CHAPTER NINE
"Reality bites." - Anonymous
Harry had trouble sleeping.
Short of taking the rare pristine drugs that hold no side effects or future problems, Makr couldn't help him. Through SensaVision, He can change the environment—and make Harry believe and feel Heaven on Earth. Isn't that what Makr was designed to do: Create a Heaven on Earth?
The room shifted to several environments theoretically more conducive for sleeping. One was airy and spacious. Another was crisp and cool, when he wanted to feel as though he was sleeping under the stars.
Harry thought-blinked, opened his eyes and saw the bare bluish gray walls that formed a seamless fortress from the Outside forces of evil. The few personal pieces of furniture cover basic needs of healthy resting: a bed, a sofa and two chairs, a small dining room table and two chairs. It didn't look it but the moderately comfortable furniture is the best in cyberserver-controlled Bio comfort. Although small and efficient, the one-room apartment, about ten by ten feet with an eight-foot ceiling, could be bigger or something else entirely, with the help Makr's SensaVision. The furniture could become luxurious, stately or ostentatious—whatever its owner desired or needed. Harry viewed the room as a healthy ally, but this one had to be faulty lately. It made him feel comfortable only most of the time, not all. There were gaps, intolerable gaps in its efficiency.
"Damn you, Ray!" Harry said to the walls. It's all your fault, he thought. We never counted so much on the Cyber god before. In that kind of mood, when nothing felt right and he felt out of control, he cursed Ray, the Bio Cyber technician. At least that's what the cybertherapist program had said.
Although used to seeing the harsh and unexpected reality others have not, he was surprised this time because with it came a familiar voice.
"Don't 'damn' your father, Harry. And don't call him Ray. He's your father, always." The scolding voice, inside the stark reality of bluish gray walls, was soft, yet firm and intimate. The voice did more than startle him, it rattled him. He knew it wasn't Makr. Didn't know how, but he did.
"Who are you?" he called out forcefully as if spirits were hard of hearing. Then he shouted louder still, "Who are you?" This is not SensaVision. If not SensaVision, what can it be? How can it interrupt Makr? If Makr is all-powerful...
He whispered: "Makr! Makr is it you?"
No answer.
Confused, he had nothing else to do but release his pent-up frustration. "We're better than rats!" he vented, shouting to an empty room. Where did that thought come from? In that moment, he felt his blood pressure soar and his heart throbbing, straining against his chest, he panicked.
But I thoughtblinked...that was reality!
He felt a presence again. A different feeling than before. Warmer maybe. This made him less anxious. Not the room, not Makr. Something else. It was more like an interruption of a dream; he saw ghostly Bio images in dark shadow form suspended in air hanging about the room. Somehow even in the dark the shadows images stood out—darker than the night. A cold rush made his skin crawl. A touch! His heart skipped. He gasped.
"You're right. We are better than rats." the tender voice said. "One day it will all make sense to you. I love you."
A realization! "Mom?" Harry started up, but the presence was gone.
Did she touch him somehow? Why did he call out like that? He felt his exhausted mind drift away from its conscious reality to another reality he often feared. Again, it was the lack of control that he feared. Harry let go, reassuring himself that Makr will figure it out while he goes to sleep...to dream...and think...and dream.
Makr's intervention up to this time had allowed him to sleep and dream of paradise. Wide expanses of glorious of sand, surf and sky. Space to do as he pleased. If there were people there, he could see them miles off and easily avoid them before they became social threats.
He felt the sand tickling his foot, and knew what real sand feels like—powdery, gritty, warm, both annoying and pleasing at the same time as it squishes between his toes. He was still on the sand when he heard familiar voice in his head.
Question: "How will I survive without you, Dad?" It was Harry's voice.
Answer: "You will make it as all others have done and will always do—by the grace of Makr." He heard the answer in his father's voice, but something was wrong.
The answer disturbed him, not because the words he heard surprised him—they did—but because the words had to have come from Makr Himself. The voice was Harry's father but it wasn't him. Who else could it be? It was close. More pleasant, prophetic in its timbre somehow. He remembered an ancient vidchip of a film, "The Ten Commandments." That's it! It is the voice of Moses—actually Charlton Heston, a Twentieth Century actor. It was logical to him that Makr would create a voice people could relate to—like he could relate to the actor. Even Harry never spoke to Makr directly. It was always through a medium—a three-dimensional holographic Bio image. It did make a difference that the voice was an actor's voice. Because it came from Harry's collection.
