A Conscious Thing: Nirvanaing, #3

A Conscious Thing

Book 3

By Mark Bertrand

First Edition, Revision 6: March 25, 2022

Publisher: Not A Real Publisher

https://markbertrand.com

COPYRIGHT © 2022 MARK Bertrand

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

This is a book of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual historical events, real people, or real places is entirely coincidental.

Prolog: Just to get the mind right and share a secret.

Most nights, when I go to bed, I start my sleep with clear-mind meditation. I’ve practiced going to sleep this way for over forty years. It begins by quieting my mind and becoming mindful of the pillow and the bed. Lying on my back with my legs outstretched, and arms at my sides. I turn my attention to this place in the bed as a place of meditation. Neither comfortable curling up into the mattress, pillows, and sheets nor uncomfortable. I am just here with the intention of meditation. Let the body recognize the mind, and my mind recognizes the body. The body works to calm itself and relax. My mind does the same. No aches, no pain. No worries, no ruminations or running dialogue. Mind and body in equipoise.

The realism of it is I usually have to start over from the beginning twelve or more times before the mind and body reach peace. What follows is worth the several minutes spent starting over, and over, and over again. Effectively, you’re not supposed to tell people what takes place when you reach the various Jhanas stages, or whatever, because when we learn what someone else got from meditation, we strive to experience the same, or better, sort of thing. So it makes sense not to share experiences when you realize that.

But let’s acknowledge everybody prefers to get a hint or something more generous to start with. Otherwise, after the third or fourth repetition... legs outstretched my arms at my side, blah blah blah, we’d quit.

Anyhow, for me, I’ve trained long enough to know if I continue the course I reach the first Jhana; I can close my eyes and fall asleep while remaining aware of the sleep.

Here’s something that can come at you the way the first mouthful of a straight-up, room temperature, peaty Isla Scotch, hits you. Let’s concede; it’s a shot of Ardbeg. Anyway, metaphor aside, my attention drifts into the dream state, and I hear tapping. You know; tap tap tap; like the sound that fingers make when tapping the keys on a keyboard. Sometimes, I notice, the typing is fast and other times slower.

The dreamscape takes form and is moving into visual acuity. As my viewpoint pulled back and away from the keyboard, I saw no hands or fingers typing. However, the sound of typing continues, and there is a well-lit monitor of what looks like a laptop. My guess is the computer is running an artificial intelligence (AI) program, and the machine is working in its own direction.

As the dream pulls further back, the room dials into view, but nothing is in bright focus. Slowing — the visual field widens, further back and away from the laptop, the dreamscape yawns.

The vision is expressed in detail where I can see the dining room table, and the laptop sits on top of it typing away on its own. There must be five or was it six empty chairs at the table, but it doesn’t matter how many since there’s no one in the room. Furthermore, the room is not well-lit, with a single wall sconce positioned above the empty chair in front of the laptop. I’m drifting, or floating is perhaps the better word, and observing while mindfully, I’m wondering if this dream could be any more boring when the typing stops.

The artificial intelligence program has stopped typing. I heard a door close and it was that sort of noise where I wondered, was that in the dream, or is someone in my house? I stayed awake within the dream.

My awareness moves toward the laptop. Closer and closer until all I could see was what the AI had written. I willed the machine to scroll to the top of the writing. I lay there dreaming this dream about reading until I woke the following day.

Here’s what the story I read was about . . .

Table of Contents

Prolog

Chapter 1 -> Get A Job

Told by the King

Chapter 2 -> Words Have Power

Told by Visákhá

Chapter 3 -> Kelv’s Search

Told by Kelv

Chapter 4 -> The Weight of Now

Told by Merliana

Chapter 5 -> The King

Told by Mahá

Chapter 6 -> The Oracle

Told by the Oracle

Epilogue

Conscious Awareness

By Mark Bertrand

Character Interview with Vallena

Character Interview with Shavarah

Character Interview with Drrea

Contact Information

Part 1

My name is Mahá, and I’m presenting this to help remind you of where we left off after part one of the story and I’ll catch you up on what we learned. I will bring you up to speed for the second part of our story. I pronounce my name Mahay.

