I decide to walk to the spa Nakomi has booked for us, as it's only a few blocks from my place. The sun is shining, and I've forgotten my sunglasses because I've been a space-case lately, for obvious reasons.
A young man walking past me in college-core attire studies me without subtlety. Then he points at me. "You're Izzy Belvin, aren't you?"
"Guilty?" I wish I'd remembered my glasses.
Hoping that he merely wants an autograph, I begin to put my happy face on, but my smile is greeted by his scowl.
"If you've come up with such an amazing food source that is both sustainable and bizarrely nutritious, why aren't you ending world hunger? Why are you taking your intellectual property to Mars with you?"
"I'm not taking all of it to Mars; there are plenty of Belvin grasshopper farms here on Earth, too."
"And let me guess: the farmers had to pay good money for that IP, didn't they?"
"Well we can't just let anybody have them..."
"Oh. So letting some people starve is preferable to you?"
I struggle to find the right words. "That's not what I meant. It's just that the grasshoppers have to be carefully bred and regulated. We don't want them entering the natural ecosystem. That could have devastating consequences."
The man looks unconvinced by my argument. "People like you just don't care about those of us on the lower rungs of society. All you care about is profit. Profit and ownership. Earth is running out of land; let's see how much of Mars we can claim, right? Let's leave everyone unworthy behind to enjoy the ruined planet."
My hands held up, I say, "Whatever," and walk away. Not my most graceful comeback. It isn't even really a comeback; it feels more like the admittance of a defeat.
Trying to forget about the man's words as I complete my journey to the spa proves difficult, but by the time I enter the doors, I've nearly forgotten. Focus on the day ahead, I tell myself. Focus and forget.
Nakomi is already inside, and she hugs me warmly as soon as I enter, gesturing to the overhead screen displaying the menu of options, which I begin to read.
Part of me enjoys spa days. Being pampered and forced to relax is something all of us need, in my honest opinion.
But the other part of me wonders why spa days disguise what seem like various forms of torture so well, as shown on the display menu: Wet and dry saunas that can sizzle someone's skin and melt their extremities off. Cryogenic therapy capable of freezing one to death. Sensory deprivation tanks that cut one off from all sights, sounds, smells, and sensations. Deep tissue massage (ouch).
The newer forms of torture are the worst, I think. Sensory overload tanks (recommended to be followed by lite massages and naps). Hyper-electric massage beds. Sensory-deprivation oxygen-aided sludge tanks ("great for the mind and the skin"). Nanobot-aided deep-tissue massages (double ouch). And the newest form of leech extraction, which uses genetically enhanced leeches for the ultimate toxin and blood clot removal. (My rival, the creator of these foul creatures, calls herself the Queen of Leeches; so original.)
Being boiled or frozen; pricked with needles or slammed with rocks; fed on by leeches; or locked in the quiet dark with nothing to keep one company except one's own thoughts: how is all of this supposed to be therapeutic?
"Let's do the sludge tank!" Nakomi says excitedly; somehow, I knew she would pick that option. "I haven't tried it yet!"
"Oh, joy," I exclaim. "I've always wanted to go swimming in sludge."
Nakomi, used to my sarcasm, rolls her eyes for just a moment before saying, "We're doing it. It's not really sludge. It's Beauty Sludge™, a Research Luxe Cosmetics product, and it's highly beneficial." Decidedly, she approaches the woman at the front counter, telling her, "Two Sludge Tank Deluxe Packages." The menu shows me that the deluxe package includes a massage, a facial, and a drink at the Freeze-Dried Reject Fruit™ juice bar. Already I'm wishing for the juice, which will signal the end of this trip.
We fill out paperwork. Unlike the moments leading up to my first Vivectica™ experience, I largely disregard the small print. I just want to get this over with. I try to pretend it will be fun and relaxing. Pampering.
A woman with several eyebrow rings and a deep voice who introduces herself as Claudia shows us into the locker room, where we strip down, put on the offered robes, and lock away the rest of our belongings. She then leads us to the sludge tanks, which smell like strong rainforest mud. Nakomi and I are given ear plugs, goggles, and breathing apparatuses and instructed about how they work. The instructions are overwhelming, so Claudia cleverly sandwiches them with information about the benefits of Beauty Sludge™ for the skin, along with the benefits of brief periods of sensory deprivation for the psyche. Submerged in our individual sludge tanks, we each will be cut off from all sounds, smells, sights, and tastes. The only thing we will feel is the warm Beauty Sludge™, and it will begin to feel like nothing after a time, Claudia explains.
