Authors: Veronica Melan
Two days later colourful spots and light glares started dancing before my eyes. For the first time in a long time a brick wall fell and the light began to make its way through the darkness. Even though my sight was still very vague and blurry, I was jumping from joy.
“I can almost see! I can see!” I shrieked, trying to walk around the room, dancing. Hulk was laughing, but still not forgetting to watch over me so I would avoid sharp corners and walls safely.
“Don’t rush, my kitten, if you’ve already began seeing the highlights, then after a day or two, everything will return to normal.”
“Only two days? Yahoo!”
No matter how hard he’d try to hold me back, I couldn’t stop moving around the room randomly, watching the light by the windows get brighter. It was now as an unusual experience as a happy one. As soon as Hulk would leave the room, I would walk back to the windows, still unable to believe that I was starting to see again.
Once, we sat on the balcony - Hulk, smoking a cigar, and I was just enjoying the warm breeze, playing with my long hair.
“Hulk, does it ever rain here?” I asked the question that’s occurred in my mind a few times since I got in Tally.
“It does.” He replied, “But not very often, maybe, once a year. It rains for a few days in a row and then stops and dries out again.”
“And when will the “wet” season come?”
“Soon, in about a month.”
I paused, thinking. Perhaps it would be interesting to see this wilderness flooded. Many plants will start blooming as soon as the moisture will touch the soil; dust will be nailed down to the ground by streams of rain, and the wind will thrust through the air. Maybe even some thunderstorms will occur; at least I was hoping for it. For some reason, I really missed thunder and lightning strikes. This sight had always filled me with awe, reminding me how weak people are in comparison to mother nature. And the lightning over the desert - that must be a great spectacle.
“It’s good that I’ll be able to see it.”
“Uh-huh.” Hulk confirmed neutrally, his thoughts wondering elsewhere. The wind brought a fragrant smoke, smelling like cherry or was it vanilla?
After sitting quiet for some time, I began to ask more questions.
“Hulk...”
“Yes?”
“Tell me more about the Commission.”
“What exactly do you want to know, baby?”
“What is it? Where are their offices located?”
He chuckled, made himself comfortable in the chair and flicked the ash from his cigar. By now I’d learnt how to identify some of his movements by the sound, which I couldn’t before.
“The Commission is a strange authority that governs all Levels. I can’t tell you where their offices are located, Drake usually comes to the allocated place, and we were trained in one of their buildings, but trust me - you won’t find it on the map. I don’t think even I could find the way there myself, because its location constantly changes within the space. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try.”
I was surprised to hear the words "changes within the space", but I didn’t say anything. I guessed I had to learn many things that I didn’t think could ever exist. Therefore, instead of showing my mistrust, I just asked, “But how could I contact them if there are no addresses, phone numbers and marks on any map?”
“Why would you contact them?”
I thought to myself that one day I might need this option, and if there was a chance to learn more about the Commission from one of the people who’d worked with them so closely, it certainly must be used.
“I wasn’t going to.” I avoided a direct answer, “Everybody knows that they exist and wonders who they are, but nobody knows where to find them. Are they human beings?”
Before answering, Hulk pondered for a while.
“Yes, Shereen, I’d say so, but they are not exactly like us. What do you know about the Levels in general?”
I had to shrug since nothing specific came to mind.
“Nothing really. I just know that they have created the cities where we are living.”
“Do you remember how you entered the first city and where you lived before that?”
I referred to my memory with a new request, but got nothing in return. The thoughts were slipping away as soon as my brain tried to catch any information on this topic. Everything seemed to become like cotton wool, and the thinking process would immediately switch to something else. I told Hulk about that.
“That’s right.” He nodded, “Some areas of your memory are not possible to reach, because they’ve been blocked.”
“Blocked by the Commission?” I tensed
“Well...” Hulk sighed, “You raised a very complicated topic and I have to start my explanation from the very beginning. At least, I’ll tell you what I know, which is far from the full picture, but it’s still more than anyone else could explain to you, except, of course, the people from the Commission.”
“Won’t you get punished if you share this with me?”
“No, I won’t. You’re a smart girl and won’t be spreading it to everybody, right?”
I nodded.
“Right.”
“In order to protect this information from leaking or in case if a talented individual would decide to extract the information from you, I’ll block it out after our conversation.”
“So I’ll forget everything?” I became capricious, “And will lose my vision again?”
“No.” Hulk’s voice sounded soft, “You will remember everything and you won’t lose the ability to see. Well, agree?”
“I agree!” I said; ready to hear his interesting story. At least, I thought it might be interesting. And yes - the story didn’t disappoint me.
“Let’s start from the beginning.” Hulk started, and I listened to his every word with a great amount of fascination, “The Commission is a group of people. I don’t know how many of them there are in total, but it was them who created the place where we live now - the Levels. Yes, all the Levels were created by the Commission and I could bet my right arm that they didn’t exist before.”
