The Highlander

THE HIGHLANDER:

OPENING CHAPTER

Maybe I should just stay here until I feel better. Six months away from the wedding and the

well-oiled machine that is our relationship breaks down before it's even meant to start. I

admit there were a couple of nut-crunching moments, but when you sum it all up, it was

moving, it was working...Then all of the sudden, a stab in the gut - some other guy...

It's easy to say it’s her fault. My world tells me to say it’s hers. Her story is that it's mine.

Truth is, it's both of us.

When she was sad she couldn't see how much I tried to take care of her, when she needed to

be heard, there was no one to listen - and things dissipate, I guess. And the love seemed so

pure and clear as crystal day. I liked her from the very start - then a couple months in, like in

a lull, fell deeply in love.

We met on an island where I live, work, survive... one of thousands of workers who migrated

that same reason. I'm soon going back. I love London. I have a family there. Not a real one,

but at work. I'm not just saying that. I truly feel like I'm in a family among kind and loving

people. It's so humbling. Some days, most days, it’s all I need. Most people just need to feel

they're a part of something bigger, to be accepted. I'm no different.

Before I go, I'm here to finish something. I'm in a village, not far from the city where I was

born. I'm on my grandad's land - the last thing that ties me to this place. I've decided to sell it.

All of it, all thirty six hectares of it. I only have half a life left. I figured, I'd sell it, have

enough to travel for ten years. London is great, but I want to go east. Closer to home,

somewhere where people aren't as self - conscious and self - obsessed...

The phone rings. It's the man helping me sell the land.

-Hello.

-Hi, how are you getting on?

-Good. What's the story? – I jump straight to the point. He senses this.

-Woah, you don't wait do you...

They hate when I jump straight to the point. People here like a soft landing. A bit of how are

you, how's the family – then, boom, the question... Do you have three thousand euros? I'm

moving house, can you help get my wardrobe down the stairs? Bad news, good news,

whatever business it is, there's beating around the bush first. I've lost that skill, obviously.

-Well, the guy is on holiday, so, we have to wait until he's back.

What do you mean? Can't someone else do it?

No, because I don't know the other guy.

“This is the guy we need” - I remind myself. We chose this guy because of connections. Fast

tracking, contacts, you name it.

-Well, how long is he going to be away for?!

Two weeks.

Two weeks?!

I've forgotten how to wait. Everything here, you have to wait. Documents, passports,

buses...you spend your life waiting. Losing your soul in a never-ending bureaucratic circle,

Kafka style...

I've forgotten how to do that. I've been away for so long, my identity changing over and over,

London reshaping it every five years. Who am I? I feel small, not like the young brave self I

used to be. I used to believe in something. I still believe in that same thing, but I don't know

how to act upon it.

What do I do? - I find myself asking him.

Just relax, go on one of those tours. Go see the canyon or spend the weekend by the lakes.

There's plenty of things to do - things are cheap here and you've got money.

He is referring to my wedding pot. You tell people one thing here and they plan it for you like

it’s their own. It’s like when I used to sit down with my parents for dinner and they’d go:

“So, when you get married ...”

I have to go, I'll keep you in the loop. – he says, hanging up.

It's a cold call drop. There was a break before he did because he was expecting a pat on the

back, an invite for a drink, some sort of me paying him in some way for the work that he's

doing. But he hasn't done any work. He's just asked a guy he knows if he's at work and the

guy said: “No, I'm on holiday.” So he’s met with silence - and that's why he hung up quickly.

Who cares...two weeks, I get this thing done, and then I'm off. Off to start the end of my life.

Phone rings again.

Jesus Christ. What now?

-Hello?

-Hi, this is Artemis, we're looking for GUU-RAN.

“Another corporate stuck up who can't bother to spell” - I thought.

-It’s Goran.

-Yes, GUU-RAN.

“Wanker” – the word pops up in my head.

-How can I help mate?

A distorted voice continues.

-We're calling from the future. Your life is in danger.

-Are you serious?

I'm getting pranked by teenagers who want to go viral.

-Listen, I've got no time for this.

-Me neither. Look to your left.

-What?

-Look... to... your left.

There's nothing but fields until the end of the horizon.

-And?

-Now watch this.

A huge ripple in the air appears.

-What the fuck?!

-I did that. I'm observing your universe. I cannot directly manifest myself in it, but our

universes can collide. That's when ripples are created.

-Who are you?

-I have no name. I presume you are asking who I was. My body was a female named

Johanna, but she died two hundred and thirty four years ago. Her consciousness was uploaded

in the collective stream. It's how humans have been living for the last four hundred years.

-So you're a woman? – I ask.

