The Interview

There have never been such painful days as the times before your mother came to us. We used to cry and beg to be left into the walls, but our hands would go bloody banging with no answer. We would fall to our knees in despair trying to think of something else we could do, but there would be no other ideas, no other plans, all hail Marys had been spent, only the doors remained while we wavered outside.

Then one day we heard the voice coming from up in the walls, from inside, and she was speaking to us. It was such a joyous feeling just to know that the people inside knew about us that I didn’t even stop to think about her message, what she was saying, but when I did, I waited to hear what she had really said just to hear silence. I couldn’t believe my ears, I had not heard correctly, so I asked the others what the voice had said and they all said the same thing: they will take care of us.

The doors opened and I prepared myself, I wanted to somehow capture as much as possible from whatever I could see from the inside, I don’t know what I expected, I just saw light and the doors closed. In front of them where a group of people, aligned like solders with their commanders at the front, and I thought maybe they had come to kill us, which was not ideal, but I would have welcomed it.

-You are not to enter the city, you will never enter- a man said. He was bald and small and angry… but he spoke with authority, and respect- but we will take care of you, so that you stop banging on the walls and covering them with blood

“Yes!, yes!” we screamed “whatever you say!, just take care of us please!”

We formed a line and they had one of their people of science look at each of us. They all feared to touch us, but not she, our deformities did not scare her, our glow did not sicken her, our trembling did not disturb her.

When she came to me I showed her my hands, what had become my hands, and what had been my hands. I showed her my eyes, my ears. I showed her I could still think, despite all the noise I could still hear my own voice. And she was kind to me.

Then they all left. The doors opened and closed again. We were left alone again with only the monsters in the distance.

The next day no one came, but we hoped. The second day no one came, and we worried we had dreamed it all. The third day no one came and despair took hold of us again. The fourth day we were banging at the doors again… when we heard her voice, we backed down, and the doors opened.

-You know you are not people, right?- she asked us

“What?” we asked “what do you mean?”.

-You know who you were?, you know where you were before you came here?

We tried to remember, but all we could think of were the closed doors, the walls, and the monsters in the distance.

-Do you remember when the angels came?- she asked us, and we trembled- do you remember when they marked the chosen ones?- she asked and we shrieked- do you remember how their plague covered the world and took hold of plants, animals and things?- she asked but we couldn’t take it anymore, we begged, we could not hear anymore, it was painful.

-It pains us to remember- I said, looking at her

-This is a pain I need you to sustain, we need to know if you understand what you are- she told me

-We know we are… unwelcome… I…- it hurt me to say- understand why you cannot let us in… we are the plague… we are the voices that took form inside the plague… we are a chaos of information unwilling to die and taking a new shape… for information cannot be destroyed… we are the bits and pieces of the minds of so many people… we took shape in the chaos… we are sorry

She was silent for a long time.

-You know what you are, but what about them?- she said pointing at the huge beasts roaming in the distance, tall as mountains, uncaring as gravity

-They are pain- I said and as I saw them the rage started building up inside me, I couldn’t contain it, I felt to my knees and cried and screamed at the rage of the plague and the plan of my makers

-I understand- she said- we have more to think about, you will have to wait

And she left.

I don’t know how long we waited, but this time there was no despair, we did not beg, for we had been made to confront what we were, and we understood the back of our dreams.

Finally we decided to make a circle and start eating each other. One started with his arm, ripping it from his shoulder as the muscles complained and fought to stay in place but ultimately giving up. Then his eye, which crushed as he tried to pull it out. Then his tongue, and his inner ear, and as he ripped all these pieces he passed them along.

As we ate them we felt what he felt and we thought the back of his thoughts. We saw how he had been confused, how he had thought himself lost and wandered looking for someone he could not remember, until he saw the city and knew he would not be lost if he only was inside. We saw the day I had remembered, which seemed so recent yet. We saw how that day he realised he had never been lost and there was no one to look for. Just the dream of a dream his mind had made to fill out empty space.

We cried and finished our sad blue meal.

Another one was going to start.

-Don’t- she said, she was behind us. The doors had opened and closed and we did not even notice it- we know how to take care of you

“How?” we asked “we are just lies” we admitted “we are just characters that escaped from a dream”.

