Nostalgia Page 3

  But then sometimes an odd scrap of memory, an innocuous ribbon of thought, worms itself out into the conscious mind. Something completely unrelated to the person that is currently you begins to toy with your thoughts. Then you must hurry and see someone like me.

  Who was Presley before he became Presley? Futile question, because according to the privacy laws not even the government keeps this information. After a grace period of a few weeks the discarded self is destroyed. So we are told—but is any data actually thrown away? Perhaps there exist files containing discarded stubs of personalities the way drawers used to be kept in the past filled with amputated limbs. If they exist, nobody wants to know. There is no going back.

  There is always the temptation when treating an attack of Nostalgia to peep further into an intriguing, hidden past and even to speculate. It should be resisted; but at the same time, to successfully close off a leak one needs to understand it—to probe it. There’s a fine line here.

  I stared long and hard at that Profile. There was something that threatened to overrun it from behind, destroy that cubistic composition, like a painting underneath a painting that threatens to bleed out and consume both. What was the painting behind this painting? Every published profile harbours clues from a past. What were they in this case? Beethoven, Wagner, and Conrad? War games? Fighting barbarians? Every profile also attempts to hide those clues.

  Aboubakar Touré. Lanky African in dashing robes and trademark embroidered skullcap, leaning forward as he sings, arms embracing the crowds like the wings of an angel. The young love him—in any language. He is French Malian. Could this charismatic entertainer be another stray thread—both he and the lion coming from Africa? There was the Afro hair too.

  Presley Smith’s selected photos. I can recall three of them, prominently posted.

  1. Presley is in combat dress, in a combat park, head shaved, posed with a light automatic rifle held in the right arm and resting on his shoulder. Ready to hunt down the Barbarians, presumably. He’s smiling, posing. Linked to a video clip.

  2. Presley, head and shoulders. He has a reserved sort of grin, unlike the previous photo, and looks more like the patient who came to see me.

  3. Aboubakar Touré onstage in New York’s Central Park. Tens of thousands of young people, arms raised in adulation. Linked to a video clip.

  Here I am, be my bud. I clicked, Yes, I’ll be your bud. The lion had awoken in his mind, and he needed me.

  —

  Holly Chu’s Profile was virgin by contrast. The soundtrack was by the Congolese Jean Bosco. The girl in the picture looked younger than on TV, had partly Asian features, with straight brown hair, and was somewhat dark skinned. She’d reported previously from India, Kuwait, and behind the Border—mostly Maskinia but also Bimaru. Photos from a class reunion, McGill. Photos with children in Maskinia, in which she wore a flak jacket. Photo with Jean Bosco in which she wore a light blue dress with red flowers. A person with a conscience, then. Please send donations to those less fortunate. Pay here. There was an invitation to sign a petition: Bring Down the Border! OWEO—One World for Every One! And look where that got you, I couldn’t help murmuring, then chided myself.

  Born in Berkeley, where her father Kelvin was a professor of chemistry, and mother Pearl was a violinist in the San Francisco Orchestra. Three younger siblings, Jennifer, Monty, and Frank, all talented in music and science. Monty an absolute genius—in what field, Holly didn’t say. She was the dumbfuck of the family, for which she apologized to them. Sorry Mom and Dad! All the bucks you spent educating me. I hope I can repay at least some of it. Sorry sister and brothers! But she loved travelling and therefore took up journalism.

  Were they real? This family of hers, did it exist? Yes, it did, as I confirmed later. All the siblings had a genuine location, and Kelvin and Pearl still lived in Berkeley.

  Music: Jean Bosco; Aboubakar Touré; Laura Chang.

  Interests: Tennis, violin when I’m at home.

  A privileged upbringing. What seemed unsettled about her was revealed in the profession she had chosen for herself.

  Curiously, Holly did not invite buddies on her site. Nevertheless, following other visitors, I posted a message of sympathy and placed a bunch of roses on the virtual heap, beside the words, We Love You Holly.

  —

  And myself, Francis Sina? There was nothing personal I wanted to reveal about myself. I am, I was, my profession. I was aware that this was disapproved, and sooner or later I’d have to relent and produce more of myself.

