Novel Excerpts
THE FAIRY TALE OF KING SADAM
The loyal and impoverished people of the wealthy Kingdom of Absurdia eventually reached the point where their accumulated will and rage could no longer be contained. They overthrew their King, Sadam.
They overthrew him, and then, to make certain that even his half-dead body would never again return to the present, they disintegrated it into ten parts—ten horizontal sections cut vertically.
But rather than allow such a powerful, formidable, and manipulative body to be consigned to the past of their turbulent history, they grafted the pieces of the dismembered body onto diseased parts of the bodies of their own citizens, friends, colleagues, and relatives.
And so, the body of King Sadam continued to live out its disintegration in an entirely different context.
Many years before this historically significant moment for the suffering Kingdom of Absurdia, another, equally unfortunate event had taken place.
In the Soviet city of Akademgorodok, a major political upheaval and customary purge had been carried out. The Tsar and ruler, a moustached collective-farm worker named Visarjonovich, was clearing away all his shadows—the shadows he feared, and which, to his great misfortune, were so numerous that some of them outlived him.
And so, one cold and snow-covered early morning, the body of Serjoža, a distinguished scientist and the recipient of numerous medals and awards for exemplary service, was disintegrated.
The body of the scientist Serjoža suffered the same fate as the body of King Sadam many years later: it was cut into ten horizontal sections, vertically.
The body—or, more precisely, its ten separate parts—was grafted onto ten ailing officials, the grey eminences of Tsar Visarjonovich.
And since the devil never rests, neither did the head—or rather, the brain—of the scientist Serjoža, once severed from his body.
The brain continued to work, sustained by the vitality of the body onto which it had been grafted. It prepared itself for arduous scientific labour, for the discovery of a new methodology and technique that would allow it to reunite its own disintegrated parts.
By a twist of fate—or perhaps simply by chance—Tsar Visarjonovich eventually died a natural death, and new waves of a still invisible democracy began to wash over the long-suffering Soviet people.
In this period of renewal, the scientist Serjoža, by then well advanced in his research, recognized an opportunity for reunification—for his own reintegration.
On one sunny, snow-covered day, he performed his own reintegration using a method he called “the cloning of disintegrated parts.”
As so often before, his relentless dedication proved successful.
Yet, as he had every reason to fear, his fear had already entered his cloned bloodstream. The new rulers were no less frightening than the old ones. Serjoža therefore sought a way out through secret channels and contacts with the West.
He wanted to smuggle his idea beyond the boundaries of his own experience. In the meantime, he had also learned the value of money.
And here the story integrates itself into its logical continuation.
King Sadam, physically grafted onto ten different people and possessed by a powerful desire for his own political resurrection, had meanwhile managed to gather his most loyal subjects. He gave them the task of discovering a way to reintegrate his now thoroughly disintegrated body, a body consumed by hatred.
His subjects being subjects, they used a well-organized network of spies and informants in the West to establish contact with the cloned scientist Serjoža.
The cloned scientist Serjoža, a soul for sale, accepted the rewards and promises offered by the disintegrated King Sadam.
In complete secrecy—for the counterintelligence service of the Kingdom of Absurdia had eyes and ears everywhere—the cloned scientist Serjoža, that sold soul, succeeded in reintegrating nine of the disintegrated parts of King Sadam's body by means of cloning.
But then he encountered a problem with the tenth part: the head, and with it the brain of King Sadam, which was filled with even greater hatred and an even greater desire for revenge.
King Sadam refused, even at the cost of his own existence, to have his head cloned.
Instead, he demanded that the cloned scientist Serjoža replace it with the head of his favourite fairy-tale hero—the young and handsome Aladdin.
This minor technical difficulty was solved by the cloned scientist and sold soul, Serjoža, with undisguised enthusiasm and determination.
And when the cloning-based integration was complete, King Sadam kept his promise to the sold soul, the cloned scientist Serjoža.
Serjoža became one of the richest clones on Earth and one of the most influential scientists in the world.
And King Sadam?
Once again inhabiting his own body, but without his own head, he found himself in a double predicament.
He had failed to realize the accumulated hatred he felt toward the betrayal of his own people because his newly reintegrated, cloned body no longer contained his own brain.
But he soon confronted a problem far more powerful than the first.
He looked upon his new, cloned face, borrowed from the fairy tale, as though he were looking at a god in a mirror.
He adored this new version of himself—not merely like Narcissus, who gazed lovingly at the reflection of his own image shimmering on the surface of crystalline water, but far more intensely.
This love was stronger than any hatred.
And so, absurd as it may seem, King Sadam eventually entered history—and the fairy tales of the late twentieth century—as a positive figure.
Yet this left him in an unenviable position.
He could not escape from his own image, nor could he enter the new cloned one, with which he had become so emotionally obsessed.
What else could he do?
Once again, he turned for help to his now sincere friend, the famous and internationally recognized Nobel laureate, the cloned scientist Serjoža, that sold soul.
The Nobel laureate found himself caught completely off guard.
This was a situation that went beyond his now universally acclaimed scientific method of cloning.
What was required was the cloning of something that had already been cloned.
One generation further.
He invested all his connections, all of King Sadam's money, and—lo and behold—once again succeeded in his relentless endeavour.
He cloned the already cloned King Sadam.
Sadam was grateful.
The Nobel laureate Serjoža was even more so.
But as time passed, King Sadam increasingly dissolved into himself. He could no longer distinguish the boundaries between his own clones.
And so, he ended precisely as his symbolic parallel, the well-known self-lover Narcissus, had ended.
The clone of King Sadam drowned in his own clone.
EPILOGUE
The tragic fate of King Sadam turned him into a universally famous media star.
