I again remembered what had happened to me and the desire to share it with someone returned. Not tomorrow, not the day after, but now. So I decided not to go home, but to call someone to meet. I started browsing the contacts on my mobile phone, but out of 200 people, recorded there, there was only one who was awake now. Only one, who would be open-minded enough to hear my story, and to say their opinion about it. But unfortunately, this person now most likely was under the influence, and he had many other things he wanted to listen to.
The Curious lived in a dilapidated house at the end of the city, which he bought for a pittance because the previous owner had convinced himself it was haunted. I never figured out how he managed to acquire it without any financial help from his parents (his mother worked a miserable job, and his father had been dead for ten years) and at some point I had to settle with the explanation that he is one of those people to whom such things just happen. The rooms of the house he didn’t use, Anton rented out and as a result the house was always full of people, who were so many, and changed so often, that I perceived them as part of the interior. Although, once I was one of them…
Okay, let me structure my thought in points:
I can’t believe how quickly we had stopped communicating. It seems to me I hadn’t seen him for two months. But interestingly, despite that, I headed straight to his house, without calling him to warn him. Realistically, I had no idea, he could have found a job requiring him to wake up early, or gone somewhere, but something told me he was still constant in his inconstancy.
As always, the door of the house was open. I entered the huge hall, which occupied almost the entire first floor, and greeted the guys and girls sitting there while trying to shout over the loud music pouring from five shiny “Infinity” speakers—a legacy from the previous owner.
I stepped forward and yelled in fright. A person was lying on the floor. He was unconscious and in his hand he clutched a branded KFC bag.
“What’s wrong with this guy?”
Instead of answering me, he and a few of his friends started laughing at my question, and gradually almost all the people in the room joined the laughter (even those who had no idea what was going on). After a while, one of them started explaining to me that at the beginning of the evening, the said person had bet with someone else that he could without a problem…
NOTE:
“Don’t ask stupid questions, unless you want to hear stupid answers.”
I looked at the people once more and after not finding anyone I knew, headed toward the back of the room. Curious was in the corner, sitting in a huge leather armchair, that he built himself. He was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, and his head was covered with a baseball cap which darkened his whole face, and hid from his gaze everything else, except for a thick book, placed on his lap, which he was unfolding so fervently that its pages were tearing at the corners. I stood next to him and said “Hello.” He turned toward me for a second, just to establish my identity, and then buried his nose in the volume again, while simultaneously talking to me:
“How are you, Engineer. What’s up?”
“Nothing special.”
NOTE:
“This question seems to have become redundant.”
“Anything interesting with you?”
“Yes.” – I said, after recovering.
“What?”
“Actually, it’s one of the most interesting things that ever happened to me.”
“And aren’t you going to tell me what?”
“I’ll tell you, bro. That’s why I came.”
With this remark, I managed to engage his attention. His gaze stopped roaming the room and focused on me, while I mentally went through the whole experience, trying to systematize the information. While I was telling, he listened attentively and interrupted me only to make me repeat certain passages—something I’d never seen him do before.
Actually, he didn’t say anything even after I finished the story. At first, I thought he was reconsidering his answer (another thing he never did) and by the time I realized, five minutes had passed, during which the music was playing, the people around us were having fun, and the two of us sat like two reproductions of the statue of “The Thinker” and exchanged meaningful glances.
“Well?”
“Do you have any idea what would have happened next?”
“Pardon?”
“Well, you stopped at the most interesting point. After the contradictions disappeared and the light became darkness. What was going to happen? Do you know?”
“I have absolutely no idea.” – I said. – “Have you heard of anything like that?”
“I read somewhere.”
“Where?”
“No, you won’t take it seriously.”
“I don’t have much choice. Is it in one of those books about contact with aliens?”
“Worse.”
And despite that, he got up from his chair and headed toward the library. The books there weren’t arranged by any principle, but despite that, he immediately found the one he wanted to show me.
He brought it and slammed it on the table. Then sat back in his armchair and turned to me:
“First of all.” – He said. – “You should be aware that most likely what you saw is a product of your imagination.”
“You think I made it up?”
“Listen to yourself?” – He said. – “An Engineer to imagine a world where the laws of logic don’t apply? The option of contact with aliens is more likely.”
“Don’t joke!”
He took another sip of vodka and moved closer to me:
“I’m not joking at all.”
Then he started explaining what he meant:
“Now what do you see in my hand?”
“A glass of vodka.”
“How did you know it’s vodka?”
“Because that’s what you drink.”
“You’re right. - He said. But I asked what you see, right?”
“Okay, I see a glass with transparent liquid.” – I said. – “If I didn’t know you, I’d think it was water. Especially considering the amount…”
“Absolutely right…” – He interrupted me. – “To assimilate what we see, we liken it to what is most familiar to us. And those are probably the two things we humans know best—water and…”
“And what?”
