Naked Minds

Arrival

2.

There was a long line up at the Toronto airport. Johnny stood there helplessly waving his Red Cross papers. That eventually helped him get to the head of the line. He had nothing to declare upon entering Canada. He felt relieved after passing the customs. Gray clouds greeted him outside. The late spring sun was desperately trying to break through. He looked around for a Red Cross vehicle but saw no sign of one.

The vision of the true nature of our universe that he experienced in Amsterdam was still with him. Every single thing was an illusion, a sequence of perceptions in an infinite pattern. He came to Toronto to find a dream, beautiful girls, and his own fate. Instead he found a ruined city with millions of overthrown minds. Even so, it was Johnny’s ambition for years to one day make it to North America. He finally stood there, free from his mother and motherland.

He visualised an old version of himself slumping down and withering away. Wise men have said that attachment to concepts such as a nation and religion, prevent a man from becoming his true self. The attachments must die in order to gain true self awareness. The old and dead concepts were peeling away from him. A true consciousness was floating up to the surface. He started trembling because a real change is terrifying.

Suddenly, the traffic of people in the airport picked up again. It is if they were all frozen as a one dimensional photograph until then. The engine kick-started again and they all resumed going about their ways. He saw their trajectories as predetermined patterns. They were like ants in an ant colony, each with their pre-assigned duties.

Even though these people were doing nothing out of the ordinary, Johnny knew that the psychedelic wind had blown through here in full force. The TNDM bombs had evaporated up into the grey clouds above Toronto. He noticed a few strange looks thrown his way, crystallized eyes with a hint of madness. A vague murmur slowly turned into an audible whisper as he realized that the people in his vicinity were talking about him.

“Johnny? That’s a strange name for an Eastern European.”

“Isn’t he from Amsterdam?”

“He’s acting like he swam the Atlantic to get here.”

“I thought he was going to U.S.”

A wave of anxiety splashed through his chest as he tried to figure out if the whispering was real or an audio hallucination. A bright red poster which was advertising the Toronto Symphony Orchestra came into his field of vision. The colour red really stood out against the rest of the background, it was popping out of the poster, breathing out.  He looked around in fear. He saw one of his attachments decomposing on the floor behind him. At what point do visions become visual revelations of truth as opposed to just mere hallucinations?

He recalled the North America of his dreams which was made up of TV shows and Hollywood movies. This place was not it. There had been a serious upheaval here. He focused in on the people. There were a few lonely women who walked fast and stayed close to the walls. The men stood silently in small groups while smoking cigarettes. Everyone’s clothes seemed dishevelled. Their eyes and their stares were those of a wild animal with a serious case of rabies.

Panic started to seep into Johnny.

“Are you with Red Cross?”

Is this another auditory distortion, he thought,

“Johnny?”

He wasn’t imagining it. A man with a gray beard in a Red Cross uniform stood before him.

“Yes, that’s me,” Johnny finally came to his senses.

“I’m Doctor Lazarus,” the man stretched out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”