The Incredible Adventures of Xavier Hawk
The wall was huge. It stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. I could not see where it ended to the left of me nor to the right. What made it unique and alerted me that this was no ordinary wall was that it stretched off into infinity both above and below as well. I was floating there in space, surrounded by the vast nothingness of the void save for this monumental wall that shattered the emptiness before me. I knew instinctively that there was no “ground” below. I was floating, timeless in the vast ocean of non being. I was aware this was a dream now, and even my seven year old dreaming mind knew this was no ordinary dream. Though I recount the process and effects of this dream now with the bright capable mind of a man reflecting on past experience of childhood, it does the experience itself little justice. This dream had a profound effect on my development as a person for, as you will see, it began the process of shattering any individualized identity I might consciously or unconsciously fabricate for my travels in this world of ours.
As I floated closer to the infinite wall I could make out regularly spaced drawers placed into the monument stretching into the distances as though the entirety of the structure was made up of these drawers. As I drew nearer, and upon closer inspection, it became clear that these drawers were exactly the same size and design of drawers one would see in a morgue. I was familiar as a child of what these drawers looked like and I immediately thought I was in a nightmare. I hesitated to float any closer. Perhaps I could go fly and explore the vastness. Perhaps I did not need to try to figure out what was on the other side of the wall by looking in the cadaver sized drawers of this morose and monstrous wall. Surely I would find death, cold and unforgiving in the vastness of space without time.
As I began to turn away in my zero gravity empty universe I felt something, an urging, a longing, a desperate plea for….. Something. It was coming from the menacing wall of drawers. Hesitantly, I drew near. Floating there with a sense of dread I pulled the drawer before me open with a start, hoping to surprise whatever unknown thing might lay in waiting. I would get the jump on it before it got the jump on me. So goes the thinking of a seven year old facing his fears. To my startle the drawer did not extend as much as I had thought a morgue drawer would. I found no cadaver stiff and lifeless, no terror awaiting me. Instead I found a living, pulsing, consciousness. A beautiful little spark of knowingness floating serenely in a file sized box drawer. My young mind had no reference for what a spark of consciousness like this would look like so I saw a brain. I perceived a beautiful prismatic ever changing stream of colours and shapes expressing itself in the shape of a human brain. After all, wasn’t that what they taught us in school? Our identity and awareness comes from this spongy, liquid crystalline, biological computer?
MANNABLISS
Episode I: The Brain in the Box
33
Mannabliss Tribe Speaks