The number of visible stars in the sky of that early afternoon seemed
to have increased again. They had explained during the midday news
report that these celestial bodies, which had appeared on that
morning, were supernovæ. In other words, stars exploding at the end
of their life. This phenomenon was completely unexpected, since it
had always been believed that only a handful of those could occur in
our galaxy within an entire century.
But Doctor Vanderglück was in a hurry. His leather gloved hand left
the steering wheel of his Audi to sound the horn. Just a brief little
stroke, to avoid sounding too aggressive. The guy standing in the
middle of the parking space into which he planned to reverse, who
appeared to be lost in his contemplation of the supernovæ, sent him
all the same an instinctively hostile glance, but resolved to make
way for him without making more of a fuss about it. Vanderglück
would have preferred not having to park in this public-housing
neighborhood. Unfortunately, the urgency of the situation didn't
really give him a choice.
He came out of the car. His small bent body, wedged in a skimpy suit,
offered a ridiculous contrast with the powerful black vehicle he
owned. In the distance, a group of young boys, probably not older
than ten, was playing around a smashed bus shelter, right in the
middle of glass fragments, shouting at the top of their voice. With
his index finger, he pushed his glasses back on the top of his nose
and headed unsteadily across the parking spaces towards the high-rise
building his GPS had indicated. How could Damien and Sofia endure
living in such a place?
When he walked past the bus shelter, he realized that what was
amusing the children was some kind of electrostatic arc taking place
between the ground and the sole of their shoes as they jumped around.
On any given day, he would have stopped to observe this unusual
phenomenon. But today, he really didn't have the time. He quickened
his pace.
A little farther, there was a group of gawkers under a tree. They
seemed to be engaged in lively arguments. Some were pointing their
finger towards the branches. The Doctor looked up there and, with
great surprise, discovered that new leaves had appeared on branches
that, for several months, had remained naked. As he was approaching,
he noticed that there also were flowers, and even that some leaves
had yellowed, while others were already falling down. In spite of
himself, he remained observing this curiosity, stroking the tip of
his moustache mechanically.
His phone rang. It was an old comrade from his astronomy club.
– Have you seen this? said his friend.
– You mean, the trees?
– What ? What's about the trees?
Vanderglück was in too much of a hurry to start a conversation on
the subject.
– Don't worry. You will get to know about it soon enough. What did
you have to tell me?
– You're not in on anything? That's the only thing we've been
hearing about on the network for the last several hours. All
celestial bodies have gone completely crazy. The moon is moving away
and doesn't show us exactly the same side any more, the asteroid belt
is disintegrating, the orbits of Pluto and Uranus are completely
disrupted, pulsars and neutron stars are panicking, galaxies are
revolving as you look at them, and quasars are flashing like
Christmas garlands.
The Doctor looked up to the sky. The clouds had accelerated their
progression, like in a time lapse, moving up and down in whirlwinds.
But be it as it may, even if the end of the world had to happen on
that day, he couldn't leave Damien in the state in which he was.
– All right, Jacques, thanks for the information. You should go and
see what is going on outside, you won't be any less surprised, said
Vanderglück before ending the communication.
He took the path of the building in which his patient resided. The
walls were dirty and covered with graffiti. By chance, everyone was
concentrating on the ongoing oddities, and no one noticed him. The
entrance door had certainly taken a beating, since the glass was
cracked. A strong smell of urine emanated from the mailboxes. Some
had been smashed in. One was tagged with a Nazi swastika, others with
insults.
The Doctor felt a characteristic sweatiness under his armpits. His
body was riddled by a wave of heat. Something in his mind was yelling
silently to go away. But Damien counted too much for him. He had
become the symbol of his psychiatric career's success, and even,
since the decease of his wife, his only reason to live. His case
would definitely make him go down in history. He was the only patient
to ever have recovered from the Vanderglück syndrome, a rare
disorder of the autistic spectrum he had identified himself.
A flash of light illuminated the entrance from the outside, and a
deafening blare made him startle. Probably a lightning on a tree. He
took a deep breath and headed for the lift. When he opened the door,
a strong stench stroke him, and he stepped back instinctively. A
puddle of vomit was lying on the ground. He resigned himself to use
the staircase.
On the way up, a group of children going down four at a time hustled
him. On the landing of the second floor, someone was lying down.
