The Communicator (Part 6)

Metanoia - Chapter 2 - Life Path 3

Table of Contents

Character Chart: A Map to the Nine Lives

When I finally came to a clearing, the ground descended into a massive basin, taking both Thallon and I by surprise. At first, nothing, but then in the distance I could see the ground churning with civilization. I didn’t realize it at first with the way it was placed, having no organized structure or methodical placement of buildings. It all fit in perfectly with the dense canopy of green and flora. With no wall, and a strange sense of security from the vast basin, I started our descent.

Winding down the path, my attention was suddenly brought to a stirring in the foliage. Large gray eyes peered out from the plants. I took a few steps back out of caution. At first, I thought they must have come from some kind of creature, but they followed me with a cognizance that couldn’t have come from a wild animal. This was the moment I met Sev, an Umarian with a brilliance I had never encountered before. His eyes were enlarged as a result of two clear pieces of stone that rested on his face, which I would later learn the function of, and had feathers that displayed indigo, blue, and brown. Perhaps he was indeed a wild animal like me, roaming the continent for no good reason, but that wasn’t the case. Sev was an integral part of the civilization churning below, along with thousands of other Umarians who had the same birth defect. He stumbled out of the greenery to show himself, a bag slung around his shoulder with samples of plants in one hand and a small pair of shears in the other. The space in between glances, questions and confusion were strongly felt. I could sense him trying to figure out where I came from, if I was an outsider or some random person who strayed far from my dwelling. Finally, he smiled, and I smiled back.

“Do you need help?”

Again, I was plunged into an entirely different world, but this time I drifted into an aura of peace and community rather than that of fear and hate.

“It was absolutely necessary that we crossed paths.” Sev was quirky and full of enthusiasm. His gestures were swift and flamboyant. He made it very clear, about seven times to be exact, how spectacular it was for him to stumble upon me while he was collecting samples for his crop.

“I’m a scientist. Right now I’m conducting research on these pterop plants to see if they are reproductively compatible with yaro. It’s our most successful crop here. We’ve even figured out how to make clothes out of it despite its poisonous thorns. Its simply a matter of applying the right amount of heat and pressure to the roots so that the chemical is retracted, and processing its fibers afterwards. What are your clothes made of? They’re so soft. We have clothes like this but it takes several years of processing our plants to get the right texture. Your odyk is also much larger and muscular than our stock, you will soon see the difference, it’s quite astonishing.”

This went on for several minutes, as Sev said a lot of words that I didn’t understand, and went on to another observation before I could answer any questions.

“I don’t want to overwhelm you”.

Too late.

“I’m going to take you to my home so that you can rest and recoup before I share you with everyone and show you all there is to know about the Mari way.” First, the heart became warm towards his kind offering, and then speculation came from a mind that just endured what people were capable of.

“What do you do?” He finally asked without another word.

“I’m an Artisan” I said, flinching for what would follow afterward.

“An Artisan? Superb. I love it. What is your craft?”

“I was a scribe before I left my village.”  He stopped walking for a second, a smirk developing on his face.

“You haven’t developed press yet?”

“What?” I replied tiredly.

“Never mind, a topic for tomorrow.”

I suddenly realized how strange it was that Sev was more enthused than shocked to find an outsider like Ira was.

“Is it not unusual to you that I’m a foreigner?”

“We knew some villages were out there, we have record of it, we just don’t know where. Honestly, we seem to be a bit too comfortable to go looking just yet.”

“Don’t bother.” I sighed.

Having not slept for two days prior to my arrival, I awoke the next day well rested and completely relaxed with soft beams of sunlight illuminating specs of dust floating in the air, just as they did in the library. As I came to, I heard the rustling of Thallon outside my window. Sev’s residence was a quaint cottage tucked into a cul-de-sac within a dense mass of vegetation. His guest quarters was a den that connected to the kitchen, where I smelled new aromas that were oddly appetizing. As I gazed at the beams of light, a few tears escaped my eyes. It was a peaceful cry, an overwhelming feeling of content. After nearly a year, it was time for me to have a home cooked meal.

“Perhaps I used too many spices” Sev said with uncertainty when he noticed my eyes getting watery during breakfast.

“It’s perfect.” I assured him. Sev accepted this and ate in contentment.

I didn’t feel the need to explore this new village right away. I could have spent the entire day studying the fine details and quiet serenity of his home. So instead of heading out after eating we relaxed in his garden and exchanged information. He showed me what he put in our soup, and started a discussion of everything that needed to be explained.

