Hardcopy
Jilli Manning
Copyright 2018
The curlews outside the window were just beginning to chorus. A strange and chilling, almost blood curdling sound, like the screams of a lost and forsaken child in the night. The wind joined them in harmonic resonance and the symphony carried me back into the trance that was just starting to take hold. Down its rabbit hole I go. The clock, as if struck by some inanimate force, chimed in.
tong....
tong.....
tong....
3 am.
I looked up. The pathway around me was glistening in the low light of creeping dawn. Nobody seemed to be there, walking alone, I called myself to conjure just what it was exactly that I was looking for. The path curved to the left and I could see a clearing coming up ahead of me. The blue flowers at my feet seemed to be beckoning me forward, guiding me on. Star shaped, like larger versions of the sweet blue borage. whispering sweet encouragements from the back beyond, the other dimension where my body sat, still, breathing in time to the beat of the earth, safe in its small home in the rain forest. How the ever-reaching spirits of plants galvanise. Thank you for your courage borage. I walked on.
Come forward gently sweet child, the holograph in my mind's eye called. We have been waiting for you. The medicinal properties of borage affecting me even through its virtual presence alone, I walked boldly on and around the corner. Faint wisps of smoke curled gently around old straight trees dripping in lichen, the pine needles creating a crosshatch of brown that led right up to my feet. I had been here before. The temple. Somewhere on another plane of existence all together I had been there before, though it is only after you see these things that you remember. Like forgotten dreams triggered through the everyday mundane, the cells in my body reverberated almost imperceptibly.
Measured by the watchers I knew. I had to be quick. The AI was coded to seek the new memories. Through sensors placed at gateway points they could pick up the slightest vibration of original thought. Thankfully it did take a certain amount of processing before they could have anyone bring me back. The foibles of the 28th century. AI bots and drones unchecked had hijacked the third dimension. Life was possible but controlled, generations enslaved to the screen, mining the memories of our broken DNA chain trying to get back what was lost.
Those that did remain were separated into two groups. The watched and the watchers. Tricked by the AI into living in boxes on each and every reality span, those that watched were drugged from birth and set into the same destructive separatism that destroyed the middle east and nearly the world itself all those centuries ago. The watched lived in the caves just below the surface of the earth, where the resonance of the earth offered some form of protection from the sensors, and the polluted cities of the past. Though once someone was picked up in their dream states, a new marker was placed hence expanding the AI map and territory.
I was alone. I was a no one, Not on the registry system, and growing up with my grandmother in the rain forests of the great southern continent, I was born to be a jam in the network. The son of AI hackers and Far north dope growers, I was into that shit young. The real network, created by us all. Pulsing in time to the earth. The rhythm in my breathing brought me back. Lost in the reveries of times past was the only way to underscore the watchers. If you can sink back into the bubble of old memories, it's like diving under the waves. They lost me for now I hoped. Still, I had to expect that they would be alert and working their best to pick up my trail. I stepped back onto the path in my mind's eye, more determined and composed this time. Resolute.
The crosshatching of the pine needles merging with my feet as I shifted from the nothing back into the future memory. The wisps of smoke still lingering, bringing the sweet notions of crisp tea and smoked fish. Offerings to the new gods. My vision focused back in slowly as my feet were led forward by the pathway and the unknown. The temple came into being beside me all of a sudden. Its darkened earth walls polished by years of loving dedication, smooth and round with soft, almost otherworldly arches set into the cardinal points of the small round place of worship. A young strong man came to the door, took one look at me and made a cut throat gesture. My talismans were flung off on the spot, no old symbols were to enter here, the temple of the golden lotus. Where new myths were born and golden portals opened. I was actually making my own, right now, I knew. I had seen it. My future self knew this was the moment. I quietened the flash of remembrance to avoid detection again. Especially since the glowing pink sparkly orgone from around my neck had been cast into the ether sphere. Its EMF blocking abilities were handy. Like a cloak against the sensors, it had helped to keep me deeper under the radar, until now.
I had a feeling that I might be about to finally hit it. The knowing that what I had been working towards my entire life, was inside that temple made my heart simultaneously stop, and thump like the beginning of an avalanche. The strong young man was still there, sneering at me. Before my eyes and under my focused direction he morphed into a smiling old man. Sparkling silver hair stuck out from his shining, mostly bald head and shone under the eerie glow that had set in around us. His grin wild with pearly teeth, a simple grey homespun cloak draped across his shoulders and tied up with a coarse rope dyed deep blue with forest foraged indigo. Comfort pervaded the space and we embraced like long lost brothers. The animosity of his previous apparition dissipating, we entered the temple.
