The Paths

The city of Paths was much like a village from our world. The wooden buildings were reminiscent of older times, and they stood atop a plateau of soft greenery with a sort of red hue that glowed on sunsets. Those who flew into the Pathean Bay from the west could get a glimpse of the far side of the city, a vast stretch of forest with sparsely rooted trees and a patchwork of colorful fields, no two patches alike. I pressed against the window to get a good look. It was said that no one was allowed into the forest, including the natives, and perhaps that was why I felt sort of excited and unsettled, not unlike peeking at the last page of someone's diary, and a bit overwhelmed.

Patheans were called by many names: the Paths, Pathoes, Lizzies, Lizard-men. The young ones looked more like a combination of frogs and chameleons than lizards, their skin silky smooth and constantly changing colors. In their natural state, Patheans displayed a light green skin, but it changed colors according to their moods. "Shifting," they called this. The younger the Path, the quicker and more frequent the shifts. Kindergarten teachers were required to submit, on a regular basis, results of a medical screen designed for susceptibility to seizures and light-induced headaches.

Other than the skin tone and texture, there was surprisingly little difference between the Paths and humans. The minor differences such as the angular faces and being somewhat taller on average easily fell within the bounds of human racial differences, say, “green folks” as opposed to white, black, and shades of yellow folks. The striking similarity in external features between the pre-pubescent Paths and our children had stirred the academia a great deal and sprouted a dozen religions in each world. Puberty, however, brought out the proper alien appearance that captured our imagination a long time ago.

Callusing, a process by which the skin of a Path grew thicker and encrusted, maturing into adulthood and thereby gaining a more reptilian appearance, typically began at around age 25 to 30. Other notable changes included splitting of fingers and toes, each one in two, on average about a third of the way down, and of voices, one low range of men as basses and women as baritones and tenors, and one high, of shrill near the upper limit of human hearing. The high voice had no gender distinctions and was only used in screams of pain or reflexive exclamations of joy. I spoke with a precocious young man who had just callused, at age eighteen, becoming a target of much teasing by his peers, adoration by his younger siblings, and lengthy lectures by his parents about what it meant to be a Path. "An adult Path is expected to keep his shifting under control," he said. "The callusing certainly helps, but that only gets you half way. He’s got to nurture discipline. And focus. A few weeks ago, I saw this guy turn bright yellow at the sermons. A full-grown Path. Probably callused before I was born. Ran out in shame and haven't seen him there since.” A young girl about so high scurried past us, pink all over, holding tightly onto the backpack straps on her shoulders. A boy strolled by shortly after, whistling in light green.

The young man had invited me to his house, and we were crossing a bridge heading south when we saw a group of Paths taking a walk by the river underneath. The weather was pleasantly warm, but most wore hooded robes, shepherded by those more normally dressed. “That’s what I was talking about,” he said. “If shifting gets too out of control, it’s considered clinical, and they’re sent to institutions. Some people think them pitiful, like they’re caught with a disease, but most people think it’s just a matter of will power.” I imagined their faces in so many colors like one of those Christmas light shows synchronized to music. For the rest of the way home, he kept quiet and often glanced at what I thought was a watch on his wrist. I soon realized it was a small mirror that allowed him to check himself for inadvertent shifting. He noticed that I’d noticed and quickly explained that nearly everyone his age did the same as they began higher education or joined the workforce.

His father, who looked rather old to be his father, was quite proud of the young man. "To master his emotions at such a young age, it is unprecedented. You see, many people think that callusing just comes with time, that it's a matter of genes and what not, but that's not how it works." His wife placed two cups of tea on the table and gave me an apologetic smile. "You see," the father continued, "it's the other way around. It's when the kid becomes man enough inside that his body catches on and starts to callus. He has a long way to go, of course, but this is a good start. I was quite young myself when I callused, around 24 I think, maybe 23. Before that, to be honest, I wasn't really straight, you see. I mingled with those kids who tattooed their cheeks and wore sleeveless shirts, skipping school, walking around the west side playing games and singing songs. We would get those paint buckets and plaster the fences at night. Well, I came to my senses soon enough. You can be damned sure the first thing I did after callusing was to wash those off nice and clean." The fences divided the city from the forbidden forest. I asked if the guards ever intervened. He took a loud sip of his tea, wrapping the cup handle with each of the split forefingers in opposite directions, which looked somewhat like the ideogram of a human heart. He explained that in those days the fence guards were only there to keep children away and to open the gates for Processions. “These days it’s folks like you they have to keep away.” I must have had a blank expression for he promptly began to explain.

"When a Path nears his death,” he said, clicking his tongue a few times in rapid succession, “he starts to head for the forest. The guards see a dying Path making his way, and they open the gates. He then keeps on marching, all alone, chooses a tree to his liking, and sits down to meditate, like any good Path does every night, only this time, for good." He clicked his tongue again, gave a resigned chuckle, and apologized for boring me. "I probably don’t have too long myself. I only hope I can live to see my son succeed. Last I talked to him, he said he wanted to work at PACE. Bright kid, he's always been interested in astronomy and all that interbrane stuff." Then he became more apologetic still and invited me to supper, promising to entertain better. I respectfully declined.