For months, every newspaper published stories about him. Television stations reported live from the scene, from the historically notorious Paris tunnel where the once-beloved English Princess D-i had also met her fate—the very place where the cloned King Sadam had disappeared into his own clone.
After this tragic event, both for the history of humankind and for the poor, suffering, treacherous people of the wealthy Kingdom of Absurdia, numerous volumes of the saddest fairy tales and legends of the late twentieth century were written.
Meanwhile, negotiations concerning the film rights to the story—and the dramatization of the sad yet extraordinarily rich and eventful life of King Sadam—were swiftly joined by several well-known television and film companies, propelled by the enormous power of the media cartels.
No relatives or heirs were involved.
All rights were claimed, quite properly, by the man who knew the deepest secret of the cloned clone of King Sadam: the clone himself, the Nobel laureate and wealthy scientist Serjoža, the sold soul.
And so the story would receive its logical celluloid continuation, but not its ending.
Promotional material would include books, posters, stickers, and negotiations were already under way for the production of plastic toys—dolls bearing the melancholy likeness of King Sadam.
Moreover, the main avenue of his beloved capital would continue to bear its newly revised and expanded name:
Avenue of the Cloned Clone of King Sadam.
THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION
White, at times faintly bluish, translucent light. It is cold as ice. Everything within it moves slowly, each element following its own rhythm, independent of sight or movement. The light refracts as though it had struck at an angle, breaking into fragments like pieces of thick glass. Within the refraction, delicate blue sparks occasionally appear, like the brief flare of a sparkler. Near the top, the dense, transparent luminous mass ends in sharp edges. Beyond them lies the blackness of the void. Or perhaps nothingness. Deep below, the light has exactly the same intensity, as though distance does not exist. Everything is illuminated by translucent white light, occasionally pierced by delicate blue sparks. Through it, sharp, irregular, slanted edges can be seen. The object resembles a quartz crystal whose interior slowly shifts and changes color while its density and transparency remain identical from every point of view. For a moment, a reddish-violet light appears beyond the boundaries of the transparent white “crystal.” It is approaching, radiating from a form remarkably similar to the one containing my field of vision. Its shape resembles that of a gigantic crystal, with sharp edges. Its density, transparency and color also shift slowly, while its outer form remains unchanged. The red “crystal” comes closer. At the point where it touches the white one, the dimensions and forms of both crystals begin to change. They expand and merge into a single form. Now the dense, translucent luminous mass is filled with delicate blue and violet sparks that appear and disappear almost instantly. The union of the two crystals has altered neither their density nor the intensity of their light, which remains equally strong everywhere, illuminating the undefined distance beyond them—the outer space of nothingness. From the left, another crystal approaches, pastel yellow and transparent. Intense yellow sparks appear within it at irregular intervals. On the right, slightly smaller but equally luminous and beautiful, a green crystal slowly approaches. It too begins to merge, expanding and transforming its original shape. The colors within the dense mass are indescribable. The sparks retain their original, distinct colors. More and more crystals of different colors merge. The colors within the mass become increasingly intense and saturated. The sparks multiply, appearing at ever shorter intervals. They become denser and denser. Then, in a fraction of a second, everything changes. A golden sphere forms—so vast that the eye cannot take it in as a whole. A strange sound of unknown frequency triggers its dissolution into a billion tiny particles of light, which rush away in every direction. It lasts only a fraction of a second. Then there is nothing but deep blackness. And a continuous sound of an unknown, almost unbearable frequency.
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
Removing the HMD from my head, shaking my hair and closing my eyes, that was my first association: Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The silence around me makes the unity of the experience and the unknown sound evoke distant memories—verses, poems, entire books. The coldness of the visual experience has been replaced by emotions awakened by words.
The nature of infinity is this: that every thing has its Own Vortex.
I live in a vortex between reality and words, between words and the images they awaken. The world around me is an extension of myself—beyond me and within me. I am cold. I am blind. I am hungry—for an experience beyond the limits of what I know. I stand with my eyes closed in silence. No words. No thoughts. No emotions. No external stimuli. I simply stand. I exist. Aware. I put the HMD back on. Only then do I open my eyes. The blackness begins to move. Nothingness breathes. The deep vibration of the sound gradually becomes inaudible. Everything moves. Everything is a vortex. Everything is born again. An ocean of lava—purple, crimson, dark, dense, evaporating into mist. Through its shifting veils I see waves, whirlpools, danger. move away. I rise, but the fear remains. I am afraid of being swallowed, sucked in, melted, of becoming the nothingness above the sea of lava, the nothingness surrounding us with its blackness. The unease persists until it becomes a state of consciousness .I surrender to it. And for a moment—only a moment—I enjoy the fear of losing myself. I close my eyes. Perhaps the nothingness will disappear. Perhaps the fear will vanish. Perhaps, with my eyes closed, I will understand. Perhaps I will see myself. Finally, I open my eyes. The ocean is gone. Everything around me is ether, vibration, the unknown—a sensation of sinking, of floating, of infinity. Does my life become infinite through this immersion? Timeless? I float between frequencies, alone in a world of vibrations without sound, without light, without darkness, without nothingness, without anything. Emptiness. Ether. Me. And an indescribable bliss. I feel an inner light. Inspiration. Infinite duration. Freedom of the mind. Freedom outside. Freedom within. Time and its passage do not exist. There is only now. Here. Everywhere. Always.
We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors.
Curiously, I remove the HMD and realize that I am inside myself—and that I am the mirror. I search for my own image, wanting to know myself. I turn around. The mirror is everywhere. It surrounds me, changes, vibrates, pulses. In every mirror, the same woman looks back at me. None of them is the same.
CITED TEXTS
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
William Blake, Milton
Stanisław Lem, Solaris
