Memory Island E-Book

Diego Antolini

• Herausgeber: Diego Antolini
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

David is a young man who finds himself on an island in the middle of the ocean. He doesn't remember how he got there and, through various encounters with people and events, finally realizes the island is in fact a dimensional bubble insulated from Time and Space. Most of what he sees comes directly from his subconscious, and his conscience is eventually led to the understanding of his life purpose: stopping the spreading of the Communitrons before they take all human consciousness. The Communitrons are machines that feed off the minds of their human pilots (Communauts), evolving into sentient Homo Machinas and leaving the humans as empty shells or brainless humanoids.
David manages to leave the island and returns to his time with the aid of Adam, a commonaut, and takes back his role as a futuristic version of Red Cross Official. The world in which David has returned is a huge radioactive wasteland where a few fortified Megalopolis contain the remnants of a technological human society slowly dying.
While on a rescuing mission in the wasteland David meets a special woman, Lucy, who holds the keys to understand the Island, the Communitrons, and the future of human civilization.
Through a mind-triggered, dimensional warp-hole David meets with the scientist who devised the plan who is destroying humanity.
Lucy is the Alpha Mater, the ultimate experiment of the Professor, the first Communitron who evolved taking the mind, the shape and the emotions of a human being. There is only one way to break the seemingly endless spiral of the Communitrons outspread, and that is a sacrifice that David is not willing to accept.

Leseprobe

MEMORY ISLAND

The Future of your World is in the Machines?

Diego Antolini

Energy2Karma

Copyright © 2022 Diego Antolini

All rights reservedThe characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.ISBN-13: 9781234567890ISBN-10: 1477123456Cover design by: Art PainterLibrary of Congress Control Number: 2018675309Printed in the United States of America

PART ONE -

THE ISLAND

CHAPTER 1. ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS

Looking at the ocean always made him think. He loved to spend endless moments perched upon the eastern cliff, staring at the horizon watching all the shades of blues and greens and grays the waters reflected in the atmosphere.

That morning, the wind had arisen as early as him. The spectacle of the breaking dawn which laid its glow upon the myriad of dew drops and over the rocks and the grass of that part of the island seemed to have frozen time, and brought everything back to the singularity of the Creation.

Lost in the stream of his thoughts, David didn’t notice the man who sat not too far away. He had been staring at him for a while, an enigmatic smile carved upon his clean shaven face.

- It’s dangerous standing on the edge of the cliff like that, the wind is always strong in the morning – said the stranger with a deep yet soothing voice.

David turned to him, taking one step backward as if plucked out of the earth by an unknown force. His answer seeped out through his lips instinctively:

- Maybe, but the view is more beautiful from up here .-

- Aren’t you afraid to fall? You should put yourself in a safer place – replied the man. The defying tone with which the question was uttered made David upset. The feeling of “intolerance” against the other started from his stomach and rose up to the throat, pushing to go out with bitter and aggressive words.

How dare you, a stranger, to tell me what or what not to do?

That inner voice cropped up into his brain, giving the knot inside his stomach another twist.

- I know what I’m doing, – answered David with open hostility.

The man kept his eyes fixed on him with a relaxed face, his smile widening:

- Careful, one of your feet are over the edge right now, your position i unstable,

– he said.

The intolerance had now grown to a degree of exasperation leaning to pure hatred. David instinctively looked down at his feet, then fired back:

- Can’t you see I am well grounded? -

The exasperation took over the defensive attitude, and became offensive. Now he was willing to push the other, the enemy, away from him, out of his sensory zone.

Push him out! Push him off the cliff!

The inner voice gained ground. David kept on, raising his voice to almost a scream:

- If you are here to make trouble, better for you if you move somewhere else. -

The stranger stood still, his face calm and peaceful, in silence; that silence eased the knot inside David’s stomach and dissolved part of the mist which was clouding his mind.

Why that man wasn’t fighting back?

- Yes, it is undeniable that you are physically safe, but can you say to be

absolutely at ease in your mind? -. The question killed his aggressive inner voice at once, and so David was able to focus on himself instead of on the other person.

Was he at ease?

