The Decipherment

PART 4

  Magic, supernatural phenomena, miracles – these were things way out of Isabelle Aimery’s belief. All she believed in was the one true power, that of the powerful mind, which filled one’s aura with the colors of its imaginations and ideas. That was what made things seem like ‘supernatural’ or ‘magical’. That had been her belief . . . until now.

  The sound of the Moonlight sonata was still resonating in the cold atmosphere around her, but everything else had changed. The whole emptiness and darkness had given rise to what Isabelle concluded were her thoughts.

  First, she couldn’t see what she was walking on; now the floor was of glass, tiles of colored glass which threw off glows of white. It looked like a nebula with many stars in it. The reds and greens and blues and yellows, all seemed to be blended inside the glass, as if on the other side of it. And then the tiny specks of white dots made it look all the more beautiful.

  This is exactly the kind of floor I wanted for to be in my home.

  Isabelle always wanted to make at least one of the rooms in her house to be made of a colored glass floor. And she often thought about it; imagining it in her mind how pretty it would look and what it be like to walk on it, like walking on top of a nebula.

  She walked slowly and carefully, all the while looking at how all the colors were intermingled in the glass, and cautious as well of it breaking. It didn’t even as much as show a tiny sign of a crack as she walked briskly on it. As she moved forward, every inch of the dark and void evaporated. Isabelle’s jaw dropped open with shock as she saw what was left behind.

  Unlike the images of her memories and dreams hanging in midair, there appeared holes, large whirling holes – and they were not empty. Each of them had images whirling in them too. They looked like portals into other dimensions, except that the dimensions seemed to be moving and shifting within them.

  Isabelle felt her head was going to explode. First the memories, then the dreams, and now this . . . Was she going crazy? Was she still asleep in her study on the couch and was dreaming all this? Had someone drugged her? But that was not possible; she lived alone. Had she taken some medication lately that might have lulled her into such a deep sleep that she was dreaming all this?

  More questions filled her mind she had no answers to.

  But how come I would know I was dreaming while I was still asleep?

  She had barely thought of it when she realized it.

  Lucid dreaming!

  She was aware of the term lucid dreaming: dream awareness and control, referring to a dream in which the dreamer is aware of his/her dreaming state and can change things in the dream, meaning that he/she has control over the dream. It is considered a conscious process due to the dreamer’s control and ability of manipulating the imagery of the dream environment.

  But it still did not make sense. Assuming it was lucid dreaming after all, it would not give her access to her memories and to whatever these things were that had just appeared out of nowhere, swirling in strange holes which seemed to have no other end. Walking and thinking all the while, Isabelle reached one of the holes that were the first to appear. The moving and shifting imagery in it stopped whirling and formed clear shapes and figures, as if all it needed was her presence there to clear its fog.

  It was like a small oval portrait, depicting a sunset at seashore, with seagulls flying low under clouds streaked with long caramel rays of the setting sun. The foam rising from the waves splashed on the edges of the sea and came to rest on the sand. A small cliff was also visible by the seaside; its pointy rocks nestled upon one another. It was a peaceful sight, a sight Isabelle only thought of whenever she needed something to comfort her and give her inner peace.

  But how can that be?

  Does this really mean I’m looking into one of my thoughts?

  She knew it was too absurd; to actually see one’s own thoughts. But everything she had seen lately had been more than absurd. Suddenly, a single word came into her mind that she did not want to contemplate.

  Subconsciousness!

  Dream, thoughts, and memories . . . the three basic elements of the mind’s subconscious state!

  Does that mean I’m in my . . . mind?!

  She couldn’t believe what she was thinking. She had surely gone insane.

  But what other explanation is there?

  You saw your memories, then your dreams and now your thoughts?

  This IS your subconsciousness! You just don’t know yet because your consciousness is mixed with it.

  But then there was the whole coming-to-existence thing. Everything she thought of was coming to life before her on its own. How could she explain that?

  It’s YOUR subconsciousness, remember? You have control over the world around you. It is part of your lucid dreaming, along with your conscious mind emerging into it!

  Part of her wanted to believe what her mind was telling her, and part of her just wanted to let go and let reality deal with it. But she couldn’t just let go – not if it was her own subconsciousness she was stick in.

  It was times like this, when she did not know what to do and where to go, that she thought of the view of the seaside and the setting sun. It would make her calm from the inside and help her think straight. Sometimes she wished she could just stay there forever, in that distant place of where only the sound of the seagulls and the waves caressed her mind and the only light was that from the setting sun washing the hazy clouds with the last of its rays. She wanted to feel the freedom of being somewhere she liked, somewhere she could let it all go for even a second, forget about the whole world will all its bitterness and let the peace and solitariness be her only companions. To walk on the wet sand with the waves hitting her feet, to sit there on the cliff and through rocks in the sea, with the cold sea breeze touching her face – that was what she longed for. And right now, she was glad that view, that thought was right before her, giving her that same peace and solitude as she stared deeply into it.

