The air was funereal, yet the sun was bright, and hung rigidly in the noon sky, casting a warm glow over the kingdom it stood watch over. The grass glowed and glimmered under the light of the sky. The chairs were white, the tables wooden and brown. The air smelled of dew and of green. The taste of life was in the air. You could almost touch it.

“He was a complete asshole,” his once best friend said, with a grin on his face, and tears in his heart. People tittered. Part of the speech had been written by the deceased, as had all the instructions for this unusual ceremony. “A complete asshole, in life, and he once said that he wished he could be one in death.” People laughed, louder this time. This was important, to make sure people were enjoying it. Setting the scene.

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The air was funereal. It was howling without noise. Strong, gusty. Making the cloth covers that served as the doors and the walls to the canopy above, as one whole, they formed a tent, it made the cloth covers billow and bend, as sails to a creaky old boat. The scent of roses parlayed through the air. The wind muffled all sound but the occasional buzz of the lights that they were testing. Two men sat in the traditional cloth. The tables were draped in yellow, covered with a huge square red cloth marred by designs. Another man came in, and greeted his two brothers. His sons followed squarely behind. Hands folded behind them. The wind howled in silence and clothes rustled as they followed behind the siren of the jinn. Slowly, people started to trickle in. Followed by questions, always in whispers, always solemn. The whole affair was a sombre one. Where are you now? What are you doing these days? Quiet whispers, as if those questions had no place in this place. The carpet spread over the grass was thick, and softer than the grass, it seemed. You could curl up in it, let it grow over you, and be comfortable for the rest of your life. Someone opened the black rucksack on one of the tables, and unwrapped the thirty one red booklets inside. He grabbed one, and slowly, others followed suit. As they finished each one, about sixty pages a count, they began to place them beside the rucksack, and slowly, the pile of unread booklets shrunk and that of the finished ones began to grow. Slowly, the place filled up, the wind raged onwards. A small

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“Everything is going well.”

He could hear the voice talking to him. Not talking to him. But he could hear the voice on the other end, and the parasite- ouch, no sorry, not the parasite. Bob relayed it to him. The voice on the other end was Dr Arif Tendu, a doctor who had created Bob. Why had Bob wanted to be named Bob, he did not understand.

It’s a nice name, do you have a problem with it? A throaty voice whipped from deep inside his brain.

He stopped and stood shocked in silence.

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Ah, LaGuardia. The armpit of an already smelly city. New York smells of sweat and dreams unfulfilled, and wishes, and all sorts of evil. LaGuardia smells like New York’s armpit. It feels like it too. Crowded, people right next to one another, jostling, bustling, in your personal space. I come from a country where people do not know the concept of personal space. So many times i have stood in bank lines with people peering over my shoulder or at some office or the other, with people standing on either side, and behind me in the line. No personal space. At the grocery store, i can feel the rustling of people’s shalwaar kameez on my behind. And LaGuardia reminds me of home, in the worst way possible. 

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The subway was grimy, brightly lit. A few rats scurried here and there, if you paid just the minutest amount of attention. The floors were sticky, and your feet made a scrunching sound as you lifted them off to take another step. Trains thundered along the tracks. Garbage was lying on them, you wondered if it flew away when the powerful steel beasts came rushing in.

We were waiting at the station to switch to the train that would take us to destination, LaGuardia. I yawned. My brother followed suit. I moved along, motioned him to join me, moved to a part of the station that was less crowded, and kept darting my eyes around. We had too much stuff, we could not safely keep it all, if anyone did decide to run away with it. But then, no one could run far enough or outrun us carrying a suitcase. My eyes darted around nonetheless, paranoid as I was.

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Ah, the great thanksgiving debacle of 2015. What wonder memories can bring you.

It was my third thanksgiving in the land of the free and the home of the brave. It was my brother’s first. He was in the same city as me, the one that never slept. Somehow that night, it did. It had been windy, and not too chilly, but just enough. My brother came to my dorm from his uptown. We were to go to our aunt’s together in the morning. She lived in the mile high city. The lights were bright in New York City that night. It smelled of pizza. The air tasted of excitement and the wonder of youth. The ground felt soft and plush. It was not. Just the spryness of youth.

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The sun bore down on the bare backs of the pilgrims. Bright, yellow. Hot. it was humid. Sweat filtered through the air, doing an elaborate tango with the fresh water that was being sprinkled out by huge fans. A man covered head to toe was sitting on a machine that was cleaning the white marble floor. It was silent. Swift. Efficient. People were thronging around a huge square rock covered in a black cloth. It was lined with golden words in the ancient script. A power seemed to hum from the cloth, an energy source, a proof for those who saw the truth in the little things. Maybe it was all the massive pieces of machinery both below the ground, and all around, the former to maintain the place, the latter to fill the coffers of one of the wealthiest families in the world. Construction, new buildings, a slice of every pie went into their pockets. Or vaults, since shalwaar kameez generally do not have pockets.

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What makes for an international traveller? How do you decide when you are one? What is the golden metric?

Is it when your ears no longer pop? Is it when the rushing of the wind, the lurching of the plane as it jumps off the ground, and into the big blue sky, when that becomes second nature? Is it when every time you feel turbulence, you do not pray to the gods above, or the devils below, depending on what direction you would like to take? Is it when you can see just as clearly in the dim, poorly lit cabins as you do in the sunlight of the ground below? Is it when the smell of cabin food stops tasting delicious precisely because you are thousands of feet in the air, and this unnatural situation for your species has ceased to play tricks with your mind? Is it when your tongue tastes ash when you have that food? Or is it when you walk just as well on the carpeted floors, past the neon, bright, exit signs as a duck on water?