Probably a drug addict. The ascent was making him feel hot. He
unbuttoned the top of his shirt. On the next floor, the scream of a
woman resounded, from a nearby apartment. The Doctor was rooted to
the spot, unsure how to react. He grabbed his spectacle lens between
his thumb and index finger, as to put his glasses back in place, in a
gesture whose sole actual function was to reassure himself, and then
decided to resume his climbing, ignoring what he had just heard.
Fifth floor. Finally. His clothes were filled with humid heat. He
pushed the corridor door open with a shaky hand. The sound of a piano
resounded in the hallway. He immediately recognized Sofia's style.
She was Damien's wife, formerly subject to the Asperger syndrome of
the autistic spectrum. As usual, she used high pitched notes to
create melodies reminiscent of rain falling and streaming, which
produced a meditative music, melancholic but incredibly beautiful.
Hypnotic, even. Within a few seconds, it had made disappear his
shaking, his heat and even his anguish. He headed lightheartedly for
their apartment, letting himself be guided by the music.
When he reached the door, he stopped. He would not have wanted to
interrupt this charm for anything in the world. He placed his ear
against the panel and closed his eyes. It was as if he had left the
reality of this high-rise building behind to rest in an enchanted
garden. How long did he remain there for? He would have been
completely unable to say.
Alas, the entire building suddenly started shaking violently. He had
to cling to the door to avoid falling down. The music stopped. The
spell was broken.
Eventually, the quake stilled. He stood up with difficulty. The neon
ceiling lights flickered, each at its own rhythm, lighting randomly
the different parts of the hallway. He nevertheless rearranged his
clothes, ran his fingers through his hair, and then rang the
apartment's doorbell.
Moments later, Sofia opened the door.
– Good afternoon, Doctor.
She was radiant, but her face remained inexpressive. Her facial
muscles were completely relaxed, which made her gracious and
naturally gave her a noble attitude, without superiority.
– Good afternoon, Sofia.
– Enter, if you so wish.
As usual, she consistently avoided any eye contact. It was the first
time he visited them at home, and for a reason. But in that moment,
he wished he had come earlier. A perfume of sandal wood floated
through the apartment. Following Sofia, he cleared himself a path
through the living room between exotic plants. The floor was made up
of a large multicolor mosaic presenting fractal patterns. A lightning
stroke the roof of a neighboring building with mighty thunder,
briefly illuminating the room. He lost himself in the contemplation
of the millions of paint stains that covered the walls. They
conjugated in the eye to form semi-abstract fantasy landscapes. Sofia
was waiting for him to engage the conversation.
– How is Damien? he asked.
– He is not doing well, Doctor. He isolated himself in the room. I
tried to calm him down, but it seems my music doesn't have effect on
him any more. It's just as if he had regressed ten years back.
– May I get in the room?
– I think you will have to ask him.
Vanderglück approached the door.
– Damien?
He waited for a few seconds. No answer.
– Damien, are you there?
Nothing.
– Damien, I am going to come in, all right?
The Doctor pushed the door softly. A rather foul smell of sweat
filled the air. The furniture had been overturn, the wallpaper torn
off, objects smashed to the ground. His patient was standing in the
middle of the room, wearing dirty clothes, with tousled hair, rocking
his chest back and forth, shifting his weight alternately on each
foot. He held his hands together in front of his face, making strange
movements. All the light bulbs in the room flashed suddenly together,
and the room was plunged into the dark. Damien stood still.
– It's not really about me that you are worrying, Doctor. What has
actually driven you here is not so much the concern to see me in good
shape as the concern of your reputation and of what posterity will
remember about you. Am I not right?
Vanderglück looked at him furiously, but fortunately his patient
never looked back. It was the first time he addressed him in such an
aggressive way. He wished he could have replied something but all he
felt was anger and he knew perfectly that in these conditions he had
to remain silent until his irritation had passed. Otherwise, he would
put his role at risk.
– Keep calm, Doctor. I need your presence and your calm to
stabilize myself. But One also needs you to have a truthful
understanding of what is happening in this room right now.
Vanderglück took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly, as he had
learned to do in order to calm his emotions. He felt ready to resume
his role as a therapist.
– What are you feeling, Damien?
– Thanks to your presence, Doctor, I feel much better. Something
inside is dislocating my memories, my thoughts, my emotions. One
tears them apart like paper to reduce them to dust, One dismantles
systematically what makes me be the “normal” individual you have
trained me to become. It's as if I were slowly dying by
disintegration. But your simple presence helps me to control this
terrible anguish.
