with his new and well functioning body felt something for the first time.

Man discovered feelings.

Man and woman sat up till late in the day talking about their experiences and how they should have met each other earlier because they gelled so well together and all that kind of chit chat.

A time arose when both of them stopped talking and for the first time looked at each other.

Lightning struck once more on a rock near by and sparks flew.

The complexities of what happened next are too vast to even put down on paper without going red in the face. The union of the two humans was inevitable and it paved the way for a race of a new kind and of reproduction other than the great amoebic powers.

Besides it was way more fun.

Now we get back to a more important factor that man and woman had forgotten about. The red liquid (now called blood because of its colourful usage by man in a moment of painful spontaneity) spilt by man by the snake, had casually made its way into the small stream of lava flowing nearby. The complex compositions of both these different liquids fused together creating for the first time; and I fear for the last time as the timing and quantity was just right; a being unlike any seen before.

It rose out of the lava and revealed itself to…be...well…itself. It had a long straight face, deep sunken eyes which one could not see clearly, a small mouth with a prominent lower lip, a long thin body and a very grim expression on its face.

Lava does do that to you sometimes.

This magnificent being jumped straight out of the lava jumping and screaming a little like man had done. His skin being tougher left no scars or marks on his frame.

He looked around him in wonder as he moved using his legs (yes the long projections out of his torso were named legs.). he seemed to be aware. Aware of everything that had transpired in the world around him. He knew of man, woman, water and everything man already knew about.

He picked up a stick. Linguistic abilities being at an all time low since he was just born, he said “Stig”.

That was to be his name he decided. Short and sweet as he would say later, Stig went to quench his thirst of knowledge. He knew he would be very important one day.

He was right.

As time progresses so do the mysteries around us begin to fade. Discoveries were made by man and his companion woman. Through the new reproductive powers they had discovered, man and woman together had expanded their species. They multiplied at will and they showed no mercy to the other species. What started of in the beginning as being an instantaneous reproduction slowly became more complex over time. Woman was feeling the strain on her bad back while man to fulfil his cravings and desire would relentlessly carry on the barrage.

Woman discovers headaches.

The time for reproduction slowly increased and through the increasing amount of time the time of instantantaneous reproduction was lost to everyone. Woman decided on 9 months, 9weeks, 9 days, 9 hours, 9 minutes and 9 seconds.

Why 9 you would ask me and to be quite honest about it…. I really don’t know……. It’s a secret all of woman kind know and I am sure they do not want to disclose it. It does have something to do with the woman who started the reproductive schedule. Yin was her name.

Before we digress I must stress on how man and woman were slowly becoming the bane of the earth. They scoured the earth’s lands in search for their place of belonging. They were in the sense wanderers, searching for a match in their counterpart. They were usually found in groups. Never one alone. Man and woman had realized since their meeting that communication was a factor to overcome all. The feeling of communicating and connecting with someone was far more satisfying than hanging around a bunch of species who were not as complicated as they were.

Communication led to sharing of ideas, beliefs and systems. The discovery of power led to mans struggle for it. Land was his first power grab. Man kind everywhere were demarcating their land. The spirit of competition was in every man’s mind. Competition was the sort of driving force for the modern man. Higher, faster and stronger.

Woman not to be outdone herself also jumped onto the band wagon.

The human era on earth had begun. Their discoveries began to gather momentum.

Only one being (presumed by him) was watching mans progression into the unknown…..Stig.

Reclined on a float in the middle of his private pool in his private mansion, sipping on a ‘sex on the beach’ as these humans called it, Stig finally gave into the fact that he quite enjoyed mans many discoveries. The musings of a being who had seen everything. His extraordinary methods of travel and camouflage had made him a voyeur in some sense. Travelling was done by converting himself into tiny grains of sand which the winds carried quite quickly in fact to his desired destination. The deal stuck with the tiny specks of air had made life so much easier. He chuckled appreciatively at his own communicating skills. A sort of ironic chuckle since he himself had lived apart from everyone and communicating only when needed to. He stayed alone and entertained himself by observing the humans all over earth.

Stig’s extraordinary mind set him apart from the regular being. To put it coherently…. While man discovered the wheel Stig was driving a complex machine equivalent to a ‘Ferrari’. He was always ahead of the humans. He even felt the need sometimes to help man with his discoveries. The arrogance of Stig was justifiable. He had been the cause of the many wars.

He was Napoleon’s right hand man,

He was Hitler’s foremost general.

He made the plans for the attack on Pearl Harbour.

He gave nuclear technology to Man.

He dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

He was everywhere where there was a sense of fear, hatred, jealousy, anger, loathing, rage, antagonism and all the words you could use to describe the same. In a ‘grenade shell’ as he would like to say, he had a ‘different’ sense of humour.

Stig kept his glass on the floating table next to his float. It had been an exhausting day, even for a higher being. The nuclear deals in every country had been completed successfully. Soon there would be no distinguishing between one nation and another…. Even if they were coloured differently.

Instilling conflict in the humans was turning out to be a breeze. They some how liked the idea of control. Humans were vulnerable when they let their emotions take over. Stamping their identity over others of their kind was all that mattered to them. Their ‘ego’s’ took over them in a vice like grip. Its reassurance they tell themselves reassuringly. The rational decision is forgotten and stubbornness bores its deep holes in them. Revenge was what the game was about now. The equal and opposite reaction to every action was taking its toll on the earths existence and of the humans as well.

Stig chuckled again. He came back to what was troubling him since he had gained his infinite knowledge on well, everything. The humans had been his only source of entertainment. They themselves destroying themselves would not help his cause one bit. The need to find company was hurting him from the inside.

Television had kept him awake long nights. After being given the technology by him, the humans had done a good job of creating mindless eye candy. He did have his favourite shows none the less.

Stig transformed into the dust and the wind immediately picked him up and put him in his room.

He didn’t like getting wet.

Saturday night in Las Vegas.

Stig drove up the gates of Caesar’s Palace. A frequent visitor to the hotel, the valet immediately recognized Stig and opened his Aston Martin DB12 car door

“Goood Eeevening Mr. Good. It’s a pleasure having you here.”

“Good evening…. (Scanning the name plate rather hastily)…Jesus!”

“Uh… its je’ sus’ sir….”

“Ah yes well always have been bad at names. How are you liking your job je` sus`?”

“To be brutally honest with you (as most people were compelled to be truthful around Stig) not to good….. my closest valet friend ratted on me taking a bugatti out for a spin. And then my boss decides to make an example out of me and nails me clean on the………….”

Stig had lost interest in this conversation ever since it began. These humans and their long winded self pitying stories. He walked on while je` su`s went on animatedly to a crowd which had collected around.

The hotel was very large. The receptionist in the main lobby was busy attending phone calls and Stig decided not to interfere in her communication escapades. The hotel cum casino was ornately made, but it was still nothing compared to the likes of what he had seen. Caesars palace in Rome was a magnificent work of architecture.

Stig had made the blue plans for it………..obviously……..

Heading straight to the casino, Stig picked up a drink from a traveling waiter. A long stemmed glass goblet containing wine. Stig swirled it around the goblet just as he did in the vineyards of France. A small sniff of the wine was in order, before taking it in and swirling it around the palette of his mouth before swallowing it. The invention of alcohol had been one of Stig’s greatest inventions. Truth serum as he would like to call it.

It had a habit of loosening the human tongue and cause unforeseen circumstances which could go either way. It was how Stig relaxed.

Swirling the wine around in the glass, Stig was all set to hit the tables and collect some money. Stig never used any unfair advantage while gambling. Gambling he felt depended on probability and of course face reading. This was true for his favourite game of all time…Poker. He made his way to the table where his seat was reserved. That particular table was for all the high stake players. Old men with a whole lot of money to throw.

Stig made quick work of the first two rounds winning at ease with the same cards twice. He got a triad of sixes (666) which was more than any of the geriatrics could manage.

Feeling the need for some more wine, Stig turned around to find the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She captured his every emotion in every dazzling step she took towards him. It was unlike anything he had experienced before. Her every motion was fluid like water and just as pure.

She was looking straight at him.

Stig discovers Hopmore.

As the world runs on a cause and effect, the birth of Stig had to be balanced sometime later. Later would turn out to be pretty soon.

While man and woman tried out the new reproductive process, woman’s blood was spilt.

The blood fell into a small stream of water. The recurrence of the mixing complex structures took place in that fateful stream. The water and woman’s DH’s joined together. Hopmore rose out of the water, as graceful as the word suggests. The water ran down her pale skin. Her hair a pale, off whitish colour itself, was surprisingly dry and cascaded down her body till her knees.

She was beautiful.

Hopmore was blessed with such a complex structure that has been lost to everyone now, knew she could do things ordinary humans could not do. She had been born with the ability to travel at extraordinary speeds using the moisture in the clouds. Her body would dissimilate into tiny water particles and she would be transported from cloud to cloud and then come down by leaving the clouds which the humans came to term as ‘Rain’. Her beauty was such that no man could resist looking at her if she desired it so.

She was quite picky in that sense. She preferred to be left alone. It was not that she did not like humans, she adored them….it was just that she was different from them.

She was an immortal.

Hopmore had lived through all the years. She had seen and heard almost everything ‘humanly’ created. She had also had the ability to be forgotten almost immediately by any human. The way she changed her appearance from being loud to being discreet always helped her in her lifetime. She had always liked helping the humans do other things other than trying to blow themselves up. The hara-kiri nature of the humans was always omnipresent. She had dedicated her life to help man in saving himself. She was there treating men in the war next to Florence Nightingale.

She had written Martin Luther King's speech on the equality of people.

She had walked along with Gandhi during the Salt March.

She was the nun helping Mother Teresa do her job.

In short she was the instigator of love peace and kindness. She had spent countless life times struggling with a single thought on her mind. She had not been able fathom the idea of some being able to negate her spreading of goodness to all of human kind. There was some foul play afoot and she was going to find out.

Many a time while travelling through the skies in the clouds, she had noticed spectacular dust clouds travelling at immensely high speeds. It had never interfered with her flight path and she chose to dismiss it as some new human activity.

On one very curiosity filled day she decided to follow its path. She kept her distance from the cloud in the fear that she might cause an accident. The bellowing cloud moved towards a city in the desert. The city of Las Vegas. She had heard of this place but had kept away from it. The digression of human kind had reached its lowest over there. She had always wanted to know why and this could be her opportunity to do so.

She saw the cloud suddenly dive downwards in a spiral. She proceeded to do the same.

Rain descended in the city of Las Vegas that day. Hopmore caught a glimpse of the cloud descending into an Aston Martin DB12. She followed the car in a cab and her keen sense of tracking the gas fumes from the car didn’t leave her far off the track even though it was travelling at an increasingly fast rate.

This was certainly not normal human behaviour. The speeds this car was travelling at seemed unimaginable at times. The accuracy of that kind of driving required the responses of a cat on steroids.

She arrived at her subject’s destination, Caesars Palace. A human looking man stepped out of the car. His big collared trench coat made it impossible to see his face clearly. Hopmore for the first time felt curiosity of such intensity as never before.

She had to see the face of that man.

She walked into the hotel behind him, making a few people stop and listen to the story of a valet who had just been rudely treated by the mysterious man. She followed him through the lobby where he indulged in some of those awful alcohols. Disgusted by this revelation she started to question herself on why she was so interested in him. What made him different from any other man she thought. These thoughts were short lived as a sudden decision came over her.

She decided she was going to dress up for the occasion.

When she saw him amble towards what was called the ‘poker’ table, she side stepped into the woman’s section of the wash rooms.

Hopmore looked at her reflection in the mirrors that lined one side of the wall. She always knew she was of exceptional beauty. It was just that she never felt the need to use the full extent of her womanly wiles.

This was one of those exceptional occasions. After making sure no one was in the wash room, Hopmore stepped back in front of the mirrors to reveal a very very revealing blood red dress. There was a certain sense of determination that came over her at that moment. Her hands moved across her face to finish the look. As soon as they were put down, they uncovered a face capable of bringing the world to an end.

Simple diamond stud earrings and a silver choker make up done to highlight the right areas of her face, and a small wicked smile for the first time……..

She was going to come to his table after all Stig thought to himself. Her beauty was unlike anything he and ever seen and that was saying a lot. Cleopatra, Nefertiti, Marilyn Monroe could have never matched her for even her breath.

The way her long confident strides matched her perfectly proportioned figure made her seem unreal. How was it that a woman with such beauty had not been picked by the human media was unimaginable. A woman like that should be worshipped he felt.

*SNAP*………come back to reality, Stig thought. He closed his eyes for a second. Why was it that he was getting overwhelmed by an ordinary woman?

“That’s it!” he exclaimed rising quite suddenly. She was not ordinary and that’s why he should be even more wary of her he thought to himself.

The quick motion of him getting up caused a series of rather messy events. He hit a passing by waiter who was carrying a rather expensive bottle of scotch which in turn caused him to drop the bottle on the floor. The spilt scotch caused several other waiters carrying alcohol to slip on the rather wet floor. This further caused the walking customers to slip and fall down.

Stig took a long deep breath.

Everything around him seemed to be happening in another galaxy. He was standing face to face with the one woman who had for the first time rendered him incapable of rational thought.

A white space enveloped them.

Stig was still staring unbelievingly at Hopmore.

She came closer and closer still.

Till there was but a hair's breadth between them, she advanced on her ‘prey’.

Stig could feel her breath on his hard skin, his rather big collars doing no good to shield him in anyway…..as if he would want that……

She opened her mouth to speak with Stig for the first time. “Are you okay?” she said, her voice beginning to reverberate softly in his head a thousand times over in way that he felt he could feel ‘okay’ with her around.

A definite feeling of comfort.

Stig realized that that what he must be doing to people….but he would never be asking questions regarding good health! This thought snapped him back into his present environment and out of the dream like sequence of one of those ‘Hollywood’ movies.

“Hey where have you taken me?”

“A place where we could have some kind of privacy...”

“WHAT??............what are you if I may be so bold to ask.”

“I was going to ask you the same thing dearie…….”

“I asked first…….”

“I feel this will take along while….” Said Hopmore and two cloud chairs emerged from the white space.

********* overview

The explanations from both the parties shattered both of them equally and they could not believe how they had managed to work with the humans without either of them knowing what the other did to negate their work.

Conversations then ensued on various human and earth related topics. They ranged from how why she felt that the humans should be prevented from causing their own destruction.

Stig and Hopmore had discovered one thing of common importance…… they both found each others company strangely fascinating and wanted to meet each other more often. They decide to meet each other every day. The destination they alternated between themselves.

Hopmore would take Stig to places which were peaceful and there was harmony in every human present over there and Stig would take Hopmore to places which he had helped man create.

Stig and Hopmore began to appreciate each others work in their very opposite approaches towards the humans. They began to see the how complex the whole situation was. How one factor was connected to several other factors.

How the interdependency of different species living on the earth were slowly losing importance to the ego, ergo the human race.

The time was too late to stop them now.

Countries all over the earth had amassed the same amount of arms and ammunition.

All it needed was something to spark it off. A fight, for instance.

This was always a certainty between two highly complex and evolved beings to have a fight. On the fateful day this happened human kind would realize the true meaning of apocalypse.

The fight came about because Hopmore was an hour and a half late with her meeting with Stig. Stig erupted at the thought of someone not obeying him completely.

After a verbal throw of words at each other Stig left to sell all the remaining stocks of nuclear arsenal to even the most underdeveloped nation on the earth. Hopmore could only wait and watch as the end of the world began.

Countries attacked each other out of anxiousness. Not wanting to be the last to start an attack the battle of the earth did not last very long. Within a few minutes the entire human race and all the living species in it were exterminated.

Stig standing over a pile of rubble gazed longingly at the ruins of Las Vegas. He had transformed himself into dust as soon as the first attack had begun. He had not expected it to be this bad. He did not actually want this to happen…..

He heard a sniffle behind him. He did not turn because he knew who it was. The only other being alive in this destroyed earth. Hopmore took two steps closer to stig and then hugged him from behind and crushed her face into his back, tears streaming down her face.

He turned to hug her back.

“This was not how it was supposed to turn out…”

“It would have turned out like this even without you … you just hurried it up”

“Hmmm the air is thinning quite fast…. The ozone specks must be completely obliterated…”

Without saying another word Hopmore handed Stig a box. “I picked it up before the attacks…thought it might be useful…”

Stig opened the box to find a small human made potted plant.

Stig and Hopmore then decided to turn into dirt and water respectively and give the plant all the nourishment they needed to continue for eternity.

The plant immediately took root in the soil the last beings had created and grew into an enormous tree with just a solitary fruit on it. The fruit would nestle seeds for further trees until the tiny specks would all come back and thus the world would be reformed.

Just like the tiny specks of old.

(THE END)

MYTH XXIV - FLUBBOMANIA

2007-03-29T10:13:00.000+05:30

FLUBBOMANIA - by Namrata Narula

INTRODUCTION

Myths are magical…..

A myth is merely a story; true or untrue. A myth always has some meaning attached to it. Each myth is special in some way or the other. Most of the myths have some unnatural element attached to it. It could be a character with supernatural powers or an event which unworldly. Myths are passed down from one generation to the other. In a way myths are a proof of the history.

Myths are mostly religious or scientific. My myth starts with a very scientific approach but ends in a mythical way. It’s a unnatural ending which also concentrates on social norms. Myths usually play a very big role in deciding the nature of human beings. They are also responsible in developing a relationship between people and the universe.

Myths are usually termed sacred because most of the existing myths involve gods, goddesses, or even animals who have the powers of a god. Most of the myths end with a lesson or a moral.

Looking at all the ancient myths, I can say that purpose of a myth is to teach the humans the moral values, to teach them the about the rules of the society. Myths set laws for the society. They define man’s place in the society. People’s personal beliefs are highly influenced by the myths they know about. The beliefs influenced by myths are mostly termed as superstitions.

Myths unfold a story of serial creations, creation of the universe, the nature, the mankind, the gods or anything else. Different cultures have different myths on creation. That’s how myths become a big part of different cultures. As time passes they become the heritage of that culture.

My myths reveal the creation of the universe, earth and the mankind.

Most of the myths follow a certain pattern. They move in a certain direction and you just have to follow it no unfold the mystery in it. Myths are mysterious. The structure of a myth comprises of power, conflict, sex, hierarchy, birth, death etc. These elements are essential in a myth.

In my myth the Flubbs had and extremely monotonous lifestyle and all of a sudden because of certain circumstances they disintegrate and form the universe. The element of surprise makes a myth exciting and powerful.

The homosexual and heterosexual Flubbs got the power to create human beings which was again a surprise. One may not know how certain powers are achieved but they are a vital part of any myth.

In any myth hierarchy leads to conflict and conflict leads to war eventually. And war is the focal point of any myth. It completely changes the face the myth. It brings about a major change, either it leads to beginning or the end of something.

Birth and death…these are the natural processes which myths have been teaching the mankind over the years. With birth comes the word reproduction and with reproduction comes sex. Sex is another significant part of my myth.

It deals with homosexuality and incest.

Every birth in my myth is turning point. Like when the twins were born with the sea shell, it changed Adara and Iqra’s lives.

Death is equally important as birth. Iqra’s death led to a war between the fourth dimension i.e. the spirits and the human race. That’s how my myth introduced the concept spirits in my myth.

Most of the myths have conflict between the god and the evil. The war in my myth occurs because of the same…good and the evil. So, myths are essential to teach people to make a distinction between the superior and the inferior; the good and the evil. But it is open ended; it leaves to the men to choose the path which they like. That is why good and evil have always been there and will always be.

Myths make us familiar with the ways of living.

FLUBBOMANIA

CHAPTER-1

NOTHING….that’s what they say…… How can there be nothing? According to them there were no boundaries of nothing…that means there is nothing outside nothing also, so no one from outside could have come and made the universe. If there was nothing no event could have taken place because nothing can happen in nothing. Literally nothing means absence of everything and if everything was absent how was the universe created?? According to me, nothing never existed. And if there was nothing….it would have continued to be the same. Because nothing can happen in nothing. Think about it, there must be something which was before the universe which probably led to the birth the universe.

There were FLUBBS.They were the creators of the universe!!!! Now you must be wondering what the hell these flubbs are. Flubbs were a kind of organism which existed 100 billion years before the universe came to life. They were everywhere. The so called “nothing” was full of them. According to my investigations they were yellow in color and their bodies were translucent. The surface of their bodies was very muggy. They had these glands on their skin called the Flubbestean gland which constantly constantly secreted a substance called Flubbin from their bodies which made their bodies sticky. As there was nothing called the gravitational force, flubbin acted as some sort of a force which kept them together. Their survival without each other was impossible. Due to the constant contact with each other the secretion of flubbin was continuously encouraged. That’s how they lived on top of each other, under each other, adjacent to each other. There was no solid surface which they rested on. Whatever we see around ourselves today or what we do not see, it was all full of flubbs.

The Flubbs were a solo community of organisms. They ate the dead ones and also reproduced the new ones. They were sexual creatures. They coexisted like this for years and years, till the flubbestean gland started drying because of a never ending nitrogen storm. There was a huge amount of nitrogen gas in the storm and nitrogen led to the damage of the flubbestean gland. Hence, the secretion of the flubbin decreased. Therefore, the force with which their bodies remained fixed to each other started deteriorating. And then what…the whole community of flubbs started disintegrating! And that was the beginning of what we call the UNIVERSE today…..

As these flubbs were separating from each other they started falling apart creating spaces between them. They were separating in chunks because there was left over flubbin in some organisms. There were chunks of all sizes and shapes. These chunks of flubbs started falling in different directions. Finally when the nitrogen storm came to an end these chunks stopped falling and they got stuck wherever they were. The universe was born that day. What we see today is the mature universe.

Theses chunks consisted of various number of flubbs in them. What we call the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, the galaxies, the constellations and whatever we believe is a part of universe is made up of flubbs. When the chunks of flubbs stopped falling after the storm, they started dying. And with the each passing year the dead flubbs started coagulating and now they have become very hard and heavy structures. The bigger chunks made the planets i.e. Mercury, Venus, Earth,Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and the Pluto, the smaller chunks made the Stars, the Moon, the biggest chunk made the Sun and the single flubbs which were close to each other when the storm stopped created the Galaxies. And that is how the universe began.

The reason behind the sun being bright and yellow in color and the other planets being pale and dark is because all the planets consisted of both male and female flubbs, so they died and became pale. But, somehow, the biggest chunk which is now the sun consisted of only female flubbs and miraculously their color did not change. In fact it became brighter and brighter, and started to generate heat. The reason behind it is still a mystery to me. Probably it’s just what we call girl power!

Universe is a descendant of the Flubbs and so am I and you…We exist because the Flubbs exsisted.

CHAPTER-2

THE ACT OF SPERMS

Irrat and Diana were mating passionately. Their bodies were excited, ready to explode, a new flubb was almost created and right then they were alienated. Their skins were glowing out of desire, they longed for the contact between their bodies but now they found they were constantly receding away from each other. Their desperation kept rising with the increasing distance between them. They were wild. They did not bother about who they were mating with, who their partner was anymore, they could do it with anyone to satisfy their urge. Mating for flubbs had been a habitual job. They did it almost all the time. They mated just to reproduce more and more flubbs. Pleasure was never an important part of their intercourse. But right now pleasure and satisfaction was all that Irrat and Diana wanted. But neither did they get satisfied nor did their desperation die out. Diana was now in Venus and Irrat was in Uranus.

Flubbs had a rather simple mating process. Skin was their only sex organ, which is why they were always excited as their skins were always was in contact with each other. When the pores on the skin of the female opened, the male would secrete the sperms there and through the pores it reached inside the female body. Then the female would scrunch herself up and give rise to a new Flubb.

As Irrat and Diana were falling in space, flubbin inside Irrat dried completely and he broke away from Uranus. He was going in the direction of Venus where Diana was because the desire to mate was still alive within both of them. Strongly.

On Earth, the only planet which had homosexual and lesbian flubbs in abundance, a female flubb called Kiarah who had also lost her partner while mating was in the same condition of great heat and lust. Irrat got attracted to her glowing skin and open pores and mated with her. When Flubbs were a community, mating between homosexuals and heterosexuals never happened because it did not give rise to a new Flubb. This was the first time that a heterosexual male a homosexual lesbian female were mating. So, the consequences were unknown.

Though Irrat and Kiarah satisfied their desires Irrat’s sperms could not penetrate Kiarah’s skin, so they started to float and excited other flubbs’ bodies and this led to mating between all homosexual and heterosexual flubbs on earth. Hence, all their sperms started floating. Kiarah and Irrat continued mating and this time around his sperms entered her skin and she crumpled up and gave rise to an enormous creature, who had a well sculpted body unlike their shapeless ones. That was first human being on the face of the earth. It was called man. Meanwhile Diana also found her way to earth and mated with a homosexual male and their union gave rise to another human being who is called woman.

The sperms floating on the earth made the ocean. And the man and woman emerged out of the ocean. And when the sperms came in contact with the bodies of dead flubbs, it gave rise to tress and plants. That’s how planet “Earth” was created.

There is life on earth today just because earth had homosexual flubbs. And, accidentally, a heterosexual Flubb landed here and bought about the creation of earth…man , woman, water and the trees…probably there are homosexual flubbs in some other planet as well…let's wait and watch till a Flubb comes back to life!!!

CHAPTER-3
THE SEA SHELL AND THE SECRET

Introduction

When Kairah and Irrat mated the first time, the sperms did not penetrate Kairah's body. Instead they excited the other homosexual and heterosexual Flubbs. Because the sperms of the homosexual male’s sperms can not penetrate the heterosexual female’s body therefore, a lot of sperms started floating on the surface of the earth....which became the ocean.
But the second time Kairah and Irrat mated it gave rise to the man and Daina’s and the other homosexual male Flubb’s mating gave rise to the female.
All of this was happening in the sperms i.e.; the ocean. So that's how it happened that the man and woman came out of the ocean……

***

They lay there crying in the sand, with no mother to feed them. She transformed herself into numerous fish in the ocean. She disintegrated and became the goddess of the sea. She is called Fontsia. The twins were struggling in the sand and a shell was sitting there next to the twins and a stroke of wind cleaned its face, it contained a secret which no one knows.

Adara was talking a walk on the shore and she spotted the twins and picked them up. The moment she picked them up a tide came and pulled the shell inside the sea and with every one of the next incoming tides millions of shells were produced, and the shell which contained the secret got lost in the enormous sea.

She took them home, and named the girl Cleo and the boy Yemoli. They became a part of her family.

Adara and Iqra were the first human beings on the face of the earth. They were spat out by the sea. They saw each other and felt an immediate attraction between themselves. They made love on the shore for hours and hours. They explored each others’ bodies and they found it to be the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world probably because that was the first thing that they discovered. They made love everyday. Eventually, Adara got pregnant and gave birth to a boy called Zoel and then another boy called Tiraan and her youngest child was a girl called Alia.

All three of them were quite young when Adara bought Cleo and Yemoli home. All of them played together, ate together, learnt together….. They grew up together!

Meanwhile, the shell got lost amongst millions and millions of other shells. And with it the secret also got lost…probably forever.

Iqra had had a fight with Adara and she went away into the woods never to return again. He was on the shore all by himself. With the man all these emotions like jealousy, selfishness, love, hatred, possessiveness etc. also came in. And that has become human nature now. He decided not go back home and to stay on the beach all night long. Their children were also alone at home. No one to feed them and take care of them.

It must have been midnight when he was sleeping on the shore and he smelt a women’s scent. He opened his eyes and saw nothing. After sometime he again smelt the same scent and then he felt someone’s hair caress his face for a split second. This time he woke up startled. And he saw an extremely gorgeous woman in front of him, her name was Fontsia. She had the finest features anyone has ever had. Her long, curly, brown hair framed her face beautifully. She had just emerged out of the sea and was completely lost.

She had nowhere to go, there was no one whom she knew. Iqra was shocked to see someone apart from Adara and their children. He thought he was dreaming but it was for real.

He was stunned too by her looks. With every glance that she gave him, his attraction towards her kept increasing. She came closer to him and touched him all over and then touched herself. She was curious to know what the difference was between their bodies. Eventually they started making love to each other and it was angelic!! They had sex all night long. Initially, Iqra was afraid to even touch her, he thought she was from some other world, because his world was only that beach, the woods around it, Adara and a small house which they had made. But at the same time, he was exceptionally fascinated by her. He was also afraid, what if Adara finds out about this? But once she touched him, all his fears disappeared. Before sunrise she disappeared as if she knew she couldn't be with him. He never saw Fontsia again, no one did.

Adara came back to him next morning, she knew she could not survive without him. That was the first time someone felt how is it to fall in love with some one.

She was in love him Iqra and so was he. He decided not to tell Adara about Fontsia. Time passed and eventually Iqra forgot about Fontsia.

Meanwhile, Fontsia found herself shelter inside a rock on the other side of the shore far, far away from them. She lived there alone. In her womb she carried her’s and Iqra’s child. Finally after nine months she gave birth to twins, a girl and a boy. Along with the twins came out a sea shell from her womb! The sea shell which contained the secret of the night she and Iqra spent together and these twins belonging to both of them. She went back to the sea and broke down into many fish in the sea. And she became the goddess, Fontsia.