  She willed herself to look away and not let her mind drift away to that comfort. She needed all her concentration here, on the present - on her unconsciousness.

  It is often said that we can never fathom the depth of our thoughts or understand just how complicated they are . . . but now Isabelle wasn’t so sure about that. She had all her thoughts before her, moving and shifting just like she saw them in her mind’s eye. From her oldest and deepest to the most bizarre of cognitions – it was all there.

  From the many portals around her, one specifically caught her eye. It was one of her thoughts about her parents. Their smiling faces looking up to her, before the last time they went to their archeological trip, was a memory as fresh in her mind as it could be; and a recurrent thought as well. Thinking of her parents as happy as they were made her happy too, since it was just their memory she could live on. Now, as she stared at her mother’s deep set brown eyes and her father’s warm smile, she could feel that old welt of pain and loss in her heart reopen.

  Be strong. You know you can not bring them back.

  She knew better than to cry over something she couldn’t change, though the hurt of being alone haunted her over and over again. Instead, she could make her parents proud by fulfilling the dreams they had for her bright future.

  As she buried the thought deep in her mind – as she always did, the portal also disappeared from before her. She remembered how she could control everything here. It was starting to make sense, now that she realized she was in her subconscioussness. She had always believed in the concept of our thoughts having some physical effect on the outside world, especially the ones we give rise to from our subconscious mind. Maybe that was the reason everything she thought of came real; her subconscioussness was emerging into reality from her consciousness.

  My God. I really am in my mind.

  She could hardly believe it herself, but it was the only logical explanation before her right now.

  The one peculiar thing th
at Isabelle noticed about the portals was that not all of them were lighted. Some were glowing brightly, while some were dark and sinister, casting a gloomy look. For instance, the portal with her thought of her parents was glowing brightly in fact; it was the brightest of all. The one with her thought of the beach was also lighted. But there were other ones that were not only without a glow around them, but were in black-and-white colors. Isabelle focused on one particular one and found that it held one of her negative thoughts. Then she realized.

  White for positive and black for negative, meaning that the glowing and colorful portals hold my positive thinking while the dark ones hold my negative thinking.

  Interesting . . .

  She didn’t want to think negatively, fearing it would become real since everything she thought of came into existence. She tried concentrating on all the positive thoughts. It wasn’t surprising for her to find most of the portals filled with thoughts that she was always lost in: codes. Many portals glowed with strange looking numbers and codes; shapes and dots forming into numbers, large angles dividing into smaller ones making decipherable texts – it was like a dictionary of codes. She was amazed at how she had filled her mind with the world of numbers and codes.

  Even the oldest ones that her father had taught her at a young age were there in her thoughts. Every code was breaking itself into decipherable text just the way she had thought about it in the distant past. Changing the places of digits, putting them in different orientations, using symbolical techniques to form words – it was just the way she thought while breaking a code. She was looking at her own mind work before her.

  Among all the green and black portals of codes moving here and there, Isabelle saw a bunch of her other thoughts too. One portal showed an old man with large glasses wearing an overcoat that had codes and mathematical formulae carved on it. Mr. Boz, her professor for quantum cryptography, was one of the influential people Isabelle had met during her lifetime. His real name was Emit Heep, but he had changed it to Charles Emit Dickens as he was a big fan of Charles Dickens. Dickens was nicknamed as ‘Boz’. Hence he nicknamed himself Boz as well.

  Mr. Boz had been what might be called an ‘out of this world’ person. He was much devoted to his job. Codes and numbers were his whole world, as if his whole life depended on them. It was all he thought of. He had a theory that the whole universe was a complex piece of matter sitting on top of another more complex world of codes and numbers – codes we penny humans couldn’t understand . . . codes created by God.And he also believed that the stars were in fact the dots jumping off from the codes and formulae. Other students made fun of him, but Isabelle admired him a lot. She found his ‘encoded world’ theory quite interesting. And due to his love for cryptology and symbolism, he had codes carved onto his overcoat that we wore to the university every day, even during summer.

  Mr. Boz was an epileptic, but he never let his illness get in the way of his intelligence. He always tried to create genius from his infirmity, exclaiming how Edgar Allan Poe, the great master and creator of the gothic fiction genre, too suffered from epilepsy yet he always made genius and experiences from his illness in the form of his amazing poems and stories. It was something that Isabelle found intriguing of all, of how the mind can even create positive aspects out of something that would otherwise hinder its abilities.

  Isabelle had been very close to him. He was like a mentor to her. But just like she had lost most of the good things in life, so did she loose Mr. Boz.

