Part 1: An Ambitious Thought ...

In Other Wor(l)ds stories from Berlin - Part 1: 
An Ambitious Thought Is Swimming With the Multiple Cyborg


I. No Escape
The ambitious thought is swimming with the multiple cyborg. The flowers are falling from the trees, the birds are singing out loud and there's a terrible noise that seems like thunder: it is the nostalgic voice of another cyborg coming from the distance and it sounds like the saddest song on Earth ... Our multiple cyborg decides there and then ...

… to go to Earth and look for the other cyborg and maybe save it from its sadness. But the 1st cyborg had forgotten how people live on Earth. It was seen by the anti-terrorist forces and put in jail. There, it heard so many sad songs that it couldn't recognize the one it heard on its planet. As the 1st cyborg had no gender, the guardians put it in a cell in the women's quarter, alone, because in their world, if you are not a man you are not something else but assimilated to women. So the 1st cyborg descended deeper and deeper into sadness and soon its mission was forgotten. It thought only of the sad songs and its inability to fit into one gender box or the other. Teardrop after teardrop fell onto the concrete floor until one day one of those salty teardrops tore a hole in the floor, opening a trapdoor and sending the 1st cyborg down down down until it landed at the feet of the cyborg it had intended to save from sadness when it came to Earth.

“Hi, there you are! I was waiting here for you, really sad and terribly alone,” the other cyborg said.

“Yes, I heard your sad voice and so I decided to look for you and free you from your sadness,” the 1st cyborg explained, “but now I see this idea was too romantic. Since I've been caught and trapped here, I've become just as sad as you are.”

“Yes, but at least we're not alone now, and maybe we can escape from here.”

The other cyborg already looked a bit happier.

“But we are in a prison, there is no way to escape!”


II. The Supersonic Message
An ambitious nostalgic thought is swimming with the multiple cyborg. The cyborg carried this thought for a really long time. Thoughts were falling from its head like a fish bowl kicked so strong that all the fish fly far away ... Anyway, a head full of thoughts and some strange memories: memories from the wild sex party they threw last night.

What was that? Nostalgic thoughts? They represented what the cyborg has been longing for: cyborgs from all kinds of places, dancing to slow motion songs in ballerina suits. Oh, for sure it felt like swimming. Swimming in a sea of metallic kisses and passionate oil. That was when the multiple cyborg remembered that special robot that looked like a piece of machine from the future in 1920. All kinds of thoughts started to return to its head: “I’m gonna organize a play party this evening!”

The cyborg thought of sending a supersonic message to the whole galaxy, one that can be translated as: “Welcome to the strangest place in the universe! Everything is possible here: fucking cyborgs, aliens, robots and maybe lost humans … for one night in our timespace but in your timespace, it could represent more or less, it depends!”

The cyborg sat back, satisfied with its message. Smiling to itself, it pressed its scrawny grey thumb on the ‘send’ button.


III. Revenge of the Lonely Cyborg
The ambitious nostalgic thought is swimming with the multiple cyborg. The thought swims backwards, against the current, passing through channels and bouncing off rocks and fallen tree stumps, further and further into the past. The cyborgs swims alongside the thought, guiding it around islands and through marshy areas. While floating under a bridge, one lazy summer afternoon, the thought questioned itself.

“Why am I going backwards?” it said loudly to itself. One of the older cyborgs raised his wide head out of the water and answered: “Because you must revisit the past before you can move into the future.”

Slowly floating, the thought wondered what he would find in his past. At this point he couldn’t remember where he was coming from nor which way he had gone so far. Only when he bounced against a rock or a tree stump, he had a short flashlight of memories, astonished and confused about the way he had made so far. Where was the beginning, his origin? Or was there no origin at all? Would he just lose himself on the journey, fragmented and untraceable? And then, even if he could follow the way back to one origin, what would it tell him about the future?

Probably that he should take care of the dog more often, or write some letters to his family – the kind of precious advice that life is teaching you all through. Or: don’t step on the line, try to walk the sidewalks without stepping on the lines because that brings bad luck.

Anyway, the cyborg was lonely. A forty year old cyborg with no hopes for a future (technology doesn't last that much), thinking and meditating all day long: why nobody told me that technology doesn’t last forever, that we must be trashed too, necessarily, at a certain point? Why nobody teaches us this in school and we have to learn it the hard way ... when our metal is only good for ironing?

Even the complaining and meditating took too long, so our cyborg took a life-changing decision: “I am going to crash to the Earth, in a techno-pole, to show them where technology leads: to death ... Ah, ah, ah, I am becoming diabolic because no hope is left, no future for me, no future for others! I am going to destroy all 'scientific centers' and put bombs everywhere! Maybe the survivors will find parts of my body, maybe they'll wonder how a cyborg could be so lonely?! They might understand that all planets are perfect and loneliness exists everywhere …”


IV. In the Here and Now
The ambitious nostalgic thought is swimming with a multiple cyborg called Az. It lives in another world, far from us. Whoever built it had in mind an ideal world. Az should be clever, free-minded, not straight, but it met another cyborg called By, lost in this ideal world.

By: It’s boring, we don't have to fight anyone!

Az: I don’t agree! This world is so wonderful, no more discrimination! Everyone can live freely!

By shook its head sadly: “What good is freedom if it wasn't fought for? Furthermore, what do we learn by relaxing in this peaceful paradise? Is there no challenge here, can't we use our minds for a single moment?”

Az didn’t know what to say. It arrived to this ideal world just a few days ago: “How long have you been here?” it asked.

“3 years, 99 days, 4 hours and 36 minutes,” By replied.

Az: “And what did you do all this time? You just seem to be bored with this perfect place and you’ve forgotten what it means to fight. Now the fighting for freedom looks like a great heroic adventure to you but don’t forget about the all pain and suffering it causes!” Az looked a bit furious because his beautiful thought was questioned that way.

Oh, stop telling me what to think,” By replied angrily, “you came here with your fantastic thoughts about perfect life, telling me your wisdom – but you didn’t live this life! What do you know about it?”

“The point is that when you arrive to the ideal world, nothing is like you imagine it would be. When you live 'this' life, the ideal world is far away, unreachable. And it seems to be perfect because our reality is 'here'. Our reality doesn’t taste good, the ideal world does. But the ideal world is not here.”

When By stepped into the ideal world he couldn’t believe it because it had became part of the 'here' and the 'here' is where we experiment, what we live. And if we live something we don’t like, then we have to fight to change it. This desire for change, even in the paradise of the ideal, was too shocking for By, who realized that he was never living in such an ideal place, that this static picture was an illusion of reality. When By met Az, he realized there were many things that needed to be done. And that’s when he joined Az in the fight. He also realized that Az was not a 'he' but a 'she' and that by calling 'him' 'he' was trying to see the world as a place made only for him.

When he saw that there were others, different ones, and saw a part of the fight as well, he started to call Az for what she was, a complete cyborg, independent of pronouns. And both kept on fighting together. Ideal world or reality, call it as you want. The fact is that they are fighting HERE.


Part 2: A Beautiful Facility Manager ...