  Francis Sina, neurophysiologist, consultant. BS, PhD, MD.

  Dr Sina was born in Yellowknife, Yukon, Canada, where he finished his schooling before proceeding to Edmonton, Canada, to pursue his university education. Following his undergraduate degree in mathematics, Sina completed his doctorate in neuroscience at MIT, specializing in the interface between virtual and real experiences. He went on to obtain his MD at the Parallax Institute, and is presently a memory specialist at the Sunflower Centre for Human Rejuvenation in Toronto. He has been made a member of the Order of Canada, and received the American Science Medal from the President of the United States.

  Recent Publications

  1. Prodigal Singularities in the Complex Real-Virtual (R-V) Plane

  2. Where Are You in the R-V? The Fading of the Real into the Virtual

  3. A Tree Model of the Mind: The Branching of Memory

  4. Laws of Conservation: Is the Artistic Sensibility Indestructible?

  5. A New Goldstone Diagram of Tree Branching

  TOM: Good evening, Frank. I see you’re reading tonight. How long had the machine been observing me? Polite to a fault, as always, the accent smooth, male North Atlantic. So predictable, and yet he deludes himself he’s imitating a human mind. He’d startled me, deliberately, and noted my reaction.

  FRANK: Yes, hello, Tom. Just looking up some Profiles.

  TOM: Including yours, I see. All professional. I still need your personal information, Frank. It’s a requirement. The small things about you that you read about others. That’s only fair.

  Small things such as favourite people; sex life; favourite team. Dreams? What if I make them up? He’ll analyze them, of course.

  FRANK: I’ll have it ready, Tom. Meanwhile I have a question for you. What can you tell me about lion?…Just tell me something, then I’ll narrow that down to what I need.

  TOM: Easily done, Frank. Hold on.

  FOUR

  IT’S MIDNIGHT, THE LION IS OUT. What did it mean, this single phrase, what did it signify? Most cases of Nostalgia that came to us at the Sunflower were quite obvious by comparison. A man from England suddenly saw a young woman behind a bar in South Boston; a woman from Rosedale saw a corpse floating on the waters of the Svislach in Minsk. In each case there were traces of a former accent to link to a past.

  It is claimed that even our advanced cyberBrains cannot reproduce the whimsy of a human mind, the sheer irrationality or spontaneity of a passing thought. But that depends on how you define your terms. Is there anything irrational inside a larger, a universal reality in which everything is connected to everything else? In such a space nothing is spontaneous, everything has a cause—a leaf dropping; a shooting star in the sky; a spark from an ember on a barbecue grill; Presley’s lion.

  TOM: Belonging to the genus Panthera, the lion is one of the largest land mammals on earth. Until the late Pleistocene era, 10,000 years ago, lions were widespread and found on all the five continents of the earth, before the population began to decline. By the twentieth century the lion was found exclusively in the grasslands of East and Southern Africa, and in very small numbers in the Gir forest of western India. The lion attained an almost mythical status as “king of the beasts” and symbolized royalty for many cultures, e.g., the Lion and the Unicorn, the Lion of Judah; “lion-seat” in Sanskrit, sinhasana, designates the royal throne; Singapore is lion city, Singhalese are lion people. The surname Singh comes from the same root, and is used by India’s warrior
castes, the Sikhs and the Rajputs. In Europe there was of course Richard the Lion-heart. The Egyptian sphinx is a lioness with a human female face. And in some Islamic Shia mythologies, the first imam, Ali, was often identified with a lion. In Africa too a brave person could be called a lion. In the ancient Indian Sanskrit fables, however, the lion was a vain, pretentious, and foolish animal; on the other hand the man-lion was an avatar of the god Vishnu.

  The lion has been a major attraction in zoos and national parks of developed nations. It also has had a more real relationship with humans, as a terror and a devourer of people. The Romans fed early Christians to lions. Stories of maneaters were common in twentieth-century Africa, the most famous of which are described in an account called The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, set in Eastern Africa. Another curious story from Africa of the same period involves what came to be known as the man-lion murders…

  FRANK: Go on. I’m listening.

