Niala Ravine books

Hello, reading again? Clearly you like books but lets make this one special, did you ever consider this is more than just a stack of paper (or tablet) you are holding, reading, conveying a story to you? Instead look at it this way, this is the closest to telepathy we will ever be, my mind, my thoughts transferred directly to you, as I write, as you read over space and time we are directly connected, you will start to understand how my mind works, get to know my most inner thoughts better than I myself know them at this moment in time. As I am sitting here writing, the concept is here but the story is not formed yet, the characters have no name or soul just now, they will form as we continue, the story will run away with us, build up momentum and depth, I will need to reign it in, steer it to its conclusion and all the time take you with me on the journey.     By the time you are finished with me, or I with you whatever the more appropriate way of looking at this is, you may like or loathe, love or hate me but I will remain forever a part of your life, true telepathy, so lets rip a yarn.

The old man sat kneeled, naked, shivering and weeping on the frozen tundra ground, I shot him through the back of his head, if he had known anything he would have told it all by now. The old man sat next to me stirred with a violent snort from his slumber, stared wildly around him until he realized where he was than he apologized to me in a strong, probably east European accent before he dozed off again. I felt like going back to sleep myself, it was very early when we set off this morning, we had started gathering at around 5 am, it was a cold windy sleety start to the day and we were quite a miserable bunch gathered on the pavement unprotected from the weather waiting for the coach that as usual was nearly an hour late. As we got on board we were greeted by the smell of damp humans from the first group that had been picked up, and our arrival only enhanced this atmosphere, it would take several hours with the air conditioning on full blast before the air cleared and our clothes became comfortable again. During these first hours of the trip the old man awoke several times, each time with a violent shudder accompanied by his wild stare followed by immediately dozing off again, definitely not a solid tranquil sleeper and rather annoying to be sat next to and I decided to find myself a different seat later when people would start to move about a bit. However, this time the old man woke up gently looked around a bit and forced something aspiring to be a smile on his face as he looked at me and said “good morning my name is Sergei”, his eyes did not follow the attempt to smile and remained cool blue and piercing. “Yes good morning to you to it is rather difficult to sleep peaceful in these circumstances isn’t it” He looked at me just that little bit to long, as if accessing my statement and character before he replied. “No I never sleep well” The way he spoke did not invite me to strike up further pleasant conversation so I decided to stare out of the window for a wile than I got up to stretch my legs a bit like some other people on board were starting to do.

Hi are you looking forward to Benidorm? “Looking forward, well, it’s just another mode for two weeks.” “Another mode, now that’s a way of describing a holiday that I have not heard before how should I take that then?” “It’s a difference to the norm, the standard program which is normally running.” “Ah I see you must be a computer programmer or possibly a web designer or such.” “No I’m not I sell cars.” “Oh my mistake it is just that you spoke like someone who works with systems all day, so where does that come from than is it a hobby perhaps?” “No but we are all part of the system, we work to a program the at wakes you up at a certain time than changes into cleaning mode for half an hour or so when we have our shower and clean our teeth than it takes us to maintenance mode as we dress ourselves in attire that reflects our position in the system and have breakfast to sustain ourselves, after that the transport program kick in and so on, you see what I mean?” “Yes somehow I see how you can see a holiday as just another mode but don’t you think that in looking at life in that way makes things perhaps to regimented, controlled, emotionless and by the way, sorry, my name is Mark what is yours?” “Oh yes it’s Robert please to meet you, and I do feel that life is regimented and controlled by the system you get exactly how I view things, look at it people live in boxes neatly stacked on top of each other or in neat rows and move about in small boxes to get to larger boxes in which there are more small boxes where they work in, moving tiny boxes or files around all day and in the evening we watch ‘the box’ and then for leisure we move to a different box and feel we are really our of the daily routine, our daily rhythms are determined by a system that regulates our movements in time, we are controlled by legal and financial restraints to produce streamlined behaviours, emotionless you ask, emotions are dangerous.” “Well honestly your view of human life is rather harsh if you ask me, life is much more than that, think about hero’s, love, free choice and caring for others or even animals just to mention a few things that immediately spring to mind, all people are different an respond differently in situations that distinguishes us from robots following a program don’t you think?” “I never said all humans are the same but you must agree that most of our lives follow the same patterns every day and as for hero’s their actions are greatly exaggerated by history and