CHAPTER-4

THE TREE HOUSE

At the break of dawn Adara comes back home with the twins. Everyone at home was fast asleep. She steps inside the house to put the twins in a comfortable place. Due to the crying of the babies Iqra wakes up and he gets surprised to see two new borns in his house. He is suddenly bewildered and thrilled at the same time to see them. After he met Fontsia, it was now that he saw someone else apart from his family. The first thing he is reminded of is Fontsia. Fear rushes through his body, but he did know what to do. He decides not to talk to Adara and pretends to sleep. She feeds them her milk and puts them off to sleep. But, somehow Iqra knew that they were his children.

Soon he wakes up and goes out of the house, escaping Adara’s sight. He had forgotten her like one forgets a dream. All day he thinks about Fontsia, the things which never crossed his mind now suddenly started bothering him. Like where did she disappear, where did she live all this while, did she meet Adara or did Adara somehow found out about him and Fontsia….it was killing him inside. He spends most of his time at the beach, at the same place where he had met Fontsia. He feels guilty. At night he reaches home and Adara very anxiously runs towards him. He tries to avoid her but she catches him and first she asks him where has he been all day and how she wanted to tell him that she found the twins on the beach that morning. wuuf…..Iqra takes a breath as she narrates the whole incident to him.

He still does not tell Adara anything about Fontsia. He continues to hide for their happiness.

Zoel was 3 years old, Tiraan was 2 and Alia was 1 when the twins came home. So, they obviously did not have questions about them. She took care of them like her own children.

Playing, fighting, crying, laughing, eating, sharing the same beds…bought them really close to each other. Time passed by, they grew older and the bonds between them grew fonder.

From the time they were really young, they started making a tree house at the beach. They would spend most of their time there. Now they have become older but they still go to the tree house and sit in there. A lagoon has formed next to the tree house. They spend most of their time sitting beside it. They spend most of their time swimming, talking, discovering new plants and fruits, helping Iqra and Adara do their daily jobs like cutting the wood, catch the fish, cooking, making boats etc…

One day Tiraan was swimming in the lagoon and Alia was sitting at the shore fiddling with wood. She was a chirpy young girl. She was very good at handling material. From her childhood she always helped her father make boats. She always wanted to make strange looking boats but her father never let her. So when ever he was not around she would make bizarre things and keep them in the tree house. So, that day everyone but the two of them had taken a boat and gone to another shore for fishing. Alia had never swam in her life. She was sort of afraid of water. While Tiraan was inside the water, he told Alia to jump in and join him. But she was too scared to do that. He really insisted her to jump inside and try swimming. He told her that everyone in their family knew how to swim but her and it’s time that she should also learn how to swim. He tells her exactly what to do when she jumps in. So she jumps into the sea and tries to swim but she couldn’t, she starts drowning. Tiraan rushes towards her to save her.

Finally, he gets her out alive and takes her into the tree house. She was gasping and almost fainting. He makes her lie down and comforts her. Her clothes were wet, he was hesitant to change her clothes but had to do it because he had no other option, she was in no state to do it herself. He saw a girl naked for the first time. He felt the desire to touch her curvaceous body, at the same time he was ashamed to feel that way just because she was his sister. He was naïve, so he surrendered to his desires and gently touched her breast. Initially she was stunned to see what he was doing. But she did not resist, seemed to enjoy it rather. In response she caught his hair and kissed him keenly. She led him on and he did not stop. They made love to each other passionately.

Everyone came back at dusk. They knew they had done something which they were not supposed to but they were glad they did it. It did not create any awkwardness between them, in fact they made love when ever they were alone. Gradually they started looking for chances of being left alone.

No one in the family noticed it until Adara noticed the change in Alia’s behavior and she also noticed the symptoms which indicated that she was pregnant. Adara became really uneasy, she tried ignoring it because she thought that it could be a misinterpretation but with each passing day her symptoms became really evident. Eventually, she asked Alia and told her that whatever is happening to her is a sign of pregnancy. Alia was afraid, so she confessed everything in front of her. Adara did not know what to do. She told Iqra about it, both of them were extremely troubled. Though at that time there were no social norms. But that must be how intercourse between siblings became unacceptable. They decided to get them married.

Alia and Tiraan got married and went away from their family and started living somewhere else. Alia gave birth to a boy.

Now there were only five members in the family…Cleo, Zoel, Yemoli, Adara and Iqra.

CHAPTER-5

FOURTH DIMENSION V/S HUMAN RACE

The mating of homosexual flubbs kept giving rise to new human beings and human beings kept giving birth to more humans. Hence, the human race kept increasing in number. They are now living all around the place, close to the sea where they came from. Some of them have gone to far off places and set up their habitats there. There are women, men, children and families. There are tribes and villages.

Yemoli and Alia are now living in some different village away from the rest of the family. Alia gives birth to a child, a boy. Yemoli is like the head of the village because he was the first person to live in that village and so is Iqra who lives in some other village with Adara, Zoel, Cleo and Tiraan. Though all of them don’t live together anymore, they still love each other the same.

Tiraan and Zoel are completely opposite to each other. Tiraan is like a warrior, he is brave, disciplined, very strong headed, whereas Zoel is careless and irresponsible. But both of them love their families and give up their lives for them. Cleo is a very quiet girl. She spends most of the time all by herself swimming and sitting besides the sea. She often takes her boat, goes to the other shore and explores the sea . She is very close to Adara.

One day Cleo takes the boat deep into the sea. She sails very far away from the land, a part of the sea which is completely unexplored. But she is never scared of the sea, the deeper she goes the closer she feels to the sea. Suddenly she feels a strange force pulling the boat into the sea. It is some kind of weird gravitation pull which starts sucking the boat into the sea. Now she starts getting nervous, she tries hard not to let the boat drown, she puts all her strength to make the boat balance but doesn’t succeed. The boat starts drowning, keeps going deep inside the sea. She tries to swim and get out of the sea but she can’t because the pull is so strong that how much ever she tries to come out, she cannot, instead she is going more and more deep into the sea.

Suddenly she sees a very subtle light coming from the bottom of the sea. She starts wondering that what is happening to her and what she is heading towards. In spite of all her nervousness she starts flowing to the light, she feels extremely attracted towards the light and can’t resist going towards it. She keeps going down into the sea. She keeps following the light and going down into the water. She reaches the bottom of the sea and sees a bright green light and in midst of the lit sea there is an extraordinarily beautiful woman in intricately flowy clothes. Her face is pink and glowing. Her hair long brown and curly. She looks ecstatic and pure. She has a sea shell in her hand. It is the spirit of Fontsia with the same sea shell in her hand which contained the secret, the secret of her and Iqra, the secret of Cleo and Yemoli being born out of her womb.

Fontsia smiles at Cleo and comes close to her and gives her the shell. She tells her that after she returns to land, whenever she or anyone puts the shell next to her ear she will hear the voice of Fontsia. Cleo is nervous but Fontsia embraces her and tells her that she is her the mother. She tells her that she is hers and Yemoli’s mother and Iqra is their father.

Cleo bursts out crying, Fontsia put her head in her lap and puts her off to sleep. She wakes up after a long time. Fontsia warns her about not telling the secret to anyone. Fontsia shows her the way out to the land.

Cleo comes out of the sea. She went to that part of the sea where no one has ever been before and after her also no one had ever been so deep down into the sea. But the strangest thing that happened was that Cleo stayed under water for such a long time and did not lose her breath. She attained the ability to breathe under water. She comes out as a completely changed person. She keeps the secret to herself for long but one day when she goes to meet Yemoli and tells him about everything that happened. Yemoli is shocked, initially he does not believe her because she has been a someone who never really talks and does not share things with anyone. She has only been close to Adara . Then she shows him the sea shell and he hears Fontsia’s voice in it.

He gets completely shattered and immediately develops hard feelings for Adara. Because she was the one who told him and Alia to go and live somewhere else, so he starts to feel that Adara did that just because he is not her real son.

Cleo loves Adara and she tries to make Yemoli believe that Adara loves all her children the same and he is no different. He insists on going and confronting Adara and asking her where she got them home from. Cleo resists, she tells him that Fontsia told her not to reveal the secret to anyone. But he still goes to speak to Adara. Everyone in the family gets to know about the secret. Adara tries to calm him down but he never listens to anyone.

After knowing that his secret has been revealed, Iqra gets really anxious to know how did Cleo find out about it. He goes and asks Cleo about how she found out about it. She tells him everything, after knowing that Cleo met Fontsia , he gets really impatient. Soon after cleo told him everything he went to the sea and cried his heart out. He wanted to meet Fontsia or at least see her once.

He starts spending all his time at the sea, hardly comes home. He stops talking to Adara and barely spends any time with her. Adara asks him to leave the house. He leaves the house and Adara, Tiraan, Zoel and Cleo come back and start living at the beach.

Deep down in the sea, the spirit of Fontsia is really miserable amd cursing herself for revealing the secret to Cleo.

When Iqra leaves the house Yemoli goes and offers him shelter at his house. But he refuses and decides to stay on the beach. He is starving, he has nothing to eat or drink.

Yemoli fells really bad about his father. He develops hatred for Adara.

Iqra starts loosing his head because he can’t meet Fontsia ever, she is not a part of this world anymore. Her spirit only lives at the bottom of the sea. He goes mad and loses his mental imbalance. His health begins to deteriorate.

On seeing Iqra’s state Yemoli gets really angry and tries to kill Adara. But fortunately, she doesn’t die. Because he tries to kill Adara all existing mankind turns against him and they make an outcaste of him. Alia also takes her kid away from Yemoli and goes with the rest of the people.

Meanwhile Iqra was left with no option but to die because that was the only way he could be with Fontsia. Eventually he dies and finally gets to be with Fontsia. He is in the fourth dimension now along with Fontsia.

The spirits of Iqra and Fontsia come to Yemoli and try to tell him that he should apologise in front of the whole village but he refuses. Instead he turns them to his side.

Now that all mankind is against him, he wants destroy all the people but he is alone and he cannot do anything. So, he asks Iqra and Fontsia to help them. They decide to provide him with an army which belongs to the fourth dimension i.e. the spirits. Fontsia collects a lot of sea shells and turns them into spirits. So, the spirits start destroying mankind. Gradually, the number of people on earth starts decreasing.

When the war between mankind began, Cleo went to the sea deep down where she had met Fontsia and decided never to come back. She believes that she is the cause of the war which is causing destruction of the human race.

Adara is the only force saving mankind. But she dies of old age and then the fourth dimension takes over. The world is to come to an end.

When mankind was almost defeated, and the fourth dimension had almost won, Cleo decided to come out and save the human race. While she was inside the sea she attained certain powers because she is the owner of the shell now. So, she comes out the sea and becomes the mediator between the fourth dimension and human race. She instigates the fear of mankind amongst the spirits, and they set free the human race. She heals the world and gives them the power to evolve.

That was the beginning of the new world.

(THE END)

MYTH XXIII - I AM WHAT I AM

2007-03-24T15:19:00.000+05:30

I AM WHAT I AM - by Prerna Gupta

Introduction

When men and women ceased to be animals and began to think they asked questions.

What is the universe, and how did it begin?

What is mankind, and how did it begin?

Who am I? Who are we?

What happens when we die?

Why do crops and trees produce grain and fruits each year?

These questions were asked by men all over the world. The answers lead to the creation of the first myths. myths are a set of metaphors that provide a community with a set of answers to these questions. The importance of myths lies in the fact that these essential questions need to be answered. Even though no myth answers them fully it sustains man. Every person has an inherent myth. Our myth doesn’t really provides us with the flawless answer or the eternal truth, but somehow it subdues our search for these answers. I don’t want to label this subduing as something either good or bad. But it sustains a person while one is on a pursuit of the answers to these basic questions for oneself. It gives one something to hold on to. we might not believe in any myth completely but unconsciously we believe in some parts of it. These parts might not even belong to one myth, they might belong to a set of myths. Also, a myth is not only for an individual.They are for a community. This adds to their power. A group of people believe in it collectively and therefore the myth sustains them collectively.

They are a complex form of literature that is made up of various kinds of elements. It is formed by different kinds of symbols, motifs, archetypes, emblems, mythemesetc. My myth deals with something that is quite close to my heart. It deals with something that troubles me. I can call it a search for the answers to my questions about my existence. What I have written is a myth that I have created for myself. it is something that I believe in. I don’t really believe in aliens ruling over us or we being manufactured. But I believe in the inherent philosophy of my myth. The fact that we need to look beyond our limited perceptions. We need to be able to look at the larger picture. With that we are free to do what we want to do with ourselves. We should believe in ourselves. There is nothing much that limits us except for our own fears and ideas. Things that we feel limit us might exist more in our minds than anywhere else.

Part 1

A letter written by Fauth to his friend Quad in the yr. 18, 934 after the proposal for his dream project was accepted by the Scientists guild of the planet Yuran.

“I feel happy for you. The guild has finally issued you the grant for your project. Guadon was not in favor of your project. He did everything to prevent the jury members passing the decision in your favor. Frankly, I think he is rather foolish. I believe any intelligent person can see his vaucuousness. You should not let his activities trouble you.

So, when are you starting the project? Have you chosen your assistants? I wish I could come over to celebrate with you but I am rather caught up with this work over here.

I am anxious to see those creatures function. I wonder what they’ll be like. This project has been eventful right from the beginning. Do you remember the day when you tasted that strange dream… “

Company name: Lofec technologies

Sponsor: The Atman Party

Code name: Homo sapiens

Project brief: To study the properties of visual culture by the creation of a new species named as Homo Sapiens.

Methodology:

To design the form and structure of Homo Sapiens. Provide them with increased visual capabilities. One should exist externally and one should exist in an internal form. The other capabilities of this creature should be kept limited. He should have the sound range of 20 to 20,000 hertz. His capabilities of touch should be limited to tangible objects. Olfaction should let them distinguish around 10,000 different odors, whereas the tongues should just be able to taste salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami.

The bodies of these creatures should be molded with wax and baked in infrared light. They should then be cooled with ultraviolet water. Their body parts should have micro thin sensory wires attached to them which should serve a dual purpose. It should keep them rooted on the ground and it should allow us to monitor their physical movement.

To design the habitat for their existence. The design should be in a form which can sustain these creatures. It should have sonic machinery spread in its atmosphere which will record the various sounds. It should have two kinds of terrain primarily – terra firma or dry land and vast bodies of water.

Homo Sapiens should have a control unit in his body which will be connected to our main system. He should be autonomous.

Project status: In operation

The revolution of the Apuns has been a disaster for the Manush race. Our existing society is formed by two classes, namely the freeman and slave, the patrician and plebeian, the lord and serf, the guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed. We live in a destabilized society which has made life unfulfilling, subjecting the Manush to indignities; this has led to wide-spread psychological suffering. The continuation of this system cannot and is not acceptable to us. Apuns and Manush have stood in constant opposition to one another; they have carried on an unending fight. We therefore advocate a revolution against the Apun system. This revolution may or may not be ethical: it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few light years.

We will take our rebellion to the next level. We shall create warriors like the world has never seen. We will process our breath. The breath of the rebel. We will create a training ground for them. The place will make the toughest beings in this universe. This training ground will be called the Earth.

By Quad

Part 2

Quad's journal –

Today is the day. The time has come. The production of the first couple to go on earth was completed yesterday. They are ready to be transported. Just the last set of requirements. The sentient into the sapience. The incarnation of our breath. The breath fired with our suffering and agony. I see a fractal of cocoons. Beginning from a woman’s womb, where it bathes in her blood and strengthens in her pain. Acquiring a body of its own. I can imagine it in motion. Moving in and out in his blue and red insides. The body will contain it but the breath will sustain it. The breath and the body…

I wait in impatience to see what cannot be seen, I wait to hear its voice, to hear his cry, to hear him sing with joy. I wonder what it will be like… the first set of warriors… tamed and trained. Ready to fight and survive. They shall lead us to victory. Towards freedom and liberty.

Leonardo Schultz's diary –

6, Kristiania, Norway, 1875

I must have been six years old. I would breathe on the window of my old room and make figures with my fingers on it. One day I drew a “window”. I imagined in my mind jumping from it and to excitedly run through the fields until I reached a room. I opened the door and saw a little girl sitting there. She must have been the same age as me. I don’t remember how she looked but I do remember her delight. I asked her a million questions. But she understood my curiosity and listened to me patiently. I would tell her about the sun, the leaves, the sparrow, and the stars. I told her that I wanted to become an artist when I grow up. We talked about my parents and my house. We both hated mathematics. After being content with our conversations I would run and climb back through my window.

Part 3

Leonardo Schultz's diary –

35 yrs, Berlin, Germany, 1910

As I grew older I kept on moving further away from the religion and the idea of god. Further educations and studies initiated me into the questions and doubts of purpose of man on earth. I never really believed in god. Unlike others I did not feel his presence in the world around me, instead I felt like a pawn. I felt like I was being played with. I thought that whoever created us created us for a personal motive of his own. It had nothing to do with the kind of ideas that popular religions passed on to the masses. These ideas were made by a group of people just to keep the masses in control. However, thoughts like these and the books that I read, contributed to my reclusive behavior. I never experienced what one calls a ‘family life’ as I found myself in an orphanage as soon as I was capable enough to understand the world around me.

The five years that succeeded my expulsion from the orphanage, I spent in a constant struggle to establish myself as an artist. I would go without food for days. I slept on the streets as I could not afford the rent. The work was scanty. I was trying hard to make the two ends meet. This was the time when I was put in jail in Munich, for my support of the communist movements. It was a time of great political and economic instability in Germany. It was 1932 and anti Semitic sentiments were on a rise. National Socialist German Workers Party was gaining widespread popularity with Hitler and his propaganda. I had read the history of my country and of nearly all nations. I knew about the class struggles and their economic conflicts. I comprehend quite clearly the credo of communism. I felt very passionately for my community. I wanted my paintings to help in the revolutionary mechanism. I wanted people to think about what was happening around them. I wanted them to see Hitler’s hypocrisy and his mad intentions. I believed that dictatorship could never do any good, a nation needs democracy and freedom if it wanted to progress in the right direction.

My paintings were my tool. They were my way to fight. I realized that the times I was living in would change the course of history of my country but still this feeling kept coming back to me. This strange feeling which always gave me a sense of unease. I felt I was incomplete, incomplete not because I lacked something but because I had more of something else which instead took a part of me. It wasn’t just me inside myself. There was another being with me. I was not one person but two people living together in one body. The conversations that I had with myself always perplexed me. The reminded me of the two entities. Ego and the alter ego? Body and soul? Me and myself?

Who is the real me? Why do we have an alternate self? Why cant it just be me?

Quad's journal –

Everything is going according to plan. The earth is producing warriors of the utmost supremacy. It is just a matter of time now. The next war on earth will complete the number that we need to wage the battle against the Apuns. It is getting increasingly difficult for us to keep the warriors in secrecy. We should be very cautious.

Part 4

Leonardo Schultz's diary –

76, Skoyen, Oslo, 1943

Entartete Kunst Hitler

ART

OFFENCE

Hitler became Germany’s chancellor in January 1933. Art has become punishable. A systematic campaign to force the Nazi aesthetic on art is on. I don’t know how to escape it. Art no longer expresses the feelings and emotions of an artist. It just expresses the whims and fancies of the Nazis. They have stolen much of the art, some is being sold and the others are being burnt.

Seventy years after I first started writing this diary my hair has gone grey, my skin has shriveled up, my limbs are weak and I have become obese. Definitely not much similarity is left to the way I looked when I was an adolescent. I have changed. Things have changed. I am not rotting on the streets of Berlin. Probably if my parents were alive they would be happy to see what I have become. They would be happy to see my success. People call me a genius. I daresay I agree with them. I have achieved some things I desired but something are still left. last autumn, i inaugurated the gallery built in my name in Norway. I was surrounded by countless people who were murmuring my name and asking why I painted on the themes love, anxiety, pain, fear and death. questions about my childhood. They asked me why I lived like a Spartan surrounded only by my paintings. Reasons for depicting god as black as a burnt charcoal, why I made him look like an all permeating ghost. I told them that the saints and sages over time committed the ignominy of making us believe that God is something supreme that is bright and colorful. All that is wrong.

He is someone just like us.

The Talmud teaches:

When the baby is still unborn

An angel takes it for a ride on his wings

And shows him whatever there is to know and learn

He reveals the secrets of life and death to him.

Then at the hour of birth,

With the angel’s kiss on infants forehead

He is benighted

the child returns to his slumber again

The rest out lives are spent

trying to wake up

remembering

what the angel showed us

I woke up late. It is raining hard and it is so dark that I won't be able to paint. The papers and the radio have brought to me the news about the war. It is very distressing. It will happen sooner or later. Germany will lose. I hate to see what will become of the people of my land. Hitler has eluded them. The war is the ultimate Hitlerian catastrophe. It can't get worse than this. Anyways, I have learned to keep politics on a side. My health has been on a decline lately. I don’t know how long I am going to survive this. But I know for sure that it won't be long. I can feel it coming. The sickness is getting harder for me to bear each passing day.

Part 5

“I AM WHO I AM”

I am the son of Leonardo Schullz. Hereby, I lay down the foundations of a new creed.

We have accomplished our freedom from our creator. After a long and tiring struggle creation has achieved its independence. No longer are we puppets in the hands of our creator. No longer are we bound by his selfish motives. No longer do we have to bear the weight of his burdens.

We are free to become what we want to become. The breath, the spirit and the consciousness exists now within each and everyone by themselves, the uncreated creator who does not need to depend on anything or anyone.

The breath, sentience and simply the joy of existence so cherished by us has an astonishing and unsettling genesis. The Manush race on the Planet of Yuran manufactured Homo Sapiens. These people had lived under the oppression of Apuns for ages. They wanted to rebel. But they had sparse resources. Except for the highly advanced technologies and the will and determination to do something they didn’t have much. Quad, a senior Manush scientist looked at the butterfly and thought to himself. He looked at the caterpillar in the cocoon. He realized that this was what they needed. They needed a cocoon. They needed a place that would keep their breath safe till it is ready to become the butterfly. Till it is prepared to attain itself, to become what it is supposed to become. He suggested a brilliant plan. He designed a system by which they would manufacture these creatures who would process their breath inside themselves. After it completes its time in the cocoon it would become itself. It would become the glorious warrior, the spectacular butterfly.

Strangely enough humans have always been aware of something that doesn’t quite fit, something that was not right. Every person has this uneasy feeling once in a while, it comes and they make it go away. But, it keeps coming back. The uneasiness was due to the irony of their lives. Man lived his life in the pursuit of the purpose of his life. his life on earth. He chased something that he could essentially never attain. Not because of any other reason but because of the virtue of absence. How could he attain something that didn’t exist. There was no individual purpose to be achieved on earth. He just had to keep his breath inside him and live with it. That was all that he was required to do. All he had to do was breathe. Make the air move in and out of him to sustain the soul in him. That’s all.

So we, the humans were nothing but cocoons for a long time. Till the time came to fight for our freedom.

After a long and fierce battle with the Apuns, the Manush won. They were free from the oppression of the Apuns at last. They organized themselves and created a new nation for themselves.

After the time in the cocoon was over and the Manush had enough warriors, the first battle took place. The earth-sent warriors, as trained to, fought endlessly and after a long and fierce struggle won the battle for the Manush. They organized themselves and created a new nation for themselves. At last, they were free from the oppression of the Apuns. At last man had achieved his true purpose, his true goal. My father, Leonardo Schullz, was one of the last to reach Yuran, but he was also one of those who fought the hardest. His experiences and observations during both his lifetimes led him to the conclusion that man’s condition could only be remedied by revolution. So he organized an army and rebelled. The second and last battle took place. This time the Manush were also defeated. Humans were finally free.

(THE END)

MYTH XXII - MANGALA

2007-03-23T17:00:00.000+05:30

MANGALA - by Ishaan Dasgupta

INTRODUCTION

One cannot clearly say how the “universe” began. To some she is an occurrence of pure science, to others she is a child of a great god of the heavens, whose power binds and drives all. But in truth she has no beginning or end. She is present within and without.

Could you tell us where exactly your being starts and where it ends? Would you start from the day or date of when you were born or conceived? Would you start with the stories of your mothers/fathers or grandfathers, or even before? The idea of you, your spirit, your morals, your teachings, they began, long, long ago.

Let us start with a story of another universe. In another time and space, a universe where a minute would last us a hundred years. In this universe a planet existed which was inhabited mostly by a highly dominant creature called “Manushya”. The Manushya were an amazingly advanced creature who had gained the power to create at will, objects, creations, high on complexity and even intelligence. Through their creations they became socially almost a single unit working in unison. As they grew smarter and created more and more, they saw a need to convert everything around them to serve the creations better. Their regard for their creations took a pedestal much higher than themselves. In fact the creations became the gods and rulers. All space and time was changed to synchronize perfectly with their own creations. The result was an inward spiral in time which was bound to eventually collapse.

All Manushya were born at the time under the surveillance of a networked creation whose knowledge was endless through all Manushya. The earlier system, where the child was raised by the ones who gave birth to it was abolished as it was seen as flawed and slow and prone to an unobjective life. This method of growth was also the cause of much violence in the years before as small extremist terrorist groups and factions were built through these means by influencing the child’s mind. These factions opposed the way of life of all Manushya and called it indulgent and destructive. Sex was a mere form of entertainment. Homes and families were almost extinct as a way of life as they hindered the efficiency needed to cope with the pace of the creations. Reproduction was done in controlled environments where the eggs could be perfected at a genetic level before being fertilized, then transported to a chamber which provided ideal nourishment, temperature and space required for it to grow.

A faction existed still which was mostly unknown to the majority of the Manushyas. The higher Manushyas, the “Scientos” banished people from their land who they saw as being illogical, mindless and flawed. And thus these people came to be settled on the outskirts of the city and called themselves “Jibon”. They started off by stealing children from the city and raising them as their own. Soon the Jibons had a large army of people who, since had been born and raised upto a point under the networked creation, had an intimate knowledge of the workings and structures of all laws of the Manushyas and his creations. They were the new soldiers that would fight an old war.

13/32/3072.
There was a strange occurrence of a short circuiting in the creations systems. All networks were killed and Manushya went into a state of panic. The energy needed to run all systems was being sucked out by what was thought as a single source.

This caused all sorts of panic amongst the Manushyas. Many claimed it to be the end of the universe. Many saw it as another attack by another faction. Days passed as their planet stood absolutely still. But as suddenly as it happened so did it disappear. The Scientos were baffled by the phenomenon. Although everything was back to normal, the Manushyas were unnerved. Many had died and still many more had their world turned upside down. They stared questioning the Scientos, uncertainty had settled into the clockwork system. The most fascinated by the phenomenon were the Jibons.

3090
All over the city the news spreads “Two rebels were found within the system of the city. Mangala #13323072 and Pembe #13323072. They were caught defacing innumerable number of creations at the GenTECH Corporation earlier today. Their rampage has been going on for almost 6 years now. They have also been connected with the earlier STT site bombing, which was thought to be the work of extremist terrorist groups. These Manushyas used work with SCITECH with was the mother company of GenTECH. They have been heading many projects of which the…

…our society has never seen one of our own turn against us in a hundred years….

…and putting them to death would be the ultimate peace for them and all of Manushya.”

SECTION I

“I have heard of a prophecy that our saviour will rise from darkness itself and crush it. He will free all of Manushya and we will all be alive once again.”

“I’ve had enough of this fight. How many Manushyas do we have to kill before this ends?”

“But they were all Scientos!”

“So what? Weren’t they Manushyas?”

“Don’t be so impatient brother. We will win soon!”

“Win what? You’ve forgotten what we were fighting for in the first place. These Jibons have forgotten everything that they hold sacred?”

“You cannot leave now you have a duty to fulfill. Besides they believe that we will save them and that is why they saved us then. You are obligated to them, you must help them for they helped you.”

“I wish I had died. Is one life worth a thousand? I must stop now”

“You cannot leave the 'shyas you command. You must be strong as their leader. You must stay by me my brother. I promise you we will bring peace.

Don’t you remember what we used to feel when we were in there? The lifeless soulless torment of time. Wrenching out every drop from us, like machines we were. Remember you asked me why if we build them must we serve them? I will never forget that question. I fight it today for I believed in it. And you… you always showed me that there was much more than what was shown.

hehehe…I remember the time when we “broke” into the mainstream and let all the lab subjects loose. The whole city was overrun with creatures. The Scientos spent weeks gathering them all up. Remember how we just wished it and it happened, and they wouldn’t believe that we didn’t actually break in. I’ve never known anyone as strong as you. Your mind…our mind…what I’m trying to say is that I believe we have a purpose and this is it.”

“You’ve read too many of their books brother. You know too much, the light that you have gained since you came here has blinded you. I did say that there something more, but I do believe that it was not this. Turning a pure black to a pure white will also leave you with nothing. I will leave and come back when I have answers.”

“I see you have lost sight of your direction. Never the less when I defeat the Scientos and the prophecies are fulfilled I will look for you my brother. And we will start again”

“Perhaps…perhaps it would be better for you since the prophecies declare a single saviour and not two. Farwell brother. I hope the gods believe in the prophecies as much as you do. Take care and I wish you luck. Tell my ‘shyas that Mangala hopes that the truth is revealed to them soon.”

