The Hikari Paradox

Many things have fascinated the intricate mind of Konstantin Emirovich throughout his prodigious life, yet none had managed to arise such suspicion, shock, and bafflement as the predicament he was now curiously finding himself in. A matter of such oddity should not have happened, as the basic laws of the universe dictated as such. He knew it all too well, and his astrophysicist inner voice was screaming in vivid tones of alarming paradox, a concept of odd origins, a happening which, even if as real as the unknown face staring back at him from the mirror, should have been possible only in the wild theories of quantum physicists; those oddballs of questionable but delicious ideas. He closed his eyes and ran a mental simulation of his last memories. Curiously though, his inner voice was not his own, and it was talking in a language that until a few moments before had been completely unknown to him. It was the opposite of the melodious and ceremonial Russian, which came to his mind painted in beautiful purple Cyrillic laid on yellowed parchment, as his visual memory was by far the most evolved. It was something of central European descent, a tongue he had always found mysterious and industrial, the language of exponential progress. His mind now worked in German. Beads of sweat pouring down his now wide and wrinkled forehead, Konstantin struggled to remember who he was. It was all there, his schooling, relations, house, city, books, library, and inventions, but the day before his strange wakening was just a blank drawer in a locked wardrobe moving from one side of memory to the other as if shambled by a malevolent dumbwaiter set in motion by the winds of forgetfulness. There was but one image: the white sky, and the disintegrating rooftops of Tsentralny business district. Konstantin squeezed his eyes and focused on the image, yet it held nothing but secrets.  Photons, he thought, that's all I can think about now. Why does it seem as if my mind is obsessed with photons? His Germanic inner voice sounded odd and distant, yet he could swear his name was indeed Konstantin Emirovich, born and raised in the enlightened city of Sankt Petersburg, Russia. He was an astrophysicist, a nanotechnology engineer, an inventor with published works and great achievements among the intellectuals of his trade. A metamaterial wizard he was, or he had been, but for some reason, the blue eyes in the mirror looked of a far different substance, lacking that wild glimmer of intelligence Konstantin had so much appreciated about his old physique.  A bland character, quite tall and broad-shouldered, a squarish jaw encapsulating two bricks for cheeks, all topped by a wide forehead resting on two bushy brows; that was the person staring back at him. A brutish shape, more suitable for a nano-mesh line hauler, or line supervisor; definitely not belonging to a man of his credentials, poise, and social status.  'Photons!' a strange voice exclaimed in Russian. 'How much do we actually know about them?' Konstantin looked around and noticed a nano-mesh Basset Hound, its flapping ears dusting the floor. It was an older model, still aluminum based. It jerked awkwardly, raising a pair of lifeless eyes, dumb and lacking inspiration. It worked its voice and wagged its tail. 'Scientists tell us that photons are nothing but microscopic particles that are a representation of a quantum of light, or any other type of electromagnetic radiation. Yet what the scientists do not know, is that the New Age Mystics were right! Who would have thought that such a far-fetched, mundane, engrossing theory such as the Belt of the New Age Mystics, those wicked creatures who walked the lands of the old United States of America around the last decades of the twentieth century, sniffing glue and dripping lysergic acid on their eyeballs, would ever be of such dire consequence for this wondrously settled world? The pinnacle of civilization that we are, the exalted and expanded minds, the post-cortical brains our enlightened possess, all of these have screamed unanimously against any form of such mysticism. How about we believe everything now? Ha! As if we could ever believe that photonic metamaterials could ever be homogenous! Ha! Such fools these Petersburg Enlightened are!' Konstantin stared dumbfounded as the dog nodded in appreciation to its own words. Such an air of self-importance coming from an ancient relic released more than thirty years prior... Such dignified tone and posture from an inconsequential twerp. A German Aluminum-meshed Basset daring to mock the Petersburg Enlightened!  "Listen here, you mutt," Konstantin said, rubbing his eyes, "I... I… shut your mouth up, du kleine Göre!" The dog tilted its head and huffed as if tired. As a matter of fact, all Basset Hounds looked tired, like they had been tasked by some ridiculous deity, the type in which people believed before the merger between nanotech and biology, to carry all the sadness of the world in their saggy, melancholic eyes.  "Woof," said the dog, walking to him. Konstantin’s mind sat up from its chair, swung its cane, fixed its top hat, then jumped into oblivion. There were no AI Basset Hound companions with speech features, especially not in Russian. Even more so, not in Russian for a German resident!  "Have I gone mad?" Konstantin said, clutching his fingers around the carbon sink. Its patterns felt odd to the touch, like hot liquid pulsating with organic beats.  "Woof, woof. Maybe you indeed did, for it is the fate of an Enlightened to eventually break down and succumb to the most gruesome fates of all... cortical degeneration. Delicious release from the boundaries of one's mind. Or, there is a second possibility lying out in the open, that of sudden experimentation of a paradoxical state of existence, and the adaptation to a new mainframe, a mainframe lacking the post-cortical awakening of your former body." Konstantin swiped his hand across the sink sensor, and the carbon knitting launched thin streams of water perpendicularly, defying gravity. The beauty of Newton's Nullification Gizmo... Zero gravity, free flow pushed upwards by gentle sideways gravitational pulses, strong enough to cancel out each other and force the water to ascend up to a certain level. He stretched his hand and splashed the floating puddle forming before his eyes, face following into the coolness. Ph-regulated water, something that had once emerged as a high-end device, available only for the select few rich enough to afford it... a marvel of technology, now accessible to all.  He refreshed his sweaty face, the breeze soothing his fidgeting mind. Bassets were not very talkative usually; actually, they were not talkative at all. Yet that aluminum piece of garbage seemed to have mastered the art of linguistics all too well, not to mention those beautiful inflections of the Abkhaz dialect. He had concluded, his resolution stern and immovable: the dog didn't actually exist. He was going to open his eyes, look down, and see nothing but the floor, stained with footprint-shaped grease. "No, no. I am still here, woof!" the dog said. "And you might as well get used to it because I am not leaving anywhere. Or actually, I've been planning a vacation for quite some time now, but I can't seem to decide whether I am indeed looking for something in particular, or if I am not. Granted, there is the possibility that I may want and not want to visit a particular destination such as... the ancient Halicarnassus for example, but that would only plunge me into a state similar to your own, wouldn't it?" Konstantin sighed, and dared open his eyes, facing the menacing Basset and its intimidating ears. The dog closed in on him, that visible lack of graciousness specific to older models crippling the natural flow of artificial muscle.  "Woof!" it said again, dropping a vial at his feet.  Konstantin picked it up and read the German words written on it out loud, testing his phonic instrument. It was amazing to feel firsthand how a German mouth produced sounds so different from those he was familiar with. The fricatives were fuller, more decisive, short, angry bursts of air whistling through pursed lips. The palatal ones as well... "Nicht!" he exclaimed, listening to the whistling sound of his own pronunciation.  "The vial," the dog said in Russian, "keep it safe. You will need it when the right time comes. And as it is written that planets revolve around stars in spring-like spirals, unlike the common belief of many, just as so, a time for that vial will eventually come, and you, Franz, will surely know the moment of this particular unpleasant necessity of the body you're currently inhabiting." "What moment?" Konstantin asked, pocketing the vial. "The name on it means nothing to me." The dog barked and left the bathroom as silent as it had entered it. What a mischievous little runt that dog was. Such obnoxiousness from the creature... had it forgotten it had been created by the minds and hands of humans? But since human nature itself, in its race of ascension and enlightenment, following the precepts of an unconventional competition of jacked-up horses competing on the track of life, since this nature itself had the tendency to forget the ones who had brought it into existence, then how could it have been Konstantin's place to expect from an artificial creature to consider its makers sacred? How could he, a product of abandonment of the elders, a result of an active refusal of the parental path, together with his entire generation, how could he judge the rascal dog? No answer... Just as he thought. There was no reason in the new world for judgment or maliciousness, just progress and enlightenment, as humankind had advanced. No wars, no famine, no hate, and most certainly, no randomly waking in the body of a stranger on the other side of the continent. But Konstantin was there, trapped within his new flesh, so that had to mean something. Perhaps there were still some places in the deepest nooks of the world who still faced each other sword in hand, stealing food from the mouths of their children. Some devolved species of homo sapiens, the whereabouts of which no enlightened savant had any information on. "Such weird happenings," he mumbled, swiping the sensor on the sink. The Newton Nullification Gizmo ceased its humming, and the puddle splashed into the sink, droplets of water hitting an invisible wall. Metamaterial was there, lying invisible, cast beyond the eye's ability to identify it. IR projector installed above the mirror, the oldest trick in the book to craft an invisible watercatcher.  