The Creators

11

Jacaranda dug into her string bag and pulled out a small, jeweled box. She opened it and took out three sugared balls colored like the rainbow. They seemed to have an iridescent glow about them.

“Here, take one each and chew,” she said.

“ Are you sure?” asked Gorge.

“Trust me,” said Jacaranda and she took one. As she chewed the pill, her neck shimmered like a rainbow, the glow spread to her body and then, she could not be seen anymore! Only the other two sugared pills remained visible. They seemed to be standing in mid-air.

“Hey! Where are you?” said Gorge.

“Show yourself!” said Jasmine.

“I can’t …not for the next hour anyway. This is the result of the invisibility pill. You both take yours, then, you will be able to see me. I can see you. We can start our hunt then. Hurry!” said Jacaranda.

Jasmine and Gorge picked up the pills and chewed. They too shimmered and disappeared.

“Hey, I can see you now!” said Gorge.

“Okay. We are all set now,” said Jasmine. “We should enter the building and look for Jasper, our technological self.”

Saying this, she moved towards the lift door under the rooftop shelter. She pressed the button. The lift came up. As the door opened, a man wearing a mind police uniform came out with a weapon and a radio. He could not see them. He was looking around but could see no one. He went back into the lift. The three of them slipped into the lift with him and descended into the building.

The mind policeman went back to Jasper’s office.

“There was no one in the lift,” he told the officer. The mind police seemed to have set their headquarters in Jasper’s office.

“It is strange that the lift should be called to the rooftop by no one,” said the officer. “Perhaps we should investigate. Kaspar, you keep an eye on things here. The rest of you, let us go up.”

Jasmine, Jacaranda and Gorge had followed the policeman down. They watched and heard the mind police. But the mind police could not see the three standing in the middle of the room.

Jasmine gestured to the other two to follow her. She stepped quietly into the corridor and ran down. Then she entered a room that seemed empty.

“Have they got Jasper?” Jasmine said in a loud whisper to the other two.

“How can we find out?” said Jacaranda.

“Perhaps, if we can get out of here, I can connect with the universal mind stream and find out,” said Jasmine.

“What if they spot your thought wave and come for us?” said Gorge.

“They still cannot see me. So, if I close my mind again, they will lose us,” said Jasmine. “Let us first get out of this building. Look for exit signs.”

The three of them ran out again. They were wearing rubber-soled shoes. As they walked past Jasper’s office again, they could hear voices.

“Why do you think the lift was called up?”

“Do you think that boy could still be in the building or has the girl got here?”

“No. It could not be the girl. She has that uncontrolled mind of Golliwog with her. JaJa cannot shut off her telepathic mind ever…”

“JaJa was not with her in the dragon cloud, remember. We lost them in the sky…property of the dragon cloud the Doom gang said…”

“Wonder if they are still in the sky above us…”

“Strange the way we lost that lot and the boy…”

“Will you shut up and focus on finding them if you value your necks,” said an angry voice which belonged to the commanding officer.

The three ran past the door. As they descended the staircase, they could see guards standing at the door. How could they step out without being noticed, eventhough they were invisible.

Again, the three ducked into an empty room near the exit. This time Gorge came up with an idea.

“You both run for the exit. I will drop something in this room and run and join you. That way when the guard comes to investigate, we can slip out. Do not wait for me. Open the door as soon as the guards enter this room,” said Gorge.

“Sounds like a plan,” said Jasmine.

Jacaranda and Jasmine headed for the front door. As they reached the door, they heard a loud sound. Gorge had picked up a glass paperweight on the table and dropped it. It had smashed to smithereens. One of the guards ran to investigate. Gorge was heading for the exit.

“Hey, you better join me here,” shouted the guard in the room. “There is broken glass all over. No one seems to be around. No one has left the room. It is bizarre. Please come fast.”

As soon as the second guard entered the room and the door was left unprotected, Jacaranda opened the swinging door and the three of them slipped out.

