The Seven Kingdoms (5)
The Fourth Kingdom - Part I
Illustration: Pixabay
King Manipura had not exaggerated. Wherever he was, Andy had to admit that the technology in this kingdom far outweighed what was considered ‘state of the art’ technology back home, at least with regards to transportation and security.
A black, armoured, Mercedes S2500 Hovercraft with blacked-out windows had hovered him to the kingdom’s Museum Of Fine Arts at a velocity that made Star Trek’s warp-speed look like a leisurely stroll in the park. It hovered on the lowest of the air-lanes, very close to the ground, which was especially reserved for high officials and celebrities. All the upper lanes, literally going up as far into the sky as Andy’s eyes allowed him to gaze, were for the common folk with ordinary flying cars, bikes, and if his eyes didn’t deceive him, the odd broom here and there.
As they approached the museum, all he could make out was a vast, medieval-style stone wall resembling those of rural England. It was about 9 feet high and almost completely spherical but had dents in it. From within the wall a giant, slightly tilted, shiny black dome emerged, as if a UFO had crash landed on the site. While approaching a gate, the driver remotely opened Andy’s car window and immediately a faint smell of formaldehyde entered his nostrils. He shivered but hadn’t had time to think about it for long when a voice on the car intercom snarled:
“Breathe in slowly through your nose, breathe out slowly through your mouth, three times. Then raise your arms for five seconds.”
“Excu …“
“Just do it, please.”
He played along with what he regarded as plain harassment from his anonymous tormentor, who snarled again after Andy had lowered his arms:
“Now roll up your right sleeve and keep your arm close to the car window. It will only take a moment.”
Becoming more confused and irritated by the second, he put on his bravest face and demanded:
“Will somebody please tell me what is going on here? What kind of charade is this?”
“The King has ordered us to grant you one outburst like you just demonstrated. The next one brings you directly and without discussion back to your previous quarters, and on a rather permanent basis. It’s up to you Mr. Hoover. Your arm, no talk, last chance.”
Oh, if only the lice had been like Phil. But what they lacked for in chit-chat, they made up for in biting. So, while he grumbled inaudibly and a little thundercloud formed above his head, he rolled up his sleeve and positioned his arm as the voice had demanded.
The sudden appearance of a robot-arm holding a laser-pen coming in through the car window, like a glove puppet emerging from below in a marionette show, made Andy slap-cover his mouth with his other hand in order not to make any sound. The robot-arm moved towards Andy, pointed a laserbeam on his forearm for a few seconds, and disappeared into the nothingness from where it had emerged. No visible trace remained of the arm, or on his.
Later, Andy learned that the museum’s security system was based on recognition of individuals using all the senses, not just visual ones or biometrics like fingerprints. While exhaling through his mouth, the scent of his breath was recorded and stored, as was the odour from underneath his armpits; both are apparently as unique to each individual as DNA. The subsequent laser treatment had taken a taste sample of his muscles, so together with his recorded bodily features and voice via cameras and microphones in the car, and fingerprints from the car door handles and seats, they had more than enough information to clone him if desired. More importantly though, whenever someone was caught entering the museum with bad intentions, it was virtually impossible to get back in undetected. Therefore, he didn’t understand one bit why he was assigned to design and build a top-notch security system, because his knowledge and skills were completely out top-notched here.
The hovercraft slowly floated through the gate of the thick wall enclosing the museum building. It took a right turn and after a few minutes turned left, seemingly with the intention of ramming the building, until at the last moment an invisible hatch opened through which the vehicle disappeared into utter darkness. From there Andy was taken to his quarters, where he had to remain until closing hours: the beginning of his shift.
While sipping a fresh coffee, he looked around in his new living room and his attention was caught by a museum brochure on a salon table, because the picture gracing the cover was eerily similar to a painting by Salvador Dalí called: ‘Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)’. Being a big fan of the surrealist movement and Dalí in particular, he took the brochure, sat down on the sofa next to the salon table, stretched his legs on the accompanying hassock, and opened the brochure.
~ ~ ~
His first assignment was to explore the museum with the aid of a floor plan and make a report on the accurateness of said plan. Apparently the museum’s upper management had a tendency for confusing renovation with construction.
His flashlight shone back and forth from the paper into the darkness of the museum halls while trying to make his way to where the surrealist exhibition was located. After passing some halls with weird looking sculptures, which looked as if someone had used incessant talking as a means of erosion, he found what he was looking for relatively easy when the sign introducing the next hall read:
‘Red Zone Surrealism from the Pungent Era.’
Half expecting some rancid odour to enter his nose, he went into the first hall. It wasn’t so much a stale whiff which met his olfaction, but he was quite sure he could smell something very much resembling sulphur. Then his flashlight went out.
“Hells bells, you little…” he hissed as he hit the device a few times before it flashed back on, creating shocking light movements on the floor. Regaining control, he pointed the beam of light forward and stared at a blank wall. Slowly he turned left and found another blank wall, and another one, and also the last wall was virgin white from top to bottom and right to left. Flummoxed by these blank walls, he turned back to the first one, again. Simultaneously, the beam of light shone right into the face of a classic, red, horned devil.
‘Plunk!’ The flashlight hit the floor and Andy tripped over his own feet in an attempt to get out of the hall while screaming for his mum.
“Ouch!”
While running in the dark he hit his knee on something hard and sharp, but since the flashlight was pointed in the opposite direction, he had no idea what it was. The sharp pain prevented him from moving, and so he decided to grit his teeth and make as little sound as was possible in the current circumstances.
