A morning inside

Samora woke up to a flicker of light and a soft, low, periodic electric buzz. Like a flashing neon sign above an old hotel, the bedside lamp beamed its warm yellow rays on his face. He instinctively brushed over his eyes and turned to face the other way. He could feel a cool sweat on his hand from his forehead, complementing another pool on his chest. Sam wondered if this was the remnant of an unremembered nightmare. He strained his mind to see past that gaping hole through the wall of a … nope… no further memory of that dream. Granted, however, this February’s been the hottest on record, so any fear of TB that had flitted through Sam for a second, evaporated with that sweat. Also, it was a fairly pleasant night, so this morning’s condition was not expected to be particularly clean.

He rested his hand on the chest next to him and began to drift off to the sound of 

non-specific hooting and revs of city traffic. Sam felt the body rise up, off the bed, and squinted just enough to see an irritated look and the bulky movements of someone hurriedly getting dressed. He raised his head just in time to see his latest buddy open and slam the door, leaving with no more than a “What the fuck, man?” Sam turned his head, read the ceiling and covered his head with his pillow.

Finally awake, Sam could hear the faint, but jarring, mechanical announcement of his lamp, shouting out the words it had projected onto the ceiling. Sam peaked over the edge of the pillow and his inner voice read out simultaneously with the monotonous, repeating lamp “You are in contravention of the Immorality Act.”

After an endless sigh, Samora threw his pillow to the floor and headed to the bathroom. The lamp shouted something unintelligible across the closed door and blasting hot shower. Clean, covered in moisturiser, Sam pushed the bathroom door open. A gush of steam preceded Sam’s return to the bedroom. Rubbing his hair down with a towel, and dabbing inside his ear, he stared at the bedside lamp. “Is that an apology?” he asked, catching the glint of coloured light lined up as the steam passed over it. “Some rainbow nationreference?” “Don’t be absurd!” replied the lamp, reaching that border between matter-of-fact and judgementally emphatic. “It’s because you’re gay,” the lamp said dryly. “I’m not gay,” Sam shot back. “I’m a scientist.” He turned and threw his towel onto a laundry basket, wondering if the lamp would be able to catch his tone of mild humour today, then sniggered at the thought. “Your beams can’t help but bend in the warmth of water droplets. That’s just science.” A smile rose onto Sam’s face as the lamp gave off a low humanoid buzz as if scoffing and rolling its eyes. 

“Why would you even do that, anyway?” Sam lay down with his feet up, staring at the incriminating spot on the ceiling, now blank. “I was just stating the obvious,” the lamp retorted. “You two, people of different colours,” the lamp continued, “were engaging in indecent ac–” “I know what the Immorality Act was,” mild irritation brewing in Sam’s voice. “We didn’t even do anything; and can you also just not be a bloody racist in the morning?” The lamp considered this, dimmed its light to a dark purple, then asked, “So, what now? Why so glum?” Sam was always surprised at his surprise that this object was so accurately intuitive about him.

Sam was always fascinated by this lamp. On every visit as a child, he would head straight into his aunt’s bedroom to flick the thin, protruding switch up and down. With just enough of a twist, the cylindrical base of the switch could be rotated ninety degrees and you could then switch it side to side. “The bizarre joys and pleasures of a kid,” he’d later thought. Now, the old tungsten bulb guzzled up the limited electricity. Sam found this ironic since it was the loadshedding of the sole electricity provider that had sparked this. Some repetitive on and off, surges and sudden drops in supply, that had pushed this lamp into being. “The rise of the sentients,” his friends had declared. As if society needed some sort of outlet to overcome the frustrations of the times.

Uninhibited and brazen, the lamp interjected with knowledge and insight around anything it had encountered in its 40-odd years of existence. And since his aunt was an avid reader, the knowledge base of this lamp ranged across the literary “classics” to the embarrassing books that created a pink corner in library; it included socio-political and cultural history of the region and afar, newspaper trimmings, propaganda pamphlets, previously-banned literature, and the silly lives of comic digest characters. Since he inherited the lamp, Sam’s intimate moments of studying, pining over music, dreaming and talking through experiences and ideas with himself had fuelled the “mind” of this lamp. The patterns the lamp had developed into “opinions” were more thoughtful than Sam’s superficial brush against what he absorbed. But of course, a lamp was enabled to think that deeply. No worries about sleep, food, work and play. Not even fearful of being switched off permanently. All the time in the world to lean back and ponder about a multitude of information, developing networks between nodes of ideas, and conclusions from the art of these. 

The lamp “prided” itself with translating its deep thoughts into understandable messages that it would beam or announce. It missed the mark, sometimes, when the information made little sense to Sam. At these times, the lamp’s messages would send Sam’s body into an agitated, odd sense of high alert, adjusting while his subconscious was awakened to a resonating conclusion of thoughts that it had previously considered, but had found too overwhelming to have pushed to the surface. Over the years, certain hidden biases, buried fears and insecurities had been exposed to Sam in this way, and it never made sense at first, nor did it make him feel particularly comfortable. He’d figure it out in the end, but those annoying steps of self-reflection through things he did not want to give attention to were never as character-building or enlightening as it was promised to be.

Emphatic outbursts like this one only happened in times of major upset internally, so Sam felt immediately on edge about that possibility. In response, the lamp sent out some soothing combination of light colours lights. Sam sat up on his bed, head bowed and trying to figure out what it was he was supposed to process. All seemed fine. He had a couple of weeks free, devoid of alarms, and the other responsibilities of employment. He felt the nagging annoyance of anxiety as the thought of wasting his life-time trying hard to prove to the world that he has skills that they want and need; and that he needs for his perceived purpose of being. “What’s the point of all this anyway?” Sam said about nothing and to no one in particular. The lamp said, “Imagine how odd it would be if you were to talk this all through with yourself.”