He put a word to our race. Umarians with only one trait were called monosomy, while disomy consisted of two traits, and trisomy three. I came to find that not only did Sev’s home have this mutation, but that most residents, if not all, were either disomy or trisomy in nature. One child was recently born with four traits, something they didn’t have a word for yet. They did not see this child as an anomaly, or something to be wary of. They saw him as a gift.

I asked Sev what his people knew about their history. He informed me that they had record of a divergence at some point in time in which settlers left the desert to find paradise. One group went south, the other west.

As anticipated, I eventually told him I was the only Umarian born with the trisomy condition in my village, and I wanted to know how the rest of the world had so many. This information sent Sev into another burst of vigor, and I saw the same person I ran into in the wilderness. Being the clever soul Sev was, he delightfully provided the possible explanation that the settlers who went east could have been monosomy Umarians, while those who migrated south were predominantly disomy and trisomy.

“I can’t tell if society is astray, or I’m the one astray within it” I confessed to him. Like all things, Sev had something to say about this.

“Have you ever thought that perhaps the reason why you don’t feel you belong is because you do, in every sense of the word?”

“What do you mean?”

“You belong to many purposes. You belong here in this world, without the borders, the lines separating villages and continents and oceans, or the role that was imposed on you."

“What is ocean?” I inquired. A long pause ensued, and for the first time, I saw Sev be still.

“That’s where we’re going first.”

Sev politely took me by the hand and guided me out of the cul-de-sac.

There were many hills to walk through. They winded up and down, passing other closed passages and buildings of importance that I could not identify. A pack of small furry animals ran out of the vegetation in front of us, forcing us to stop and wait for them to cross. Eventually the ground became more grainy like the wretched desert I had just left, and for a moment I became afraid that ocean was the same word for dead lands. Our pace grew slower and slower with the ground ultimately shifting out from underneath our feet as we walked up the last hill. I could sense a stiff wind blowing on the other side of the hill, carrying a strange metallic scent. When we came to the edge, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw, and I was glad Sev didn’t try to explain.

“We were meant to see horizons” the thought reverberated in my mind from a distant point in time, now a self-fulfilled prophecy. I came over the edge to witness a tumultuous blanket, a condensed, inverted sky that churned and pulsated. Walking down a bit farther, I bent down and took handfuls of the grainy soil, which unlike the sediment of the desert was a pure white and had an iridescence in the sunlight.

“You see these?” Sev took a magnifying lens out of his pocket and put it on my hand that held the sand. “When you melt and cool this particular substrate, you can make these lenses that enlarge everything.” I took it and tried to find what made the two substances the same. All the iridescence had gone from the lens, but its composition remained the same, just in a different state that allowed for a new enhanced clarity.

These two realities where weathered stone and flowing water met, crisp and endless, ‘Was it home?’ I couldn’t help but think. Is this it? The air coming off the water felt electric, I breathed it in and experienced its vitality. Only after voyaging through the dead lands was I able to meet its inverse. As I stood there taking it all in, I became aware of how dynamic the world was to have such dreadful conditions that were equally met in depth and intensity.

I stayed with Sev in his village for two moon cycles. During that time, I was shown every facet of their way of life in bits and pieces. We took trips to the ocean nearly every day during his leisure time upon my request. Sev was very patient with my eagerness for the water. He told me he enjoyed watching me be captivated by the scenery, and felt a new sense of wonder from something he grew so accustomed to. I even went by myself a few times while he was working, bringing Thallon with me just to see how he reacted to the new world. He’d turn is head up to sniff the new air, but eventually became restless from the lack of vegetation to graze on.

When I met with the rest of the villagers, usually in small groups or individually, I saw a life, or awareness that I did not sense in the people back home. Some of them had me over for meals so that I could tell them about myself and my whereabouts. These were informal meetings, unlike the encounter I had with their city’s record keeper. Someone was also assigned to me for a few days to gather information and publish it to the community, as there was not enough time and too many people for private introductions. The diversity amongst personalities became overwhelming. I was not used to the way combinations of personalities manifested in a person.

Sev also acquainted me with an invention called the press. It did months of my work as a scribe in just one day. Their local book maker showed me how it worked, slipping pieces of paper into a strange machine that spit out sheets of perfectly etched script. Knowing that I would eventually go back home, he gave me the plans for the machine so that I could share it with my village.

Once I became more familiar with the place, there was time to reflect. My thoughts became entangled in my life’s nameless pursuit. For a moment, my attention turned to the desert city, and I wanted to know how something as ambivalent as the sky birthed creatures like us. Something that had no good or evil, only a firm stake in existing for the sake of existing, the bliss of being as I imagined it to be after my long nights of stargazing in the wilderness. How do souls turn against themselves when it kills and deprives them from this bliss?