“ONCE MEEK, AND ON A PERILOUS PATH,
THE JUST MAN KEPT HIS COURSE ALONG
THE VALE OF DEATH.
ROSES ARE PLANTED WHERE THORNS GROW.
AND ON THE BARREN HEATH
SING THE HONEY BEES.”
The thunderous voice made the building tremble. Andy felt his heart beating against his uvula and frantically attempted to prevent an Exorcist-type of projectile vomiting from occurring.
‘Dunk-dzizz!’ In a split second the hall was bathed in a shade of white so intense that a name still needs to be invented for it. Andy had to close his eyes because it felt as if he was staring right into the sun on a clear summer day at noon.
“IF THE FOOL WOULD PERSIST IN HIS FOLLY HE WOULD BECOME WISE. WHAT IS YOUR FOLLY?”
There are moments in people’s lives where the amount of stimuli go beyond the charge which the human nervous system can tolerate. The subsequent disturbance can take many forms, such as nose picking, fingernail biting, walking frantically in circles while making arm and hand gestures and talking to oneself, or sitting on the floor with the knees firmly pressed to the chest while the tips of the thumbs dance endlessly back and forth on the rest of the fingers.
“Forgive me, sometimes we tend to come on a little strong. Are you all right?”
A voice which resembled the former thundering blaze in absolutely no way at all felt close to Andy’s ear, but he didn’t dare look. Closing his eyes and putting his index fingers in his ears, he sang:
“LA-LA-LA-LA-LA”, and some part of him was fervently hoping this was all a bad dream from which he would wake up thanks to Phil flying in circles around his head.
After a few minutes of glossolalia, he went quiet. As did everything else. Slowly, very slowly, he opened one eyelid and moved the emerged eyeball from left to right before opening the second. He was still in the same hall, but now it was properly lit like a museum hall: warm whites for general lighting and warmer or cooler lighting for the art pieces themselves.
Art pieces! The hall was filled with surrealistic works matching the monsters of Max Ernst, the clocks of Dalí, the apparitions of Dorothea Tanning, the female power of Leonor Fini, or the stairwells of Escher. Yet, as familiar as these particular aspects seemed at first glance, they were placed in unfamiliar settings and surroundings. They were placed in landscapes.
Besides the paintings, the only other item in the hall was a small white, square bench smack in the middle. Judging from the height, that was the item his knee had gotten acquainted with. There was no trace of the devil or whomever the two voices had belonged to.
Andy slowly walked up towards the painting with the monsters, who appeared to have been placed in a beautiful, peaceful meadow. The ground blushed with flowers and upon closer inspection the monsters weren’t monsters at all, but actually statues resembling deep sea creatures surrounding a flock of black sheep.
“Pssst.”
“Hmmm?” Andy reacted automatically, being totally immersed in the painting.
“Have you calmed down a bit?” a soft voice asked from right behind him. Andy froze, except for his thumbs.
“You don’t have to be afraid, we won’t harm you. Won’t you turn around and face us?”
“Where’s the one with the big voice?” Andy asked hesitatingly.
“He won’t hurt you. Please, join us.”
Despite his profound anxiety, he slowly turned around. In the middle of the hall, where the white bench had been, a lady who resembled sculptures of the Greek goddess Athena sat dressed in a long off-white dress on a round table, on which a myriad of fruits and nectars were displayed. She smiled and pointed towards the empty chair next to her, bidding him to sit down. Cautiously he moved towards her while eyeing the entire hall.
“You did say ‘us’, right?”
“Yes, but you don’t have to worry about that now. Please, sit down and enjoy fruit and nectar with me. We don’t get many visitors these days. I promise to answer all your questions to the best of our abilities.”
He gingerly sat down on the appointed chair while the lady poured him a glass of nectar and fair is fair, the fruit looked and smelled delicious. However, he could swear there was still a whiff of sulphur lurking around somewhere, which made his unconscious uneasy, shown by his twitching thumbs.
“Who are you? What is this place?”
“We are called Anahata and this place is what you want it to be.”
“Really? Well, I want it to be my office at Goldman Flex.”
The words had exited his mouth before his brain had had a chance to think them over, and immediately Andy was back in his office where the lifeless monitor-walls stared mechanically at him. Phil was nowhere to be found. Yet, one monitor showed white noise, and pretty quickly another followed suit. One by one all the monitors began to display white noise, filling the room with a ghostly mix of whites and blacks.
In a far corner of Andy’s peripheral view he detected movement. Slowly letting his head follow his eyes, it appeared that monitors were merging. They became fluid like Dalí’s clocks and began to merge almost as dramatically as drops of mercury can.
All around him monitors were merging into what at first sight seemed to be a large blob. Yet, it changed colour and became bright red before all of a sudden turning into a giant, very sexy, mouth. As it opened though, it showed multiple rows of razor sharp teeth, like a shark, with large fangs on both sides. It went straight for Andy, who tumbled backwards into his chair while shouting:
“Nooo! Nooo! Get me out of here!”
“WHAT IS YOUR DESIRE?”
“I just want to be left alone!”
With a thud, he fell on his fanny. The floor felt remarkably soft, alongside the walls upon inspection and, which was a little odd, so was the low ceiling. He wobbled towards the white door, found it shut, and peered through the little square window. People in white coats were walking up and down a hallway that was too bright and too white. His screams died into the walls of cushions.
End of Part I
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