Reincarnation

Vishnu woke up, startled! His head was spinning, throbbing with pain. It was one of his dreams again. He sat up at the side of his bed, head down, resting his hands on the edge of the mattress—trying to make sense of it all. Why was he having these premonitions? Or at least, it seemed like premonitions at first. Now, with each passing day, it felt more like something which had happened before—something he’d experienced that had been etched in his consciousness forever. The scary part was that he couldn’t figure out what it was. It was like a distant horizon that kept moving further back as he approached it. Like a never-ending tunnel with light at the end of it—tempting furtively but never giving in to his quests. And yet it was slowly engulfing him like a giant black hole and bits and pieces of his mind were being sucked into its deep abyss. There was something at the end, unmistakably omnipresent—and with every dream it was becoming clearer! There was something deeply intrinsic about it that he couldn’t fight; it felt like it was coming from within—like some long lost memory.

He walked up to the window and looked out into the night. Light was about to break. He grabbed his watch from bedside table, pointed it towards the wall and pressed a button. Bright purple letters emerged on the wall offering details about the upcoming day. Current temperature was 20ºC and it was supposed to be reasonably warm, humid and overcast throughout the day. There was a prompt to allow the device to pay his bills which were due the next day. A couple of messages regarding traffic in his regular route to school and things on his calendar for the day. As Vishnu sifted through them, he stopped to look carefully at one particular item.The protest march was going to begin soon. Thousands were going to throng to the city center today. Of course he didn’t need a reminder about it though, it had been foremost in his mind for the past couple of days. The movement had created quite a stir in the community. Even his friend Zach, who was normally disinterested in politics had taken notice.

“Hey, so what’s this protest thing everybody’s been talking about?” he’d asked yesterday, when they were sitting out in the lawn eating lunch in between classes.

Vishnu looked at his friend quizzically for a moment. “Since when do you care about politics?”

“I don’t. I mean, usually. But everyone seems to be talking about it. Besides, it helps to know what your friends are up to…”

Vishnu chuckled. “I guess we will take that as a win. To have got your attention. Part of the deal’s to do exactly that. Spread awareness.” His face hardened. “This injustice has gone on too long. It has to stop.”

“So, what exactly are you guys demanding? Do you want to get rid of the whole genetic enhancement program?”

“Yes, eventually.”

“But what about genetic diseases? Those that haven’t been around for ages could come back.”

“That’s a small price to pay. Don’t you see what’s going on? Yes, I agree, decades ago when this started, it was aimed at eradicating the spread of genetic diseases. You could scan the genotype of your impending offspring and if anything was amiss, you could edit the genome and correct for that. But look what it has become now? A multi-billion dollar industry to make designer offsprings! The world today is unnatural, artificial. Homogeneity is not desirable in a species. Yet that’s where we are headed now! We look and speak the same way, wear similar clothes and find the same things desirable. A few hundred years more and all cultures, traditions, tastes and differences will cease to exist. Humankind will have converted itself into a deterministic system—sort of “evolved” into an artificial intelligence. Anyway,  that’s not even the main agenda.”

“Yeah I was going to say, I thought I read this was about social inequality”

“Yes, that’s the main issue at this moment. What about those people that can’t afford these expensive procedures to “enhance” their babies? Are they destined to be discriminated against their whole life? Today, every school, every job requires you to undergo genetic screening. What are these people supposed to do? I’ve been to the neighborhoods where they live. You wouldn’t believe your eyes—it’s like a different world, one steeped in darkness. They are also people, my friend—not some less evolved version of us, as we might make ourselves believe.”

Vishnu felt his blood boiling. He couldn’t finish his lunch, he’d lost his appetite. “Inequality”, he thought, “The one constant in all of human existence. From time immemorial, man has always fought to outdo each other and in various ways created barriers between him and other fellow men. In every age, in a different way…but it’s always been there. Yet this felt like the ultimate form of discrimination. A punishment for being fundamentally the way you were conceived, to be not considered fit enough for the mainstream society because of the letters in your genome.”

An uprising was inevitable, though. The men and women on the outskirts of the city—in slums and ghettos had seen enough, endured enough. Vishnu looked outside. Clouds were ominous in the sky. It seemed like the sentiments on the ground were being reflected in the atmosphere. There was a sense of stillness in the air—not a leaf stirred in the thick humidity. The perfect lull. Yes, a storm was definitely brewing.

Vishnu was feeling especially restless today. After breakfast, he decided to skip school. He was going to go straight to the protest march. He had the feeling of an impending calamity, an apprehension that he couldn’t pin point. Except he knew somehow that it had stemmed from his dream. It was so vivid, he could see it right in front of him. Visions of another world, perhaps—but so detailed you almost thought he’d seen it with his own eyes.

