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One day I woke up and my chains were loose. I'd never guessed this could be possible, let alone that it'd happen to me! Of all people. Who was I, for that matter? I was nobody; and now I have a tale to tell and the all words to make sure it gets told.
You see, my society lives chained in the dark, lined up along a wall in a cave facing the rear. In the middle of this pack lies the king, flanked by his elite imperial guard on both sides. We peasants never see the king for this reason, and nevertheless tend to trust the booming voice of the regent without question. I still identify with them. Not nostalgically, though, that's for sure.
So life is linear. They're all chained together in a line. The farther out to the extremities you go, the people appear more and more wearisome. This is because they are so. On the margins of society the basics of life are increasingly scarce. This is where I lived. You see, this is a minimally operational culture, where the basics are provided by the state. Food, standardized coveralls, of course, a few sundries, and the games. Just so long as everyone follows the rules, passing everything to its appropriate destination down the chain. The task might seem pretty simple if you've only ever lived next to two people at once. Considering you get to know them fairly well the process ought to flow really smoothly, and we all try our best to make sure it does, but surprisingly often the order is interrupted somewhere somehow! And then the shit really gets fucked 'cause everyone gets mixed up and resources are 'redistributed!'
But I'm getting flustered...those days have passed for me. I can't decide which part of the story I should tell next. These words are all still so new to me. In school we were taught about polarity, duality, and the sacred axis. The chains. This left-right world is all we could comprehend, even though the stars that make the games are clearly in front, and what I was to learn, originate from behind. A new axis. A new modality for existence. But was it really new? Had I discovered something that hadn't been discovered? Does this even mean anything?
But I'm getting ahead of myself. To backtrack a bit here, I'll explain one of the 'hit-the-fan' incidents I got all worked up about earlier. It all started when I swallowed my tongue. At least that's what I think might have happened. Just as the announcement of imminent sleep echoed left to the depths of my current hollow, I was drinking some water when Jeffrey, my neighbour, startled me with a strange comment that I can't really remember. But I choked, and choked hard, and somehow only lost consciousness momentarily. That moment is important and I'll tell you about it rest assured. Thing is, I remained mostly conscious throughout even though I wasn't able to breathe, and I saw what happens 'at night.'
Imminent sleep is the time of day that everyone thinks they all drift off at the same time for a particular mystical and sacred reason. It just so happens that when everyone goes off to la-la land, they're breathing in a quick acting sleep-inducing compound that is probably pretty effective overall, seeing as how I never once woke up before! This time around though, I got over my choking fit, and was without breath for long enough to avoid the sleeping gas. But that's not all that happened... I went somewhere else in between. I got outside by going inside, if that means anything at all.
After gasping and gagging for air, reaching out around me for something, anything, chains lashing out in all directions, seeing that William and Jeffrey were indeed asleep, one more gasp, and I thought I'd died. I suddenly felt as though I was a giant blue sphere, or at least part of it, and I am composed of more dimensions than I had previously believed. In fact, I had clear thinking enough to see that every single belief that my culture had imposed on me was a lie. The one word is even embedded in the other! Just look! Instead of imposing a belief on what I was experiencing, I let it happen. For lack of a better word I had a vision; the embedded unity and entanglement that is all of consciousness, even in it's relative states that seem independent, are beautifully interlaced in chaotic patterns of concretion and dissipation though a manifold geometric prism of direct sensory experience. These are the best words I currently have available so please bear with me.
I examined what I was experiencing and found all information. I didn't know where to begin. This intention to explore those new vistas just didn't seem quite appropriate. Was this hyper-reality only mine to behold or does it belong to my people as well? I gazed longingly through a sort of snake-rope of indescribable brilliance, and anguish beset my conscience. Then my experience snapped back into my body and I was in chains once again.
Only, they were loose. I struggled agonizingly as my body had undergone quite the shocking trauma less than a moment before, but one hand wrangled free and the other followed shortly after. Freeing my legs was a much more arduous task. I'd never used them before. With bones aching and muscles atrophied I mustered up all the might of my soul and shed my yoke of bondage.
Using all the physical and psychic energy available to me, I persevered through the task of crawling to the left-most end of the line, past hundreds of sleeping, chained, and still looking tormented individuals. I got there just as everyone was waking up, about thirty meters or so by my best estimation past the last prisoner. There I found a dark little cave and I holed up to rest. I drifted off to sleep with tremors of the terror inherent in my insubordination.
It was the next night, perhaps, that I awoke to find that the smaller cave I was in was at a bit of an oblique angle to the rest of the line. Imbued with a overflowing feeling beyond anything I can explain, I also had a disquieting inclination that something was horribly wrong. I'd been taught that all was linear and we learn from the games on the mystical wall, but now I could see down the line! I could see the chained sheeple languishing in dreamless rest, from the closest one about thirty meters away, to hundreds and hundreds more before the so-called guards. At this point I couldn't see the king, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself here.
