by Indra Sinha
‘Don’t ask, you’ll know soon enough. She has invited you to tea in Narnia. You’ll come of course. The place isn’t easy to find, so I’ll give you a map and send someone to meet you when you arrive. Oh, and Bear – I am named after an ancient and defiant spirit – I hate being called Lil.’
Through the cyberverse
Imagine the net as a galaxy shining in the dark of cyberspace. The plane of the ecliptic is a blaze of stars – the bulk of the internet – with systems clustered thickest in the sector of Cyber-Sagittarius. We are a long way from the centre, which is hidden by clouds of dust, particles of broken data packets, shining with reflected light. Here and there are pockets of brilliance, hot bright clouds where new systems are being born. There are dark gaps, where networks have died. Strange unexplained effects abound, there are regions of gravity overload, of bending telnets, lag and cyberspacetime freezes. In some places time runs backwards. In one of the galaxy’s trailing arms is the location of Micronet, still alive, soon to be a supernova enfolded by the gaseous remains of vapourised Necromancers. Throughout the galaxy and some a little way out from the rim, like astronauts freefloating alongside a spacecraft, are small star-clusters, private systems, like those of the virus writers, NuKE. Beyond is the darkness of total night.
Let your eye drift out. Further. Much much further. Out into the blackness of deep space. Out there, alone in the darkness of space, so faint that it can hardly be seen, a solitary star flickers. This is the secret and exclusive Vortex, home of the net’s deepest roleplayers.
A picnic in Narnia
Picking my way through clothes in the wardrobe, I step out of the back and into Narnia. Woods stretch away in every direction. Somewhere in these woods, Lilith is waiting with tea, cucumber sandwiches and seed cake, all terribly English.
‘Whatever you do, don’t be late,’ Lilith warned me. ‘Luna hates to be kept waiting.’
We’re to meet at four o’clock and it’s five to. Luckily, I have a map. I go left and follow the slope downhill. The ground falls, growing ever boggier, to a churned up clay mire beyond which, in the shadow of trees, I can hear the sound of running water. Now birch logs step down to a plank bridge which looks as if no-one has crossed it for a while, there is moss growing on the plank. More steps mount the further slope. I climb, puffing. I’m unfit, get easily breathless. I do not get enough exercise, sitting at a desk at the agency all day, and half the night at a computer screen. At the top the path broadens to a rough track, with last season’s leaves lying rustily in ruts and puddle-bottoms. I am stepping over small islands of wood anemones when, in a stirring of leaves, a faun stands before me! Yes a real Narnian faun, Mollicornuus lewisii, Lewis’s Velvet Budhorn. But before I can think to ask the way, it gives me a shy smile and ducks back into the trees. The track peters out and a few steps later I am lost in trees that run away in all directions. All ways look the same. Again the leaf-rustle and the faun re-appears, still smiling, but this time it gestures and waits for me to follow.
The way a faun’s legs are made – think of the hind legs of a goat, or antelope – means that it cannot walk as a human does, but dances along, skittering on the points of its hooves. This faun casts glances over its shoulder to make sure I am behind. I notice that it is carrying a cricket bat. Every dozen or so steps it does a little skip, swings the bat through an imaginary cover drive and makes a loud ‘tlock’ with its tongue. Whenever it does this, it turns and rolls its eyes back at me as if checking for signs that I find its behaviour odd. We go on in this manner for a while, until the faun stops, tilts its head sideways to listen, then says in a high chirrupy voice, ‘Come along Cyri.’
Is it talking to me? There is a hint of movement among the trees. Something is there, something hard to see, slipping between the trunks. The faun gives a tinkling laugh and says, now unmistakably addressing me, ‘Cyri says “Dobro pojalovat v Vodovorot”!
‘What language is that?’
‘It is Cyri’s language.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Cyri is saying to you, “Welcome to the Vortex”.’
A short while later we’ve reached the top of the hill and find ourselves at the forest edge, looking out across a wide landscape of woods and fields. The faun lifts a shaggy arm, points, then quietly as it had come, vanishes into the trees. Hurrying downhill (it is one minute to four), I find a glade painted green and golden by the sun. A table spread with a white cloth is laid with tea things. Beside it, seated in comfy looking wicker lawn armchairs are two ladies.
