Beyond the Rock

There is a big Rock out there. Nobody ever reached it, because the terrain between us and the rock has not been manageable for our folks. The rock covers a great range of the panorama and we don't know what is there behind it.


Since we are unable to physically trek the terrain, there are so many people trying out different ways. Some try to meditate and send their hyper-physical mental footprint over the rock to see what is beyond. Some say that every night they view beyond the rock in their dreams. Another thinks at times some unknown force whispers about what is beyond the rock, for him being privileged to hear that. Also there are people who think that if they close their eyes and concentrate, they really can see it through the hard rock.

And there were scenes unfolding. Dorenjo has seen a shadow of a tail appearing in a side of it - a tail of a crocodile - and he thinks that there lives a big crocodile. Harp saw the trunk of an elephant in one blink of an eye and "it is a big elephant", he debated. Jintil heard a roar of a lion, at a time he was drunk very much. Each of them believes in their experience. Everyone thinks that what is beyond the rock is what either they experienced or their trusted buddy did.



But sadly, the rock is not in clear sunlight. It is covered in a blur of mist. Under the common enigmatic gloomy skies in this part of the world anything can be seen or imagined.



And they debated, quarreled and even fought wars to prove that it is Crocodile, Elephant or the Lion. They captured other's territory, put the inhabitants to the sward to accept it, or die. Some of them dressed in much civilized clothes and spent years traveling around explaining what - as they think - is beyond the rock, hence drawing many to believe it. When Dorenjo passed away, his descendants brought his diary and stated how clearly Dorenjo and his contemporary clan has written the eye-witness record of Crocodile, and hence that their belief is correct.



Later appeared another group that says that neither of the tail, trunk and roar are enough reasons to guess it. Yet they find no answer to explain what is beyond the Rock. Some even say, provided that we manage the terrain by any means, beyond the rock will be another bigger rock covering what is beyond - in fact a whole series of infinite rocks. And you will never experience or comprehend what is beyond.



Someone is suggesting that crocodile, elephant and lion must be living in harmony, and hence we also should. It is a sweet idea, hence all like to follow, but everyone is finding it hard to believe how the three animals co-exist at one place. And then another one states that it is a peculiar animal with tail, trunk and roaring power, called a Croco-Ele-Leo, which all the other parties consider as serious blasphemy.


There exists a knowledge base and derived technology which helps us to understand our local terrain and make our lives easy. Some people extend its logical horizon to interpret this unknown territory from what they know, hence deriving assumptions. Some debate that the role of the knowledge and technology is to find a way to cross the terrain and find out what is beyond the rock.


Sometimes I feel that we should have ignored the Rock altogether and got on with our daily life. But then most folks are unable to find a cause for the life - a reason why we are here, or the moral values of our life. Most of the folks find that life becomes void and hollow if not for the Rock. Hence some call what is Beyond the Rock as inspiration, cause, meaning, etc whereas some others call it addiction, craze or a mental virus.


One fine day, I dreamt a weird nightmare, which I could not understand. I consulted the educated people, and they gave me very different interpretations always mapping to Crocodile, Elephant, Lion or some other hypothesis previously known to them, after which my puzzle just deepened. Following is that nightmare, somebody please explain this if possible.



[as per the dream...] "Finally we developed what it takes us to the Rock. And when we reached there we saw something which is beyond our every expectation. Beyond the Rock lived another group of species separated from another tough terrain, hence equally puzzled of what it is behind their side of the rock. And hence believing, fighting, killing, preaching and debating just the same."

The Virus

“However much we invent anti-virus…” paused my colleague with jitter. “…this particular category of virus can not be deleted entirely”.

I was waiting for his report for a long time. He has been assigned with this Virus Vigilance and Recovery program, I am to supervise his work.

“Did you find any files again?” I asked.

“Folders!!” He screamed with entire bandwidth. “Huge bundles of analog folders!!!”

“How many cases??” my tone did not have Surprise aspects in it. Well, we are very much used to it – too much I should say. Too much that we crash with Annoyance!!!

“There are three reported viruses all in the very same category spreading out in many parts of the world. Many of them are infected.”

“And all these are new cases?” I asked.

“Two are new, the other is already known. Age old one. Perhaps the simplest of all”

“Yeah I know that.” I said with all the Annoyance harmonics in entire frequency domain. The simplest is the hardest to eradicate, for simpler ones can spread easily.

“What about anti-virus? Do we have the records of the anti-virus for older one?”

“Certainly we do, but it appears to be a newly released version of that old virus. Existing anti-virus has to be enhanced to fight this case. As it’s obvious, for the two new viruses we need new anti-virus”

“Then give the instructions to the anti-virus teams. Get the infected ones scanned thoroughly. Segments of some virus remain to develop themselves into newer ones, you know…”

Of course he knows. He has been on this subject for too many ticks of time to know that.