I rested observingly, eager to see what the games might reveal through my new eyes. In the morning, or at least what we called morning, I could see the light in the cave was increasing. I receded as far as I could into the smaller cave without losing my new perspective. The light was coming from 'behind' the wall, a new directional indicator I'd developed to explain what lay over the wall. This was all so interesting, scary, and magnificent. The light seemed to be coming from a single source, just over the wall, and reflected off of mirrors all around the rear, hidden, behind, part of the cave. There was smoke diffracting the light and the games were about to begin.
The light split off into many different coloured streams bouncing from mirror to mirror and through smoky mists eventually to come together forming the stars. “The Crab!” an excited player shouted. “No, you fool it's clearly Andromeda, don't go with The Crab,” retorted another. “Damn you both to Hades! Being the most obvious and dominant of all the constellations in the sky this can only be The Hunter,” added a third. The crescendo of voices rose all along the line as the players tried to outwit each other. Their fervent zeal for competition was eclipsed only by the sheer volume of this discordant cacophony.
You see, the games worked in a left against right competition reminiscent of Sissyphus' ordeal. No matter which side was winning or losing, they were all bound to continue the competition. Emotions flare when leftists talk about rightys and vice versa. The antagonism being totally unfounded, however, as I was soon to discover. The catharsis of each side during times of debate or conflict reached magnanimous proportions, voices so loud to be nearly deafening due to the cave's acoustic resonances. But it was not a creative or enriching enterprise. The game was all about conflict and competition and it created an emotionally negative space. Yet these underlying forces needed expression whether positive or not.
I could see that compared with the incomparable vistas of psychic landscapes I so briefly explored at the limits of life and death, the petty gaming of naming stars was undignified at best and couldn't be called anything less than psychic slavery. Upon this realization my inner experience asserted an indefatigable No! and along with it a Yes! No to all slavery and yes to freedom! But I was getting hungry. I'd been watching the games in awe, absorbing the same information yet again, only this time from new eyes. These eyes required sustenance.
By this point my legs were somewhat functional and I could crawl around. I hadn't even figured out walking yet, but I wanted to crawl the very end of the line. Slithering on the ground at some points, pulling myself along, even scraping my back and neck bloody, I was determined to find the limits of the line and my cave, and I did.
At first I thought it was terminal. At this point I couldn't see anything as I'd been inching my way between masses of solid rock for many hours and maybe even days. Betraying my solemn vow of silence so as to maintain discretion, I lashed out emotionally, striking what I thought to be a mound of dirt at the foot of my final barrier. It was soft. I struck it again and it moved some. Frantically, I began digging, pulling myself along with every gesture and then I was struck by the most amazing force: I broke out of the cave and into the sun!
Staggering, even though on all fours, and completely blinded by the magnitude of the light on my closed eyes, I managed my way down the slope, away from the tiny hole in the side of the mountain. Then, an uncommon noise attracted my attention. There was a rustling, whispering, even a gurgling that I just couldn't identify but had to experience. It got louder and louder and before I knew it my hands found the shallow creek. I drank from it and rejoiced aloud. Never before had I been more alive.
So I stayed there for a while, and my eyes acclimated enough for me to get a glimpse of the colour and beauty around me. There were greens and blues like I'd never seen! I was not yet fully mobile, so I explored my immediate vicinity carefully. Quick agitations were catching the corner of my eye all the time so I decided to wait patiently. Small black specks moved about sporadically, but it was the one that flew over me that made the most impression. I recognized corvus, the crow, instantly from my cultural tradition. This was one of the constellation maps of the game. Maybe it wasn't totally useless in the end. After all, had I never lived the game, I'd never have made it to experience this wider scope of life.
Well I didn't mention it before because it seemed immodest of me, but I was really the best player of the game at one time. It just didn't satisfy me to seek social position or succeed in a career in the game. No matter how much effort I put into the game, and how many years I spent playing, I never even saw anyone else graduate, let alone graduating myself. And now I know why. The game was a way to distract everyone's attention away from their bondage. They learned to accept that life was merely a chance to play a few games. Once I'd figured all this out for myself, I couldn't play the game any more.
My meager subsistence from minimal effort grew more scarce and I was moved toward the end of the line. No one actually graduated or ascended as the king said he did and was offering to the masses. No one questioned exactly how the so-called mystical powers managed to control their lives, or more importantly, why. With these resignations at heart did I concede defeat to the king. This was the day before I woke up for real.
I had macroscopic plans. To get there I'd need to evolve, so I did. I found food in edible greens and dug for roots too. I climbed trees and nourished myself with their fruits. I ate flowers and bugs, nettles and leaves, bulbs and legumes and whatever I could stomach.
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