SECTION II

“I have been enlightened. I have seen another world being created”

“Oh brother how good to see you again! I had wished that you be safe so I would see you”

“Don’t brother me Mangala. You left me a long time ago remember. And now you embrace me. Do you know what I have seen Mangala! I have seen my ‘shyas being gutted, tortured. I have seen them cry. I have seen them offering themselves to the enemies so that their families are saved. All my friends died before me, my brother left me. And now you talk to me as if nothing happened! There's blood everywhere Mangala! EVERYWHERE! EVEN ON YOU!! HAHAHAHAHHAH

Do you know that on the battlefield we had to eat the dead to survive! Do you know what it was like to eat the '‘shya who fought next to you and died next to you? DO YOU!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHrghh!!!!!”

“Brother I can only imagine the pains you have suffered. But I decided to leave it all behind a long time ago.”

“LEAVE IT BEHIND! You didn’t leave it behind. You left US behind! If you hadn’t left us we would have won! There would have been a lot less shyas dead!”

“I do not believe we would have won. We would have managed to kill many more on their side, but tell me brother would their fate be better than yours? Is your killing justified and theirs is not? Look at this man brother. Or the many men who sit here before me. Or that man whose face no one will ever again recognize. He was in the city when it was attacked. He was eating a meal in his home with his friends when you army came and gutted them. He lost his friends his brothers and he even lost most of himself. He cannot speak no more, nor see. He can’t even move on his own. Tell me brother does he anger you? Don’t you wish you had killed him completely? Annihilated the enemy. He does. He wishes it everyday. Let us do it brother. Let us kill everyone who knows not the truth.”

Pembe breaks down and cries at the feet of his brother.

SECTION III

“Brother!”

“Yes.”

“They tell me all kinds of things about you. They tell me that you have many powers. They tell me you can heal a ‘shya. They tell me you can travel unimaginable distances. They tell me you have seen places and things and know the truth.

I remember we used to discuss how our bodies have far greater powers than any creation can offer us. And you used to help me focus my energies and we reached so many places with our powers. We did so many things we shouldn’t have. Together. We did it all together.

Now I feel like you have left me behind. You tell me as much as you tell them. You treat me as you would treat them. Am I not your brother? Don’t I deserve more? I want to know all you have to tell brother. I want to be enlightened. What was it like? What did you see?”

“Sit my brother. I do not hide anything from anyone. I will tell you everything I have seen. I will help you attain enlightenment…

…once you empty your mind of all thoughts, you will find energies flowing through you. All of life will speak through you and all you have to do is listen. Think of nothing, say nothing, be as the tree and listen. Then she will tell you her secret. All of life’s intricacies will unfold before you. Your heart you mind must be open to receive the river that will flow through you. Resist it and you will drown, swim with it and it will take you to the sea…”

And so Mangala told Pembe everything he knew.

“…there I witnessed the birth of a universe. The planets formed before my eyes. It was just like I had imagined. I saw a planet called earth. I witnessed the birth of life. I saw water and trees, lush green meadows. Mountains and valleys, snowfall and a sunset. I saw it all, like our ancestors described our home in the very beginning. It was beautiful. I saw a fish jump out of water and take the first step on land. I saw creatures of many shapes and sizes…”

Mangala sits for hours and describes in detail what he saw on earth. He told him of how all of life balances itself.

“It all sounds a bit suspicious to me brother. I mean it sounds exactly like what you described your world to be like when we were young. Are you sure you’re not hallucinating? I don’t mean to oppose you but I mean you could be very well making all this up. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry Pembe. You have every right to be skeptical. But what I have seen, if it’s real to me, that is all I can ask for.”

“Can you take me there? Can we do it together like we used to”

“Hmm…I think we can…”

SECTION IV

“Pursuing power is like removing the floor beneath us. We all have a purpose. There is nothing greater than that.”

Soon after lots of training under his brother Pembe started visiting earth very often. Unlike his brother Pembe believed in no one else but himself. He believed he could do anything, and he almost did too. After many years of visiting earth Pembe realized that he was able to manipulate matter to his own will on this planet. He soon learnt that the process of enlightenment had somehow gifted his brother to create his own universe. Pembe was extremely pleased with his finding. He started to create beings similar to himself called humans. He loved the thought of having a whole planet with lots of "hims" ruling over. And the best part was that he could command them. The process was simple enough to him. He realized that the life and souls of the planet were none other that particles of his brothers spirit that has dispersed over the universe and created life where they fell.

He meditated for a while, gathered up some energy and dispersed his soul over earth. Since Pembe did not have too much control over his vast powers his soul exploded and covered the earth with a million particles. The other beings could not absorb his soul as they were created my Mangala, but the humans which were created by Pembe immediately absorbed some of the particles. The air was filled earlier with pure blue spirits of Mangala and now the sky was spotted with red back spirits of Pembe too.

“How could you do this Pembe? DID YOU THINK THE UNVERSE IS A TOY? Do you think lives are things to play with? Your greed and lust for power has bound you down. I entrusted you with all my knowledge and my dreams and this is how you repay me. I thought you had left your ignorance behind and embraced the truth but it seems that you were no better. Now leave and never return Pembe. I never want to see you again!”

“So you think you’re better than me. What right do you have to create and I don’t. You’re no better than the Manushyas and their huge egos. How you’ve succumbed to your creation. Don’t you realize you are god! WE ARE GODS MANGALA!!! WE ARE GODS!”

“Leave…”

Mangala sits down to meditate. He visits earth once again. He sees the suffering of humanity. He sees their greed, their lust for power, he sees his brother everywhere.

He tries to heal them. It is impossible for him to remove life so he tries his best to mend their souls. He gives the humans the task to administer the work of nature. He teaches them how to tap into their own energies to bring about peace harmony and balance. But before his teachings are over, he is suddenly pulled out of earth. He now lies in his brother’s arms, blood pouring out of his back. He looks at his brother. Tears well up in both their eyes.

“Why brother? Why?”

“I couldn’t let you destroy my only creation!”

Mangala dies and his soul attains nirvana. That is to say it completely disperses over his universe and ceases to exist on the one he was born.

The Kshatriyas

The warriors who are mentally strong but not so, physically. They have the capability to control their bot suit mentally. They can grow out fibres of biotech muscles out of their suit. These suits make them fast agile and extremely strong. The suit also has the capability to merge with any other technology as the fibres also act as wires,cross interfacing gadgets.

The Jibons

These are the naturalist warriors. These warriors are not as strong physically as the kshatriyas, as they do not use the technology to help them. But they have the ability to control things with their minds. They have a varying range of telekinetic powers and telepathy.

Nimosas

These are machines used by the centre for complete destruction. They use subsonic sound waves to obliterate anything in its path. Each nimosa is equipped with a basic AI kit which allows is to intelligently seek and destroy. These were being tested by the scientos and are still in the prototyping phase. Not many have been produced. Since these are so dangerous they have never been used in the real battlefield until now.

EPISODE 1

Mangala and Pembe sit on top of Mt. Domiana overlooking the city of Rokangua. The city glitters down below. Smoke rising from one side of the city.

“It starts…”

“Hmm…”

“I can’t do this”

“You can’t do this? What do you mean?”

“I mean…it’s…a huge responsibility. The lives of many hundreds of ‘shays in my hands, under my command. They believe in me but the problem is that I don’t believe in me.”

“Doubt is not unnatural brother. And yes, it is a huge responsibility. Jibana is always by our side brother. We have surrendered to her power, and all, life and death is up to her. There is no need to be scared. Our destinies have already been written. All we have to do is understand why.”

“Pembe?”

“Hmm…”

“Do you really believe in all this prophecy bullshit? It makes me nervous. I can’t be made responsible for all this. I’m not ready for this yet. I mean…we’re still young. We should be living, not thinking about war or politics or things like that. It’s all so grave, and depressing. I just can’t stand how these people treat me like some god. What a bore this is. We used to have so much fun in there.”

“Ya, I was just wondering how long it’s been since we’ve had a good laugh. It's a bore, but it’s all we have now. We can’t really go back and expect a warm welcome, can we? Hehe. They’re still looking for us. Besides, now, I’m definite they know we are in some way connected to this war.”

“Hmm ya ya. I guess we’ll just have to get used to it. Play along. Fight a war. It’s all good, right? No big deal!”

“Haha…yeah, no big deal!”

“Sir. The south side forces have been engaged. Colonel Mashihori’s battalion is under heavy attack.”

Mangala and Pembe turn around to see lieutenant Biishyas standing there.

“Good. Then we can start our attack from the northern side in a day or two. Let them concentrate their forces on one side. Send a message to colonel Mashihori, tell him that he needs to keep his distance and keep the tension up for a day or two. Tell him that further reinforcements are on their way, along with some supplies. Tell him that Mangala and I send him our good wishes and hope that Jibana is with us.”

Scene zooms into the city into an alley towards the more quieter side.

“TIMALA!! TIMALA!” Firis calls out to her cat. She was especially scared now, ever since the rebellions started. The centre had become ever more strict and alert. She stands and peers out of the all, leans over and calls out again. She notices the sirens, the screams, the rioting in the distance. The sounds fade in her head as she thinks about the day she got her cat.

Mother: “Firis! Firis, come see what your father got for you.”

Father: “Happy birthday Firis!”

Firis: “Baba! Oh wow! What is it?”

Father: “I found him while I was looking for some food. He was hiding in a basement. He just came to me when he saw me. It was as if I was meant to find him.”

Mother: “So strange! I haven’t seen one in 20 years. Those who were left usually never even show themselves, its funny how he turned up.”

Firis: “But father, wouldn’t it be dangerous?”

Father: “Don’t worry dear. This is the least of our problems. If they find us living together like this we’ll be done for anyway. From today he will be your new brother Firis. Take good care of him.”

Scene of a fight in the northern section of the city.

“Colonel Mashihori! We are taking huge amounts of damage. We haven’t got any word from the captains. We can’t hold on for much longer.”

“We need to hold on for a day at least, Shiva. What’s the count?”

“We haven’t lost too many men sir but the bots have taken large amounts of damage. A large battalion of KAos approaches as we speak sir. About a 100 at least. They also have about 3 shield bearers in each battalion. It would be impossible for us to break through their shields even if we survive the offence of the KAos.”

“Ok, tell the men to stay clear of the range of the KAos. Dispatch 40 Sivayats and distract them from the air. Make sure they remain occupied till the attack from the north. And Shiva…”

“Yes sir”

“Get a Bot ready. I’m going to take out the shields”

“Alone sir? Are you crazy?”

“With all the commotion I don’t think they are going to notice a single Bot.”

“Dr Digora, the ‘creation’ predicts a small army will attack from the north. It has made calculations on the DATA form of the files of Mangala and Pembe. The pattern is quite apparent and if they are involved it is assured that there will be an attack in a day’s time. The diversion has been set up.”

“Good. I have complete faith in the ‘creation’. She has never failed us, and it’s impossible for her to fail. Tell the rest of the Scientos and take immediate action against these rebels. It's time that Mangala and Pembe realize our power. Give orders to evacuate the north side ASAP. Then set up a group of Nimosas in that area. If anything stirs or even breathes, they will be taken care of.”

“I thought they were like sons to you. You don’t really want them dead? Do you?”

“They stopped being my sons the day they went against the laws. How dare they defy the ‘creation’? Just because one is born and raised with the Scientos he has no right to alter the laws. These laws have been put down for generations. For generations our society has been functioning at optimum efficiency. Crime has been petty and negligible. And then, these two came and turned our world upside down. Sometimes I feel responsible for their actions. Maybe I didn’t teach them well enough. Maybe they were just born flawed. I shouldn’t have saved them from the extermination and raised them so.”

“Why did you save them? Wasn't there an order to exterminate all borns of that date, for fear of dysfunction?”

“Yes. But they were born minutes prior to the blackout and showed extraordinary talent years after. It was impossible for me to see such talent exterminated. Besides I hoped they would make brilliant Scientos. I made a special petition to the Scientos for their exclusion from the execution. They conducted some tests and thought it fit to raise them further. But yes, I alone feel most responsible, and I alone will finish what was meant to be.”

EPISODE 2

The sirens got louder. Incoherent crackles from loudspeakers at a distance. Firis gets stiff with anticipation, a blank look as she stares into space. The sound of a loud explosion shakes her out of her daze; she shifts around impatiently, wondering what her next move will be.

“Timala! Timala! Where’d you go?” she says under her breath. The siren gets louder still. Sounds like it’s probably around the corner of the next street. Two stiff silhouettes block out the only light entering from the other end of the alley. Firis turns, stares. “Kshatriyas! Damn! Not now!” she mumbles. She accidentally kicks over a few cans which were lying around. “Great! How about not drawing attention to yourself, Firis?” The ‘shyas suddenly quicken their pace.

“Excuse me Ma’am…” Firis looks the other way and runs with a sudden burst of movement. “Hey….come back here!!!”

She runs through the alleyways like she knows it like the back of her hand. Suddenly she comes to a halt. She sees a huge battalion of Kshatriyas out on the street. She ducks back into the alley. Waits to listen to the commotion and to catch a few extra breaths. They were rounding up people ordering an evacuation of that section of the city. “The other two seem like a better bet, huh?” She was always used to talking to Timala about everything.

She runs back. “They’re already halfway here. Hmm, they’re fast.” She runs into the first door she finds unlocked. She notices as she enters a man sitting on a table, not too much light. A smoke filled room. “A strange man” she remembers. “Doesn’t get out much, seen him once or twice. Always wondered why he gets out of his house so late at night, so cautiously.” Suddenly she notices the gun in his hand aiming at her head. She ducks immediately. “He could have killed me if he wanted to!”

BANG!! A shot fired followed by three more. She fumbles for a bit and then darts off to the next room looking for an exit of some kind. Through the corner of her eye she notices the guy at the table shot dead. Two in the chest and one in the head. One of the two Kshatriyas was also probably dead too. He seemed to be at least. “Hey you!! Stop!! You are under arrest!” She finally finds an exit and jumps out into the alley. The officer stumbles over his partner’s body, rushes in. “FUCK!!! She got away!”

“Dr Digora, your actions have been viewed by the council, and are seen as hasty. We have called you here to this meeting to review your order.”

“Scientos of the High Council, We are at war and a war demands immediate action. The creation had spoken and I had to act immediately!”

“The Council sees your actions to be clouded by your closeness to the 2 rebels. To evacuate a whole section of the city, just to catch 2 rebels seems ludicrous. Not to mention dispatching ten Nimosas. We have hereby decided that none of the Scientos will have direct authorization to execute orders. A majority vote will be taken on all decisions by the Scientos of the High Council.”

“I fail to understand the efficiency of such a law. I recognized the situation and acted upon it accordingly. Mangala and Pembe are powerful, I have seen them taking down smaller creations with their own hands. The evacuation was done for the safety of the ‘shyas.”

“We know Dr. Digora. Do not underestimate the awareness of the high council. We know everything. We are the real children of the creation. Don’t forget your place, doctor. Now leave. Send word to call off the evacuation.”

“Yes, High Council. But most of the city has already been evacuated. Should we send them back?”

“Let us not waste any more resources on these Shudras. They have always been parasites in our society. We will take up their cause again once the problem at hand is solved.”

“As you wish, High Council. What of the Nimosas?”

“What of the Nimosas?”

“We can’t send in Nimosas into a section full of ‘shyas. They will be destroyed.”

“The northern side has been plagued with the disease of inefficiency and corruption for some time now. It has come to our knowledge that many Jibons and spies reside in this section. One has to often start anew in order the fix the mistakes made earlier. A few lives for a million hardly make a difference. Besides, these Shudras kill each other for something or the other everyday.

Now go and finish what you started.”

“Yes, high council”

She waited till the noise died down. She could slowly hear the sirens fade. She cautiously went back towards the house. Checked around and slowly walked towards the man.

“You could’ve killed me…but you didn’t, and I’ll never know why. Maybe you were waiting for them.”

She searched for his wallet; she took out the Id plate. And put the wallet back.

“Thank you Innah Jaan.”

Suddenly Timala jumps onto the table. Firis gets startled for an instant.

“Timala. I thought they took you away. I thought that they would take me away too. But Innah Jan saved me. In fact he saved us both!”

She picked up Innah Jaan and laid him down on his bed.

“Curiosity killed the cat”

Firis jumped. A man walked in through the door.

“Oh shit.”

“I knew you’d come back here. Now you’re in deep.”

“Well…I came to…”

A loud hum filled the room. Then a deafening silence fell for a few seconds.

They both felt the heaviness of the silence and couldn’t move. The roof blew open. A huge machine hovered over them.

“What’s this doing here?”

“What is it?”

“Quick, move underground. NOW!! We have 15 seconds!!”

They ran to the basement. Firis opened a sort of grill.

“Follow me. These tunnels are ancient systems, they run throughout the city. There are openings everywhere.”

“You know them right!”

She looks in, looks up, and looks in again.

“Don’t worry ,you have my word! Fate has us playing on the same side now.”

She looks at him, in his eyes. She’s always had a sense about people. She knew he was serious. “Must be serious.” She said under her breath. She walked into the tunnel.

EPISODE 3

“Brother, let us pray to Jibana so that we may fight bravely and win today.”

“We do not pray brother. Jibana resides in us and so we ask her for nothing. She makes us and does as she pleases. We are gods now, she has made it so.”

“She is in all of us, but I don’t think it’s about that brother. It’s to thank her, so that she may never feel like we’ve forgotten.”

“I will not forget her Mangala. I’m ready to give my life for her. That is my prayer to her. Those who are weak pray. They ask others for things that they cannot have. Are you weak Mangala?”

“Praying is not about weakness or about acquiring things; it’s about opening your mind in order to receive, in order to act. That is all.”

“Do as you wish brother. I will not let these people see me as weak. They have too much faith in us; I will not let them down.

Gather your forces after you’re done and meet me at the rendezvous point. We shall move together from there.”

Mangala smiles, a knowing forgiving smile. His brother walks off. A confident stride. “He’s always ready. I wish I had his confidence. He’s always been strong. But you’ve always helped me through. Thank you Jibana.”

Mangala turns around walks towards the huge tree at the edge of the forest. He bows down before the tree. “Great one of the forest, I humble myself before your power. Take my message to our mother and tell her to protect me as she has protected you. I hope that one day we shall live together with our mother…”

Mangala crouched at the foot of the massive tree. He feels insignificant yet protected by the huge power looming over him. It comforts him. He feels a warmth rush through him.

Silently he waits, concentrates. Smiling he raises his head. “I thank you my brother.” He kisses the roots of the tree. He looks back to find his ‘shyas crouching before the tree behind him. He crouches down again and waits for them to finish their prayers.

Dr Digora puts on his suit. A little backpack and helmet which connects onto his spine directly. He checks the suit. He clenches his fist, in a split second many thousands of fibres shoot out of his back and shoulder and completely envelope his arm, forming an exterior muscle structure. In a split second it shoots back in again.

“Still got it. Like riding a bicycle.” He smiles. He takes a look at his room. He checks if everything is in its place. He always checked before he went anywhere. That way he could always tell if someone’s been in there, even if they were really careful. He’s been a bit extra careful since the incident concerning Mangala and Pembe. He has been under a lot of scrutiny since. As he is about to walk out of his room Dr. Gulfaaz walks in.

“Dr Digora, I heard about your meeting with the high council. Thank god it wasn’t too ser…er…”

Gulfaaz notices the helmet under Digora's arm and stops.

“Gulfaaz I need to go. Don’t tell anyone about where I am.”

“But sir…what…why? I don’t understand.”

“Remember I told you to send out Nimosas and evacuate the north side. I was ordered to call off the evacuation directly but the Nimosas…

I will not stand and watch innocent people die so that a few rebels and jibons can be eradicated.”

“You can’t save all those people alone?”

“I can save some. I cannot bear the burden of anymore guilt. I cannot let it pass.”

“But sir…what about the new law that was put to motion.”

“The way I see it, I'm not giving out any orders that need the authorization of the high council. I’m acting on my own free will. I trust you Gulfaaz.”

“But they will find out anyway”

“I can face the consequences later but I cannot sit and wait for an answer. I need to do this.”

Digora and Gulfaaz leave the room.

“I wish you well sir. I hope you find peace”

“You too Gulfaaz. You too.”

Digora runs off down the corridor and disappears around the bend.

“What is that thing?”

“He is Timala and HE is a cat.”

“You’re not allowed to keep these creatures.”

“I don’t think you are in any position to tell us what to do. Besides Timala knows these passages better than anyone else.”

“You mean we’re following that? I thought you knew where we were going.”

Timala suddenly stops. Starts to lick his paws as if suddenly disinterested in what he was doing earlier. “Oh Timala. Don’t feel bad. He doesn’t know anything. He’s ignorant. Don’t be offended by what he says”

“And now you’re talking to it? What do you mean ignorant? I’m a bloody Kshatriya; you don’t become a Kshatriya just like that you know.”

“I’m sorry Timala. Forgive him. He’s a kshatriya.”

Timala gets up meows twice, hisses at the Kshatriya and starts walking.

“Hey he actually understood. Wow. I’m sorry.”

“Of course he understood. Timala is a lot smarter than most of us.”

“I wish my map worked underground.” he said under his breath.

“Oh by the way I’m Firis. And this is of course Timala.”

“I’m Kaulatta, tenth troop second squad, local section, north side.”

Firis sniggers “that’s it?”

“Er…sorry. Kaulatta. Just Kaulatta.”

“Kaulatta, welcome to our world.”

Colonel Mashihori runs toward the oncoming force. He crisscrosses behind the buildings making sure that he is not seen. His bot suit gives him enough speed and agility, at least the amount he can creatively conjure up or handle. He climbs up to the terrace of a building to check out the scene for himself.

“Hmm…”

No sooner had he climbed down from the building than there was a Kshatriya standing in front of him. Strangely he was alone.

“Ah….I found you. I saw you running about from far. Thought I’d come and see who was snooping around. But I have to say you’re very brave if you think you could’ve penetrated our forces all alone. Foolish but brave.”

“You’re the one who’s a fool to have come here all alone.”

“Really! Hehe. Who may I know dares to speak so boldly?”

“Uzuka Mashihori. Colonel of the fifth battalion.”

“Mashihori…Mashihori. Why does it sound so familiar? Well, no mater, it will all end very soon”

Immediately the Kshatriya releases a blow towards Mashihori. He slides and dodges. A second third forth and a fifth follow in rapid succession. Mashihori, nimble on his feet, evades the onslaught. With a powerful jump, Mashihori jumps to the roof of the building. On his way up he fires several arrows towards the Kshatriya. Dust rises from the ground as the rain of arrows falls over the Kshatriya. The dust clears and he’s not there.

“Impossible!”

Mashihori sees movement beside him through the corner of his eye. A split second, but it's too late. A hard blow to his back, he plummets down the 13 storey building. Mashihori lies on his back, the sun in his eyes. He sees the Kshatriya jump off the building toward him. The Kshatriya’s hand changes to a sword and he’s ready to deliver the final blow.

“Damn”

Mashihori raises his arm. Suddenly the Kshatriya’s suit retracts and he falls to the ground. Mashihori gets up. Retracts his suit, stands over the broken Kshatriya.

“What did you do?” a low mumble.

“Oh you should consider yourself lucky you’re still alive. After a fall like that.”

”What did you do?”

“You fought well warrior.”

Mashihori turns around and is walking away.

“The fight is not over yet old man. I can still move. Where are you going?”

“It's over. Consider yourself lucky I let you go. Don’t push your luck.”

“The battlefield is the wrong place to show compassion old man. You either kill your enemy or are killed. Come back and kill me if you can.”

“I have no time for this foolishness.”

“I get it. You feel more powerful now, don’t you. You feel you have done a great deed in letting me live, in showing me mercy. You feel like a god with the power of life and death. But remember we have no place in the land of gods.”

“You should not speak so boldly, boy. Be grateful for what you have been given. It’s not time for you to die.”

“Come back here! COME BACK AND FINISH YOUR FIGHT!! COME BACK!”

Mashihori walks away.

EPISODE 4

Timala, Firis and Kaulatta walk further on through the tunnels. A shudra spots them. Scared, seeing the Kshatriya there, runs back. A group of Shudras congregate at the crossings of a tunnel. They look at the Kshatriya and slowly advance toward him. He senses a threat and instinctively reacts. He kills them all. Firis gets agitated as she sees this. His earlier warm exterior suddenly turns cold and ruthless. Kaulatta turns cold. It’s what he is trained for. It’s what he does best. It is what he was made for. His opinion of the Shudras was always low. He believes that the Shudras are lazy and a dirty lot. He blames them for their own plight. However hard the society has tried to help them they never get any better. He feels that they deserve to be low. He used to be a shudra once. But he worked hard to move up. He believes that anyone can do what he did; it’s just that they must want it bad enough. He used to work for a scientos, Dr. Mirwa who slowly patiently trained him in meditation and other forms of concentration. Dr Mirwa saw the instinctive skill the boy possessed to pick up things fast and his eagerness to learn. Since then he’s been slowly moving up the class ladder. He joined the Kshatriya forces when he was 16. Now he’s one of the top kshatriyas. He’s now eagerly waiting to give the scientos exam, which he’s been training for a long time.

Firis lived in a whole family once. She grew up not in the most comfortable of situations but her family taught her to live happily with little. Street smart, quick, patient, emotional, attached. She had seen her parents being killed by the kshatriyas, when she was only 12. But she felt no spite. She never felt like death was the end, she believed that her parents were probably in a better life now. But this scene shook her belief; she relived the brutality she had seen earlier. She felt the loss, the pain, the anger, but this time it was multiplied ten fold. She was no longer a child, no longer innocent, no longer full of stories that made all things look better. No longer could she dream. No longer did she have faith. But she quietly held it all in.

Pembe was always the stronger of the two. He had learnt the methods of the kshatriyas. Under the guidance of Dr. Digora, Pembe was always the better student, while Mangala was always the better son. Mangala believed in intuition. He believed that all that has to be learnt could be learnt from everything that surrounds one. Knowledge is not for a select group. Both Mangala and Pembe saw the hierarchy and monopoly of the kshatriyas and how they had by force suppressed the other classes causing huge disparity between the classes. Their rebellious nature had slowly taken them to the other side of the fence. Being in the core of the system they had seen many executions, exterminations, instances of corruption and greed, by the upper classes of society. They had seen how the lower classes are played in their weakness. They had tried to resolve it internally but they were seen as a threat and made enemies of the state. The final blow came to them when the state also falsely accused them of many crimes and murders that they had not committed. As they would put it “fate wants us to fight this war”, although they might not want to. Their reason for fighting is life, which they believe is lost in the efficiency that all the Manushya strive for. They fight against the corruption and injustice the center has started to signify now.

Pembe is a ruthless fighter. His head was strong and focused. He showed no weakness. Mangala fights because he has to. He never intends to kill, he tries not to. He never uses weapons or technology. He believes in using his body and mind solely. Pembe sees his brother as weak and too ideal. He often tells his brother that his kindness will kill him one day. He tells his brother that in a war there are no friends or family. “Either you kill your enemy or are killed by him. Why waste your emotions on lifeless souls.”

Mangala and Pembe enter the city with their forces. They are attacked heavily by the Nimosas. They gather heavy losses but they manage to destroy a few. Mangala and Pembe are separated during the fight.

Mangala meets a Kshatriya.

Mangala stands in the dust of the broken buildings. The Kshatriya stands, hesitates and charges at Mangala. Mangala moves, lightning, he’s behind the Kshatriya. He tries to take control of his suit. But feels the huge energy field the Kshatriya was radiating. “That’s not going to work.” In a flash the Kshatriya reacts. Mangala backs off for a second look “that’s not going to work boy.” He realizes that the Kshatriya was no mere warrior but a man of great power and resolve. “It’s not going to work.” The voice in his head repeats. “I know all about you.” He suddenly realizes that the Kshatriya was telepathically talking got him and that the voice was not merely playing in his head. “You are very powerful after all” says Mangala. “It would be an honor to fight you” Raging battle breaks out between them. Never is a blow struck in deception. Both men fight with dignity. Mangala finally defeats the Kshatriya. But leaves him alive. “I was honored to fight you Kshatriya. Your mind is strong and just. I am Mangala and I am pleased to have met with you.” The Kshatriya takes off his helmet and Mangala realizes it was Dr Digora. “Father! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to see Mangala, not my son. I realize today that you have always been true and virtuous. You could never be the monster they accuse to be. Why don’t you come back my son? Why don’t both of you come back and we can sort everything out.”

“My choices are not for me to make father. I have been put to this task by destiny herself. I’m merely a thread in this intricately woven cloth called life. My place is here, and I must meet it.”

“So be it. Do not be angry with me my son. Being a scientos I also have to act a certain way. I do not wish to fight you, but you are right, destiny is ironically against us.” Meanwhile a Nimosa attacks them. They suddenly start working together as a team and destroy the machine. As parting words Mangala tells his father that he understands his father’s dilemma and decision. His father tells him that he is proud of his sons. The only thing in his life that has satisfied him was raising them as his sons.