warped to suit a certain point of view, a hero to one is a terrorist to another but we crave for these emotional icons exactly because our own lives are so regimented, they seem to possess what we lack, and for love, nobody can tell you what it is, isn’t that strange. I agree it’s there amongst hunger, hot, cold or even desperately needing the toilet and some other strong physical feelings or perhaps a better name would be ‘input’, small electrical flashes flicking little switches to enable or disable certain programs And than you mentioned the aspirational free choice, highly regarded by modern society, advertised as one of our greatest goods, so who is it that has this totally free choice? I have never met anyone with free choice, my boss won’t let me extend this holiday as long as I would chose, my wife (if I had one) would not be to pleased if I would chose to sleep around to mention just a few examples. There are so many institutions in place to limit my free choice to punish me should I make a decision that goes against the system, fear is struck into us from the moment we can comprehend it, only small children have (in their minds) free choice, their options are unlimited, they are still unprogrammed, the robot (as you called it, not I) needs to be filled with system information and for the first twenty years of our lives that’s all that our parents do, I think it was Cat Stevens who sang ‘from the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen’. When children are listening this makes our lives easy, if they are not cooperating we will strike a level of fear into them to achieve the result the system requires, we tell them that they are good and praise and reward them when they do what we want, if not some form of punishment is given, the appropriate amount of fear is programmed into their hardwiring, we all now if this is done incorrectly a person will suffer from that all their live but if it is done ‘compassionately’ it will turn us into a well rounded human being or should I say a unit with optimum performance? The ones without fear are the dangerous ones, here look at this motorway (by this time we dusk had set in we were between two large cities and rush hour had started, before us the motorway went down the valley and snaked itself up hill again, the red tail lights on our side and the headlights crawling towards us opposite as far as we could see) if you were an observer in the sky without much knowledge of the earth this would look like one continuous ‘thing’ perhaps existing in it’s own right possibly with a purpose and a reason to exist, you may see the individual segments as links of a chain but it seems highly unlikely that you would think of free spirited individuals, hero’s and lovers.I see people in small boxes with no free choice whatsoever, regulated by a highly sophisticated system grounded in fear, don’t you think that in all these cars there are not at least a hundred people who are wishing that they could just ram all the others out of their way to get to wherever they want to be, or drive up the emergency hard shoulder, they don’t, and that is not because they feel that would be immoral and could impede an urgent rescue (some may but that is yet another form of indoctrination) but it is that they fear being caught and punished. Free choice requires fearlessness, now imagine that totally fearless driver going for his goal driving as he pleases endangering everyone else and causing chaos, just watch ‘The most dangerous chases’ or telly like that and you can see what happens and that also shows us again that you will get punished if you behave like that. The fearless need to be restrained for if the system allows such an unchecked program to run the result can be the death of millions and decades of world chaos as we know from history, total system crash. Hitler, Lenin you name them these were the free spirits you praise so much, and you know the so called hero’s only emerge in those times, Churchill, the brave soldiers, young women making bombs in factories that make the ill, you name your hero.But actually if you think about it these are merely system administrators franticly implementing virus control programs to return the system back to normal as soon as possible.” I had started to understand what Robert was trying to tell me and I must admit that the way he looked at society started to make sense. “But Robert if this is what life or humanity is all about, and the more I listen to you the more I feel this is truly how you feel this must be deeply depressing, a life with no free choice just going through the motions dictated by a system can not give you any joy in your life.” “Oh no not at all, I think lots of people, especially younger ones,  are unhappy with life just because it is supposed to be exiting and full of surprise and options and yet their own life seems to be devoid of all this, as Oasis sang ‘I was looking for some action but all I found was cigarettes and alcohol’ so then the questions start, there must be more to life or what is the purpose of it all, questions people through all ages have attempted to answer and you know what , I have never heard a plausible answer yet. Now if we just accept that we are all part of a system that we have to play our part in and just go through the motions it actually liberates you the motions become part of what defines me as a person this is life these are not just annoying chores we need to do whilst pondering about freedom, love and glory, no they are what you are focus on them and actually they turn out to be enjoyable, that at least is the best way I can describe it, this is life nothing more get on with it.