I tried to hide my amazement.
“Does this mean that the place where we are living in is artificial?”
Hulk pondered for a while.
“I wouldn’t call it “artificial” since, to some extent that word means “unreal”. This place is real, it became real some time ago, even though it was created manually. Don’t ask me what kind of knowledge you must possess in order to create something that didn’t exist before and out of the emptiness, because I don’t know. But the Commission was able to do it. I don’t think they were called “the Commission” in the world they came from; they were just a race there. Or not even the “world” - because when I use the word, I think of some kind of outer civilisation, and we are only talking about this world - our world, and just about human beings, not about strange organic creatures. Thus, it would be appropriate to use a different word - a Reality. We have plenty of those in our world.”
Hulk fell silent. Then he asked, “So? Do you understand?”
I slowly nodded, fascinated by the lifted up curtain that was hiding either a fairy tale or some crazy fantasy behind it.
“Yeah, I get it, but... it’s weird. Are you saying that there are many Realities?”
My head was spinning - five minutes ago everything was easy - one life, one world; just what you see with your eyes, but now my brain stuck, thinking that not everything is that simple.
“Yes.” His reply was firm, “I know that for sure - there is a huge number of Realities and you can switch from one to another, but that's another really complicated subject. So let’s get back to our sheep.”
I giggled. The guys in silver uniforms, no matter who they actually were, would not approve of such a comparison.
“They came to this place, and created it from scratch. Gradually, step by step, they built these cities and connected them with roads, created the environment and so on. You probably noticed that all the cities are different?”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded.
“Some of them are completely made out of concrete - they are grey and mostly dark. Many high-rise glass buildings, offices, strange neighbourhoods and unsightly areas, as if everything were copied from a postcard image from another world.”
After I’d heard these words, something twinged in my head, which was painfully familiar, almost tangible as it often happens, when you smell freshly baked bread and it suddenly makes you recall a distant old and forgotten image from your past. But in my case it didn’t smell of baking, but of tangled up streets - dull, dirty and dangerous. As if it was in a different city, many years ago, but as soon as I tried to grab this picture by its tail, it would instantly dissolve into my intricate memory corridors.
Hulk, meanwhile, continued speaking, “Other cities aren’t like that - they are green, cosy, with old beautiful architecture, small and cute. Or there could be a mixture in one city, where half of the buildings are made of glass and steel and another half is made of stone and wood. Like your Klendon-city. There are islands, coasts and deserts. There are many things... And such diversity allows everybody to discover their preferred environment to settle within.”
Or where you’ll be exiled to, I wanted to add almost out of the blue, but shut my mouth on time, thinking what exactly in Hulk’s words brought this bright feeling of Déjà-vu.
For a few seconds there was silence, but I hardly noticed it.
“Are you trying to remember something?” Hulk asked.
“Yes, you said something that made me briefly recall a chunk of my memory, but I couldn’t catch it.”
“Shereen, you won’t be able to catch it. I’ll explain why, but later, ok?”
“Ok.”
“And another thing - what I tell to you now, can greatly affect your perception of the world. How can I explain... This new knowledge can be reluctantly accepted, or start to bother you. A human brain doesn’t like any changes in habitual feelings, it always wants to be sure that it knows and understands everything, and when we learn something new that invalidates the old knowledge, then we lose a sense of control over the situation; it knocks us for six. If this happens to you, I'll carefully shut access to this area of your memory, so it won’t bother you. You have to tell me if this happens.”
I shivered and frowned, not willing to experience any new interventions in my poor mind. I'd rather try to accept all the new information without losing my normal attitude. In attempt to avoid any further unpleasant discussions, I asked:
“Hulk, what are these realities? Are they like parallel lives? Do they have the clones of us that live and behave differently?”
A long time ago I saw a sci-fi movie where the characters were constantly intersecting with their second selves, trying hard to avoid any changes in the space-time continuum - that's how convoluted all this was called. But Hulk, for better or for worse, didn’t confirm my theories.
“No, Shereen. These realities exist outside of space and time, and they are not parallel to ours. They don’t have our “clones”; there are different people, cities, systems and regulations, and different places.”
“So, those are worlds?”
“They can be called “worlds”, but they aren’t located in space, they are very close to us and they interact with each other. We don’t see it. This is a completely different level of knowledge, not available to us.”
“Is it available to the Commission?”
“Of course, it is. Otherwise, how would they have created an entirely new place? Moreover, you’ve seen the oddness of the place, but never questioned anybody about that – nobody did, because that’s just how it is, and, nevertheless, you’ve seen that there are no births or ageing people at the Levels. Time doesn’t exist here. People come here from different places, but no one knows exactly how or where they’d lived before.
Now I was puzzled.
“Right... For some reason I never thought about it, but really - there is no getting old here. But there is time - there are watches we wear on our wrists, there are days, months, and years - calendars... So strange. Do you really think I came here from another world? And Jenny did? And you?”