Pembe is meanwhile fighting off another Nimosa on the other wing.

Firis and Kaulatta soon part ways. Firis is left stirred. As days pass she slowly starts to break down. Her emotions release a sort of energy in her she had never before felt. She also starts hearing voices in her head. They tell her things she has never heard before. In time she realizes the voice is actually her cat. She becomes stronger as she hones in on these energies. Her anger gives her focus and direction. She starts to fully communicate telepathically with her cat. She can also read people's minds easily. Her cat becomes her guru and feeds her full with hatred for the shyas. She slowly learns to harness the energies of nature as told by her cat.

One day she encounters a group of shyas who are ruthlessly searching the city for rebels. One of them is Kaulatta. He tells her to trust him and that he would help her. She is standing calmly but she sees one of the Kshatriyas holding Timala in his hands. He looks limp. As Kaulatta is about to tell his fellow kshatriyas that she is not a threat, she grabs the one who has Timala and snaps his neck. She jumps around and fights them off with the agility of a cat injuring and killing most of them. She is overwhelmed by their great numbers and is shortly captured. Kaulatta tells her that she will not be able to get away now. She is really in deep. But tries to talk to her and understand why she acted in that manner. She stays silent.

The years in captivity, Kaulatta slowly gets to know Firis better. She accepts that she will be soon executed and opens up to the only company she has in prison. Hearing her stories Kaulatta starts to grow fond of Firis. His point of view of the Shudras goes through a major change. He starts to empathize more. He starts to feel. Kaulatta hopes that if he helps Firis get out of prison that she would probably fall in love with him for saving her life. So he helps Firis escape but he doesn’t receive the appreciation he had hoped for. Firis calmly and composed almost as if she was already ready for death shows no such appreciation. She takes it as a second chance to seek what she truly desired, revenge. She wanted to have nothing to do with the kshatriyas. She even acted distant with Kaulatta once she was out.

Firis had found information about the camps of the Jibons on the outskirts, from the other inmates. She was itching to go and find this place since she learnt that they believed in a similar force as to what she learnt from Timala. Firis soon finds the place where she had heard the Jibons were camping. But she did not realize that Kaulatta had been following her. His love for her still lingered, but had now turned more to a black obsession. He hoped to find out what she actually wanted and win her over. When he saw her going to the Jibon camp he knew Firis had now become one of the enemies. But deep inside, he still longed for her.

As time passed Firis learnt how to control her powers under the guidance of Mangala and Pembe. She became more close to Mangala over time. She felt a real connection with him. She felt like Timala was somewhere inside him, he seemed to say the same things as Timala. She liked the warm, comfortable, familiar feeling.

Kaulatta who had now learnt of Firis’s love, turned bitter. His love turned completely black and it swallowed him whole. In spite he informed the scientos of the position of the Jibon camps. He also made plan with the scientos to attack the camp at night since it was forbidden for any shyas to fight at night. They believed that if people fought at night, not only will you have to fight your enemy but all the spirits that awakened at this hour. The scientos were obviously men of science and had left this tradition far behind. They only saw an upper hand in attacking with such deception. Kaulatta also makes it to the post of a scientos because of this. And his childhood wish is fulfilled.

Meanwhile, deeply involved with this new relationship, Mangala grew distant to his duties as a commander; he grew distant from his brother. Pembe grew more and more impatient with them. Pembe felt that his brother, who was always weak, was now completely destroyed by this woman. He felt that his real brother had been stolen away from not only him but from the futures of their people as well. This angered him even more.

The final battle takes place, when one night, because of Kaulatta's planning, the whole Kshatriya army attacks the Jibon camp by surprise. Traditionally no one fought at night so an attack at that time was unexpected. There is a final battle between Mangala and Kaulatta. Digora who was sneaking into the camp earlier to warn Mangala gets detected and has to fight off many Jibons. Finally he has a face off with Pembe who ruthlessly kills his. Although Pembe knew of his father's identity he spares no one. His fury is tenfold as is his power. He feels he has to compensate for the loss brought upon them by his brother. Firis fights many kshatriyas all alone. After a while she is overpowered by the sheer number and she is beaten almost lifeless. Mangala comes to her rescue but also suffers a lot of damage. As they lie together waiting for death, hardly able to move, Firis looks into Mangala’s eyes. Their last look at each other - they confess their love for each other. The battle rages on around them and about 10 kshatriyas charge toward them to finish them off. But between them time slowed down as they stared. The noise was silenced and they were lost in each other. They closed their eyes and moved toward one another. They were ready to die together. They kissed. Suddenly time sped up again and a huge energy blast radiated from Mangala and Firis. All the kshatriyas in a hundred meter radius around them were crushed in their suits. All machines for a mile around dropped dead and lifeless. There was stillness. As if the energy form within them had blasted everything away. Their souls, their energies, had united, releasing an energy much greater than that any 'shya had ever felt or imagined. The battle was now over. The kshatriyas were retreating. Mangala and Firis lay, still kissing, their eyes still closed. Believing they were dead.

Days later Mangala decides to quit the war. He sees the destruction. He sees the pain, the suffering. He learns of his father’s death and it saddens him more that his father was killed by Pembe. He decides he can’t fight anymore. He asks Firis to come along, but her thirst for revenge wasn’t quenched. In fact once she had the taste she just wanted more. She was addicted. Mangala was disturbed by this side of Firis. Although he still loved her, they soon parted ways.

Pembe is alarmed by his brother’s decision. After the deception by the scientos he was even more full of hatred. He could not understand how Mangala could feel like letting them go like this. Even Firis is alarmed. They try and convince him to stay but cannot. His mind is too restless and he feels like there is another way.

Mangala leaves the war.

EPISODE 5

Firis, now addicted to warfare, soon started to command her own troops. Pembe who saw her earlier as weak now saw her in new light. Her powers had increased ten fold since she had joined. There was certain insanity in her eyes, the thirst for blood. A wicked smile before she unleashed herself onto her enemies. Pembe now noticed her more than before. But he had no room in his heart for love, nor did she. They saw each other as comrades, as shadows as reflections of each other. In fighting no one had seen such fury as theirs. The kshatriyas were falling. The scientos grew weak.

Mangala watched the broken city from top of the mountain. "What is all this? Jibana? You’ve protected me for so long? What should I do? I feel I have deceived my brother, but I cannot kill anymore. I cannot go on with this fighting? We’ll destroy everything and then what?" Mangala sat under the huge tree praying to Jibana for days. The same questions, the same doubts, but no answers. He sat for days for weeks. His body growing thinner. His mind growing more faint.

The scientos were almost powerless now. The creation had lost many followers, lost knowledge. They were no match for the powers of the Jibons. Never had the shyas seen such raw natural power. All their life they had been taught to use these devices to help them. Now a few were taking on a thousand, and without this technology. The whole world was turning upside down, the arrogance of the scientos; brought their destruction, their greed, lust for power was their end. Large number of people started to join the Jibon forces. Most of them were shudras, a few vaishyas, some kshatriyas, and even one scientos.

Dr Mirva, Kaulatta former trainer and father had seen this tide of war changing. He never felt completely tied down to the laws of the society anyway. Firis was weary of the scientos. She had hated all upper castes. She knew how they played their parts to keep things as they were. She knew how they had all killed her parents.

Dr Mirva knew Firis from before though. He had worked with her father on developing telepathic devices. The project was killed by the scientos of the high council. They saw such a device as a threat to the hierarchy of language and knowledge that had been created. Making such a device would mean that all people had access to all ideas and the shyas would become a collective consciousness. The center threatened them and asked them to forget about the project. Firis’s father however had never confined to the laws of the scientos fully. He quit his job as a scientos and started to live in a family structure in the city. Slowly he further researched on the development of the device on his own. He slowly became an active part of the Jibons. Dr. Mirva helped him get access to inside technology and information. They were almost like brothers on two sides of the fence. He started to become closer to Firis. He became like a father to her. He told her stories of her father that she never knew. She found out about everything about her father’s past. She felt a real loss. Her anger turned to sadness. Slowly she became a child once again.

Kaulatta had also later joined the forces of the Jibons. His intentions though had not changed yet. He slowly learnt the hierarchies of the Jibon forces. He learnt their strategies. Slowly he poisoned the structure. He knew Mangala was too powerful to fight, so he became extremely close to him and poisoned his thoughts. He worked like smartly patiently working away at the bottom.

The Jibons crumbled away. The war was over. Slowly and painfully the Jibons lost their glory.

Mangala who had left the war years earlier had now traveled and met many people. He had shown many people how to harness the natural energies present around them. He showed them a path of co existence with nature. He empowered the underprivileged people with a way of life, with knowledge that was all around them. Mangala meditated for and conversed to get answers of many things that his mind was filled with. He tried many times to clear his mind of all his thoughts. One night he had a dream where Jibana presented herself to him in the form of a creature made of many animals and the texture of the bark of a tree. She spoke to him without opening her mouth, as if she were in his head. She told him to give himself up to her. To go into the forest and learn from her. She told him to trust her and not be afraid, not even of death. And then he died, as if she had sucked out his soul. All things around him turned white as he floated off. He felt light, he felt alive, yet he knew he was dead. He felt nothing but felt consumed. His mind clear and cleaned of all thoughts all attachments. He woke up that morning feeling fresh, feeling alive, as if he had been born again. He knew what he had to do. He left in search for the forest she had shown him.

In time Jibana showed Mangala many truths of life. He started to consciously empty his mind. One day as he was meditating, Mangala managed to empty his mind of all thoughts. Suddenly, boom, he gained enlightenment. Thoughts and feelings flowed out of the emptiness of his mind, creating constellations, planets, stars. He stumbled upon the unifying equation of all things around him, of all life. He traveled through his universe and started to mold them and play with them. He scattered a part of his soul all over the universe. Wherever they touched land, life was formed. He spent many days in mediation overseeing the formation of his universe. When he awakened from his trance he saw many creatures sitting around him. His soul was glowing from a new power. He was now a creator of a Universe. He was now a supplier of souls. The animals felt his warmth and resolve and gathered around him. It was like a low hum, a vibration that massaged their souls. Through him parts of their souls were being transferred to this universe. One planet in particular attracted the most souls. It was called earth.

Mangala leaves the forest. He heads to the city to tell the people of what he had learnt. He wants to tell his brother, he wants to tell Firis.

When Mangala get there he sees the city in ruins. The war seemed to be over but there was destruction everywhere. Homeless people roaming around, helpless, destroyed. People wounded, people, sick, without food or water they helplessly just waited. Kshatriyas were patrolling trying to keep people in check. Arresting anyone, who showed even the slightest signs of disobedience. Many were voluntarily getting arrested since they had nowhere else to go. Mangala was saddened to see this. He calmly walked about walking past the people helping whoever he could. The kshatriyas didn’t recognize him. Everyone was just awed at his presence. He seemed to be glowing. People started to get up and follow him. The kshatriyas watched as if something had taken over their bodies, they couldn’t react, they just stood and watched. He walked all around the edges of the city, gathering people as he walked. He finally sat down under the huge tree at the northern edge of the city. He started to tell people everything he had learnt.

Mangala and Pembe met on the edges of the forest. Pembe was happy to see him but blamed Mangala for their defeat in the war. Firis was overjoyed to see Mangala.

Mangala and Pembe become close once again. As Pembe sees more power and resolve in his brother he starts to learn from him. Mangala now has a large number of disciples. He also trains Firis and Pembe in the art of concentrating and plugging into natures energies. Pembe is still not satisfied as he sees his brother is still more powerful than him, after years of him being the stronger one he cannot stand being second in line. He asks his brother about everything. Mangala tells Pembe of earth and how he created it. Pembe is curious to see it and so Mangala takes his brother along with him onto earth. After that Mangala and Pembe visit earth again many times. Pembe learns the trick of going to earth. He is jealous of his brother’s creation. He realizes that Mangala had not yet created a creature like himself on earth. He thinks it is his duty to create such a creature so he disperses his soul over earth. But his soul is tainted with greed, and an insatiable thirst for power, and so man is born.

Mangala is furious by this act of plebe’s he had wanted his universe to be perfect in every way. He asked Pembe to leave. He started to visit earth many times after that, as many learned and great men in order to hold in mans greed and make him the guardian of the planet. But Pembe killed his brother. Pembe felt humiliated, ashamed, deceived by his brother. He felt that Mangala had gone against the prophecies, letting down thousands of shyas and Jibana herself. He saw Mangala as cunning, sly and self centered. So he felt it unjust for such a man to possess such great power.

As soon as Mangala dies his soul explodes and scatters over the people around him. Pembe who was closest to him attains most of his brother’s powers.

Pembe slowly starts to learn his brother’s ways and attains ultimate power. He single handedly attacks the centre once again. Defeat was not an option for him. He felt he had lost everything and now he was ready to lose himself as well. He manages to penetrate through most of the centre and destroys most of the kshatriyas single handedly. He finally enters the room of the scientos of the high council and destroys the chambers in which the highest scientos are kept constantly connected to the centre. As soon as he does this he realizes that the scientos were already dead and were being used by the creation as puppets to control the shyas. All the shyas believed that they were their own masters but the masters were their creations. He is shocked. All his anger of the shyas disappeared. He had spent so much time cutting the puppets fighting them, killing them. He felt confused. All that he focused toward was false. All that he believed was false. All his anger was false. His bother, his father, they were all dead, because of him. In fighting the lifelessness he too had become lifeless. He started to break down. His brother’s teachings rushed back to him. Without knowing the truth, his brother spoke of it. He used to think of it his brothers weakness, to feel for another, but that was what set shyas apart from their creations. And now he had become one of the creations. He was the enemy that he was fighting all the while. An uncontrollable energy radiated from him. He could not feel. Then an explosion. The creation was obliterated. The city centre with it. A shockwave traveled through the city destroying everything. He couldn’t control it. He collapsed on his knees as it ended. The city was dead. It was over. Pembe wanted to see the beauty of earth one last time before he died. He concentrated. As he died his soul mixed in with Mangala’s and created a perfectly balanced soul. A perfect being was born on earth at the time. A perfect mixture of Mangala and Pembe. The last one sent to cleanse the earth of humanities greed. He was known as Kalki.

(THE END)

MYTH XX1 - MANY STORIES AWAY

2007-03-23T16:43:00.000+05:30

MANY STORIES AWAY ....by Sumona Chakravarty

INTRODUCTION

A SECRET

You believe it. Don’t you?

I mean… you must remember.

You must, at least, remember believing it?

Or did they take it away from you forever? Your parents, your teachers, childhood friends who told you Santa Claus didn’t exist and it wasn’t the storks that brought you home. Did they make you stop believing? Did they make you forget it all?

How, the story of ‘how-the-world-came-to-be’ is really just that. A story.

You’re a part of it. A part of a grand adventure, the character in an epic tale.

Someone wrote it.

And believed in it. And it came to be.

That’s it. that’s the big secret of creation everyone’s searching for. Who are we? Why are we here? Simple. We, and everything around us, are a product of someone else’s imagination, dreams… and faith.

That’s the way it has always been. Faith.

At one point, the point, at the beginning of everything and the end of nothing faith was all there was. But faith moved away from the point. With nothing to hold it, nothing to contain it, it drifted aimlessly.

A story was spun around that floating faith. Faith filled it and infused it with pulsating energy. The threads of imagination that had created the story, then burst out of its fabric in a dazzling brilliance of light. In a haze of infinite colours they wove together again to form- reality. Faith spilt out and drifted again.

But that’s just how it began. The story goes on. From the first story was spun countless others. Stories within stories. Water, earth, wind, fire and ether created stories. Animals created stories. Even ordinary people like you and me had stories to tell. Dreams, they really wished would come true. Each story became a reality. All it took was a little faith.

“You say it’s true then?” you ask me. “That I could cook up any cock and bull story and there is enough faith floating around to make it come true? Or does the faith you speak of work only in ‘a haze of infinite colours’?”

Really… no. You can’t spin any old yarn and try believing in it. Your story must be born out of your deepest desires. It’s got to be genuine, something you really believe in. Not to sound corny, but it should be… umm… from the heart.

Do you believe now? Now that you know the secret? Do you at least remember believing it?

If you do, you won’t be sitting here. You’d stop reading and start writing. You’d start writing your own story. And with the final full stop you would know, that somewhere, many stories away, your story would be coming true.

Today something extraordinary happened.

I wrote my story. Believed in it. And with the final full stop it shall come to be.

My story. Well my story is about a song, a light, a fight, a letter and a truth. It’s about how the secret of creation was discovered anew, eachtime, in different universes through these. How spaces seperated by time and distance were connected by a single Story. And how the secret lived on through this Story, moving from one universe to the next, many stories away.

A SONG

Sometimes, when they take everything else away from you, all you are left with is your story.

I remember that day so vividly. I had just watched her die.

She looked at me with a smile in her eyes. A deep golden glow filled her. I couldn’t stop ranting, screaming crying. How could she just leave me? But all she did was smile.

And then I heard a song. It seemed to come from within her. The light that filled her pulsated powerfully with the rhythm.

I could only look on helplessly. Quietly sobbing.

It dimmed and grew brighter. Dimmed, and grew brighter and brighter each time. Till I couldn’t see her any more.

As the song neared its end and began to fade away, the light left her body. It diffused, filling her room, flowing through every object in it. Her bed, the books in the shelf, her dog-eared cook book on the table, the table, the rickety stools, her walking stick, her plants, the weather-beaten rug on the floor- it passed through everything for one fleeting second, and in a flash moved on. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

And then it entered me. No words can describe what it felt like. I felt lost, weightless, anchorless. Like I was drifting and there was no direction. Like everything my life depended on was actually not there. I felt divine.

It lasted an eternity and yet was over in the fraction of a second.

She was gone. Only her smile lingered.

That night I told my wife everything. She knew that I needed to talk her, that I needed her to listen.

I told her about grandmamma and how she died. I lay down with my head on her stomach. I could feel the baby moving inside. Could he hear me?

Her songs. She always expressed herself better in song. She sang me to sleep every night. I would crawl into bed and watch her finishing her chores. She’d blow out the light orbs, gently lie down, and draw me towards her. She always smelt like wildflowers.

Hummmmmnnnn…

A quiet hum. Then in hushed whispers she would begin her song.

Her songs were not peaceful lullabies. They weren’t fairy stories to keep me happy. They didn’t put me to sleep.

In the darkness of the night she was luminous as she sang. I could see her ensconced in a soft cocoon of light.

I heard the same song every night. The same story- sometimes just parts, sometimes the whole of it. But it never failed to keep me captivated.

It always started at the beginning.

There was an angel. She had no form- yet she was beautiful. She sparkled and the light broke into rainbows. A free spirit. She didn’t need anyone or anything.

The whole world used to be full of magical beings like her. It was barren, yet charged with their energies. Idyllic. Pure. Full of song and always in motion. A never-ending dance.

No attachments. No loss. No pain. No anger.

But something happened that changed things forever.

I heard the rest of it in bits and pieces.

She was spiraling, vibrating, singing when suddenly she heard something. A sound unlike any she had heard before. She tried to ignore it but it wouldn’t go away. It seemed wrong, it scared her but she couldn’t help herself.

She followed it, all the way to the other end of the world. And that was where she found him. A baby. Abandoned. Crying. She didn’t know what or who he was but she could feel his little heart aching for love. Stranger still, she felt drawn to him.

I want to pull him close to me. Pour my happiness into him. Wrap myself around him. Feel his innocence. I want to feel love. I want to feel his sorrow. I just want to feel something.

She did try. She gathered her energies, the iridescent light that sparkled around her and flowed tightly around him. But she slipped straight through him. She tried again. She tried to soak into him. Soak him into her. In vain! Again and again she tried in vain.

And then she felt.

Pain. Frustration. Anger.

That was when things changed forever. Her entire being collapsed to a single point, and from that point a new creature emerged. She saw her body take shape, mould itself to the likeness of the baby. It matured, evolved. In many ways it started looking different from the baby. It was over in an instant.

She planted her feet firmly on the ground. She could feel its hard coldness. She walked towards him slowly, cautiously and knelt down next to him. Her heart pounded violently within her. He looked up at her and stopped crying. She picked him up and held him close, felt him draw warmth, life and comfort from her.

It felt perfect.

But she wanted so much more for him. Her world was barren, unfeeling. She wanted to fill his world with colour. She wanted to infuse blues and greens into the grey earth and sky. She imagined a world full of wondrous objects for him to touch, smell, taste. She wanted to create mysteries for him to uncover, new lands for him to explore.

Cradling him in her arms she walked for days over the endless barren expanses.

Where do I go? Where can I find a home for us?

Her anxiety drove her mad.

One day, she just stopped. She stopped searching. Stopped hoping. She dropped down on the ground, Her baby curled up on her lap and drifted off to sleep. He looked so peaceful, so beautiful. She couldn’t help but smile. And after a long time she felt like singing.

She closed her eyes and poured everything inside her into this song. It was the story of everything she wanted, all that she was searching for.

The ground, the sky and the rocks reverberated with the music- as if alive. She could sense something changing around her.

At the end of the song, she opened her eyes. She couldn’t believe it had actually happened.

Grandmamma never really told me what had ‘actually happened’ but I could picture it so clearly. She saw her creation. The world she had built for her little boy. The image remained with me every night as I drifted off to sleep, and entered my dreams.

I knew, even when I was little, that there was ancient magic in Grandmamma’s songs. She told me later, when I was older, how the songs came to her in her dreams. And much later, a year before she died, she told me the whole truth. She really shouldn’t have told me. I would have been better off not knowing, not believing.

She told me about the lady in her story.

And how her story was really… not just a story.

She was like a ghost in Grandmamma’s life. She never spoke a word and appeared at the most unexpected places. In classrooms, at the market, the ball, at my parents’ wedding, the scene of their murder, their funeral, and finally at my Grandmamma’s place the day I moved in with her.

That day, at night when I was asleep, she spoke for the first time. She reached out and held Grandmamma’s hand, stroked her hair and sang. She told her story, starting at the beginning.

She told her one other thing. She said it was my destiny to find a story. A story that would change the world.

After that she only appeared in her dreams.

Could I do it too then? Could I create my own world my, own story and watch it materialize? Could I want something badly enough to make it come true?

I became obsessed. I had to find the answers. For a year I shut the rest of the world out of my life. I had to find my story.

Everyone thought I was losing my mind. They agitated and conspired. They used to hate her. Now they hated me too. “He’s taken after his loony grandmother!”, they said. I didn’t care.

And then she died. I lost all hope.

That night I lay talking to my wife, I felt my baby moving inside her.

It was then that they barged in. They broke the door down, threw me off the bed, pushed her into the corner. They kicked and cursed and stripped me bare. They twisted my arm behind me, gagged me and tied me up. They took me away from everything. They took everything away from me. I could only hear her screaming.

I’m sitting in an empty, dark, windowless cell. I can’t see anything, I can’t hear anything. Just the cold wet stone beneath me. That’s all I can feel.

But that’s not all I’m left with. I’ve found my story.

It’s about my son.

I want him to find a better world for himself. For us. I know he will. I want him to be strong. I want him to fight for his dreams, against all odds.

Did he hear me talking that night? He can’t believe I’m mad. Can he?

I hope he heard me.

A messenger from another dream like world,

Whispers into quiet slumbers

The secret of creation.

A father holds the secret dear

For he knows it must pass on

To his son.

A LIGHT

I hope she’s safe! What could have stopped her from coming? Or did she… didn’t she want to come? Does she too think I’m a lunatic? Then it’s good she stayed away. Would she have scorned me like the rest? Her hatred…no. No, I could not bear to see her hate me. Am I a lunatic?

I hope she’s safe. Good she didn’t come. Would not have been able to leave. Will she miss me? Oh but to see her one last time!

No.

Why is this happening to me? Why me?

If I hadn’t wandered off that day. If I had only stayed with the rest, none of this would have happened.

But the situation was desperate. Another hunt in vain. Back home. Well, back home there was nothing. No food. Death. Pain. A strange disease was spreading insidiously in the waters, slowly killing everyone. The Reef itself was gradually dying.

I had promised her that I would come back with food. Promised her, I would find a better world for us to live in, to start our lives anew. Had hoped I could go back and ask her to marry me.

I left the hunting group behind. They were too scared to go further. They wanted to go back to the Reef. But I swam forward recklessly into the depths of the uncharted, murky waters. As I said, I was desperate. I couldn’t go back empty handed. I had promised I wouldn’t.

There was no turning back.

I swam for days. Was I going in circles? How could I tell? All I saw was darkness. Dark, silent, lifeless water stretching endlessly all around me.

Till something began pulling me. It was as if the water itself had come alive. I felt weightless, almost.

And then I saw it.

After that it was easy to find my way back home. I had to spread the news. First I would tell her. Should I then immediately ask her to marry me? She would say yes. I knew she would. Right?

I didn’t even get to see her. They got it out of me. They called me mad.

‘He’s a lunatic.’

No… listen!

‘It’s the curse.’

‘The same curse that had killed his father.’

What! My father died in a hunting accident!

‘Remember he too had wandered into the uncharted waters.’

‘Oh yes! Poor fellow.’

‘Poor fellow indeed. He tried to brainwash everyone into believing that the waters pushed him to the end of our world.’

‘Fool! Madman!’

‘Something about how the waters ended, wasn’t it? And how a new world began!’

‘He saw the sky, he said!’

Yes… that’s what I saw!

‘The sky? But I thought that existed only in ancient fables!’

‘Ya, he never grew out of his grandmothers stories! The fool!’

‘Give him a chance and he would have claimed to have seen land as well!’

No wait!

‘The madness killed him in the end.’

No you don’t understand.

Send him away! We don’t want him polluting our minds and scaring our children! Yeah! Send the mad man away! Yeah! Banish him!

They screamed. They cursed. They crushed me with their frenzy.

For two days they put me behind bars as they debated over my fate. For two days I waited for her to come.

Then they banished me forever from the Reef.

My father? Was this the truth? He saw it too? Then it must exist. No. I’m not mad. They can’t make me believe I am. I’ll find it again. I’ll go back and show it to them too.

There! The pull. Please take me there again.

I see it! The darkness of the water breaks. Slivers of light brighter than I have ever seen before dance across. Endlessly this dancing veil of light spreads above me. It’s so so…

It’s beautiful.

I still feel the pull. This time it’s stronger. Holds me back. The sky lies just beyond. Just let me go. Let me see it!

I’m still floating. Is this the end?

I’m falling! The waters rushing away from me! It’s letting me go. I see the sky. Wait. Now I’m not falling anymore. Something firm is holding me up. Not water.

Light. There’s so much light. I’m still. I can’t move. The sky lies above me but what lies beneath? Could it be? Is this… land?

Everything feels so different. I feel warm. It reminds me of her. The warmth. I see new colours in abundance. There’s so much... life, here. Everything feels so alive, so vibrant. She should have been here. Our children could live in this wonderful world. We could all leave the Reef, and come here.

But why am I finding it so hard to breathe. Like there is too much surrounding me and I can’t take it in. I want to float, dive, swim but the sky can’t hold my feeble body up.

This is the new world. I know it. I know she will be happy here. Our children will roam these strange plains. They will hold themselves up. Soak in the tremendous vitality of the sky. They will leave the waters behind and find their place on the land. I can see it so clearly in my head.

Ah! I really can’t breathe now.

I found it!

Everything is a haze. It’s getting… it’s getting very… warm.

I know I’ve found it!

This- is the end.

And he knew, it was but, only a beginning.

To a son many stories away

The secret is finally revealed.

He creates a new world,

Where for generations after him

His people will live.

A FIGHT

How did you like the boss’ speech today eh?

Uh…

Hundred years since our grandfathers moved into this Valley! Amazing huh?

Er…

Not bad… My dad used to tell me about how our family moved here and began working in the fucking quarry. The company had made some grand promises then. They all came in hope of a better life. Those were the good ole days. Hah! Look what’s left of us! Bloody hell… what about you? Did your family come in after the depression as well?

Um…

Oh yeah! I saw your old man’s name registered in the old employee list. He died in the quarry didn’t he? So sorry. What about your grandpa? Taxi! One sec- Taxi! South extension? Yeah.You need a lift?

Uh… no thank you sir.

Sure?

Yes sir. The bus will be here in a bit.

Ok then… see you Monday.

Number 42. I get on to the same bus every evening. From the same stop. At exactly the same time. Every weekday for the last twenty years.

6:25. As always. It screeches to a stop. Bloody obnoxious prick of a boss. I get on. No window seat. Again.

It’s getting hotter everyday. Where the hell did I keep that handkerchief? Ah! There! K.W.S.- my initials. Embroidered on neatly by her. That’s the picture of her that will always stay with me. Sitting by the window. Hair tied back loosely. A few strands falling on her face. Bent over her work. Sometimes a pillow cover, a tablemat, a blouse. Her needle swiftly flying in and out of the fabric. She realizes I’m watching her and smiles. Hell she doesn’t deserve a screwed up asshole like me.

Shit! Ah my head!

The bus stopped suddenly. I went flying. Hit my head. Shit!

But she’s such a drag. Like she’s dead or something. I hit her and she just sits there. I scream, I curse and she just… sits there! What happened to the spirited girl I had fallen in love with? She’s dead! She’s so fucking dead. Aah! Why? Why? Why why why? I hate the puny bitch.

