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    Kinedim
    Kinedim
    Kinedim
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    Kinedim

    By Benjamin Karl

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    About this ebook

    What does it mean to be human? In our distant and lonely future, when the extracted talk instantly between the stars yet take thousands of years to reach them, two tortured outcasts dare to challenge the central truth of their time. Greigh is an old man, a recluse driven mad by despair. Kinedim is a curious child with a will all her own. As society tries to destroy them, can they find peace for themselves, and in doing so might they challenge our ideas of what it means to exist, forever?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBenjamin Karl
    Release dateAug 24, 2014
    ISBN9781310200205
    Kinedim

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      Book preview

      Kinedim - Benjamin Karl

      ONE

      This is how I orient myself.

      To this universe, I confess I believe myself of it. Despite my ever-failing attempts to justify a belief in any existence outside of my own mind, I resign to hold that some things are real, independent of my consciousness. Whether I submit to this out of defeat or convenience, I shan’t admit to either. I fear it, for the vastness of somethingness astounds and horrifies me.

      As it is that I cannot see my heart, yet ever I know its rhythm, so too does the empty expanse of space follow me. Half a billion galaxies, hundreds of billions of stars in each—these are the terms we use to enumerate the size of all things, yet what is it compared to the emptiness between?

      The Milky Way is above me by night, but I am in it day by day. I spin around its galactic core as I spin around a spinning star, bound to a planet that spins upon itself. I am caught in spins within spins.

      I am human, and we are yet alone.

      From the moment the forest fell black, I have held my eyes open. The darkness, veiled at first behind the stuttering afterimage of a searchlight, is interrupted now only by what starlight peeks through the canopy.

      Kinedim! Their calls grow fainter. I hold motionless, eyes burning with drought.

      I still don’t understand why we’re not allowed out here, their forbidden forest. It’s perfectly safe, or so they tell us. I’ve asked my parents a million times if we could visit for just a minute, just to see what’s out here, but they always act as if it’s a silly idea, as if I’m too young to understand how pointless it would be.

      The search party is even quieter now, distant. I release my fingertips from the trunk of a large tree and, in the solid blackness, reach my arms out in front of me. Nothing there. I take a cautious step forward.

      The forest at night paints with noise. A breeze passes somewhere behind me, and, by an arbor magic, the tapping of tall grasses transform into the stalking steps of some practiced predator. It’s just my imagination. Still I grow anxious, and in the creaking branches above me I can almost see them, wild specters spying me from the boughs, gathering like vultures to feed upon my fright, waiting for it to fully ripen. I increase my pace, descending further into the forbidden forest until a warm fog settles on my brow. Or could it be the breath of some unseen beast, crouching just beyond my reach in the blackness?

      The leaf litter thrashes, sending all other illusions scattering.

      Surely, my senses have now completely abandoned reality. I'm just imagining it.

      But no, something is there.

      I dash headlong into the undergrowth, forearms shielding my face from twigs and cobwebs. I stumble once, then again, but manage to remain upright as I weave my way between the trees.

      A green light appears in the darkness, a pair of them, growing larger as I make my desperate escape. I veer to the right, bursting onto an open field. Behind me a silhouette comes into focus, shoulders an arm-span wide, fur rising with each effortless stride as the monster comes for me.

      I cut back into the woods when my foot slips, spinning me to the ground. I’m done for.

      For a moment I just lie there, feeling the forest night—the weight of the sky above me, the cold of the mud beneath me—and I confess to myself that all other orientation has left me.

      The monster approaches slowly, confidently, until his face is hovering above mine, eyes glowing green, mouthless.

      TWO

      Why do I despair? I do find comfort in it. There is companionship in loneliness herself when you become familiar to her presence. There is a strength to be gained when all is meaningless and insignificant, and absurd. What apprehension is needed in the affairs of men when they are so futile? My lust and my greed are appeased by despair.

      I did not always welcome despondency. I, like most others, once sought what I desired directly. I filled my gut with the sweets called for by my tongue. I sought comedy and drama for my entertainment. I would drink and dance and hold on to that euphoria for just as long as I possibly could. But the more I consumed, the more I required. My carnal desires could never be satisfied but for a fleeting moment. The more fully I extended for the pleasures of human life, the further I found myself sinking into an unfillable void.

      As the void grew, and my pleasures lessened in intensity and occurrence, I was drawn evermore inward to gaze upon it, the emptiness. And as I came to understand the absurdity of it, an appropriately absurd response was gaining resolve: I would endeavor to go as far down into the void as I could. I wanted to know what was down there, where it led. Thus, I would strive to deny myself all that I desired, and I would seek out all that repelled me. I would attempt to be as depressed as I could possibly make myself be.

      Consciousness alone is able to choose pain over pleasure. All else is biological machinery. This was the first lesson of my strange journey. I used this insight to drive myself further down the spiral, into the void. Eventually, a time came when I felt on the brink of madness, of discovering some part of what few, if any, had ever seen, the depths of the void, when something unexpected happened.

      I was living a different life, yes, but was I sunk deep into the void, or was I high upon a mountaintop? Was this really supreme unhappiness that I had found, or was it bliss? It was truly difficult to tell. When I allowed myself to be honest with myself, I realized that some of what I had once detested I now enjoyed, and many things I once desired I now possessed a strong distaste for. In this way

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