Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The Nothinger

Chapter 1: Voices and signs

That day, the dawn seemed to bring with it, a special meaning for him. He saw signs everywhere he turned. He had been seeing them for a while now. But today, he felt, was going to be the culmination of that endless search for a map. He was longing to travel.

The world he knew was pushing him out, he thought, joyfully. Or was he pushing out the world he knew, he wondered, in momentary panic. But it seemed to subside when voices in his head told him that it didn't matter. He remembered that until yesterday, such voices in his head telling him things would have left him startled and even a little unsettled, but today, they were calming, reassuring, almost soothing, as if preparing him for some monumental trial that lay ahead. It was a sign, he thought.

He was a lover of logic, a man of science. He was schooled in rational thought. For a while, he tried suppressing the magic of that dawn. He ate his breakfast in numb silence, alone as usual. There were butterflies in his stomach. He did not know why and it bothered him. He tried to ignore it, but it wouldn't go away. His inquisitive mind kept asking 'why', and after a few times, he had to relent to the urgency with which his entire inside was trying to come to terms with the unknown. Just to quiet himself, he made up a reason. Something so utterly trivial, something his mind would have tossed in scorn a few moments ago, that he couldn't help smiling. He remembered it was the first time he had smiled that day. In fact, it was the first time he had smiled honestly that whole week. He smiled even more. He saw a sign.

But his reason, or perhaps, all the smiling, seemed to have helped. His ego was temporarily sated with an answer. After all, the answer seemed to fit into a general scheme of logic. It didn't matter if it was nonsense.

He remembered a syntactically perfect computer program he had written for his bank that did absolutely the wrong thing. The compiler was happy then, he thought. At once, he felt his ego mind kicking defensively against the insult. He smiled again. He was not a machine! That assertion, he recalled, was stronger than the last time. Again, he saw a sign.

He let a few minutes pass. He felt free. He had the power to choose. "There is no compiler", he proclaimed to himself. "I have no syntax", his brain echoed. He remembered reading about algorithms that evolved and mutated with time and experience and wondered if the brain was one such. He felt accomplishment at the thought, and fear at the realization. He wondered if it was even relevant. By the time he had finished eating, he decided it didn't matter. He cleaned up and left for work.