High and low

The „Thing“ was moving so fast and so random, that I had hell of a trouble of getting it into the sight of my blaster. I hated to fire all around me just so that it will not get close. I had to save the ammunition. This month I was extremely short on it, as I decided against ordering a full new load of bullets. I was determined to last on the old one – what the fuck, I am not in the zone of the open conflict or something, it is just for the self-defence. Just to get along on the streets. And when the money is so scarce, like in my case…I wanted to save some of it in order to, maybe, buy myself some pretty stuff. Like women do, you know. A dress, maybe...A tight lace black one, that can demonstrate the progress I;ve made in the gym…I will definitely do it, very soon. Except that I;m not sure, where and when I will wear it. Like in some fancy restaurant – I will walk in gracefully in my tight black dress and high heeled shoes (by the way, I need to buy those too), and beautiful silky stockings (another thing to add to my imaginary to-buy list), everybody will see the highlights in my hair and the men will hold their breath…I will be gorgeous, I will shine like never before…  But … who;s gonna invite me for dinner?”
“Try saving on the ammunition means to lose you damned life, - the voice of my Master echoed in my head. - And you, you carry responsibility not only for you but for our son as well. Are you aware of that?”
I fired, hoping the shot would get it...and that it would not get me first.
This “thing” was a nasty one – with many legs and mean-looking teeth, but I got it right on the small head.
Good job.
So the way to work was free now. I enviously viewed the cars that were gliding past me with ease of their perfectly tuned motors. The guys in there are safe...I mean, I surely have my protecting suit, gloves, helmet and my blaster right there on my hip, but this is no comparison to a real armoured car. Not to forget all kinds of other great advantages – speed, prestige, comfort...
I sighed. Being poor and being a slave is not a nice destiny at all, but, as my Master meant, this is my own fault to a great extent. Of course one cannot choose where to be born – into a free family or into an enslave one, but still even a slave has a fair chance of becoming rich. Like everybody does. There are some slaves that manage, the ones that get it, the ones that break through. The ones like me – healthy, resilient, well-educated. Except that in my case something went completely wrong. Me, with all of the studying and all of the investment the System, my parents and the Master did in me, I was meant to succeed. I was meant to be some Big Shot in Business. It was predestined. But I failed. I was just a mere mediocre secretary with hell of the economical background and excellent grades. I was worse then mediocre – I was really low level, working in a tiny firm for a joke of a salary. Having no car, having to fight my way through the hostile streets of LE-LO city…
It was my duty to bring my son to the kindergarten every morning. Although my Master possessed a car, he still was way to busy to take care of such things. So me and my 5-year-old Michael woke up, had breakfast, brushed our teeth, put on the protective suits and rushed for the public bus. I hated public buses with all their illegal immigrants and dull slaves, making their way to their joyless workplaces. A free person rarely took the public transport, a free person took his or her own shiny oily beautiful and perfectly safe car.
After I have brought my son to an impressive-looking building, checked him in on the entrance, signed the papers and got out of the sliding doors I would immediately feel immense relief. Once the responsibility for Michael was off my shoulders, I would feel tremendously better. On my own. Not having to be afraid for him, not having to be on a constant lookout for the dangers lurking out there. Then I would make my way to work – take another public bus, put on the headphones and listen to some optimistic audio book. In the evening, when the work was over, the routine would be the same. At home I had responsibilities waiting for me – cleaning, cooking, maintaining, waiting for the Master to come home, taking care of the child. My occasional highlight of the week was the gym, where I was allowed to workout in order to get a better body, the one that would be more pleasing for the Master. Well, at least at first that was the idea, but as time passed I got to really enjoy the exercising. Watching my body getting more and more flexible, watching the fat melt down on my hips and belly, feeling my muscles gain shape and vitality really made me happy. If the rest of my life was predestined by my birth and the choices other people made for me, at least there was something in my control. And it felt wonderful.
My Master, however, was not really satisfied – because although I really did look more pleasing to the eye, my sexual performance had not improved as he had hoped. I was still using every possible excuse to avoid fulfilling my duties of the kind. I was not really good in faking the enthusiasm around it and he vividly felt it. He was disappointed in me but there was not much I could do about it. We both hoped, that with time it will get better on its own.