My anxiety makes my hands shake as I insert my ear plugs and put on the goggles and connected breathing apparatus. The two of us will be under for an hour, and I can't help but feeling like this experience might be as scary as my experiences with Vivectica™, despite claims it will be relaxing.
Still, though, I go along with this, giving Nakomi a brief nod (she looks ridiculous in that apparatus) before the two of us step up next to our individual tanks, swing our bodies over, and get inside of them, eventually allowing ourselves to sink beneath the sludge. Because the sludge is so opaque, there is no need to shut us inside to shut out the light as there is with the regular deprivation tanks, and for that, I feel thankful.
Everything is quiet and dark. The sludge feels pleasantly warm, and I can longer smell it with this apparatus on. Even with the goggles, I can't tell if my eyes are open or not.
Try to relax, I tell myself.
Although my world is quiet, my inner voice begins to speak relentlessly.
Will it be lonely on Mars? Will I miss my best friend even though she forces me to do things I don't want to do?
Do the humanoid lizards know about Mars? If they exist in a world outside of our universe, can they be called aliens? What is the definition of aliens? If aliens are creatures from outer space, then the crocodile-lizard people are only aliens if outer space includes the space beyond the outer space in our universe. Does it?
Am I hoarding intellectual property? Could I feed more people here on Earth with my grasshoppers? Is it wrong to colonize Mars? Am I a terrible person?
These thoughts go on and on and on, for hours, it seems, until I wonder: How long have I been under?
I suddenly become aware of my body; it's strange that my awareness of its size, its shape, its space has eluded me. I move the tips of my fingers, the sludge keeping the movement slow. My hand slowly makes its way to my stomach, where I feel around for the scale. The scale must be just below the surface of my skin, I think, and my finger presses into my stomach, the sensation pressure-like.
Why did you give this to me? I think, sending my thoughts to him. I need to know. I need you to show me. I need to see you.
A disturbance in my tank seems to offset the sludge. Has someone gotten in here with me? This tank is only meant for one person, but it is still quite spacious (probably to prevent too much claustrophobia), and I've kept to one side.
I reach out, fighting against the sludge, and I feel...scales. Slimy, plated scales.
Fear overtakes me. My body, with a will of its own, emerges from the Beauty Sludge™. Above the sludge, I shakily remove my goggles and breathing apparatus, my back pressed against the edge of the tank. Sludge covers my face, and I'm not even sure what I did with the apparatus; did I let it sink into the tank? Did I throw it out? I can't find it.
Across from me, I see two crocodilian eyes poking up just above the sludge, peering at me with intensity.
My breath catches in my throat, as Crocodile/Lizard/Whatever-He-Is Man lifts the rest of his head out of the sludge, saying, "Hello, Izzy." His words are verbalized, not telepathized, and loudly enough for me to hear with my ear plugs in; his mouth even moves, with teeth visible for me to see. Although the words are clear to me, they don't sound right; my language doesn't seem fit for a creature like him.
But he can't really be here. I am imagining this. I must be. Sensory deprivation can induce hallucinations, I think I've heard. I didn't even read the small print, but there was probably something about this exact scenario.
About the creature from your drug trip showing himself? Okay, maybe not this exact scenario.
I stare at him, unable to move. Finally I say, "What are you doing here?"
"I found you."
Quickly, I climb out of the tank, missing the steps completely and slipping on the floor, now muddied by my exit. My body crawls to the edge of the room, where I stay on the floor to try to catch my grip on reality. After a few moments, I slowly get up and turn to look at the tank.
He's still there, standing up now—the upper half of his body is now visible, albeit sludgy.
In his right clawed hand is his high-tech scepter (also sludgy). Without meaning to, I think: my magician.
He sees me studying the staff. "This is what brought me here."
I decide to accept the reality (or unreality) of this situation. "How does it work?"
"Your kind would call it a teleportation device. It transforms matter between its different states. It turned my body into information. But it requires a special mind ability to use it. The scepter-wielder must target the place they want to go with their mind."
These humanoid lizards can speak telepathically. They can teleport. They have special mind abilities. And special technology.
"So information is the fifth and final form of matter?" I ask dumbly, as all the other questions parading around in my mind, all the but how questions, just seem pointless, perhaps beyond my understanding.
He suddenly teleports directly in front of me, startling and sending my back into the wall. "There are more than five forms of matter," he says calmly, as though he didn't just disappear and reappear in a movement too quick for my eyes to process.
