Moments of Clarity

[rosetto 0]

 

Moments of Clarity

The Klingons thought the whole concept of worshipping a corpse was ludicrous. They believed that once a person was dead, what remained was simply an empty shell to be discarded. The person now resided within the minds of those who remembered them. There were many known cultures who had shared similar beliefs however, Sal's didn't. He watched from a distance, crouched at the doorway, as two of the drones had doubled back to seemingly recovered their 'injured'. This was strictly a 'human' trait; no man left behind. Here was robotic automatons acting like a soldiers on the battlefield. It was a sight that was not unfamiliar to him and he fought to forget the past but he knew that he never would.

 

 

Sal continued to watch with curiosity as the attending drone stretched out one of its appendages to the fallen one. There was a whirring sound and he watched how the attending one lit up. After a brief moment, the fallen one turned cold and silent and the other picked up the drone and dove silently back into the underbrush. It seemed touching and disturbing, this moment of death and Sal mused several moments on it. He clutched his shoulders as the cold rain left him in chill.

 

 

But his mind, as usual, was firing on multiple planes focusing briefly on this thought or that and then spinning off into a new direction. Slowly the pieces of the puzzle assembled themselves and Sal received short bursts of clarity where he saw the completed picture. They were not long enough for him to consciously be aware but they existed and he could not deny them. There was humanity here and that was the gift of which those men of the cloth speak.

 

 

He watched as Pher tended to Ethan. She was graceful in her moves and yet all the more purposeful and careful not to attract the attention of the other drones. In the bushes with the rain pouring down was the second in command; the family man who no longer had the watch. Sal didn't know his full story; only the rumors that had spread between the various crew members who had come and gone since his arrival on QoB. It was funny, in a curious sort of way, that Pher, Chris and the Captain seemed to know all about him but he still knew very little about them. That was most likely their intent because this space out here was very cold and black. It was not remorseful to the dead or faithful to the kind-hearted. And with a torrent such as that hovering on every horizon the mud between you and the bunk below was thick. It was a bridge or a drench and you were brothers or you were enemies.

 

 

This life was much different than what Sal had expected. He knew there would be times that they'd be hand-to-mouth between lucrative jobs but he didn't realize that he would enjoy it as much as he did. He'd done something selfish and down right stupid by exploring this structure alone but Chris had come for him. He realized that had Chris not shown up then he'd still be trapped inside; his fate unknown. Although he had momentarily broken the bond that had taken him on his little trip, he also realized that it would have eventually regained footing in his mind. That chamber, the Mandala Room as he'd named it, was a one-way ticket. You did not leave. You were 'let' out.

 

 

Dr. West's diametric of the human condition returned to his conscious as did the Zoalus' chanting. He thought about the eight archetypal characters that she had described and began to comprehend how the 64 syllables of each chant phrase represented much more than a single word. They were emotional as well as descriptive. They evoked feelings. Sal now knew that these eight symbols were very important to the Zoalus; they were the Zoalus. They represented all that these people believed, all that they cherished and hated as well as all that they knew and respected. They were logical and irrational and could take on many forms with their own distinctness without losing the common bonding that held the society together.

 

 

He thought about the symbol pairs below each figure. The significance here was that every pair was unique yet it gave balance to the figures as a whole. They were, the eight figures, one. Like a governing body, the mandala represented the balance of power. There were long-held traditions that were 'tried and true' coupled to an excitement of the unknown and a yearning to belong.

 

 

Sal was digressing again. What was important? What was of immediate causality? What of this language and culture could help the team complete their objectives? Sal thought the key was in controlling the drones. He imagined that they had once received verbal commands from their previous masters. They were, modified and not alike, all keen to the sounds that the group made and moved accordingly but Sal knew that for these 'garden variety' drones to perform their duties for their 'clients' a certain amount of impromptu response was necessary. They would have to understand verbal requests that may or may not be exactingly perfect, grammatically speaking.

 

 

But there was still the issue of the symbol-to-sound assignments. To solve this, Sal thought he must get back into the Mandala Room. There were plenty of symbols and of course the chant phrases. He closed his eyes and tried to remove himself from his immediate surroundings; put himself back in the Mandala Room and looked up at the imagine in his mind of each one of the figures on the ceiling. The symbols below each one formed somewhat of a triangular shape terminating where the ceiling met the chamber wall. The symbols didn't stop there, however. They continued down the wall forming a column of symbols. These were different ones though. Each pillar contained only the low-ordered Zoalus text. Sal wished that he could have tricorded them so that he could examine them in detail now.

 

 

Sal opened his eyes once more and watched the 'investigator' and its party follow the other drones into the forest mist and looked to see if Pher needed any help with their fallen comrade. Ethan, as far as he could see, seemed no worse for wear; mostly frightened out of his wits. Sal had first-hand knowledge of this feeling. Even though he now knew that these drones were designed to tend and maintain the landscapes, being under their watchful scrutiny and examination was a harrowing experience. Sal wanted to speak again but remembered what Chris had just said and didn't want to attract any more attention to himself or they others.