fredag 30. november 2018

Fourth excerpt from "The Iron Meditation": Mirror the world

Welcome to the fourth excerpt from my sci-fi novel, "The Iron Meditation". What I'm putting out on my blog, is chapter 5, titled the same as the novel itself.

While the novel is not published in English yet, you can publish the Norwegian version from here, here or here.

I have also published excerpts in Norwegian: "Naturmeditasjon", "En drage av forurensning", "Det eneste mennesket i verden" and "Trommeslag".

The Iron Meditation Chapter 5.4: Mirror the world

I notice how hard it is to walk - that the preceding office eternity didn't prepare me for even a park. As if I had magical abilities or there were a god listening in, an oldfashioned iron bench appears. 

I do as I'm tempted to, lying down on it to look at a sea with a boat on amidst flying fish beneath a bavang-dhang - that is a high-tech tool with robot properties. It's heart-shaped, anyway, so it's not for everyone, neither are the submarines peeking up from the ocean. And what about the ice berg, ice adrift, polar bears and clouds in the sky? And it's all made of iron. 

Drumbeat (is a sound).

The bench slightly vibrating, shivering, floating in its coldness, or is it my skin? I'm still half naked as the world is moving and iron waves curl on the surfaces. No one is talking in the wind, I'm just observing. And I'm thinking about the drum. Will I ever actually see it, and can I play it? I'd want to be observant when the sound appears so that I can summon it within my mind and thereby co-create thus imagining myself playing the drum. But I find myself unable to visualize it properly.

Then I zone out of the present and I find myself thinking about strongmen, men with super muscles, and I add that we are not all strongmen despite our technology and knowledge on how to manipulate any gene at will (Crows are weaker than humans, but they've got beaks at least. And I do not.)

I am waiting for the drumbeat.

I repeat the memory of the sound within my head. And I manage to synchronize the memory of the sound within with another actual drumbeat from without. And that is me playing the drum.

And then I run. Passing rhinos, dragons, deers and giant octopuses, statues of famous people, villains, ghost army, straw people. And I'm out of breath. I gasp and feel as weak as those who did not consume weight supporting food. My brain is buzzing, and the taste of iron in my mouth mirror the world. I opt for the floor, lie down, scratching my knees in the process.

I'll attempt to recollect myself. And something else is new: I am terribly thirsty. Drinking water would be the loveliest thing on earth. 

It's too far to the rusty water and it's probably not the healthiest to drink. So I hope for the future to present it to me. That I will find water or that someone will bring it to me. I have my back against the floor and the floor is cold. I want to dress back into the grey cloth I still carry around, but, it's wet and will feel uncomfortable to put on.

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