"What?" The word erupts from my mouth, but I'm not even sure what I'm asking.
He shakes his head at himself. "Nevermind. I need to be careful about teaching you things your kind has not yet discovered. You are fragile creatures with limited neuroplasticity. And we don't know what too much knowledge will do to you, or what it will do to the chain of worlds." His words continue to be understandable, but he clearly struggles with the language. Perhaps his biological features are not well suited to human English.
"How do you know our language?"
"From your visits. Several of you humans have gifted us your languages. Some have gifted us other knowledge, too. Some have even gifted us love." He widens his eyes here. "None before you has ever gifted their curiosity."
I'm not sure why he finds it important to tell me this.
"Why did you come here?" I finally ask.
"Because...I was curious. I'm curious about you, Izzy. I'm curious about your world. I can only learn so much from the confines of my own world."
"What is your world, exactly? I mean—what's it called?"
"The best way to say it in your language would be...Glerkyakipap." He sounds the name out slowly.
"And who are you? What are you called?"
"Call me...Horton. My people are called ... glephkings."
Glephkings. Huh. "Horton? Is that your real name?"
"It's a name I stole from your kind."
I look at him quizzically. With a swish of his scepter, a book appears in his hands: Horton Hears a Who.
"The scepter can teleport objects, too?"
He nods.
"But you had that scepter the first time I saw you. Why have none of you...glephkings...traveled here?"
"We didn't know from which microcosm of our world you humans came. Did you come from one of the purplish floating globules? From a flower petal? From a geffenhawk? From a bacterium?"
I don't ask what a geffenhawk is, as realization hits me. "Until you put your scale inside of me."
He nods.
"Is your scale like...a beacon?"
"Somewhat. It would only show me your location if you desired to show me. Now, we finally know where your kind comes from."
"Can I see that?" I ask, gesturing at the book. He hands it to me, and I open it, getting sludge all over the pages. I skim its contents. Written nearly a century ago, the book depicts an elephant discovering a world contained within a dust speck, a world containing tiny creatures called whos. No one believes him.
"How did you know about this book?"
"A human gifted me with its knowledge."
"Why do you find it significant?"
He smiles here with his crocodile smile. "Because, Izzy, your universe? It's contained within a virus on my world."
My universe exists within a virus. How...poetic. The idea that I might exist on a world within a world had entered my mind before, most pronouncedly during my conversation with Adham. But the truth of this idea rocks my world nonetheless. My world starts spinning, ever so slightly, and I feel faint.
A disgusting, wet sloshing noise distracts me, effectively preventing me from falling over, and I look over to find its source. Nakomi, now emerged from the Beauty Sludge™ but still inside her tank, struggles to remove her goggles and breathing apparatus.
"I have had quite enough of that," Nakomi sputters, talking to no one in particular, tossing aside her apparatus and opening her eyes ever so slightly to take in the artificial light of the room. She looks ridiculous, her skin caked in the sludge, whose "beauty" modifier is most certainly a misnomer. I must look the same.
She sees me from her tank and smiles, but then she see Horton next to me.
"Izzy?" she asks, a bit too nonchalantly. "What the fuck is that?!?"
subchapter | paradox
A paradox is a statement or situation containing seemingly absurd or contradictory qualities. A paradoxical statement leads to self-contradictory, circular reasoning, while a paradoxical situation is or seems logically impossible.
"The more you learn, the less you know" is an example of a paradoxical statement. If you learn more, shouldn't you know more? After some circular reasoning, one can prove this statement true. Famous logical situational paradoxes include Schrödinger's cat and the Pole in the Barn. How can a cat be both dead and alive at the same time? How can a pole be both too long to fit in the barn with its doors closed and short enough for the barn doors to be closed at the same time? It's a paradox! With some knowledge of physics, both these paradoxes can be resolved: both situations can be proven true.
But not all paradoxes can be resolved. In life, there exist many contradictions that can't be reconciled, many mysteries that can't be solved.
Many of those people who have influenced altered states of perception—whether via psychedelic drugs, sensory deprivation, meditation, starvation, or other near-death experiences —have described some of their experiences, particularly those experiences involving ego dissolution, as being "full of paradoxes." In other words, they experienced a state of mind where numerous or even infinite paradoxes seemed to exist simultaneously. These people say that, paradoxically, this state of mind seemed to make more sense than anything they'd ever encountered before. Another way of putting it: the meaning of life they discovered is a paradox, as it is brimming with contradictory qualities. Contradiction, perhaps, is key to balance.