by Mohammad Soltani
Floating on the vast expanse of a foggy sea, I can remember nothing of my past. There are just some disordered vague thoughts in my mind getting nowhere. Has my ship gotten hit by a storm? Or I’ve been thrown into the sea after being attacked by somebody. My thoughts expand in the cold water and then, they get frozen before recalling any memory. A weird image of some underwater creatures takes shape in my mind. A bunch of jellyfishes are moving up. When they approach the surface, each jellyfish turns into an icy brain attached to a beating transparent heart with some long vessels hung from it. But, those transparent creatures must lack brain and heart. My legs elongate downwards and touch the underwater ground. A sea star runs off from under my feet. Am I drowning? I gasp and lift my head trying to get on my feet, but my legs are floating along my numb body. Lying on my back, I stretch out my arms over the sea and stare at the twilight cloudy sky. There is a dark cloud in the distance that takes in nearby clouds and gets larger and larger.
A thought crosses my mind. I need to shelter from the rain. That nonsense thought disappears swiftly, and I give it a bitter laugh. Water and the cloudy sky would be my only memory of the real world when I die, and a cliff I just noticed. It is a huge stone that has stuck out the water. Has my boat hit this rock and sunk? I tread water, and peer at the rock in the hope of spotting any survived companion. Nobody is waving at me from top of the cliff. I move my arms in the water, and get swimming towards the rock. As my muscular arms indicate, I seem to be a great swimmer, and it is most probable a venture across the sea has gotten me into this trouble.
The more I approach the rock, the less I need to exert my force as I am pushed forward by the sea current. I lean my back against the rock and get some rest. After a while, I grip a protrusion on the cliff with my shaking hands, and then I find the rock under the water with my feet and pull my numb body up the cliff. I feel like I am the first fish that crawls out of the water onto the land. But, his land is a jagged cliff where he won’t live for long. Taking hold of the slippery surface of the rock, I position myself with difficulty on a flat stone. I excitedly sense the pleasure of being on land, like the first fish had joyed and decided not to return into the ocean. My feet have got some bleeding scars and sores, but slits don’t seem to be deep and serious. However, if I have got stung by a jellyfish I won’t survive after experiencing a lot of pain. I greedily peer around, but I am desperately surrounded by wavy water all the way to the far fogy horizon.
I am starving to death. I look down into the water around me in search of a dead fish to catch and eat if my hunger gets irresistible. Thought of eating a rotted fish makes me want to vomit. Fortunately, there is nothing visible in the dark water. I straiten my back and swallow my spit. If only I could make a fire on the cliff to signal a passing ship, if there was any. Hopelessly, I stick my heels together and swing them from side to side, thinking I am a lost mermaid. I find a joy in being a mermaid and keep mimicking a lost mermaid. An idea sparks in my mind. If I try to bring back memories of me making a fire, it might help me to activate my brain in the hope of remembering my life. I close my eyes softly. Sound of the waves swirl around in my head, as if there are just waves in the world and nothing else. In my imagination, two sharp-edged stones are being struck against each other by me. I try imagining again and again. The places vary each time, but I always hit the stones together. I have no face in my dreams. I appear silhouette like my vague reflection in the dark water, but I know it is me.
When I come to myself, for a while I am staring at a lighthouse appeared from nowhere in the middle of the sea. The lighthouse winks and sends out a red light that scatters by dense fog. Nothing is around the lighthouse but misty waves that roar and collide with its impenetrable solitude. The Nothing worsens my feeling of fear and loneliness, wondering to which zone that lighthouse is supposed to direct the lost ships. Somebody must have been there to turn the light on when it gets dark. I aimlessly wave my hands and scream. I need to get there; a lighthouse is not supposed to rescue a lost man staying on a rock in the middle of the sea.
I estimate that if I swim with all my strength, I could approach there before I faint, then somebody would rush to help me. If I am lucky, the light keeper would spot me sooner when I am in the water. I need to hurry before I faint out of hunger. Determined to swim to the lighthouse, I stand on a slippery edge where the cliff is not very high. I find a stick out on the cliff and cautiously put my foot over it. While I have gripped the rock firmly, I struggle to come down the cliff. All of a sudden, my foot slides on the rock, and I lose my balance. I fall down in horror. At the very last moment before I detach the cliff, I catch sight of another lighthouse near the first one. I hit the water and sink, it feels colder than before. If I die, I would scatter by the waves all around the sea, but I am still conscious of myself as an individual. Gathering all my strength and concentration, I become an individual that keeps living to remember. Every tiny particle of my body craves remembering.
Water feels colder than before. I swim to the surface and get my head above the water. I bewilderedly peer around. I have been carried a long way from the cliff which now looks like a little rock. I wonder how I could have stayed on that stone. Picture of two lighthouses comes into my mind. It should be a double vision error of me caused by vertigo.
