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[ 18 minute read ]

mostly fiction

Harrari and Hakim

I think my abandoned alien friend, whom I call Harrari (‘Harraree’) doesn’t like me so much as I first thought she did. Actually, I don’t suppose it matters how it is spelt, because I don’t write to it or her, I am not entirely sure which.

Now I live in a house my life is somewhat suspended in the glutinous gel of physicalities and practical matters. I thought Harrari doesn’t like me because I found a plastic tiger in my back garden, the sort you find in a small child’s toy zoo, and set it up outside my front door to act as a psuedo warning that a weirdo lives here, and the caller should expect weirdness if the door is opened. You know, weirdness just falls out of its own accord. 

Anyway, no-one knocks on my front door, but I did once find my loft hatch open when I got up one morning. An intruder or another lonely alien practical joke perhaps, like knocking my glasses off when you found me living in your wood? ‘Not funny, Harrari’. My loft floors are insulated and the warm from the landing was going on holiday to what it might imagine to be a new place to inhabit. Not good. Warm air holds more moisture than cold air and that is why condensation forms on cold windows and walls.

I had, over the years I have spent living here, had an annual struggle with mildew forming on some of the far out of reach walls in the stair well. The previous occupants had allowed a nest of mildew to form in the upper corner where two exterior walls and the ceiling meet. Baby mildew spores would drop down and find comfortable places around my house; behind cupboards and other hidden places. There are two things you can do; empty your house of everything, including your lovely kitchen cabinets and get a plumber to stop your water and remove the toilet cistern, your bath and your toilet; or pay very, very close attention to controlling how much moisture is in the air and the temperatures of each room. Controlling the build up of moisture is easiest. Moving warm and wet air from rooms that have a temporarily higher temperature than normal to cooler areas of my home means I can let the cooler air with its condensing water vapour out into the wild through the front door. That is, if I am awake.

When in a dog eat dog world, be a cat

Harrari, is like a friendly labrador dog, but way, way, way more intelligent. Harrari has her own character. Harrari is funny and deliciously cruel and diverse in humour. Not at all hurtful though; and here is where I have a very good understanding of Harrari’s abilities to be deadly. Invisible, silent and almost undetectable, with an intelligence that would be off any chart we humans might invent in the next thousand years that measures intelligence (I have just been told, almost exactly two hundred years), Hararri, could if she wanted, be devastating. It is useful to remember that it was Harrari that guided dog-walkers away from my woodland camp, and guided me out of a ditch directly to my tent in a pitch-dark wood, around spiky bushes, holes, fallen trees and along unseen paths to my temporary home.

So when I discovered my loft hatch open I was immediately alarmed. The police would not climb in, after I told them that I didn’t want to go in because while passing through the hatch you can be stabbed in the neck, and any intruder would do that to avoid capture. It didn’t help when I showed the police officer my thirteen inch (34cm) kitchen knife with a one and a half inch (3.8cm) wide blade near the handle. This is what I proposed to protect myself with when the hoodlums jumped out of my attic, I told him. He stared at it on the kitchen counter for a full ten seconds. He then stood at the top of the stairs using MY torch and said, ‘There is no-one in there.’ After I had fetched him a mirror and showed him how to use it, which he bumbled, I had to climb in, he was too scared, into the attic to look behind the header tank (water tank found in older homes where water for heating is temporarily stored to refill the immersion tank in the unforeseen event that the water supply to the home is not available, to prevent the immersion heater setting light to the airing cupboard by overheating itself – the thermostat inside it tests water temperature only).

It was uncanny that he reminded me to look behind the header tank. Why did he think I was in there? I could have sworn he said that there was no-one there before. When I climbed out he asked me if I am crazy. 

       'Do you have mental problems?'

I secretly laughed at his naivety. So did Harrari, but even I didn’t hear her. I never even hear her laugh at me, she only hints at it later, when I am almost entirely asleep.

