The Great Game 🎲 Vicinto Prossimo
i. The Water Damsel
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At the Kitchen Window
Talfar remembered it with crystal clarity, even though it was 250 years ago. He was only 50 years old when he first saw her along a patch of pavement that got the full morning sun. She was a water damsel from the nearby district of Vicino Diaphana. The hormone of infatuation hit his system like a ferridian brick. Somatherin. The drug-dealers of Fallar Discordia would do anything to get their claws on this hormone, which they used as a model for their strongest amphetamines: diathamine, roketamine, and concatamine. Somatherin was like spiked Russian vodka, drunken by Raskolnikov so that he might do what he dared to do, and then so that he might forget what he’d done. Testosterone, by comparison, was like diluted shandy served without scruple to children in country pubs.
The somatherin coursed though his body when he saw Thalphemera dancing down the street, across from their ground-floor kitchen window. She seemed as if in another world, doing makeshift pirouettes, as she waltzed from her family’s apartment to the university in Vicino Concentrica. She wore a light green taffesca dress, frilled like the flowers that lined the balconies of the honeycomb apartment across the street.
Like most of the apartments in Vicino Concentrica, this one climbed into the sky eighty floors above the street. But the light at this hour was at its brightest, and a great swath of golden sunshine swept down the narrow street from the oost, where it had risen just a few hours ago. Each window-box and balcony was lush with greenery and flowers of all sizes and shapes. The plants at their kitchen window were lime green and magenta, with tinges of turquoise and cyan.
To Talfar, the water damsel appeared to be dancing naked along the street, her mid-section hidden temporarily by bursts of dragon-lily and heavenly blue morning glory. A golden pony tail danced in the sun.
Thalphemera stooped momentarily to get a drink, at a crystal fountain, and at that moment he was struck by the waterfall of her golden hair. She swept it away from her forehead with a movement so graceful that the only thing more beautiful could be the eyes that she uncovered. They were crystal blue, like the water. It was at this moment that Talfar realized that being and universe were one.
It was the first day of Prime Rhythm, the first year of university. It was a crucial time in life, when the young adult of 50 finally started to see the world as it was, rather than as a reflection of his own needs or desires. Indeed, when Talfar saw Thalphemera skipping along the street, he realized that there was a whole world out there that he didn’t have a clue about. But he also had another thought, which he knew would clash with the primerhythmic Doctrine of Zero Ego: he wanted her all to himself.
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The Prime Rhythmic Directive
In his first Psychology class, the professor was attempting to impress upon the young minds the evils of egocentric perception. The professor told them that the aim of first year university was to blow their minds in so many directions that they would eventually realize (hopefully in time for their exams) that the universe was excruciatingly vast and that everything they thought they knew about it was like a little blue glass bead.
The little glass bead lay between two rocks on a mountain range a hundred times the size of the Golden Hill (which was 6 kilometres high and 6 kilometres wide). The professor added, “It’s nevertheless very important to cling onto the self, to the Zero that you really are. Accept this Zero, and don’t let the fact that you’re completely insignificant get in the way of doing great things to advance the realization of your soul, which has no weight, no numerical value, no real meaning. Indeed, the soul and the self are very similar, except that the self is a little something while the soul is a great nothing.”
“The self is but a slim blue light vibrating haphazardly in a cocoon of translucent silicon. Your aspirations must always be larger than your ego, which is but the starting point. Point zero, nothing to be proud of. But with the help of the vast systems of Vicinese education and administration, you’ll start to understand what surrounds your tiny self. By hard work and dedication, you’ll increase your inner light year by year, decade by decade, until one day you will become a star.”
“Yet the star and the bead are one. The tint of the bead will be the tint of the star. The frequency will be the same. It will pulse the same unique frequency that has always determined who you are. The star doesn’t even need to have a name, because it has the same tint, the same identity as the little bead that you were when you set out on the path from your home to these hallowed halls of learning. And yet, even without a name, your star will shine, projecting its light from the heights of the Golden Hill to the depths of Fallar Discordia. It doesn’t matter who you are — give up that fruitless search — what matters is that you nurture your inner light, the tint which makes you special. Project this light into the dark!”
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Talfar had been befuddled all morning. He couldn’t seem to find the right clothing. Then he couldn’t find his classroom. Then, when he found the classroom, he couldn’t see an empty seat. Finally he saw an empty seat halfway down the lecture hall and in the middle of the row. By the time he got to the seat and got out his notebook and started to write down “completely insignificant” he couldn’t help noticing that the student next to him was looking straight at him. Her eyes were crystalline blue and when she winked at him, her green eye-shadow glistened in the morning light that was coming in through the stain-glass windows behind the professor. Talfar realized that this was the same young woman who had danced down the street and made him so nervous that he didn’t know if he should wear a jacket, a t-shirt, or just cover himself in black rags and pretend he didn’t exist.
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Next: 🎲 The Blue Bubble
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