----

Brane travels were made possible in the city of Paths. The theory of interbrane tunneling had long been well established, but the problem was the accelerated entropy that the object sent through would experience at the boundary of the two worlds. It would experience millions of trillions of years pass by, leaving nothing but its atomic constituents by the time it reached the other world. This effect was isolated to the passage of the tunnel; in other words, the transportation time as measured in either world was a mere matter of seconds. The technology to address this issue came from the Pathean Council of Engineering, or PACE, a state funded research facility located in the southern end of the city. Despite their rustic way of life, the Paths respected the sciences as exemplifying self-discipline and demonstrated a technological prowess far surpassing that of our world. The solution by PACE was now referred to as the entropic insulation method, which strengthens the bonds in the traveler’s body at a rate nearly equal to the decomposition. Some of its energy was redirected from the compressed entropy itself, but the rest was harvested from the traveler’s life force. One trip across the tunnel exhausted anywhere between one to five years of lifespan, and all dead tissues such as hair and fingernails save their proximal ends, disintegrated. The recuperation time was approximately half a year, which most travelers dismissed as a minor inconvenience.

Since the development of this methodology, PACE became an idolized institution and a symbol of success. The principal scientist of this project became a hero, revered, adored, and much talked about even to this date, decades after his death. On the northeast corner of the city lived one of the few engineers who’d had the privilege of working with him. Retired, of course, he lived in a simple house, wooden, hardly decorated but with an unobstructed view of the forest and the sea that flaunted its master’s affluence.

“Would you like a glass?” he asked, holding a white, stony bottle in one hand and two transparent glasses in the other. We were on his balcony. We had just come back from supper at a restaurant by the south sea where he had inquired much about our world. Traveling had always come second in his priorities. “I hope you enjoy our spirits,” he said, in his steady, measured way of speaking. I’d heard of Pathean wine, but it had been impossible to find. There were no bars or liquor shops, and inquiries were answered with looks of confused disapproval. It was red, viscous, sweet, and odorless. Sip after sip, we talked about how the wine was made, the hardships of farmers in the city, immigration, discrimination, and just about everything except the hero. When I finally asked, somewhat unabashedly with the wine taking effect, he stared down into his glass, tilting it forward, then around, leaving a film of translucent red. I thought I caught a red flicker in his eyes, a shade bluer than the wine.

“By the time I came to join the tunneling team,” he began, “he was already famous. They called him sergeant, like, drill sergeant. Never perturbed, always in control. He ripped to shreds any bullshit with merciless logic.”
My image of the expressionless face I’d seen in photographs became a bit more intense.

“We knew everything about him and nothing about him. His life was his science. The meetings dared not digress off topic, and we dared not approach him outside of meetings. He was inspirational, but stressful and exhausting to be around. He was the gold standard we could never reach.”

This much, I knew. Everyone knew. Bright and carefree as a child, disciplined and hardworking in his teens and early tweens, singularly devoted to science till death did them apart, he was the personification of Pathean virtues.

“Other than science, the only thing sergeant allowed himself was Howling. Do you know about it?”

I’d heard of it. It was music not unlike metal, in our world, characterized by extensive use of the Pathean high voice. It began with a soloist, and others joined in one by one, creating rough, microtonal chords that shifted in and out of harmony in a sort of improvised progression. The idea was as old as ancient rituals, but it had gained popularity as a genre of music in recent years.

“When he was stuck on a problem, he’d shut himself in a room, and we could hear blasts of Howling through the walls. We’d always try to discern whether he was singing along, but no one ever talked about it. It was sergeant’s secret mistress who could not be mentioned in public.”

His glass was empty, and he held the neck of the stony white bottle, passing it swiftly from one set of fingers to the next with practiced dexterity, clicking against his fingernails. I asked about their project, its beginnings and its struggles.

“The year after I joined, we made more progress than anyone had imagined possible. For the next three years, we made no progress whatsoever. Another theory began to gain popularity, a branch of teleportation theory that had made a recent breakthrough. Everyone jumped on it. We should have, too. It was the right call at the time. But we didn’t. He held fast to the idea of entropic insulation, and just would not let go. I didn’t know what to make of that. There was nothing strange about a scientist not wanting to give up his project, but this was sergeant. He always made the right call. I asked him about it on several occasions, but he didn’t say a word. When I really pressed him one day, he exploded, ‘No! Just leave me alone!’ I’d never seen him lose his cool. He immediately apologized. I’d never seen him apologize. I’d never seen him so rattled. He was irritated and kept muttering like a madman ‘Time, time. Time is of the essence.’ I left the team the next day.”

He stood up and leaned against the railing. He spoke of the next few years, how the teleportation project went as far as successfully sending macroscopic objects across worlds, but was eventually deemed impractical due to the high level of energy consumption. He spoke of the few years since, how he returned to sergeant who’d made no progress in his absence, and how they proceeded to run in circles together. In his soft rich voice was an unmistakable longing for those days, the days of fight against despair in camaraderie. The media usually picked it up from here with ample flare, the eureka moment when the hero was born.