In part one, I was celebrating my fourteenth birthday and, as is customary for our caste civilization, my wife from my arranged marriage was moving into my family’s home. We wouldn’t be married until my eighteenth birthday, but it is customary that we learn to live together before we marry. My parents will help her (Visákhá) and me mature and prepare us for living together as husband and wife. I pronounce her name Veesaykay. The h is silent.

Our civilization adopted the customs of living as a community from a manuscript that was prepared by and given to us by a race of humans known as Humanoids. Humanoids were the first humans to implant bio-computer chips, known as Neuralink, into their brains. They further developed biotechnology far in advance of, and long before, any other group. They also adopted the Earth satellites, known as Starlink, to enhance their mental and physical abilities far exceeding normal organic beings. Humanoids had one aim which was to end human suffering, known as The First Priority. Yet, they became feared by societies on Earth and were then hunted to extinction.

However, they abandoned Earth in the year 2339. Long before the media pronounced them extinct. They settled on a super-M-class planet they call Planet 44, near the center of the Galaxy. There they continued to develop biotechnology, Starlink satellites, and designing methods to end human suffering. In 3912, they developed a serum that could alter human DNA. It removed anger from the human gene code.

Since they were scientists with thousands of years of experience altering organic human life, they knew a trial experiment with the serum. They need to prove that the modified gene code could accomplish The First Priority which was defined as Nirvana. The end of human suffering was to culminate in what the Buddhists and Taoists call Nirvana.

The experiment went like this. First, they terraformed a limited-class-M-planet at the far edge of the outer arm of the galaxy. No other human exploration could reach this area. The Planet was called Planet 444. Next, they approached the leading scientists from other human-occupied planets to recruit them for the experiment. To be the lab rats who take the serum and fulfill the priority.

It took one thousand years to prepare for Planet 444. It only took two years for the Humanoids to recruit forty-four scientists for the experiment. All time is measured in Earth time. Every planet adopted the standards for life spans, time, distance, etcetera from what we all call Blue Origin (Earth). Perhaps the oddest difference between Humanoids and their non-biomechanical enhanced humans is lifespan. While most people age up to ninety years before death, Humanoids live four hundred and fifty years.

The serum takes three injections to modify the human gene code. Each injection required a twenty-one-day wait before the next. It took three generations to complete the new strain of DNA. The forty-four scientists completed their inoculations, implants of the Neuralink, and biomechanical devices and boarded a starship destined for Planet 444. The trip would take four hundred years to complete. Four hundred and twelve years, to be exact. The first humans to occupy and live on Planet 444 would be the third generation (adults) and their children (fourth generation).

These ancestors we call fourth parents, and the original forty-four we call first parents. As each of the ancestors died, we would transfer their implants to an heir. The Humanoids didn’t supply any extras for the expansion of the population. And they didn’t put any technology on Planet 444 to develop any sort of computer device. On the long journey, our ancestors would discover and develop a prophecy. The prophecy came from several scientists who had expertise in the paranormal, or what we call Oracles. The prophecy tells us it will be the eighth generation that will accomplish The First Priority. My generation. I was born in the year 5935.

All my life, I’ve wondered which of the friends I was growing up with would lead our civilization to Nirvana. Anyway, when Visákhá moved in with my family, I didn’t like her. Looking back at it now, it had a lot to do with me having been the center of my parent’s attention. Then, with her, their attention was divided between the two of us. It was also because she seemed to me to be so much more mature and intelligent than I was. She is two years older, but even with that, she is far ahead of me. I wondered if it was her.

Over the next four years, we grew up and we grew into good friends. We made many more good friends when we switched from going to public school to attending the monastery school. There we learned Buddhism and how to use our minds far in advance of what we could have achieved in public school.

Problems with the current monarchy ensue, as the King has to feel threatened by the Oracle’s prophecy. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Welcome to the second part of