”Well this is the first time I am on holiday alone, my husband died last year, we used to go on holiday a lot so it feels strange but I do look forward to it.” “I understand this must be strange for you you must miss him” “Yes I miss him a lot we used to do everything together and were never very sociable people since everything we needed we had between us but I know he is with me right now” “Yes I suppose he will always be in your thoughts” “in my thoughts but also physically” for a minute I thought that she could actually have her husband ashes in her handbag which made me distinctively uncomfortable but I rationalized that even if this was the case they would be in a very secure container, nevertheless I felt that I should not get to involved with a mourning widow and started to make the usual  condolences escape clause but she almost rudely interrupted me. “You know I have been doing a lot of thinking recently (I realized that I was not going to get out of this one quickly) and yes as you say he is always in my mind as he was when we were together, it is as if the switches in my mind have got stuck in that position and even when his physical form is not here I can feel him as if he is sat next to me, you know I read somewhere that all the atoms of our body when it disintegrates will swirl through the air parts of the air that we breathe so possibly he is actually going through my lungs a s we speak.” Another creepy thought I felt uncomfortable with but in retrospect a rather interesting idea, after all we are nothing but a collection of atoms, still I did not want to linger with this woman but before I could make an excuse she had started again. “You know it’s like a river.” She left this hanging in the air, I thought how annoying it was when someone started every sentence with, you know, and also realized that she was looking at me awaiting some response “a river?” and as I said it I knew that I had just given her the opportunity to give me the unabbreviated version. “You know it starts high up the mountains when the snow and ice that had been frozen, inactive, for years thaws and starts to form a little trickle really nothing much in the beginning but gradually it grows and tumbles through or jumps over the rocks not at all in control of it’s own movements like a baby, pure and unpolluted. More snow or rain falls and it grows as it feeds and it starts to interact with the surroundings, sometimes running slow sometimes fast and furious and it starts to take in the particles of the land it runs through creating it’s own specific flavour and character but still it is not yet big enough to influence it’s environment but starts to interact more and more perhaps even develops a sense of self and awareness, it starts to sustain other life first simple insects and little fish and as it keeps on growing it becomes totally integrated with the surroundings supporting more and more other life that also leave their marks and of course us humans leave our pollutants and still it grows more as more rain falls but still the very first pure particles it was created from are still part of it. It now becomes strong enough to carve its own meandering way through life it gradually changes course but only where the land allows for this perhaps it will create its own deep gorge as it keeps it self going on the same direction on a path edged out by its own force and than perhaps another river crosses its path two become one, merge and blend all their individual characteristics become one new bigger stronger together, perhaps they will remain together or split up after a while but even if they split they will never be the same parts will have been mixed up forever. And as it starts nearing the end of its life it is slow, sluggish, polluted and finally dissolves into the final resting place of all rivers, the ocean (finally she is finished, I thought , but helas no such luck yet) but you know, there is more, its like that was life, the course of a river from spring to sea is as our own but than death, all the parts of the river dissolved in the sea, did the Greeks not talk about the afterlife as a place between death and heaven? But the water from the sea will evaporate rising to the sky leaving all the impurities behind floating through the sky in its purest form and than still in the air it starts to form larger droplets alike cells until finally it falls from the clouds creating new rivers, forever, you know water never gets used up no matter what it passes through it is always there in one form or another like life so that’s where my husband is after all we are all ach I don’t know 85% water.” “Well I am very happy for you that you can see it that way, it was very nice to talk to you but I really need to powder my nose now so perhaps I will see you later, goodbye” I made my way downstairs, finally escaped from her, she obviously still had a lot of grieve to cope with she had almost lost