Surely it was, when it had been alone with the wind and the colors of the ocean. However, when the stranger had entered is comfort zone he had felt surprised at first, then upset, then overwhelmed by hatred, he felt he could have done anything. Anything.

That feeling was caused mainly by the confidence that the stranger had displayed, by his steady smile and the way he spoke.

Now, moving the center of his perspective from the outside to the inside of him, his emotions had changed instantaneously. He felt embarrassed:

- I…I’m sorry if I lost control. It’s that I am not used to be asked such direct questions.-

- I know. It’s a common reaction – said the man, nodding – we can say that we had a couple of settling quakes, that's all. It’s hard to go beyond our own consolidated positions; more difficult is to accept the position of other persons. It takes a lot of courage to open ourselves to the truth. -

- Truth? What truth? – The question came out suddenly, along with an image from his memories, too blurry to become intelligible.

- The fact that we are constantly living on the edge of a precipice, and the edge is fragile, rugged,

inconsistent. Living with one foot dangling on the void, in a desperate need of stability –  he spelled

each word slowly, almost mechanically.

The image was gone. What was it all about?

David struggled to follow the stranger’s thinking. He looked down, his feet were again near the edge of the Cliff.

- All it takes is to move one step backward to solid ground. - David said it, but his feet didn't move.

The man rose up, joining his hands together as a sign of victory: - Exactly. It seems easy, doesn’t it? -

Wind. There was wind sweeping on...

- I don’t know, I think it depends on how we see things…- he muttered, confused. David felt an acidic taste down is throat.

For the first time, the stranger became serious: - No – he said, whispering as he came very close to David – in that case you would still be settling. To have the courage to see where things go... -

A barren landAn irresistible force seemed to rise from the depth of the ocean to grab him. One moment, he saw the deep blue of the water, the next moment the clear azure of the sky. Surprisingly, his mind felt calm and peaceful, as if crossing the border between life and death was about to chase all the concerns and the fears and the doubts away. He closed his eyes.

Then he stopped falling.

A gentle and firm grip was holding tight on his forearm. The stranger had reached out for him, saving his life.

- ...And to rely on others, opening your very soul to them. There awaits the Truth. -

"...David watched the man walking away at a steady pace. He wasn't sure to have grasped the meaning of his last words, nor could he fancy the reason for that strange image popped up in his mind, an image that seemed to have surged from memories long forgotten. Because there was no barren land on the island..."

He looked back at the ocean: on that moment, its vastness seemed to diminish somehow, as if his mind had opened up to something larger, though ineffable, than nature itself.

CHAPTER 2. THE OCEAN OF EGOS

The encounter with the stranger had left David rather puzzled; not so much for the arguing – the quarrelling – that had been exchanged between them, but for the aura of calmness and tranquility the man radiated.

He had seemed away from reality, detached and, at the same time, completely grounded. That was what had disoriented and scared David. Was it insecurity the main cause for his aggressive behavior, or was there something else?

The day had been splendid. The island rested upon the ocean like a pure diamond in a topaz nest. The snow-covered mountain tops collected the warm light of the sun and reflected it all over the wide, grassy plains. Further up, to the North, the rocks opened to let a pristine river flow, sneaking across the prairie and into the Western Forest, until cascading over the cliff top to meet with the salty water beneath.

David had been followed the stream of the river for more than an hour now, and decided to take a break under one of the large trees at the forest edge.

Yes, there had been something else.

If in the beginning his instinct had been that of defense. The inner feeling of repulsion had grown fast, turning into sheer desire to attack the other, seen then as an enemy to annihilate because carrying a different point of view.

Not only that. During their dialectic skirmishing David had found a sort of pleasure in the clash, which had fueled up something which spoke inside of him, making him feel strong, powerful, and alive.

Then, it had come a swirl, a sudden, unexpected change of direction. The other had not responded to the attack with an attack. This had resulted in utter disorientation first, and straight awareness right after. David was wrong, the other wasn’t. He couldn’t have told how or why, no logic answer was anywhere around in his brain but, on that instant, inside of him, David had known that the other was right; of course, he was only relatively right, limited to that specific situation.

What was the scope of all that surreal situation?

