Enacting the Unfamiliar and the Unknown

I CANNOT believe what I am looking at!

It’s…..breathtaking! Jaw-dropping! Awe-inspiring…..

I have only come across this through third-person accounts. Through the tales told by those who are no longer with us. Through reading texts that have been long since forgotten, its language having morphed into something else, entirely.

I was tempering my expectations, trying to rationalize myself that what I might end up seeing, won’t be as spectacular and grandeur as I might imagine myself of it being. Since I love fleshing out my imaginative streaks into mental retreats.

But, how wrong am I! I’ve been wrong plenty of times, sometimes I admit, other times, otherwise. But, this? This is perhaps where I’ve been wrong the most, in every possible parameter that one could list out! But at least this time, I am in the wrong for the better! For such is the spectacle that I am looking at!

Behold! The Grand Tower of Asia! As I get the privilege of looking at it first-hand, through my own, personal filter and perspective. I, a tiny, humble, feeble, volatile creature left speechless at the sight of this tall, intimidating, imposing and sturdy structure, in front of me.

Over the years, the existence of this tower has been dismissed as a ‘grownup’s fantasy’. An urban legend. A myth. The consensus among the world’s renowned historians is divided. As so it is controversial among sociologists, too. Among architects and engineers, such structure is a fable, with its design and theme being an oxymoron, a paradox.

How could this structure, with its spire rising high onto the sky as if it was trying to reach the heavens above, dwarfing the dwellings in its immediate vicinity, become forgotten to the point its existence has been put to question?

As I’m facing it, the first thing that my vision catches is the bold, impenetrable pair of doors. Its size being enough to comfortably accommodate the passage of that of a giraffe. The initial floors lack any windows, with intricate, elaborate and pain-staking but, gorgeous patterns adorning the dry, beige walls. Such a pattern and design has all but been lost and forgotten, by the present day.

Beyond the initial floors, for the bulk of the tower’s structure, are transparent, glass windows. Not wishing to conceal anything and anyone inside it. Letting its spectators be known that it is a commercial, public establishment. The creativity and artistry that adorned the exterior of the initial floors end abruptly, once these floors catch the eyes of their admirer. Being bland, uninspired and unoriginal. But, beautiful and impressive, nonetheless.

The tower’s upper floors, the cherry atop this cake, is a beautiful, elaborate and visually striking dome. A semi-circle, more so oval or bulbous. Its spire slender and hair-thin, almost inconceivable even, revealing its presence only when the sun shines directly towards it, as is why I am able to look at it without any issues. The dome’s color is sapphire blue, as so is that of the spire’s.

I have never raised my neck so wide and high to look at something to the point of straining it. And this tower has managed to obtain that, from me. One legend mentions that it must have been around a kilometer tall. While it is hard for me to tell from where I’m standing, I bet it's even taller than that by another 500 or so meters, perhaps. No building or structure prior has reached such heights and in turn, today….none has managed to break this threshold, since.

I probably must have been standing here looking like an idiot over it for well around 5 minutes, by this point. Or at least, that’s how others are looking at me. Huh, they seem all nonchalant and….aloof(?) about all this.

I do not see anyone asides from me looking and fawning over it. No tourists. No students. No connoisseurs to play the role of its admirers. The folks here, the locals, perhaps take for granted this monument, probably having become a mundane sight for them, to see it every day. To be reminded of its existence, whenever they turn their heads towards the direction of this tower. Probably even fed up that their rich, nuanced, diverse culture and history has been diluted onto that one single, narcissistic structure.

Enough looking over it. Now, I must approach and enter it physically as myself to savor and ‘feel’ all those feelings and emotions that have overwhelmed me, at the moment.

From what I could gather, I mostly see people going to work, judging by their corporate-sanctioned backpacks and briefcases. It probably is a large office, a headquarters, perhaps. But, on my way, I notice vertical banners placed along the median, displaying ads and promotions for certain eateries and stores, claiming that they are present within this tower.

A complex of stores and commercial establishments? For diverse purposes? All under a single roof? Now, why has anyone not thought of this, in the present day!

As I approach closer towards the entrance, I see two plaques embedded on each side of the entrance. They look….English but, I am unable to understand when I try to read them. 350 years has changed my mother tongue and the lingua franca of the present-day world so much.

Atop the entrance, however, is a horizontal board. Written in a bold, decorative style:

‘The Central Asian Association for Economics, Trade and Co-Operation’.

So, that’s what CATCO stood for! Except, it got corrupted over the years, with two of its letters missing (CAAETCO).