When I met Lilith in ‘real’ life she was wearing leather trousers and smoking a cigar. Today she wears a dress of white organza and lace, of a style that was last seen in the years before the First War. Beside her, sitting very upright, is a lady all in black. Above a dress buttoned to a high collar and fastened with an emerald brooch, is the most exquisite face I have ever seen. Its geometries must have been calculated by an angel. The face is meshed with the fine lines of extreme old age – how old must she be? ninety? a hundred? – and in the parchment-pale skin her eyes are (I am quoting now) ‘feral gashes of viridian’.
Lilith says, ‘Luna, I would like to present Bear.’
The old lady looks me over and says to Lilith, ‘Is he civilized?’
‘I think so,’ Lilith says. ‘We shall see. Tea, Bear?’
‘Thank you, yes,’ I say, feeling foolish.
‘Do sit down,’ she says, ushering me to a third chair which until this instant had not existed, but now obligingly appears.
‘Let me get you a plate. Will you have a slice of cake? May I give you a sandwich?’
While Lilith busies herself in an unnervingly un-Lilithlike way, I smile at the old lady, who glares at me.
‘The tea is Earl Grey,’ says Lilith. ‘But Luna likes a spoon of Lapsang in the pot, don’t you dear?’
She pours from a large round teapot.
‘Porcelain,’ says Luna. ‘Tea does not taste the same from pottery. People who serve it in mugs are never to be encouraged.’
‘Taste the tea, Bear,’ says new, polite Lilith. ‘Is it to your liking? Do you prefer it sweeter? Perhaps with honey?’
‘No, no,’ I say, lifting the cup and taking a sip, ‘it’s good.’
‘Good? What is that?’ says Luna. ‘Lily, I’d be insulted, after the trouble you’ve been to.’
‘Don’t you like the tea?’ asks Lilith. I am sitting, plate on lap, holding the teacup and saucer.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘It just feels rather silly, playing “let’s pretend”.’
I am expecting Luna to glower at me, and am relieved when she smiles. ‘You’re embarrassed!’
Lilith says, ‘I’m not surprised. First visits to the Vortex can be rather . . . unexpected.’
‘Since it is his first visit,’ says Luna, no longer smiling, ‘I will overlook his gaucheness.’ Turning to me she asks, ‘Did you enjoy the scenery on the way here? The view?’
‘Yes, the Vortex is like a paradise. It’s beautifully written.’
‘Not all parts are so pleasant.’
‘Well, I am enjoying it immensely.’
‘So! You’re entertained, even charmed. Bravo! But when invited to contribute to this world, you grow embarrassed.’
Lilith says, ‘Luna, I can guess what Bear is thinking. This must feel to him like being at a child’s tea party where you’re handed a tiny cup and you have to pretend to drink. The child watches you intently, to make sure every drop has gone down, and asks “Is it nice?” and you murmur “Delicious”. Then she asks “Would you like some birthday cake?” You say “Yes please”. With very great seriousness she hands you a little plastic plate with nothing on it, and you have no option but to poise finger and thumb about the slice of invisible cake and lift it to your mouth. You make little smacking noises with your lips and say “Mmmm, lovely” and hope that this will satisfy her and that she isn’t, pray God, going to offer you another slice . . .’
‘Exactly like that, Lilit
h.’
‘Exactly thus,’ says Lilith, ‘do we wish away our children’s imaginations.’
‘Roleplay isn’t just pretend, you know,’ says the old lady, munching imaginary cake with relish. She leans across to me. ‘I will let you into a secret. It is this: everything we experience is equally real. Or else equally unreal, it makes no difference which.’
