Mountain Qualia

NaNoWriMo Day 13

They were sitting around a small campfire that they created using the small survival kit in Julian's pocket. It was very odd to Tipi so see in Kalisa; the woman chasing him in dreams, as a person in the flesh. He supposed it was the other way around, of course. It was weird that this woman who came to them from the cave had been in his dreams. He had focused most of his attention on Julian. Ever since Tipi had saved him from a possibly fatal fall, he had said next to nothing. Tipi had tried. Was it about missing his parents, or being lonely or bullied in school? Eventually, Julian had replied. "It's life." Tipi had given him a Schnitzel lunch for dinner, and soon after the boy had fallen asleep.

"You and I need to have a chat," Kalisa said.

"You're not as frivolous as the Kalisa spooking behind me in my dreams."

"Dreams have their own color palette. It's not just in my control how I speak to you there, you have a say in how things come across."

She sat down on the other side of the campfire and warmed her hands. The mountain had cooled a lot since the heat of the day. "I could not get into contact with you for over two years," she said. "What happened?"

"I don't think asking me questions will get you any answers as I am perfectly clueless about how I ended up here, and also about how you ended up here. What were you doing in the cave? And how did you find us?"

"So what do you know?"

Tipi told Kalisa as much as he knew. Which comprised most of the story from the coffee shop to running away from the crow men.

"You think you are The Toki Ponist on the Mountain? Is that why everyone is calling you Tipi?"

"That's what I'm told. Wait. I'm not?"

"No!" Kalisa stood up and laughed. "You really don't know anymore, do you? It was you and me and the fiction together, not you alone. You are just Joakim, nothing more."

"So, what the hell am I doing here?" Joakim said.

"And why couldn't I contact you?"

"They said I was enlightened."

"Who?"

"My followers?"

"We didn't have followers, we never wanted them either."

"Sometimes you get served something you didn't order."

"If you were out your mind for over two years, where was your consciousness then? There was no accident, no traumatic event, no health issue. There was no reason for you to suddenly lose yourself.""What have you been up to those two years then? We're you stuck inside my head for all that time?"

Kalisa laughed again. "You think I'm some sort of genie? You'd wish I'd grant your three wishes. You don't have to worry about me, I have my ways of getting around as you will remember once you remember."

"Now I'm getting a bit tired of all this. Everybody is telling me different things. I can't believe those so-called followers that drug me and bring me across the globe, I'm being chased by crow fanatics, you just walk out of a cave and blame me for stuff I do not know about. The most real thing is this boy asleep here, and he just tried to abandon me and the world by killing himself off. So if you would please from your elevated position tell me what has been going on with me, I'd be much obliged."

Kalisa sat down again. "I don't know exactly what happened to you two years ago. But the only way I see that you could lose your consciousness is if you were part of a larger one."

"A large what?"

"Consciousness. If you would extend your brain with a few extra cells, they'd become a part of you. If you would connect to a rat, the rat would disappear and you would lose a bit of yourself. If you connect with another human, you would both stop to exist and continue as a joined entity."

"I did not link with anybody, if anyone, it would have been with you, as you just claimed yourself," Joakim said.

"Our brains don't connect that way, they never merged. Ours spin together like flywheels keeping each other in motion."

"So, proof it."

Kalisa stood up and walked over to Joakim. She held her hand out and Joakim immediately responded with a defensive gesture. "Hold still I just want to look," she said while trying again to put her hands on Joakim's head. She checked every bit on Joakim's skull for any marks of a neural link. Then she checked his neck, shoulders, and arms.

"Nothing, " Kalisa said. "But you have to know something about the skills we had when we were working together. Storypolation, rings a bell?"

"Story-what? Joakim said. "No. Everything rings bells right now, my brain is one big one-man-orchestre of sounds cutting right through me. When do any of you get it that I am no longer who you think I was?"

"Relax. It will come back to you. It is in the best interest of space-time that you learn to fill the gaps and create fictional singularities."

"Who are you talking to, exactly? Because you make no sense. You don't seem to understand that I am stranded on a mountain I've never seen taking care of a boy who is way too young to be suicidal and surrounded by people that think I have to find my way back to something that, frankly, sounds like a terrible position. I mean, fictional singularities? Flying spinwheels -"

"Spinning flywheels," Kalisa said.

"Cocking cogwheels, whatever, living alone for months in a hut on a mountain, having the burden of presenting myself once in a while to perform miracles. If that is the life I should go back to then, no thank you. And to be honest, I don't believe it."

Joakim threw a few sticks on the smouldering remains of the campfire and curled around it, next to Joakim. "Goodnight."

"I thought you'd remember me," Kalisa said. "You knew my name."

"Goodnight."