But, but what kind of filter do you have, indeed? Chen’s hands twisted together, rubbing and writhing.
He hurried his steps, scraping one door after another, his fingernails screeching along the wall.
“Miss Ji in Room 5, the ‘stranger’ filter. She lost the ability to recognise faces and lives in a world of strangers. Every day, after waking up, she spends half a day habituating herself to the new weeping face in the mirror…
“Mr Lv in Room 7, hippocampus and adjacent cortex damaged. His short-term memory lasts for one minute and twenty-three seconds only, so his life is sliced into episodes each lasting one minute and twenty-three seconds, just like the name of his filter—‘debris’…”
All those familiar feelings flashed through his memory, various misfortunes, the same destiny, the past filtered to nothing, patched and woven together again this day. Just like me…
No, I’m different. Chen shook his head, hard, and strode forwards.
I am their watcher.
Finally, at the end of the cave, a grand door blocked the way, with a small “c” etched on it.
“I’m sure you’ve found that the cave dead-ends here. I dug every single one of these rooms with my own hands and left the last one for myself. I can see all the doors, watch all the people, all…”
The rapturous hands paused in the air like a conductor pausing at a rest. His mind slipped again, remembering a proverb: Man turned into an animal, digging one exit after another in the burrow to protect itself, but he can never walk out of the burrow. That’s from Austria, a dead country.
But why should I walk out?
“Don’t you want to come in?” He put on his routine smile again. The door banged open, deep darkness soaking everything except the faint fluorescence on the ceiling. “I’ll show you my private collection.”
He danced on, light-footed, sliding and swirling in the dark room, his voice flying like a moth.
“Do you know the ‘dark burrow’ filter? This name actually originated from Anton’s blindness, and the symptoms are very similar: blind without realising the blindness.” He paused for a moment. “I was like that, living in my fictional world, even the rectifiers couldn’t help me…”
Great Anton, no, the Sovereign Dark Pope, grant us lightness and hope, the sacrifice of the black mass will be offered immediately.
In the blue fluorescence, by the line of dome-shaped containers, his form fluttered about, and his hands kept on stroking the glossy domes.
“Are you feeling dizzy and weak? Ah-ha, it’s suppressing your neural transmission. Soon, soon it’ll be all right.
“Soon…” He fished about for something with great effort. With a crack, a strong electric arc flashed behind Chen, revealing a strange machine: two long thin tentacles stretched out from a jumbo-sized fruit blender, wriggling like snakes.
“You know, when I was assigned here, I tried to communicate with them, learning to match the hallucinations in the brain with the reality, but I failed, and I almost broke down from the failure.” Chen began to hyperventilate, huffing like the bellows of a broken organ, his breaths imbued both with nervousness and excitement. “Man is too self-centred, too attracted by the present, the past, the undamaged world, even if it is just an illusion. But I couldn’t. I needed release. Finally, the forbidden Society of Compound Eyes opened up to me. You must have heard about it, yes, the so-called “evil cult”. That, that is all true…”
Chen’s breath came even faster, breaking up his sentences.
Oh, the Society of Compound Eyes, the loneliest child of the dark Church of Satan, but also the one with the mightiest dark power. We, the three million “dark burrow” filter owners, were called to serve the sole truth: only with compound eyes will we see again. Each compound eye needs many ommatidia, each ommatidium needs…
Another blue-white electric arc flashed through; the collections in the dome-shaped containers glittered: the twists and turns of the gyrus, the creamy sleek texture, and the deep fissure running through the centre.
All human brains, like plump, translucent fruits.
The damaged brains with their individual symptoms are the ommatidia. The dark science of the Society of Compound Eyes enabled those with the ‘dark burrow’ filter to wear these ommatidia, even though they were still seeing only a distorted world. But just as one can piece together a complete dollar bill from many bills damaged in different ways, when the number of ommatidia reached the threshold for a full compound eye, the “dark-burrow” sufferers would see the light again. So, in all the rumours, they were called…
“Ho-ho! I am the so-called Filter Collector.” Chen howled with laughter, grabbed the two tentacles on the machine and stabbed forwards violently. Brilliant sparks burst at the end of the tentacles, lighting up Chen’s face. On his face, where the eyes should have been, there were two deep, dark holes, all the more ferocious on his twisted face.
The air smelt of ozone. Chen grabbed in front of himself with his hands. Nothing but air.
“Stop!” He rushed out, running in the deep tunnels, stumbling. The scenes in front of him started to flutter and blink as though he were wearing the filters of his tenants again. The escaping human form suddenly became himself, then a stranger, and then swiftly faded away like a ghost. The cave walls started to flow, forming a shimmering picture.ran with all his strength in front of the picture but could not advance a step. His shivering legs finally dragged him to the ground, where his body, devoid of all strength, collapsed, just like the dying Mrs Shi, Wei, Mr Wang… those tenants who had gone missing one after another, with just their naked brains remaining in this world. Only the useless Wei died intact.
He kept on chasing.
On the bluish ground, the waving shadows and the hurried steps chased each other, fighting, intertwining, and finally tangling into a shapeless mess.
Chen fell down with a thump, two bottomless eye sockets staring at the counter and beyond.
“I just wanted to try your filter! I just wanted—” he sobbed. “—to see, see the real world. I can see nothing but this…”
His sobbing bounced back and forth in the cave, pounding on the doors of the empty rooms. It seemed as if no-one had ever come, and no-one had ever left. A tomb of his own.
The voice died out far away. That’s the entrance, but not the exit.
[1] Tathagata: see The Diamond Sutra, Section V, understanding the ultimate principle of reality.
[2] Cult of Satan: Satanism first emerged in the 12th century. The main ceremony is called the Black Mass.
[3] Blink reflex: an involuntary defensive neural reflex to protect the eyes.
[4]The Burrow: from Franz Kafka, Der Bau (The Burrow).
[5] Anton’s Blindness: Also known as Anton’s syndrome or Anton-Babinski syndrome, discovered by Gabriel Anton in 1899. Patients who suffer from it are completely blind but deny that fact, and often experience hallucinations.
[6] Anton Szandor Lavey: founded the Church of Satan in San Francisco on April 30, 1966, one of the most important branches of Satanism.
The Sound of Breaking Glass
Joyce Chng