Cyri
‘The truth is . . .’ says Luna, then stops and titters. ‘No, the truth is something else. Truth and reality have very little to do with one another – Lily, could I trouble you for another cup of this good tea? Thank you – the fact is (for facts and truth are also unrelated) that our experience is seamless and undifferentiated. Only we, being unable to accept this, chop it up into bits to which we attach labels. “Real” is just one more label. What actually is real? I am sitting in front of my screen. To my right is a window on which is a pot of lilies. The light catching their leaves makes them translucent, almost golden. It is afternoon. A pigeon is flying down to a roof opposite, which reminds me that I am in London . . . I won’t say which part. On the desk beside my computer are the following things, of which I’m aware from time to time: a tiny bulldog clip, used train ticket, twisted paperclip, US twenty-dollar bill; a mug – aha, yes, I bet that surprised you, but it is of porcelain and bears a coat of arms. A breath of wind is just now moving the trees outside my window. My computer screen is flickering, which annoys me. On it these words are appearing as I type them, this word, this letter . . . r. My mind sees Narnia, green and golden, it sees Lilith in her white lace, and it sees you, Bear. All of these things, impossible to disentangle, comprise the actual reality of “now”.’
In an adjoining meadow figures in white have appeared and are walking about, carrying what look like sticks.
‘Bear, I will now present to you three edited “realities”. In “virtual reality”, you are in Narnia talking to a cantankerous old woman called Luna. In the “real world” you are in front of your plastic and glass computer watching these words appear on its screen. You are talking to an unknown stranger whose name you do not know, and are aware that “Luna” may not be an old woman at all, or even female. She may have lied about living in London. She may be a fifty-six year old male truck driver from Wigan. But there is a further, transcendent, reality where you will henceforth meet many different Lunas: it is your imagination. These “realities” can’t be separated because they are actually all the same thing . . .’
While Luna talks, I notice the fauns, for now I can make them out as such, tapping sticks into the ground and all of a sudden realise that what they are doing is banging in stumps, setting up wickets. There’s going to be a game of cricket!
Luna smiles at me. ‘Lily, do pour Bear another cup of tea, his first has gone cold.’
As Lilith takes my cup, Luna asks, ‘How much of our “real” lives do you suppose is lived in the imagination?’
‘Sixty percent?’ I venture.
‘One hundred percent,’ says the old lady.
‘Bear, how is your tea?’ asks Lilith.
‘Hot, wet, sweet.’
‘Hopeless!’ says Luna, ‘Better drop him, Lily, he’ll never make a Vorticist.’
‘All right,’ I say, ‘I’ll have a stab at imagining. The tea is . . .’
‘Don’t fish for adjectives,’ says Lilith, laughing. ‘What do you feel?’
‘Well, I like . . .’
‘The human hand,’ says Luna, ‘is capable of at least twenty-four discrete movements, each of which requires the coordination of a range of muscles in the hand and forearm. To pick up a cup, the forearm must extend towards the object, the hand must open and then close around the handle. Precise motor skills ensure that the cup is grasped firmly enough to hold it against gravity, but not so firmly that it breaks, or so loosely that it slips . . .’
All right. As I lift the cup to my lips I am aware, because I choose to be, of its weight on my knuckles, the sweep of its handle. The rim of the cup against my lower lip is smooth, curving away. I hold it pressed to my lip, tilt and inhale the warm tea spice an instant before the liquid kisses my upper lip. It floods into the mouth, trickles across the tongue and sinks into the corners of the mouth where the taste buds extract its marvellous blend of sweetness and bitterness. The teacup itself is hot, its heat a sort of tingle impressed on the lips and probed for, in a snakely gesture, by the tongue tip.
‘ “Snakely!” ’ says Luna, ‘I like that. Yes, I think you really did taste that tea.’
Across the field, the ring of white figures slowly closes in as the bowler makes his run up, moving out again after the delivery. I love watching cricket, especially this sort of rustic knockabout. I love the green of sunlight on grass and in oak leaves, the white figures moving in their slow, hypnotic ballet, the occasional clock of leather ball on batwillow. There is a ripple, patter, or clatter of applause like wings round a dovecote. Someone is out, the new batsfaun, all padded up (ridiculous, the pads have to bend the wrong way), is walking out to the crease. There’s something familiar, every few steps, about his little hop and imaginary cover drive. I close my eyes and listen to the symphony of tea and cricket sounds, the chink of a cup on a porcelain saucer, distant calls of cricketers, the muted tinkle of a spoon, wind stirring leaves, wind getting up, sighing and snorting in the branches, crackle of leaves close at hand . . .
There is movement in the wood. Something is there, something on the edge of vision.
‘Cyri, Cyri,’ calls Lilith softly.