       ‘We all do.’ I said to the police officer.

He then instructed me to only call for help when I have been stabbed in the neck, and the culprit has escaped, like any frightened policeman would command. 

        'Only phone us when you actually see someone'

His female colleague saw him for what he was; Certainly Harrari did, Hakim did, and the policeman's own spirit was holding up a banner behind him that said 'I am scared!' It changed to 'Everything is your fault!' and then, once it saw me looking at it, 'Sorry!'

Harrari was, with her usual perspicacity, laughing at both the policeman and my naivety. She had opened the loft hatch, while I was asleep, to move warm and moist air from the top of the landing into the attic so it did not instead descend down to the bottom of the stairs.

She can pass through my locked front door with a good deal of effort but warm air cannot. Taking a key from a hook and manipulating it to fit the keyhole in order to be able to turn a stiff lock and then twist a handle to open the front door is, not outside her capabilities, but I suspect she would be exhausted by this, since it can only really be done with telekinesis; and such finite maneuvers are terribly tricky, even for her. However, a shove that comes from a slowly building storage of force, such as pushing up the loft hatch is quite do-able for her.

Very kindly, Harrari left the hatch turned forty-five degree over the opening so I could easily close it again without climbing in. She, of course, knew that I could not lock my left elbow to support my weight, because I had fallen off my bicycle and had swelling in that elbow.

You can see how I interpret Harrari as a faithful labrador; but she is not! A well-meaning creature would, like a dog, try to help its pack members. ‘I will let some air out, or in, for you!’. (Opening windows for Harrari is tricky too).

We, as arrogant creatures, that think we know best and better then mere cats and dogs, over-estimate our intelligence. Hararri was laughing at my naivety and sheer stupidness for not recognising that she was still there, with me, and had helped me while I was asleep. Similarly, I thought it was sweet that my cat of long ago, once brought in about a dozen live frogs from my neighbours pond; probably because, with raised eyebrows at the smells from my cooked food, he also thought I might like to eat the poisonous frogs. Maybe, and I prefer to think this, my cat had a wicked sense of humour; deliciously cruel but ultimately harmless. You wouldn’t want to be at the focus of its hunting and killing prowess though. I compare Harrari to a cat because they are both stealthy killers but choose not to attack.

A thought just struck me; I still don’t know what Harrari eats. I have just remembered it is for Harrari that I left out some food, in Tupperware containers, outside of my tent for the black human-like silhouette I saw in the woods I was living in. It was, of course, Harrari.

Fever had shifted my perception towards the spirit world where Harrari and her alien species are visible. Back then, with no fridge in my tent, I often accidentally poisoned myself. I couldn’t see any spirits, because they are even further away on the spectrum, but there, among the scintillating flashes of light in every direction, was a very, very sensuous movement, almost like a snake.

It is movement that attracts a predator’s eyes; and we humans are definitely predators, our forward facing, binocular eyes telegraph this to all animals. Because this is true, like all the advice we are given if we feel threatened by a predator, the black silhouette stopped moving. I could feel it looking at me, as I simultaneously felt myself half in and half out of the both the physical world and the spirit world. I now know I had crudely torn the veil between the worlds. Harrari was not expecting me to notice her, and alarmed, because humans can be exceedingly dangerous with stuff we do not understand, she ran away.

So scared was she, that on this one occasion, she broke some long ago fallen dry branches which cracked underfoot as she fled, panicked by my ability to see her. In seeing her, she possibly felt that perhaps humans have developed that ability across the world. Her safety as she saw it, was in a moment of, as it turns out, false realisation, swept from her. I let her go; I didn’t follow, she had a head start of probably forty metres, and she is a very fast and fit runner.

That evening I left some food out for her. Of course, she didn’t eat any; the effort to open the Tupperware containers probably outstripped the energy she might get from my strange food. There was however, the feathers of a pigeon nearby. That could have been a mink that ate that though. If it was, it would also explain where the cock pheasant that woke me every morning by shaking his wings went. I don’t know who ate it, or if it just ran away.

