Mountain Qualia

NaNoWriMo Day 21b

When Tipi opened his eyes, he was in a sunlit room. He must have slept throughout the night. He got up from the teenager bed with superhero duvet cover design. The rest of the room was empty and revealed that there had not been a teenager living in here for quite some time. He checked the door, which his captors had locked, of course, and also the window could not open. He looked outside over a large body of water. A few pleasure boats bobbed up and down.

The sound of a key in the door lock startled Tipi, and he struck a fighting Tai Chi pose. In came the two familiar bird men. They grabbed Tipi, put him on a rolling desk chair and tightened his hands behind his back with a piece of rope.

"What do you want?" Tipi asked. "Who are you?" While Tipi did not have a great reputation for remembering names he hoped to get a better hook on them than the words bird men or crow people.

"We'll come to our needs in a minute. You can call me Vasco, and this is Körbl."

He took several papers from a portfolio he was carrying on his back. He tried to read them but gave up.

"We've come an awful long way to find you, Mr. Tipi. And we had hoped not to need you at all."

"That feeling is mutual then," Tipi said. "But I can't imagine you following me all the way from Austria to here, with months in between."

"Nothing is unreal as long as you can imagine, like a crow," quoted Körbl.

"The feeling is certainly mutual, because we are not interested in you at all. And it was a tremendous disappointment that we had to track you down after all that trouble on the mountain. But we certainly lucky to bump into you on those slopes or we would never have found these."

He held up the papers he had taken out of hiding moments before.

"Are those papers from my hideout on the top of the mountain?" Tipi said.

"Excellent start. At least you are not denying anything, we're in much luck again, Körbl," said Vasco.

"After all that time, we finally found the Secret on the Mountain."

"Secret?"

"Yes, don't play coy with us. You hid the secret to enlightenment in your little Batcave so the world would not benefit from it. You don't have to teach us about guru's in the wild. They're selfish assholes, most of them, and charlatans usually. But we knew you were partly the real deal, and the fact that you hid away for most of the time let us believe the rumors that you kept the secret that could make anyone enlightened in an eyewink."

"But what we had not anticipated," Körble said. "Is that you have written it in an arcane script? We tried to decode it but it was too complicated to decipher."

Tipi laughed out loud. "Complicated?" He looked at the manuscript which Vasco held in front of his nose. "That's written in toki pona and not even in the sitelen suwi script. It is simple as hell. It is even called the simple language."

"We need you to translate it for us."

"Now, why would I be translating that for you?"

"You can also just tell us the secret," Vasco said. "We're not interested in your childish cypher."

"I'm afraid I can not do that. Memory loss. I have no recollections of the last two years when I spent my time in that hideout."

"That is most unfortunate," Körbl said. "So translate it then so we both learn something new."

"I can't say I feel tremendously safe and sound to perform this trick for you now. What will you do? You need me."

"We'll see," said Vasco, who nodded at his partner. Körbl walked out of the room and after a minute he returned, holding up a young boy by the collar of his sweater.

"Julian!" Tipi said. "What the hell did you maniacs do? Kidnap the boy? Hasn't he been through enough?"

"No, he has not. He was quite a disappointment to us, but you saved the day. He's also been a disappointment to his parents. Haven't you, Jules?"

Julian bit his lip and kept his mouth. He must have been with these two creeps for many days, maybe weeks. Just to get here from the mountains must take a while.

"He lost his parents once, and now you rip him from them again? Sick bastards."

"Lost his parents, you say? No, dear Jules ran away from them."

"Ran away?"

"Yes, just before he could lead us to the hideout by himself. If it wasn't for your guidance, he would never have found it."

"How would he have found it for you, I had never met the boy before that day?"

"Not you, but the possessed you."

"Posssessed?"

"We know about the neural implant, Mr. Tipi," Körbl said. "But you are not the only one carrying such a chip around."

"So you're the people who hooked me up to the big computer?"

"It's not connected to a damned computer. It's a mind bender device created to control the weak-minded. But no, we did not build it. We stole it," said Vasco. "We knew it had you under its spell. We wanted to find another soul that would mimic your actions without posing too much of an extra layer of complexity and autonomy. So once we figured out where in the world you kept your secret, we searched for children young enough to be naïve and complacent and old enough to climb the mountain. Once we had a child chipped, he would mirror your behavior and go to the hideout."

"It was a hell to find parents who would chip their child," Körbl said. "Luckily, we could easily persuade Julian's parents with a decent sum of money. So we didn't have to kidnap any children illegally."

"Good job. You win best bastards awards. You kidnapped him now, didn't you?"

"We're in a different phase of the game now," Vasco said. He put a knife from his pocket to Julian's throat. "Even though Jules is quite used to being mistreated by his not so loving parents, I think there is a new level of hurt we can get him acquainted with." He grimaced.

Tipi hissed. "With such attitude, how do you ever think you can reach enlightenment."

"You were also a troubled nobody if my research is any good. And then poof, it happened. Do you think I want to connect to the cosmos and experience all reality and truth so I can become my own little guru or start talking about world peace and that we should all love each other? Nah, I have much bigger plans."

Vasco gave the knife to Körbl, who put it even harder against Julian's neck. Julian whimpered and broke Tipi's heart. Then Vasco took the papers again. "Now. Translate!"