My stop. I get off. Home’s five minutes away.

He walked through what once used to be the heart of the city. The early migrants had settled here. After years of economic depression and political struggle they had hoped that migrating to the Valley would help them start afresh. It was a new world- full of opportunities. Those first few years were so perfect. There was plenty of money, the city was beautifully planned, the business at the quarry flourished. Everyone was happier now than they had been ever before.

But it was short-lived. As more and more people moved to the valley- the horrors of the past surfaced again. There was no money, no food. Crime and corruption crept in. the city spilled out of its boundaries- dingy lanes replacing wide avenues, shanties instead of grand bungalows. The streets became unsafe.

Damn! The streetlights are off again. I refuse to file another freaking complaint. Somebody should shoot the dimwits over at the corporation. Bloody sitting on their asses!

Why is everything falling apart? Things at work… this place…damn, even things at home. We barely talk anymore. She says nothing. I just scream and shout my lungs out. Why doesn’t she say anything? It’s like she’s dead. Like I’ve killed her. Why can’t I just stop? I can. Right? But why can’t she stop me. Why does she have to take my shit! She’s so spineless, so lifeless. I could kill her.

I couldn’t. I have loved her too much. But if she could just give me a reason… if I could just … love her again. Everything would be fine. Everything would be fine.

Number 74B. Home.

Inside he heard him knock. Ma! Dad’s back! He goes into his room and slams the door shut. Fuck! If he loses it again I’m going to… Fuck!

Why does he have to screw our happiness? How does she take it? She never cries, never shouts back, she’s so so strong. We should leave. Just walk out while we are still sane. Before he breaks her.

He turns the music up. Shuts everything out.

One sec!

Bang! Bang!

She quickly tries to finish the pattern. Fumbles as she ties the knot.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

She pushes the needle into the pincushion and runs to the door.

Hi. How was work?

Same.

Tea?

Why the hell did you take so long to open the door?

She walks into the kitchen.

What? What were you doing woman?

He walks into their room. Her work is lying on the bed- spools of thread, needles tucked away, a blouse with the beginnings of a flower pattern.

He picks it up, walks to the kitchen and shoves it in her face.

Is this all you can do? Is this what you were busy doing while I was waiting at the door? Have you seen yourself? You’re a fucking hag! I work all day to support this family and all you do is bloody needlework! You’re useless! You hear me? You. Are. Useless!

He threw it down and walked away. She could hear the sound of the shower. The same thing happened each time. The sound of the shower. The faint sound of music from her son’s room. And she? Alone. Drowning in her silence.

I take it all, don’t I? I mean what more can he want from me? I’ve never complained. What more can I give him? What more does he want? I don’t know. I don’t know! What more…

Every time I hope. I pray that everything will be normal again. Not wonderful. Not perfect. Just normal.

She picked up the blouse and slowly pulled it apart. She watched it rip through the middle. She walked slowly to her room, opened the cupboard. One by one she took out everything she had made.

Pull and rip. The torn fabric piled up at her feet.

Pull and rip. Blouses, blankets, hankies, eiderdowns, pillow covers, napkins, mats.

Pull and rip. The sound of the shower. Pull and rip. Music in the background.

She picked up the scissor and ran it through the curtains. She moved from one room to the next.

She pulled out one book after another and ripped out the pages. The paper scattered everywhere.

The shower always helped him cool down. The sound of the gushing water blocked every thing out. He had done it again. When he had sworn not to. It was up to him to put an end to it. But he had screwed up again. Again!

I just want everything to be normal. Not wonderful. Not perfect. Just normal.

The sound of the shower seemed to calm him down.

Pull and rip. The shower stopped. She held her breath. He stepped out.

What the hell is going on!

She looked back at him blankly.

What have you done? Have you lost your bloody mind! You bitch! I’m going to kill you!

He ran towards her and threw her against the wall.

She looked up at him. He raised her hand- ready to strike her down. But for the first time he saw tears in her eyes. He stepped back slowly, looking straight at her. Stumbling.

The music stopped. But they didn’t notice. Behind them a door opened slightly. Quietly he looked through the crack. What the fuck is going on! What has happened? Is Ma dead? Did he kill her? No. She’s alive. She’s crying? But... but she never cries. She never cries.

He shut himself in again. The music started, louder this time.

I’m just trying to disappear. That what you want, don’t you? You want me to erase myself from your life. Right? Well… that’s what I’m trying… that’s what I’m trying to do. You sick sonovabitch! She screamed out.

They looked at each other in silence.

What have I done?

What have I done?

Things can be normal again. I know it can.

Everything will be normal again. It has to be.

And just like that- it happened.

He sat down beside her and put his head on her lap. She bent over and kissed him, her tears streaming into his hair. And slowly, softly they began talking.

A new world full of promises

Slowly starts to die.

But amidst the chaos

Man and woman, together

Find the secret.

It helps them survive.

A LETTER

Mom. Dad.

I had to leave. And I’m never coming back.

This place is a hell house.

Don’t try looking for me.

They found his note on the dining table the next morning.

Angry, lost, confused,

Their son choses a different path.

He starts a new story,

And shapes the world’s

Destiny.

A TRUTH

News flash!

In a historic move the World Council has decided to invite the leader of the Rebellion to a special Session of Parliament. The members of the WC Governing Body are hoping that this will end the eight-year political struggle between the establishment and the rebel group. They will also address the accusations of corruption made by the Rebellion against forty-six members of the WCGB…

I was in my room at the Rebel Headquarters that evening. Waiting nervously for the news. What had happened at the Parliament Session? Had they agreed to put those bastards behind bars? They have to. They can’t ignore the corruption that has seeped into their establishment forever. Everyone knows the truth. The whole world is on our side. But they’re so bloody brainwashed, bunch of cowards. Shit! Before it’s too late… shit!

I was writing in my diary when she barged in. I had never seen her look that way.

They’re dead! My parents!

What?

He killed them!

What? Who?

The bloody sonovabitch! He killed them! Shot them down! I would have killed him by now if he hadn’t killed himself! Coward!

Calm down darling.

No!

Relax!

Don’t tell me to fucking relax! He killed them!

What are you saying? Just tell me what happened.

Your best friend. He’s ‘like a brother’ to you right? I told you he was up to no good. ‘A brother’! Murderer! He fucking shot my parents!

What! When? How?

The much-anticipated Session of Parliament ended in violence last evening when an unidentified member of the Rebellion shot two members of the WCGB, killing them immediately. He then shot himself in the head. The session was nearing an inconclusive end when a few members of the rebel group got agitated and accused the entire Governing Body of being senile starting a shouting match between the two parties. Suddenly three shots were heard from the crowd…

We were driving back from the funeral. I tried to make conversation but I could make out she didn’t feel like talking. I knew she blamed me for what had happened.

“They were the nicest people I have known. They were the ones who made me believe that I had the right to fight for a better world. They chose to do this by serving the World Council. But they let me chose my own battle and supported my decision to join the Rebellion. Sorry Ma. Sorry Pa. I let you down. I didn’t mean to, but I let you down. I miss you. And it’s my fault. I miss you so much…”

Then she broke down.

My ma and pa. I don’t remember ever missing them. When I left home I vowed never to return. I hated them. I hated them. I hated the fact that the rest of the world loved them. I hated being my father’s son. My mother’s little boy.

But most of all I hated the way they fought. Behind their glorious public lives as Heads of the grand WCGB they had horrible, secret, private lives. They hated each other. They acted like complete strangers at home. They never had any time for each other. For me.

That’s why I left. That’s why I joined the Rebellion. I wanted to destroy everything they sought to protect. I didn’t care that they were the few people on the Council who wanted the same things we did, who were honest and were tired of the corruption they saw around them. I didn’t care! I just wanted to destroy them- make them powerless.

I was foolish. I was. But that doesn’t change anything.

I reached out and held her hand. Ei… it’ll be all right.

No. You don’t understand. I killed my parents.

Ya. I can’t ever begin to understand… I’ve never been in your position. But…

You have. You killed your parents the day you left. But you felt nothing. Your heartless. That’s why you can’t even begin to understand.

… Their daughter, an active member of the Rebellion, attended their funeral. There were over five thousand people outside the crematorium who had come to offer their condolences…

… The WC is using this tragic incident to win back the people’s sympathies. Several members have promised the people that the assassination of their favourite leaders will not be tolerated and that immediate action will be taken against this new face of terrorism.

… International Army has been sanctioned by the WC to round up all the terrorists and ‘smoke them out’ of their hideouts. The army has already bombed several areas in the northern part of the Capital where the Headquarters are believed to be located. Some areas have been razed to the ground. Food and water supplies have been cut off. Death count on the rise.

Sir, our people are anxious. They want an audience with you.

Huh?

I was distracted; I barely heard what he said.

Sir.

Yes?

They need you.

All right. Give me five minutes.

I didn’t know how to face the people. I had nothing to say to them. I mean what can I say to people who have lost their homes and families because of me. That I’m sorry? Hah! Sorry! Sorry your daughter died. Sorry you have nothing left to live for. Sorry I can’t help you.

They look up to us to lead them. Now half of ours dead, some have fled. The rest of us? Lofty Rebel leaders have been reduced to terrorists!

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. We were supposed fight with our intellect not resort to crude guns and bombs. We were fighting as equals, dammit! Now we are petty criminals. With blood on our hands.

Sir. They are waiting.

Ok.

Thank you sir.

Wait. Where is she?

Who, sir?

Has she left?

Oh. Yes sir. She left last night. Sir?

Yes?

May I suggest something? Wouldn’t it be helpful to approach your parents now? After all…

That’ll be all.

Oh- ok sir.

Terrorist troops have attacked the capital from all sides threatening to destroy the city unless the army is withdrawn from the northern areas. Fighting has broken out throughout the Seven Nations. The WC has refused to back down resulting in a drastic increase of terrorist insurgencies throughout the world. It seems like the tension that was building up ever since the start of the Rebellion has now exploded uncontrollably and is threatening to destroy the world.

“ We beg you to stop. We beg you to surrender. For the sake of our world”, said former Head of the WCGB…

I was sitting in my room at the Headquarters when I read this article. The only sanctuary that seemed to be left in this ravaged world.

I cut it out and opened the drawer. Keeping it away with the hundreds of other articles. I had been collecting since the day I left home. Any tiny report that even mentioned my parents found a place in this drawer. Ma at charity meet, addressing the parliament, Pa’s thoughts on new-age opera, his International Unity Day speech- everything.

I used to collect them because I wanted to analyze their every move. Plan how to destroy them completely.

‘I’ll never miss them’ I proudly told myself. I don’t need them. I’ll never be like them.

But that was the day I realized I really did miss them. I did need them. And that I am, and always had been, exactly like them.

That night I went home. I found myself at the front door in the wee hours of the morning. But I couldn’t get myself to ring the bell. I stood at the front porch like I was waiting for it to open. The place seemed to be frozen in time. Nothing had changed. Even my bicycle was parked at the same spot. Which meant that at five thirty ma would open the door to keep the flowerpots out.

I waited.

She recognized me immediately.

Son…

She stopped.

Help me with this pot, will you? She finally said. And we both started laughing. And crying.

I’ve come to do whatever it takes to set things right. A new beginning.

Pa, everything is about to be destroyed. The world as we know it is being ripped apart. I know we can do something. Together.

I couldn’t stop ranting.

I can’t sit back and watch. People are dying. There is so much hate. It’s madness. It makes me want to scream… ma…

Son.

Pa… you…

Son!

We understand, son.

But now you have to understand.

What? Understand what? Do you know what we can do? How we can help?

Son you have to understand that often the end is the only beginning.

I don’t under…

Listen. We have to end this world if we have to start a new one.

What! You mean kill everyone and… And then what? Nuclear war? Transport two of each species to another planet on Noah’s ark? What? How are we even saving people?

Death is not as final, or as terrible as it seems.

So we start a genocide?

No son, you have to believe us. You must believe in it.

In what ma? Pa?

Believe it is possible to change the world, by believing you can. Possible to start a new world, by believing you can. Possible to transcend above this world into new spaces. Possible that destruction can also mean creation.

They were sitting across me, at the breakfast table when they said these words. Ma reached out and held my hand. And just like that they disappeared. Vanished. Poof! Into thin air.

Former Heads of WCGB missing! All evidence points to assassination by their son, a Rebel leader.

The news of the disappearance has pushed a world already in turmoil into a state of complete chaos. Everyone is waiting with bated breadth for the trial to be held tomorrow. Many feel that if he is proved guilty the terrorists will suffer a major setback and be forced to withdraw…

It would be my turn to testify soon. The world was watching. What would I say? I don’t know what happened myself. Magic? Did they die and become stars in the sky? Was it an illusion? A hoax? Vanishing cloaks or some such shit? What had happened that morning?

I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

But what is the truth?

Your Honor. Umm…

That’s when I chose to believe. I spoke out. And hoped that the world would believe me.

“You have to believe that often the end is the only beginning.”

Somehow, I knew they believed me.

He’s gone! Where did he go?

The whole world saw him disappear. His last words echoed in their minds. Believe… the end… the only beginning.

And that was how the world disappeared. It ended. But if you believe in it, you know, that was really how the world began.

A lost son finds his way home again.

His story ends here,

But begins anew

Many many stories away.

(THE END)

MYTH XX - EXP:EARTH

2007-03-22T08:25:00.000+05:30

EXP: Earth - by Bharati Bahrani

Introduction

Since the dawn of time man has been searching for the answer to a simple yet extremely complex question- who am I? He has been trying to understand his origin and that of the universe. Different people in different times have tried solving this query by explaining how the world was created through stories. These stories have been passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years. Who is the creator of the Universe? Why was it created? Science can only answer some of these questions but not too convincingly. A myth is a mode of communication in which knowledge of a culture is passed down from one generation to the next. It is a way to understand the workings of the world. It is the story of the Universe since before the beginning of time, of space.
A myth explains the creation of the universe with all its creations, of man and woman and sex, of battles and choices and consequences, of prophecies and dreams and premonitions, of good and evil, and of utopia. There are brave warriors and mighty Gods fighting against ghastly demons and cruel men.
A myth is a complex and interwoven narrative which is written using mythemes such as hierarchy, conflict, power, creation of man and woman, sex, fear, loss, sorrow, joy, victory, life and death. It is a multi layered plot, where everything is connected to the other. It is usually placed in a world very different from our own. They describe great journeys and impossible quests. The hero is pushed to test his limits. He attains enlightenment at some point in the story and restores the kingdom. He is met with many obstacles in his path to spiritual enlightenment. He has to overcome every form of temptation. And just when you think he is about to crack, the prophecy of his coming unravels itself. The last battle between good and evil is fought. At the very end the hero is victorious. He reestablishes peace and order and a utopian kingdom.
a myth lets your imagination run wild. You explore unknown worlds and meet new people. You are transported into the authors playground. Your mind paints pictures of forests and castles and the heavens and spaceships and aliens and god and the devil and wars and beheaded orcs and Armageddon! The beauty with which the author weaves such a complex web of stories which unfold to reveal an answer to the ultimate question-who am I?

EXP:EARTH

The Senate Building stood out against the busy skyline of UB – 707, the official headquarters of the Galactic Council. Journalists, science fanatics, and worshippers hustled and bustled in anticipated excitement. The Day of Judgment had arrived. The Members of the Senate had just landed on the platforms above. The amber city of Uttukalamer shone dully while the three suns set.
Inside the Senate Building, the arena was buzzing with heated debate. They had all been waiting for this day. The Vice Chancellor stepped up to the podium. “Order! We shall have order!” The buzzing died out. “The motion for the Republic to commission the creation of a new planet, to be known as ‘Earth’, which will serve as a habitat for experiments to be conducted and observed on the new, hybrid species called the Humanoid…and this is what we will vote on this time.”
Hushed whispers echoed around the arena. This had been an extremely debated-over matter. The Believers vs. the Atheists, at war with one another over the differences in their beliefs. The Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Universe was presiding over the session.
“Order! Order! Will the speaker for the Believers party please come up to the podium and make his statement.” The Vice Chancellor stepped into his pod and hovered off towards the Supreme Chancellor’s box which was suspended on the top of the arena in the centre.
The representative for the Believers was an old-timer. He moved his pod towards the podium with a lot of difficulty.
“Can everybody hear me?” His voice boomed across the arena. He was kind of taken aback by the volume. He spoke again,” Can everybody hear me?” only much softer this time. “Ahem, ahem…ahem…My esteemed…er…fellow citizens of the Universe. You all know why we have gathered here. The creation of the Humanoid. Let me just cut to the chase. How is something that has been created in a Petri dish and test tubes, mutated and genetically modified, alive? It is against natures will! It is against the will of our creator, our Lord and Supreme Ruler of the …”
“Science is our creator!” someone screamed out loud.” Silence! Your party will get an equal and unbiased opportunity to speak.” The Vice Chancellor down to the mid-section of the arena. He turned towards the speaker,” Continue.”
The Believers were twitching in their pods. The speaker fidgeted with his long floppy ears. “Er…ahem…ahem…As I was saying. Putting together bits and pieces of genetic material in a lab isn’t the same thing as giving birth. This is impure. The books have said so. Everything will come to an end before time. It’s all an illusion. Out universe as we know it will explode into itself. There will be only darkness left! I appeal to the Supreme Chancellor and the Members of the Senate, please do not let such a sin occur. Please consider the consequences of this so-called ‘experiment’ before you make up your minds. Thank you.” He hovered off to join the rest of the Believers.
“Will the Director of the Board of Science of the X7 galaxy please step up to the podium.” the Vice Chancellor announced.
The Director of the Board of Science was someone you couldn’t mess with. He always got what he wanted. A man of great genius and power. He stepped up to the podium and looked around at the cheering crowd. He waited till there was deathly silence in the arena.
“Science is the ultimate truth. It is the absolute truth. Our existence here, in this very moment is true, only because of science. The Universe is governed by the laws of science which have been proven. So, who is this so-called creator of yours and what exactly did he do? Create everything and then go hide? What proof do we have about his existence? He is just a figment of your petty imagination.
The creation of the Humanoid is a giant leap for us, our kind. You and me have evolved into what we are today, gradually adapting and adjusting to out environment. The humanoid is the future. It is our future. We need to learn, extract as much information as we can in order to better out lives. Intelligence wise, the Humanoid is supposed to be far superior to us. The simulation of infinity around the earth is only for the benefit of research, so that we can get better and faster results.
I urge the galactic council to think of the possibilities, the infinite doors that this single experiment could open for us. The chance to make this world a better place!”
The arena burst into loud clapping and cheering. The believers sulked.
The Members of Senate and the Vice Chancellor hovered off to the chamber on top to join the Supreme Chancellor. The tension mounted amongst the crowd. This had been the moment they had been waiting for. Everything that they fought for would depend on the decision of the Galactic Council.
After what seemed to them an eternity, the Supreme Chancellor emerged from the chamber followed by the Vice Chancellor and the members of the Senate. The Supreme Chancellor stood at the podium. “My esteemed colleagues. After much argument over this matter and patient listening to the arguments of both parties, the Galactic Council has taken a decision. The motion for the creation of a planet, with a controlled and regulated environment, for experiments to be carried out on the new hybrid species called the Humanoid has been passed.”

“My babies!” whispered the Director of the Board of Science. He was standing in front of two giant glass cylinders filled with a transparent liquid. One of his arms reached out and touched one of the cylinders. He looked at what was inside with awe.

“I have spent my entire life waiting for this very moment. You are perfect. You are beautiful.” A second arm extended towards the other cylinder. “I have molded you into what you are now. I have given you strength. I have given you intelligence. I have given you perfection!”

He moved a step backward to admire his creation. He turned to face the first cylinder and held it with all four hands. “I shall call you Adam. “ He turned to the other cylinder “and you shall be called Eve.”

“Sir.” It was his personal assistant. “I am sorry to interrupt you, but the Supreme Chancellor has asked if he could come see the humanoids before the experiment commences. He is waiting in the board room.”
“Send him in”

The Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Universe had an extremely overpowering presence, even for someone like the Director. He entered the laboratory and walked up to the cylinder “They are remarkable. Indeed a giant leap for our kind. You must be wondering why I am here. Well, I must say, this experiment of yours has created quite a stir in the Senate. I hope you know what you are doing, Director. The fate of the Galaxy lies in your hands. I have come here to tell you that I am appointing you as the General Operations Director, G.O.D for short. From now on you and your team of experts are solely responsible for experiment Earth. You will report to me from time to time the progress of this experiment. Although I must inform you, the moment I feel that this experiment is becoming a threat to the rest of the Universe I will pull the plug on it.” He stopped and took a deep breath in. “ I hope you understand your responsibilities, Director. The consequences of your actions will have an effect on the rest of us.” He turned around and left.

Adam opened his eyes to see a black canopy spread out above him, studded with holes through which light crept in. He was lying naked on a bed of soft green grass. He grazed his fingers against the blades and felt the cool breeze against his skin. He stood up on his feet. It took him a long while to do so. “Now what?” He thought to himself. He turned his head around to see his surroundings. In the distance he saw something that resembled him. He took a step forward. ”Oh! So that’s what these are for.” he thought looking at his legs. He moved towards the lump on the grass. It had the same colour and texture as him. He moved closer. “But it is much smaller.” He kneeled down beside it and looked closely. “How come I don’t have those things jutting out of me?" He reached out and touched it. It moved . Adam was startled. Slowly the lump began to move. It opened its eyes. Adam saw its face and felt something happen inside him. Only when it sat up did it notice Adam’s presence. Adam reached out to touch it again. It felt warm and soft. He liked the way it felt. ‘It’ was Eve.

He stood up and looked down at her. He pulled her up to her feet and continued staring at her. She looked back at him with the same amount of curiosity. She realized that they were quite similar. “But what is that thing hanging between his legs?” she wondered. She looked around herself. She was standing on something soft and green. There were these huge brown things that grew out of what she was standing on and had more green stuff on top of them. She observed that the ground was not flat, because in the distance she could see mountains and hills. “Let’s check this place out” she thought to herself. She held Adam’s hand and set out in no particular direction.

“They are awake, Director,” cried an ecstatic scientist. The now G.O.D smiles and watched Adam and Eve walk around on the surface of the planet he had created. “I want each and every movement of theirs observed and recorded. Their thought, their feelings, their conversations, their discoveries, everything is to noted down in detail. Induce thirst and hunger.”

The experiment continued this way for a long, long time. Physical stimulations were initially induced till they became a necessity. Their bodies had been created in such a way that their sexual desires were quenched by one another. They procreated. Developed language and communication skills. Adapted and adjusted to their environment. Gradually their numbers increased.

He crouched behind the bushes. He had it in his sight. Without the slightest sound he aimed at fired. The deer had been caught unaware. “We shall feast tonight!” their victory cheers echoed over and over again!

He had been the most sought after male in the village. He was strong, and handsome and a very good hunter. He was made Chief when his predecessor caught an arrow in the head by one of the rival clans. They say he came from the heavens! He slowly began to expand his kingdom, waging war against the neighboring villages and conquering them all. He was the mightiest of them all!

He fell in love with a carpenter’s daughter. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever laid his eyes on. Big brown eyes, luscious pink lips, long black hair, olive skin…his heart skipped a beat every time he saw her! He wanted to caress her lovely bosom, and make love to her under the moon and the stars, and to cum in ecstasy together!

He held their son close to his chest and swore that he would protect him from any harm. He kissed the baby’s forehead and hummed some forgotten tune.
“They are beginning to develop attachment towards their mates and offspring. They experience this emotion termed love, which is the reason why they feel the attachment towards their mates. It is a chemical reaction that happens in their brain which creates this emotion. They fornicate for pleasure mostly…that’s just an observation we made. Moving on…”

The G.O.D moved to another monitoring screen and continued, “They have developed hunting abilities. They are wandering across the surface of the Earth in search of suitable habitats. It is quite remarkable what they achieved so far, Chancellor.”

The Director turned away from the monitoring screen to face the chancellor. “You don’t look too pleased with their progress, Chancellor.”

“I just assumed it would be much faster, considering the fact that these humanoids are intellectually superior to us. It has taken them so long to develop an understanding amongst themselves, their surroundings and other creatures present on their planet. This is an experiment. I feel the need to remind you of that fact, Director. Not some fantasy world you desired. We need faster and better results. I don’t think I will be able to continue funding this project for too long if I feel that it is going nowhere.”

“The simulated universe that we have created around the earth does not run according to the rules of our universe, Chancellor. It is in a time warp. Time is moving much faster in there than what it is out here. You have got to understand that it took us millions of years to evolve into what we are today. What the humanoid has achieved so far is astounding considering the time since it came into existence. It will take time, Chancellor. The process is happening as fast as possible. We cannot speed things up further. Our purpose will be lost then, Chancellor.”

“I am giving you time then. Do not test my patience, Director.”

His skin camouflaged him with the night. He had been hiding amongst the trees while the sun had been up. The small army of men come along with him were hiding in the valley behind him. He had gone on ahead to check on his enemy’s position and strength.

“We can take them on! They are sloppy and drunk, overconfident. But their numbers are larger than ours. That’s the disadvantage we have. But we are smarter than them. We shall take them by surprise before dawn breaks.”

They crept in deathly silence towards their enemy’s camp. Once they came within visible range they started shooting poisonous darts at the enemy soldiers. He found the clan’s Chief and slit his throat while he was sleeping.

The army returned home to celebrate victory. There were feasts and dances in honor of the victorious soldiers.

“They have managed to spread out across the planet. They are territorial in nature. Their bodies have adapted to the environment that they are in. They have started building settlements for themselves. The male is the dominant one of the species because of its strength. He is the protector and the provider. The female is the nurturer. She is more sensitive than her counterpart. They rely on their senses- sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. They have developed tools and devices to make things simpler for them.”

“This is why I agreed to invest in your experiment, Director. I knew it had potential. But I still feel that the process of evolution in your simulated universe is not fast enough. Your experiment might prove to be an added, unnecessary expenditure. The Believers are demanding the shutdown of this project. Riots have been breaking out all over the galaxy between the Believers and the Atheists. Members of the Senate are getting anxious. I am standing by your side, director, only because I am a man of science myself, but I have to maintain peace and decorum. I will not allow mass uprisings and havoc in the galaxy because of a G. O. D’s whims and fancies. I hope we understand each other clearly, Director.”

The G.O.D. held the Petri dish against the light. The Building of Knowledge was empty at that time. All the scientists had gone home. The Director stood alone in the dark lab looking at the Petri dish with a gleam in his eyes. “You are mine! My own! You are going to grow into a beautiful humanoid! My son!”

“Do you ever wonder what’s out there?”
“Out where?”
“The night sky. Don’t you ever wonder what lies beyond the stars? Whether there are people like us, living, breathing, walking, talking like us?”

The Director had been secretly creating a humanoid for himself. Every night, once the Building of Knowledge was vacant, he would go to his lab, and work way into dawn on the growing embryo. The gestation period for the humanoid is nine months. The fetus had now been growing for almost seven months. “You are going to be the next G.O.D. I shall teach you about everything. You will be different from the rest of us, far superior. I know I won’t be able to tell you the truth till you’re much older. But I know you will understand. The Galaxy will see that you are the future! Together my son we will…”
A knock broke the silence. The door split open. The Supreme Chancellor stepped into the lab. “I have been looking all over for you Director. I haven’t heard from you in very long, I hope everything is going well. I wanted to check on the progress of your experiment.” He stopped walking. The Director was trying to hide something behind his back.
“What’s that behind you?” He moved two steps closer to the Director.
“It’s just something I have been working on Chancellor.”
“Then why are you trying to hide it? Step aside.” The human fetus was floating in a cylinder filled with a transparent liquid.
“What is that?”
“Like I told you Chancellor it’s something I’ve been working on. I’m trying to figure out a way to speed the evolution process as you asked me too by mutating some of the genes.”
“Do you take me for a fool Director? Have you forgotten that I have dedicated my life to science as well? I know what mutation does to any creature, and that humanoid does not look anything like a mutant! Tell me something Director, do you have any children of your own?”
The Director knew what was coming next. If word got out that he had been secretly germinating a human fetus in the laboratory he would be sacked from his position and all the knowledge he possessed would be wiped out of his brains. He had to do something! He was getting frantic.
“Did you hear me? Do you have any progeny Director, to take your place when your flesh is rotting and being eaten by the worms?
Your silence answers my question. I’m afraid you have broken the rules, Director, the rules that you set. Your ego has brought your downfall.”
The Director’s hands were fumbling around the desk feeling for something.
The Chancellor moved towards the cylinder containing the fetus. He looked at the floating humanoid with fascination. “I must admit, it’s amazing, this humanoid of yours. An object of absolute wonder! But it can’t be our future. Our race is and will always be superior. It has taken them eons to figure out the laws of science and mathematics, and they’ve still not achieved anything spectacularly brilliant. Their existence is turning out be a burden on us now.”
The Director’s hands caught hold of something. He slid it into his pocket. It was an electrode. The Chancellor reached out for the plug that connected the cylinder to its power supply. “I’m sorry to say this but as of this moment, Experiment Earth is abo…” The Director switched on the electrode and jammed it into the Supreme Chancellor’s chest. The Chancellor’s body went into shock as a high voltage electric current flowed through his body. The Director held the electrode till the Chancellor’s body went completely still. He had thought about this a million times but never imagined that it would turn out that way. He moved away from the corpse. Slowly a crooked smile swept over his face. He started laughing. The madness in his laugh echoed through the lab. He looked at the Chancellor’s dead body and then at the fetus. “The time has finally come my son, time to start making our own rules, to take control of our destiny.”