Where do 'Spirit Fish' come from?

Harrari later came back and changed the tunes in my head for me, you know those annoying ear-worms of music. Being half of this world but having an invisible influence in another is not something I have ever been able to fully understand, but this was where I currently found myself. Those dreams that seem so real when we wake but fade so quickly are like holding a spirit fish. Real fish are slippery and wriggle a lot; who wouldn’t wriggle when they find themselves suddenly outside of their safe environment where they can breathe. Spirit fish are slippery, wriggle and become invisible. Even if you haven’t lost it, you think you have. ‘Tricky little buggers!’

I am inclined to think that dreams are made of ‘spirit fish’ substance having a laugh and fooling around, then when we can see them from the perspective of our physical world they ‘swim’ away. Or if that metaphor doesn't work for you, try dicing onions with a blunt knife - good luck with that!

If you have ever woken from a dream that you are holding something and are surprised that you are not when you wake, you might, if you were really observant, notice that the objects you were trying to pick up, just before you wake became progressively more intangible. Clearing a picnic table of dishes and things is normal while dreaming, but as the real world and dream world begin to collide, our hands glide through the cake, but we can still lift the paper plate; then not the paper plate but only the napkin with an address scribbled on it is fine. Until eventually, we wake and all the things you have tried to salvage from the dream are not, after all, at the bottom of your bed with you. How frustrating and disappointing. That is what it is like spending most of your time being at the liminal place where worlds collide. I could show you, but I just can’t carry the ‘spirit fish’ across.

There is an invisible bridge right in front of you. Come on over!

Harrari and I, for a time, at my behest really, have tried to create a bridge between the physical world, what most people call the ‘real’ world; the spirit world; and the dream world. We, Hararri and I, know that a lucid being can have an effect in any of these places. Hararri, being an alien, is not of this world and has evolved to survive on her own world. It isn’t her fault that her brothers left her behind on earth after their intelligence-gathering trip here abruptly finished. She has had to adapt to our world from just a very young and scared lone alien, to a fully independent young ‘adult’ alien. I suppose I am lucky, that she sort of grew up here without the constraining and rigid thinking of her alien species to shape her into hating humans for their rigid stupidity. She thinks we are funny.

Alcoholics find it incredibly, hugely, almost impossible to wean themselves off alcohol when they monitor and control their own doses and have lots of money and a twenty-four hour service station within a ten minute walk. They just have to go ‘cold-turkey’ and clucking, listen to their brains shrinking and playing tunes to itself while it tries, like any highly functioning creature, to make sense of all the stimuli it is absorbing.

Making sense of twisting wires

When I was sixteen, I had a head-cold with a fever that would not let me sleep, just like an alcoholic going cold-turkey. Somehow, I had the ‘cure’ which I suppose also meant that I controlled the doses, and I had a twenty-four hour service station right there in my head. All I had to do was ‘go’ there. In a weird nightmare I had to connect thousands of wires together without a circuit diagram. Worse still, all these thousands of wires were either blue, yellow, or red, exactly the same hue and tint; identical except for three colours. I would then have to run a current through all the connected wires every now and again to see if any connections were correct. Worse still, they all wriggled around and kept changing place so if a connection was false and I disconnected it, and I tried to remember which wires they were, they moved.

Some time passed, maybe hours. Then, finally, I had it, all the wires were correctly connected. I fell into a deep sleep and the next morning I was so greatly improved that I got up. By the afternoon It was as though I had not been ill. I was just a little weak from not eating for a few days. Harrari thinks this is remarkable, and she tells me that is why she still stays with me. I suspect her scientific family background makes me interesting to her. But she is not a scientist. She was left behind long before she could adequately train.

