In order to make the average man complete some task you must lock him in an office—a place without any kind of amusement, hold him there for eight hours without letting him out except for lunch and watch him so he doesn’t start playing minesweeper or something. So people like me, people who like to do things, who work just for the hell of it, are irrelevant in offices.
Still, as every other day, I parked in my spot in front of the office, greeted the doorman, and entered the elevator. On the way, I grabbed a newspaper but found nothing interesting and tossed it. I entered our department’s room, and a familiar scene unfolded before me. I’d title it something like: “My colleagues, sitting at their computers.” This sight annoyed me simply because I saw it every day. I made myself a coffee and sat in front of the computer. I was currently expected to work on a project for software that could think independently. Or something like that. The task came yesterday and was so unclear that I even gave up trying to understand it and spent the whole day reading random stuff on the Internet.
Note: There’s no point in developing artificial intelligence—there are enough real ones, who aren’t being used for anything.
My colleagues weren’t much more oriented than I was, but I knew that this would soon change, because unlike me, they were capable of adapting to what was asked of them. Every time we started a project, they would start getting interested in the field we had to work in, and talk about it during breaks. And if we worked long enough, some of them would even change as people, depending on the circumstances. It seemed to me that the better a person mastered this skill, the more diligently and confidently they worked, held a higher position, and generally, Darwin’s theory applied quite universally to the rise of people in the corporate hierarchy and the melting away of their individuality: The corporate machine always wants more agents—more numerous and more complicit. It wants more power, more influence on society, it wants its logo on every surface on the planet. So if you agree to play, you will be powerful…
I wanted to be powerful too, simply because I had too many issues that could be fixed with some power. My issue was that in the same way in which the machine wanted more, my mind wanted to have less and less to do with it. I wanted to ultimately go live in the woods. Only, I didn’t realize that it is possible.
There were ten minutes left until the end of the workday, and my script was empty as a brain after a lobotomy. “You can’t commit it like that,” I told myself. “That would mean officially admitting you haven’t done any work.” I took a deep breath and typed a few lines of code, but they were so wrong that I couldn’t even answer why they didn’t work. I tried again. The same “Why?” appeared at the second symbol. And every letter my hand touched spawned thousands of questions that I couldn’t even grasp, let alone answer.
I got up from my computer and decided to walk. “It’s clear you won’t finish anything today,” I thought, putting on my jacket.
On my way out, I turned one last time to the monitor and for a second started to get uncontrollably irritated at the sight of the empty file.
I grabbed the keyboard and lifted it over my head, intending to throw it to the other end of the room, or even hit the monitor with it. But then my anger at not having done anything all day disappeared in favor of the desire to do something the next day. So I carefully put the keyboard back in its place, and prepared to leave with the idea of going to bed early, to wake up early. I became interested. And just before leaving the room, I turned, brought my hand to the keyboard, and entered into the file exactly one symbol. The symbol “X”
I saved it like that, then turned off the computer and headed to the elevator. Two or three of my colleagues got in with me (the ones who didn’t stay late at work) and together we traveled the distance from the top floor to the ground floor while having mundane conversations (“This building isn’t bad”/”Didn’t you hear they’re moving the office.” “Where? Hopefully it’s easy to get to.”). The doors opened, and I stepped outside. It was then, just as I took my first breath of unfiltered air, that I saw what I actually want to tell you about.
Here’s what I saw then: a concentrated light came from one of the slopes of Vitosha, similar to a laser. It was directed straight up and was so strong that it went through the clouds, and I couldn’t see where it ended. At first I didn’t wonder about the source. Because no one else was doing it, I decided that everyone else knew what this was and I was once again the idiot who didn’t know what was happening. Soon, however, I realized it wasn’t just me—my colleagues were also looking in the direction of the light just like I was.
“Did they mount some kind of spotlight there?” I asked, instinctively trying to hide my excitement, so as not to look weird in front of my colleagues.
“It’s definitely not a spotlight. Or at least I haven’t heard of a spotlight whose light is distributed like that,” one of them replied.
“Well, maybe they made one.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” I said. But my colleagues were already speeding off toward their cars, so I did the same.
A little later I took another glance at the mountain, and for a few seconds before the horn from the car behind me made me turn my head forward and continue. This repeated a few times, until finally my curiosity prevailed and I hit the brakes. Car horns blared behind me like a choir, and with difficulty, I parked the car so the others could pass.
The air was cold and damp and the wind whistled in my ears. I crossed the edge of the city (where the asphalt ended), and started walking across the meadow toward the mountain. When I estimated I was close enough, I looked up.
