He opened his eyes...

He opened his eyes. This old instinct, personally governed by the nearby brain in order to save time in case of danger, caused him to smile when he thought of its now unnecessary immediacy; he found it amusing to think of the things archaic of which life as it used to be consisted. He thought how is it not to know what to expect, to be afraid of happenings, to live among the horde of strangers, each of them on their own? He imagined that atmosphere and then this quick flood of light under the opening eyelids began to make sense. But only for a short while, until he forgot, for his own reality carried nothing in support of his trip into an antique biology.

Since the times when it was determined that the varieties were the source of uncertainty and therefore of unhappiness, they were being mercilessly hunted down. Some thought that the fight is doomed, and those engaged were called fanatics, but little by little the conformity began to take bigger place and shape and now there left almost nothing that could disturb a freed from the habitual fear bodies who suddenly opened themselves to the unexplored, impossible earlier new pleasures of the correspondence.

 The meaning of “I” that he used to define himself was still actual, but since everyone around looked and acted alike, also due to a wise partition on ages - one of the varieties that was hard to unroot - this “I” thing was quite unfixed and he really couldn’t say if his “I” didn’t belong to other people too.

The same clothes, same faces masked whatever differences were still duplicating themselves in new people, but they, not welcomed, were also on the edge of disappearance which promised even less worrisome life after. Everything else around was becoming similar even easier, so he knew what he’ll see when he’ll open the eyes rather accurately for what he saw was going by its many little roots deep into his past and brought it up, that moment and that too, cemented them in one view, made his perception homogeneous, off times, as a spider that places its multiple legs over the things past so not one of them would claim a significance, all were just the insufficient details of the picture that meant little. Strangely, it was giving him a feeling of the temporal omnipresence, was taking a power of the moment off him, leaving it naked and vulnerable to his neutral eyes and a pleasure never experienced by the generations before like a calming gas was filling the lungs of his brain, the pleasure of having without a burden of possessing, a sort of death that lacks everything grim about it.

He opened them and rippled through the cascades of samenesses. Even those scarce varieties that were necessary to outline the similarities were of one sort. Things that are obviously different, like the tree over there and the cup on a window seat, made the same impression on the softened surfaces of the abandoned by the alarming instinct eyes.

And then it happened for the first time. Or was it the second time and the first was when this story began, when he thought of the accidents and of the strangers? At least he noticed it only now. A presence that had no place in a long chain of his conscious instances, totally unrecognizable, it cut that velvety curtain of eyes of his in half. It hadn’t invited itself as everything seen does, through the forms, colors, feeling, smells, drawn from the depth of the memories. His “I” was empty for that image, dangerously unprepared. It was a man, in every aspect utterly different from what he, everyone around was. He was the myriad of incompatible, living, circulating details; his smudged figure, tensed, was engaged in a constant tremor of brief poses, the clothes, chaotic, glared at him with a lack of steady idea, but the moving hair on his head and face was the worst. It alone was driving the petrified by the horror watcher into the insanity, that, announced irradiated, was quickly rising from the dead right in a middle of his mind.

The ghost seemed to stare at him and then, when he could bear this chaos no more, with a deep sigh, almost a moan, the apparition rushed through the open door out, right before someone, a calm copy of the scared victim, drifted in and it was as a sudden breath of a fresh air, as a vitamin shot, as the sun from behind the dark cloud and the memory of vision was gone. Everything was fine again and the homogeneity was heavily covering him from all sides as a thick blanket at the depth of winter night.

But the encounters didn’t stop. The next was as alarming as the first but he thought he might survive it and that gave him enough of a presence of mind for the figure in front of him to stop shifting and trembling and to begin to make some sense, though, it still was not much than just an specter that disappeared with a sigh that he characterized to himself as desperate, though he couldn’t explain how he knew what it meant.  

It continued and became almost a part of his routine. He couldn’t say anything to anybody, for nothing was supposed to happen and he suffered alone, but the lonelier he became the less he suffered, the less scared he felt and once he thought he even saw a smile on the man’s face. That time the man opened his mouth and began moving it as if he was speaking, but he didn’t hear a word. “We are all same here”, said he just in case. The man grabbed a piece of paper, wrote something and turned to him. The page was blank. The Same felt dizzy, he wanted the man to go away. Other people came in, but to Same’s astonishment they acted as if the visitor wasn’t there. They completely ignored his presence as he unceremoniously was making his way through their crowd out. Same looked at them, wishing unity, but his “I” didn’t flow and merge with others as it usually did; it was stubbornly fixed to his head. “That is what they meant by “on your own” back then”, flashed through him. He caught a glimpse of loneliness and even wished for the man to come back. But this notion went away soon, and the pleasure of being no one, wonderfully no one, returned. Absentmindedly he brushed the surface of the table in front of him, caressing his calming down, swiftly folding in an intellect in a swerve of the appearing void.