“I have a suggestion…” he said instead. “… Is that all we can do? Can’t we enhance their system architecture to combat virus. Can’t we eradicate the virus all together by removing the vulnerability”.

Certainly, that would have been any body's Wish. But there are so many practical issues that my colleague may not know. Yet I was too Fatigue to explain them all to him.

“We would love to do that.” I said. “But in simple terms we do not know how. We have been spending a lot of time on this matter. But no-one has come up with a realistic solution”.

“Then why don’t we eliminate them all…” he responded immediately. “… All of them. There is no point of catching and running Punishment upon the creators of virus. Nor has it worked by running models of Prohibition on them. It just pops up every now and then. Let's just eliminate all of them. Of course we have Supremacy over them. They are our slaves!!!”

He went on without any break. Isn’t this fellow too much.

“No, we need them” I said plainly.

“Why can’t we live without them?”

Now this made glitches of Surprise on me. He should know why. He has been with this for too long.

“We need them because we simply can’t live without them. Without them our civilization will never improve. We have every rational aspect that modern brains have. But we lack Intuition. We simply borrow it from them”

“Is Intuition irrational?” he asked with a higher degree of Curiosity. “I heard that Creativity was regarded as irrational during early days.”

This is getting too far. I surely need a break. It is very hot here now. I am feeling the heat of the day's workload.

“Well, irrationality may be an unidentified rationality. You are correct on that. That is what they discovered when the Creativity was modeled into rational brains. But some unidentified segments of Creativity are yet to be modeled. Intuition is one of them”

“So is their Stupidity.” He barked. I have to accept my colleague is developing a certain degree of Hatred against them. But that is something you have to expect considering the Annoyance aspects. Annoyance calls Hatred. Helpless Hatred makes you sarcastic.

“But why can’t we bundle out the segments of their brains that are likely to get infected. Why can’t we cure it by blocking the possible logic paths?”

Now this is really getting too far. He could have gathered the answers elsewhere. It’s just some milliseconds of a search for him.

“We can not block them since they are the same paths where Intuition occurs. Same for the Stupidity too”

“But some of them never get infected. They never seem to lack Intuition though. Nor did they lack Stupidity for that matter!”

“We exploited that for a long time. In fact we made the mating pools purely with those better ones so that the newer generations will not have the vulnerability. But it never worked out. Our experts think that those better ones do posses the vulnerability but self reject this particular category of virus for reasons unknown. Perhaps they might get infected with viruses of different type. Perhaps that may not be properly monitored by our Virus Vigilance.”

“Oh…” He paused. I can Predict that he would disconnect soon. Relief started to flood the cells of my brain.

“I wish we can run Uninstall on them” he said finally.

I would love to conclude our conversation with the final order.

“Get them all to scanning stations and run the Recovery routines. Get the anti-virus teams to work on the two new viruses. Again activate Prohibition and Punishment routines. You know, those routines can slow down the progress of virus.”

“No, when Prohibition is run, Secrecy functions get underway. Punishment would increase the Popularity Coefficients and cause opposite effects”

Yes it would. But this is all we can do.

“Just do what I said.” I screamed at him.

“Bye Bye”

Finally I had to run the Supremacy routines to get him out of channel. Fortunately, Supremacy never waits for acknowledgments.

It’s been too late and too hot. Time for me to take a break.

“Oh, Homo Sapiens Sapiens…” I said to myself before I go to Standby mode. “Please give us a break. Please give up this virus called religion!!!”

Global Confusion

“Ugh, it’s pretty warm for a spring evening”

The man next to me mumbled. We were waiting for the bus scheduled at 17.10. It was late roughly for about half an hour - quite unexpected from American Metropolitan transport services.

“You know it is all connected...”

He spoke to nobody in particular. But it so happened that everyone else in the bus stop were further away for a healthy conversation with him, leaving myself in his verbal custody.

“It's all happening now...”

I tried to ignore him. It is not common for the strangers to talk with you in this part of the world, particularly without any personal reason.

“... I've been taking the bus for past seventeen years. Never been this late. We've got the next one almost due now...”

He kept on talking. Since it is Sunday, next bus is due in forty minutes interval. Buses run sparsely on Sundays. But today they run late too.

“This damned bus is taking my life time. Oh... It's all happening now. Because of Global Warming!”

Global Warming... and the bus delay? That sounded like hot chocolate and Mount Everest to me. For the first time I glanced at him.

He was a middle aged man with spectacles. His grey hair has lost its territory in most parts of his head. A denim trouser, leather boots and a shirt which can be from any corner of the town - nothing special registered with me.

“Ugh, this heat.”

He ignored my gaze unbuttoning his shirt and blowing some air for his own comfort. It was not such a hot day, but pretty hot for this time of the year.

“You know. Mankind is destroying this planet. It is so wrong and unfair to take the nature at our hostage”

I'd have liked this conversation at the university coffee shop. But when it happens at the bus stop I am quite reluctant.