Against my will, I no longer have the strength to swim. While I am struggling to move my body in the cold water, I am mostly drifting towards an area wherein there are two lighthouse towers. Like a leaf, I am going up and down in the misty waves that have already approached the two lighthouses ahead of me.
Hearing a scream overhead, I raise my head worriedly and stare into the sky. It makes me dizzy. For a second, I feel like I am atop and the sky is beneath me. After a while, I can barely spot a seagull circling in the sky. Seeing a seagull is more promising than those two strange lighthouses. The bird should have a nest somewhere around by the shore. Seemingly, the seagull has just noticed me and got curious. The bird begins descending towards me, and when crosses the red beam of the light house, I squint to have a better look. The more the seagull nears me, the smaller it gets but the bird multiples to several screaming seagulls. That vision is unbelievable, were they several seagulls from the first? All of a sudden, a bunch of screaming seagulls dive into the water. They don’t hit me but they are horrifying. I am scared to death. In a moment, I see a bewildering view of seagulls from above and under the water at the same time. The astonishing seagulls dive into the water but, before hitting the foamy waves, they have begun chasing and capturing the jellyfishes. There is no living being in the sea but a bunch of transparent jellyfishes. They have lived in the oceans since millions of years before the dinosaurs, and hence the ancestors of jellyfishes had been living together with dinosaurs for a long time. Are those eerie seagulls the flying dinosaurs hunting over a primary ocean? Am I lost in time? Have I been thrown past through the time while my location has not changed? Am I in the middle of a crowd right at this place but in another time? Does somebody, sometime, somewhere, await me?
I swim to get away from the seagulls. I take the lighthouse I think I had seen first and propel myself hastily towards it.
No flashlight has been shown on me. The light keeper has not spotted me striving in the water. When I approach the concrete platform of the lighthouse, there is no presence of the light keeper awaiting me. I am strongly pushed away by the waves, and I can hardly stay at the foot of the platform.
The concrete platform is not very high, and with the help of the grips jutted out of its sides, I can finally mount the platform. I am shivering and exhausted so that I can hardly stay on my feet, but I force myself to get to the small red door in the huge tower of lighthouse. It feels like the tower would sink the small platform at any moment. I knock on the door forcefully. My hands are shaking so intensely that it panics me. I keep knocking with my pain full hands and scream. No one opens the door. I grasp the rusted handle of the door and turn. The door is locked. Haplessly, I lean against the door, and let my tired body fall down. I wonder if there are two light keepers or only one light keeper tends both of the lighthouses. Keeping lighthouses must be a torturous job for a man. If I were the light keeper, I would sleep most of my life in order to turn my back on my sad destiny. He will definitely go crazy if he sees me behind the door.
Freezing in my wet clothes, I hug myself against the wind and stare at the other lighthouse. It is like I am waiting for a Cuckoo bird to come out of his home and sound. Would that Cuckoo bird be a seagull? Maybe an enchanted prince who has doomed to live here in the shape of a seagull? Or, he might be a mythical creature with a man’s body and a seagull’s head.
It is a while that the rain has started to come down. Steady rainfall makes my eyes heavy and sleepy, and I am about to plunge into dreams. Would dreaming approach my memory?
Before I fall asleep, through my half-closed sleepy eyes, I can discern a moving figure under the red light beside the tower of the other lighthouse. My sleep breaks in a second and I wake up abruptly. I shield my eyes with my hands from the rain and peer. It doesn’t last long. I make sure there is someone on the other platform. I grip the door’s handle to pull myself up, but the rusty handle breaks and I fall on my side which causes a lot of pain in my body.
Pushing my hands against the ground, I lift my body and get myself in a sitting position. I stare ahead to spot the light keeper, as if he is a bird and might fly at any moment. He is there waving at me. All of a sudden I burst into tears. It is a cry of excitement and joy. I get up and stumble towards the edge of the platform while I am making an attempt to wave back. I lose my balance, and before I fall off the platform, I throw myself on the ground and grasp the edge of the platform pinning myself against it.
I stay lying down on the cold concrete for a while. Suddenly, I am startled by the sound of a cat meowing beside my ear.
I sit up terrified. The cat jumps and stares at me. He seems scared too, but that dripping white beautiful cat does not seem to be willing to flee.
He raises his head and stares at me. He cautiously takes some steps towards me, and I notice he has got a blue color mark, the size of a fist, on his chest. He mews and curiously sniffs my side. I gaze at the cat and talk to myself aloud, “Where is here?”
“Mew.”
“Why are you here?”
“Mew.”
“So helpful.”
