Kthaahthikha
One man, a word-processor, and too much free time.
29 June, 2005
The Warp and Woof
In time the palace proper presented itself. Gone the omnipresent red stone of Khahir, for now only purest blue shone such as I had never before seen. This crystal, crafted as it seemed from light alone, on closer inspection revealed itself to be water hanging suspended in the form of a chamber, fish swimming through its walls of size and nature out of place for more than sixty million years. At the heart of this chamber, upon a throne of gleaming limestone surmounted by trappings of gold, sat a man enshrouded in plain cotton robes bent above a gammon-board.'Welcome,' spoke the Caliph, his voice high and trilling. At this word the guide melted away and Siloi flowed into the floor.
'Have no concern - mere cyphers born of necessity and whim.'
I wondered at this, a figure who crafted his duppies with what seemed an absolute lack of concern. He wore a smile as I did so, as though he were able to read my thoughts. Of course this was the truth. My mind was as an open book to him. This was the real world, and I had descended from the level of the constructs, this elaborate veneer with which he had covered the universe.
'Not I,' he said. 'That is no construct of mine, the world which you inhabited. And do not be so eager to dismiss it as mere fakery - your universe is neither less important nor less real than this - they are one and the same - the mechanical, the philosophical, and the physical.'
'But your servant...,' I said, 'Even so, it is clear that there is some separation. How else can you explain this impossible realm?'
The Caliph laughed. It was a low, short, comfortable laugh. The figures upon the gammon-board danced under his fingers as he played against some unseen intelligence, and the walls dropped away whilst landscape changed and we drifted through aeons of time to a single stone hut upon the shore of a vast green lake, a lake that in my mind stretched for thousands of kilometers as I watched a figure exit the hut and tend to a flock of something known as goats.
It was the Caliph, old and wizened, his face a mass of creases and his head all but hairless.
'This was I,' he spoke 'founder of the red city of Khahir - a name which at this time still meant something, though it was only 'Home'.'
The old man was a lunatic, a hermit mystic, bent at all times over his scrolls and tomes as he leafed through philosophy and made leaps of illogic that any other would dismiss as pure lunacy - which it was. Upon a cured goat-skin he made notes in charcoal, and observations from over a shoulder revealed complex geometric patterns that wound their way about a single point that all neared, but never quite passed through. One wall, a rough black slate, was the victim of endless chalk missives, erased and repeated in various manners before commitment to the goatskin on the floor.
One day, the old man laughed at his discovery. He was a crippled, shambling mess now, his goats barely cared for. He lived on roots and berries and the milk of those nannies which stayed by his hut out of habit and a nostalgia for better days. But on this morning uncharacteristic animation infused him, and he rose to with glee to set about his work. Taking several figures from a leather bag beneath his pallet, the Caliph laid-out the parchment and, with absolute care and stern concentration, began to move the figures slowly about.
This practice continued for a considerable period of time. After an hour or so of manipulation the figures would complete a complex circuit, and the Caliph - his work seemingly done - would relocate and recommence.
Time wore on - days passed - and slowly the nights ran into day and the old man began to blur, his flesh melting into the aether until a point of light drifted in absolute, encompassing darkness. Still the figures moved.
Lines of light were scored in time by the Caliph's passing. Worlds drifted below and aeons reiterated. Looking once more over his shoulder, I saw the deft gammon of one who has dueled with the universe.
The Caliph descended from the void upon the face of the earth, manipulating, battling with his games until a flier presented itself. It touched down on a spot in the desert where, several years and a moment later, I was to sleep. Still we had not made true contact with what I considered the real world.
'We will be there in moments,' said the Caliph. He smiled at me from his board, and I waited in the flier while he subdued the anxious hordes, bent the history of the city - manipulating the designs of ancient surveyors, architects and kings - until walls stood against the rioters and the flier had ceased to be.
The Caliph turned to me.
'And so I do not control anything. I play against the universe - existing at a point not wholely separate, but far from contained, an objective vantage of which none of this is a part'. He gestured at the palace - it flickered and we sat once more in the ancient stone hut. And inscribed on a sheep-skin were the mercurial formulae - no, formula, for it was all at once, the battle against his pieces - of Ish. People walked between the lines of ink, and I looked down at myself in the heart, contained within a circle that none of the paths ever quite touched.
'They move as I move them,' said the Caliph. 'It is a hard game to play, a difficult instrument to work.' His fingers flickered like insect wings as he worked the populace. 'They cannot be forced in any one direction - only have the way blocked. So I cut the circuits with my pieces, moving ever slowly towards the centre, and in time the streets will guide them all to the correct points, and I, quite possibly, will win.'
This should finish-up next post, although I'm not sure. I may be sucked into my own head before reaching completion.
Tom Meade, 1:44 am
