Thirteenth Seminar

Whatever comes into his mind, Simon spurts it out. Quickly, he becomes detached from the group. He’s uncertain about the next steps and what to say. He stood there, in front of an audience, and wanted to tell a story. But he couldn’t.

This was unusual. He thought.

This could well be what I had waited for a very long time, but have evaded it successfully.

Not this time round. He stared at the audience, but had no power to speak.

He couldn’t even stammer words.

He got blurry eyes.

He got worried. Tedious, this, he thought.

Why Do I bother to put myself in this place? He re-muttered inside his brain.

Why am I here? He continued!

What am I to say?

He continues looking corner to corner, browsing to see an escape edge, seeking safety inside his mind but fearful outside his skull. Come on, say it...

a voice is heard from the back of the stage.

He is frightened. His body moves, but his mind and his brain do not connect.

The silence kills him.

He wishes that somebody will say something.

Somebody bloody burp, at least. He prays that nobody will come on stage and punch him. Now he is beyond nervousness. He is livid he can’t talk.

He can only envisage a new life in his own little mind. What kind of life would that be? He thinks to himself.

The world is much bigger than I ever care to think. He said to himself. He thinks to himself. Then things change for the better and suddenly his speech is rearranged and felt to be much more fluent and articulate.

He blurts two words. “Sod this” and walks out straight from the stage and heads out. Right out there by the gates, are three of his mates. They have planned a series of university lootings. They just can’t stand the thought of becoming slave to the tutorial class of people who last thing they have in their minds is the idea of knowledge propulsion and the rest.

Knowledge Propulsion - is an idea that came into prominence during the reign of Master Rybs Andrews. He had only a tiny stint at the university and didn’t teach any more. An engineer by training, he was prone to schizophrenic fits and had a major heart attack in the third year of his teaching. He made it alive after the event but was never seen ever again.

Many people wondered whether this was it with professor Andrews. But a few years later, just as the twelfth seminar was due to begin, prof Andrews showed up and had a huge row with a member of staff. No one knew who the member of staff was he was arguing with, but it came to be known a lot later that was Miss Crew. A key member of the Steering Committee for the young and the future. That’s how it was called. It didn’t last long for the news to take off and everybody was keen to know more about this recent development. New students stayed away from the story, but the rest of the core and mature students were very keen on trying to find out more, what was going on and how is this was going to affect the grading and everything else. During the argument, professor Andrews kept referring to the thirteenth grade and thirteenth seminar. No fucker knew what was that supposed to mean.

They all raised their eyebrows and wanting to know more what it would actually mean. Young students began wondering around, asking teacher and faculty staff if they knew anything about this and whether the thirteenth seminar makes any sense to them at all?

The secret was never revealed, and nobody bothered to explain it, either to themselves or to the students. A few years have gone by and when Mr…professor Andrews, ahem, showed up out of the blue, some of the old students who had to resit and rethink about their lives much deeper but found life at university as quite appealing and an attractive proposition to stay longer and get something out of it for good. This for good mentality kept them going for a very long time and that they were going to see their lives as something more than just a university and academic life, but more to it - something like an enormous window to the strangest things that ever occur in this space.

It turns out that the thirteenth seminar was supposed to be a long session of lecture by the professor Andrews to be held in the main atrium where people were expected to sign a nondisclosure agreement with the Faculty and professor Andrews. What was this lecture all about? - no one knows. No one bothered to ask. Andrew has been doing some homework on this, though. He has a sketch he has drawn up a while ago and feels that he should share it with the rest of his mates. No, all they are interested in is looting and ruining everybody’s university experience. He said that loudly, so loudly that people in the street could hear him say it.

The sketch he has in his hands is a drawing of the most basic six pointed diagram with intricate angling for each of the angle of the diagram.

Andrew drew this up a few days ago because he knew that this will propel his thinking into bigger things. He knew deep down that professor Andrews has been working on the idea for a very long time, because he had seen notes in his desk every time he had gone to do a quarterly evaluation as a student. His parents have been paying a fortune to get him to this university, he says to himself, so it is time that I get back that spent and earn a slight respect. Stammering and all is a bother, but one thing he has in mind is that the process of self-victimisation and just sitting there in agony and prep, and study and analyse situations, and scream, and complain about what the others are saying or doing or any other doings in his study and uni life, it isn’t for him.

What it is for him, he thinks to himself, is the want to score loud and shout out inconsistently, he needs to get better at this and he needs to break through without feeling that he has been tormented by the thought that the others are just a burden or that he is just a comrade to other people’s dreams and aspiration. 

He doesn’t understand at first, but then he is bound to understand a little more and cone in the thinking. I am not prepared for this. He tells his mind. I am more of the other thing. That thing is the thirteenth seminar. I just remembered where I stood. He said. I remember now.

He tries to call onto his consciousness and appeal to the inner knowledge of what the thirteenth seminar is all about. The thirteenth seminar will come alive for him when he sees, touches, and takes part in it. The zone is the top layer of the twelve sections of the thirteenth seminar. And this is not the lecture. This is more likely to be a uniformed cover up for a failed lecture that was never delivered. How can that be a real thing? He wants to touch whilst he is shutting his eyes and seeing things inside his eyelids. An orb-shaped object appears in front of him. He opens a door that is highlighted with a phosphoric surface and Andrew does not hesitate. It’s almost like his instincts have told him to pull the lever of the door and enter it.

The insides of the orb are blanketed out, a hole whiteness transcends everything else in this oval-shaped interior of an orb is white. Only a pickle of black dot is noticed by Andrew. The tiny miniscule black dot is brimming black hot at the hundred and eighty degree angle to his left.

