MNESIUM - English

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.”