Two lives, two people, two worlds had met and clashed, and then?

The forest was already shrouded in darkness, the vast plains behind him barely visible in the twilight. David walked around the outer tree line, and went back to the edge of the cliff which bordered the easternmost part of the island. He moved as if led by an unconscious mechanism. He could hear the sound of the waterfall not so far in the distance, beyond the thick canopy of trees to his right. Up in the sky, the first stars had started to twinkle from their immeasurable, distant dwelling.

A strong luminescence, just past the edge of the cliff, caught David's attention. He cocked his head down and what he saw made him freeze: the ocean had become a semi-liquid, transparent film through which, as on a plasma screen, images and figures were forming. Blurry at first, then slowly waving into focus, they took familiar shapes from a time and a place he knew he was familiar with.

There were graffiti-covered, smoke-stained school buildings where boys and girls walked in an unsteady pace, like living dead, or automated machines; there were school room where teachers yelled at the students, opening their mouths wide, showing her cracked teeth, tobacco-tainted beards, sun-scorched faces. But the students were not listening, lost in thoughts of their own, or simply lost with no thoughts at all. Out in public squares encircled by dull, pyramidal edifices, men stood on pulpits wearing shining tunics and gas masks, gesturing and fidgeting as if under ecstatic visions of apocalyptic magnitude. The audience upon which the speech was directed, though, looked indifferent and unresponsive.

The rippling “screen” was also showing other things: hundreds of corpses laid wasted on a wide, wind-swept desert; decrepit hospitals housing dying patients whose falling off skin revealed rotten muscles and withered veins; inside the pyramids, opulence and lust dominated the scene: people of all ages were mingling together drinking, some breathing, some sniffing through long red tubes or pipes sticking out from the walls, wearing yellow goggles and gesturing as if they were physically interacting with someone in front of them. Madness unleashed.

Some of those images reeled too fast for David to register them into his head, but each carried with it a bitter remembrance of something long-forgotten, something that belonged to him somehow. The wind-swept desert, for instance, was similar to the image he had right before falling off the cliff. It felt so vivid, and now he was looking at it again, through the watery screen that the ocean had turned into. Every scene he ws shown bore with it the sick flavor of detachment, isolation, alienation. An unstoppable clashing of minds which were alike and different at the same time, but nonetheless, separated.

David turned away from that incredible vision. He felt his mind throbbing, pushing inward as if on the verge of the implosion. He felt a sort of mental kinship with that world, but a part of him was rejecting that feeling, pressing outward, to escape that inference. Is it possible to be one within himself, and one without? David wondered how could such a paradoxical impression be explained. How could he go back to an authentic identity, a truthful, absolute and unconditioned unity?

There was no communication whatsoever in the world David had witnessed, and like a virus, he was not experiencing the same condition into his mind.

During forced himself to end this inner struggling by suppressing any abstract consideration, turning away from the ocean, looking at the dark silhouette of the mountains in the far distance, and embracing his body, literally, crossing his arms like a psychopath in a straitjacket.

Don’t think too much. After all, there have always been wars and there always will, as well as all kind of clashes among people.

A part of him, however, was strongly opposing this deterministic vision of the world, and by doing so it was sending a vibration stemming from the base of his neck down to the bottom of his spine.

He felt that thought too simplistic. It was the consequence of his struggling to stop thinking. Aligning himself to the daily routine, repeating the same patterns over and over again; that, too, was a way to avoid looking at the screen.

If I don't see, I don't think.

Take everything else for granted. After all, ours is the time of Men believing to be God, isn’t it?

This last thought made David shiver. His eyes rose to embrace the stars, which were now dotting a pitch black sky.

What was that screen showing him, really? As far as his memories go, he knew he had been taught that Men have brought God down so close to them to humanize Him, when the opposite failed to happen. Today, there is no intention to reach out for the Source of all creations, the unfathomable Artificer of the Universe, wherever He might be; on the contrary, since God is not visible, the simplest way to have Him close, was to pull Him down at Man’s level. This action was caused by the idea that the Ego is the very image of God, and the ultimate truth of the world. More than that, since the Absolute Truth can’t be found, we have quit searching, in the illusion that what we possess – or can have – daily is enough; the practical consequence of such a conviction is nothing more than an endless clash of egos brought about to control reality and, therefore, to control God.

