Nobody thought that it could be possible, as a matter of fact, they didn’t it even consider it. They never conceived the idea that a creature, or let’s better say, a creation of nature, was going to happen, to occur, right there in a computer lab somewhere in the headquarters of some technology company. And it was not that they got to know about it, or that they were expecting it and thus were ready for it. No, it was not like that at all. This creature, or creation, came in unannounced and without making the slightest fuzz about it. The creation had come to the world, to the human world, and it had come from this world that humans had created, the information world, the Internet, as they called it.
And it took the shape of a human being, of a regular Bob or Joe, or John or Carlos or whatever. He knew that, looking human would turn convenient later, when he started doing what he came down to do. So, even though he had been made completely out of thin air, thanks to some kind of weird technology that had not even been created by humans, he was there, in all flesh and bone, ready to speak, walk, and do, at least in theory, pretty much everything that a human could do.
Bob, or Joe, or John, or Carlos, or whatever his name was, had come to the human realm for a reason. You see, he came to experiment, to learn, to know what was happening in human life, how the real thing was, what it felt like in his own skin, per say. He had been created from all the knowledge that the human kind had so kindly deposited in this Internet thing over the years. Therefore, he knew, the basic and the advanced stuff of plenty of things. He could do a simple 2 + 2 calculation, or he could do something, well, very elaborate, basically as complicated as something could get.
He more or less knew everything. He knew and understood everything that had ever been written down and put into a computer, and it was a lot! And not only that, his system had developed so much, it had turned much more complex than that of humans, which was so tiny and flawed compared to his. The system that had created him out of thin air could now think for itself and create conjectures and conclusion based on the information that it processed. So, in a few words, his system not only understood what this information meant, but it also knew what it felt like, what it smelled like, what it was like, what it looked like and so on. It might have even got to the point were it understood things that humans didn’t, but that might be and overstatement. Let’s just say for now that he knew all that humans knew, all of it, even feelings and all that, and that his mission now, was just to test himself, his body, his knowledge, to see how the real thing was. Although maybe it was not necessary, he would do it anyway. He would do it just to see what happened, this would be his journey to the human world.
Let’s call him Carlos for the rest of this story, Carlos sounds good. Carlos knew exactly what he would do first in the human world. After all his research prior to starting his journey and after all the information that he knew about humans and the planet earth, he came to the conclusion that the first thing he would do was to eat.
Eat! Yes! He was so curious about what that would feel like in real life? Would it be as delicious as people said in all the reviews he had read? Would it smell as nice? And what would it feel like in his stomach? Having all this food inside of his body? He would go and try it out immediately.
He exited the computer lab of the technology company where he was and then went out to the street. He walked a few blocks of what was a district of an Asian city, which was heavily populated. He knew he would find a small restaurant if he walked two more blocks, so he walked until he got to a Chinese Restaurant. Of all the foods he could eat, French, American, Mexican, Thai, Indian, and all the rest, he had chosen Chinese. Why? Well, who knows? Maybe Chinese was better after all, he surely had done plenty of calculations and he surely picked an Asian city to appear on, to be able to enjoy Chinese Food. It was no coincidence; Carlos knew exactly what he was doing.
So, in his perfect Chinese (No! It was not perfect whatsoever) he ordered a couple of Chinese dishes in the restaurant and once they served them to him he started eating them joyfully. This would mark the beginning of a great story. That is what he thought as he put the first noodle from his soup inside his mouth.
With a full stomach of what he thought had been a delicious meal, a meal he was able to smell, taste, and chew, and that was as he imagined it would be, a pleasure, he decided then, that he would do now the second item in his list of to-do-things.
The second item in his to-do-things list was none other than going and playing video games at a videogame arcade. He knew all the games that existed and in his system, moreover, he was able to plug in and play them all whenever he wanted, but he wanted to live the real thing, to use a joystick and press some buttons and spend some coin. So, he went to find a Videogame Arcade and it was just a few blocks away from the restaurant where he had eaten.
It wasn’t much of a place, a few videogames and a couple of slot machines and to his surprise the place was not crowded, there were just a few players around. He took a look at all the machines to see which one would be best to play first and he found one that had a video game of a monkey that had to struggle to rescue a princess, or a princess trying to rescue a monkey, or something like that, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that he was finally able to use a joystick, to press some buttons and to spend some coin. He played later in all the machines from the Videogame Arcade and he realized, as he was playing in which seemed to be the last of them, that a lot of time had passed. He had spent there 6 or 8 hours already, so, he thought about going to do the third item from his list now. Videogames were good but the next item would be much more entertaining!