it waffling on about life circles of water and rivers with their own consciousness. I now had gradually worked my way towards the front of the coach and had become aware of a woman’s voice that became more agitated. She spat out her words like bullets from a machine gun without much intonation or punctuation rat tat tat. An older woman with a face like a prune a proper blue rinse and too much lipstick had either been brave or stupid enough to reply and was now facing the full brunt of the hail of bullets. “Dirty les-bi-ans  fe-mi-nists what rights are they tal-kin about a wo-man is a wo-man made to bear chil-dern as na-ture inten-ded it it made man des-pe-rate to get their way and wo-man phi-sikly weak so man could have it their way.” The prune faced woman is brave rather than stupid, “So why should feminists, or lesbians whom are certainly not the same or always both, not have any rights.” Leaving herself exposed to another barrage of word fire. “Sure they have rights now-a-days but only be-cose man made them man omly star-ted to make law for their own in-te-rests when they wanted to pro-tect their own wives or do-ghters from other man and the man in power agreed since this sui-ted all their interests.” See seemed to be calming down a bit and her speech returned to a more comprehendible cadantz. “It is all as nature intended it, if you watch these programs on TV about the stone ages they tell us that the man were the hunters and the woman gathered seeds etc and looked after the cooking and the children and I agree with that but than we get to the scene that shows us a few monkey like man running about some elders sitting about and a few children doing something useful, well bugger me, ok it’s only TV but think about it, what you should see is more like a nature program, the males chasing ovulating females shagging them as they please due to their superior strength and should they have developed a bit further and like it as much as modern humans do without any social restraints you can imagine it happening all the time all over the place, so that means baby’s hundreds of them everywhere, the man can go off and leave them to it but he woman have to take care of them. And when not with child they were probably highly pregnant and useless or menstrual which as you can imagine was not very pleasant due to lack of modern hygiene, all in all woman could never be more than looking after the future generation, they probably did gather fruit or nuts only when the man where out on the hunt but think about that as well, these proud hunters did not come home with their proud catch to say here my darling can you make me a nice steak, no, why do you think the barbeque is still the mans job? So the alpha mail would keep the best meat and woman for himself, the oldest form of law, keeping other man away from his prize possessions never for the benefit of the woman always to suit the man.” The prune faced woman had been listening intensely at times her expression had neared agony (I think she certainly had strong feminist tendencies herself but than which woman doesn’t now-a-days). “So if that was prehistoric time according to you, you must agree that since than a lot has changed, human kind has developed and progressed immensely, just think of all the great woman in history, Boudica who        Marie Curie          Joan of Arc          the Queen of sheba            or Victoria Woolf and of course e pank             , many woman have been smarter, braver and more humane than any man has been. Many rights that we now enjoy have been achieved by generations of woman fighting for these, not just because man wanted to get his end away.” “Ah yes all these names you just mentioned, I don’t know many of them but Marie Curie was married to a husband who was famous for many other discoveries and actually he and one of his students formulated the existence of nuclear energie, perhaps it was only due to the fact that she was his wife that she made such a name for herself and Boudica was the wife of a great king, only when he died and the Romans took over the kingdom and her daughters were raped by the Romans (something the local man were not to happy about) did she manage to raise the revolt. Perhaps all these woman would have never made it without a husband who stood by them and enjoyed having a strong or cleaver woman, I am sure they did otherwise they would not have been married to them and don’t get me wrong I am not saying that man are bad it’s just how nature intended things to work that way. All these laws that have been made due to pank      and others fighting for them, you tell me one woman that actually made the law, I bet you even tough you seem to know so much about this that you can not name one woman that passed a law.” This was indeed met by an awkward silence from the prune faced woman. “It is always man as I told you, well actually there is one exception, remember the poll tax?” 

