12-31-3010

Every time I enter my pad, I find it tough not to smile. I inherited it from an `uncle’, a well-wisher. He had invested everything he had on it, his money and his time. He had studied old sources and tried to recreate something sublime. It is quaint, pleasant, a relic but nice. There are windows in the East with sunrise against an azure expanse with lacy frills of white cloud. In the West, I have sunset into blue-green sea. In the North, there is an equatorial forest deep and thick stretching far. In the South, snow-topped mountains, waterfalls, lakes and fresh water springs with smoke rising from a volcano, too. One of these days, I will interchange North and South. Or, I will let it be, for my uncle’s sake.

I stretched on the old arm-chair, the one with old leather, stains and smell. It was a hectic day. I had chosen too many parallel lives.

As usual, my body went to office. It is a good rule, I think, to make everyone come bodily to office. Work can happen from anywhere but it is good to fit in old-fashioned social interaction for a fixed period of time every day.

There is so much to do on the latest project, taming the higher orders – that’s its description. There used to be a guy called Einstein who thought the speed of light is a constant. The paradigm shift changed everything – a world without fundamental constants, only fundamental laws. We are now somewhere between the second and third generation. It is a never-ending process. New technologies, new needs will develop the next generation of approximations. I had to make a presentation today and most of the participants were bodily there. It is tough to make out the virtual and the real these days.

I fumbled at two points during the presentation. Two other lives exerted their influence – first, my meeting with Ann; and, second, the fight with my nemesis, my twin.

She had `knocked at my door’, in the virtual sense, before I left for work. And, I `let her in’. I have heard that people used excuses in the old days – like, “I am otherwise engaged”. Now, it is either `in’ or `out’. An orgasm with Ann made me fumble during the presentation. Ann is a tricky one and I like her. It was not easy finding her. Now, including her, I have six people who can `knock at my door’, anytime, any place. I can manage that many lives simultaneously.

My twin is a bastard. He, too, calls me that. Our ‘parents’ had wanted to prolong their lives. They tweaked our DNA. Then, they conditioned our synapses and nerve centers – with their experiences. It is still a tricky business. We know how each part of the brain works. We understand consciousness and intelligence; also, chaos and turbulence. But, the haphazard still plays a role. At times, it is the initial conditions; at times, the final conditions; an exact replica is still improbable, if not impossible. I do not know what happened in our case, I mean, with my brother and I. We hate each other. We try to destroy each other. There is hardly a day when we do not go for each other’s throat. I guess that explains why I fumbled.

The other lives had been less eventful today.

In one of them, Shiv and I are touring some of the outer communities. It is just a pet project – studying these old communities (in alphabetical order): atheists, blacks, browns, cannibals, capitalists, Christians, communists, families with husbands-wives-children, Hindoos, Jews, Moslems, paedophiles, politicians, soldiers, yellows, whites…Do you know that some of them used to be terminated in the old days? People used to believe that some people could decide how other people should live. Some of them still think that there is an intelligence out there called God controlling them.

We have tried various programs to educate but old customs die hard. We try to teach them about the latest discoveries concerning intelligence and consciousness; about the latest laws of the physical world, in equilibrium and non-equilibrium; about experiencing parallel lives.

The phenomenon of letting loose parallel lives has been there for more than five hundred years – it was discovered after the period of globalized war and annihilation, after the despondent years, after the years of reawakening. But, parallel lives were not viable till the method for `switching off’ was found. When that was found, some of these old communities claimed that we are trying to be God. If my brother or Ann dies, it is no big deal, nothing to do with God. Old cells always die; rarely required after prolonged use. If I don’t let my brother or Ann `in’ at this moment, I am not being God; I am just telling them that I need some privacy. If they keep knocking, I might let them `in’.

It is time for me to get up and knock at Swapna’s door. We will spend the night together. I call her a dream; she calls me a nightmare. I hope my episode with Ann does not cause too much trouble. I can handle erectile dysfunction; but not Swapna’s emotional dysfunction. She knew all about Ann when she accepted me as a `contact’. She could control it, if she wants to. But, she does not want to. Neither do I want her to control her likes and dislikes. I accepted her with all that.

We might cook together and wait for that moment called midnight when people in the old days used to cheer and shout… if we are not otherwise engaged… we might cheer and shout, too…whatever that means…`Happy New Year 3011!!!’.