Midnight blue. Dawn came. We woke up to the familiar sound of the gong. Like pilgrims in the night, we walked to the big shala in silence. The air was buzzing with excitement. My heart was about to burst. That day, we were to tear down walls; we were to open the doors of perception. Change our bodies on a quantum biological level.
It all felt like a free fall into the future. We were to become the ancestors of the new kind of humans. Humans, who have the divine within.
It all started in the underground labs of Copenhagen with a group of young scientists. We were experimenting with the expansion of our human senses. Experimenting; to be unrestrained by our senses and perceptual capabilities. Not by external machines, but by enhancing our consciousness. Some of us were working on crypto-chrome vision, so we would be able to see and feel Earth’s magnetic fields. Roam as birds do. I was exploring the possibilities of quantum tunnelling.
There, I’ve met you. Slender and dark stars in your eyes. Oh, the careless years of experimenting that ensued! We were mesmerised by the possibilities of a new kind of existence. Of having an inborn faculty of visionary experience. Of existing in realities overlapping, but radically different from ours.
The first time we met, we talked until noon the next day.
“She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.” — you quoted Raymond Chandler’s Little Sister, and I leaned in to kiss you.
It was a mild August night. We stood on a rooftop overlooking the city. We felt elated like the world was ours. I remember your deep-deep eyes and the flickering galaxies within.
Serotonergic neurons (5HT) inhibit incoming sensory input. It filters and suppresses the perception of reality. We figured that we could build nanorobots, that would block 5HT on demand. Blocking 5HT would make our vision akin to a quantum tunnelling microscopes’. Not only that, but we could perceive time and space in a more real way. Experience synesthesia. See sounds, taste colours. Be free from the illusion of linear time, exist in the multiverse. We could provide our senses with enough energy to tunnel between particles. See solidity as the illusion it is. We would tear down layers of protection around our restrained concept of reality.