I have been watching you”, this coming from the man with the piercing eyes was not really an invitation to an answer so I pretended not to have heard him “you have even started to make notes about the passengers, why?” the question was posed in such a manner that I could somehow not disregard it, normally I am not a fellow who is easily intimidated but this guy could not be ignored so I put my innocent face and intonation on “well since we are all travelling on this coach and people seem to share some of their thoughts and emotions, especially when the drinks keep coming as they do, I thought that perhaps this could be material to write about something I have often thought about doing but never seemed to have the time or inspiration for, that’s all.” “So you want to write stories about people’s life’s, you think that might be entertaining” the question seemed rhetorical and I was still hoping that he would somehow just go away so I did not reply to this. “I’ll give you a story, as soon as we arrive in Benidorm I am going to the high cliff left from the beech and scatter the ashes of my late wife and than jump after her in our final embrace.” This statement and the fact that he was actually talking to me made me stare at him and as I sat there speechless his face cracked in to a smile, however, not a happy kind of smile more a smile of contempt, pity for the shocked fool that I was in his eyes, he carried on. “Benidorm was the first place in the free world we stayed, it was the place where Marcha fell in love with me and the place where we both for the first time in our lives felt totally free, if there is such a thing, now Marcha has left me, I am only half a man and I can not live like this, I will not go on aimless without her and I can not be a weak despairing person I have never been that in my life and refuse to become this now so we are going back to the place of our first love and share that place forever.” I still did not know how to respond to this sudden total openness and before I came up with something. “So are you going to take notes, or what, you want to write a book, I can tell you things that have happened in my life no one has ever heard, secret  KGB insider information, I know I will die and don’t care anymore, perhaps by sharing this I can finally be free of my conscience.”  I was still shocked but started to understand why he had been as he was during the trip and the pity he had shown for me returned to him in my mind, I also had a twang of self-satisfaction about the fact that he indeed was some sort of secret agent. “Well I must say you have taken me by surprise and I am shocked to hear of your loss and I would be happy to listen to your story.” “Good you listen and write but do not give me any condescending pity or condolences just write. I met Marcha the first time in an interrogation room and fell in love with her the first time I saw her, now this is of course not true, she could have opened her mouth and have had the most irritating voice and rotting teeth, bed breath and nothing interesting to say but no she was the most beautiful women I have ever seen, not your movie star or model beauty but her skin was almost translucent, fragile like a porcelain doll but her eyes were fierce, hazelnut brown with a flame of topaz in the 2 o clock quadrant of her left eye, since that first moment she has never disappointed me, her conversation has always been witty or funny and invigorating her motives pure and always showing her love for me. (his piercing eyes became soft, gentile and his accent became even stronger as he envisaged her in his minds eye) About a month before I had killed her father, an innocent old man who had no further use to me, an act I did not even had stopped to consider, using or disposing people had become second nature to me but on that moment when I saw Marcha for the first time since my childhood I felt guilt perhaps even remorse. I also started to feel very angry, initially about my fellow agents when I saw the cigarette burns on her arms as I imagined the pain and fear she had gone through and then this anger turned towards myself, I could just as well have inflicted these on her, after all for years I had used, manipulated and tortured people to achieve a result I believed (or had made myself believe) to be justified.The interrogation did not last very long, I was confused struggling to contain my own emotions and was aware that my superiors were watching us through the mirrored window I knew I would be questioned about my lack of ‘enthusiasm’ I left the room exhausted and managed to convince my captain that obviously the previous aggressive approach had not been productive and my approach, although rather unconventional, would be to build some trust relationship with her over a longer period. This turned out to be a great idea since I managed to prevent Marcha from further torture and could actually negotiate privileges when she told me more about what had happened and for me it was the best chance I had to see her as often as I could. Later that evening alone at home I cried, I cried for Marcha, her beauty and the pains we had inflicted upon her, I cried for all the people I had mutilated or killed in the past, I cried for their fammlies and I cried for myself for what I hade become and what i had lost that can never be regained. It was to long agoto remember when I had last cried but I felt totall los, emptyness, lonelyness and eventually it phy