The capital of Zimbabwe? No

Car tyres going over joints in a nearby road, make a repetitive sound for each car, and the cold-turkey brain (a hang-over for most of us); or one that is in liminal space; or is in an otherwise feverish state, eventually decides the repetitive noise is garbled speech that is really hard to decipher. But, as soon as it settles on something, that is all you can hear. Many of us have seen a comedian on the telly, showing us words that sound like something more humourous than the true words 0f songs; and then, that is all we can hear when we hear the song again.

Harrari got her name when I asked her for it, when she one day came to visit me. She stayed outside my tent. Neither of us wanted her inside. Because the cars nearby going over the same bumps made a ‘Ha raa ree’ noise, that was louder than her weird-sounding real name spoken with her super-soft voice, we settled on that. I don’t suppose all telepathic voices are soft, but certainly, hers was whenever she soothed my thoughts with just a few words. Of course, for weeks, she had passed right by my tent, unnoticed. One day, I was really suffering with ear-worms. If you can imagine two bars of a very simple melody repeated over and over and over again, you understand.

           ‘You had enough? She said, ‘I will change the tune for you. Hows that?’ Suddenly, there was no ear-worm, just a soothing melody.

Other times, sleep was also difficult, and sometimes Harrari would crouch outside my tent and reaching through the fabric telepathically brush my head with her hand. Tent fabric, is not too difficult for her thoughts to pass through. Magic sleep came in moments; like switching off a light. This is one thing that really frightens me about her; she can make humans sleep with a switch.

Truth, marry, or death

One time she asked if I wanted to marry her so all my problems would be eternally taken from me, and when her alien friends came back for her (in a few weeks), I could go with them, but I had to be completely free from wrong-doing for the few weeks before her family arrived. She, she told me could never go with them because she would have to be re-programmed somehow – she never explained how. I wasn’t sure what this really meant, and like I said, Harrari can be exceedingly dangerous if she puts her mind to it. I think, she is ruthless, though not savage. Maybe wild, describes her.

Alea Jacta Est and Post factum nullum consilium

I felt that this might mean dying. In fact she had said, that I would afterwards be fully in the spirit world. I didn’t want to upset her and then be savagely killed by her in the night; so I stole food from a homeless man the night before it was all going to happen. The next morning, my mobile phone, still with a charged battery, had, had all its stored numbers deleted. Harrari later told me that at the last minute, she had directed me to steal the same food I had given to the homeless man, from an undercover intelligence operative watching a kebab shop, posing as the homeless person. She, of course, knew I didn’t want to die; it was; at the time, very close, though. Thinking about it, she could have, and can, kill me any time she wants to.

She didn’t quite cause me to think that she made me buy food for the homeless man, when I actually needed food myself. Nor did she tell me that she had caused the homeless man to gently place the food away from him. We are never allowed to be sure that there is some other explanation for how things came about.

             ‘If there is a script for the future or a log of the past, all of you would instantaneously cease to exist.’ she once explained.

Of course, an undercover intelligence operative has back-up to remove trip hazards that are unintentionally left in their way.

Nonetheless, the intent to steal from a defenseless person was enacted, and far superseded any charitable act I had added to my spiritual record. Harrari told me I had been examined in the spirit world, my mobile phone numbers were deleted so I could not accidentally phone someone with my physical body rolling over in sleep, and I was rejected because my guilt led them to my insidious behaviour.

            ‘Once the order for examination is made, it cannot be cancelled’, she whispered to me.

            'Am I dead?'

Sometimes, when I open one of the firedoors in my home, Harrari crouching really low, still invisible and hoping I won’t notice, slips past my legs, in one direction or the other, I can’t tell. I think, from memory, she is actually about one metre sixty tall.

Hakim, whom I have mentioned in a previous blog, is the spirit-avatar-manifestation I conjured, when I was sixteen, to protect me from my violent brother when he was my guardian. Hakim, is still not friends with Harrari, but at least they don’t fight, or maybe Hakim is always running away from the feline Harrari, with her mischievous humour and suppressed deadliness.

She scares me a lot.