Every time a mosquito sings in my ear, it launches a domino effect that only ends with me drinking beer with a zebra in my village Elahem. I have been trying to crack the meaning of that encounter but with no success.
Some details of the drinking venue remain the same: yellow wall, 5 frames on the wall with variants of Hannibal crossing the Alps with 19 solar panels, a four-eyed bartender wondering why I have no neck, and an old man sitting in the corner, quietly observing everything that’s happening. By the time I wonder who the old man is, I’m drunk, unable to see through the fog that’s suddenly filling the room.
Some details of the drinking venue keep changing: in one episode, the zebra has green stripes instead of black. In another, the old “man” is an old “lady”. In another, I’m drinking wine. In another, I have no shoes.
When I was old, I used to plan every detail in life to remember everything by the time I become an embryo. I was never a fan of spontaneity. I always got in trouble with at least 80% of myselves. I believe that some remnants of that old version of myself still haunt me in this chaos of uncertainty, especially around which questions to ask.
The journey from the mosquito song to the bar takes about 93 hours. In the first episode, I worked from home as a data consultant, from which I got a recommendation to work for a non-profit in Belize. The work required that I collect some data that could help the company know how far “uneducated” people can go in predicting their future, whether there is an absolute year they are physiologically unable to think beyond. I designed the questionnaire and collected the data, and some distracting thoughts led to a question along the way: “What kind of food would time eat in the event of a supernova?”
In the process of finding an answer, using pen and paper and talking to the wisest from each community I could encounter, I stumbled upon three 3 hyenas heading to the airport to catch a flight. They gave me coordinates to the man who had an answer to every question that has been and will ever be asked by any breathing being. I was excited as I was following my trail until I suddenly found myself drinking beer with Brooks, my Zebra friend.
In every loop, I lost exactly 40% of my entire non-dualistic self, except for awareness. For every loss, I wished to break off the loop, but every thought pattern seemed designed to build another loop, slowly sending me toward infinity. It was when I was about to cross at 12 nm3 in volume that I became instead excited. After all, I thought the answer may be written at Planck Length despite the fact that I was on a one-way trip, at least it seemed. Nonetheless, that curiosity came with a question: How do I really know that I’m losing 40% of my mind if my mind is both the observer and the subject observed? How sure am I about intra-loop information transmission? I started wondering whether I was blinded by my own curiosity, trapped inside the mind it was trying to control. I couldn’t even trust my math.
Until today, I still don’t know where or when I am. All the loops that I remember did not transmit information with each other, so it was never an easy task to optimize my efforts to break out. When I try to presents data collected from each individual loop with my remaining selves, we mostly end up disagreeing a lot, sometimes getting physical. I couldn’t tell them that I’m making these details public, but I’m sure we are fighting as you are reading this piece.
In my quest to find my alternate self, I’m now using another strategy. The question the guy had “What kind of food would time eat in the event of a supernova?” could be the clue that pieces together what I need to locate him and pull him back from whatever state he is in. That question, combined with tracking down the old man, could provide some insights.
As a Plan B, we may consider breeding a replacement. Last time we lost one of us, he ended up fighting with a wormhole and fell into an endless tunnel filled with cats. If that’s where both of them are, now that would be an interesting adventure. I still cannot believe that observation would be useful in saving the mind itself, or lack thereof.