-I'm not. We've transcended our bodies. I'm a soul stored in a digital avatar called Artemis.

-You're in a video game?

-Not quite. Four hundred and fifty years ago humanity went fully digital. Some people

became numbers, others ideas, you could become a thought, a quote, an Instagram post. Most

people decided to store consciousness in the stream. The stream allows us to live forever. We

also uploaded our ancestors DNA. We have access to every living memory of human beings

since the beginning of time. We are what humans from your era closely described as God.

-Great, so there's this guy and he's on holiday, can you plant a suggestion in his mind to come

home sooner? I've got work to do.

-We do not control people’s free will. If I could, I wouldn't contact you. We need your help

GUU-RAN.

-It's Goran. So, if you're in this stream, you called it a stream right? How come you can reach

me when I'm not even there yet?

-We don't need to. This is how the ripples help us make contact with your universe. In fact

we tried reaching you thousands of times. It's a matter of luck we are talking. The ripples are

the only way that we can communicate. But there's no time now, I'll explain later. I’m

creating another one - I’ll be using bigger force. It will open a black hole - I need you to walk

through it. Think of it as a portal.

-Wow, wow, wait a second, Artemis - more like Rushing This.

-There is no time to waste. Ripples are also signals to bad forces. The longer we stay, the

faster they can track you down and kill you.

-Kill me?!

-Oh no. – Artemis sighs.

-I'm not going anywhere, thank you very much and goodbye. I hang up.

Bloody teenagers...must be some David Copperfield scam. I'm so glad I ruined their plan. I’m

sure they were planning on making a six hour prank call, for someone to then scroll to the

highlighted bits on YouTube, whilst they’re lying in bed past midnight eating Cheetos. I'm

not your weekend entertainment. It puts a smile on my face.

How do you get out of this desert anyway? Nothing but fields and a few electricity poles here

... and one long gray road. I don't even remember which way I parked my car. Must be down

the road - next to that old abandoned clinic. Better make my way.

As I start walking, from very, very far away, I hear some sort of noise. It's so low and so

distant I actually think I'm imagining things. Then the sound gets louder, it grows, and I

recognize it. It's a motor engine revving. The exhaust pipes are popping. Pow, pow, POW!

“Great, maybe I can get a lift to town.” – I think to myself.

At the end of my sight, the road bends ever so slightly downwards. As the sound nears, a few

dark figures climb out of the slope. Even from that distance, they look bizarrely scary. The

bikes are all huge metal machines and the cladding is all in black, the uniforms black, the

faces covered with masks. As they get closer I see skulls on them. They are now a hundred

meters away. The biker to the left leans back with his right arm and pulls out a semi-

automatic.

I didn't wait any longer.

Pa, praa, pa, pa, piu!!

The last bullet hits the asphalt, the others penetrating the air.

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!!

I'm running back the other way and make my way across in the fields.

Pa, pa, pakk!!

More shots firing my way, one hits a tree lined next to the road.

Open the portal! Pleease!! Open it! - I scream into the sky.

I hear them getting closer. “The portal Artemis, please!!!!!”

As it suddenly appears, I turn to take one last look. One of the bikers, a huge, tall man in a

leather vest stands at the edge of the road, just looking at me. He doesn't give chase. His look

makes me shiver. He pulls his mask down. He’s faceless.

I jump through and the only thing I see is darkness.

She moves slowly, firmly, confidently. She is used to this motion and as hundreds of times

before, she performs it at the speed she wants to.

She isn't throwing her head back or biting her lip like the porno girls do. She isn't faking it –

she’s not an actress, she’s a person really living in the moment. At one point her legs tighten

their grip around my hips. She rides me harder now and soon she has an orgasm. A streak of

red blushes across her face and she loses control of herself, the sensations so strong that it

shocks her body. Her legs start to shake and soon after that she collapses on my chest, sighing

and breathing heavily. After a few intimate moments, she gives me a look. She knows I have

to go and fight. Soon, I’m standing behind a door in a dark basement, wrapping bandages

around my knuckles. I can hear the roar of a crowd behind the wooden door.

