Thursday, February 10, 2011

Story: Realization Six

New story. New Realization. I recall the entire Realization series was put on hold as I had some work to do back in October or November. I managed to convince myself to continue sometime around December. Sitting on a train (I'm starting to like travelling by train), I began thinking of possible idea for the sixth realization. Funnily, a story wasn't that hard to come by and instead of realizing the "plot" of the sixth realization, I ended up with three others. Anyway, the sixth one is about quantity and it's relativity (and quite a large list of other things). Or so I'd like to think.


Realization Six

It was cold that evening. Very cold. He could feel the freezing touch reaching deeply inside his body, grasping his spine and twisting it completely. Despite his numbness. Despite the fact that he was alienated from all and everyone.

His life revolved around a single thing. A single substance. Medicine. Many were the days he spent zoning in and out, ignoring those passing him by, talking to him, trying to make him speak. He didn't care, however. He didn't even notice. To him, speech was something strange. Something distant.

What was speech? What was voice? He didn't know. But he didn't despair because of that. How could one oblivious of the existence of such word despair? Why would one despair at not knowing the benefits of something unknown to him? Yet how could he, a simple mind, despair, when all that made his consciousness was a lone urge? To maintain intake. Like an animal.

They were animals deluded into thinking their sentience was of a higher meaning. Be it food, speech or power – it was always senseless. No matter how glorious the deed might have looked, no matter how drastic the change was, it was merely just an illusion. Every single time. A horrifying fact he was aware of in his slumbering consciousness. An irony that he, the person realizing the most basic truth, was also the most impaired.

However, it didn't play any role. No truth did. Wars, pestilence, torture? Terms and nothing more. Medicine. That was what mattered.

He had to take one after another, gulp the sour, white, clean, decontaminated, processed and engineered substance that brought his sentience a step closer to himself.

Bodies adapt, however. Some build resistance. Others simply demand more. And his? Nobody knew, for he had never told anybody. It wasn't within his powers. He simply had to carry on. He experienced severe pains. He felt great sorrows. He lived through oppressing anxieties. But his consciousness, a tool rendering him into a brainless mush of flesh, denied him any of its shape, any of its taste and any of its names.

How could ever a man claim to have sustained wounds to the mind or the body when put in contrast with him? For those around him, he was special. An enigma. But he wasn't aware. For him, they weren't.

All that was – medicine. More and more each day. The shivering cold gripping his spine, strengthening its choking grasp upon each intake. The horrible seizures he experienced each time, growing in power and seriousness. He was poisoned. A venomous disease coursed through his veins. Ever since his birth.

He knew nothing else than that feeling. If he had been aware of those around him, he would have believed they were living through the same.

Apart from the feeling, he learnt of another thing over the course of his life. Numbers. He had no names for them, but his brain recognized them. One, two, three… as was said, the names were unknown to him.

However, the awareness of their meaning was there. He could count the quantity of medication he took. And he could notice that the number rose gradually each time.

Until the vessel carrying his soul couldn't take any more. Death? He didn't know what it was. But before he found out, he realized yet another truth eluding the majority.

The gradual increase in the quantity of his medicine. The adaptation. The change. Numbers were merely a manifestation of those. An aspect. A way of looking at things. An interpretation. And as with all imperfect interpretations, even this one had a flaw. There was no difference between one and many.

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