Singularity

Thomas Koepke, a first year freshman at philosophy, was grinning at his mirror image after having consumed a six-pack of Bergenbier. His blonde hair was long enough for him to pass as a member of the Jackson 5. He kept three different toothbrushes and pastes in a glass beer cup. He looked at them, and observed that he wasn't drunk enough to see more of the brushes. He went back to his IQ test, which consisted of elaborate questions like the following: "What is a Fornetti? a.) an Italian baroque composer b.) a famous football player c.) a kind of pie."

Tommy had no idea. The questions went on filling the screen of his laptop. His test results put a garbage collector miles ahead of him. "I'll be damned!" thought the university freshman, and decided to smoke the weed he was hiding in a bucket under the sink of his bathroom.

The heroin induced a trance-like state, acting massively on his subconscious. He dreamt that a strange creature enclosed in an immense container of water and resembling an octopus was monitoring him. The octopus looked at the results of the young man, and put all eight of its arms on its massive head. Tommy kept hearing the name of Einstein, which was of course due to the telepathic manipulation performed by that strange being, somewhere, light-years away in the dark depths of a distant galaxy. The creature was thinking to himself that he never in his 200 of earthly years, and intense traveling through different galaxies, had met a race as stupid as humans.

The alien race didn't know human language. Yet, Koepke was completely connected to the emotions of a consciousness that knew infinitely more than he did. The strange creature's mind transmitted him pictures from planets with double suns and deserted beaches, seas in which nothing other was swimming than microscopic organisms and algae, in the most primary state of evolution.

At other times, Koepke's mind was filled with the ruins of buildings, long ago emptied from the songs and laughter of life, drained rivers and barren landscapes as far as the eye could see. He didn't need narcotics anymore to be connected to the infinite wisdom of this distant mind. He gradually found out that at the other end of the line, they were fully aware of mankind, but a genuine sadness came with the mental images, emotions that transmitted the lack of awareness and consequence of actions as far as humans were concerned. It was like a fully stretched map of disillusion from the part of the other; that mind was like a hidden clock ticking, keeping the track of time on its own, with nobody watching or caring.

Koepke was wondering if he was alone watching the show. But for the telepath the concept of loneliness was barely to be understood. That race was like a single mind, interwoven and bound together, where a singular mind was never alone, even if they were biologically different entities. In fact, the minds, stretching from the depths of the vacuum, were supposing Koepke to be similar to them. But somehow the connection and the whole warning message was as if a colony of ants were trying to tell something to the same human mind. The human felt singular, brave and indispensable, as if protected by an invisible, yet utterly powerful shield from anything negative or menacing. The singularity of the human mind was unable to perceive in any other way, than a mirror image of itself. The Others finally realized the paradox of their mission, and retreated.

Koepke eventually woke up. He felt as if he was to do something very important, but he had forgotten what exactly. He awoke as an ordinary drunkard after an ordinary feast of alcohol. There was nothing to remember.

THE END

Bio: Botond Teklesz is an English single major Hungarian by mother tongue. Botond says of himself "I love to write and to translate. I am a fool for Sci-fi and have read most of Bradbury and Asimov. I mean Hamlet is great but it never made me laugh."

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