The Mirrors

It was alive. There was no other way to describe it. It was mysterious, intricate, beautiful and alive.

The utter and complete blackness was everywhere surrounding it. And the veins of light pierced through the darkness like gold in the deep mines. There were no shadows, no gray areas. The tendrils of light extended to the outer reaches of the entity, where they led the assault against their invincible enemy. The darkness had always been there, and one wondered if it was in fact the light that was the void.

There seemed to be sources, but they might as well have been the destinations. There was no definitive order, and yet there seemed to be rules. There were shapes set in purpose and boundaries drawn between them. But they were all connected. And there was movement--ceaseless movement with perfect co-ordination. There were grids and there were circles. There were graceful curves and sharp edges. There were short lines and long ones. There was variety and symmetry. And most importantly, there was a blissful harmony that just made sense. It wasn't just alive, it was intelligent.

The electricity fired up and died down repeatedly. The pinpoints of light glimmered in their fundamental color, as if the stars themselves had mirrored their stories in them. The pulses of energy flowed from one end to the other and back again. It was pulsating with life and it was growing. And the energy was its blood.

It was a rough landing, but he was glad he had chosen the last window seat on the plane.

The God of Ants

"Brothers!! Fellow Ants!! There is something that you must hear!" The excitement in the ant's voice was overwhelming. All the other ants paused in their work. They stopped carrying the heavy burdens of food they had brought from distant lands. They stopped constructing the massive structure that they called home. They all stopped in their seemingly endless tracks and gathered round the mound on which stood the ant that had spoken.

"Brothers! I have had the most amazing experience which I must share with you." The ants were listening to him curiously. "A few days ago, I got separated from my tribe of ants, when I wandered into unknown territory searching for food. As it was growing dark, I lost sight of my trail and could not find my way back home." The ants were losing interest. Everyone got separated once in a while. Some turned back to their work.

"I was searching desperately for a trail, but was utterly and completely lost. I did not give up hope, and kept searching." The ant continued, "I eventually found myself at the foothills of the Great Mountains." There was a gasp followed by a loud silence. Only a few ants had ever dared to venture that far. For beyond the Great Mountains lay the Eternal Darkness. "I knew it was futile, but I began climbing the mountains to get my bearings. The road was hard and slippery. The wind blew me down again and again, but I had to reach the top. It was my only chance." They were all listening to him now.

"After a frightening struggle, I finally conquered the mountain. And it was here that I witnessed the most extraordinary thing. I suddenly felt myself lifted above the mountains. I thought it must be the strong wind lifting me, but I was moving in a direction opposite to the wind. It was painful and ecstatic at the same time. I was lifted high high above, and although it was merely a few moments, it felt like an age had passed by in the valleys below. I opened my eyes and saw it-- the Eternal Darkness. It lay before me--terrifying and mesmerizing. It was the birthplace of the wind and was filled with all the water in the world. I was scared."

"And I was completely stunned by what happened next. Suddenly I was looking at two huge orbs of grey ahead of me. The orbs were surrounded by an eerie white luminescence. It was the most hypnotizing spectacle I had seen, I was lost in awe and I lost all sense of time. I do not know how long I looked into those orbs. Then I caught a glimpse of what lay above the orbs. And I could not believe my eyes. There lay a large forest of Antennae above. Dark thick Antennae that moved as one. It was as if they were sensing every event of our world." There was a look of profound emotion in the ant's face.

"And then it was over. Before I realized what was happening, I had been placed at the foothills of the Mountains again. In a dazed and confused state I wandered for hours. When I regained my composure, I realized what I had just seen." The ants were looking at him in undisguised amazement.

"I had witnessed the Great One. I had witnessed God on his throne in the Great Mountains at the edge of the World!"

John stood on the rocks on the beach. He stared into the sea. It was peaceful, and a gentle breeze blew in his hair. As he glanced below, he saw an ant scrambling across on a rock next to him. For no reason at all, he picked it up and brought it close to his face. He peered at it and smiled. "Thank God my life isn't as meaningless as yours!", he thought.

As he set the ant down his smile wavered. Somewhere inside a voice said to him "But what if it is?"

Dreamscape

She was special. Just like everyone else. She liked to think of herself as an artist-- restless and free. Her paintbrush was her imagination, and her canvas was the Dreamscape.