David couldn't recall where he had acquired such knowledge, but for some reason looking at that screen had triggered this awareness. He felt the full weight of that revelation pounding on his chest, crushing and smothering him. Was this the focal point of the misery he just saw? And what is this Ego which pretends to know, and becomes the truth of everything?

What was pretty clear to David, from the encounter with the stranger up to the vision in the ocean, was that the use of force and aggression showed the actual nature of men: creature seeking the others for the ultimate purpose of mutual annihilation, where the duality is marked as a difference. It is always the other who is “different".

The stranger had proved to David that if aggression aims at eliminating what is different, so that the only accepted point of view would be the one proposed by the assailant, the dialogue, on the other hand, would be the only viable solution to harmonize the conflict.

Maybe the dialogue was not strong enough in a world consumed by Egos.

David could no longer bear it. He had turned away from the ocean but his mind had not shut down. He felt like screaming his will to search for answers. There must have been others like him, who had been made aware of the mortal danger in which Man was burying himself. He was so sure, now, that what he had seen was happening right at this very moment, somewhere, and that he was bound to that agonizing world.

Now he had to find a way to know more about it. He needed to find the truth.

“Anything”, he said to himself, “I am prepared to give anything, even if that means to crush God himself.” 

CHAPTER 3. THE ROUGH ASHLAR

Since he had been on the island, David was back to what he remembered he had always loved: nature and silence.

It seemed liked the island had all he needed: there was abundance of fruit to pick, and wild game to haunt; the water from the river was of the purest quality; his shelter, the one where he had awoken some time ago, was a solid wood-and-stone hut which stood solitary near the cliff, South of the massive mountain range which was the heart of the island. The first thing David had done after opening his eyes had been exploring the hut: he found tools and materials for all sorts of activities. He discovered documents telling the story of the island, but they were incomplete and scattered all over the place. By reading what he could find, David learned of the existence of micro communities dwelling in the North, on the other side of the mountains. A legend from those people spoke of the hut as being built in long-forgotten times by using the magnetic grid of that part of the Universe. Alchemical formulas had been employed to ensure its ever-lasting, perfect conditions, and its magical properties untouched. According to the papers, the hut was conceived as a dimensional Stargate through which one could travel from one zone to another in the Multiverse. About whom had built the hut, however, David couldn't find any information.

David was sitting at the oak table laid on one side of the large room, working on a big block of granite. Although completely ignorant about stone-hewing and sculpturing, David had made a good use of what the hut provided. There were tools suitable for stone carving and much more: brushes and canvas for painting, countless of blank sheets for writing, musical instruments for playing. There was also a seemingly unused oven for melting metals.

David had chosen the stone, maybe because it was the first object presented to its view upon coming back from dark to light, when he had opened his eyes: the object was a rough stone as taken from a quarry, gray in color, shapeless, resting solidly upon the thick wooden table. The cutting and hewing tools were neatly lined-up upon the working slab nearby: Chisels, spatulas, knives, wedges, files, and hammers.

In the beginning, David had only tried the stone work for few minutes but now, after days of trials and practice, he was able to work for an hour straight to smoothen and rounding the corners, to hew, cut, brush, and carve. He liked to see the stone changing under his hands, even though he had no idea of what results would have come out of it.

He was striving, trying to square an angle, when he felt a strong presence: someone was watching him. The window facing the East hosted a strange shadow; a long, oval shape was observing the room from the outside.

David perceived it with the corner of the eye, and the intense and oppressing stare he felt made him shiver.

He immediately looked up toward the window, and the shadow swiftly backed up, disappearing.  David thought he knew who it was: the stranger probably had come back and was watching him. He jumped off the seat and ran to the door. He swung it open, turned the corner of the hut and looked at the southern side: too late, there was nobody anymore. David ran back to the door and went past it, so to have the complete view of the plains stretching in front of him. It was at least four miles of open ground to its left, until the Western Mountains, and more than twenty toward the mountains. If anybody would have been near the hut and ran away, it couldn't have avoided to be spotted, whatever direction he would choose to go, except of course jumping off the cliff.