I am surprised however that all of this does not have an equivalent, appropriate and well-deserved counterpart in the local language. The region is diverse and heterogeneous in the present day but, uses a common, standardized Turkic link language that ensures the Turkic people with their varying dialects and other linguistic (among other) differences, do not feel alienated and left out.

“Riz, can you hear us?”

“Loud and clear”

“The enactor will shut itself down within an hour. You don’t have much time!”

“An hour? That’s all it can muster up? An hour is too less a duration for someone to experience an enactment!”

“Let’s argue about that once we get over with this task. Right now, just focus on what needs to be done, please?”

“Fine….man, you are missing out a lot here!”

“Ugh! Whatever, don’t waste what’s given to you, then.”

Well, this was….unexpected? I swear to have come across claims that the enactor can let one experience something for almost a day through the eyes and perspective of another person. And Mai here is telling me that I barely have an hour left? Despite like what, only a 5 or so minutes having been elapsed since I entered inside this enactment?

No matter….I’ll have to get inside. Inside the gates, I could make out some heavily armed security personnel and some…..contraptions and setups that these personnels are monitoring and controlling?

The sight of all that setup and the guards is.... making me all nervous. Will it be able to detect that the host’s body has been “possessed” by me? Is it some sort of a personality authentication device? One way to find out…not that I have a choice to make, I mean….

And so, I look over the guards, their faces concealed under an opaque visor, as they seemingly look like they aren’t noticing my presence.

“Please proceed ahead for the checkup”, as a deep, distorted voice tells me albeit, with such a polite tone.

I pass by that setup and I hear a beep sound. Is this it? Am I busted?

“Please take out your PC or any other electronic or metallic equipment that might be in your possession.”

I notice there are two, somewhat bulky objects placed in both the front pockets, in my trousers. On the left pocket, there was a wallet sealed with a strap. I open it to find out that the button is made up of metal and inside it, contained some cash, spare coins and credit cards. On the other pocket, I take out this “PC” that they tell me and it looks like a small screen of sorts. How do I open it? Anyways….these two were what caught that device’s attention, I suppose.

One of the guards approaches me and frisks all over my body.

“Okay all clear….Have a good day ahead, sir.”

Phew, that was close! So much for all that!

Now, I need to find and match the firm that this gentleman was working in. Ground floor here seems like a small commercial street. There are eateries, clothing stores, a large departmental, movie theatre on the first floor, arcade and…' video games' on the second….

The aroma nearby a local food stall is so….overpowering and overwhelming. As is the sight of all these stores! Man, if only I had more than an hour’s worth of time to enjoy all this….

The office seems to be above these leisure sections. Beyond the second floor. I see a door, not far off from my right where people are standing in a queue, to get inside. There are two pairs of doors, actually. From the other one, people seem to come out of it. Must be the elevators.

As I wait in the queue, I see a ‘Restricted Access. Office Personnel Only’, signboard atop these elevator doors.

I open the wallet to see what I could find for me to help things out. I take out what reads as an ‘access card’, an ID proof that implies that the host used to work in the Finance Department and a picture of him with a woman, smiling and seemingly in high spirits, as the two of them are sitting in a bench, amidst a shoreline, overlooked by a lighthouse far away, atop a cliff.

Will this give me a good start for this quest? Will I manage to find out what we have been seeking? This whole affair has been pretty expensive, so far.

Expensive in the sense that it took us a great deal of time, effort and resources to find and secure a working enactor, ever since they were outlawed by the U.N.T.A., in these parts of the world. Those found guilty of using or in possession of an enactor will be penalized a hefty fine. Failure to pay such a fee results in a 10 year-long prison sentence.

This better be worth it…

As I board the elevator, I select the floor(s) where the finance department is situated. They alone occupy 7 floors. Out of the 60 available. There’s an extra 30 floors available beyond the office but, it’s restricted only to certain V.V.I.P.s.

I reach one among the floors only to realize that I am at the wrong one.

“Mr. Abdali….it’s been a while. How was your vacation? Boss lady is expecting you in her office.”

“Yeah, sure..thanks for letting me know that. Hey…they didn’t change our desks now, did they?”

“They’ve done it again! Ugh….really? As if the last one wasn’t confusing enough already!”

“Ya man, sigh….hey, I thought my office was on this floor? Turns out, I’m wrong?”

“I am not sure, you used to have your space here before shifting to two floors below. What was the point of the original re-location then? I swear…this management, they’ll bring this whole place down, at this rate, with their incompetence!”