The soft dust under my feet felt immediately comforting. A pervading sense of home engulfed me, nearly reducing me to tears as the culmination of my journey ignited into the now. I felt as though I was moving along invisible, long before ordained lines. I gravitated to the centre of the small temple silently, as my companion made himself busy near the altar beside the northern arch, his back to me, in respect for my needing to acquaint myself with this space I had long since forgotten. In the centre of the temple, the lotus. Shining, caressed over the years with masters' tools, enshrining the ancient glyphs forever in the polished gold. I was reading them with utmost surprise, I had never seen these symbols before, yet my hand reached out instinctively, as my body lowered itself without direction, onto the soft dusty embrace of sacred safety I had found on this floor that lived only in my mind. Deep breaths ensued as I steadied my pace. I could feel my disconnected body breathing heavily, back in my true reality, my heart rate increased to a dangerous degree. I brought myself to an inner equilibrium as I lent my consciousness back to my body for a moment to quieten the inert anxiety residing there.
My body could feel it too, even though it seemed an age away from my mind in that moment, the knowing, engulfed me again. I had been training my entire life for this moment. The years secluded in the forest testing the strength of my mind with those of the trees. The power held in the unconscious mind brought to the conscious, over and over again, like a tumultuous wave. You must stand firm, you must remain resolved in these motions, do not go under, stay above the wave, my previous self rang through in a mental checkpoint that I had set up all that long time ago in that ancient forest of my forefathers. Resolute, this is my choice.
My eyes opened inside the temple again, shifting and adjusting in the dappled light, as specks of freshly allocated consciousness floated in through the archways. My spine straightened, my shoulders relaxed, my breath even, I was ready. My hand reached out to this ancient sculpture before me. The elder temple keeper approached with the chalice. Reverberations of an ancient future shuddered through me as the first drops fell. Like iridescent blue birds it flew into the top of the lotus, running quickly in rivulets down the petals that until now had been folded up on itself. The glyphs inscribed on the outside of the petals seemed to enliven, absorbing the liquid poured from the chalice.
The self-satisfied smile of my companion gave a glimpse of a slightly more human side to him. The grin matching his crazy white shining hair. he spoke to me silently, “This is good what you are doing”. I didn’t answer him for the words alone were enough to conjure forth the last stage of directions. Steadily he poured, going back to his silent, otherworldly self. The petals on this enigmatic sculpture opening more fully with every drop that poured, the sigils seeming to come alive and morph before my eyes with this elixir, the outside layer was complete now, the blue liquid pouring down into its second layer that had become apparent, probably for the first time since the last “ending”. This sculpture had been here from the very beginning. Conjured forth from spirit they said. At the same time as the great mother. Infact, some recounted, the great mother had been birthed from this very lotus. The flood of remembrance ensued again. My eyes seemed to roll back voluntarily.
I could see them now. The drones had found me. Quelling the fear that knew they would arrive here within the minute, I reached out again. By this time, the entire lotus had opened, the elixir was working its way along the floor to me, the dust that had been so comforting was now a quagmire of mud, yet I could see, undulating underneath, almost imperceptibly, patterns almost like the human mind. It was running down these channels, desperately. In its innate sentience, this bright blue spring of elixir knew too. It was time. They were here. My companion was gone. I couldn’t see anything except these blue rivulets yet I knew he was outside protecting this space to give us the time we needed. The blue was running up my fingers now, tracing the veins in my hands and arms, each inch it traversed like the touch of a long-lost friend. The exquisite ecstasy of electricity coursing through my veins. Oh yes, I remembered.
I closed my eyes again and assumed the pose of someone who knew what they were doing, even though I was not exactly certain. The coursing brilliance of these blue veins becoming one with my own body should have terrified me, but instead I welcomed this strange and wonderful embodiment. The elixir had spread to my back and shoulders now, and through my mind's eye I could see it. Spreading out into the air from my shoulders, like water filled lace wings lifting me effortlessly into the air. From this position I could see my companion at each entrance. His dissection of self standing sentinel at each gate point, arms and legs stuck out in stunning defiance. The Ai bots had nothing on this piece of ancient incarnation I laughed to myself. Yet I knew there wasn’t much more left in him. It was my turn to take over now.
Wings spread, the elixir lifted me further into the air, gently guiding my ascension above the temple. Blue trails spreading from my fingers back down through the domed rood, connected to the lotus which was pulsating and spinning in its own radiance of effervescent light. A loud crack seemed to come from my forehead as the elixir parted my brows and all of a sudden, suspended in electrifying unity with this temple space and this ancient sculpture, I turned to face the bots. Laughing as I imagined my image coming across the screens of the watchers. I could see their smug grimaces churning in fright. They knew what was going on here. The last ending for them, they should never have come here, yet I knew, this was the only way it was ever going to happen.
A jam on their airwaves I truly became. The blue elixir shone forth from the space between my brows, surrounding the three bots who had followed me to this hallowed temple. Forever suspended in this hyperspace now, and I, the conduit to source, stepped out of the way. The blue etheric enigma surrounding and engulfing everything now, myself, still suspended in the air, yet triumphant with the knowing that through these bots, we could hijack them back. The elixir went to work. I remained in this space. Suspended, ecstatic, in this everlasting electric blue.