I began to notice one definitive component amongst the three societies. Amnesia governed the fate of populations. History had been lost in my home village, and therefore, progress was slow. You cannot build a tower if you have to keep rebuilding the fifth floor. Then again, the hatred towards my kind died out along with progress. They did not remember how to hate me, although there wasn’t enough of people like me to cause a conflict either.

I learned of the Southern Umari who were impeccably innovative, leaps and bounds ahead the western and eastern villages in ways that were technological but most importantly sociological. These people did not have amnesia to the extent of everyone else, and were aware of the gaps in their knowledge, of a time that has long passed and that which had an impact on their present circumstance. They were aware of what they were not aware of.

I contemplated the case for the desert city. The trisomy and disomy Umarians lost hope in the idea that free life can exist, and so the knowledge died along with it. As for the rest of society, I did not have the capacity to relate to them or to know how or if amnesia impacted them. Perhaps the opposite occurred. Perhaps it was knowledge that they hadn’t lost, but instead held onto so tightly that it swung violently in the opposite direction where a truth was concealed, manifesting a system of extremes. Perhaps they knew exactly what they were doing, holding on so tightly to their conviction.

In the fleeting moments between thought and wonder of the place, I considered staying there. However, there was a subliminal longing to return left over from standing at death’s door. My brush with evil gave me a craving for the innocence and familiarity of home. When I finally did leave the settlement, I climbed up to the top of the basin and looked down one last time before departing. Moving forward, I couldn’t help but think that this “mutation” was the sign of an evolutionary jump in our species, restrained by its own conventions.

   When I made it back home, it had been nearly two years since I left. I went directly to my mothers dwelling to find her sitting at the table I used to read at, a blank expression that conveyed an emptiness I felt. When she looked up to see me in the doorway I sensed she had not lost hope, but merely had been waiting. After a warm embrace, I soon collapsed from the arduous journey, where I remained until I got my strength back. It felt more like a home than ever before.

I had a hard time finding Fren, but easily ran into Denon while he was working. He stopped what what he was doing, awestruck, and pulled me into a long embrace. Denon was convinced I was gone forever after the first year, as was Fren, who had become incredibly involved with her art, and was promoted to the chief art instructor for the whole village. After he pulled me aside, we went for a walk and I tried to explain what had happened to me. It seemed as though the disruption of losing a close friend so suddenly brought on a depth to him that I didn’t see before when I first asked him and Fren if they ever thought about what was beyond this place, all those years ago. I walked with him, and I stayed with him from then on.

When I introduced the plans for the press to the chief Technician, he was confounded and thankful for the new technology. They had not been trying to develop something to make books at such a scale, but the idea of it would surely make information more readily to disperse amongst one another, and for the future preservation of old bindings. This forever relinquished any future position as a scribe, and I was okay with this. Instead I focused on art projects that were based on my journey. I even wrote and illustrated a children’s book, something that I was glad I did once I discovered the news that I was harboring Denon’s child.

Once I got settled, I began searching for Alaster, wanting to tell him what I encountered and to thank him for his guidance. If he had not been with me on my first day out, I would not have made it back home. I would have perished in the desert or I would have been trapped in the desert city, but Alaster was nowhere to be found. I managed to track down a lead Protector and ask her in person if she knew about him and where he was. She didn’t even recognize the name, and could not help me. I was both intrigued and saddened by the mystery of his unexplainable appearance and departure.

After 12 moon cycles, I reached full gestation and went into labor. It was after a long day of drawing when the sun was getting ready to set. I called for my mother, whom I wanted to be there to deliver the egg, and left for the hospital.

We did not make it there.

Halfway there, I became unconscious. In a brief moment, I regained awareness, where I saw that I was on the ground, my mother doing the best she could to deliver my egg and keep me from going under. I sensed the blackness waiting for me again, this time much more soft, something worth drifting into unlike the resistance I felt in the desert. I noticed the smooth patch of grass I was lying on and the sweet air.

Suddenly, I lost all feeling below my waist, quite an odd sensation. Now with only a head that throbbed and wanted separation, I tilted it back to where I could see the setting sun.

Had I not been on the ground as the life left my body, tears escaping as hushed pain, I would never have known how beautiful the sunset looked through watery eyes. The liquid collected around the circular edges of my vision, scattering the light and intensifying the view as if I was looking through the magnified lens of the isolated Umari.

This time, instead of merely appearing closer, it was closer. I realized that I had lived my life as an impartial being. All my life I had lived in fear of the mere concept of this moment. It was a life impartial to a love long forgotten.