As they ran on the snow, which was coming down fast now, they could see their footsteps leaving marks on the soft white snow that covered the ground. There were round tables and chairs covered with snow in what had been the garden of the building.

“I think the falling snow will cover our footprints,” said Gorge aloud.

“I need a shelter to stand and focus. It is freezing here,” said Jasmine.

“Let’s go under that shed,” said Jacaranda. It was the shed for the parking the flying cars of visitors. The three went in and Jasmine closed her eyes for a couple of minutes. Then she opened them. Her eyes looked frightened.

“Quick, let’s run. I have blocked my mind again. The mind police has figured out that we are hiding here,” she said.

As she was finishing her sentence, the door of the building opened and the mind police started filing out. The three of them ran towards the building. The mind police continued pouring out of the door and running past them towards the parking shed. They, of course, could not see the invisible trio. The three of them slipped in through the open door without bumping into the guards and got into the building.

Again, inside an empty room, the three spoke in whispers. There were still voices of the mind police in the building.

“We need to pinge out to a safe spot,” whispered Jasmine.

“Where?” said Jacaranda.

“Have they got him?” asked Gorge.

“No. But they are angry to have lost all of us. They will kill if they spot any of us,” said Jasmine. “We will need to locate him from a safer spot. Let us go back to that favorite island of yours Jacaranda…the isle of wonder in magicland.”

“We need to hurry. It is past fifty minutes since we took the invisibility pills. The effect of the pill will wear off soon,” said Jacaranda.

Jasmine had the tongs in her hand. Gorge and Jacaranda held on to her shoulders as she clapped the tongs. They pinged. They were still invisible when they landed on the grass of a meadow on the island.

“We will lose our invisibility in few minutes,” said Jacaranda. “We need to find shelter once we are visible.”

“Before that, can we get rid of these clothes? It is warm here,” said Gorge.

“Here goes,” said Jacaranda. She mumbled something and the three were back to their normal war.

“Let’s make a run for shelter,” said Jasmine.

“I know there is a cave near the hill,” said Jacaranda. “We could use that.”

The three ran for the wooded area and then started walking towards the hills.

“Are you guys hungry or not?” said Gorge.

“Okay. Here is a sandwich for each of us,” said Jacaranda, swishing her arms and mumbling a chant. She handed them a sandwich and a packet of milk each. They ate as they walked through the woods in search of shelter. They came upon a stream with fishes of all colors, shapes and sizes.

“We are close now,” said Jacaranda. “ This stream will lead us to the hills and the cave.”

They walked for another half an hour and they were at the foothills. The stream fell like a waterfall from the hill.

“The cave is just there,” said Jacaranda.

The three of them walked towards the cave.

Safe in his hideout in the technological dimension, Jasper was worried. After dinner, he told Matilda, “Tomorrow, I need to try to contact this girl. Perhaps, I will leave our hideout for a short while, fly out to the sky and try to reach her again telepathically…”

“I am scared when you go out like this,” said Matilda.

“I have to for our baby’s sake and our sake try to find a final solution. I did not want to be caught in this crossfire. We have to find a way out. Don’t worry, I won’t be caught,” said Jasper.

 

 

The Creators

2

The mind police was in a quandary. They could not locate Jasmine. She had blocked them off completely. The mind police never chased a person physically but studied the thought waves and found the people. Then they pinged to the person, accosted him by surprise, gave a whiff of chloroform to the truant and pinged them back to their own reality to decide on the course of action. If the truant had just lost touch unintentionally, then they would just send them to the correctional facility. They would be re-trained. If they showed signs of rebellion, they would wipe out their memories with a flash of the memory eraser and take them back to the dimension from where they had been brought in as a baby.

Jasmine was an issue. She had a mission and a vision at an inappropriate age. She did not fit into any of the dimensions that existed. At twenty, she had a vision of a new reality. That is what the councillors did at three hundred!

Mankind was not ready for a multi-dimensional existence, not just mankind but even the other species. Take the fluffy, harmless looking golliwogs for instance. They lived in jungles and growled at and bit anyone who went near the hordes of chocolate they had plucked from trees. They loved it when their candy floss clouds rained sweet syrups which filled their pools. They were always high on sugar and never slept. That was a strange dimension… No one was quite clear why and how it existed.