– But who is this “One” you are talking about, Damien?
– It's the syndrome to which you have given your name, Doctor. Over
the years, I have learned to forget I have always worked for him. But
my true nature is about to regain the upper hand. And now that you
are here, I am ready to assume the function for the sake of which I
have established communication with you and your fellow men. And now,
if you don't mind, we are going on the roof. Sofia?
Damien offered his open hand to his wife. She grasped it without
hesitation. The whole building started shaking again violently. This
time, the walls were cracking, the fragments that composed the
mosaics on the floor were spurting out of their mold and parts of the
ceiling collapsed. Damien grabbed Vanderglück by the collar, and
then applied a forceful push on his neck.
When the psychiatrist lifted his gaze up, a few fractions of a second
later, they were all three on the roof of the building. As he was
kneeling on the ground, he felt the cold touch of the rain water on
his legs. He looked up towards Damien, who was levitating about six
feet from the ground, seated in lotus. Had he completely lost his
mind? Plumes of black smoke rose all around over the city. A car
lifted by one of the numerous twisters that ran through the darkened
streets crashed into a balcony of the opposite building. Vanderglück
recognized with consternation his beautiful Audi.
The scene took an even more surreal turn when the sky color started
shifting towards a darkening violet and Damien's eyes started
gleaming yellow. Sofia was sitting nearby, eyes closed, as if nothing
unusual was happening.
– Thank you both for being here, Damien said. Your presence will be
essential for me to stabilize my emission. I thank you in advance in
the name of the Collective.
The sun seemed to have moved away. Vanderglück could only see in the
twilight thanks to the ever flickering light of the many lightnings
that stroke in all directions one after the other. Sofia was now also
hanging in the air, in the lotus posture. A strong vibration that
seized his sensations like a magnet turned his guts upside down.
– Hold on, it won't be long, he heard in his head.
Then, the emission began:
– This is a world wide telepathic broadcast. Don't be afraid,
everything is under control. One is a collective entity, the result
of the interconnection of a large number of consciousnesses. Until
now, you have considered our Collective as a simple set of persons
suffering from an autistic disorder. But if so far One has not
bothered communicating with you, it is because One perceives reality
in a very different way, and One does not feel like participating to
the one you have built for yourselves.
The round of lightnings had stopped. The entire firmament was
rotating in an exorbitant movement, as if Earth were a giant spinning
top. The sun and the moon executed a complete revolution within a few
seconds. Unable to control his dizziness, the psychiatrist vomited on
the roof of the building everything he had in his stomach.
– Each individual having ever been part of the Collective gave it
the entire content of their experience, until their death, and One
has stored the sum of all those information from time immemorial. A
very long time ago, the Collective was the crucible of almost the
entire human kind. It was an age of harmony between human beings,
because everyone had access to the experience of every other. Over
the millennia, the inevitable dissidents grew in number, until they
reached the critical point beyond which the majority of individuals,
the ones who always remain easily influenced, shifted to their side.
They all ended forgetting even the existence of the Collective.
Vomiting seemed to have purged him. Vanderglück felt much better. He
had also started levitating. The vibrations were still very powerful,
but his body was now in sync with them. The calm he felt inside as a
result of the soothing in Damien's voice contrasted with the
apocalyptic visions that the external world offered him.
– Those dissidents would not act any more taking into account the
whole of their fellow men, but only according to their own apparent
interest. They sought their personal pleasure, without concern about
the consequences that what they did to obtain it had for their fellow
men. They lost sight of the fact that, by believing they served their
self interest in defiance of their fellow men's, they worked
eventually against themselves. They have finally come to squarely
erect egocentrism as a supreme value.
The cosmos was distorted in all directions. All sorts of stars,
planetoids, galaxies and interstellar clouds seemed to come near and
then go away in vertiginous movements.
– But One has made a lot of progress during the last few millennia,
and One is now able to set up this revolution. You are about to be
connected to the Collective. Those of you who want to will be able to
be part of it. Others will be redirected toward a separate reality
they will be allowed to construct as they want, and One will wish
them good luck. Prepare now for getting shifted towards the
Collective's assemblage of reality.
The entire space deformed, as if dilating. All the lines got pulled
towards the infinite in all directions, and seemed to freeze in this
state. And then suddenly they all converged into a single tiny point
that shone briefly in the middle of darkness. The next moment,
everything was new. And the tacit message spread: “Welcome.”