I sighed deeply and immediately the glass of my visor became clouded, blurring my vision. Damn! I pressed a button on the left side and lifted it a little bit for the cold crispy autumn air could flow in. Hopefully there;s not much poison in the air right now…
I felt my mobile phone vibrating in the pocket of my backpack. It must be him – nobody else would send me messages at eight o;clock in the morning. A guy named Sylv. He was an outcast, a rebel slave who went against the order and was thrown out of the System. Somehow he was enjoying a protection of a mysterious free lady, whose name he wouldn;t reveal. It was thanks to her that he was not banished from the safety of the city into the wildness, where he would most assuredly die. Quite miraculously to my mind, he continued to live in the downtown of LE-LO and was even bold enough to visit public gatherings and cafes.  It was the first time I got to know somebody like him – a slave without a Master, slave without a job, slave without a home, even without a protection suit! He just came up to me, reached out his hand in a pretty old-fashioned way and smiled: “Hello, I;m Sylv, nice to meet you”.
On the very first evening I;ve told him more about myself then I ever did to anyone in my whole life. The conversation seemed to flow on its own, Sylv seemed to know exactly which questions to ask, which remarks to make. It looked to me that I;ve met somebody I already knew before. Maybe in a previous life. I marvelled at his courage to stand up and go against every law we learned to follow. He gave up everything he had in life – his Master, his home, his job – he sacrificed everything to his beliefs.
- Life is not supposed to be like that, Eve, - he told me. Life is more than you know, there more, much more to it. Life is not about serving and being used by others, like you are right now, like I was before.
- What is it about? – I asked him.
- Find it out for yourself.
Life is more, life is more then the routine and the job and the duties, - it seemed to be my own voice that spoke those words. Was it the voice I;ve learned to ignore so well? Was it rising in me now?
And so we started seeing each other for the one sole purpose – to talk. We talked and talked and talked for hours. I was fascinated by his narrating skills and by the similarity that our destinies seemed to have. Except that his seemed much harder, much more painful then mine. Where I would get a mere scratch, he seemed to have broken his leg, where I stumbled, he fell head over heels on his head. His life seemed to be a reflection of my own but through a magnifying looking glass of pain and suffering.
We were walking the streets together (both of us freezing cold at the thought that someone we know might see us – for him, as well as for me, it meant whole truck loads of trouble) and nothing felt the same. Same streets- but a very different feeling. Same places – but suddenly the details I have always failed to notice came forward in full flavour. It was natural that, since Sylv had no protection suit and no blaster, that I was taking care of the dangers on the way. It was natural, since Sylv was poor and had no money, for me to pay for the drinks and the food we consumed in various cafes. It was natural for both of us to start having sex with each other since, as Sylv put it, “I love the whole of you, including your body”. And it was natural for me to think the same, as Sylv stated. Because that what love was all about. My life became more and more surreal, it felt, like it was rolling down the hill at an ever-increasing speed. I lost control but I was enjoying myself like never before…And then a crash came.
It turned out that I was not the only slave girl the Sylv has been seeing lately. I learned to put myself up with the fact that he was seeing his Free Lady, who was something like his new Master. It was all right for me, because I was living with my Master too so it wasn;t that bad or wrong…But another slave girl – this came on me like a hard blow in the stomach. For me this relationship with Sylv was so special, so extraordinary, so intimate, that even a possibility of him having something similar with another person put everything under question… This thought was almost unbearable. Sylv holding someone else in his arms with the same tenderness. Sylv saying the same words in the same tone, maybe using exactly the same phrases..no, this felt so wrong, this simply could not be!
I tried to talk to him and communicate how bad I felt about the whole issue, but as an answer came something like “I don’t think I have to choose between both of you”, “give me time” and “why are you not sure of your uniqueness”.  This all made it sound as if I was the source of my own misery.
And so, as a result of my constant suffering and pain I decided to stop seeing him and spending time with him. And a black abyss opened up to me. My life had no meaning anymore. My duties made me sick. I hated my life and was ready to give it up. I was often hallucinating, daydreaming. Imagining how blissful he is with his another slave girl friend, imagining, how he was walking the same streets and going the same places, eating, drinking, being, existing – completely without me, forever – filled me with throbbing pain that clouded my vision and poisoned my life. It could not go on like that. It had to end.
