Moho (Part One: Rise of a Symbol) (8 page)

“In the name of research,” she sighs when I look at her.

“Of course,” I chuckle.

The Red Island lies east of Maze Island and south of Center Island. It is not a long walk to the Red Island and there is a land bridge connecting it with both Center Island and Maze Island which makes it hard to believe no one was ever curious enough to check it out.

When we reach the land bridge, Maya stops. I lay my hand on her back and encourage her to move on. She does.

The Red Island is strikingly different from all the other islands. It’s basically a jungle that is overflowing with vegetation. Once, there clearly were paths through the thicket but moos and scrubs are now growing on those paths. What’s most unusual about the Red Island is that, well, everything is red. There is not a single green leaf, fruit or blade of grass on this island. There are some brown trunks and a beige type of grass that grows in some places, but most vegetation is some shade of red. Even the ground is dark red.

There are Hotstones scattered throughout the jungle that dip even the scarce, humid air between the plants into deep red. And not the slightest breeze makes it through the deep wall of trees that separates us from the ocean. It is unbearably hot. I feel more and more sweat running down my back as we make our way deeper and deeper into the jungle. Maya notices my suffering.

“You can have some of my outfit. I am wearing too much anyway.”

No one can seriously claim that she is wearing a grain of sand too much but there is no need to ponder that offer. I take of my clothes and feel better immediately. Then I witness how the orange-beige sand on her neck, arms and legs flies from her body onto mine. She tells me to connect my essence to the sand on my body, like she taught me to this morning. I do and the sand sticks to my body.

“That is much better,” I say.

Then we continue walking further into the jungle. I’m studying all the exotic red plants and so does Maya. Barely two of them look the same. They come in all kind of shapes and sizes. Some of them react when I touch them. Some of them even make sounds.

“It’s stunning,” I say. “I don’t understand why no one is supposed to set foot on it.”

“There are rumors that Cosmo decided to shut down the Department of Inter-Body Connectivity in the aftermath of the Mass Darkening that ended The Second Dark Time. All the mentors and learners on the Red Island left Cosmo’s Islands,” she explains.

When we reach a clearing with large red rocks, we see the first sign of former navee habitation of the island. Like all caves on Cosmo’s Islands, the rocks look natural from the outside but the perfectly polished walls of the empty tunnels and rooms inside indicate that someone shaped them.

After the first wave of amazement ebbs, we sit down in the clearing. The temperature is much more bearable here than it is directly in the jungle.

“What did people study here?” I ask Maya.

“I’ve heard rumors that they explored physical contact between navees and how those connections impact one’s essence. Some say the hongi was invented here. It’s curious… Your ‘hand shake’ could have been invented here as well. Or this interesting greeting you used earlier today.”

“Hug.” I say. “That greeting is called a hug.”

“In a way it’s logical that they closed this department. Mental contact is a far superior way to connect to another navee. Plus, there is no need to be in the same location.”

“But how would you mentally connect to another navee?”

“There are several options. Most people use TNOP, the Thought Network
of Persadia. But there is also INOP, the Imagination Network of Persadia. I prefer to use the two simultaneously and use TNOP to transfer my thoughts and INOP to transfer my corresponding mental images. The combination of the two makes for a much richer experience.”

“I’m not sure that I understand this.”

“Lean your head against mine and close your eyes,” she says with the demanding confidence of her tutor persona I got to know earlier today. So I follow her instructions.

“What now?”
I think.

“It’s most interesting if we think about something abstract,”
she thinks. I can hear her voice in my ear but she isn’t talking. This method of conversation is somehow very intimate, like someone else is talking to you but from inside of you.

“Then let us think about the question I asked you earlier today,”
I think.
“Is a navee’s essence incomplete by itself?”

“Sometimes, when I’m awake at night, it’s exactly this thought that rattles my mind. I feel this unsettling incompleteness of my essence. I don’t know… Maybe my essence never was complete or maybe it isn’t complete any more. But I do know that this feeling never arises when I am mentally connecting to another navee. Every time
the connection stops, I can feel the incompleteness in my mind again. Who knows, maybe I can constantly feel complete if I’m constantly connected to another essence,”
Maya thinks.

While she is having those thoughts, the black in front of my closed eyes disappears and I see her mental images. Some images are blurry, some images are only visible for a split-second and some images are actually moving images, like short memories. She lets me see a starry night sky, her lying on her bed and staring at the dark ceiling, the back of a young boy and an almost equally large bird, a woman I don’t know, The Spring, Ravi
, and a small Glowing Stone. It’s all quite confusing and I can’t really make a connection between her thoughts and her mental images. But in a way the experience is like being Maya for that one moment. Maybe if I really knew her, I would understand the connections between her thoughts and her mental images.

“Even two connected essences are two essences, not one,"
I think.
"There will always be moments, even if those are short and infrequent, when you aren’t connected to another navee. And if you are depending on another navee to make you whole, those small moments of incompleteness will feel all the more intense. Also, people change over time. Someone who was a presumably perfect match at one point may feel like a misfit later on. So building up the expectation that a single navee can complete you for eternity will inevitably result in disappointment. Finding different navees for different phases seems like an approach more likely to succeed.”

I let her see Victor breaking the Springstone, me seeing the crowded Springtreegrove for the first time, Maya and Ravi talking, a lot of nothing and some very blurry images from people I don’t recognize.

“
But the two essences will assimilate over time. Investing all one’s effort into the assimilation of two different essences has to lead to the constant feeling of completeness eventually. Spending all one’s effort on one essence is the only way to know that one has given it all,”
Maya thinks.