When there was a time for the man to appear again, Sam’s mind went through the series of tremors, until the regular length of their rendezvous was up. He didn’t come. He didn’t come the next time too. The man stopped coming and Sam was utterly missing him. He would imagine him sitting across the table, trying to say something and Sam would wish to understand. He’d look around in search of help, he’d grab one thing and another, and call their names to his imaginary visitor and it was strange, for just a while ago things were as if the same and he couldn’t understand how they could be. He was looking around his scarce on them room to see what else he’d show when he saw a piece of paper on the floor, the one that the man was showing him. There he saw: “Find me”.  

Sam saw it as a picture. The four forms close to each other and then another two. He studied their figures, angles and orbs. He found the meaning and yet another one, but they could not be that which he looked for. He was afraid that the forms could simply mean sounds, and the sounds were not related to their looks. Then he looked again and read: “Find me.”

He left his room, walked endless maze of white corridors until quite accidentally found the way out. He was staying on a street, if the space between the rows of identical buildings could be called a street. He walked it, and for a long time there were only buildings and the same people in their windows and nothing else, until he saw a cat down the street, a red and black cat, that was quickly disappearing behind the corner and he followed it. The alleys where the cat was turning were becoming less sanitized then then those he just walked. He began to see objects on the ground, debris. The cat could be hiding anywhere - he didn’t notice a piece of wire and tripped over it. He fell yet two times until he came to a little enclave between seemed abandoned structures with the holes instead of windows, and saw his how the cat run into the open rusted door at the end of it. He thought he heard a sound, a cinematographic one, and he stopped to listen. It was coming from that door. He climbed over the fence. Its sharps edges scratched his skin and tore clothes so badly that he smiled to himself how much he might look now as the man. He jumped down into the deep dirty puddle, splashing himself all over. The door was right there and he looked inside.

There he a saw a trapezoid of a screen, lit with bright light. On it were the people, all kinds, all ages, well and colorfully dressed, walking back and forth on a wide promenade, holding their hands, in groups and separately, laughing, talking, or just pensively observing the crowd and the birds, that were cheerfully crossing the air above the heads. From time to time they were glancing to the side, at something big and alive, perhaps the sea or the mountains. A sudden strong desire to be among them, to ask, to answer, to laugh, to say good buy and hello overcame Sam and he rushed into the door and at that moment the screen went dark.

There was a silence, and in it he sensed a human presence, the soft, monotonous sounds of many people’s breaths. Then the match stroke, lit a figure in a chair nearby. He saw his man. You? Yes, Sammy, it is me. My name is not Sam, he heard himself saying. The wave of excitement rolled through the room. Of course not, said the man. Nice to meet you at last. It took you a while... What was that? This was…life, answered the man. The match burned off. In a darkness the new man shook his head – I don’t understand… And, how did you get here? The new match was lit and the man lifted it over his head. There was someone on a chair next to him– he brought me. The next man took the match and lifted it over his head too – and she brought me. He heard the strokes of many matches and in an instance the place was brightly lit. He saw row after row of people, looking at him. They were as those people on the screen, of different ages, differently dressed but he could swear that in all these faces there was something so absolutely same that it scared him - hope. Among many there was one pair of eyes that caught his attention for they were burning with something he needed so much for so long time. They belonged to a young woman of approximately his age. Their eyes met. Something of a cat was in her appearance. Someone laughed, and yet another and soon all of them were laughing except for the pair, him and her. The face of the woman blushed, and knew now what was emanating from her eyes – tenderness.

Sammy, you’ll see each other again, said the man softly. Now you have to go. Go and find another, bring him to us. The door shut with a clang and steps distanced into the silence. The screen lit up again, illuminating shining eyes hungrily absorbing the action from the felicitous canvas.

He was wandering from room to room, looking at sleeping people until he found one whose eyelids twisted under his direct look. A smile light as a butterfly touched the pale lips of the sleeping. The new man sat on the edge of the bed and began to wait for the eyes to open.