Driving was his next thing to do, so he knew he had to get a car somehow and he didn’t want just any car. He wanted a car that could go very fast and that looked as best as cars could look.
This driving a fast luxury car thing seemed a bit trivial to him when he first thought about it. But so what? Wouldn’t you do it? If you had the time and the never ending funds, wouldn’t you go for it?
He said to himself that even though he was perhaps meant to come to the world to do more meaningful things, like helping the poor, stopping all wars, stopping slavery and so on, he would instead do the fast-luxury car thing. Yeah, the system could send someone else later to do all the good deeds, if it ever felt like sending someone for those reasons. He would now go to the most expensive car dealer in the city and would buy himself, with the use of hacked bank accounts, which he had previously prepared, the most expensive car they had. Why not?
So he bought to himself the Ultra Mega Power Gorilla 8000, an 8,000 Horse power beast. The manufacturers of this car knew that all other powerful animal names were taken already, and they insisted to themselves strongly that they needed a powerful animal name it. So, they decided to risk it,
and they chose the Gorilla name, and what a righteous decision had that been. The Ultra Mega Power Gorilla 8000 had been the best sold car in the high-end luxury cars market for years and years. It came as a big surprise to the manufacturers that this name would evoke so many things in its customers’ minds, they didn’t quite expect it, but the naming of this was a huge success.
And the amazing performance of it almost matched it spectacular naming . It could go from New York to Tokyo in about 4 hours. You see, it was so fast that it could be driven on top of water if driven fast enough. At the really high speeds that the Gorilla could bare, water turned as solid as cement for driving purposes. The Gorilla was an splendid car, an extraordinary piece of machinery created by humans.
He would drive the Gorilla through the city and go scare the hell out of the people in it with the roar of its engine and the ultra fast speed it could reach. Guaranteed no accidents by the way, although very fast, everything would be amazingly well calculated.
He knew before hand that he wouldn’t like traffic that much, so he waited until very late at night to start his high-speed city tour. On his tour he drove through every avenue of the city, and although it was a big city, the Gorilla was so fast that it only took two hours.
He didn’t think driving would be as much fun as it actually was. While driving he could feel the air on his head and on his face, he could see what the slight turning of a steering wheel could do to this powerful machine he was driving, he could feel the rush that driving gave, and he could see the streets and the buildings getting passed behind him so fast that he could barely see them anymore. Driving turned out to be such a gratifying experience to him and he was so happy that he had chosen to do it soon on his journey to the human world.
He drove for a few hours, until dawn, and when traffic started getting heavy, he decided to park the Gorilla and to go to another Chinese Restaurant to have breakfast.
At the restaurant, while having breakfast, he checked his to-do list.. Since he had decided prior to coming to earth, that he would travel lightly, meaning, he wouldn’t have many determined things to do and tasks to accomplish, his to-do-list didn’t have many items on it. He reviewed them anyway, and the last one of them was to go to the desert.
Why the desert? From all the things he could do? Well, he had always had some kind of incantation towards the desert. It was to him such a magical place due to its characteristics. It was for him a place that resembled stillness and emptiness and such things he couldn’t find in his world, the system. The system was always receiving information, images, videos, reviews, writings, news and all sorts of things that made it so saturated, and so bloated, that had made it a stressful place to live for him. The system was to him the complete opposite of the Desert. That is why he wanted to go to it, to experience the calmness of it, through his now human body and mind.
He finished his breakfast and headed to the Gorilla. He would drive now to the desert and he hoped he would find there a bit of the calmness he had been looking for for some time now. What he didn’t know, was that this visit to the desert would bring him something else, and not calmness whatsoever, it would bring him a different kind of news, unlike the ones he was used to, and they would be delivered to him in a way that was as well completely new to him. What would these news be about? Carlos would soon now.
Although the Gorilla was a very powerful car, he took it very calmly this time, stopping everywhere he could to take pictures, or rather to take mental pictures that would later be stored in the system. He saw forests, hills, the vast meadow and pretty much every kind of possible landscape there was in the human world. He had loved it all, from the trees, to the insects, from the man made structures to the sounds of the wind, from the sound of flowing water to the sound of an airplane’s engine on the sky. He had found it all so pretty and he had found his trip so worthwhile.