It is very cruel of the light keeper to have left this hapless cat alone out here, the cat might fall off the platform. I hold out my hand towards the cat. He lowers his body and touches his head against my palm. I began stroking his wet back.
When I stand up, I feel a severe pain in my knees so that I can hardly maintain my balance. The cat takes some steps away from me and began licking himself. The blue stain has not washed off by the rain. Whereas, the cat has a normal and kind behavior, but I have some mental health left to understand that the blue is not a color for cats.
I turn and stare at the sea. I feel excited and worried wondering if the light keeper will have a normal behavior and give me a kindly welcome. Light keeper is not on the platform anymore. Clouds have scattered after the rain, and I can spot him in the moonlight swimming towards us. Would I understand his language? If not, how could I explain that I have got a memory loss without arousing his suspicious I’m hiding something from him? I even have no idea where I am from. Cat relaxes beside me and gets licking his chest. For a moment, the red light of the lighthouse reflects off the sea and illuminates the light keeper who pushes the water in front of him to the sides and propels his body through the water. There seems something weird in his swimming that confuses me. While he is getting closer, he is not leaving any wake behind him. Instead, the waves from his movement are forming ahead of him, as if he had already been here and now he is swimming away. That is insane. That is against all the laws of physics.
The shining red light turns into the darkness on the moonlight, and the light keeper disappears in the water.
But, the word physics repeats in my head over and over again until it sticks to some other worlds and vague images have popped in my mind. All at once, a clear image of a stone façade building comes to my mind, and I hear unclear noises resonate in my head. The sounds become loud and louder as if they are coming off the sea. The cat seems fidgety and meows nervously, like animals scream during the earthquake. The light keeper is not in my sight anymore, and I know he is somewhere at the foot of the concrete platform. My mouth is dry and my heart is beating so fast that I put my hand on my chest, and bend down at the edge of the platform. I see him on my right sticking to the grips with his one hand and haul his body up the platform. He seems to be holding something over his head with his other hand. I get the cat from beside my foot, lest he jumps into the sea, and I rush to where the light keeper is climbing. I watch him in readiness for help if needed, but he pulls himself onto the platform without much difficulty. His right arm is tragically wrapped around a dead cat. The image is awfully upsetting. He knees and puts the dead cat on the ground. I press the cat in my arms to my chest, but he brings up his head and stares at the dead cat in fear. Both cats are almost the same. I notice in amazement the dead cat has a blue mark on his chest as well. The man seems very tired and gasps loudly. Inattentive to me, he runs his hand over the dead cat. Hesitantly, I take some steps towards the light keeper. He seems startled and stands up. He has a long triangle-shaped face. His black wet hair is hanging down over his round black glasses. He is wearing something like shorts fastened around his waist by some strips of leather.
He pulls his dripping hair out of his bonny face. I stare at him in shock. Unbelievably, he resembles the man in my imagination who was striking the stones together to make a fire.
To shield my eyes from the lighthouse’s dazzle, I raise my hand to my forehead. The light keeper takes some steps towards me and I hear he calls me in a scratchy voice, as if he has not talked for long, “Mr. Jamshid!”
Cat jumps out of my arms and runs away. The repetition of the man’s sound gets so deafening he startles me. He Shouts, “Mr. Jamshid, you have a question?”
The man leans forward and stares at me. He is fatter than what I had thought at first sight. I stutter in shock, “Me?!”
“You have raised your hand.”
I look. My hand is raised towards the ceiling light. I drop my hand immediately. He says firmly, “We are all ears Mr. Jamshid.”
I turn and take a quick look at my classmates, and then I stare ahead. Everybody has turned and stares at me. I feel their look unbearably weighing on me. On the board, there is a picture of a box with a cat inside. “It is Schrodinger’s cat,” I say it involuntarily in an excited voice.
And then, I go on in a whisper, “How could Schrodinger’s cat be distinguishable in the parallel words if there is any?”
The man frowns at me for a while. He then, raises his eyebrows and says, “Say it louder Mr. Jamshid. We all want to hear you.”
I take another look at the clumsily drawn cat with an almost dried out blue marker on the board, and say excitedly, “How could Schrodinger’s cat be distinguishable in the parallel worlds if there is any?”
Mr. Jelani Fisher gives me a simpering smile and says, “Is this your problem?!”
I hang my head and run my hand over my face to wipe my sweat.
“I should say that . . .”
He raises his head and shouts, “Anybody can help?”
I hear laughter in the classroom. After the noise settles, Prof. Jelani Fisher scratches his chin and rolls his eyes up. He says, “That cat has a blue mark on his chest, I think, almost the size of a man’s fist. He leans forward and mutters, “But, promise me you won’t reveal this little secret.”
Laughter sound gets louder.
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