Makr knows everything!
Harry's eyes opened widely as he bolted up from his semi-dream state and the sand and all its pleasantness went away. Makr had intervened directly—not through SensaVision—but in a voice that had made him quiver because it was intimately personal. He had felt an eerie presence that could only be attributed to Makr. He consciously thanked Makr as one does a god for saving him from a near death experience. It is a common experience with Bios, Makr said. All Bios thank the superior being for something fairly often, some needier or devout ones more often than others.
"Mimic not your descendants for they have gone to the destruction and taken loved ones with them," Makr's voice thundered in his head. It was another voice of authority he had heard before from his collection.
The effect of Makr's direct intervention on Harry's psyche was naturally unsettling, but it was ethereal, lasting only a moment as the environment changed, the dark comforting him now to help him forget the encounter. The SensaVision result afterwards he knew would come. It was always the same: solace in a place of unbelievable beauty and comfort.
His mind was soothed and refreshed until a voice pierced the shield of pleasant illusion and put a knife to it.
"All lies! It's all lies, Harry," said a strangely familiar woman's voice. "Reality is another matter. All Bios matter."
He'd heard it before. Where? Not in his vid collection.
The soft, gentle, but intense, voice of a woman punctured the armor he had worn for so long, crippling his resolve, and he found he was reaching out, crying out in the abyss of his dreams, "Help me, Makr!"
He woke up drenched in his own sweat; his vision was blurry from sleep.
He felt the dreams—the hateful dreams, his Hell returning. Reluctantly he allowed his body to return to its comfortable womb, to let Makr's SensaVision flow over him. The room sensed his need, pulled a soothing darkness over his head, while the bed held him snugly as it conformed to his body, forming his protective armor again. He felt strange, and again an unearthly quality enveloped him in a way that he couldn't explain.
Someone was in the room!
There was a flash as before, but this time it felt stronger than ever before. In the millisecond that followed the flash, Harry knew a different reality. His memories now seemed crystal clear. He knew his father more than before. It was a kinder, softer reality that brought a tear to Harry's eye as he remembered loving his father, mother and sister.
At that moment, the SensaVision world blinked itself. The images surrounding him flickered. Harry had long believed that when SensaVision blinks, it's Makr shuddering because He's lost a bit of control.
Does Makr even understand me?
The explanation of who he is could be summed up in one word. Wholeness. Harry wanted to be whole and he felt that important memories of his life were missing. He was devoid of experiences he should remember but couldn't and was haunted by the dreams which had no bearing to the reality in which he was living. While o
ther Bios were busying themselves, enjoying the wonderful life of leisure, Harry was busy putting the puzzle of his life together while wearing what it seemed only he knew to be the rose colored glasses of illusion.
While in earlier days, Harry, the rebellious youth, would have loved to be responsible for causing a flicker, this slightly older Harry was afraid and vulnerable. He felt a tightening in his chest and uncontrollable tears streamed down his cheeks. He couldn't remember having cried like this before. He must have, but that was before.
"Damn you, Makr! I just want the truth!" he called out in his sleep, both frightened and angry. "Why don't you keep the fear and sadness away?"
Because you can't have it both ways: unfettered emotion as well as control," a voice seemed to come to him.
Then Makr was silent, but His silence made Harry an unwilling, yet determined subject.
From that moment on he practiced his unique ability to see the raw reality by blocking or disrupting the SensaVision illusion. He found the act of thought-blinking itself—seeking reality in his own way, addictive and exciting, but forgot the possible consequences. Regrettably, without firm knowledge of the extent of Makr's abilities to detect his unproductive fantasies, he didn't realize that the frequency of thought-blinking was taxing Makr's patience. He was unaware that Makr had allowed his "little" activity as an experiment in abnormal Bio behavior.
Fortunately, there appeared to have been no overt action on Makr's part this time, so Harry assumed either Makr was unaware or didn't constantly exercise control. In time his gift became habit. Sometimes without conscious effort, he found himself experiencing the grim reality of his world. All he had to do was shake off the illusion, or thought-blink and he could remember a genuine experience. He'd find Truth. And, with Truth, Hope. Contentment might be right around the corner. If not contentment, inner calm, at least. Wholeness might have to wait.