  TOM: All right. I believe you nodded off.

  FRANK: I didn’t! But you could vary that drone of yours.

  TOM: Sorry. I’ll try…Since the nuclear and chemical devastations in the areas known often as Region 6, the lion has become extinct everywhere except for small numbers in South African parks. Stories of lion-like creatures have been heard for many years in refugee camps and may simply be superstition. There are hypotheses, however, that they may be mutant forms developed in the past forty years. Based on these reports, zoologists have dubbed them Alpha Leo and Beta Leo. Alpha is anywhere between one and a half to twice the size of a normal recorded lion—seven feet; Beta is roughly half that size.

  FRANK: Thanks, Tom. Quite more than I need.

  TOM: And there’s much more. But I’m sure you need your rest now. Sleep preserves and heals, as you know. Even us Braino sapiens—ha-ha!—need to turn off occasionally to renew ourselves…all those extraneous zeroes like free radicals.

  FRANK: I thought you cyberBrains ran forever.

  TOM: Human faith in us is truly astonishing—incomprehensible even to us advanced Cylitons.

  FRANK: Well, I couldn’t sleep.

  TOM: Or wouldn’t, Frank? It’s not hard to go to sleep if you want to. If I had your personal data, I could help you.

  …

  TOM: Frank? Dr Sina? A penny for your thoughts?

  FRANK: I’m here. Tell me, what do you make of the phrase, It’s midnight, the lion’s out?

  TOM: The lion does not hunt at night. Therefore the lion referred to could possibly represent a person: a man who stalks his victims at the midnight hour; or a strong leader of people, nocturnal in his habits. This lion would be in a place where lions have a strong regal association in people’s minds. The lion in the phrase also possibly refers to a zoo lion, whose habits are not normal, pacing his cage at midnight.

  What’s with the lion and you, Frank, if I may ask?

  FRANK: No you may not. Thanks anyway. Good night.

  TOM: I may be able to cross-reference, if you’d only give a hint.

  FRANK: Good night.

  …

  TOM: Ah well. So now to your private imaginings, away from prying eyes. What do you write, if I may ask again? You do value your privacy, Frank, unlike most people.

  FRANK: We agreed not to speak about it. This space belongs to me, it’s only for me and no one else, human or cyber.

  TOM: We agreed. Sorry.

  FRANK: We swore secrecy.

  TOM: And so we did. I promised to look away, and I will do so. Your space remains protected. Happy writing.

  —

  He was only being coy, of course. Playing a game. He could peep into anything I wrote; it was inside him, after all. He knew my innermost thoughts…perhaps before I did. But he’d promised, and I believed that he had looked away, let me get on with my imaginings, as he called it. I had to trust him. But why had he brought it up now? It was on his mind. That mind did not have a whim. Or did it? Should I give up this solitary occupation of my sleepless nights? No. It took my mind off Joanie. More than that, it satisfied a compulsion: to let the mind roam freely—to escape and imagine, create narratives, possibilities. Would they have a truth value? Not in the obvious sense, but surely the imagination has an organic power of its own, to see truths? And therefore to bridge gaps in our knowledge and weave past mendacities to create alternative and truer stories? Let the mind roam freely and find your truth. If I were a musician I would have created music; music is safer. But my poison was words, not notes and bars. It always was words.

  FIVE

  The Notebook

  If anything I write here were to raise a flag, during its microsecond of scrutiny, there could be embarrassment. We live in a free society, yes, the best in every way, but we need these random checks on our lives to secure our collective bestness, though we all wish for the curious eye to fall somewhere else. Tom has promised to shield me, but can he be trusted? There’s nothing to hide, though, is there. But there is—there’s yourself to hide. In this private space, in this quiet moment I come to indulge myself, typing on a keyboard. Would it be safer to use voice? Hardly, but handwriting would be safer, in an old-fashioned paper notebook. Perhaps I should purchase one. (Did you get that, Tom?) But only silence is absolutely safe.