Many years had passed since the Supreme Chancellor’s murder. The G.O.D had usurped the position of Supreme Chancellor of the Universe. It happened overnight. The Believers rose up against it and demanded a fair election. But since the Atheists were in majority they didn’t really have much say in the matter. Time moved on. Things seemed to be going on smoothly. The Believers felt cheated but their numbers were too little and their opponents too strong. Some of the Atheists were unhappy about the fact that the G.O.D had created a humanoid for himself. That child had grown up into a young, handsome and extremely intelligent man. Since he was outside the time warp Earth had been placed in, he aged normally. He could use his full brain capacity unlike the earthlings whose brain had been modified so that they could use only one eighth of it.
The happenings on Earth were being monitored and progress had been steady. But now the G.O.D wanted more. He decided to send his son to Earth in order to gain one on one experience with the humans. He called for a meeting to discuss this move.
“G.O.D, are you sure this is the right way to move ahead? It is against the original set of rules we had laid down.”
“Yes, I agree fellow Atheists. I know you are all concerned about the repercussions of this move. But I assure you the humanoids shall not find out the truth. This is a method to take our studies forward. My son is the only one who can go to earth and spend some time with the humanoids without creating any suspicion. He’ll blend right in.
The reason I want to send him there is for us to be able to understand in depth their way of thinking. To analyze how their mind works.
This experiment has been going on for years. The humanoids have been enlightened. They’ve been exploring science and mathematics and have achieved great success in these fields even though they can use only one eighth of their total brain capacity. It’s time now for us to understand these things called ‘emotions’ and ‘feelings’ like love and attachment. We need to develop a deeper understanding into these facets of the human being. Our vision needs to expand. It is the only way to fully understand our future.”
The Committee members murmured amongst themselves. After several minutes of hushed whispering they came to a verdict. They agreed to let the son of the G.O.D go to earth for a time period of ten Earth years in order to further the progress of the experiment.
Eshyuwa, the son of the G.O.D, had been trained in the sciences. He too studied at the Galactic University of Biological Sciences and had specialized in Genetics. He had been waiting for this day all his life. He knew it would come. They created a passageway for him to safely enter the simulated space around the earth. Once he entered that space he had to make sure that no one would notice the space shuttle he traveled in. His journey had been programmed into the shuttle's computer system.
Eshyuwa had been preparing for this journey since he hit puberty. He had studied humans for years. He knew their every trait, the language they spoke in, the way they dressed. He had been practicing some of their rituals and spent hours talking to himself in different earth languages.
He spent his first two years just traveling around the planet, noting down different behavior patterns. He made friends with people from all over. As time passed and he had been to most places, he felt something change in him. He realized that he had developed attachment towards some of the people he met and had grown close to.
One night he was sitting at a bar and drinking this beverage called beer which has intoxicating effects on you, when he met this woman. Her name was Marianne. She had long black hair which glistened in the light. Her lips were pink and luscious. She came up to Eshyuwa and offered to buy him another beer.
“Hi! I’m Marianne. You seem to be from out of town. How do you like it here?”
“Yeah, I just came in two days ago. I’m Joshua. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Where are you from, Joshua?”
“Well, I’ve been traveling around for sometime now. Wandering around from place to place like a nomad.”
“Oh! How come?”
“Looking for some adventure I guess. I like seeing new places, meeting new people. It’s just a lot of fun and I have the money, so why not?”
Eshyuwa had been using the same line every time someone asked him about his history. He sent reports to his father regularly. His experiences with people. Conversations he had had. But there were certain things he couldn’t really put down in words.
Him and Marianne had been spending a lot of time together. He had gotten to know her. She said she was in love with him. He didn’t know what love was. He felt a jolt inside him every time she touched him. He made love to her. It was his first sexual experience. He felt this bond with her which he had never had with anyone else before. Maybe this is love, he thought to himself.
In his fifth year on earth, Marianne bore him a daughter. He held his little baby in his arms and his eyes brimmed with tears of joy. He knew he was finally home. He belonged on earth with his people. But he knew his father would never let that happen. According to the G.O.D, Eshyuwa had gotten married to Marianne only to understand what family meant to the humans. He didn’t know what Eshyuwa actually felt. His son would soon come back to him was what he thought. The G.O.D didn’t realize that his son would feel human emotions like his fellow beings. He took it for granted that those things would not have an effect on Eshyuwa.
Eshyuwa wanted to free his people. He wanted them to know the truth about where they came from and that everything around them was an illusion. He had to find a way convince his father to set the earth free. The only way to do that was to make him believe that if he freed the earth and took out the time warp and let the humanoid use hundred percent of its brain capacity, the stupid experiment he had many conducting for centuries would show extremely brilliant results. His father would do anything in order to make his precious experiment be in the limelight again. For the last few years he spent on earth he continued sending in reports to the G.O.D and he kept hinting at what he wanted.
The time for him to leave had finally arrived. He didn’t know how he would leave his wife and daughter. He would come back for them eventually, but for now he had to let them go. He staged his own death, leaving no trace of a body. It was the hardest thing he had done his whole life.
The Atheists had been eagerly waiting for Eshyuwa’s return. The G.O.D had arranged a meeting in which his son would submit his report to the Science Committee. But before the meeting he wanted to meet his son.
“Eshyuwa my son, I am so glad you’re back. I have missed your company terribly. Tell me, how was it really to be there, on Earth? Not the scientific jargon, I want to know how you felt when you were walking amidst them. Did you experience any human feelings? Love, lust, compassion and things like that?”
“Father, I went there keeping in mind all through the time I spent there that I was there for a purpose and that was Science. I feel that the human intellect in its present state will not be able to really utilize its full potential unless they are allowed to use their brain fully. If you change the program and let them use hundred percent of their brain they will achieve things beyond our wildest imagination. Their progress rate will be off the charts!”
“What you are talking of is not feasible. I have thought about it many times, but the members of the Science Committee feel, and I agree with them that letting the humanoid to use its brain fully is too much of a risk. I…”
“Father you have to understand that unless you do so, it’ll take you another two maybe three thousand years to fully understand them! And even then we might not be right. Then all this would be in vain. Your experiment will fail. They are too primitive for their standard. This is my conclusion after spending so much time there. They are not like you and me father.”
Eshyuwa persisted his case with the G.O.D for weeks. He had cancelled the meeting saying that he needed more time to submit his report to the Committee. The G.O.D brought up this matter with some of his fellow scientists. He wanted to know what they thought should be done. He was torn inside. He wanted to do what Eshyuwa was asking of him, but at the same time he had to think of the rest of the Universe. Some of the Scientists were exasperated at the thought of it while some others agreed with Eshyuwa. The G.O.D decided to call for a meeting of the whole Science Committee to discuss this issue with them. Eshyuwa had convinced his father that it was the only way to get better and faster results. It was all in the name of science is what he said.
Some of the Committee members felt that the G.O.D had gone senile. “Free the Earth! I think he is losing his grip. It’s about time we chose a new G.O.D, someone who won't go around trying to be a revolutionary for the lab rats!”
The Committee members gathered in the Building of Knowledge. There had been a growing rift between the supporters and the non-supporters of the G.O.D. Eshyuwa had been hoping that things wouldn’t come to this. He thought that everyone would see things as he did, even though their intentions would have been completely different.
“My fellow members of the Science Committee. We have gathered here today to discuss a very important and growing concern in the progress of our experiment. I have been in charge of this experiment which has been underway for centuries now. It is my life’s work as you all know. I feel it is time to let the humanoid be whole, like it is supposed to be. Let them live a full lifetime and discover the rest of the Universe with all its wonders.”
“What if they decide to take over the world and change everything to suit them. You have said so yourself that they are superior to us. What if they decide to invade us? It’ll be the end for us all. Don’t let your greed jeopardize our safety Director.”
“What reason do they have to take over the Universe? They still don’t know a lot about its mysteries. Maybe they might help us unravel some which we haven’t been able to crack so far. Think about the endless possibilities.”
“We cannot let you go ahead with it Director, the stakes are too high.”
“Then I’m sorry to say that I’m going to have to go ahead with it on my own. Those of you who see things as I do may join me. The rest of you, I’m sorry to say that you are cowards!”
The G.O.D lost a lot of valuable friends due to this decision of his. The Atheist Party broke down. The people who didn’t support him left. The Galactic Universe was going through pandemonium. Riots broke out everywhere. Unrest and violence swallowed everything. The G.O.D and his son had never imagined this to happen. But the decision had been made. Earth was to be freed.
In spite of all the commotion the team of Scientists working with the G.O.D and Eshyuwa had figured out a way to safely pull the earth out of the time warp it was set in and also place it in actual space. The Earthlings were to know nothing of this plane. Eshyuwa didn’t agree with this, but the G.O.D felt it would be better to let things happen gradually.
Once earth was out of its time warp the lifespan of earthlings would increase. But they would have to make it seem to the earthling as if it were a part of their evolutionary cycle. Their genes would be mutated back to the original human genome structure using regulated amounts of radiation before their release into space.
The Universe was in turmoil. Believers fighting the Atheists. Atheists fighting the Atheists. The G.O.D continued with the execution of his plan. Earth was successfully released into space. The G.O.D died at the ripe old age of 1027 earth years. Eshyuwa went back to his family on Earth.
Earthlings eventually discovered the rest of the Universe and brought back peace and harmony to it.

(THE END)

MYTH XIX - THE EVOLUTION OF MAN

2007-03-21T17:11:00.000+05:30

The Evolution of Man - by Dhananjay Murthy

A long, long time ago, there was nothing. I know people through the ages, a number of them being renowned scholars and scientists have said that there was a lot of space dust floating around and after a few thousand years, they came together and the earth was born. The left over particles that didn’t go into forming the earth turned into dinosaurs. This is the general way it goes…or so they tell us. I shall now endeavor to tell you what really happened, how it really happened and where it really happened.

As I started earlier, a long time ago there was nothing. There was no space dust or charged particles. Everything was just black. A few light years away, there was a planet called X-84 according to science, however, the inhabitants just called it ‘home.’ This planet was destroyed many eons ago, when internal strife among its people ended in the very destruction of the entire planet itself. Anyway, that was much later and of no consequence to this story. Anyway, the people of this planet used to have a ball game which was surprisingly a lot like modern day human cricket. The people on this planet were giants so big that they would put the titans to shame. They were having a tournament, and one of their star players hit the ball so far away, that it broke through X-84’s gravitational pull and traveled for thousands of years until it finally stopped in our solar system as we know it today.

We now fast forward in time to a couple of million years ago. The Plutonians, were amongst the most advanced people around at that time. This, mind you, is before they were wiped out by the Uranians who in turn would later die out due to some strange incurable space virus which manifested itself in the ring of ice that circles the planet. Anyway, these Plutonians were experts on space and time travel. While traveling around space, they stumbled upon the ball from X-84. After traveling in space for a while, the ball had become heavily charged with radiation and atomic particles. The Plutonians, ever looking for fun and a chance to show off their scientific prowess, saw this ball and decided, that it had the potential to be a planet. They decided that all planets must have life. Creating life being one of their technological forte’s they quickly got to work. After trying out various combinations they ended up creating the dinosaurs. Unfortunately for them, the dinosaurs were anything but the cute lovable creatures that they set out to create…well, most of them at least. And given that the average Plutonian was half the size of a modern day human, the entire scientific team was devoured by the very animals that they had created. This brought the Plutonian expedition to a rather abrupt end.

The dinosaurs had a free reign on the ball for the next few million years. In the mean time, the ball’s neighbour had evolved an exceedingly powerful species, resembling us somewhat. The reason for that I shall soon get to. They were facing a problem, that their planet was getting too small for their ever increasing population. When I say this I don’t mean it in the same way as our modern day earth. I mean that the Martians were a race of avid holiday goers, and their planet being large, red and rocky wasn’t much of a holiday destination so they started looking elsewhere. The state funded a magnum expedition to find a holiday destination worthy of their race. All the other planets in the solar system were either too cold, soggy or the atmosphere was not suitable to the Martian system. They then hit upon the ball, which was renamed ‘earth’ after the Martian expedition leader’s mother. Finding that the dinosaurs were still there and that they might pose a threat to the tourists, a decision was taken by the high council on Mars to do away with them. What ensued was probably the first case of large scale ethnic cleansing on our planet!

After doing away with the dinosaurs, the Martians imported a number of species from other planets and solar systems, and put them on earth. These species thrived on the atmosphere and the land. As a new wave of eco-tourism spread through Mars, there was a need to create more and more species. Finally a leading Martian scientist created the ancestor of man. This was a species created both to amuse as well as to serve the Martian tourists at their holiday spas. Internal turmoil in Mars caused the Martians to abandon their vacations for a while. However, while testing this new species called ‘man,’ the subject contracted a virus very similar to the common cold. This virus, although quite harmless to the subject, proved lethal to the Martians and they died out suddenly. The few survivors boarded the last space ship and went to earth. This Martian refugee band was mainly comprised of women. Reaching earth, and getting rather bored, they ended up pro-creating with their former scientific subjects leading to what we know of and call as ‘homo sapiens.’

This story, however, far fetched it might sound, is true and has been hidden from us for millennia as it goes against God, religion and modern human society.

The Evolution of Man – A Hypothetical Take Part II

As I have explained in the earlier installment, humans, contrary to what people might say, were actually created by Martians. What had happened on earth was, since these Martian women were higher beings, that is to say, in the eyes of their beholders, they set about ruling the earth with power of such magnitude, that it would have made any despot from Hitler all the way up to Pol Pot exceedingly jealous. Yes, hard as it might be to swallow, this planet and us were all once under the iron rule of ‘girl power!’ I know this might sound like paradise, and in many aspects might easily have been so. But Martian women, you see, being a foot and a half taller than most normal women were a trifle more demanding than their modern day sort of descendants.
To these women, the male species, which they had originally created in labs all over Mars, and then propagated with and changed thereby into an exceedingly advanced hybrid, were all, to put it simply….just slaves. Well, that wouldn’t do. Not for these new creatures who called themselves ‘men.’ Given the situation that the Martian women consisted solely of one generation, and with cross breeding, a newer generation of females had come into existence. These human-ish females, growing sick of their mother’s antiquated ways, thought of a plan to keep these slaves all to themselves. They sowed the seeds of discontent amongst the males. The males, not having any knowledge of politics or intrigue were ready to do the bidding of the newer, faster and more improved females! A hand picked band was assembled to assassinate the old Martian women. However, for the first time recorded in history, the men having a compassionate side couldn’t follow through with the plan. This caused the younger women to be exceedingly angry with the men, denying them the one thing they lived for – procreation!
These females, ever shrewd and having a brilliant mind for dastardly deeds, cooked up a fantastic lure to get the old Martian ladies together in one place for their extermination. Ironic as it might sound, they decided to throw a luncheon for the old women on top of a mountain, which in later years would get the name of Versuvius. These old Martian women had no idea what they were in for. Thinking it would just be another lunch at a glorious location, they dressed up in their finest, made sure that their hair and make up was just right, and set out for lunch. When they got there, they had no idea that their daughters and grand daughters would actually want to do away with them. They landed up at Versuvius, and found the view to be spectacular. However, unknown to them, the peak of the mountain had been heavily laden with explosives, which in turn were promptly detonated wiping out the very creators of our species. The men, who had no idea of this plan, could only watch in shock as their mothers, grandmothers and lovers were blown to smithereens by the females. Since the word females has appeared quite a bit, to avoid further confusion, from this point on I shall refer to the survivors only as ‘women.’

With the dominant figures suddenly gone, our race was weak and unprepared for life. The new generation of women, after carrying out their wicked plan, had no idea of what to do with the disarray that was growing amongst the humans. Also, with the death of the Martian women, we lost all technology and degenerated by a few hundred years. Out of the darkness that was prevailing came a man whose origins are steeped in mystery. Some say that he was the last of the ones with pure Martian blood running through his veins, others said he was a cross between a woman and an animal, but whatever it was, he was the one who brought hope to this fledgling race. Today, we might call him god, however, he called himself Al.
Al was unlike all other humans. He was special. He had a vision, he had a dream. He was a person with such presence and charisma that when he spoke, whether people liked what he said or not, they listened. He worked tirelessly to better our condition. There were no rules to go by, no guidance for future generations on how to live, and yet, even then we were multiplying like rabbits! Therefore Al decided that he would be the person to change it all. I shall now quote some of his sayings that made up a part of his philosophy which was followed and helped to evolve us into the society that we are today.

• Men are the only species capable of ruling.
• Women having been proven as sheer evil shall hereby play only a secondary role in life and other such matters.
• Men shall only be allowed to be with women, not another man
• Since girl children will grow up into women, they shouldn’t be taken seriously or paid attention to, so that they learn early on their role in society.
• Men are to uphold the world and its values as they are chivalrous.
• A man shall have to take a woman for his partner for life to prevent her from stirring up evil and to create progeny. This woman shall be called a wife. He may keep other women for the same purpose provided the wife doesn’t find out.
• Children are the future generation, therefore, they must be taught these essential truths early in life that they might practice this as they grow into adulthood.
• The men must rally round all the people and settle them in one place. There these people must dwell and live as one and serve one another.
• In some cases, it might be necessary for a collection of men to decide how to live, and in others just a single man.
• It is imperative that a man keeps his woman under check at all times and sees to it that his children do the same.

As you can see, a number of Al’s preaching’s have been a great influence on us and our society as we know it today. Feminists today condemn Al’s preaching’s as overtly sexist. However, anyone who reads it properly can see that the man had vision. If only we could follow this more strongly in today’s day and age.

The Evolution of Man – A Hypothetical Take Part III

Al was a man unlike all others. He was wise, shrewd and a brilliant orator. He was also a real charmer with the ladies! Before I go into details, let me tell you a little more about Al. He was a tall man, nearly six feet four, built like an ox and he had fiery red hair and pale blue eyes. His early origins are unknown, but it is very likely that he was off the original Martian human mixed stock. He had come down from the mountains to help mankind through his philosophy. He was always wearing his ancient ‘relics.’ These ‘relics,’ came from the mother land, namely, Mars. These ‘relics,’ consisted of a head ornament which was referred to in the home planet as a ‘helmet’ was made out of a shiny material which was cold to touch and harder than wood. Along with this he wore a sort of vest which was made out of some sort of hide with the same material covering the torso and shoulder areas. A millennium later, derivatives of this would be the fashion rage on a small island which would be named after Al’s Martian great grandmother, Greece.

Al, after his initial doctrine soon saw that as his laws were followed and mankind settled down under his guidance, the population had swelled into a healthy enough number that phase two of his plan could begin. Unlike all the other humans, after all this time, Al still retained the ancient wisdom of his Martian ancestors. He knew things no other humans knew, for instance, he knew that in certain places the soil could support life. He took this fresh society that he had created and showed them how to live off the land. He showed them that food was not only to be found in animals, but also in plants. He showed the men that the animals that were not a threat, could be used to work on the land, and as a double plus on that idea, was that at any time you could even eat them and since they were harmless, killing them wouldn’t be as much of an ordeal as killing the wild animals. Another, reason was that the animals would get used to being around humans and lose their fear of them. He also gave to them something that had been lost since the Martian colonization…fire and the wheel.

These introductions into society transformed it over night from a mass of confused individuals, into a race of smart people getting more sophisticated every day and learning new things. After a while, men started getting into competition with another, and soon started quarrelling over land and animals. Al, weary of any dissent that might result in the anarchy and mindlessness of the previous few decades quickly decided that a policy of appeasement would be the best solution. He therefore declared that there was enough land for everyone to live on, therefore, he declared that the people should travel the world setting up settlements where they could do as they pleased as long as they followed the book of Al, which was now compulsory for all humans to read at least once in their lifetime, preferably during childhood.

When man progressed up to Al’s satisfaction, he showed them where to dig in the ground so that they may find a material that was very strong and cold to touch, very similar to the material that his ‘relics’ were made out of. This material was called ‘metal’ after Al’s maternal cousin twice removed who was a rather cold stiff sort of bloke. This metal was used to make tools to help the men work the soil. It was also used to make decorative ornaments for the women which was called ‘jewelry,’ after the first Martian woman to bear a human child. This would keep the women appeased and quiet for another two millennia…if only it had lasted!

As I mentioned briefly Al was a hit with the ladies, I think that was a bit of an understatement…he was huge with them! After his sermons, and as the number of his followers grew, women would be throwing themselves at him left and right. A strict follower of his own preaching, Al was never the one to say no. Soon there was the pitter patter of little feet all over the world as Al went all over the land showing people the true path. Al was a good father to his children…that was at least to the ones he knew about. There were however, quite a few babies with fiery red hair and light eyes running around accosting random strangers, asking them if they were their father!

Al had a total of a hundred and fifty legitimate children. The break up was a hundred daughters and fifty sons. In spite of his low opinion on women, Al knew that without them the true master race he was aiming for would only be a dream. Therefore, he got them all married off after carefully selecting their spouses. As for his sons, three were his favourite. The oldest and favourite, was called Jeezis, the second and close rival was called Moremud and the third was the runt of the litter, a little boy call Shiver.

Jeezis was a tall, shy lanky boy who for some strange reason loved animals, especially domesticated farm animals, and loved spending all his time in a little hut he built for himself and called a ‘manger.’

Moremud on the other hand for some strange reason always had a chip on his shoulder. He always wanted to be his father’s favourite, and since Jeezis was only his half brother, distrusted him and was always trying to spoil his image with Al.

The Evolution of Man –Part IV

All the years of helping mankind had begun to take their toll on Al. For starters, he wasn’t as young as he used to be. Secondly carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders is no easy task. Al was tired. He had lived a long and full life. He had taken mankind from being a race on the verge of extinction to a thriving race with limitless possibilities. Earlier, there was nothing. Now there was society, culture, morals, ethics and also a guide line on how to live. Without Al, mankind would have been doomed. He had saved them and they were eternally grateful to him for that. Now with all these achievements behind him, there lay only one last thing to do. This would be Al’s greatest lasting gift to mankind. Something that would be his crowning achievement. The time had come for Al to pick an heir.

Simple as this task seemed, it would be the most difficult decisions in his life. He loved his three favourites almost equally, and each was worthy in his own way. Therefore, Al called Jeezis, Moremud and Shiver together and told them that they were to go and spread his teachings around. And that they must do their bit for mankind.

Jeezis was a tall, shy lanky boy who for some strange reason loved animals, especially domesticated farm animals, and loved spending all his time in a little hut he built for himself and called a ‘manger.’

Jeezis was the true son of Al. Even the people saw him as the future successor of Al. He preached to everybody with such faith and conviction that they were ready to follow him to the ends of the earth if they had to. He soon had his very own following, with numbers that would soon even possibly rival Al’s. Jeezis’ philosophy was the same as Al’s, however, he allowed the people to make their own choice. This was something Al was against in his mind, people were incapable of making their own decisions as they were too self-serving and conniving. In spite of all that, Jeezis was getting good results and the people loved him. For Al this was significant as it showed him that Jeezis was the leading contender for successor by popular demand.

Jeezis had a select inner circle of followers who were also his friends and confidants. Their names are not important now, but they were an integral part of Jeezis’ life.

Moremud, on the other hand, for some strange reason always had a chip on his shoulder. He always wanted to be his father’s favourite, and since Jeezis was only his half brother, distrusted him and was always trying to spoil his image with Al.

In spite of all this, Al was very indulgent to his three favourite sons. Grooming a successor was a job Al took very seriously as the future of mankind depended on it. When Shiver was still young, he contracted some sort of water born infection turning him a dark blue colour. Shiver was always being picked on for looking so different. Realizing what was happening, Al decided to spare him of all this verbal torture, so he sent Shiver off to the east giving him power to create a whole new race to populate his lands. Shiver proved to be a worthy son of a worthy father. He quickly created a race of dark coloured people. He put all of Al’s preaching’s to practice here as well, making changes and additions here and there.

Jeezis in the mean time was all set to follow in Al’s footsteps as successor. He preached Al’s wisdom to all and sundry. In a short time he became exceedingly popular. Even the people started looking at Jeezis as Al’s future successor. This made Moremud extremely jealous. He too started preaching to the people and started taking on his own followers to counter Jeezis’ following. Moremud’s outlook on Al’s preaching’s were radical and relatively close minded. For him, it was either his way or no way at all. For Moremud, his aim was not so much to better mankind, but to give himself more power and control. Unlike Jeezis and Shiver, whose methods were peaceful, Moremud was quite willing to use violence to get his way. He swelled the ranks of his followers by giving them land and titles. Sometimes, he would even give them land belonging to others after violently turning them out.
As Jeezis and Moremud’s power and following grew, so did the animosity between their followers. Clashes between the two factions were taking place all over the place. News of these events soon reached a now ageing Al. He was greatly perturbed by this as he had always thought that eventually the brothers would put aside their rivalry and work together. He summoned Moremud and harshly reprimanded him and his followers. He then called together all the people and in public announced Jeezis as his heir. This shattered Moremud and humiliated him. His mind was now bent on revenge. He was going to be successor. He would be the one to carry the torch. Jeezis was too soft, he wouldn’t know how to deal with men. He also convinced himself that Jeezis and Al had together conspired to destroy him. Therefore, with the element of surprise on his side, he would destroy them first.

He called upon one of his most faithful followers, a sinister looking character who had led a life of petty crime earlier called ‘Joo.’ Joo’s orders were simple, he was to infiltrate Jeezis’ circle, and at the soonest opportunity, he was to kill him. Joo quickly went to do his masters bidding. Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. Finally Joo landed up at Moremud’s house bearing a box. Moremud opened the box to see Jeezis’ head in it. Overjoyed, he immediately marched to Al’s house with his followers. On being granted an audience, he quickly gave Al the box. On opening it and seeing his favourite sons head in the box, the ageing Al couldn’t bear the strain of such a site and collapsed dead with shock. The stage was now set for one act and one act alone…that of Moremud.

The Evolution of Man –Part V

Moremud’s brutal rise to power was met with some initial opposition, however, it was quickly and quietly put down. He did his best to ensure that everything went smoothly. All members of the opposition parties, including Jeezis’ followers and apostles were given senior positions and large land grants. In those days, so naïve were men that they were fools not accept such baubles.

Moremud, I shall begin by saying, was a man of impeachable character. He had an electrifying personality and charisma unrivaled. He was very pious and came up with his own sect based on the Book of Al. He declared Al a god. He would rise before dawn and stand on top of a large terrace and wake all his followers and call them to prayer. He ordered that everyone give themselves to the book of Al. He claimed that Al would come to him and speak, and together they had written a final chapter to the book. That was, however, true only to the masses. Everybody believed him as they knew he was not responsible for Jeezis, or Al’s death. All of course, barring Joo. Joo was Moremud’s closest friend and confidant. Joo had been lavishly rewarded and had everything a man could want. He too was a heavy follower of the Book of Al, but with a slightly alternate take. He himself had a large and growing following. Moremud was suspicious of this as some of his followers were going over to Joo’s faction. He therefore decided that Joo needed to be put in his place and toned down.

A meeting was decided a top of a beautiful barren weather worn mountain, named after Moremud’s first wife, Sinai. There under a large brilliant coloured tent, the old friends came together for the first time in a few years. They both came with only their five closest attendants who left them in privacy after they had embraced and proceeded to sit on the well laid out sofa under the center of the tent. Joo had changed. He seemed haughty and overbearing. He had smugness about him. The last few years had been good tor him. With Moremud’s gifts of land money and senior appointments, he had invested in more land and businesses. In other words he opened up jobs which were and could only be manned by his followers. He had control over more or less all the wealth generated in the land. He even bought a large chunk of land with three ports for sea trade and this land was exclusively for his followers whom he called ‘Jooden.’ In those days the world was a big place and you could pretty much buy anything, but this land Joo had bought happened to be Moremud’s, and he wasn’t too happy about it. To make things worse, the land was populated by some of Moremud’s most loyal followers who were either being forcefully converted to Jooism or being expelled from the very land of their birth and toil.

The thing that ticked Moremud off the most, was the fact that even though he had a larger following, more respect and land, Joo was rich. He had less land, fewer followers, however, he was the shrewdest businessman you could come across. The joke in those days was that he could even turn camel dung into money! The minute the attendants were out of sight, Moremud got to the point. He told Joo that he didn’t like the fact that he was making so much money, he told him he didn’t like the way he preached the book of Al and he told Joo that he didn’t like the fact that he was force converting or banishing his faithful followers. He was willing to forgive all, provided that Joo return the land which had now been called Israiyl and he that he stop persecuting his Moremudon’s.