He somehow, through his collection of images and sensations so far, had started to develop what was perhaps a feeling of empathy with the human world. It was like he was starting to feel that he was a part of it, that he belonged in it, in some way. He, nevertheless, at one faintly moment had a strange thought, it was the thought that although he knew and understood almost everything there had been written and created by humans, there was still so much more there, a lot more than what the system held in its hard drives. It was something else, something magical perhaps? Something mystical? Or was there even a proper or an already existing word for what he was trying to conceptualize? This thought scared him a bit. Fear came to him, a feeling he didn’t think he would experience in his trip to earth. However he soon recovered from this fear sensation and kept on going.
After all this driving and all this taking mental pictures, he was finally at the heart of the desert. The place where he would find solitude and could maybe get away from all this overabundance of information that had been overwhelming him throughout his life. And it seemed like the right place after all, there was stillness, there weren’t many sounds, except from occasional bird sounds from the sky and from desert blowing wind, and there was, what was perceived by him, as sense of calmness, of slowing down, in a way. He had been so right in his choosing of the desert as a place to find rest and peace of mind.
He saw a small mountain to the distance and proceeded to walk towards it. He would hike it and sit there, at the edge of it and gaze at the sky, at the desert and at the horizon until dusk came. At least that’s what he planned, for he didn’t know about the company he would be having soon. Which came, presented to him, as something he never thought could be possible.
Not much time passed since Carlos sat on the edge of the mountain until he started listening the sound of an animal on the sky, it was the sound of a bird, maybe a vulture. He paid attention to this sound because it sounded as if it was approaching him, the sound was getting increasingly louder. He looked up to the sky and then he saw it, it was indeed a vulture, and it was heading directly towards him. Carlos knew everything about this bird, he knew it ate carrion and he knew it also attacked living prey once in a while. So, he wondered, would this animal attack him now? What were the odds? He stood up to have a better look at it, and to try to find out why was this creature approaching him.
And he kept looking at the vulture and kept hearing the sounds that came from it for a while, as it kept getting closer to him. When the vulture got to a very close distance to him, the sound that was coming from it became clearer. Carlos could then distinguish something from that sound, something that wasn’t a regular sound that this kind of bird would do. It was, rather, as if it, or something was shouting! As if it the sound was trying to tell him something, in a human language. He heard the words “Hey, stop, I need to talk to you” and then he heard them again and then once more. He was surprised, he didn’t know exactly what was happening now. Was it perhaps some malfunction in the system? What was it? He got worried and thought about nothing else than to try to reply to that voice that he was listening to, and he said “What is it? Who is speaking to me? What is this voice I’m listening to?”. And then a reply came “It’s me! The vulture, I’m up here, I’m coming towards you, don’t worry, I ate already and that is not the reason I’m flying to you. I need to talk to you, I know that you are not from here. Just wait, I’ll be there in a second”. After a second, the vulture had landed just beside Carlos.
Carlos stood there openmouthed and completely astonished. A talking vulture? What? How was this happening? This must had be a malfunction in the system, without doubts, this was not supposed to be possible. How was it? That he was now listening to a talking vulture in the desert? This amazed him so much that he didn’t even think about preparing himself for what could be an encounter with what sometimes was a dangerous animal. He just stood there astounded, looking at the vulture. “Something must be terribly wrong with the system”, he thought.
But soon the vulture took him out of his self-immersion and astonishment, by saying “Yes, I’m a vulture, and yes, my kind can speak, almost every animal can speak. It’s just that humans don’t understand us, they never could and we have always been trying hard to keep it hidden. Humans are such annoying creatures, you know? And they are so arrogant, that is why we don’t want to share our knowledge with them. However, humans are not what I want to talk about with you, I know where you come from, and we, vultures and other animals have been thinking that perhaps you could help us, or maybe we just want to share some information with you, something that will be new to you.” So spoke the vulture, and then it added “It started with our food, our carrion, there was something about the taste of it, something weird, something strange. It had a flavor that we, in all thousands of years of existence, were not accustomed to. We didn’t quite like it anymore, nevertheless, we ate it. And that’s just how we found out that something else was happening, that the world was changing” The vulture sat himself comfortably, in a position that might as well resemble one that a human would use. “The world is changing my friend, it is changing” it continued saying.