Konstantin walked to the door and left the bathroom, entering a chaos that was supposed to be called a room. A cheap rug faking its nature of a carpet covered the floor, stained and derelict, oozing a faint sour aroma. Blue blipping memory chips laid scattered all over, datapoints of his new body's personality and past. The furniture was simple, a few grey boxes of some cheap material, roughly cut to fit the shape of what they were supposed to be. It was distasteful and depressing, nothing like his neat apartment back in Sankt Petersburg, with its mesmerizing view of the entire district. The sudden realization of his predicament struck like a hammer, and skipping a breath, he reached for his wrist and pressed the biochip. Another layer of images forced itself on top of reality, displaying the strange alphabet of Westerners. It held precious information, data he was conditioned to learn and internalize, as it all belonged to his new person. Franz Kaffman was his new name, born on the 18th of December, 2212 in Wien, Austria. A simple man who had lived a simple life. Never married, yet not a virgin -a strange occurrence, but after all, Europeans had always been peculiar in their habits-. Franz Kaffman had been a man of small ideals, a simple worker for a drone coating firm, his daily task being that of spraying shipping drones with MetEx glue, applying phono-material armor plating, heat-stamping the brand of his corporation, then moving onto the next drone.  A working ant of the global colony, one of the devolved, biologically outdated homo-sapiens. Panic clutched his chest as he probed within his mind, looking for something that wasn't there. He searched within for electric impulses, for that connection with the external world, where the mind could change the environment, but the post-cortex was not there. It was like trying to access something that had been cut off with a pair of mental scissors, a barren nonspace; like trying to enter a void through an inexistent door, only a chalk contour on a dark wall. Heart thumping, his eardrums almost burst. "You've realized it now, enlightened," the dog said, climbing onto the bed. "It has all been changed for you, all but your previous theoretical knowledge. You might thank yourself for choosing such an exceptional brain when it comes to storage space. I can vouch that the others haven't been so fortunate in their selection." Konstantin breathed in deeply, his gaze falling outside the stained windows. The building across the road peered in through the plain glass, unreflective, no drapes, no shelter from the conspicuous, intrusive eyes of others. It was all a mess, a nonsensical sequence of events, seemingly unrelatable. Photons, a talking dog, Germany...  Germany! Konstantin thought, walking to hide between the windows. As the wall embraced his shaking back, his heart rate calmed. Focusing back on the augmentation in his eye, he searched for other valid info. For some reason, the date was off, probably a calibration bug, easy to fix if connected to a terminal, but what was the uncanny script, the location: Berlin, Germany. Konstantin had never traveled outside Tsentralny district, not to talk about Sankt Petersburg itself, so Berlin seemed rather far-fetched. Why would he waste time with traveling, where there was so much to learn? Still, his new container, that of the drone-man german, and the square, old architecture of the buildings confirmed the data stream unfolding before his eyes.  "I can't put the pieces together," he said, pacing in a circle as he always did when the mind metastasized reality. It was a complex process, one he was no longer able to access, but still, the neural framework of his new bod, rudimentary as it was, offered some sort of intellectual solace. “You haven’t realized it yet, haven’t you?” the dog said, wagging its tail ungraciously. “There are many things in this world which may seem incomprehensible, and I guess you’re well aware of the concept of a paradox. You have dwelled long enough, we think… Long enough in this questioning state, a state not becoming of an enlightened. Unfortunately, there were no post-cortical vessels for you all to inhabit in this scenario of altered spacetime, so the destination-archetypes had been rather scarce at the time of selection. Still, I am here for you,” it said, sitting still like roadkill. “If you desire any clarification, don’t hesitate to ask.” Konstantin watched silently, then paced to the couch and allowed his bulky frame to sink in. The contact was rather harsh, as the material was nowhere near soft, a faint jolt of pain shooting up his spine.  “What… is this?” he asked, staring at the ceiling. “I am almost certain that I am not of Germanic origins, and that my name sounds nowhere near as… Fr… this… this! Who are you? Why am I here? Why do I…” “These are simple questions, dear Konstantin. Questions that can be answered simply. But before I will provide what you desire, I must ask you a few things myself. First of all, concisely, what do you remember? Is it photons?” “Photons!” Konstantin blurted out, raising his hands. “Yes, I remember photons. Oh, and how beautiful they were… But destructive.” The basset stood and shook its head in confirmation. Wisdom seemed to pour out of its eyes, as it mechanically pushed its wet muzzle against Konstantin’s hand.  “Destructive they were, indeed. I must ask you, bright enlightened… What is your take on the concept of apocalypse?” Konstantin scratched his forearm wildly, as an invisible swarm of fleas pinched his skin. His muscles tensed and craving washed over his body, the frame shuddering. It seemed to desire for something, yet he couldn’t tell what exactly, and the augmented overlay didn’t possess any information regarding any medication that Franz was supposed to take. As healthy as an ox his new body was, at least according to the markings of the Global Health Authority, yet Konstantin knew that there were many ways to trick the GHA’s medical examinations; and if he knew it, others surely did as well. He had been ignorant enough in his youth to consider himself the only keeper of answers, but maturity had taught him the true ways of the world, where his old brain, enlightened as it was, evolved with the post-cortex and all, the pinnacle of human evolution, strong and brilliant, it wasn’t unique. Nobody was unique, and nobody knew the answers to all the questions, and no answer belonged to just one person.  “An interesting concept… Somehow, it still plagues today’s world like an annoying reminiscence of the past. For thousands of years, we have believed that some divinity would rain down fire and destruction above us, for the final judgment, or that the Earth would somehow just… explode. Ha! Yellowstone was indeed a strong candidate to win the place of World-ender, but once we’ve tamed it, it just became our tool, like everything else in this world. I think that now, even if the masses still like to speculate and fantasize about an ending, we have reached a point in time, a step of evolution in which we can finally say that we are the rulers of destiny, and not the other way around.” The dog nodded, and Konstantin frowned conspicuously. “But why am I telling you these things?”  The dog was uncanny. Somehow, he felt compelled to answer its questions truthfully and well-structured, even if the apparition repulsed him greatly. It was an abomination, a silly ball of technological disassociation, equal to the genetic cross-breed between an Australopithecus Afarensis and a Homo-Eximius, such as him. Just the thought of his genes being sullied by those of an Afarensis sent cold shivers down his spine and a ball of emptiness in his stomach. And as such was the dog, a combination of two ages, an amorphous, un-labelable existence, a conceptual result of extensive inbreeding between two incompatible gene sequences.  “Well woof, that is because I’ve asked. It’s the nature of a social creature to answer when asked. Aren’t humans like the leaves and the wind? The wind asks, and the leaves answer. In a way, you can say that your species is both a leaf and the wind, isn’t it right? Either way, enlightened Konstantin, you have a rather interesting outlook on the concept of apocalypse. I am to understand that you’re an atheist, correct?” “Atheist?” Konstantin said, gravely offended. “No, by far not an atheist. But I can’t say I believe in a certain God of a certain religion. I would never dare to call myself an atheist, for I do believe in something superior to me. But since we’ve never actually found that superior thing, I compare myself with what I see here, in this world.” “And here you are superior, woof?” “Well… I was…” Konstantin said, staring at the floor. “Apparently, I’ve lost whatever made myself be myself.”  The dog wriggled off the couch and stretched its limbs with a clockwork clank, then eyed the enlightened.  “Yet you haven’t lost it all, haven’t you? The entire databank of information is still there, as far as I can sniff. Your relationship with the negative-index metamaterials is indeed cut off, and you can no longer consciously alter the physical reality, it no longer bends to your will. Still, to my knowledge, there are several paths to override this limitation that you are currently being subjected to. Rather invasive, true, but after all, this isn’t even your body so whether you damage or not should be of no consequence to you.” Konstantin reached for the fridge and snatched a protein booster, proceeding to mix it in a cup of water. He stared at the whirling liquid as it changed color, the clinking teaspoon offering a hint of mental solace. He enjoyed repetitiveness, it gave him sense, meaning, a sanctuary to shelter him from the onslaught storm of thoughts flooding his mind.  “You seem to know many things, basset. If you think you’re so knowledgeable, then tell me, what happened?” “Why, the apocalypse, woof!” the dog said, walking to him, ears flapping. “It will come in four years, and you’ve been brought here to stop it.” Konstantin stared in silence, then grimaced, downing the contents of his glass. The protein boost tasted like ash and dirt, yet it invigorated his yearning body. There was something behind his new host’s muscles that urged for something, something he could not make out. It was a painful yearning, like the cold claws of a hundred beasts squeezing his frame, but the enlightened didn’t mind it. A deaf pain, far less interesting than his twisted present situation.  “And when is here?” Konstantin asked, staring at the overlay over his vision, the date blipping monotonously. “You’ve already seen it, didn’t you? You’re in an Einstein-Rosen reversal, my dear enlightened, four years before your yesterday. Come now,” he said, “there is somebody you must meet before you do anything else.” The dog pranced to the door and scratched it, its dead eyes glaring at him expectantly.