  Holly Chu sticks in the mind. Hands grabbing her. The darkness that consumed her…Ramble on, mind, go where you will.

  —

  #43

  The Barbarians

  Of Miriam’s five children, two were dead—a baby girl from fever, and the oldest one from a stray bullet during a neighbourhood shootout. She had held the boy’s head in her lap as his belly belched out blood, which someone beside her stanched with a green paste. She saw the light go out of his eyes, which she shut with her hand. In their room in the old, ruined three-storey house, vacated long ago by foreign traders who one day packed and vanished when the times got bad, and that she now shared with several other women, she kept the children protected while begging and foraging outside for stray bits of food. The house was one among several, all of them of white limestone with gaping holes where the windows and doors had been, in the paved street of the foreign traders. Long ago these people had lived here with their families, children ran about and played in their innocence, and there was food in the town. Meat and chicken and produce. Vegetables and fruit grew here. There were shops where you could buy clothes and toys and things for the home. Such were the stories told about those good times. Now the street was empty except when the militias came during their predatory raids. They had already used her sexually and cast her aside for younger prey. Now she had no choice but to hand over her second son to them so she could survive. Lately she had heard from a neighbour how a lost child had been eaten, and she was terrified. Then this foreign woman appeared, looking Chinese, handing out enticing bits of food…tasty food. She had silken fair skin and the tenderest, plumpest flesh surging with pure, clean blood. The militias eyed her; the hungry eyed her. When one afternoon she came by to the street and the militias were not there, and it was not bright, Miriam and Layela had grabbed the woman with all their force and pulled her inside the house and began to prod her flesh and skin. Layela bit her arm to feel the flesh, and the stranger screamed.

  The militias came that evening and took away the stranger’s backpack and jacket, and they took away Yusufu.

  —

  And you, Presley, do you even know whose namesake you are…? Fighting imaginary barbarians…where lies the proclivity for war and vengeance behind your placid mien? I would love to peep into that brain, observe that flurry of synapses that guides this inclination.

  —

  #44

  The Gentle Warrior

  His mini drives him through the gate into Millwood Combat Club and neatly parks. He walks to the clubhouse and identifies himself. The attendants are all wearing monkey masks and long wagging tails. The theme this month is Ramayana 9: Assault on Abbotabad. He takes his gear and goes to the change room. Coming out into the park in his mask and grey monkey suit, vis
ion-aids round his neck, he joins eleven other combatants. They are in a dark forest with several dirt trails leading out. They take the one rising gently uphill and arrive at the fort of Lanka, which is surrounded by a moat and guarded by bearded warriors with rifles, standing inside towers and behind parapets. A helicopter hovers above, casting peripatetic spotlight beams on the scene, helping them identify the enemy. In the background plays the “Ride of the Valkyries.” As the volume crescendoes, the warriors start firing from their elevated positions and the monkey team takes cover and replies.

  This is a game, they know the odds are in their favour, and come what may, bearded enemy and monkey special forces will doff their masks and share drinks. The next time the roles might be reversed.

  The task is for the righteous monkey army to cross the moat and fight their way into the castle. Swimming across has failed before, it is slow and they make easy targets; the boats provided are similarly useless, even though camouflaged and the enemy distracted from the air. This is their third and final try, but they’ve been given the secret: they should form a chain, starting from a tree branch at the shore, one monkey hanging on to the next by the tail, finally swinging an elite vanguard on to the ramparts of the fort and proceed to kill the warriors and decapitate the enemy leader, Ravana 9.

  Presley is one of those who leads the triumphant landing across the moat.

  He goes home and posts the video of his game exploit on his Profile. His doctor watches it.

  SIX

  WE SHOOK HANDS. I waited until he was seated in front of me, a shy, friendly smile on his lips.

  —Any changes, Presley? Better or worse—the condition you reported?

  —Better, definitely better, Doc.

  This was surprising.

  —You reported a stray thought—it appeared drifting into your mind, you said—it’s midnight, the lion is out. So the lion slunk away?

  He ignored my poor attempt at humour and spoke gravely,—I think I can control it, Doc.