Platonic Diseases

By Neethu Parvathy

I was awoken intermittently that night by strange noises. At times it sounded like images generated by my eyes as I struggled to peel them open. The brain registers half the information onto memory “Awoken by sound” with no information regarding what the sound was.

The question of what consciousness meant haunted me often these days. It disappears and reappears like a flickering light bulb whose gaps seem to hold shorter durations between each flick. I was completely awake by the time I heard the faint cry of a puppy. I jumped from bed and looked out the window but there was nothing there. I was almost certain it was coming from right outside the window. As I regain my sense of reality, my brain turns on its radio and sits down to have coffee. Once the radio is on, it’s hard to switch it off. It reads out the morning newspaper like an oscillating pendulum, back and forth over my past and future. “May puppies follow you everywhere”

I turn and gaze at my human companion who is still sound asleep in bed. His routine well-wishes rang through the radio again. “May puppies follow you everywhere …Is my consciousness playing games again? Or perhaps the closest to reason could be the possibility that I’m the grim-reaper of dogs and tiny ghost puppies are following me. I hear them but I can’t see them”. I move away from the window, tolerably disappointed and confused. That morning, the 6:45AM light graced my eyes differently. I slip into my sneakers and go out to get tea after my morning routine. I hand over the money to the cashier. He returns the change and I stare at the green pieces of paper for a moment before stuffing it into my wallet. The brain continues blurting out its opinions in its 50s radio voice “I have to pretend these are real for surviving on this planet? Wait…where I’m I? When I’m I? What I’m I?” I looked around. The sky was coloured blue and strange flying life forms perched on large intricately designed organic structures…trees…birds”

I sip the tea and look at the clock - 06:50 AM. The radio voice recites “On this planet we run to the tunes of that thing”... “What is wrong with me? This is far from human” Naturally I assumed I am suffering from what I could best describe as some platonic disease. Its symptomatic glitches were far severe than other times that fateful morning. Like in a movie theatre, my brain projects a short clip onto the back of my skull. I see a blurred view of a hard yellow beak between my eyes. A strong scent of moisture adhering skin that lost its feathers from friction over metal. I was crammed into a tiny space with others of my kind. Unbothered by the faeces peppered over my food I peck the grains. The short clip fades into nothingness and the 50s radio voice continues narrating without my permission. “When was this? I couldn’t remember”. I tried harder and harder till my temples throbbed of pain.

Eight years pass after the last glitch from the unknown platonic disease and I would turn 34. I was one among the many gathered at the city streets protesting over the ethical issues of bioengineering human beings. The last flicker pushes itself through in the form of powerful reverberating words that naturally demanded the crowd’s attention.

“People…Try to remember what it was like being a chicken. Your ability to recall the past and knit the future was extremely limited. No emotions thus bothered you the way it did humans. No feelings of disgust as you peck the grains smothered in the faeces nor its putrid stench. No particular thoughts about mathematics, no understanding of neurons, no understanding of God, right or wrong, No knowledge to build spaceships to the moon. Just cloudy chicken thoughts. You close your eyes one day, dreamlessly sleep and open them to a new world as human. If evolution ceased its patterns, you would have lost that opportunity. Is it not our right to close our eyes today and open our eyes to a perspective of higher realm likewise? Just as we scorn the limits of what we once were as chickens, let us remember what we will be tomorrow and humble our present existence. Let us make path for the same opportunity as naturally as nature granting its possibility“

Homo Deus, a divergent of the human race ponders over its evolutionary history. The brain projects a clip onto the back of its skull displaying a peculiar historical event taking place at a particular point in space and time. The 50s radio voice narrates through abstract speakers. “Sapiens are peculiar little creatures who consider anything beyond their culturally accepted behaviour as a sort of platonic disease. The year was 2022. Roughly 367 Years back, a single Homo Sapien comes forth from the crowd of screaming protestors against the proceeding of bioengineering on mankind. There comes a time when “pushing” one’s ideas that could save the world becomes morally the right thing to do and nature granted us the freedom to choose what could be right or wrong. Like mathematics attempting to express and understand itself through the human brain, something from an ethereal realm was trying to send a message through the sapien so that it too can acquire existence and know itself. Sapien held the key to the door through which the higher entity, soon to be labelled as Homo Deus, were to emerge into existence breaking free from the platonic disease named Ego carried by sapien” The radio voice finishes narrating the news article.

Like a thin sheet of frozen ice melting by the warmth of the sun, memories melt a thin layer of tears over the eyes. A gush of cold wind freezes back the moisture in place. Homo Deus remembered being Homo sapien, everything that ever was, is and ever will be.

By Neethu Parvathy