In that wooden room, among those who were asleep and those lost in their thoughts in ritualistic silence, Lusihar, in a moment of sitting down, fell asleep instantly with her mouth open facing upwards.
Farid tried to imitate everyone and closed his eyes. Deep down, he didn't believe in what is called out-of-body experience or astral projection, but there was no harm in trying. He remembered rituals from what he considered silly videos that discussed the topic. So, he sat in the lotus position, regulated his breathing, and tried to enter a state of conscious sleep, focusing on a specific reference—his breath—so as not to surrender to sleep.
After a few minutes, the external sound began to diminish while the sound of his heartbeats increased. He began to hear the sound of distant music, its sound was incomprehensible. It was slightly terrifying; it seemed like something spiritual or a summoning of demons amidst a strange mixture of paralysis and reluctance to move.
He started seeing colored geometric shapes intertwining. Then, he felt as if his eyes were opening like a cloud of fog—a sensation accompanied by a feeling of gradual floating. The feeling was as if he was seeing with his eyes, but his eyelids were closed. He felt slightly elevated above his body, like an aura or a mass of mist or something immaterial floating above his body, as if his essence had left the bounds of his physical body. He somehow felt that the reality was 'low,' and this 'low reality' reminded him of his feeling on Planet Earth.
Farid imagined a rope piercing the ceiling as if it were a ghost. He reached out his hands to grab it and pulled himself up. He rose high. The sensation of detaching from his body was like the feeling of a hair being pulled out of dough. It was like the feeling of emerging purely from a viscous substance that had spilled out of his body and between his ethereal atoms, relinquishing its penetration of his soul. This allowed his pores to open and his limbs to stretch. He pulled himself higher and higher with his elastic limbs, free from the body's constraints, until he entered the gate from which the rope emerged.
A familiar child we had seen before, appearing to be seven years old, in torn and dusty clothes, with one shoe on one foot and the other foot bare and blistered. Behind him was a desolate, desert-like, dry landscape. This was Farid, bound and being carried by a man wearing a woolen Jellaba inside out, while another tied the end of the rope that bound his feet to the trunk of a dry tree, long dead...
After finishing, the man descended from the rock he was standing on and removed the tape covering his mouth. Farid writhed to free himself amidst his screams and calls for help, but to no avail. One of the men climbed onto a rock from behind again, immobilizing the boy, covering his mouth, and bending his head backwards.
From the front, an old man with a white beard and a traditional Jellaba, like the other two, approached. He covered the grey of his long hair with the cowl of his Jellaba and pulled out a weapon: a long machete scythe.
He covered Farid's eyes and quickly recited some incantations, which hinted at his expertise in what he was doing. The words sounded like familiar but reversed speech. Suddenly, after Farid's tension subsided from the length of the incantation, the old man began cutting his neck with his dull knife, which intensified the child's suffering and increased his muffled screaming until his windpipe was severed. Then, he was released. Farid's eyes opened wide, looking at the old man who had his eyes closed and was bathed in his blood, mumbling incomprehensible, reversed words.
Suddenly, he stopped speaking and slowly opened his bloodshot eyes, as if looking into the depths of young Farid's soul.
Farid woke up startled, touching his neck, which was unharmed. He hadn't performed any astral projection; he had merely fallen asleep, and what he saw was a nightmare. Farid looked at his companions, who stared at him in surprise, but their faces were flickering and strange, an indication of the beginning of the intermingling of the two consciousnesses. All of this was accompanied by the familiar panic attack of death.
"Another annoying hallucination, right?
[Farid nodded his head.]
Saheen, the son of the highly principled woman, doesn't want to leave you alone. Wait a moment
[after a little thought]
let's go out, I have a solution."
Farid looked at a corner that seemed to be emitting a black light, and there he saw a row of yellow teeth and eyes like two luminous dots. An aura of fear of death began to envelop him; he knew it was a warning of an imminent hallucination attack.
The group left the restaurant after Alfonso paid for the food.
"Wait for us here."
Lusihar took him to a narrow hallway and took out a small glass she had stolen from the restaurant. She started moving her cheeks as if something was in her mouth, then she stuck out her long tongue, from the edge of which her transparent saliva slowly flowed into the glass, and she handed him the glass.
"Drink."
"Are you mocking me?"
Farid's body suddenly stiffened, his face turned red, veins bulged from his forehead, and he began to emit a muffled groan as he watched Lusihar's face flicker and transform into a terrifying black and white face with a luminous white pupil and sharp teeth, speaking strange words in a deep voice that sounded like incantations:
"...They are lying to you. Hell will kill you. Hell will eat your soul and torture you forever. These are its servants, these are the infidels, and you are their sacrifice...
...Remember what I said, I am trying to save you and make you die once and for all."
Farid regained his senses.
"Are you alright?