  Once, when he didn’t come to class, everyone got curious since he never was never absent and so punctual that during the 15 years he had been teaching at the university, he had never been late. When Isabelle had gone home that day, she wondered what might have happened to him, keeping in view his illness. Later that evening, his doctor called Isabelle that Mr. Boz had received a silent stroke and had passed away the previous night.

  It had left Isabelle broken. She had a heart deep connection with Mr. Boz, who was like a father to her. There were just a few people she cared about, and Mr. Boz was one of them. Loosing the only ones we care about is indeed a hard fate to suffer.

  Mr. Boz never married and so, he didn’t have a family to entrust his belongings to. He had left his will with his trusted friend who was also his doctor and had advised him to give it to Isabelle after his death since she was the only person he trusted and cared about the most.

  It turned out that Mr. Boz had already arranged for his house, a condo in the silent part of Paris city, to be sold and the money be donated to hospitals where people suffered from diseases but couldn’t afford to pay for their treatment. The little savings he had were entrusted solely to Isabelle. The only thing he had urged upon in his will and which Isabelle found surprising too since he never mentioned it to her, was that after his death, his body should be donated to a science research facility for research purposes.

  He had advised Isabelle to make sure his wish was fulfilled. She did as he had wanted her to, but it had been extremely hard and painful for her; watching them take away the person she once sat and shared good times with like a piece of toy they could experiment on.

  Time passed by. Another professor took Mr. Boz’s place. Rather than teaching, all he did was boast about his degrees and qualifications in cryptology and so, everyone loathed him and his proud nature. It was then that all the students and teachers realized the difference Mr. Boz made, his importance, and the fact that he wasn’t crazy after all; just a genius born out of craziness. When we loose something only then do we realize its importance – when it is too late.

  Now, as Isabelle stood there watching that same old smile flicker on the face that once made her happy, she couldn’t help the tears bubbling in her eyes. Whenever she felt the urge of giving up on something, she always thought of Mr. Boz, of how he never gave up on his illness to take the better part of him. She thought about his humorous nature, the way he often shook his head in excitement whenever he had to solve a tricky question or deal with some complex code breaking. It helped her to move on.

  She had saved his dear memory the best she could and always remembered him in her thoughts. That’s why he was there, in the portals of her thoughts.

  There were many other small portals as well with the thoughts Isabelle had for a short period of time, unlike the ones she had frequently which were in larger portals. One of the small portals glowed brightly with different paintings and sculptures made by famous artists. She guessed they were her thoughts of art.

  She loved art since she was a child. Anyone living in Paris – home to so many great artists, would understand the importance of art. The first place she had been to in Paris was Louvre, the greatest art museum in the world. She had spent the whole day, from morning to midnight, exploring every piece of art she laid eyes upon. Her parents had to drag her back to home. She could have spent eternity enjoying all the beautiful artwork and still not get enough.

  Some portals showed the places she wanted to visit and often thought of. One of them was Vatican City. Though it was not far away from France, she never quite got the chance to take out some time off and go to visit it. It was her favorite places on earth. For her, it was a whole different world of symbols, hidden passageways, codes and so much more that is otherwise invisible to the mind’s eye. Places like the Pantheon, St. Peters Basilica, the Sistine Chapel – these were places she would kill to see even once.

  In one of the portals, she saw small mountainous valleys and an ancient and ruined tower standing at the edge of a cliff.

  Languedoc.

  It was another place she wished desperately to visit.

  Her parents, being archeologists, had been there once on one of their Cathar researches, travelling to country from country to discover the many hidden secrets of the long forgotten civilization.

  Languedoc, the home of people called Cathars, was the eastern province of France resting peacefully among the many folds of mountains and cli
ff. Isabelle found Cathar history the most intriguing of all – even more than Egyptian, Roman or Greek histories. The Cathars were an extremely intelligent race of people who discovered so many things the world doesn’t give them credit for; astrology, ptolomy, alchemy, mathematics, art – you name it; they were people who truly appreciated the metaphysics of the cosmos and tried to explain it in their own terms and methods, yet the knowledge deep in their hearts was buried with them.

  Majority of the Cathars were burnt alive on the stack during the Albigensian crusade due to refusal of accepting Christianity, others were killed mercilessly and the 500,000 population of this genius and creative race was erased from the face of the earth.

  The ruined castle that was depicted in the portal was The Château de Montségur, the last stronghold of the Cathars which was besieged in 1244, during the Albigensian crusade. To walk on the ground where the beings so diverse in their forms and who the world has forgotten now once walked upon, to touch the walls blood of the innocent and helpless had dried upon, to stand there and just feel the greatness that once roamed the air – it was the experience Isabelle wished to have.

  Maybe someday she would get the chance. She just had to wait and let the course of time handle it all.