And then one day on my way from kindergarten to work I stumbled over a creature I have never seeing before. I was just going out of the armoured gates, feeling really miserable and wishing myself dead, and suddenly something, or rather someone, on the other side of the street caught my attention. It was a woman, making her way down the street like everybody else. But there was something very unusual about her – she was wearing no protection suit. In fact, the only thing she had on was a very thin-looking lace dress, almost like the one I;ve been dreaming about, except that it was the purest eye-stinging white and not black. Her arms and legs were not covered by anything and there was no gun in sight. The girl was very slender looking but it was her hair that amazed me the most. It had the colour of the warmest honey with a gold sparkle to it and it seemed to float around her head as if she was moving under water. This hair seemed to defy the law of gravitation just as the existence of this unknown lady defied all the laws of LE-LO that were immovable for me. I wondered who she was. I wondered, if she was just my imagination, when she stopped and looked across the road straight at me. I saw the blue eyes in her pleasantly round face grow large with surprise. She seemed to be staring at me just like I was staring at her – in astonishment. And then suddenly she briskly crossed the street and was standing beside me.
- What are you? – she asked curiously. What kind of suit is that? Is there a movie being made nearby or something? – she reached out her bare hand and ran over the arm of my suit with her fingertips.
- This … this is just a normal protection suit. How come you don’t wear one?
- Me? What for?
- What do you mean what for? Are you joking? For protection!
- From what?
- Well, like – from that! – and I pointed my glowed hand to a something that looked like a Salvador Dali version of a rattle snake, crawling down the sidewalk.
- This? – the girl;s eyes grew even larger.
- Yes! Or that – I pointed my finger to wild cat walking on top of the gates.
- This kitty? You must be joking! – the redhead reached out for the cat and scratched it behind his ears. Surprisingly, it did not bite her hand of nor did it make any attempt to attack. I guess you are ill, right? Is it right? But why are you not under surveillance? Should I call for help?
Suddenly I felt dizzy and sick to the stomach.
- I;m fine! It is you who;s sick, you are insane! How can you play with this creature, it;s dangerous, simply stupid! How come you are not wearing any suit?
The girl laughed a melodious little laugh.
- How come he is not wearing any suit? – she mimicked the panic in my voice and pointed her finger to the air beside me. And she? – she pointed in anther direction. And that old lady, and that child as well?
As her tiny finger with a carefully polished nail came flying to and forth, something strange happened to my eyesight – suddenly I was seeing blurred shapes or figures she seemed to be talking about – a little boy in a blue shirt, a women in a long colourful dress, a grey-haired lady with a gray handbag. It seemed like they were walking among the people I was used to seeing on the streets - armed and fully dressed and ever on guard. These two crowds were walking past each other without seemingly being aware of each other. I closed my eyes and opened them again – it must be some optical illusion.
- What the fuck! – exclaimed the little redhead. Who the hell are all those crazy soldiers? Are we at war? – she was turning her head around and rubbing her eyes as if trying to get her vision in focus.
I realized that she was experiencing something similar – suddenly becoming aware that there was something beyond the world as she knew it.
It all was simply too much for me to bear. Like a computer, attempting to process too much data at once, my brain simply refused to function any further and I lost my consciousness.
This is how I got to know Aiko, the beginning of a great change in my life. Aiko called for an ambulance and they took me to a place I;ve never been before. To the LE-HI.
It is quite difficult to explain what LE-HI is. As Aiko put it – this is where your good thoughts take you. And your bad thoughts take you, accordingly, to my world, to LE-LO. Although the two places existed simultaneously, sharing the same time-space reality, it looked like they were hardly ever mingling. People of LE-LO were tense, strained, unhappy people with pretty short life spans. They were living their lives just in order to survive, to compete against others, to fight in a hope to win. Always rushing, never getting anywhere. Always fighting, never seeming to win. They were inclined to various addictions like drugs, or tobacco or alcohol, they were imbalanced and aggressive. People of LE-HI…well, if I would have been ever told before that such people exist, I would not simply believe it. Those people were simply and purely happy, joyful, balanced. They did not except bad things to happen to them all the time – and just miraculously, they didn;t. The animals never attacked them, as they felt no aggression from them, the illnesses seemed to be rare and in general they lived something like three of four times longer then the people of LE-LO.