The mind police were wondering if they should check out Jasmine in different realities. There was the dimension where she had remained with her parents and would have grown up to be a writer called Jacinth. Of course, Jacinth was about a decade older than the Jasmine.

Jacinth looked at the girl at the gate and smiled, “Come in,”she said. “How strange that you should have the same name as my character in this story! What is that on your shoulder? Is it some kind of a toy?”

“ No. It is a golliwog,” said Jasmine as she walked towards Jacinth.

The mind police had never looked at Jacinth beyond the time they had got hold of Jasmine more than two decades ago. They didnot know her thought patterns. She would be difficult to trace in the chaos of minds. The mind police knew that Jasmine came from a reality where the parents had suddenly lost their baby in a crowded book fair. The baby had been pinged to the councillors as they had identified Jacinth as a powerful creative mind. They did not want to lose such a dynamic force. Her name had been changed to Jasmine so that she would not be recognized in her own original dimension if she ever went back. They knew she would have to travel to different dimension when she was studying for her councillorship. They did have to visit multiple realities to study the need for thinking and how thought could be materialized.

What nobody foresaw was that Jasmine would never want to be part of a collective consciousness but would want an individuality beyond the needs of the creative dimension.

In the creative dimension, thought was common property. There were no copyrights. A consciousness existed not only among the living but also among the inanimate objects. A rock and a plant were as much a part of the collective mind as were people’s thoughts.

Jasmine sat down on the chair Jacinth pulled out for her. “Thanks,” she said. The golliwog jumped onto the table and grabbed some candy that lay in a small basket on the table. She started chanting and eating on the table. Jacinth looked on perturbed.

“What is that?” she asked.

“ That is a golliwog, a creature from another dimension. She is called JaJa.”

At the sound of her name, the creature started singing in a strange language and gurgling.

Jacinth found her peculiar but she was an open and tolerant individual so she put up with JaJa quietly. Jasmine, an adept mind reader, could see the struggle in Jacinth’s mind. She knew all about Jacinth. Jacinth knew nothing about her.

Jasmine said, “I am going to ask you a bunch of questions that sound peculiar but you must answer them so that I can tell you who I am.”

Jacinth felt she was in a dream.

“Do you believe in a multiverse?”

“Yes, I do,” answered Jacinth.

“Are you getting strange colourful dreams about walking on clouds and people fleeing?”

“Yes. I am. But how would you know that?”

“You will understand by and by. For, the time being please believe me when I say I am you in another dimension. I know we have more selves in the multiverse. JaJa is a version of us from a more primitive dimension. She lives on candy and syrup.”

Jacinth was staring at Jasmine and JaJa open-mouthed!

“Please listen carefully. The mind police from my dimension is trying to catch me. I am not a felon but I think different. Sooner or later they will look for me in your home. Right now, they are probably trying to track your thought waves. You need to continue focussing on JaJa and not me. They do not know JaJa exists. They only know of you and me and they have lost track of you. Does all that make sense?”

“Kind of…More like fiction…”replied Jacinth.

“ It is the reality. We need to pinge out of your dimension and to our bubbleself’s dimension to avoid detection. The mind police is not aware of the bubble universe because it keeps drifting and is difficult to access. Right now, just trust me. Hold on to my arm when I clap the tongs. And whatever happens don’t let go.”

Jasmine again placed JaJa on her shoulder.

Jacinth was ever ready for an adventure and agreed. Everything seemed like out of a dream or a racy fiction for her.

Jasmine took out what looked like an oversized tong from her knapsack and clapped the tongs. Jacinth was holding on to her and JaJa too. She heard a strange ping and then she felt herself move through a whirl of air and kaleidoscopic light and emerge into a strange blue sphere. She could see a giant bubble floating, or rather hopping. She felt their trio rush through the air and land inside the bubble with a ping.