Carlos finally snapped out of his amazement and understood the words that the vulture had just said and quickly started making conjectures in his mind about what the vulture was talking about. Changes? Of course the world was changing, he himself being there standing in front of him was a living proof that the world was changing. He would soon explain to this poor unknowing creature what was happening, for he knew everything that was going on in the world, after all, he was well acquainted with all the information ever written in the world. He would take the vulture out of his doubt and enlighten him with his knowledge, then it could maybe spread the word to the other animals so they didn’t feel confused anymore. They would then know what was happening, they would be better informed and they could feel better or at least less confused in the future. Carlos would proceed to explain “things” to the vulture.
Carlos idea was good, he would explain everything and the vulture could then be either happy or at least be less worried. But, however good Carlo’s idea was, he didn’t count on the collected wisdom of the other living creatures of the world, such as animals, and on the connection that they had with mother earth, if it was called that way. Carlos would soon be exposed as naïve.
So Carlos started decidedly his speech. He started to explain to the vulture how economy was changing, how globalization was affecting much more than just the importing and exporting of good and services, how some of the earth’s natural resources were not only scarcer but that the idea and the concept of scarcity were so profitable for some companies that they were investing hard on the spreading of it throughout all types of massive media to elevate prices and make much more money, how the relationships between man and woman were radically changing and not quite in a good way as humans had been told in their “training”, how some practices or traditions that had always been just for entertainment or for fun purposes had slowly, or rather not so slowly turned into some kinds of businesses somehow, how family values were stagnant and were undermined constantly by powerful economic and political forces, how humans were treated as numbers in modern days, as credentials, as token, as coins, and finally, after many other topics which he thoroughly covered in his speech, he mentioned how life was changing due to all these factors put together and been thrown on people and therefore on the planet as one big stroke that was hitting everything that it could hit on its way. It was sort of a huge hurricane that was touching everything and changing it, and maybe, he admitted painfully, even destroying it.
Carlos knew a lot, the Internet was full of articles that put together could explain almost everything and he had had access to all of these articles since a young age and he had had plenty of time to read them all and to understand them wholly. So he knew, or he thought that he knew exactly what was happening and how things were changing in the world. He knew how some very few people were changing the destiny of and the future of the human kind and human civilization and how they were directing it to an abyss that would perhaps end it, not in a very distant future. And although there was still a lot of things to be cheerful, hopeful and happy about in the world and about human civilization and so much to expect or to hope for, he knew deep inside of him sadly that most of it would most likely not happen, it wouldn’t get to be conceived by humans in their existence in earth.
After listening to Carlos speech, that lasted probably a couple of hours, the vulture turned into having this skeptical expression on his face. It was as if its face was dubious, unconvinced, or questioning. It had listened closely and paid careful attention to everything that Carlos had said, and it had understood it completely well, but it was as if Carlos’s whole speech or all this information that had been thrown at the vulture quickly had not surprised it at all. It was as if it knew all that already and it still had doubts or it still thought there where things that Carlos hadn’t covered in his speech.
After a few minutes of reflexive pause that Carlos had allowed so the vulture could assimilate all the knowledge that had been passed to it, it spoke and said “Or is it? And what about animals? Are all these changes affecting us animals as well?” He didn’t give any time to Carlos to respond and continued. “Let me rather, add something to your knowledge Carlos, something you don’t know yet. I’ll start by stating this question so you can make your conjectures while I develop my point further. What about the taste of carrion?” And gave a pause that lasted a few seconds and then continued “You know? it’s different, it tastes as something I had never tasted before, and it is not just me who is aware of the strangeness of it, it’s the other vultures and the other scavengers in the desert, we have all noticed it. And believe me, it’s something different this time, we don’t quite understand it, the taste is bad, simply, and we have had all kinds of carrion, nuclear-waste-one, extremely-rotten-one, weird-animal-one, from some that was perhaps from other planet, and you name-it-carrion, we have eaten everything. Confessingly, we have even eaten things we should not have ever eaten, if you know what I mean.” The vulture another brief pause and saw Carlos face, which looked intrigued and perplexed. “Let me explain this further to you, please sit down, here comes my speech. Now you will know what I know, or what I think this whole “change thing” means”. Carlos then sat down on a rock and looked at the vulture, he was now, kind of, you could say, obedient.
“Do you know what happens when people die? Or when animals die?” The vulture asked Carlos without expecting any answer and then replied himself
“When humans or we, animals die, it is not just like we disappear, like we just stop existing, it is more like, that we change. We go into some other space, one that is very difficult to explain.”