Joo flatly refused…Moremud was livid. He reminded Joo that it had been him who had taken him out of the gutter. It had been him who made Joo what he was today. Joo owed him everything and if he was going to be ungrateful, he would die a horrible painful traitor’s death. Almost as though he had been pre-empting this, Joo smiled and wryly reminded Moremud of a secret that only the two of them shared. Moremud was stunned. He never thought Joo would use this against him. As he stood there speechless, Joo smugly chuckled convinced he had stumped Moremud. Moremud agreed to give up claim to Israiyl, and in return, Joo agreed not to persecute the Moremudon’s there. Both had lied. Joo thought he had won, and therefore, since Israiyl was now his, he was going to make sure that Israiyl was to be for his people and his people alone. No other followings would be tolerated. Moremud on the other hand, was a man who would take no chances. The outcome of this meeting was final, Joo would have to die and he would have to die at the soonest.

Since the meeting was in Moremud’s territory, he had ordered a banquet in celebration of the treaty. It was one of the grandest banquets ever seen. Everything that the earth had to offer was there. There were exquisite foods, strange animals and people from all over the world, even the races created by Shiver who were led by his son Gandee. Also present were Jeezis’ companions known as the apostles who now held important posts as administrators and recruiting managers for Moremud. Once the feast was laid out everyone prayed as was the custom and then began to eat. Once the first course was served, again as according to custom, the leaders toasted each other. Joo was first. He toasted to a new friendship and a coming together of peoples and other such trite. The audience lapped it up and gave him a whale of an applause. Moremud who had been waiting all night decided to spring into action. He got up and immediately accused Joo of killing Jeezis. A deathly silence now engulfed the banquet. He quickly spun a story of how evidence of this had recently come to light. The oldest of the apostles, a man named Tony, recognized Joo and remembered him to be an attendant Jeezis had for the last few months of his life.

Before a dumbfounded Joo could react, all twelve of the apostles jumped to their feet and stabbed Joo to death with their steak knives. They then declared that since their master had really been murdered, that they should continue to preach his words to the people. Moremud seeing that he could use them readily gave his blessings to the faithful companions of his dear dead brother! They declared Jeezis as the son of god and that he should have his own religion called ‘Crustyanity.’ The apostles set about converting people to their faith and as there were still a lot of Jeezis’ followers around their ranks rapidly swelled. Phase two was ready for action. Moremud met with the apostles, recommended that the Moremudon’s and Crustyans joint forces wipe out the evil Jooden. The Crustyans were ready as the leader of the Jooden was the man who had killed their leader and the Moremudon’s did it as Jeezis was their leader’s brother. The Jooden, after the blow of losing their leader were weak and low in morale. Joo’s sons Benyammin and Lakhaim tried their best to rally support and raise morale. They were determined not to let their father’s work and legacy be destroyed.

However, they were heavily outnumbered. The three forces met in a desert a few miles outside Israiyl. The Moremudon’s would make the initial attack and the Crustyans would mop up. However, the Crustyans threw a big tantrum and insisted that they attack first. They made an all out charge with more than half of their force. The charge being led by six of the apostles was convinced of an easy victory. Lakhaim seeing this large ungainly force charging at the center of his army which was on its way to meet Benyammin’s quickly ordered a feigned retreat and ordered the other half of his force to circle around and attack the Crustyan force from behind. The attack worked and the Crustyans were ambushed. They were quickly cut down by arrow, spear and blade. Four of the apostles going down almost immediately. The rest of the force was panic stricken. The retreated in disarray. Lakhaim quickly rallied his men together and stopped them from pursuing the enemy. If they were to win the battle, he had to link up with Benyammin. An hour later his army reached Benyammin’s amidst loud cheers.

Meanwhile, the Crustyans retreaters had started to reach the rest of the army. The morale had slumped. They had lost a lot of men and four apostles. It was now the turn of the Moremudon’s. Moremud was a military genius. He was going to use his force to its greatest advantage. He had men, and he had time. He would draw the Israiyli’s out and then in one single swoop, destroy them. He ordered small units of hand picked men be selected to test the enemies strength by feigning attacks on all their fronts. Benyammin who was the elder of the two, was a bit jealous about not being the first to lead an engagement for his side and felt a little usurped by his younger brother’s victory in the morning. Every attack on his side of the front was met with defense. On the other hand, Lakhaim kept his forces from skirmishing as he knew he would need all his men for the main battle so rather than exhaust them on skirmishes, he would save their energy for later.

Seeing Benyammin was the more impetuous brother, he decided that he would be the one to attack. He gave the Crustyans who were licking their wounds, a chance to redeem their honour and to avenge their dead comrades by making them attack Benyammin and lead him into a narrow pass where his Moremudon archers and cavalry would swoop down and massacre them. Another part of his force would attack the Israiyli’s from the right flank and draw Lakhaim out while the remaining Crustyans would then cut them off from the left.
Everything went according to plan. Benyammin fell for the ploy and led both himself and his army to the death. Lakhaim's force was cut off and without Benyammin’s army to support him was badly mauled by the enemy. Most of his army was wiped out and he himself barely escaped with his life. The carnage had been immense. Hundreds of thousands lay dead. Israiyl had been conquered. Lakhaim fled to exile. The Jooden’s were persecuted and expelled from Israiyl. The victors then carved up the enormous financial wealth that had been seized from the Jooden’s between themselves.

Many years passed. However, Moremudon’s and Crustyans couldn’t live in harmony forever. The remaining apostles who now numbered two had started challenging the Moremudon’s take on the Book of Al. Moremud who was now irritable in his old age ordered them torn to shreds by beasts. The Crustyans had no leaders and were weak. They were expelled to the west where they flourished. However, they yearned for their homeland. In the meantime Lakhaim and the other exiled Jooden were also planning for a return to liberate Israil. At the tail end of Moremud’s life, the Crustyans invaded his lands from the west and the Jooden made terrorist attacks all over his land. He was like a bear plagued by bees. He thought that he had seen the last of the fighting. He now saw the divine wisdom in the Book of Al. He had seen how every time man bettered himself he got worse. He remembered how wonderful it had all been and how simple things were. He wondered if it would ever be like that again. He then realized he wasn’t kidding anybody. He died knowing that the world would never know any peace. Crustyans would always be killing Moremudon’s, and Moremudon’s would always be killing Crustyans and they would both kill the Jooden. And that’s pretty much how things still are today.

(THE END)

MYTH XVIII - AN EMBRYO

2007-03-21T16:59:00.000+05:30

AN EMBRYO - by Mrinalini Babbar

Chapter 1: an introduction to the beginning

Boom! An explosion. The big bang, is it? No, it was an egg. A tiny embryo, which gave life to the world. Inside the egg was a universe so spectacular that it was a life form within it self which was a home of fairies, dragons and elves. There was good and there was evil, there was a hero and then there were conflicts which led to war resulting in serious consequences of which we are a result.

Destruction. Plague. End of life in the embryo. It all started with the stealing of the powerful stone ‘hera’ in which rested the powers of both good and evil. It was a magical stone with immense powers. This stone was kept safely at mount. Dritious safe guarded by romano the elf.

The embryo looked white and pure from the outside, but what was inside was a mysterious world of elves fairies and the drakons. Inside the embryo, they all lived in a universe full of conflicts and the drakons an inequitable life as they were made an outcast. This was one of the main reasons for digasa the supreme leader of the drakon community to get someone to get Hera in order to be in supreme power and start a war. A war, which could wipe out the elves and the fairies and even destroy the universe…

The fairies and the elves were the supreme powers reining the world who had mystical powers unlike the drakons. Each of them had the power to fly from place to place… and each possessed a magic wand by the powers of which they would cast spells, be it good or evil. It was by the virtue of the evil spell called ‘unumurah’ the out casting of the drakons took place following came the mortifying disease ‘pelob’ which overtook the drakon race.

The Drakons had been suffering from a mighty lot, including the horrendous disease called Pelob which made them emotionally evil by nature and hence increasing their need to be in the possession of the stone. It was a disease so mortifying that it was impossible to escape evil. This disease was a spell cast upon the Drakon race by the elf, umbelluf long back when digasa tried to steal it. Even though he was the main reason that every drakon became an outcast no one really held him responsible for it, as they were anyways treated with disrespect by the elves and the fairies.

There was a distinction between the two- the beautiful and the ugly. As superficial as it may seem, it was the truth and a sore reality that the drakons had come to terms with. But Digasa vouched that he would put an end to all this once and for all. And that day would come soon….

It was when Auberon the warrior elf cast the spell of rebirth that the magical world inside the embryo came to an end.

The embryo was a short-lived life form which gave us our life. But what really happened inside the embryo was……

Chapter 2: the uprising of armies

It was at mount dritious where the magical stone was kept safe guarded by romano who was taking rest. It was a sound morning but something in the sky looked disturbing… it was a clear sky except for one black cloud hovering over the mount dritious. It was a sign, for unexpected bad things to come.

There was a trivial sound of movement which woke up romano from his sleep. Something was not right. An eerie feeling crept inside him that made him shiver. To his disbelief he saw a drakon walking away with hera! In an instant he flew towards him and was about to take out his wand that the drakon turned around and knocked down Romano. He was on the ground utterly numbed by the pain. He had never felt anything so strong hit him ever before. Whoever this drakon was…he was bloody strong! Romano lay on the ground unconscious and saw Hera being taken away.

It had begun….

The stone was gone. And what was worse was that it was in possession of the drakons. There would be war, destruction and most of all end of life in the embryo.

Umbelluf the supreme elf, the leader of the magical race was informed of the dreaded action. Drawn back into the past he was reminded of the time when he had cast ‘unumurah’ on the drakon race. Deep inside he knew that he had set ablaze a fire which would destroy the world within a matter of time. Now, there he was, umbelluf repenting his own action which he did years ago.

Umbelluf called upon his most trustworthy warrior elf and his only son Auberon and told him about the stone and asked him to prepare the army for war which was to take place soon… Auberon left and did exactly what his father told him to do. He prepared the army for war.

Auberon was a warrior himself. He was a reserved, self-confident elf who had an enigmatic aura about him that would automatically make the other elves follow him. He was a born leader, and naturally he was the best amongst the rest.

A few hours later, Auberon had raised an army so large that it was a sure fact that the war was going to be a great one, on which the future of their race would depend upon...

Meanwhile …

It was in Euronomosaki, the place where all the Drakons lived as outcastes that Digasa was waiting impatiently for Karrossa to come with the magical stone. Only the sight of Hera could pace him down. A few minutes later Digasa saw what he had wanted to see since the time he lost it. Instantly flashes of the past came back.

“Digasa! Stop. You are making a big mistake. Don’t touch the powerful Hera!” Umbelluf cried. “No, my friend, this stone is the key to great power. Join me and we shall rule the world!” declared Digasa. “You’re giving me no choice, Digasa. Please! Don’t touch the stone.” “At a moment like this who needs choice? I repeat, join me.” “I ‘m sorry, Digasa!” Umbelluf raised his hands and cast the most powerful spell ‘umunurah’ on Digasa and the rest of his kind…

Karrossa had to raise his voice in order to snap digasa of his past memories. Karrossa carefully handed the stone to digasa. As digasa held the stone in his hand his eyes gleamed with the reflection of the stone… he had never looked as evil as he did now.

With the stone in his possession he asked karrossa to prepare the army and declare war.!

The time had come…

Chapter 3: the war

A war takes place due to a conflict, revenge and….well, there are many reasons… the main reason for the war to take place here was both conflict between the 2 races of elves and drakons, and revenge from the elves for treating the drakons as an outcast.

As a million elves lined up for war at the battlefield, Auberon sat strong and confident on his white horse and said, “I am aware that by the magical powers of the stone digasa has nullified our powers and destroyed our magic wands. Today is the day when our powers will be put to test when we hope against hope. We are at war with the drakons, a race disliked by all. This is their attempt at getting justice. But we will make sure that their attempt is just a mere attempt and nothing more. Digasa has put his hand into the lion’s mouth by the act of stealing the stone. He will not succeed in his plans for the occurrence of Helius. We are to make sure that everyone of these drakons is killed without any mercy .They are going to suffer from a tragic loss which I cannot begin to describe. It is we who are going to stop them and bring peace in this world. I hail to the Almighty! Let the powers be within us. Let the waaarrrr begin!”

2000 thousand feet away were the drakons getting ready to run forward and wipe out the elves and destroy the world. digasa stood strong in front of his army .He felt a pang of adrenaline rush inside of him. His blood was all pumped up to take revenge and make happen the day dreaded by all.

“My fellow Drakons”, he said. “Today is the day we go to war and destroy everything that has loathed us in some way or the other. I know not what will be the outcome but I do know we go to war and create the day in history that will be remembered by all. Yes, we are going to end this misery and suffering once and for all. We will kill all who defy us. Our ancestors once said our life is worth more than what we live it to be, we are not outcastes…a day will come when everyone will see the drakons rise above all. That day is today. Today we shall prove who we all are. It is by the powers invested in me that I Digasa your leader raise my head and declare WARRRRRRR!” Digasa raised his head; he roared and bright yellow flames lit up the sky. The war had begun…

The war was everything more than the elves had anticipated it to be. It looked like the elves were being crushed by the force of the drakons. Auberon looked around in a daze and saw that a thousand elves had turned into white ash already! Elves were dying rapidly. And then he saw his father being killed by a drakon. He was agonized by the pain and could not move. He was in hysteria! And then he felt something on his head. He felt as if he was dying… but he fell unconscious on the ground. The last image he saw before he fell unconscious, was Digasa‘s face…

Chapter 4: the end of life in the embryo and rebirth

The war was over. Umbelluf was dead and so were a million elves. The remaining hundred elves were defeated and were taken as slaves. The drakons had got their revenge. Digasa was overwhelmed by his victory and the possession of Hera, the powerful stone by means of which he planned to destroy this universe. But in order to do so, he needed a spell. A spell, which could activate the stone’s hidden powers by means of which the universe could be destroyed. This spell was known to only two elves Umbelluf and his son Auberon. Digasa now had a task at hand. He had to force Auberon to cast the spell.

Auberon was in confrontation with Digasa now and obviously refused to give out the spell. But for a minute he contemplated and thought of rebirth. Yes, he knew what he had to do. He told Digasa that he would cast the spell for him. But little did Digasa know of Auberon’s intentions, he gave him the stone.

Auberon held the stone in both his hands and said out aloud, “Within the realms of the stone, rests a mighty god, who shall destroy this universe and everything living, and there shall be rebirth of this universe with a new and more powerful race. There shall be a world so unique that every living thing in the world shall have utmost importance. I call upon thee to end this world of misery and commence a whole new world.”

Chapter 5: a whole new world!

Auberon had cast the rebirth spell and everything inside the embryo was washed away with a storm of water by the virtue of the spell being cast upon and the almighty force being released. The universe inside the embryo came to an end… and this was the birth of a whole new world.

God destroyed the embryo to end the pain and suffering once and for all. Auberon was the clever elf who cast the spell of rebirth and released god from the stone to create the living world that we live in now…

Hera, the stone was the only thing of the past that we have in our present. God cut it into two parts and placed it in either corners of the world. Amedius (the good) and Reetraka (the evil), causing rebirth of an entirely new and advanced race – the Homo sapiens who now dominate the world and of which we are a part of…

(THE END)

MYTH XVII - THE REVOLT

2007-03-21T15:57:00.000+05:30

THE REVOLT - by Prerna Gupta

Part 1

1. A letter written by Fauth to his friend Quad in the yr. 18, 934 after the proposal for his dream project was accepted by the Scientists guild of the planet Yuran.

“I feel happy for you. The guild has finally issued you the grant for your project. Guadon was not in favor of your project. He did everything to prevent the jury members passing the decision in your favor. Frankly, I think he is rather foolish. I believe any intelligent person can see his vaucuousness. You could not let his activities trouble you.

So, when are you starting the project? Have you chosen your assistants? I wish I could come over to celebrate with you but I am rather caught up with this work over here.

I am anxious to see those creatures function. I wonder what they’ll be like. This project has been eventful right from the beginning. Do you remember the day when you tasted that strange dream… “

2.
Company name: Lofec technologies
Sponsor: The Atman Party

Code name: Homo sapiens
Project brief: To study the properties of visual culture by the creation of a new species named as Homo Sapiens.
Methodology:
To design the form and structure of Homo Sapiens. Provide them with increased visual capabilities. One should exist externally and one should exist in an internal form. The other capabilities of this creature should be kept limited. He should have the sound range of 20 to 20,000 hertz. His capabilities of touch should be limited to tangible objects. Olfaction should let them distinguish around 10,000 different odors, whereas the tongues should just be able to taste salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami.
The bodies of these creatures should be molded with wax and baked in infrared light. They should then be cooled with ultraviolet water. Their body parts should have micro thin sensory wires attached to them which should serve a dual purpose. It should keep them rooted on the ground and it should allow us to monitor their physical movement.
To design the habitat for their existence. The design should be in a form which can sustain these creatures. It should have sonic machinery spread in its atmosphere which will record the various sounds. It should have two kinds of terrain primarily – terra firma or dry land and vast bodies of water.
Homo Sapiens should have a control unit in his body which will be connected to our main system. He should be autonomous.
Project status: In operation
The revolution of the Apuns has been a disaster for the Manush race. Our existing society is formed by two classes, namely the freeman and slave, the patrician and plebeian, the lord and serf, the guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed. We live in a destabilized society which has made life unfulfilling, subjecting the Manush to indignities; this has led to wide-spread psychological suffering. The continuation of this system cannot and is not acceptable to us. Apuns and Manush have stood in constant opposition to one another; they have carried on an unending fight. We therefore advocate a revolution against the Apun system. This revolution may or may not be ethical: it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few light years.
We will take our rebellion to the next level. We shall create warriors like the world has never seen. We will process our breath. The breath of the rebel. We will create a training ground for them. The place will make the toughest beings in this universe. This training ground will be called the Earth.

By Quad,

Part 2

Quad's journal –

Today is the day. The time has come. The production of the first couple to go on earth was completed yesterday. They are ready to be transported. Just the last set of requirements. The sentient into the sapience. The incarnation of our breath. The breath fired with our suffering and agony. I see a fractal of cocoons. Beginning from a woman’s womb, where it bathes in her blood and strengthens in her pain. Acquiring a body of its own. I can imagine it in motion. Moving in and out in his blue and red insides. The body will contain it but the breath will sustain it. The breath and the body…

I wait in impatience to see what cannot be seen, I wait to hear its voice, to hear his cry, to hear him sing with joy. I wonder what it will be like… the first set of warriors… tamed and trained. Ready to fight and survive. They shall lead us to victory. Towards freedom and liberty.

Leonardo Schultz's diary –

6, Kristiania, Norway, 1875

I must have been six years old. I would breathe on the window of my old room and make figures with my fingers on it. One day I drew a “window”. I imagined in my mind jumping from it and to excitedly run through the fields until I reached a room. I opened the door and saw a little girl sitting there. She must have been the same age as me. I don’t remember how she looked but I do remember her delight. I asked her a million questions. But she understood my curiosity and listened to me patiently. I would tell her about the sun, the leaves, the sparrow, and the stars. I told her that I wanted to become an artist when I grow up. We talked about my parents and my house. We both hated mathematics. After being content with our conversations I would run and climb back through my window.

Part 3

Leonardo Schultz's diary –
35 yrs, Berlin, Germany, 1910

As I grew older I kept on moving further away from the religion and the idea of god. Further educations and studies initiated me into the questions and doubts of purpose of man on earth. I never really believed in god. Unlike others I did not feel his presence in the world around me, instead I felt like a pawn. I felt like I was being played with. I thought that whoever created us created us for a personal motive of his own. It had nothing to do with the kind of ideas that popular religions passed on to the masses. These ideas were made by a group of people just to keep the masses in control. However, thoughts like these and the books that I read, contributed to my reclusive behavior. I never experienced what one calls a ‘family life’ as I found myself in an orphanage as soon as I was capable enough to understand the world around me.

The five years that succeeded my expulsion from the orphanage, I spent in a constant struggle to establish myself as an artist. I would go without food for days. I slept on the streets as I could not afford the rent. The work was scanty. I was trying hard to make the two ends meet. This was the time when I was put in jail in Munich, for my support of the communist movements. It was a time of great political and economic instability in Germany. It was 1932 and anti Semitic sentiments were on a rise. National Socialist German Workers Party was gaining widespread popularity with Hitler and his propaganda. I had read the history of my country and of nearly all nations. I knew about the class struggles and their economic conflicts. I comprehend quite clearly the credo of communism. I felt very passionately for my community. I wanted my paintings to help in the revolutionary mechanism. I wanted people to think about what was happening around them. I wanted them to see Hitler’s hypocrisy and his mad intentions. I believed that dictatorship could never do any good, a nation needs democracy and freedom if it wanted to progress in the right direction.

My paintings were my tool. They were my way to fight. I realized that the times I was living in would change the course of history of my country but still this feeling kept coming back to me. This strange feeling which always gave me a sense of unease. I felt I was incomplete, incomplete not because I lacked something but because I had more of something else which instead took a part of me. It wasn’t just me inside myself. There was another being with me. I was not one person but two people living together in one body. The conversations that I had with myself always perplexed me. The reminded me of the two entities. Ego and the alter ego? Body and soul? Me and myself?

Who is the real me? Why do we have an alternate self? Why cant it just be me?

Quad's journal –

Everything is going according to plan. The earth is producing warriors of the utmost supremacy. It is just a matter of time now. The next war on earth will complete the number that we need to wage the battle against the Apuns. It is getting increasingly difficult for us to keep the warriors in secrecy. We should be very cautious.

Part 4

Leonardo Schultz's diary –
76, Skoyen, Oslo, 1943
Entartete Kunst Hitler

ART OFFENCE

Hitler became Germany’s chancellor in January 1933. Art has become punishable. A systematic campaign to force the Nazi aesthetic on art is on. I don’t know how to escape it. Art no longer expresses the feelings and emotions of an artist. It just expresses the whims and fancies of the Nazis. They have stolen much of the art, some is being sold and the others are being burnt.

Seventy years after I first started writing this diary my hair has gone grey, my skin has shriveled up, my limbs are weak and I have become obese. Definitely not much similarity is left to the way I looked when I was an adolescent. I have changed. Things have changed. I am not rotting on the streets of Berlin. Probably if my parents were alive they would be happy to see what I have become. They would be happy to see my success. People call me a genius. I daresay I agree with them. I have achieved some things I desired but something are still left. last autumn, i inaugurated the gallery built in my name in Norway. I was surrounded by countless people who were murmuring my name and asking why I painted on the themes love, anxiety, pain, fear and death. questions about my childhood. They asked me why I lived like a Spartan surrounded only by my paintings. Reasons for depicting god as black as a burnt charcoal, why I made him look like an all permeating ghost. I told them that the saints and sages over time committed the ignominy of making us believe that God is something supreme that is bright and colorful. All that is wrong.
He is someone just like us.

The Talmud teaches:

When the baby is still unborn
An angel takes it for a ride on his wings
And shows him whatever there is to know and learn
He reveals the secrets of life and death to him.

Then at the hour of birth,
With the angel’s kiss on infant's forehead
He is benighted
the child returns to his slumber again

The rest of our lives are spent
trying to wake up
remembering
what the angel showed us

I woke up late. It is raining hard and it is so dark that I won't be able to paint. The papers and the radio have brought to me the news about the war. It is very distressing. It will happen sooner or later. Germany will lose. I hate to see what will become of the people of my land. Hitler has eluded them. The war is the ultimate Hitlerian catastrophe. It can't get worse than this. Anyways, I have learned to keep politics on a side. My health has been on a decline lately. I don’t know how long I am going to survive this. But I know for sure that it won't be long. I can feel it coming. The sickness is getting harder for me to bear each passing day.

Part 5

“I AM WHO I AM”

I am the son of Leonardo Schullz. Hereby, I lay down the foundations of a new creed.

We have accomplished our freedom from our creator. After a long and tiring struggle creation has achieved its independence. No longer are we puppets in the hands of our creator. No longer are we bound by his selfish motives. No longer do we have to bear the weight of his burdens.

We are free to become what we want to become. The breath, the spirit and the consciousness exists now within each and everyone by themselves, the uncreated creator who does not need to depend on anything or anyone.

The breath, sentience and simply the joy of existence so cherished by us has an astonishing and unsettling genesis. The Manush race on the Planet of Yuran manufactured Homo Sapiens. These people had lived under the oppression of Apuns for ages. They wanted to rebel. But they had sparse resources. Except for the highly advanced technologies and the will and determination to do something they didn’t have much. Quad, a senior Manush scientist looked at the butterfly and thought to himself. He looked at the caterpillar in the cocoon. He realized that this was what they needed. They needed a cocoon. They needed a place that would keep their breath safe till it is ready to become the butterfly. Till it is prepared to attain itself, to become what it is supposed to become. He suggested a brilliant plan. He designed a system by which they would manufacture these creatures who would process their breath inside themselves. After it completes its time in the cocoon it would become itself. It would become the glorious warrior, the spectacular butterfly.

trangely enough humans have always been aware of something that doesn’t quite fit, something that was not right. Every person has this uneasy feeling once in a while, it comes and they make it go away. But, it keeps coming back. The uneasiness was due to the irony of their lives. Man lived his life in the pursuit of the purpose of his life. his life on earth. He chased something that he could essentially never attain. Not because of any other reason but because of the virtue of absence. How could he attain something that didn’t exist. There was no individual purpose to be achieved on earth. He just had to keep his breath inside him and live with it. That was all that he was required to do. All he had to do was breathe. Make the air move in and out of him to sustain the soul in him. That’s all.

So we, the humans were nothing but cocoons for a long time. Till the time came to fight for our freedom.

After a long and fierce battle with the Apuns, the Manush won. They were free from the oppression of the Apuns at last. They organized themselves and created a new nation for themselves.

After the time in the cocoon was over and the Manush had enough warriors, the first battle took place. The earth-sent warriors, as trained to, fought endlessly and after a long and fierce struggle won the battle for the Manush. They organized themselves and created a new nation for themselves. At last, they were free from the oppression of the Apuns. At last man had achieved his true purpose, his true goal. My father, Leonardo Schullz, was one of the last to reach Yuran, but he was also one of those who fought the hardest. His experiences and observations during both his lifetimes led him to the conclusion that man’s condition could only be remedied by revolution. So he organized an army and rebelled. The second and last battle took place. This time the Manush were also defeated. Humans were finally free.

(THE END)

MYTH XVI - ORKHAOS

2007-03-21T15:52:00.000+05:30

ORKHAOS - by Khushrav J. Writer

The world is born, grows and exists in absolute primeva; where the Forests of Trees reach the deep blue eaves, allowing light to shatter through its canopies on to bats shimmering with every sweep and lift of white mulmul wings and for whom the carnage of hunters below is an open book with every throw of screaming ultrasound.

Of late with the recent passing of seven earthquakes, the hunters of the kingdom have moved beyond killing for existence to the bloodbath of sport; and the air hums with disquieting audibility, causing Orkhaos to shift course. Orkhaos whose combined duality of existence, which is inseparable like twins conjoined, moves across the edge to khaos – the regulating principle. Far seers and mute chroniclers of events, the bats feel the shift and their sensitive intelligences are disturbed. Gradually and in one mind they shoot through canopies of troubled light, towards the mountain of the aloof Lion and the deep black apes of reason that inhabit clear plains east of the mountain.

Over mountain and plains the seers whirl like comets of the cosmos, screaming khaos down to the lion, down to the apes and from miles around deep black bristles blotch the plains and surround the mount with their growls rising and falling like a heaving pulse. Into this sparking air the aloof Lion emerges to hold conference from high above and with far below; and at noon of the next day when the land is clear of shadows a female ape from the best stock mates with the lion to produce after one passing of all seasons a species corpulent, strong willed, hairless and whose communication is sound more refined than all in the animal kingdom.

The new entrants are taught by the bats about the history of the Forests of Trees, its citizenry and the place of every animal within the green folds. They travel with the bat teachers through the ‘magick’ of composing basic sounds into highly evolved opera that breathes a universal language with its movement. In the early periods of their existence on the plains and mountain the entrants survive on roots and grub and are taught to live as nomads so that they properly answer to the true call of their purpose. With the growing intelligence and strength of the community, they are finally asked to feast on the flesh of their own kind. This brought all the years of teaching to the crux of the purpose and the aloof Lion, the black apes of reason and the bats hover in uncertainty at to whether the final act will be carried through as the first sacrifice. In a single instant the clear undisturbed clarity of their eyes reach across in grasp of the purpose and in unison the one, the first, is selected to be slain in happiness on the mountain. With this crossing, they were ordained in name and spirit as the race of Ardebil, after the ancient place whose meaning lies in Asha.

The Ardebil took their place in the Forests of the Trees, constantly moving across the green lands singing Orkhaos back into the minds of the animals, which by now had all turned feral. In locations where the song of Orkhaos did not work, the act was performed through sacrifice and the animals realigned to the balance that is Orkhaos.

- “Chaos is the order of order, while unbridled order can grow out of hand.”

Glossary of meanings:

Orkhaos – is the combine of order and chaos, with chaos being the regulating principle to order

Primeva – my version of primeval. I feel the word is stronger and crisper than its older more legitimate version.