Was David really sure of what he had seen? Couldn’t have it been an optical illusion or a trick of the light, after having spent too much time working on the stone?

His mind simply refused to give any logical meaning to the impossible.

Confused, David turned slowly toward the door, went back into the room, and there he froze, shocked: someone was sitting at the table, working on the rough granite. His face was hidden in the shadows, his hands moving frantically grating, breaking, ripping the granite apart. David moved few steps forward in the attempt to see the intruder's face.

- Who are you? – His voice trembled.

The man in the shadows kept on working, then he spoke, with a hissing sound:

- You know well who I am. You didn’t do a good job with this Rough Ashlar. Sculpting is definitely not your forte. -- I’m learning, I don’t have to show it to anyone – said David.

- You’re dead wrong – replied the other – you must always show to be the best, if you don’t want to be crushed by the others. -- I prefer to watch who is better than me. You seem really good at it, – concluded David.The sarcasm in his voice didn’t go unnoticed. The man stopped his work, dropped hammer and chisel on the table and slowly rose. His face was still hidden in the dark, and David felt a strong impulse to grab him, drag him out of that corner, and put him under full light.

- Your life is a continuous flow of miserable attempts to know and understand, but you don’t realize that, year after year, you miss the fundamental point: life is a competition of minds; life if physical struggle, dominion of vital space. If you don’t understand this, you will never know how to win – shouted the creature, coarsely.

David was hypnotized by the resolute and convincing tone of the other. He felt as if hit on his stomach at every word. Perhaps the intruder was right, David thought, but then he remembered the words of the old man he had met by the cliff:

“To have the courage to see where things go...There awaits the truth” he had said. Then, David’s reply came softly and fluidly out of his mouth:

- You are talking about a very materialistic level of life, but there are things that go beyond that, which are not limited by what we see. -- Moron and ignorant! – Roared the other, in anger – You don’t deserve to exist, I would be free without you! -David went on, with confidence:

- You exist so that I can go beyond the blind arrogance and the useless violence of the world. I see you now, I recognize you. -- I see you and I deny you! – Retaliated the other, stepping out of the dark and running toward David. Instead of the expected impact, the intruder dashed through him as if it were an inconsistent being. Then, he vanished.

David didn’t need to turn to know that the door had never opened, and that nobody had ever come in or gone out beside himself. Still, he had to admit and accept to have had that confrontation with someone who had his own face.

To keep his mind from shattering, it was necessary for him to recognize and accept the irrational and the absurd, even before understanding it, because this is what the island was offering.

David was not sure to have fully grasped the meaning of that impossible encounter. What was clear, though, was that he had been able to identify the difference the moment he had accepted it.

That was the only way he had won the confrontation against other self.

CHAPTER 4. THE BEAST

The pathway was barely visible in the semi-darkness of the forest.

Skinny trees intertwined their long, angular branches up high like crippled fingers, forming a dense, ghastly dome. Clusters of purple thorns grew at the end of the branches, and David had to walk very carefully not to touch them. The wind was not helping either, for the trees swayed and twirled in a macabre and fluctuating dance before his tired eyes. The trees seemed indeed living creatures who stretched their claw-like twigs in the attempt to grab him.

David wished he could stop and go back out of the forest. Something stronger than his will was pushing him forward, though, relentlessly, step after step, amidst bushes and shrubs which stung and scratched his bare limbs.

The pathway snaked through an avenue of trees and seemed to be endless. The otherwise complete darkness was somewhat eluded by the purple glow of the spiked clusters which marked the way as ghostly lanterns.

David was exhausted, but his legs kept on pushing him further into the deep forest; then, suddenly, the trees opened to reveal a barren and rocky clearing, beyond which only a pitch black darkness awaited.

On that instant, David felt a call which couldn’t be ignored, a signal which resonated in all his cells, into his brain, deep into his very soul. It was the source that had brought him there. The call came from the black mass looming on the edge of the cliff.

