The Hikari Paradox

Skinner's Conditioning I

The Berlin outside Franz’s apartment looked like nothing Konstantin had seen before. He had never left Sankt Petersburg before as he never saw a use for leaving the beautiful Tsentralny district. After all, when one is so busy with designing the future of the humankind, how can he morally allow himself to dwell in emotionality or hedonism, and incur to such activities as traveling? Plus, it had never been an urge for him to travel, as he was enamored with the old buildings of his home district, with its crowded streets, robotic vendors, skypaths interconnecting the upper layer of the new suspended business district, with its translucent bridges not fit for those who feared heights, and all in all, everything Tsentralny had to offer.

He closed his eyes and remembered home; Saskia’s, to be more precise, and the beautiful Russian artist who ran the venue. She was an enlightened, such as himself, a marvelous creature, whose exceptional artistic eye and keen people skills had propelled her to an almost godly social status. At the age of forty, the beautiful lady, “enchantress” as she loved to call herself, was already retired. However, she had opened a most interesting location, a hybrid between a coffee shop and a gaming lodge, but not any type of gaming. The eccentric billionaire had acquired relics almost two hundred years old; primitive, Konstantin had thought at first, but after she displayed the gallantry and good will of teaching him some of those cardboard strategy games, he fell in love with them.

“For some odd reason, the enlightened love board games. Did you know?” Konstantin asked the dog.

It jumped in a puddle on the sidewalk, wagging its tail as if it hadn’t even heard him. Yet he knew that nothing escaped the cunning creature. As dumb as it looked, the dog was wise, an elder sage hidden inside a miniature mecha-suit, to not attract unwanted eyes upon himself. People said that the wisdom-enlightened, the ones who had chosen the path of spiritual development, always lived alone and hidden, usually only accessible above the clouds, on barren, sun-drenched mountain summits. They lived beyond the second ocean, drenched in cosmic light, in perfect attunement with the flow of the world beyond.

Fools and charlatans, that’s what they were. People blessed with post-cortical biology who had chosen to run away, scared of their own perception and world-view. It was a shame for such marvelous brains to abandon the path of science and reason, but after all, every age had been polluted by cowards, weak enough not to care about progress and evolution. All of them were selfish humans who had chosen escapism in a fantasy universe, forged with such attention to detail and compulsive obsession that it became their reality.

“They’re not cowards, woof,” the dog said. “I have noticed throughout my many years of observation that your kind is very extremist, Konstantin. Both you and the spiritual parents refuse to accept the perspective visible on the other side. I say visible because you can both see it, but you consciously decide to completely abhor it, refuse it with stoic determination. It’s a battle, like Kant facing Ghandi.”

Konstantin stared at the dog for a while, struggling to synchronize the walk pattern of his new body. It was completely different than what he had remembered. The movement was grindy, as if he fought to control an overweight body which refused to listen. It was nothing like controlling the flesh of his own lean, agile body.

“Rationality against spirituality,” Konstantin mumbled, staring the exotic architecture of Berlin.

Drones hummed around, building a translucent skypath above their heads. It was far wider than what he had seen back home, but the principle was the same. Ever since metamaterials became a thing of commerce and had been tweaked for 3D printing, they became the fabric of the new age. All it took was a smart enlightened, Saskia in this particular case, to bring forth a miniature 3D printer, small enough to be installed on bee-drones (the new construction workers), to propel the world of architecture and construction to a new level.

With enough drones, digbots, and auto-cranes, one could build an entire city in less than a week. It had been done, as an architectural experiment financed and overseen by the enchantress, and so appeared Sankt Petersburg’s little megalopolis brother, Fürsternis. A weird city, at least for Konstantin. He had plenty of time to explore its 3D blueprint, proudly displayed on a holographic table in the center of Saskia’s coffee shop. It was a jewel of old architecture, a gothic city built symmetrically around a central business center. But even the central part was not at all modern or contemporary. There were no glassy skyscrapers, no superior skypaths, but magnanimous buildings, printed by bee-drones in amazing detail.

“I’ve personally designed every single sculpture you see there,” she had once told him, as he was admiring the central building.