They were few in number. And although she did not know it, Sarah was one of the most skilled among the Sleepers. For ages people had been intrigued by the notion of sleep. For ages people had tried to decipher their dreams. For ages they had failed. Some thought of dreams as bridges built across memories, while some looked at them as merely irrelevant resonances of neurons. Some speculated that dreams served as recycling and reorganizing processes to consolidate the massive information input to the brain, while some believed dreams to be a fulfillment of unsatisfied emotions. Some agreed that all these may be true, and some declared that each one was false. Sarah was intrigued by their confusion. She perceived them with the same mixture of amusement and exasperation of an artist who paints a beautiful painting, and then listens to observers voicing their interpretations and critique. Only the artist knows what the painting really meant. And Sarah was an artist. An artist of the Dreamscape.

She stood alone in a dark room. Around her a hundred candles were glimmering in a circle. This was always where she collected her thoughts. There was a subtlety involved in the technique, which she had learnt to master. The trick was to float in that realm between the conscious and the unconscious -- to be present and absent at the same time. It was the so-called 'sweet spot'; where she was aware that her mind was wandering, but made no effort to change its course. She was soon asleep.

The window was open. Beyond it lay the magnificently unknown Dreamscape. The eagle swooped down in its majestic flight and a bell started ringing rhythmically. She was moving very fast. Suddenly she was the eagle. The mountains below her beckoned her to descend. She landed on the highest peak. Her white dress flowed in the wind and the clouds lay beneath her. She could see the bell now. It was on another peak far away, and each chime created waves of colors. She had what she needed. She walked in an endless field. A huge tree stood at the brink of the horizon. She opened her hand and found the bell. She opened her other hand. In her palm lay a watch, whose hands moved at her will. In the Dreamscape, time and space were her tools. But like any tools, one needed the skill to handle them. And the Sleepers had the gift to be able to do so. This was why they could create their own dreams and observe what others dreamt. This was why they were artists.

"Reality is what the mind perceives", she had heard her father say. "What the mind sees, what it hears and what it senses by touch, it perceives as real."

"So if I close my eyes and shut my ears and float in space, will reality disappear?" she had asked.

Her father had smiled, pleased that she had asked the question."No, it would only mean that your reality is different from everybody else's. Now sleep, my dear."

Sarah had slept. She had dreamt. She had made the Dreamscape her reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzm8kTIj_0M&feature=related

Singularity--Part 1

It was here. It was finally here. Adam couldn't believe it. He and 9 billion others had seen it coming, but he still couldn't believe it. "I should have prepared for this day", he thought. But he was prepared and he knew it.

Several things had led the world to this point. And indeed it was the most significant point in human history. It had begun with the early prehistoric men creating sparks from stone and men shaping their thoughts into words. It was pushed ahead by great and illustrious men and women who rose above the ordinary and stood up as beacons of light guiding the ship of humanity. Aristotle, Alexander, Buddha, Hitler, Mozart, Shakespeare, Picasso, Da Vinci, Darwin, Einstein, Neil Armstrong, Sagan, Dawkins and hundreds of others would have deserved to witness this day. But even the most foresighted seers and visionaries would have hardly imagined that this day would be here so soon. And it was rightly so, for the imagination belonged to no single mind.

What it finally came down to was the ever-so-cliched paradigm that technology had progressed at an exponential rate. Moore's law had exceeded expectations and had entered the realm of genetic engineering. The Internet had connected billions of minds on the planet to create a consciousness wise enough to ban wars and find common religious ground. Something that had not been achieved in 4 million years of human existence had been achieved in 40 years. Economics, the biggest frictional mechanism that had tied down technology, had been overhauled by the elimination of money as a metric of value. The small open-source movement that had begun as a tool of collaborative development, had overrun capitalism and communism. But there were cracks that nobody had seen--yet.

Information had continued its journey from atoms to DNA to brains to technology, and was at the gateway of the fifth epoch as theorized by the wise old man of modern day, Ray Kurzweil. Technology had merged not just with human minds but also with their bodies. There were nano-computers small enough to be embedded into human cells grown from stem cells, and disease was nearly eradicated. Quantum computers had revolutionized logic itself. The concern about energy had been abruptly lifted with the advent of nuclear fusion. The misleadingly named Chaos theory had given an exquisitely beautiful and contradictorily simple answer to the complex machinery of networks ranging from vehicular traffic to weather prediction, from neurons in the brain to the social dynamics of the world. Some said this was utopia. They were mistaken. There were some frontiers yet unconquered--time, and the speed of light. Humans were still bound to this thread which had brought them to this moment.