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Two losses in one day. A sinking in his stomach, eyes brimming with tears, burning with fear. He could smell the cold floor and feel the sweat in the air. It was salty, fatty, and reeked of necessity. They led her away. She did not cry. She did not understand what was going on. The man dragged her away, within seconds, it was done. He stared for a brief second, and turned around, heart sinking deeper than Atlantis did. His phone was in his hands, strange, he did not remember grabbing it, and his thumb was poised above the keyboard, to type out a message. If I send it, this will become more real. It would become stronger. Instead, his thumb found the lock button on the side. The screen went black. He turned away before he saw his reflection in it. He looked ahead of him. Throngs of people. Big, fat, tall, black, white, brown. Wearing thick colorful headscarves, wearing nothing but the thinnest veneer of clothing. Marching by, same expression on most faces: curiosity and interest.

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You know that feeling when you’re so engrossed in something that your senses narrow. Every single one of the five races into a tunnel, and everything in you is focused on that one activity. Maybe you have not felt that feeling. But you have definitely heard of it.

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It was a cult far greater than any had been in the history of mankind. There had still been naysayers. They denounced The Assistant, and all that the Organization had stood for. Their concerns now, seemed largely unfounded.

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It came out as something to wear on your face. Simple enough. Innocuous enough. It smelled so good. It was black, sleek. Only came in one color. The marketing campaign for it had been anti marketing. It did not seem to care whether or not you bought it. The advert, there had only been one, was weird. Unexpected. Offensive. Jarring. But that is what the other companies had forgotten. Art, true art is supposed to jar and shock and disarm. Theirs did. The other companies had fallen into this cycle of trying to keep up with one another, creating things that would soon be copied by the others, offering people more and more, and more. Trying to please everything. They did not even bother to try. They were honest about their product.

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When virtual reality becomes perfect, i will bring you into my universe.

• Unknown, circa roughly 2019

The year is 2039. Like the big brothers and the big blue social networks before it, it has completely enveloped the world in its embrace. People have been quick to adopt it. No matter the race, gender, or creed. It is everywhere. There is no room for competition, no space for dissent. It has swallowed that space between mountains named for the material the early chips were made of. It is Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley, it.

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Hair long, flowing. Shining. Face made up, clean. Smelling of that fresh, post shower, fruity smell. Loose, baggy jeans. Oversized t-shirt. Straddling both her worlds. For her conservative world, her clothes were well, conservative, her face was always clean and ready for socialization, lest someone come to ask her hand in marriage. For her parents’ adopted home, and the one she had moved to when she was so young, she could barely remember how life in their country had been, for the new home, she was wearing their clothes, she was exotic, but spoke in their accent, with their language. In their slang. She spoke like them. She dressed like them. She did not look like ‘them’, but ‘them’ was constantly changing. In her generation, most of ‘them’ too were now from other places. So she did look like them. It was a melting pot, and she was one of the ingredients.

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🎵 I heard you die twice, once when they bury you in the grave 

And the second time is the last time that somebody mentions your name 🎵

Tears welled up in his ephemeral eyes. In his invisible eyes. He was a shroud, a wraith. Death was not at all like you imagined it. No pearly gates, no record of your life on earth, judgement, lies. Death was a mellow affair. Earthly life was the overdramatic one. Here, everything was tamped down. He remembered it all as if it had been this moment, as if it was happening now. At least he understood time here. Simultaneous and non-linear. The woman who wrote the book about wizards had it right. Kind of. His brain created a construct that would help him make sense of his reality.

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The truck slowly chugged along the gravel road. It was dark, the driver was tired and haggard. All around it were beautiful hills, lush green, but in the darkest part of the day, they could not be seen, not the lushness of them, just the sparkling dew caught in the headlights. The gravel road was bumpy. The air conditioner was throbbing in his head painfully, body shivering, yet uncomfortably warm. He kept scratching himself, his hands. In the dark, he could not see it, but they were rubbed red and raw, and soon would have pores on them, pores that he had scratched open with dirty yellow nails.

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He winced in disgust, his expansive features stretching out over smooth, taut skin. His eyes still sparkled with the delusion of youth that his actual time spent on this earth belied. His face was beautiful, pure, unlined, his hair was thick and wavy, his shoulders broad. His chest was wide, his hips tight and sturdy. His legs were like tree trunks. He was tall. Yet his did not look obscenely big. His eyes were beautiful, his hands callused with hard work.

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It had been a fairly simple thing. Two men. One action. 

They had been best friends. In a way, they still were. Motive was passion. A woman. Somehow, there was always a woman involved. Good, bad, evil. Whatever the action, there was always a woman involved. One had fallen in love, the other had already been.

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He watched the droplets above him silently, a mosaic, every now and then, he would blink as one fell down, terrified that it would fall in his eye. The steam was everywhere, his body was dripping with sweat. The steam made it hard to see, but what was there to see anyways. It smelled of eucalyptus and tree oil, or so he thought. His fingers curled with a little bit of delight as his pores opened from the heat, and they took in the oils. Rejuvenated.

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Coming in, you would not think that this was a mental hospital if you never met the patients. Even if you spent time with most of them, not too much, just a little, you would not think this were a mental asylum. They were soft spoken, calm, eyes did not flit around. Most of the time. They were perfectly normal. As they spent more time in this place, they became crazier. No one could prove it, of course. But they did.

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