A Sip of Infinity

In Search of Heaven

My head laid comfortably on something soft, and a soothingly warm palm was caressing my hair. Raising my head I viewed the glowing face of the woman I loved more than the world: mother. Her hair seemed silky and had no wrinkles or dark circles underneath her eyes. She wore a radiant smile on her youthful face. She was wearing a golden gown and smelt as though she just had had a shower. I stared at her face with widened eyes, unable to believe what I was seeing. In addition to that, I realised that I was wearing the woolen sweater that mom always sewed for me every Christmas.

“Is this heaven mom?” I asked her inquisitively, ogling at our surroundings which seemed neither earth nor space, the place was just wide empty space filled with pearly light, brighter than perhaps the moon and milkier than milk itself. “Where are we mom, is this where good people go to after death?” however, she didn’t reply to any of my queries and just kept smiling widely. Suddenly, she got up, as though somebody had just called out to her and began moving away steadily towards nothing that seemed any different from the space filled with pearly light. I called out to her desperately and began sprinting towards her, but she neither turned nor responded but continued pacing away.

My body jerked up instantly as though I had been shaken by a tremendous earthquake, I was covered in sweat and my body ached agonizingly. I was lying on my bed in my apartment, it was past midnight, all my wounds had vanished and I was draped in fresh clothes that were not even mine. I could feel the waned effects of hemlock which in turn illuminated me with the fact that almost two days had passed since that incident at Burj Khalifa. 

The mollifying dream about mom couldn’t keep my mind off my shocking survival and the even more flabbergasting presence of me being back in my apartment. Was that all a dream, I thought, utterly bewildered. But in a few seconds, my astounding scepticism vanished as I placed my hands on the day’s newspaper, which read: d**g King Benjamin Joey found dead near Business Bay. 

A sort of victorious bliss and relief broke across my face at this marvellous news. I didn’t bother to read further and started making some breakfast, however, my mind still couldn’t fathom the mystery of my escape from death. Then a stupid but terrific idea struck me; was it hemlock that had saved me, was it possible that this elixir was powerful enough to save a person’s life falling from miles above. But that still didn’t explain me landing back at my house with no wounds and in someone else’s clothes. Another thing that bothered my senses was Ben Joe, the memory of his words struck me like lightning: ‘that tonic of yours isn’t magical enough to bring her back,’ what had Joe meant by this, was he referring to what I think he was? How on earth did he possibly know about hemlock? Did he have any connection to it being found by me? Or was he in any way related to its manufacturing? These questions bombed my brain, especially when the effects of my tonic had waned, and my head throbbed appallingly.

The next morning, after a gulp of hemlock and stepping into my advanced version, I went to a famous restaurant located in Downtown, where I had arranged to meet a man whom I had met on the internet. He was a Chinese man, who towered above me and had muscles which indicated that he either owned a gym or spent every hour there. The guy wore a jet black T-shirt and faded jeans with a thick golden chain in his neck and assumingly exorbitant blue sunglasses, which truly gave the impression that he was the right man for my purpose. Through the sunglasses, I could see a pair of sceptical brown eyes gawking at me, as we sat at the table.

“Hello Chang,” I greeted him warmly with a smile, and raised my hand at the intention of shaking his, but the courteous gesture was unequivocally ignored by the man who I understood meant only business. “So, as we discussed last night, I told you that I am looking for a short term loan-”

“You forget it, boy,” he cut me curtly looking on the side and portraying as though I was merely a distraction.

“But you agreed to provide me with a loan when we chatted last night?”

“Why on earth should I trust you and pay you fifty thousand dirhams, I don’t know you and what’s the guarantee that my loan will be repaid?” he scoffed, turning towards me and placing his left leg on his lap.

“Because…” I began taking a paper and pen in an attempt to bring the guy under inescapable confidence. “I have invested about ten thousand dirhams in the stock market after I was able to identify certain patterns in the stocks and observed the stock charts closely, knowing exactly when the prices of stocks would fluctuate and when they would go higher, which…in turn has provided me with the privilege of getting my money doubled in a matter of weeks….” I ended, pulling my pockets and revealing a pile of thousand dirham notes and placed it on the table. I knew instantly I had the guy under confidence as he provided a half-smile and pushed the pile towards me while in turn exposed a brown package.

“Well, just in case you know…you don’t repay the amount in a month, I’ll peel your eyes out, cut your tongue and sell it in the stock market. Fair enough?” he threatened, sounding as casual as ordering something off the menu card.

“I have a strong intuitive feeling that you are not one of those men I wanna give a taste of disappointment,” I concluded assertively and walked off with the package.

The rubbish I had fed him with about the stock market wouldn’t have been possible without some quick thinking and of course hemlock, but I doubt he’d have accepted my garbage without the pile of cash, which was basically the amount that I had taken as a student loan from the bank. Together with the combined money, my plans were for a startup of Artificial Intelligence. Since the day I had got my hands on hemlock, my mind had been buzzing with ideas, ideas that my feeble brain could only dream of, but with hemlock on my side, the opportunities were boundless.

George High consisted of various categories of students: from full-time bunkers to extremely dedicated nerds to thugs (which I myself had been once). But I had my eyes on someone who was neither a nerd nor a thug, someone who had brains but also kept an eye for using the intelligence and knowledge he possessed for a wide range of applications, in general, someone who aimed to change the world someday. As I had just begun to contemplate on such a person, my mind gave a buzz, brilliantly conveying the idea that such a person was available in my own backyard. Instantaneously, I took a three-sixty degrees turn and rushed back home.

The ominous knock I gave on the door could have made anyone jump to their feet and bang it open. Harold looked at me as though the world at reached its end and his face was white as a sheet. Harold, an unbearably lanky guy with a freckled face and large geeky specs who thoroughly worshipped Einstein, was a college dropout, but don’t judge him through his dropout status, the guy was a teen prodigy, a person solely born to serve science, he had dropped out of college coz of his inability to stand the lackluster lectures and solely theoretical approach to education. Mind you, I couldn’t possibly envisage the effects of hemlock on a born genius like him (not that I wanted to try it on him).

“What’s the matter, is there a fire in the building or something!?” he blurted, looking sideways anxiously, then fixed his terrified eyes on me.

“Eh…nope, listen Harold I need to-” he was about to slam the door on my face when I pushed it hard and intruded inside.

“What do you want, Bane?” he demanded curtly, folding his arms. “You come here, bang my door and destroy my sleep as though there is an earthquake,”

“I apologize for that pal, I would like to have a word with you about a startup that I have been planning for ages….”

I explained to him all the ideas that my extraordinarily buzzing brain kept clicking. About how I wished to start an Artificial Intelligence company, based on foreign funding. How I would require his assistance in helping me get sponsors and recruits, and above all, his knowledge of Robotics, combined with all the other sciences. At the end of my speech, he was left with his mouth hanging with a mixture of approbation as well as bewilderment. He looked at me as though I had discovered fire.

“Are you really Jared Bane?” he asked, in a ghostly manner, with his eyes glued to me.

“Uhh, yeah,” I retorted normally, with a half-smile on my face.

“How… how has this transformation occurred?

“Well….let’s just say I received enlightenment one fine day…. So are you with me?” I demanded impatiently.

“Umm… seeing the type of enlightenment that altered a person like you and transformed you into this, do I have a damn choice?” he claimed, with a genuinely impressed smile which indicated that my plans were about to be implemented.