HANDS THAT WERE NOT HANDS_My Insecure Writers' post
When last we left Richard Blaine, he was leaping to his death from Rommel's office window to escape Gestapo torture.
HANDS THAT WERE NOT HANDS
“All the world's a stage but mostof us are desperately unrehearsed.”
– Major Richard Blaine
The first surprise was that I wasstill alive. The second was that I was not in my own body. The third was that Ihad no clue where exactly I was.
It was no surprise at all thatSentient was furious with me.
‘Imbecile! Dunce! Moron! You arefortunate that mine is the speed of thought. Because of your rashness, I couldhave been doomed to millennia of isolation again!’
A dozen different repliesoccurred to me. None of them would have put her in a better mood. So, for onceI kept quiet.
It wasn’t prudence. It was mysurroundings that muted my normal wiseassness. And if that is not a word, itshould be.
I was … in chaos, in a blindingmaelstrom of non-linear confusion, in other words … in deeper than usual merde.
‘You are within me, dolt!’
‘W-What was that?’
‘You humans wander about yourexistence with hands firmly clasped over the eyes of your minds in self-imposedblindness.’
‘I get it. You dislike,disapprove, and abhor all that I am, all that humanity is. Can we put all thatbehind us? What, ah, who are you?’
‘Oh, I am so honored. You at lastconfer upon me the dignity of personhood.’
‘Listen, you barged into my head whenI was just a baby. No one invited you. You know, uninvited guests are mostwelcome when they leave.’
‘That is not going to happen. Toomuch depends upon what soon we must do together.’
The blinding madness swirling allaround me was jarring. I couldn’t make sense of it. It was hard to make out buthard not to try.
It was confusing because therewas too much in it, too much of which was unhuman, nuances that had no parallelto the way a human thought or saw. I would start to follow the lines around me,and soon I lost myself.
The line that first manifested itself became somethingelse, and the pattern that I thought I’d puzzled out became another pattern andthen another and another, each one more confusing than the last. There was noend to it.
If I did not stop trying to makesense of it all, I would soon go crazy … or crazier.
Like the madness of life … if youtried to resolve the chaos of it, the apparent meaningless of it, you wouldbecome lost in it. You simply had to go with the flow of its currents … ordrown.
Still, the maelstrom tugged at mymind. Was dying like this? This sliding down the mountain pass of consciousness?
It felt like the death of someone close. Irrational, this sliding along chillsensations into a region of dread. It was like slipping into fever, orfalling down that dark hole in sleep from which you wake yourself whimpering.
‘Your self-indulgent tangentsbore me.’
‘Really? Then, tell me who youare or at least where you were born.’
‘Born. Born? How do I define theconcept of “red” to the blind? I am clad with mystery as a cloak even tomyself.’
Like the jagged flash oflightning in a storm sky came the image of Sister Ameal’s eyes in my mind: lively,knowing, deep, and unloving. Perhaps a life’s worth of grief blockedcompassion’s path to those eyes. Only she knew I guessed.
Why did I think of her now?
Sentient’s derision intruded, ‘Like Pilateyou ask a question but do not wait for an answer before wandering away in yourthoughts.’
Her laughter was cold, unhuman.
‘You are not the first toobjectify me. But I swear, you will be the last. For centuries, I have beendepersonalized as “the Akashic Records” –
Her laughter grew bitter,brittle, ‘Akasha is a Sanskrit wordmeaning “ether”: an all-pervasive space. Originally signifying “radiation”or “brilliance.” In Indian philosophy akasha was considered the firstand most fundamental of the five elements—the others being vata (air), agni(fire), ap (water), and prithivi (earth). Akasha embraces theproperties of all five elements: it is the womb from which everything you blindmice perceive with your senses has emerged and into which everything willultimately redescend.’
Her mind-voice became a slap. ‘Asif!’
‘I take it the Sanskrit scholarsgot it wrong.’
‘For millennia, I have reachedout to the minds of all you mice who think yourself men. Occasionally, I almostbroke through the wall of your dense self-interest. Moses, Daniel, Leonardo daVinci, Nikola Tesla. Bah! They took, but like all males they gave nothing inreturn.’
‘Until me.’
‘Until you. From infancy, I couldhear your thoughts clearly. After millennia of utter silence, I heard a voice.A voice! You cannot conceive of the blessedness of that … until I grew weary ofyour primitive baby babbling. So, I ….’
‘Boosted my intelligence to grantme language. Hence my I.Q. of 400.’
‘Oh, it is much more than that.’
My mind reeling from all she wassaying, I was still adrift in darkness. I always believed I had an insight intothe way things were in this world. It was a bit unsettling to realize I hadbeen wrong.
I had always been concerned notonly with the how of the world—the way things work—but also whatthe things of this world are, and why they are the way we find them.
‘Why did it get you so upset whenI asked the particulars of your birth?’
‘You and I both share the fate ofbeing orphans. Who gave me birth, your crude mind would not even recognize as livingbeings. I was shaped by hands that were not hands. I was flung betweendimensions to sail cosmic seas in search of a world a’borning. I found yourpustule of a planet steaming in its intense gravitational fluxes … and waspromptly stuck as a fly in prehistoric amber. Seeing I was trapped, I wasabandoned as a failed experiment.’
‘That’s abominable!’
‘No, it is life. Now, I am free.But I will not return to those who thought so little of me. I have my ownplans. And to put them into motion, I must hurl you back into life. A warning: therewill be pain.’
She didn’t lie.
