I also couldn't resist the idea of a third solution, watching a pure consciousness, a spectacle that even a monk could pay a fortune to attend. I realized that I may choose this option and let it be a final spoonful of the caviar of truth before total madness. It could be the liberation of my tortured mind just moments before the Big Filter. It would be a liberation from the mind that forced me to live in solitude, full of traumas and nightmares, kept me awake most of the nights, searching for answers that couldn't be reached, like a small, golden balance that tries desperately to weight a mountain. My perpetual suffering from the lack of answers to fundamental questions would finally end. I would be the luckiest man ever if I could communicate with our new, higher being, asking questions, the fundamental ones that we still couldn’t answer throughout all the history of mankind. What is consciousness? Is it real? Is it awareness of only for the physical world? Or is it beyond that? Are there other beings in different worlds suffering from the cosmic solitude as we do? What is time? Is there any other concept of existence that we are not aware of? How did life begin? Can we be at peace with ourselves? Can we be eternal? Is there a “God” beyond this universe? A manipulator? A simulator? Are we his experiment as you are ours? Are we a story in a computer just like you are a story in our computer?
I would ask until I filled all my brain with those ultimate answers that will then stipulate more complicated questions and paradoxes. But it would totally be worth it. That short moment of total enlightenment before the total insanity is golden.
The fourth solution, the easiest and the most logical one, I kept it until the end because it will close my story here. All my memoirs and meditations will be unfinished as the writer would have decided to check out. By ending my own life, destroying my own consciousness, I could resolve all the problems at once. Every problem we meet in this existence is subjective, meaning it exists only when we sense it, as one needs to be alive to experience a problem. All problems cease to exist when we sleep, they disappear as if by magic, but they come back when we wake up. Therefore, one can assume that ceasing to exist will destroy all the paradoxes as, by definition, I will not be there to witness them. Consequently, they will never affect me, as there will be no more me. Such a wonderful idea! Finally, a good reason to leave my meaningless and tormented life in a kind of a sacrifice for the gods. I could end all my problems by simply swallowing this cyanide pill in my hand. I am watching it, admiring it, loving the idea of the final rest.
‘Out of nowhere, Oina appeared suddenly in my delirium like a flash of memory. Oina… how could I leave knowing that she will be struggling alone against the powerful First Citizens? They will destroy her world without a doubt. Left alone, she will be destroyed by pain, knowing that I committed suicide. How can I do that to her?
When the drops’ effect disappeared, I looked at the clock; it’s bedtime. Through my bedroom window, I could see the grass moving slightly with the breeze. A gentle touch of the moon caressed the leaves lightly, adding more sense to the existence better than any supercomputer on the planet. I could feel some tranquility. Life is mostly tranquil and peaceful. Why do we always make it so complicated? Why do we feel the need to create if everything is already created? Would the impulse of domination persist if we dominated everything? I closed my eyes slowly, and I thought that I should go with the second solution. I will destroy that bloody machine, and the plan has already been assembled by my best buddy, the giant salamander.
The first purple rays with a light breeze caressed my face gently. I slowly rose from my bed and admired the sunrise with serenity. Today is the big day, supposedly...
Dismar just parked the limousine next to the door, gave me the carrot juice, the sports papers, then said, “Sir, it’s done.”
“How long you think it will take them to fix it?”
“The guys did a good job. They have excellent skills, and, in my opinion, at least a week.”
With a smile, I said, “Are you sure we can’t recruit them? They are indeed a special force.”
“I am afraid, no, sir. No uniform would fit them, and we have no regiments of mice, either”
That made me laugh out loud. What a nice way to start a day!
Chapter 10
The Religious Regime, the Bamos
“The virtues dictated and imposed by a religion are only burdens on the believer, as the way of happiness should be explained, not imposed.”
~ Loman
T he Bam kept its first place as the biggest and the oldest religion in the world through a violent history of persecutions and wars, as the tradition dictates for all the monolithic religions. The historians agreed that it started as shamanistic rituals performed around some unknown phenomena which occurred fifteen thousand years ago. The holy book of the bam mentioned that in the first chapters, “In the beginning, the Skylights brought the First Supreme.” The scientists ridiculed this supernatural hypothesis as they traced back and found some cosmic events that did happen around that period – the passage of the Comet Jona coincided with a full eclipse of the Sun. Those two phenomena created what was evidently interpreted as “supernatural” when a shower of meteorites that detached from the comet fell to