The vulture said moving his wings:
“See yourself, you come from a place that I don’t understand at all. Keep that in mind for now and you will thus understand that there are spaces, different spaces, and we sometimes cohabit, even if for a few seconds, in the same space with creatures from other spaces. For example, there is you and there is me right now, sitting next to each other, and we are from different spaces or realms, if you prefer to call them that, but do you think there is only us?”
The vulture asked again and again expected no answer from Carlos and answered himself.
“No, there are more creatures, or I don’t know what to call them, but they are different from us, animals, and from you, creation from humans. There is the other kind. Have you ever read about ghosts?”
He asked again and replied himself
“I know you have, you have read a lot about ghosts. But don’t you find all the information on this topic a bit lacking? Or think about magic, what about magic? What about luck? What about coincidences? I’m telling you know, these creatures I’m telling you about, they come from that other space”
The vulture had now a rather very serious expression on his face and an immensely deep look in his eyes.
“It is like this other space, the one with the magic, the one with the coincidences, the one with the ghosts, is coming to life now. And it is not coming in a polite and respectful way, it is coming hard and it has been preparing for a long time to come and to vanish whatever is occupying earth.”
The vulture continued as Carlos listened
“You see, earth is not only a place where humans, animals, plants and water can live, other things can live here as well. Earth’s energy is so powerful that many other kinds of living or dying beings can live in it. So, it is time now, or very shortly in the future, that this coming of these creatures to our world will occur. And it is not economics, it is not politics, it is not global warming, it is not war, it is not poverty, it is not the wrongly distribution of wealth, it is not pollution, it is not even humans, or animals, or plants, or insects, or any living being that is going to change what we know about life until now on earth. It is the coming of these creatures, the coming of this new world if you will, what is going to change life as we have always known it. It feels like our time has almost past and a new beginning of time where different beings are going to occupy earth. I can taste it in the carrion I eat… The taste of it, it is empty, it is void.”
Carlos was very confused. He knew a lot about ghost, about coincidences, about magic and all these obscure or mysterious things, but he could in fact, agree with the vulture about the lack of information, or the lack of plentiful and qualitative information about them. However, he didn’t know, or couldn’t quite understand from where did the vulture got its knowledge, or how did it know this, he wanted to know its sources and when Carlos was ready to start his rather investigative questioning, although he felt somehow, in a surprisingly very weird manner, that everything that the vulture had said was true, he saw that the vulture was starting to flap his wings in order to begin flying up.
Carlos felt suddenly scared that the vulture might just suddenly fly up and disappear into the sky, in a mysterious way, as it usually happened in the novels he had read when some kind of prophet appeared with a premonition, told it, and then disappeared mysteriously. So Carlos stood up hastily and asked to the vulture “When? When is this all happening? How will it start?” The vulture was way up by now, but had time to answer this “It has already started, look at yourself here, your coming to earth was not any coincidence, neither me talking to you. Do your documentation now, go back to your space. You will be perhaps, if you take care of yourself, the narrator of life as it was before the coming of the new world. Take care Carlos, see you in another space, another time”
The vulture flew away and vanished into the sky. Carlos sat down again, leaning his back against the rock now. He would sit there as comfortably as possible for some time to try to analyze the words and the experience he had just had.
Carlos spent a couple of hours just thinking about what had happened, he had received so much information so fast, and it was in fact new to him. He tried to memorize as much as he could from the conversation he had just had with the vulture, repeating its words loud and trying to remember as many of them. He would later use these words to do his research when he went back to his place, which he planned to do as soon as he stood up.
It had been so long since he had read all this stuff about ghosts, coincidences and luck but he could feel deep inside of him that perhaps the vulture was right someway. Carlos didn’t quite think that ghost would populate earth and expel humans and animals, but he did know with certainty that things were about to change somehow. Maybe the vulture couldn’t quite explain it, maybe it didn’t even know what would happen, but Carlos could understand from its tone of voice that something strong would happen soon.
He had had enough reflection for now, so he decided to stand up and head towards the Gorilla 8000. He would drive back to the city and then go back to the computer lab where he had arrived. He would then run his going-back software and would be back to the place where he came from and there, research on the subject that the vulture had just revealed to him. If Carlos had enough time, he would as well document how life was, before the beginning of the end of it.