-Can you hear the screams coming form the distance?- she asked, we flinched- yes, you hear them, and yet, you do not wail, you can speak with your own voice. You are not the plan of the angels, you are something unexpected. You are identities where there should only be confusion.

-We are confused

-You are not just confusion. We can build on your identities

-There will always be confusion- I said, accepting her plan

They loaded us in trucks and we set across the devastation. As we went far from the walls and the door we cried and feared, but we knew we would come back.

The land was changed, covered in our meat, blue and pulsating, glowing. The wheels of the truck hurt the land and we could see how it left wounds in the meat and the blood spilling out. Faintly we could hear the wail of the meat.

Finally we reached a place and we stopped, they took us down the truck.

In front of us was one of them. Tall as a mountain, its legs thin and strong and moving slowly.

We could feel the rage waving from it like strong sound blasts only we could hear, and we were terrified of getting its attention.

-Can you guys take it down?- she wanted to know

“How?” we wondered “how could we take down such a mighty lump of rage?”.

-With your own rage, you feel it don’t you?, then that thing must feel you too

I fell on my knees and started to pray. I felt how much I hated myself. I forced myself to remember when I started remembering, how I thought I was lost and tried to find my way back, just to find I was lie made from lost dreams. I could never enter the city because I could never be one of them and yet I stupidly had banged on the door invoking my own blood to show me how futile my hope was.

Could my mind have an end?, could my pain calm down if I stopped feeling it?, could I offer my body even if there was no one to eat it?.

As my despise for my self grew and my brothers and sisters felt it they all fell to their knees and started lamenting our existence. We had to exist and if we existed we would feel us and it could not be otherwise. How cruel.

And the thing fell to the ground. Its legs bent under its mighty weight, unwilling to rise again, for its rage had turned to despair, and we felt it, we felt the rage and fear like an explosion crushing our body under a pressure wave… a memory that wasn’t mine to have and yet felt familiar.

And so the rage faded. I could finally stop clenching all my teeth. We could stop shaking. The thing was dead.

“It worked, it worked!” said the people that worked with her, but she didn’t say anything, because she understood what we had had to feel to bring it down.

-We can’t keep doing this- I explained- if we dwell on those thoughts they will become real, and you will loose us… unless that’s what you want…

She looked me in the eyes. She recognised me. She knew me in another life, a life that wasn’t mine to remember.

-I only need you to do this one more time, could you do it?

“Yes!” we all said.

They gave us food for days, they built us houses, they gave us blankets, and they told us to wait.

Then we parted again. She took us to see an angel.

The light hurt my eyes. The fire that didn’t burn rose from the ground until the height and then expanded in many directions, creating the many blinding wings.

All around the meat grew in thin tendrils rising through the fire that didn’t burn, making the angel feel and think, giving it a voice, giving it every voice, that was the source of the millions of voices we heard every time, the ocean were we always risked to get lost in.

We got close, we touched, and we understood.

The angel had only done the only thing it knew how to do. It had grown and prospered and felt and screamed with its voice. Then it had built more vessels and sent its essence to find new things to feel.

I loved it. There was an intelligence to it. A deep wisdom we could not hear. A soul we could not commune with.

That was the story here, that’s why they had retreated into the walls behind the doors. Because intelligences can have parallel experiences and they will never be able to find a mapping between those vectors spaces.

It’s work was done. It was time for meat to retreat and give back what it had borrowed.

We fell on our knees and we prayed for days, weeks, months, years, I don’t know.

We reached deep into our own despair and we presented it to the Angel in the altar of our minds. We felt it tremble towards this new experience. We felt it thinking. We could not feel what it thought. They were waves in a cold ocean, growing slowly, moving quickly.

I cannot know what it thought but I know what it chose. I felt the determination as the meat withered and crumbled like ashes. I felt it whisper and sigh. We saw the land dying.

She had thought she would find more like us and present them to the other angels across the land, but it was not necessary. The Angels spoke among themselves, they just needed time to get their affairs in order.

I tried to explain, they didn’t believe me, but as the years have gone by each angel has whispered away and left their meat behind to die. Only a few remain now, making sure all their work is finished before moving on with their plans.

I never expected to see her again. they gave us houses to live in and left. But she has come back once and again, she introduced you to me, you remember, when you had so little meat. But you are like her know, you make me remember, and this is a memory that does not make me shriek, nor wail, nor shake.

And then you asked to interview me.

Am I doing this right?.