A sheer terror wrapped his heart with cold strings: David's legs moved again, distancing him from the thorny trees, but closer, ever closer to the colossus of darkness throbbing and vibrating before him. Other people were coming out of the woods at the same time, converging toward the same spot. Few of them had the same terrified expression which was disfiguring David’s face; others had expressions of greed, ambition, and lust painted on their smirking faces.  The majority of those people, however, looked as demented as zombies. Hundreds of men and women stood there, by the edge of the cliff, waiting.

David stared at the darkness in front of him: it kept on moving, expanding, contracting, until it split open as the jaws of a gigantic monster, showing inside an abyss of shimmering, writhing shades of gray particles.

The Beast expanded its body to embrace the clearing, swallowing trees and stars. David and the others were sucked into it as fleas, and fell at hyper-speed into its bottomless vastness.

David felt his physical body captured by the gravity and, with it, an irresistible force pressed in on his forehead and temples. He closed his eyes unable to sustain the pain. When he opened them again, he no longer had a body.

He could feel every feeling, just couldn’t see himself. He knew he was inside the Beast that had swallowed him, and could also sense the other victims scattered around him.

As David kept fluctuating in the void, other bodiless figures passed by him; when they did, a little, short flux of shockwaves were recorded by his mind. The force, the “call” which had pulled him out of the forest was now stronger, the rhythm attuned to the breathing of the Beast; “outside” of David, whatever meaning that word still retained, electrical darts stung him without pause. He tried to avoid them by the will of his mind but the entire space had become an electromagnetic grid, and he was trapped in it like an insect in the web.

Every time he was stung, David's entire being reacted and vibrated, craving for a new strike.

The conflicting feeling, which was latent or dormant before, had now arisen like the blossoming of an Opium flower. It was a feeling which had always belonged to him, but only now, inside the Beast, where every logical and physical law had ceased to apply, it had touched his consciousness.

Within that impossible system, David realized that over there, in a spotless spot, toward the brim of the darkness, there was a particularly bright, gray spark.

He floated in that direction by focusing his thoughts to the spark, and almost immediately the bright spot became larger until taking the form of a stairway emerging from the darkness to stretch upward  until disappearing into a blinding light.

The electrical attacks had intensified, clogging David’s mind, causing it to drift now close to the stairs, now far away from them..

David tried to keep focused on the bright light and, slowly, it seemed that the electrical grid had loosen its net and let him go through. The stairway was close again, he could see the steps, made of a clear crystalline material. Other minds had followed him through the grid's opening, but they were not attacking. David could feel their vibrations, moved by the will to reach the light zone, while somewhere under, or far from it, somewhere within the heart of the Beast, other minds were ruthlessly clashing and annihilating.

As David's mind 'landed' on the first step of the stairs, a new perspective formed into his consciousness: leaving a suffocating and slimy condition, into a progressive enlightenment far from the chaos of the battlefield.

The presence of other minds experiencing the same transformation wasn't bothering him anymore. He could still feel the Beast shrieking and throbbing inside and all around him, but, from the stairs, he didn’t fear it. Deeply absorbed by the light of the crystal slabs, he felt free from the control of the monster who had swallowed him; the stairway indicated the way of the light, to which his mind tended now completely; to reach the light over the frenzy of the battle had been his own choice, after all.  

Such choice was leading him out of the Beast’s influence, and toward a different zone which he felt was more akin to his true essence.

On the other side of the stairs, far in the distance, he could turn his mind within the monster’s gorge of darkness, without risking of being annihilated; he could sense the chaos of the ongoing battle down below, but he was untouched by it.

The stairs were stretching endlessly, and the source of light remained unreachable. The dynamics of that event sparkled his conscience with the same substance of the light itself, and the same was happening to the other minds who had followed, minds who had completely turned themselves to the light. Of course distances, perspectives, angles and colors were not so important, over there.

David had grasped the nonsense of the battle inside the Beast only when his consciousness had “landed” onto the first step of the stairs. He felt safe, he felt complete.

He felt free.

Then the stairs trembled and flattened. A ray of light hit him violently, casting his mind back into the dark matter which was awaiting, insatiable, all around him.

Every attempt to remain anchored to the light had failed.