An animal emerges from the trees, so perfectly camouflaged that it seems made of glass. I sense, rather than see, the shape of a zebra. As it comes closer I realise why it is so hard to see. I really am looking clean through it. The creature is all striped nothingness. Nor are they stripes. I am looking at a small horse whose body is woven of interlaced Cyrillic letters that stretch and ripple as it moves, creating the illusion of volume. The calligraphic horse trots forward to Luna and lowers its head. She strokes its nose.
‘Ya nyenavizhu smotryet sport po televisoru no ya obozhayu JanBothius,’ says the horse.
Lilith explains. ‘Cyri says, “I hate to watch sport on TV, but I love JanBothius”.’
‘JanBothius is the faun who likes cricket,’ says Luna, but I had already guessed this.
‘My parents were émigreés,’ Lilith tells me and Luna. ‘He was Ukrainian, she from a family of Russian Jews. They met in Berlin, where among other people they knew Nabokov. One of his stories – I can’t remember which, but it will come back to me – mentions them. When the Nazis got power things became nervous. In 1937, the year before I was born, they were on the road again, this time to Paris. I am glad they left Germany. I was born in the small hours of November 10th, 1938.’
‘Noce nazivayetza Kristallnacht,’ says Cyri.
‘Yes Cyri,’ says Lilith, patting him, ‘the night called Kristallnacht.’
‘My mother was a gentle soul. She had hair the colour of corn, twisted in plaits. She made me learn Russian, and told me tales of Baba Yaga the witch and the house that turned round on chicken’s feet. She also told stories about this little horse made of alphabet who would teach me a letter, a word, a phrase every night.’
‘Ya lublu yest morkovki,’ says the horse.
‘That means “I love to eat carrots” ’ Luna tells me. ‘He is always saying that. ‘Here you are, Cyri. You shall have the largest, juiciest carrot imaginable . . .’
And of course it appears in her hand.
Hindustani by candlelight
The imagination is a building of many rooms which contain images of objects and people. The ‘rooms’ are not described by four walls, floor and ceiling, but are multi-dimensional spaces which can hold a whole landscape, or even a universe. The objects, by the same token, are not what we could commonly call ‘things’, but may be ideas, sensations or memories. The rooms are not arranged, as in a mansion or castle, on separate floors, opening off long corridors. They float in clusters like
frogspawn, each room having connections to thousands of others. The links may be lofty archways or secret tunnels. This building, the imagination, is not accessed by a single door. There are dozens of entrances, each opened by a different key. Music, ritual, drama, poetry all open doors into the imagination. The candle-lit, incense-pillared temples of witches and magicians are its portals. The Tarot, I Ching and Qabala unlock secret doors. In the Tibetan Bardo, cave mouths invite entry, guarded by animal-headed monsters. Similar labyrinths are sentried by the minotaur and the death-beasts of the Nile.
Cyberspace is the name we give to the human imagination when we access it via a modem. But the delirium of modem worship is uncannily like the experience of an earlier generation of cranio-speleologists. Coleridge and de Quincey entered the imagination via the opium gateway. They are the truest, most direct ancestors of the cybergypsies. (So naturally is Kubla Khan’s pleasure dome a work of cybertecture that it has been erected in the Vortex – one of the sights of Luna’s guided tour – where its glittering dome of white and blue ice can be seen for miles above the scarlet poppy fields of Lethe.) Cybergypsying is addictive as any drug. Jarly, addict and murderer, claims that the chemicals it triggers in the brain are the same endorphins released by opium. He points out that both addictions create hallucinations powerful enough to crystallise imagination into reality. But cyber experience of the imagination is in one important respect different from all the others.
Until recently we have been alone in our imaginations. However vividly a play, film or book brings characters to life in our minds, we always form an audience of one. We enter the story but have no part in it. Millions of people have experienced the vision of Jane Eyre learning Hindustani by candlelight in her moorland cottage, but if Jane was ever aware of ghosts from the future peering in at her through the window, she would have seen that they haunted singly, never in groups. In cyberspace, for the first time, we create imaginary worlds which can truly be shared, in which each of us is fully present, with the power of free and spontaneous action. We no longer have to follow a script. We can play inside each other’s imaginations.