It had started off as certain thoughts and ideas that seemed to take root in his consciousness. He couldn’t pin point when it had actually began. But it was strange. Sometimes he would feel that his thoughts were not his own and that some of his actions were driven by an external invisible force. Slowly, the visions became a part of his own consciousness. He was no longer able to distinguish between his own ideas and thoughts and the ones that were planted in his brain through these visions. Sometimes, he would look in the mirror and realize he was half-expecting to see a different person. He was scared.

As his car drove him to the city center, Vishnu rolled down the windows and stared outside blankly. Where was he headed and why? It was as if he was on auto-pilot—a strange, unknown force was guiding him around. Subtly, yet with an undeniable, deep conviction. He remembered his visit to Dr. Rosenberg’s chamber. He’d been shuttling between different physicians for several months, frantically seeking answers—but to no avail, when he decided to give Dr. Rosenberg a call. He was a specialist in extra-existential psychology—studying unexplained, out-of-body phenomena.

Dr. Rosenberg had pointed to a model of the human brain in his office and said, “There are approximately 100 billion neurons in the human brain and about a 100 trillion connections. We have spent the last century mapping each and every one of these connections, and yet the broader question of the human consciousness remains unanswered. We know exactly how each of our senses work and how our brains deduce logic and make judgements—those seem to be hardwired in an individual’s brain—not unlike the hard drive on a computer. However, consciousness goes much deeper than that. It is what connects us to the rest of the universe—it is what lets you feel emotions, feel another person’s pain or fear or excitement. In a way, the web of collective consciousness is like the internet to which your brain connects but is independent on its own accord. So what happens when two different brains with similar connections probe this web?

Vishnu sat there, in silence letting the implications of Dr. Rosenberg’s words sink in.

“You may have guessed what I’m getting at. The concept of reincarnation has been there since time immemorial. It’s often misinterpreted though. It is not so much a “re-birth” as it is a reconnection. I’m afraid what you’re describing may be something like that. It seems as though somehow you’ve been able to connect to someone else’s brain through the web of consciousness. This is fairly common to a certain extent in people who’ve lived and grown in close proximity—twins for example or when two people care and love each other deeply. They are able to feel each other’s emotions and thoughts—something we loosely refer to as telepathy. But usually these are limited to certain situations and happen with people who are physically in close connection with each other. Yours seems to be a very rare case in that respect.”

Vishnu had been looking for answers in desperation—and absurd as it sounded, deep down he knew it made sense. He had walked out of the chamber prematurely, not wanting to believe what he’d heard. A few days later, he came back, seeking help. Dr. Rosenberg said his visions may be leading him onto something and the best way to get back to normal may be to follow this path to its conclusion, see where it leads him. Perhaps the connection to his parallel mind was limited to only certain thoughts and ideas—and once he had followed it through, it might cease to exist.

Crowds had begun to swell at the city center. Vishnu knew he was going to be here for a while—he instructed his car to drive back home. Vishnu had found out that the timeline of his dreams dated back a hundred years, more specifically to the time when this practice that they were protesting against today was first started. He knew somehow his weird sense of connection to this cause had something to do with his alter-ego and he was determined to find out where his visions would lead him. He was afraid that at any moment his distant premonitions may explode into light with the energy of a big bang and his very existence would be lost in its wake. Yet he couldn’t walk away from it—like gravity of a giant star it was drawing him towards the climax. Vishnu could feel he was on collision course and he couldn’t take his eyes away from the calamity!

There was a sense of rendezvous. Suddenly, as he stood amidst swarms of protesters, he felt he had been here before. In another time, in another uprising. His head began to spin. As people around him marched forward shouting slogans and waving flags, Vishnu stood there, spellbound, staring deeply into thin air as he moved in and out of his past and present self. He could see himself, standing there, on a podium, giving a speech, explaining to people how large-scale pre-natal genetic manipulations would affect future generations. Yes, he could see it clearly now, he was a scientist. He knew exactly how dangerous this new technology could turn out to be. Till now, his visions had been mostly restricted to his dreams—but now the light at the end of the tunnel seemed to be burning brighter than ever. This is where it was going to explode into light, this is where it was going to end, he felt it. Or rather, knew it.

There was something happening upfront, at the head of the protest march. The police were cracking down on the protesters! This was supposed to be a peaceful rally. The protesters were numbed into inaction for a second before the panic began. How could the police be wielding their weapons at a bunch of their fellow citizens with no instigation whatsoever? Or did they not think of these people as their own citizens? Genetic casteism had really reached its pinnacle. As the hordes of people pushed backwards, shuddering from the telling blows, many lost their footing, including Vishnu. As his head hit the ground and thousands of feet hovered over him, Vishnu felt his visions reach their climax. He was there, agitated as he was now, frustrated and disgusted, as he tried to argue his logic from the podium. And then, as dozens of feet landed on his chest, crushing his ribs—in those final moments of pain, he recalled a similar pain—felt at this very place a hundred years ago, only that time it was a bullet through his heart.