“He’d reached the solution. He came over and started explaining, keeping ironclad control over his excitement. But he made so many leaps that I could hardly keep up. He finished, less than five minutes had passed, and I could hardly suppress my shifting. He was pacing back and forth lost in thought. I asked if we should call in the others. No response. Another five minutes passed, probably. I felt a lifetime pass. When he finally broke the silence, he was looking my way, but far past me. He said, ‘Sorry. I still have some things to sort out after all,’ and walked out the door. I remember he’d left behind his jacket, and I called after him, but I couldn’t reach him.

“The following months were busy, exciting. A century of efforts was reaching a dénouement. He stood at the center of every activity, but everyday, he spoke a bit less. He stopped engaging in discussions and only answered questions when asked. Then he stopped coming to meetings altogether. He stood by his desk looking out the window at nothing in particular. Some of us gathered up the courage and asked if there was anything wrong, but nothing came of it. In the final days of the project, he was nowhere to be seen.”

He looked at me, like a good storyteller, searching for signs of confusion, of empathy with his then confused self.

“His Procession was where I next saw him,” he said, plopping back down into his chair. “Half a year had passed. The reporters had been in a frenzy trying to get a hold of him, but nothing short of breaking into his house would get them an interview. They ended up writing a typical story of an introverted genius, with no primary source, but it didn’t matter. His popularity was through the roof. The news of his Procession spread within minutes. Between him and the gates of the forest stood nearly every Path in the city, utterly dumbfounded. I was no exception. He was much too young and in too good a shape. But there he was, marching away. He wore a grey sleeping gown and nothing else, no undergarments, no shoes. It was well into the night.”

I imagined a lone Path, walking slowly, leaning forward, with steady rhythm and firm steps that left deep impressions on the ground beneath. I pictured him walking through the gates, into the forest with effortful decisiveness.

“And just like that, at the blink of an eye, he was past the gates, and everyone headed home. Lingering meant disrespect. Let the dead rest in peace, though they could hardly suppress the gossip. The guards soon joined the crowd and the place was empty, without a soul, except for me.

“My eyes were fixated at his back through the crack in the gates until he disappeared completely out of sight. I continued to stand there for quite some time, and as the night grew deeper, I realized what I was about to do. My heart was pounding away, and despite all my instincts revolting against my present action, I opened the gates.

“Next thing I knew, I was sprinting through the forest. His footsteps were fresh, and mine lay atop his every so often. My mind was filled with him, finding him before he died, finding him and asking him whatever it was that I wanted so badly to ask him. I don’t know for how long I ran, perhaps ten minutes, or perhaps thirty. I was reaching my limit when the last row of trees sped past me.

“His silhouette shimmered at the center of the open field. He took no notice of me; something else was preoccupying him. A few steps closer, I noticed all around him pieces of his skin. He was bent over with an oblong stone, making hefty blows at his foot, peeling the skin off chunk by chunk with the sharp end. The pieces looked remarkably like tree bark, and only then did I notice that his entire body was covered with hardened, cracked skin beyond any I’d seen on a living. He ripped off the last little bit, held the stone with the sharp end pointed at himself and, to my surprise, extended it toward me. A few steps closer, still huffing, I held the other end of the bloodstained stone. He looked at me. Two iridescent flames danced in the dark, as clear as the cold night air. He retracted his arm with great effort and proceeded to wedge his foot into the ground. I noticed he had done the same with his other foot. He pounded the ground with his mangled, skinless foot until it was firmly buried underneath. His bodily skin ground and crackled at the joints as he stood up like a newborn golem. He stretched his arms towards the sky, his fingers grew into a thousand branches, and the flames in his eyes disappeared behind the merging skin.”

Silence befell on evening rays. “My apologies, this isn’t like me,” he said, embarrassed. When I asked him what happened afterwards, he smiled and told me to take an early flight out, to catch the forest at dawn, that against the spread of dawn I should see a wide-open field, surrounding an especially tall tree, dancing in iridescent flames.

---

It was years later that I found the time to visit again. There was a newly established museum, a history museum, a sort of hall of fame. I passed by sections of great leaders, war heroes, civil heroes, the likes of those who bravely rescued little girls from drowning in the Pathean Bay, and finally, the hero. A tall wooden statue, perhaps twice lifesize, stared down at me with expressionless intensity. I played around with the interactive systems that explained in layman’s terms the principles of interbrane tunneling. I was about to leave, basking in nostalgia, when I spotted a series of sketches near the exit. There were easily a hundred of them, covering the entire wall. The description read:

Sketches made after retirement from PACE

On the top-left were technical sketches of the tunnel – tentative, unfinished. They became more complete near the bottom, and on the next column were paintings, white, curved gridlines against the bluish dark background. As I moved to the right, the precision was lost, and the paintings became more abstract. At some point, a Path entered the picture, simply passing through the tunnel at first, then resisting and defying in frustration against the overwhelming tunnel. Soon, the Path began to dominate, dismembering and reforming the tunnel every which way, repainting the darkness in brighter and brighter colors. The bottom-right picture was a familiar one, one I would never forget. I suddenly found myself wondering about the girl in pink and the boy in light green. I wondered if they could still shine in so many colors.