It was her research institute, designed to resemble old churches, like those Konstantin had seen in his history class while learning about the European middle ages. Tall and dark, gargoyles and hyper-realistic statues of humans, angels, demons, and the sorts looming on the roof like silent vanguards. Arched windows, their stained-glass images depicting phantasmagoric scenes he could not understand… A complete mess, nothing like the cleanliness of new architecture, with its perfect, silvery curves, its reflective attributes, mirroring the world around in a game of lights and radiance… But no, Fürsternis was nothing like that. It looked like a city of darkness, a city where old myths went to live; the necromancer and the witch sharing a neighborly ‘good morning’ whilst enjoying the blessing of that macabre realm.

And Berlin was an uncanny fusion between the two. An interesting and striking apparel, the city had, a combination between glass light and Victorian darkness. Konstantin smirked, as he knew the reason behind the unexpected merger of the two. It had all started with the age of light in architecture, with Le Corbusier, the magician of lights. He had theorized light and its importance when it came to an inhabitable place, and all the architects followed him for many years, playing with photons.

Photons, Konstantin thought. Why am I so obsessed with them lately?

But at some point, even if small attempts had been made to theorize darkness in architecture, works that were unquestionably tarnished and stigmatized by the architectural intellectuality, at some point, a rather odd girl of unknown origin came up with an undefeatable thesis on the importance of shadow, a paper Konstantin had read and enjoyed as if it were a book on advanced astrophysics. Ever since, the European architecture had suffered a philosophical shift towards the game among light and shadow, the architects designing ingenious pathways for light to travel, or for it to cease its existence.

“Is your mind wandering again, woof?” the dog asked, stopping abruptly.

Konstantin shrugged, and returned to reality. It assaulted his senses for a split second, but then resumed its natural flow through his perception. They were in front of a metallic door, the type that looked military, and a sign lit the wall above in pink glows of neon: Alaya’s World, it said in oblique letters. Quite old-fashioned, as most bars had moved towards holographic signposts, but after all, he was in central Europe, the realm of tradition and old ways.

“We’re here, enlightened.”

Konstantin lowered his eyes to meet the dog’s and stared questioningly.

“And where exactly is here?”

“Hmm… Woof! Ah, I hate when this happens,” the basset muttered, shaking its head, the long ears spinning like the blades of a windmill. “There is somebody who you must meet in order to achieve what you wish. She is down here, I’ve seen her. Fear not, she will sense you. Maybe not immediately, but eventually…”

“You’re not coming?” Konstantin said, the odd feeling of losing a friend looming in. He had no idea why he was feeling that way, because in actuality, the dog was a rather undesirable presence, but his heart seemed to think otherwise. How funny emotions were.

“My, of course I’ll be coming too. If I could hold your hand, I’d do that too, but I’m afraid my height would make us look foolish…”

Konstantin rolled his eyes and pushed the door, a dimly lit stairway leading them into the underground. The hue was pleasant, that of lilac flowers, and it smelled of lilac inside, as if he had accidentally stumbled into a lilac tree orchard.

“Woof!” the dog said, a sense of urgency in its voice.

“What?” Konstantin said, turning around.

The dogbot stood frozen in front of the stairs, its eyes leveled with Konstantin’s who was already a few steps down. It frowned, a very displeasing image, and huffed in frustration.

“I can’t walk if there are stairs,” it whispered evasively, raising a paw in front of him. “These small feet of mine are too short for these steps. I mean, not too short, but they’re not very able… I’ll need you to… carry me downstairs.”

Konstantin analyzed the stairs, and indeed, they were taller than the entire basset, not to mention its paws. A cheeky smirk brightened his face, the muscles moving just enough to remind him he was not in his original body, and that his smirk surely looked stupid on his new face.

“And will you allow me to… carry you?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Just do it already,” the dog urged, snarling. “Just don’t ever mention it if front of the others. That’d make a spicy topic of discussion among them.”

“What others?” Konstantin asked, his brow deepening.

“It doesn’t matter now. You’ll meet them someday, when the time is right. Now take me down these stairs.”