Ardebil – Together with its old and middle Persian equivalents, the term asha appears in a number of theophoric names,
including Ardešir, Arda Viraf and Arta-xšaϑra (Greek: Artaxerxes). Asha is also the root of the name of the city of Ardebil. In this case I will call the humans in my creation myth Ardebil which for me translates to – every man is the place of truth.

FAS
Below nightsfall and electriless stars, the white far seers sweep through the Forest of Trees, while rising and falling; foliage below swims to the rays of a shifting moon and shades of blue and deep blue rush by. They fly in delta formation, turning and dipping to locate the epicentre of a disturbing thrum.
Deep in the Forest of Trees, the Ardebil confer among themselves in a meeting of equals; their octaves spiralling and combining through the air.
The sounds of the one called Asha the Truth silence the rest into receptiveness, and he says ‘The Forest of the Trees has now existed in peace for a thousand years; it is time, my people, to reconsider our role, our future and reason for existence. Now that our work is done in this place, must we silently walk into the Nether Halls, returning to nothing once again?’
Only the tiniest of creatures broke the heated calm of that space.
Adaro the Just looked all around, ‘Ardebil, it is the place of truth. We are each one of us Ardebil. In our name we carry out what the Ape mother and Aloof Lion tasked us with. It is in the womb we touched Orkhaos. Our race was born for it to be restored in this place. Sacrilege it would be were we to stray only a little.’
For the first time there were songs of assent and dissent from within Ardebil.
‘See now the cracks in the tapestry; a path is revealed under it.’ With eyes closed they meditated on Asha’s song.
In a while, half of the hundred rose to Asha the Truth, ‘Come walk with me and you all will become Asha Mehr.’
From behind the Asha Mehr came the ringing song of Gira, the Protector of All, ‘In following you have brought down the first scale, equality. For you there can be no existence of Orkhaos, this curse is not ours to give, but yours in the creation. The existence of Asha Mehr for now may seem to subsist in light, but the seeming light will weave darkness so utter, but you do not see it. ’
For the remaining, not of the hundred, there was no regret, their path of Orkhaos was clear.
The Asha Mehr followed in Asha's wake, seeking out the Far seers of the land.
Through days and nights they traversed distances singing their new life and calling to the bats; and at last they met the seers and asked them for the gift of procreation. The Chroniclers heard their songs and with sudden clarity saw events far into the future unfolding.
Helpless, they confer among themselves and one of the bats’ said to the rest of his kin, ‘We give in to destiny that is a glancing ray, guiding the land in different directions every time; do not worry in knowing and allowing events to unfold as they will; since we cannot shape the complete path that is formed by countless others and begun here by us.’ They turned to the Asha and its followers to begin shaping the first step. Thousands upon thousands of the white creatures wept, dropping angst; the bat teachers spoke, ‘Your race must leave the Forest of Trees to allow Orkhaos to flow freely; and when your destiny has been realised, you will return.
Asha looks back at its people and says, ‘Follow me and we will find our place.’
During their journey changes began to occur within their ranks. Each one of the Asha Mehr separated into two aspects, no longer remaining the sexless beings they once were. The Male - with a body wide, hairless and strong, empty of corpulence, had faces that took on a feral look. The other facet was female and she had the body of a lean predator with hypnotic sensuality and hair providing a lustrous black frame to the head and torso.
The trek to find a suitable location grew lengthier with Asha leading in deep concentration. ‘With our journey growing before us, the patience of your followers grows shorter,’ observed his wife, in a whispered statement.
‘This is a test to strengthen our resolve, at best a filter to separate the ever mortal body from spirit.’ was his only response.
‘At least address your people, you should not in your new role of Shah, give yourself the luxury of assuming that they would see what you see. With the turning of time over and over again, give them your eyes to make your ….. our dream unwavering.’ was his wife’s reply. ‘Why do you smile, are you not worried.’
Asha replied, ‘There are two reasons, one of joy, the sight we embrace between us makes me feel at peace with you, almost as if we were one being again; and there is deliverance approaching, so I will not be required to explain.’
Puzzled, she looked at his quiet confidence that had put even her mind to rest.
‘The night seems to lap us into her embrace,’ he said.

‘She fills us all, I think, with a strange powerful feeling.’ He stood over her looking down. ‘Look at all this rising chaos; it stretches us - this consummate time.’
She traced her fingertips along his leg, drawing him to his knees and all around was the splendour of darkness.
In a few days they arrived along the foothills of a vast mountain range. Asha decided to settle his people within a grove of evergreens along the lower slopes of Mount Daemavand.
‘We shall build dwellings for ourselves and make new lives over here. Each one shall house a gathering of ten people and the dwellings shall encircle a point, with openings for each along the rims of the circle; the wood shall be taken from trees that are already fallen.’ With the building of the dwelling came the first children and the settlement was named Spring.
The children rolled and laughed across the loamy ground, falling in soft and hard places that went unnoticed by them.
‘Careful, Viraf, the ground there will make you shed tears’, shouted his mother An-ayaifah.
‘Oh, let him be, children see only happiness’. An-aiyafah turned and smiled back at the man beside her, who shared her dwelling with other men, women and children. ‘Even we knew only bliss once and now our lives are differently freckled.’
The man nodded in agreement. ‘But our word seems to grow stronger and spread faster among the many species of this new land, its strength lies in the inherent singularity of the message.’
An-ayaifah nodded, ‘Yes, that is true. Even the manner of our living is one of our greatest strengths.’
‘How so?’ asked the man.
‘First you must help me carry this and then we will talk about it. ’
When they were settled at the altar of the dwelling she said, ‘Our people live in dwellings such as this, fashioned to our whim; within each we live in the warmth of a shared bond. The dwelling is our bond, inside it our ties are stronger than the thickest blood, we are all to one another - family and lover. While our children grow up in the awareness of the bonds that created them, within the dwelling they see for themselves the origin of everything.’

Glossary of meaning:
Asha – Zoroastrian concept of truth.
Anahitha – Persian goddess of water venerated in prayer even in the current Zend Avesta.
Fas – is fate in Latin
Fatalis Luna: Latin for ‘Fated Moon’
Hecate in Greek myth is the goddess of crossroads, ruler of magic and enchantments; also of dark magic
Nightsfall – my word to describe visually through suggestion, the closing night. Originally – ‘Night fall’.
Electriless - a pormanteau word that adds 'electric(ity)' to' less,' meaning 'without.'
Asha Mehr – Light of Asha. Taken from Arya Mehr or Light of Arya which was used by the Persian emperors to describe their position.
Mt. Daemavand – In Persian myth a demon with the strength of 10,000 horses is said to be chained in the confines of the mountain.
Fravashi – In Zoroastrianism it is the spiritual aspect of the soul that is in touch with God.

THE CITY OF SPRING

The red, the gold and the purple of a rising sun from behind the range of Alburz, picks out a species in expansion and work. Some working in the groves cutting trees to make the town visible to passers-by; others working the fields for grain. A quarry some distance from the town provided stone for buildings which once were built with only the fallen wood of dead trees.

The City of Spring began to grow outward in concentric circles and was already four miles deep, with the centre taken up by the residence of the Shah and his court, the buildings of bureaucracy and the Main Temple with other smaller places of worship spread across the town.

One day a traveller entered the town and looked all round him in bewilderment. One of the towns’ people stopped to speak to him. ‘Hail stranger, you seem confused. Is there something you want to know?’
‘This town, it does not have any walls! It is the first I have seen in my many travels that does not seem to worry about its safety,’ said he, his mind accustoming itself to this strange sight.
‘It isn’t our belongings that we worry about being taken away from us; it is people passing through this town without understanding who we are and what we believe in. That is the greatest worry. Come with me, as at this very moment our Shah will be speaking to the town on this, since there are some who now believe in walls.’
The traveller followed the man through the roads, admiring its order and planning in this harsh wilderness. Soon they began to pass through the Arya Mehr standing in straight lines from the palace to the third circle, waiting to hear their Shah.
He marvelled at the precision with which the rocks were cut and slotted into one another at perfect right angles, but looked in slight discomfort at the buildings themselves.
The man noticed the look in his eye, ‘Why do you look warily at our buildings?’
It is the manner of design and the stone used. It seems so oppressive; I can imagine the air inside one of these, stifling the mind from freely thinking.’
‘Ha-ha! Strangely it isn’t the same from the inside; but hush, more of that later. Here is the Shah.’
‘He seems to be cut from the same quarry that birthed the stone,’ muttered the stranger under his breath, as he watched the Shah emerge from behind a vast pool of water that encircled the palace and was two kilometres from one edge of the palace to the other side of the pool, ‘It seems as if he emerges from the waters like a god.’

The Shah flanked by his court was transported on a moving stage of stone across the water and the traveller watched in amazement; he knew what a tremendous effort it would take to move these children of the earth.
‘Arya Mehr, my people, I speak for myself and members of this court, our beloved all knowing Magi. I have been hearing reports of questions being asked, my decisions being second guessed and standing before you I notice the worry etched on each of your faces. The lack of a wall and abundance of danger is no doubt a source of tension for some of you, but try and remember why we built this town to begin with.’
And in a quieter voice that settled the last murmurs, he said, ‘The body sometimes must be sacrificed to succour the spirit, remember the old days when our race did such things. Why should the afterlife be a worry, it is just another place that we go to live in. Let all the world pass the City of Spring, and when they witness it’s growing brilliance, unhindered by obstacles they will approach to take a closer look and our philosophies of the spirit will pull them closer to be born as we are born, to live as we live and to die in our manner.’ The crowds shook with tumultuous approval at this open policy and chanted mightily in growing headiness, ‘O Asha, Asha Mehr, King God, Shah of Shahs, Originator of the Waters, we are yours to command, send us out so that every dark crevice burns with the fire.’
The Shah held his hand up for silence ‘Is there anything you would like to know from me?’
‘Yes,’ came a voice from the crowd, ‘What if we are attacked by the wild tribes from the sandy oceans, I have heard they look like enraged Diws blowing white in the wind of their thundering steeds as they come upon settlements looking for easy plunder. It is rumoured they have instruments that reflect coldly the harsh miseries of suffering; and these are reputed to cleave a life from its dwelling; sticks with thorns at their ends that fly at you finding your life-spring.’
‘Wait my Mehrian’, said the Shah, ‘your fears; I do not understand where they come from. We were once the sacrificial beings that brought peace through example; life and death was nothing but a means to an end for us. Have you forgotten your past so easily? Are you all affected by the same fears? What has happened to change you all so drastically?’
His face was a mask of confusion in a sea of worried faces.
‘Our lives are different, O beloved Shah; you have brought us to a place that has set a new meaning to life and death. We are no longer Ardebil, or have you forgotten the past that easily? We once were and now are; these are two different worlds, the former is a scratch on the memory and the latter a mortal form.’
Deep in thought was the King, ‘If only I had known what the split of bodies and personalities might have brought about, but then regret is a neighbour best left unvisited.’ He raised his head and spoke once again, ‘If we are set upon by these Diws from the sand, then use the channels that link all parts of the town. You have seen the vessels we are taming; not long from now there will be a sufficient number to transport everybody and they will take nobody else but our own kind.’
The people seemed satisfied with this, some of them even smiled and the crowd chanted as one, ‘Your Mehrian thank you O Shah, King God and Originator of the Waters.’

The man and the traveller stood alone, each in his own thoughts after the crowd had dispersed.

‘Kingship it seems is an embodiment of the people’s will over here,’ said the traveller.
‘Yes’ replied the man, ‘should it be anything else?’
‘No, no, it is just that I have seen many forms of government and control through my travels. You live in what some call utopia.’
Intrigued, the man asked, ‘Utopia?’
‘Ha-ha-ha! Such innocence; yes, for some - your town, its politics and people might be an imaginary place, an ideal.’
‘Ah!’ replied the man, still unsure what the stranger was telling him. ‘You look tired, stranger, come and rest in the temple and clean yourself off the grime. What is your name? I forgot to ask earlier.’
‘Ximenes,’ said the traveller.
‘That is a name I have not heard before, but then again, my travel isn’t very extensive.’
‘I am called Bokhtar; and serve as an acolyte - soon to be priest in the Temple.’

They came to the temple that sat masterfully over the water. It was built from a grainy textured grey blue stone cut into squat blocks; the windows were rectangular eyed and heavy lidded with a glow issuing from each of them. Ximenes halted in wide-eyed amazement at the pool of water circling the temple. ‘I never realised it before, but it seems to me that your temple like the Shah’s palace and the other buildings of the town seems to rest on the water like an apparition. Is this true what I see?’
Bokhtar’s eyes twinkled in a blend of amusement and pride, ‘Yes, what you see is true. I cannot tell you how it is done because I do not know and even if I did I would not reveal it. Though what I can tell you is that our structures of stone are crafted by the People of the Quarry, who burrow deep into the stone and bring with them an intimate understanding that allows them to test the limits of what is possible with it.’
‘Magnificence,’ said Ximenes, ‘though I still cannot begin to like the oppressiveness of your buildings. They seem to be built for domination rather than habitation.’
‘Well,’ replied the priest, ‘we build for both reasons.’ He pointed to the façade located over the entrance. ‘Do you see that sign within the facade?’
‘Yes I do. It is a large fish, swimming with ease against an upstream current of water …. With a man in its mouth, standing it seems, as if he rides the fish and in suggestion, is master of the water as well. But what does this have to do with the temple or even the other buildings? Are you saying it is an ethos of sorts?’
‘Very admirable Ximenes; where did you learn to read like this?’
‘Ah! Well, in my travels and what not.’ Ximenes looked away and asked the question once again, ‘so tell me what is the meaning hidden in the sign.’
Bokhtar frowned, but went on to explain, ‘The fish in the sign is known to us as the Salamon and the man is representative of our people, the Arya Mehr. The fish and man are engraved in sharp relief as compared to the waters, whose waves are cut into the stone. This to us is a suggestion of hierarchy within the sign; one element rising above and the other subservient.’
‘Why is there a halo around the head of the fish and yet the posture of the man seems so dominant, with one hand shading his brow and the other holding a staff which rests on the mouth of the fish,’ asked Ximenes.
‘You see,’ replied Bokhtar, ‘The Salamon we perceive as a demi-godlike being, powerful enough to hold mastery over navigating the primal waters, yet not so powerful, as for us to become subservient to it; it is our servant.’
‘While the man,’ continued Bokhtar ‘views the untamed lands in the distance, with a Staff of Hazel wood held in the other.’

‘Our God, the truth we believe in, traveller Ximenes, is Order. With it we hold dark chaos in our sway; our craft is an embodiment at our level, of Order and control.

Glossary of Meaning:

Staff: A symbol of power and authority.

Hazel: Is an emblem of personal authority and gives its holder power over the natural world.

ARES

Night fell on the City of Spring with the normal sounds of surrounding scrubland muted. It was January, and the full moon cast its light onto stone, dipping the city in white and shadow. At Springs’ edge where scrubland and civilisation parted ways in a neat circle, the voice of Ximenes carried to Bokhtar who was standing some distance away, ‘Do you know what some people call this night of the full moon?’
‘Tell me.’
‘It is called a Wolf Moon, acolyte. ’
He turned with a shudder, ‘Why a Wolf Moon?’

‘The story of the January moon was told to me on this same night before the city was overrun; long before the foundation of its walls, when their Fathers lived in covers of animal skin. Packs of ravenous wolves would descend on their hutments looking for easy prey. Their insect infested bodies drove their minds to a demonic craze of blood thirst and teeth that held the light of the moon. It is said their fur could be seen prickling even from a great distance – so large were these beasts. The attacks continued every year on this same night, until the Fathers found their lair after some months of intense tracking and massacred the demons.’
‘Great god of order! Your tales never cease to amaze me.’
‘But it did not end there,’ continued Ximenes. ‘After vanquishing the wolves, on every night of the January Moon their howls would rent the air and in the morning that followed, the city would find invaders on its doorstep. With this threat as with every, Ares would march across its threshold to meet these new ones; and with the defeat of every invader,’ the voice of Ximenes rose to fill the air, ‘the host of Ares would bathe their city with blood of the slain. The first blood that washed the city, it is said in the chronicles, was wolves’ blood.’
‘The curse has never left them then, has it?’ asked Bokhtar.
‘The god of chaos is incarnate in Ares; the power within that city subsumes all life to its will; but they are warriors without equal, blessed by the All Father.’
‘God of Order! Then they are enslaved wills Ximenes; without the freedom of their minds.’
‘Freedom and life is of different sorts, acolyte.’
‘Maybe, but I still can make choices in the things I do everyday and in the manner in which the future shapes for myself,’ replied Bokhtar.
‘Choices, futures, me, I. Arrrrgghh! You are already trapped and you do now know it. What do you know about yourself, acolyte Bokhtar, outside of a world you have made for the me and I?’

Bokhtar could see the slowly developing anger on his friend’s face and quickly changed the subject. ‘You said that Ares had been overrun the night you were there, but then how did you escape the city?’
With this question, a faraway look entered the eyes of Ximenes. ‘Under the light of the moon, everything is fortune.’
Bokhtar waited in the silence of that space, as if expectant of something.
And Ximenes continued, ‘Ares awoke one morning to find another invader, but this one they realised was far more powerful than their own weakened and interbred people. The last host of the first people of Ares flowed from life under open city gates that resembled a deep cut across its bleeding face. In a moment gone too soon, the invader entered the untouched city and the new assumed the identity of the old.’
‘How did you escape this?’ asked Bokhtar.
‘I was the last of the old people; last on the field trying to protect the city until one of their officers threw a handful of sand in my face and I was knocked unconscious. I was treated after that with respect by these people; they probably saw me as the only actual surviving member of a people now dead in the past. A lot of times I would get people coming up to me and talking in the floweriest of language about my deeds on the field. Even with the respect that was accorded to me in the city I was not allowed to remain a warrior. I think that was a blessing in disguise, looking at it in retrospect. It allowed me to free myself from the spirit of the city and its ghosts and afforded me the luxury of becoming Ximenes the traveller – from being Ximenes Warrior among warriors; now after a lot of travelling, I am here feeling the Wolf moon once again. I do not know why.’
‘Goodnight Ximenes, my friend.’
‘Goodnight, innocent.’

Ximenes woke the next morning to the sound of soothing water within the temple premises and screams accompanying. The look outs posted to warn the city of danger were pointing to a dust cloud in the distance. ‘Look, look,’ screamed the man, ‘white specks in the sands; they must be the Diws.’
‘Send out the other lookouts,’ ordered Ximenes. ‘Tell them to get the rest of the people within the city limits.’
The man nodded, recognising the authority in his voice, and left to carry out his orders.

Clouds from numerous white specks burnt the sand and people were rushing across his vision’s periphery in blurs of fear. Across the city a wail of horns sounded almost as an extension of the mood; it was not in alarm the horns were sounded. From all the moats surrounding the city buildings surfaced gargantuan fish, with bodies silvery scaled and clouded pink streaks running across their sides. They were the Salamon etched into the facade of the temple entrance. Guided by a Mehrian with staff in hand who stood within its gaping jaws; and it seemed as if the symbol etched had stepped out of the façade.
Through all this Ximenes stood in a trance, the visions of his reality were slapping against memory.
‘Ximenes, Ximenes, XIMENES. Wake up my friend, the city will soon be under siege. We need to cross the water.’
‘In those things; how can I?’
‘Yes, you can warrior, you have to; the Shah is waiting for you in the palace building. Come, we must meet him.’ They jumped into the mouth of the waiting Salamon and crossed the turbulence.

‘Welcome,’ boomed the voice of the Shah from across a room called the Garden of Origins. It was a massive block of stone the colour of soil, chiselled into narrow and large corridors through which flowed water and the Salamon spawn. The centre of the block was vaulted and he stood in its centre with the waters pouring sunlight splashes on to the Shah’s frame.
Ximenes thumped his fist close to the heart region and stood waiting.
‘Still the soldier and general I see’ said the Shah, ‘Do not look so surprised, we are a new people but I ensure that our network of information grows as quickly as possible. Why didn’t you tell Bokhtar that you were a general in the armies of Ares.’
‘It was not necessary, sire.’
‘Of course not, you are probably a soldier’s general.’ The Shah looked him over and asked, ‘How well are you held in estimation by the New People of Ares. ’
‘I am respected and will always be welcomed back by them, but never allowed to wear a weapon within the city. Why do you ask me such a question?’
‘Perhaps,’ the Shah looked at him carefully and said, ‘you could help our fledgling city and people.’
‘That is a large request. Why should I do it for you all?’ asked Ximenes.
‘Another people will die; this time without having the opportunity to feel the depth of a long history and culture. Ximenes, you do not know our history, but we made certain decisions as people that were based on the desire to speak truth to the different offspring of this world. We need time and the opportunity to be able to grow and accomplish this task with a sense of history, pride and accomplishment at the end of it all. Do not let us pass away from this world like a wisp of memory.’
‘What is it that needs to be done,’ asked Ximenes.
‘Uh, I would like you to journey with Bokhtar here to Ares and ask for their help,’ the Shah said, ‘and they must come and fight for us and if possible help raise an army of Mehrian to defend the city.’
‘All right. I will do this but it is unlikely that they may come to your aid.’
‘Why?’ asked the Shah.
‘The entire city of Ares, both men and women, are also it’s army; they are trained to be an aggressive and invading force and do not take well to a defensive role. Even when their city is under siege, they have always marched out and not hidden behind walls.’
‘This is worrying Ximenes, but you must try your hardest and use all the influence you can to help. ’
‘I will try sire, they may in fact have a use for the oases of the Desert Diws as a cross over point into other areas. Though, what I cannot understand is, why I have to take Bokhtar along too?’
‘I will leave that to Bokhtar to explain. For now I have a people to take care of. Goodbye Ximenes and good luck.’
‘Hail Sire.’

Outside the Diws were returning to the desert while the Mehrian looked from behind the safety of their moats.’
‘So Bokhtar, why do I have to take you along with me to the city of blood.’
‘I have not told you till now but I am the advisor to the future king. While his life cannot be endangered just yet, it is necessary that I undertake this mission to learn more about the world.’
‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Do not sound so defensive, acolyte, I was only teasing.’
Bokhtar smiled. ‘If we have the moats, then why do we need to request the people of Ares for help.’
‘For this reason, acolyte.’

A Salamon was lying on its back; with mouth agape and its belly neatly sliced through, exposing the dead Mehrian sheltering within.’

Glossary of Meanings:

The Wolf Moon or January moon: is a full moon that occurs in January. This full moon is also known as the Old Moon or the Moon After Yule.

Father: symbolic of dominion, the warlike spirit, civil authority, reason and conciousness.

JOURNEY TO ARES
‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! That is a funny story Ximenes. Where did it happen, your meeting with this woman?’
‘Oh, it was a little village, at a turn off not far from the Traveller’s Way.’
‘And what is this Traveller’s Way, Ximenes?’
The traveller smiled and put his arm on Bokhtar’s shoulder, gently squeezing it. ‘The road we are walking on is it. Ha! Ha! No, no. Wipe that smile off your face; we are not going to meet the woman. This road was once tall stalks of grass that hid magnificent stalking beasts; but the incessant walk of civilization has removed the grass and its hidden beauties.’

‘Civilization; what is that?’
The traveller looked at his friend in disbelief. ‘God’s boy; you are the advisor to the future king and what will be the future; if he is like you?’
‘I have no idea Ximenes, none of us do; we are not overly concerned. I think only the Shah worries about it. He seems in contact with the outside through a network.’
‘I think a fledgling people are closest to nature;’ said Ximenes, ‘growing on instinct in direction of the sun watered by hopes and slow awareness of the fates creeping from behind. Civilisation is the growth of a species, any species into an organism with its evolved rituals, customs, laws and large populations; leaving behind its connections with the land that birthed it. Even when there are traces of the natural world in their culture, it is spoken only in symbols and images, each with a deep history and meaning but little connection to what once was and no substance to the claims of their images and symbols. The roots of a civilisation do not grow from within the lands, Bokhtar,’ said Ximenes with a sudden vehemence. ‘Even worse, the plant outgrows its roots like a body outgrowing its stomach.’
‘How can a body outgrow its stomach or even a plant its roots,’ asked Bokhtar.
‘Exactly, that’s why they are unnatural; civilisations are just glorious façades, eating themselves inside out to keep their face from falling to ruin.’
‘I, I do not know what to say.’
‘Nothing, Innocent, keep your mind open and the world will form a pattern in your mind.’

‘Is that the desert we are approaching?’
‘Yes, we have to cross a small portion of it to reach the city.’
‘Ah good; I cannot wait to find a good bath in the city; don’t you just love a refreshing plunge into a pool of cool water Ximenes.’
‘Yes, even someone like me luxuriates in the barbarities of civilisation once in a while.’ They both laughed out loud, happy in the company of one another.
‘So silent; I can hear the sands shifting. One area so hot and now so suddenly cold, the winds strip the skin dry and the body seems as if all its water has entered the ground. What a place this is; so vastly superior to us.’
‘It is unconquerable and pure, Bokhtar. Not an easy place for a weak will but it is the best prescription to draw from the desert’s unforgiving nature.’
‘Do your philosophies shift with the landscape, my friend?’ asked Bokhtar.
‘Yes, because they are shaped by the nature of the land.’
‘And,’ asked Bokhtar with a slight smile, ‘Were your philosophies shaped by that woman’s body you were overpowered by?’
‘She destroyed them in that moment.’

They came upon the city at noon, the next day.
‘What a place,’ said Bokhtar, ‘I have never seen anything like it.’
‘You do not come across such places too often. The gates are the darkest red; so much blood has been poured over this city, that over the ages it has turned almost black. Look there at the words written above the gates’ –

Today we are the strength of the world
Tomorrow ash on a field

‘If you will notice Bokhtar, the buildings and homes closest to the gates are at the lowest height; this is meant to help the city defend itself in times of war, which it never does since the soldiers meet the enemy outside the walls.’
A woman approached them at the Gates and immediately broke into a smile when she saw Ximenes. ‘Ximania,’ she shouted in absolute glee, ‘where have you been. The Warlord will be happy to see you. Come with me. I will take you to him.’ She walked down one of the streets, her petite frame moving quickly even with all the armour and weaponry that covered it. ‘So who is your friend?’
‘A friend from another city, far from here, that does not have any warriors.’
‘What,’ cried the woman, ‘no warriors, so it is true; there are yet cities that we have not taken, it’s unbelievable?’
Bokthar’s eyes widened at the remark and he whispered into the ear of his friend, ‘What kind of people are they?’
‘They are the opposite of what your people stand for, and your Shah would ask them for help!?’
At this remark Bokhtar fell into a thoughtful silence.

The palace was a citadel, strong looking with tall, slim towers at all it’s four corners. It had massive front gates through which there seemed a constant issue of soldiery – some appearing to leave and others returning travel stained and battle weary. The entire city seemed to be on a war footing; children could be seen being taken through all sorts of training. The younger ones though were not engaged in any form of physical activity, but were sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed.
‘Why are the little ones not doing anything at all?’ asked Bokthar.
‘From a young age they are taught to focus on finding the darkest part of their minds and then fight their way through to arrive at a state of heightened awareness. Here we are and remember stranger, when you meet the Lord of War, do not avert your eyes; keep your gaze steady and strong. Do not allow it to waver; there is a custom here that no warrior will avert their eye to anybody.’
‘Quick, before we go in, tell me who is the Warlord.’
‘It is Hardol, Ximania, the other went not too long ago,’ said the girl.
Hardol, why he should never have been allowed to take power; what were the people thinking of; has nobody tried to depose him yet.’
‘Tried and failed Ximania, he is too powerful for anybody to defeat.’
‘You mean if you are not happy with the king he is killed,’ asked Bokthar?
‘No Bokhtar,’ said Ximenes, ‘in this city the King’s right to the seat is openly challenged, this leaves no room for deception, since backstabbers are executed as traitors’

They entered the Room of the Seat, where the King held court. Bokthar felt extremely uncomfortable in his presence.
‘Welcome Ximania, great warrior, and a welcome to you Bokhtar, acolyte from the City of Spring.’
‘Do not look so surprised, my friend; it is necessary that I know everything just as I knew when the Diws would attack your people.’
‘That is incredible sire, your network is better than even ours.’
‘Yes, your Shah has built an impressive information network in such a short time but ours is far superior in numbers and has people that we can depend on.’
‘Then sire,’ said Bokthar, ‘you probably know what I am about to request.’
‘I do to a certain extent, but carry on and let me hear what you have to say.’
‘Sire, the City of Spring asks for your help in destroying the Diws from the Sands that have plagued our city. We ask for the assistance of your army and later in training our people to learn how to fight.

‘I know, I know all this Bokhtar, and I also do know that I will not and cannot stop the inevitable.’
‘What is that Sire?’
‘The clash of the ideologies - the order your people believe in and Chaos that is incarnate in our spirits far deeper than it would be for you all who find it only in the expression of craft and symbols which is but a weak embodiment of your principle. The order that you all profess will bring more misery and hardship, because without chaos order will stagnate. Through our actions we renew life and maintain it’s vitality.’
‘What are you saying sire,’ asked Bokhtar.
What I am stating most simply, Bokhtar, is that we will soon march on your city when the Diws who stand between your city and ours have been annihilated; it will take time but we will soon come to you. Go and find your mercenary army elsewhere, here you have found only the desert.’

(THE END)