“
I don’t think two navees can become the same over time. Navees are individual by definition, right? So two navees becoming the same is contradictory to navee nature. And even if you find a navee that is a perfect match, it's almost insignificant because you two may develop into opposite directions. And maybe we don’t have control over our personal development. I actually don’t even feel incomplete. What I feel at night is uncertainty. Literally everything is uncertain. The benefit of connecting to another navee is having certainty about at least one thing. You can’t know if one navee is the right one but you can decide that that navee is the right one. You have to make the commitment to stay with another navee forever. And then stick to that commitment, even if it’s hard. But the benefit of knowing that this other person will be there forever makes the difficult phases worth it. It's a commitment and it won’t be successful just because one makes the promise once. It needs constant work,”
I think and pause for a moment before I add,
“but isn’t it all irrelevant to you anyway? You will be gone soon,”

Maya doesn’t respond for a while. I don't hear any of her thoughts and I don’t see any of her mental images. Then she thinks, “
No, maybe I should not.”

I open my eyes and look at her. She looks sad. I probably shouldn’t have thought that and try to change topic.

“So, I’m still wondering what being summoned by The Spring really means,” I admit. She opens her eyes and looks at me.

“Everyone wonders that. What we do know is that all navees and animals come out of The Spring and only navees who can mentally control all elements are summoned. Therefore I assume that the summoned nominees create navees and animals in The Spring. I think they become a Creator,” she explains.

“And why would you want that?”

“Becoming a Creator is the highest reachable aim imaginable. What else could one want?” Maya asks.

I don’t know the answer to that but disappearing into the same place where I first came from makes the journey in between a bit pointless. We sit there in silence. I lower my head and stare at the ground. Suddenly I realize that a thin layer of orange sand covers the ground around us. How odd… The sand looks exactly like the sand we are wearing. Then I realize that we aren't wearing the sand any more! Or anything else for that matter. We are completely naked! I gasp and she immediately realizes our predicament herself. We got so lost in our mental connection to each other that we completely forgot about our physical connections to our bodies. So we both cover ourselves again and we both start blushing. It's an awkwardly intimate moment none of us saw coming.

Then she stands up wand walks over to an apple tree that is standing in the clearing all by itself. I follow her.

“I am curious. What do you think of TNOP and INOP?” she asks.

“Well, it certainly was a memorable experience. And there is no way one could communicate mental images any other way that precisely. But I did miss seeing your facial expressions, looking into your eyes, hearing your voice in my ears," I say. "The fact that navees studied inter-body connectivity here makes more sense to me now, too. I mean, the circumstance that navees are divided into separate bodies makes physical contact necessary and possible in the first place. So when you're right and one navee by herself is incomplete, then physical contact is crucial to get as close as possible to another navee. In a way, physical contact reduces the incompleteness of an individual,” I explain.

"Physical contact seems so useless to me. I do not see how shaking hands and hugging helps my essence be more closely connected to another essence. Somehow, bodies are useless."

"Physical contact feels good. A foreigner feels less foreign when you shake that foreigner's hand. Every hug gives you safety while you're buried in someone else's arms. But touching isn't only about connection. It's also about self-awareness. You feel yourself when you feel someone else. It reassures you that you are real," I argue.

The conversation stops again and we stare into the treetop above us. I spot a snake in the apple tree which feels so arbitrary considering that I haven’t seen a single animal in the entire jungle. The snake winds itself around a branch full of apples until one falls to the ground. I pick it up and offer it to Maya.

“Here.”

“It doesn’t seem right to eat something from this place here. We shouldn't even be here,” she reminds me.

“It’s not like you plucked the apple from the tree or picked it up from the ground,” I point out. She looks at the apple but hesitates. Somehow she is standing in her own way
. “You clearly want to. Just do it. I won’t tell anyone.”

And then she takes a big bite out of the apple. The fruit is so juicy that juice squirts onto her cheek. She doesn’t seem to notice and so I swipe it off with my right thumb. I can feel her head pull back a tiny bit when I touch her.

"Thanks,” she says shyly. Then she smiles and I take it as an invitation. So I lean in further. She pulls back a little, her eyes alternating between my lips and my eyes. I lean in further and she doesn’t pull back this time.

“Relax, it's fine,” I assure her. She smiles and her warm breath hits my upper lip. I put my hand around her neck before I close my eyes and my nose hits her face. I hear her accelerating breath. She is nervous now.

“What are you doing, Moho?” Maya asks but I do not believe her cluelessness.

“Research,” I repeat.

Suddenly, an intense pain hits my eyeballs and our foreheads bump into each other before I have a chance to kiss her. I look at her, squinting my eyes and she is doing exactly the same. Then my eyes close. The black fades to white and the contently smiling face of Xerxes appears.

"Dear Navees,

It is with great pleasure that the Chastener Association of Persadia is able to announce the first discovery of a human since The Second Dark Time. To our deep surprise, the human invader was located on Cosmo's Islands and was once selected by Cosmo himself. We are appalled by this unimaginably dubious judgement on Cosmo's behalf and will significantly increase our presence at his prestigious incubator for aspiring Creators.

We expect The Spring will relieve naveekind from the despicable invader at the anniversary of The Second Mass Darkening via darkening of the human.

Until then, stay alert and live by our motto: Exclude To Cleanse!" Xerxes says. He flashes his teeth one more time before he disappears and the white fades back to black.