[Farid shook his head.]
I used part of my ability, which is manipulating neurotransmitters, and what you drank is a mixture of Clozapine, which reduces delusions, and Modafinil, which increases vigilance and attention to maintain the stability of the dominant consciousness. It's a temporary solution, as mental illnesses, especially your psychotic state, only alleviate symptoms and don't solve them permanently. The issue here is that you are a new dominant consciousness, and here the condition cannot be cured because the owner of the body lies deep in the brain, and is not a new consciousness that can be completely contained, all due to the error of that cancer you call delta sigma."
"Lusihar..."
"What?!"
"I want to ask you... Who is the one called Hell?"
"Where did you hear that?"
"From the hallucination attack just now, and it said she is stalking me."
"Hmm... Hell... Hell... Oh, yes, I know it. It was an old religious concept for judging people for their mistakes.
Hexagonism is an atheistic religion. You might find us referring to the writing or reading entities, but they are also helpless; they are just higher beings that some pray to in times of distress, but they increase the hero's suffering to write a good story. Rather, we in the Modern Standard School believe that the world moves in a pattern that reflects the writer's mentality and experiences. Every person is the hero of a story, and as long as there is a writer, nothing is random. Things in life are like Chekhov's Gun, as the Transferred Saint Primadius called it. You may see something absurd now, but it has a role in the future, and you must anticipate that role and head towards it or move away from it.
[Farid heard a voice in his head intertwined with Lusihar's words:
" S-S-She is lying to you "]
The goal of life in Hexagonism is to create a great story that leaves a good impression on people because it is impossible to imagine the annihilation of consciousness. No matter how much you imagine nothingness, you will only imagine darkness, but nothingness is not like that. The truth is that the world is material, and you are immaterial, so you will fall out of the world, and your soul will become an idea in the Noosphere. It will be linked to certain concepts they have, and you will feel their feelings towards that concept, even if they forget you, which is a bad thing. You will float there in the void, linked to concepts that either torture you or make you live in bliss. Those concepts are abstract beings that interlink and present to your perception a phenomena—either an ocean of liquid pain (and pain is a liquid that resembles one of my techniques, where pain accelerates to infinity without your body being affected) or being crushed under a mountain where you cannot die, or you live in a beautiful place where your wishes come true. To be honest with you, people fear a bad ending more than they desire this place where wishes come true, haha. And don't worry, attempting to change people's opinion of you by altering history has counterproductive results, as those who try to change the opinions of others act as a mediator that separates your essence from them.
And he who knows your essence, his influence and pulling of you are stronger than a person far from you, and evil things pull you stronger than good things, as people remember their oppressor more to warn against them than they remember a good person. There are many other details, but they will prolong the conversation. Sorry for elaborating. All of this was just to distract you so the medication could do its work."
He continued his tour with his servants while the city was boiling with holiday season celebrations.
"Tell me more about yourself, Lusihar. I see people surprised that you are from the Sixth Root."
"Simply put, the Sixth Root are literally immortal people. I know it doesn't look like it, but I am 556 years old, and I know people who have lived for tens of thousands of years—for epochs—and an epoch is ten thousand years. If you saw them, you literally wouldn't believe it. The reason for our immortality is that in this update, the length of our telomeres does not decrease, which means we do not age or become old, but we die due to illness and other causes.
We maintain the forms we reached at the age of 25 to 30—the maximum growth and perfection of human strength. I decided to become a servant as a change of pace, as I was revered like you, but I got bored. I was thinking of becoming a nomad after Saheen dies, but it seems I've changed my mind, all because of you.
[She playfully poked Farid's nose with her finger.]
Honestly, I enjoy watching the Prototype and the Third Root being born and aging until death, like these two walking with you. I feel the thrill of superiority. Life has no meaning if you are not immortal, as everything else ends in death. As an immortal person, you will search for the best place to live and try to experience everything. At least, that's my opinion. You are probably immortal too, so don't worry, I won't see you relieve yourself due to the grip of death.
< Hiss... >
No, don't look at me like that
[Lusihar hugged Alfonso and Martinus]
. You will enjoy eternal bliss, don't worry."
Chants, shows, discounts, and foreign goods arriving from abroad for the occasion filled the city. Farid wandered in astonishment, not focusing on one thing until his attention was snatched by another. Between tools and licensed magical potions (not meant for the Prototype to challenge the Metatype in power) to strangely shaped exhibits and shows of magicians and fortune-telling, Lusihar tried to push Farid away from them so as not to reveal his identity. The animals and shows looked surreal, and things flew in the air by themselves. Farid spent a lot of money.
On the way back, Alfonso and Martinus carried the bags amidst their immersion in chatter.
Lusihar sighed with a relaxed look and said:
"delta has been trying to spread its molecules and poison us for a long time."