- How did I transit? – I asked Aiko, sitting in my crispy white hospital bed, relaxing on a soft cushion. The air in the room was fresh and filled with a delicate flower aroma. I was so unhappy. I actually was thinking of willingly ending my life!
Aiko;s eyes grew wide with horror. She was sitting beside me on a hospital chair, looking quite shaken. In the past two hours that we;ve spent talking to each other she learned from me as much as I;ve learned from her. People of LE-HI, as she told me, were convinced that their thoughts created their reality. Some long time ago, as she remembered from her history lessons there used to be frustration, suffering and negativity, but over time, the majority managed to create a magnificent, relaxed and wonderful life. 
- You did? You really wanted to give up the wonderful chance of physical existence? How come? – For the people of LE-HI suicide was something from the ancient times, a word that has almost become archaic.
- Well, it;s just that…The man I wanted to be with was unfaithful. I didn’t love the man I stayed with. I hated my job and there was never enough money. The only thing that brought joy to me was my body – although it would from time to time fall to some illness. I was unhappy and wanted the struggle to end.
- Well, maybe your body made the transition for you, I don’t know. However, this is highly unlikely that it managed to do this without your mind. Maybe it was just a brief fleeting second of an unusual perfect harmony between the two that did the trick.. Anyway, the thing that I know for sure is that me myself was in a rather poor condition. I felt imbalanced and somehow angry, although not really,. I was actually on my way to a quiet place where I could meditate and connect with my inner source. I wanted to ask the inner me for guidance and help when all of a sudden I noticed you and after we started talking I started to notice the others like you as well. It was horrible!
- Well…thanks!
- No, really, Eve! How could you have possibly created such a terrible agressive world?
- I don’t know…We know nothing beyond what we see…You say that…
- …the world is created by your thoughts!
- Yes, right. I guess we, the people of LE-LO, just learn to think the thoughts our parents did. And they learn from their parents. And they from theirs. And so it goes on and on and on – and the same is here, in the LE-HI
- Seems plausible…It really does. But for us it was exactly like that too. Many, many centuries ago. Somebody made the first step. Somebody broke the pattern… Now this brings us back to your transition – there has to be a meaning to it! I actually have an idea! I think, Eve, you are a messenger, a pioneer, so to say. Now that you’ve seen the world as it can be through the conscious effort of thoughts, you should go back to your people and tell them about it. Explain them. Give them a chance! Help as many as possible to come up here, to us.
- Why should they believe me? Why bother at all? Why not leave them where they are? They will come after me. After some while they will.
- Because it is not natural, like all you think, for someone to feel pain. For someone to be aggressive, tense, angry and suffering. You have to tell them about it. And besides – what about your kid? Wouldn;t you want to get him up here as well?
- If you put it like that…I surely would!!! I would so much! I think Michael will make it with my help.
- See??
- But he is my son! He trusts me and loves me. And the rest of them…I bet they simply will not listen to me. They will say something – well, it may be easy for you, but we have stuff to attend to – monsters to kill and jobs to do in order to survive. And if I tell them – but look, look at me! they will respond – well, some broads just seem to be damned lucky!
- Well, Eve…Maybe you are right. But you must try. And I will help you, since I;m in it already. I think, Eve, we both came now to our destiny.
Aiko reached out for my hand that was resting on top of a clean white blanket, and squeezed it gently.
- We are in this together now, dearest, - she smiled a warm smile, bent over and kissed me on the cheek. I felt the softness of her floating hair and inhaled the delicate flavour of he perfume. I spread out my arms and embraced her, pulling her delicious body close to mine. The simple perfection of the moment stopped the flow of time. Suddenly, in my mind;s eye, my life unfolded before me into one huge surreal heavenly landscape. It was full of choices where one felt better then the other. If it is as simple as that. If all I have to learn, is to train my thought to be a continuous wonderful flow of well-being…then it is a miracle. I relaxed and felt the joyful warmth of the blood rushing along my veins, washing my whole body clean from the inside. So simple. As simple as that. And eternaly perfect.