The moment of the Technological Singularity. The point when the age of the Homo Sapiens ended and when man could now steer the direction of his evolution. Today was the day that the age of the Homo Evolutis would begin. Today was the day that Alpha Dawn, the computer that surpassed the collective intelligence of the entire human species, would be switched on.

Dec 23rd 2048. Adam, the super-conscious being, took a collective deep breath. The Singularity was here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_Singularity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOC0DBvhuaY&feature=related

Freedom

I make the path, I break the dam,

I race and flow across the land

The sky and sea call out to me

I crack the glass and spill the sand.

I thrust the flag into the earth

With fate and purpose in my hand.

I shall not seek refuge and hide

Behind the veil of doubt and fear.

I shall not feed my empty pride

Let it starve and disappear

I shall not crawl, I shall not whine

I shall not find excuses here.

I pierce the clouds and ride the wind!

I smell the freedom flame ignite

I see it all, I see it now!

I hear the symphony tonight

I taste the wonder pure and deep

And I surrender to the light.

The Collector

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_inventions

http://listverse.com/2009/11/16/10-great-achievements-of-the-human-mind/

He was a curious person, in more than one sense of the adjective. He was old, his hair was grey, but his brow wasn't withered in wrinkles and his eyes were a startling blue that speared through every translucence. The eyes he was born with; the brow he had shaped to his will.

It was his eyes that defined him. He had always felt the urge to see through things that others refused to or could not see. And he always wanted to see more. It was this urge that had been the most fulfilling part of his life and also the reason why he had always felt incomplete and unsatisfied. The dissatisfaction stemmed from his knowledge that there were so many things in the world before his eyes that he could not create. That he would always have to be a spectator and could never be a player in all the games he loved.

He was a curator. He knew about every inch of human technology since the invention of the wheel. He had a replica of the first Saturn V rocket launched, the first radio used, the first holograph, and the latest Nintendo. He had a library of the greatest books ever written, from the Gutenberg Bible to Newton's Principia Mathematica. He had a collection of the world's greatest music, from the scintillating folk songs of the gypsies to the timeless classics of Led Zeppelin. He had visited the best museums of the world and had marveled at the art of Michaelangelo and Picasso, and had set his eyes upon some of the best photographs ever taken. He was conversant in 12 languages and had learnt to write with both his hands. He found a deep meaning in surrounding himself with the greatest achievements of mankind and being able to absorb the endless stream of information.

He was always inspired, and had a painful longing to create beauty and wonder out of his thoughts. The more he created the more he found that he could create more. It was a strange mix of enjoyment and disappointment, which he had learnt to live with. But he was aware that it was only during the times that he was neither observing nor creating that he felt the contradictory emotions. And he was curious about those emotions too, and felt them voluntarily.

His eyes never missed a new sight, and his brow only wrinkled when he thought about the friction between his thoughts and actions. But he had grown into his role as the Collector of Human Endeavors. And he felt alive with each breath he took.

Silhouette

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/17/captivating-examples-of-silhouette-photography/

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/85-free-high-quality-silhouette-sets/






Pay attention to detail. Those essential frivolities which lend us uniqueness and identity. Those colours painted across the canvas of our countenance and pride. Pay attention to them. Pay attention to the jewels sparkling and proclaiming the beauty of a maiden. Those wrinkles on the skin of the old beggar. Observe the expressions of joy and wonder, dignity and horror, innocence and fear, determination and peace, racing to outlast each other. Observe the deftness of light as it glides over the texture of the clothes. Relish the variety. Relish the changing landscape with the trees calling out to the heavens from atop the rocky hills. And the intricate structures built with the care of an artist's brush and a poet's thought. Be amazed at the difference. The different genes that collided through the ages and resulted in you. The differing ideas that galvanize the world into a revolutionary spin every now and then. Be amazed.

And then wipe it all out. All the lines and all the colours. All the adornments inner and outer. All the light and all the shadows. All the history and all the future. See the silhouette.

The dark form that you share with everyone else and everything else. The naked form that can tell you a billion stories about a billion lives. The form purified of all decorations and scars. The form that includes hills and trees and birds and farmers, and you. The vessel that can be filled with emotions and destinies. The silhouette is honest and quiet. It forms stunning shapes of power and freedom. It whispers to you that those beloved differences may after all be superficial and irrelevent. The silhouette is always embraced in the welcoming arms of light.