Going for it, he acts immediately.

A sense of urgency washes over him. Deep down, he knows he is now in an original state than before. The thought of potentially seeing something unseen is unbearable to him. Driven by resolve, he is intent on uncovering the button’s intentions. He knows that whatever he is doing is not within his conscious self. he knows that whatever this is, he will wake up one moment and the next he will be back to his daily routine of a student life.

A few seconds after he had pressed the black dot, the light extinguishes and a moaning noise is heard beyond the walls of the orb.

The noise reminds him as it becomes clearer, the singing of the red indians when they have given up on a promise, that humming sound of a young redskin Indian when faced up with the prospect of a broken promise, he sings the almost lullaby sounding voice. Very romantic, very light in my head. Andrew thinks. The noise now scares him a bit. He is not sure what to do next. Impatience inside him burns like hell. Red steaming heat coming out of his face can be seen from the most hidden corners of the labyrinthine space encounter ahead of him.

The orb spits him out. He refuses to accept the rejection. A voice coming from the inner depths of the orb tells him to respect the verdict of the thirteenth maker and move on.

You are not what we are looking for. You need to stop pretending to be somebody you are not. They tell him. Fear has left him now.

At this moment, he can do anything and quite a lot of things. One thing he was not ready to admit, though, was if anybody had seen him go through the torment.

When he opens his eyes. A lot of stuff is clear to him. It’s clear to him where he stands and what he stands for. Now, he has a clear idea of what he needs to do. Self-improvement: He should strive for self-improvement. Knowing he can become paranoid and feel unsafe, he does. He knows also that he cannot sustain much of life if it wasn’t for the best part `a system of change, an internal combustible engine of rage. He knows rage will not help him a lot but what it would do is enrage him further to where he will feel that he has the world to own and the burden not to share. To carry it out all by himself and onto himself.

He continues to feel the heat of the moment. Fear has gone now but persistence to see and feel more prevails. For a moment, he feels as if he wants to step out of the room now and take on the world. But then the sense of anticipation for more unexpected encounter or feelings, betray him and he stays longer. After five minutes, he stepped out. Let’s enjoy stepping out of a shower after a few days spending unwashed, he said to himself. Suddenly, he feels his perspective is slightly different to the rest of the world he envisages he will face. It’s almost like he has been here before, but at a much weaker spot and a less determined ambient. he wants to rearm himself with more detailed and mechanised memories. But he can feel that he is slightly beginning to forget things.

Damn it, they are erasing my memory of being here.

Damn it. He swears.

He then tries to pick his pen from the depth of his right pocket in his jacket and tries to scribble a few lines. One line read as follows; I saw lights, but a lot of teachers surrounded me. The thirteenth teacher told me a long story that lasted about ten years and I saw lines and waves of stuff which humans have become. Humanity, by then, is in an original state. We have become slaves of other entities and we do not trust our instincts. Animals have better status than we do. There is no education system and there are no hospitals. The only thing that remained as far as I could see was the hanging red gelly spills that derive their flow from some poles, grey poles. One teacher whispered in my ear and said that these are human consciousness which stink and that they aren’t needed anymore, so we trade them and we trade them good. I saw the faces of these things. Actually, they were no faces. Resembling: Grill-like microcosms, they transformed and talked. They were more metallic than any biological synthetics. I can’t remember precisely what they were smoking. They didn’t talk about these things. I mean, what am I saying?

Strange,

strange,

strange.

He shouts and then hits his head hard.

I want to say more, but I can’t remember. Then he stops.

But then within seconds, his memory flow comes back again and then he remembers a bit more.

He is too shy to admit to anything.

He doesn’t want to admit to himself that he has been foolish not to remember anything for an instance and then he wants to feel less foolish because it’s way too embarrassing to congregate around the same thought for over an hour.

He finally realises that he has been dogged by deeper thoughts for a very long time and that these thoughts will not allow him to feel any sense of anything else.

His head feels heavy but duty bound to tell it how he feels it.

I feel the enigma of life scouring through my head just like an envelope wrapped around my neck. It’s heavy and terribly smelly.

I feel the weight of everything else that has befallen humanity.

No, you don’t. A voice is passed over from the other side. He doesn’t know where it is coming from.

His feet get hotter and a wave of warmth `bypasses his shoulders. He can feel the aura, but he can’t name it.

I know I have to focus on what I am doing now rather than what I am about to do. He said.

These are two important things that will accumulate the rest of my life.

I do not deserve the stamina of a rabbit.

I am a lion at heart and a bear in soul.

I am a human, above all.

He then walks, but the walking isn’t like any typical walk.

He stumbles a lot and feels that his skin has gone all drooly and not attached to his flash anymore.

He accepts all of this change because he does not know better.

He knows better, but only when he is back to normality.

There is no normality. A voice is heard from afar. Distancing physics does not work in this realm, only imagination and self-proclaimed reality can be conjured up.

He begs for sanity. He needs his wife and the rest of the congregation around his life.

He will get nothing without the sense of an ending and without being able to show some sanity to himself. Ok, ok, ok! My name is Simon and I am back. I hope to return. The thirteenth soul is not something I want. I want my soul back. I need and I am going to count to thirteen and you are going to fucking leave me alone. One thing I’m telling you; I don’t care, throw me in a ditch and make me paralysed, four, I want my life back; I want my wife and my kids, five... bang! The flash in his head is painful, but he is on the floor of the hospital, surrounded by two psychiatrists and a crying daughter, Emily. She says so sorry, dad but I needed to do this.