The air is thick and humid. It’s hot in Thailand. It’s where I’ve been living for the last twenty

years. After my self-exile from the country, the regime started hunting down dissenting

voices who were protesting against the government. I left for Turkey, then Cyprus, Israel,

Mongolia and finally Thailand. I thought the stint won't last more than six months. “The

regime will fall one of these days and I will be back, doing my job and being with my friends

and family.” – I naively thought. Not only did the regime not fall, but it became stronger -

and with more resources at their disposal they tracked me down in each and every place,

forcing me to live completely off the grid. I quit my legal job, burnt my documents and

became an illegal alien. I started picking up work in small, rural villages - chopping wood or

gathering herbs. I'd roll into a new town every Sunday to steal food and clothes from the

markets. If I can't manage to steal anything, the hunger would make me fight in small

underground muay-thai clubs where the reward was usually a bowl of fish soup. That’s how I

met Pho, my new boss. The door opens, the crowd greets me with cheers. I step into the ring,

my opponent is tipsy. “Easy day.” – I think to myself. Not long after the fight is announced, I

take three steps - the last a very light one on the toes of my left foot, from which I propel into

a roundhouse kick straight into the opponent's ribs.

My rival bends down in sharp pain immediately, raising his hand and waving away his

willingness to fight. The eager crowd, now displeased, starts swearing at me for ending the

fight too soon. I don’t pay them any mind. I’m too hungry. I jump into the crowd and head to

a table where food is being served. Like an animal out of a cage, I yank a bowl of soup from

the chef’s hands and devour it, then take another one. A well-dressed man approaches me.

It’s Pho.

“You make Pho Thao a rich man” – the man says to me, grinning, then hands me some

money. I thank him... in Thai. I’ve become a fluent speaker ... even my new wife, the

woman resting on my chest is Thai. A whole new temporary - turned permanent life. Then I

see a ripple. The angry chef pushes me as I step into the portal. Darkness.

-What the hell was that?!

-Guuran, can you hear me?

-I can't see anything.

-You're in a black hole.

-Sure...let’s just pretend that’s normal. Why was in Thailand?

-I need you to forget about that.

-What?

-That was a mirror universe. Every time you jump through a black hole, your particles split.

-I thought you’d die instantly?

-Scientists of your time nearly got this right. Black holes do kill you, but not instantly – over

time. It’s a paradox. Time and space doesn’t exist in a black hole – yet it needs time to

recognize your particles, because it works in patterns, similar to algorithms.

-What does that have to do with me fighting in a damp basement?

-Well, when your particles split, you create another universe. The universe is built in billions

of patterns. They all communicate with each other on an ethereal level. Your DNA becomes

part of a new pattern, but because it isn’t whole, the rest of the sequence gets filled out by

dark matter, the very fabric of the universe. Dark matter is not real and so that universe isn’t

real. That’s why I need you to ignore it.

-I was looking forward to having abs.

I look at my jiggly belly, then remember I ate a whole tub of ben & jerry’s this morning. Oh,

the guilt.

-You’re not taking this seriously enough. We’ve had difficulties trying to find you because

someone is erasing you, your family, your people, half the world! Millions and millions of

streams are being lost, their consciousness disappearing. Someone wants to switch us all off.

-And I can help how exactly?

-There are places where the DNA is kept, where all the memories, living or dead remain

intact, even if you delete them in the stream. We call them shields or points of light. We want

to understand why whoever is trying to erase us can't access them - and to store all the

remaining data in it while we do. Your granddad's land is one of them.

-Oh my god... that's why the bikers couldn't get into the field!

-Do you see my point now?

-Yes, I can ...you’re just using me to get what you want. I thought I’m some sort of

superhero, but no, turns out you want my things rather than me. Just like my ex.

-Guuran...

-And for the last time, it’s Goran! G-O-R-A-N.

-There's no need to experience negative value emotion. You will meet the love of your life in

twelve years and eleven months.

-At forty six? You shouldn't have told me that, what if I don't meet her now because I'm

conscious of it?

-There's five thousand, two hundred and thirty seven scenarios where you are conscious of

it...and you still meet her.

-Wow, love really does find a way.

-It’s a mathematical reality.

-You sure know how to make people feel good.

-And you do play a part in this. Only the original ones can access their ancestral DNA. You'll

also have access to memories in the stream at a given location.

-Wait, if you’re calling from the future, I can’t access the stream right? I’m just a memory

that you’re talking to. I mean, I’d need to be physically there – next to you or to your avatar,

so you can hook me up or something.

-There is a shortcut. We need you to jump through a few more portals until we find a memory

of yours. Then we’ll map your frequency and sync it with the stream. Then you’ll have access

to everything.

-You mean I get to meet my great-great-great-great grandma or something?

-Everyone. Everyone that in one way or another helped make you who you are, since the

beginning of time. Even if they have zero point one percent of shared DNA...We’re talking

millions of people.

-So where do we start?

-We’re hoping to find some clues back on your granddad’s land. We need to find out what's

causing the shield to work, how to enter it and store our data there. We need you... Goran.

-Ha! Okay, fine... Still kind of wish I was the fighter. Let's go Johanna! I'm ready to meet my

makers!