The light was still there. Instantly all my theories, with which I had explained its origin, evaporated. I felt how infinitely big the world is—or how small we are. One part of me filled with curiosity, another with raw fear, which must have engulfed people even before we became homo sapiens. Because the light didn’t come from Vitosha and wasn’t directed at the sky. It was exactly the opposite.
The beam was strong yet precisely concentrated. I could see its end clearly: a circle about a hundred meters in radius on the mountainside, which was illuminated so well that I had the feeling I could count the blades of grass and pebbles there. Its beginning, however, wasn’t visible—it passed through the clouds, and its primary source was lost there among the stars.
From staring so long, my head started to hurt. I also knew that my eyes could get damaged, but I couldn’t tear them away from it, and when my eyes adjusted, it was the only thing I saw. Gradually I started to accept the Phenomenon—I couldn’t explain it, but I accepted it, as I did everything beyond my understanding. Then the light intensified, and besides the big beam, two more smaller ones came from the sky. One of them was directed somewhere far away among the blocks of Sofia. The other shone directly onto me.
The moment the light enveloped me, I felt a very strong headache, which was apparently connected to it. The pain signaled me to move aside and I took a few steps forward. To my surprise, the beam began expanding its range, first enveloping the highway I drove on, along with the houses built around it, then the whole city. Afterwards—even faster. I realized I could hear the voices of people who were illuminated by the beam. Students studying for an exam. An elderly man and woman watching TV. The speech of millions of people merged into one slightly annoying buzz.
My new abilities intoxicated me and made me feel like some higher form of life… But this was only for a few seconds (the best in my life!), because then the light intensified even more, and everything became white again. I stumbled on the ground from pain. And when my eyes adjusted again, the only thing I saw were tunnels. And here it really becomes difficult to tell.
I stood up and tried to brush off the dust, but my hand passed through my body. Apparently I had transferred to a non-material plane. The houses and people around me had disappeared, and were replaced by endless winding paths, forming a huge labyrinth. I sat to observe the landscape—the surroundings seemed familiar. I had the feeling that I had visited this place before, and many times, but I couldn’t remember when, or on what occasion. I shrugged and set off along one of the tunnels.
As soon as I stepped into it, the first in a series of memories invaded my head. The peculiar thing about these memories was that they weren’t about things that had happened to me, but rather things I had thought. This particular one was from my childhood, but I didn’t remember the time or place. Instead I could with crystal clarity reconstruct the reasoning I had back then, done with elementary child logic. They were general reasonings—like what mom does at work, or why they didn’t let me come with them, but at that time these things were apparently important to me. The more I advanced through the tunnel, the more clearly I remembered the thoughts that had passed through my head at that moment. I progressed through my reasoning faster and faster, until finally, I couldn’t continue, because my childhood logic reached an irresolvable contradiction. In that same moment, the tunnel ended. And that wasn’t a coincidence—the contradiction was the wall that marked the end of the corridor. And with my expanded vision, I sensed other people, as before—each locked in their own labyrinth. Each bumping into their walls. Alone.
Note: Why do we even think logically if we cannot get to anything of substance? Why can’t we just be free?
I stepped into more tunnels, hoping to escape, but the more recent the memories were, the more walls there were. In the last tunnel—the one I had hollowed out a few hours ago—there were more contradictions than in the others, and I whirled through it like a fish in an aquarium. And new contradictions constantly appeared, narrowing the tunnel, and making me feel claustrophobic. The light became darkness. I felt there was no way out.
This state lasted for some time, whose duration I couldn’t determine, because I have no reference point to measure it by. But then the surrounding world became perceptible again. Gradually I began regaining the sensation of my body, and in the darkness dozens of small lights appeared. I smiled inwardly. These lights signaled that my eyes were fine. And besides, a few of them were arranged in a way that looked strangely familiar from somewhere.
Soon I felt gravity again, from which I concluded I was lying down. Gradually I felt my arms and legs, the pain began to subside, and the lights I saw became stronger and stronger. And I remembered where I’d seen it—it was the constellation “Ursa Major.” I was lying on the Earth’s surface. The strange figures and light were now only in my memories. I felt both relief and disappointment that everything was over.
I got up from the ground and looked around. The surrounding landscape seemed familiar and at the same time strange, as if I were entering my apartment for the first time after a two-week vacation. After a moment I remembered where I had come from, and headed back. I almost ran to the first house that crossed my gaze, and held down the doorbell. A man around fifty answered. The same one I had seen a little while ago.
“The light! Did they figure out what it is? Did they say anything about it on the news?”
“No, they didn’t say anything on the news,” the man said slowly. “And now would you please remove your car from my garage?”