“Ya ya, thanks for your time. I’ll leave you be, seeing it’ll be a headache to re-organize and re-locate your workspace and all. Bye-bye!”

Okay, so I reach the floor that I should have been on and locate my office. Farooq Abdali. Senior Accountant.

Alright…the objective was to find an invoice from Flourish Corporation. Important, I guess. To the point we are carrying all this out under the law’s vigilance, having risked and sacrificed aplenty to reach this point.

“Twenty minutes remaining. Hurry up, Riz! ”

Shoot….

Alright, I reach the workspace and my goodness….what a mess! With papers and documents scattered all over the table! There are some files, and they all seem unsorted, having no labels! And, I don’t have much time!

Okay…calm down. And let’s try to remember if there’s any detail that we might have forgotten…

The briefing claimed that this invoice was issued a few days before Abdali availed his vacation. So, it must be atop this…pile of mess.

I haphazardly go through that pile. But at last, I come across one. September 2156. From Flourish Corp., albeit…the logo and everything about them, is unrecognizable here.

In it were some estimates for a purchase. Doesn’t seem any different from a typical invoice. We were risking our necks here for this worthless piece of paper!

“Mai, you there? I found the invoice….write down whatever I am going to dictate you…”

And so, I try to tell her everything that I could see and understand, to the best of my abilities.

“Good job, Riz. Hopefully, we get to bail out of all this mess!”

“Amen to that…”

And so, I close my eyes. I hear Mai’s voice. And open them, when I realized we are no longer talking via an electronic parser….

“Good to be back on my own body.”, as I let out hearty laughter, though I feel nauseous. This is my first experience with an enactor.

“You look sick….take rest. We’ll discuss this in detail later. In the meantime…let’s hope this clears out our dues."

“It better. We’ve lost and risked so much. For so….little. At least, I got to see a lost monument in all its glory!”

And so, I return to the motel. Took paracetamol. When I tried sleeping, I was met with a mental re-creation of the enactment. My body and mind have trouble coming out of it. Took me a few hours to go to sleep.

I wake up, get ready and visit our hideout for debriefing. There, I see Mai, looking sleepy and frail. Poor Mai…..past few weeks has been rough for her.

“Hey…had your breakfast?”

“Huh, what?…Why, yes, yes….I did.”

“Everything alright, Mai?”

“I’m fine! It’s just…. I am nervous about the debrief. My Dad left us with no savings and in heavy debt. If only he hadn’t let himself loose in gambling! I am paying for his mistakes here!!”

I wasn’t aware. I knew Mai had owed a debt to Flourish Corp but did not know she was forced into all this. Me? I fell into debt due to bad purchases and investments. Does she deserve the same predicament as that of mine?

“Sorry about that. The worst is over, fortunately. You and your family can move on. Start fresh. As too can I, hopefully.”

Mai looks at me and smiles though, it was riddled with skepticism and cynicism.

We debrief with the anonymous taskmaster who assigned this mission to us. All they gave us were some leads to find an abandoned enactor facility and the host Abdali’s preserved brain. We do not know how they managed to secure his brain.

Was told to plug the brain vessel’s wire onto the socket of the enactor’s bed, where the person who’ll play the role of the player, will be told to rest in. The bed has a helmet fixed onto it, where the observer ought to place their head in. There is a panel that controls the configurations. Once that’s set, the player will enter the enactment of the host’s memory. Obviously, all of this was scary to me, but….I had no say.

In their distorted, legion voice that had both a male as well as a female voice, they praise us on a job well done.

“But, your debts are still pending.”

“Are you kidding me! After all that we’ve done?”

“And what have you done? All you did was fetch me a piece of paper! A small errand. A trial of sorts, to see if we could pull off the real task.”

All of this was a trail!?

“And what would this, ‘main’ mission be?”, asks Mai.

“Both of you will play out different enactments. For her, the mission is to infiltrate the construction crew that built this grand Asian Tower and obtain the secrets to build such tall structures that have long been lost and forgotten.

And for him, the mission is to play out as one of the special-ops members of Flourish Corp that allegedly brought down the structure. To see how easy was it to bring such as structure down and to figure out preventive measures for it.”

So, Flourish Corp brought it down. Why?

“I hope the two of you will pull off a good job. That fetches results and provides data. Else, you’ll be brought down for non-payment of debts. The same way CAAETCO was brought down. And everything about it has been either re-written or made to be forgotten. Making it an unnecessary memory for mankind to possess.”