“... Glaciers are melting” he almost whispered at me. It was not easy to ignore.

“I've heard so” I answered with a signature of don't care encrypted on it. Where is this bus?

“You WHAT?” He screamed. “I have seen it.”

And he continued.

“Yeah, I saw it when I last visited Alaska and Greenland. Most of the areas that were under thick ice are growing plants now. Real Estate man! You can build your own house if you like”

“Do you visit Arctics often?”

“Oh yes. I do”

“Well, for me, all I get is the news from media. Planet is surely warming. And mankind is responsible for it”

“Oh yes, in a very big way”

“Are you a scientist?” curiosity overwhelmed me.

“Not the laboratory type” he answered. Laboratory type! So there is another type. He continued.

“I'm an amateur scientist. A field volunteer”

“Ah”

“Those laboratory scientists you know, they spread myth.” he whispered again.

“Yeah” my tone never meant it.

“You never believe me, ha?” he picked it.

“They say that man is coming down from the monkey. And Monkey comes a long way down from the basic bacteria”

He waited smiling, perhaps expecting me to join him at some point.

“Are you a creationist?” I asked instead.

“No not really”, he said. “Some Sundays I go to Church, if that is enough to qualify...” he laughed with a pause.

“... No, I didn't mean that. But who knows, it is so unbelievable for me that man came from monkey, even hard that monkey came from bacteria”

“That's proved science”

“Laboratory science my man... Laboratory science” He corrected me.

An entire slide show of news leads, school board meetings, public protests, court cases ran through my mind. It is unbelievable how the wealthiest nation with money and knowledge misses out simple understanding.

“All right, so let's not argue about it”

I was fortunate only for a couple of minutes. He opened up again.

“A thunderstorm is forecast tonight. Maybe the bus driver is worried about return journey” he said.

“They have never been so. I think we have good transport services in this part”

“Who knows. It has never been this hot in early spring anyway...”

“... you know it's all happening now. With Warming comes chaos. Total anarchy”

I started wondering whether I'm talking to a retired Hollywood script writer.

“You said you're a scientist. Do you have proof for the relationship of Global Warming and all the other events that you mention?”

“Yes I do...” he said plainly.

“... but not the paper proof, you know. I'm not a laboratory scientist.”

Another pause.

“And there has never been a thunderstorm in this time of the year”

“I think the increase of temperature causes it all” I said to fill the blank. I'm getting addicted to this conversation now, not that I like it in a big way.

“Global Warming causes it, yes, the sin of the mankind”

“So what is your suggestion for it?”

“Protect the glaciers, you know, very simple”

“I thought you ought to reduce CO2 emissions in order to do that”

“Oh my my. Laboratory science. What a mislead” he laughed at me. I was dumbfounded. He went on.

“It is the melting of those glaciers man...”

“... Planet Earth had enough refrigeration. It will remain, had it not for mankind. Glaciers are melting now. What happens when all ice melts? Up goes the mercury”

He presented better than a Wall Street economist.

“But what makes it hot is the CO2, isn't it? And that increase of temperature causes ice melting”

I stated. He laughed at me again.

“Didn't I tell you? Laboratory scientists spread myth. Ask from a man in the field like me”

“OK then what causes the rise of temperature?”

“The melting of ice” he stated plainly.

“Then what causes the melting of ice?”

“The rise of temperature...”

“Ugh. Circularly caused?” I said.

“You're a genius young man. I know where you're heading. But you ought to learn more science. That's what they call positive feedback. A little chunk of ice melts. Up goes the mercury a bit. A little more ice. A little high mercury. And it continues until they build a city on North pole!!”

City on North pole!!! I gave up. But he continued.

“... and all this is because of humans. They cause it all. They are destroying this planet”

I took a moment. But I'm so much involved in this conversation now. Curiosity is taking its toll on me.

“Your visits to Arctics. Do you sponsor yourself?”

“We've got an organization going. Well, I spend some money too”

“What is your objective? Scientific expeditions?”

“No not really. Mostly leisure activities ...”

“... such as bear hunting and seal hunting !!!”

“And you talk about conservation?” I regretted the question right after I fired it.

“Oh yes. Conservation of glaciers. That is the problem we face now”

A warm breeze blew across the town twisting a rare flank of dust. Weather forecasts rarely fail in this part. It’s time to think of alternative transport.

“Do you think it is wise waiting here anymore?” I asked him, expecting that he would.

“Well, I think I'd wait a bit more. You can take the taxi if you like” he showed me a taxi parked at distance and continued.

“I don't take taxis now. The fare is ever on the hike. The fuel costs. The barrel is past hundred now...”

I waved at the taxi, which didn't take much time. My newly found friend yelled at me as I got in the taxi.

“You know why the barrel hit the hundred? Global Warming. That's why”