“Think a bit. You’ll remember yourself…”
Then someone from the table interrupted with a scream:
“Anton. Is this Bible yours?”
NOTE:
“Never think you know someone.”
By that time, I was open to accepting new things, but since I was little, I had felt distrust toward religion, bordering on disgust, and the spiritual scriptures seemed to me composed by someone who had taken large amounts of drugs beforehand. But what annoyed me most was the fact that there are people who consider all that to be true. People who believe that someone created them, and someone guides their LIFE. How could Anton be one of those people? It was probably best to ask him:
“Bible?” – I said. – “Is that your explanation? I thought you’d pull out some scientific literature, or at least pseudoscientific. Everything is probably better than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing, just to believe….”
“Little Engineer, listen. You’re a very good friend of mine. That’s why I want to admit to you that sometimes you’re very stupid.”
“What?”
“No, I expressed myself wrong. You’re not stupid, but you miss things that are very important…”
“For example?”
But the Curious One didn’t answer me, because he was too busy arguing with the guy who asked him about the Bible—he had spilled a bottle of red wine on it:
“You idiot, this book costs over a hundred leva.” – Anton was shouting. – “Not to mention the wine is another twenty…”
“I don’t know how it happened…”
“Well, in the state you’re in, probably someone could pass behind you without you realizing how it happened!”
“Sorry, Anton… I don’t know what to say…”
“Don’t talk, go to the bathroom, get the rag…”
“Okay. But where is it?”
“So, there’s a cabinet, which is to your right when you enter. Next to it…”
I stopped listening to this conversation, trying to come to terms with the fact that on this day, things often interrupted exactly at the moment that was most interesting to me.
“Okay.” – I said to the Curious One, after the wine crisis was controlled. – “So you believe in god, is that it?”
NOTE:
“Atheists are allowed to write ‘god’ with a lowercase letter.”
“You could say so…”
“And you reject the Theory of Evolution?”
“Those are two different things, little Engineer.”
“Because?”
The Curious One shot out the answer, as if he had repeated it in thousands of arguments with thousands of people:
“Because the theory of evolution doesn’t answer the question of how life originated. OK, humans descended from monkeys, monkeys descended from some other animals there. But how did the first living organism arise?”
“Well…”
“So there’s at least one organism whose existence isn’t a result of evolution.”
“So what?”
“Since there’s definitely one, is it so impossible for there to be several?”
“I need to think about that.”
I took the bottle of vodka, unscrewed the cap, and took a big gulp.
“Okay.” – I continued. – “Let’s assume we humans are created by a higher form of life. But then who created that form?”
“Some even higher one?”
“And who created it?”
“Considering you’re a mathematician, you probably feel quite uncomfortable with the concept of infinity.” – the Curious One burst out laughing.
With this remark, he broke the ice that had formed in our relationship over the last two months and the conversation between us took off. We started discussing the role of religion through the ages. We even laughed a bit at how disoriented and small people are. Little by little, the memory of the Phenomenon began to fade from my head, and even started to seem more pleasant than confusing.
I realized I was having one of those conversations that have no real practical benefit, and which only distract me far from my work and the other things I had to think about during the day, but despite that, I was genuinely having fun. In the middle of some sentence, Anton shared with me that he had started writing poetry. When he saw my look of disbelief, he suggested reading me one of his poems. From the first sentence, I understood why I had looked at him with disbelief—he had taken a very famous poem, which we studied in school, and cleverly altered it so that it sounded like a praise of marijuana and laziness.
“Okay, let’s end today’s meeting with this.” – I said while wiping my tears, streaming from laughter. – “I’m going to steal a few hours of sleep before work.” – Because (as much as I didn’t want to) the fact that I witnessed one of the most mysterious phenomena in my life and the existence of god in no way changed the fact that the next day I was at work.
While driving, I suddenly remembered what Anton meant when he said that everything was a product of my imagination: “To assimilate what we see, - He had said. - We liken it to what is most familiar to us. And those are probably the two things we humans know best. - water and…”
…and light.
I don’t know why I was born into this world.
I didn’t ask why I will die.
But I suppose it’s to smoke weed all day.
and I hope I’m not mistaken.
I greeted youth, dropped a drop of Visine
and ecstatically opened my eyes,
to meet Life, wrapped in a cloud of smoke
in a chariot of moonbeams.
But here comes the police in us again.
Neighbors shout that they can’t sleep,
I wait for the dealer to come for a whole hour.
And I am seized with anger, malice and wrath.
These people prevent me from being happy,
and turn my life into hell.
before gaping abysses to black walls
society fucks me from behind.
I recognized my brothers in a slave caravan,
oppressed by the Golden Calf;
They do not see that they work and live by a plan
Created by someone, to whom…
…making plans is not his thing.