four-eyed cat

Отрывок из малой прозы “Michelandgelo”

 

 

Poetry, prose is the art of the past, left in distant memories.

Cytosine, adenine, guanine and thymine.

You don’t need more than an abbreviation of these words to compose a piece that surpasses the book’s masterpiece. Each gene will tell a story that could shake the world. Each nucleotide is a chapter in a fantasy waiting to be discovered. There is no art greater than its cosmic succession; there is nothing more beautiful than building them in a new order and bringing them to perfection. Only four letters in impromptu repetition provide a unique answer. Understand them and each person will become an open book.

 

On September 8, 2104, David was born. Whereas it takes nine months to conceive a normal human being, it took over four years to design David. You see, unlike any regular person, David is the result of a meticulous process, otherwise known as genetic engineering. He doesn’t have a mother, nor does he have a father, Instead, he has a creator; the illustrious Michelangelo who has perfected the art of Genetic sculpting.

From all across the world, eager parents of society’s upper echelons would flock to the celebrity, pleading to gift them with designer babies that would be nothing short from their vision of perfection.

Yet that is exactly what irked Michelangelo, as he deemed both his clients and their desires to adhere to a flawed concept of human perfection.

In every future child he ever so diligently etched the commandments of charisma and beauty, there was always a flaw: it was based on the genetic foundation of their parents. He was able to carefully scalp out obvious defects, such as a sequence that would result in future proneness to addiction, for instance, but that would never sate the master.

No, if the perfect human being had to be designed, it had to be from the ground up. He would spend countless days to find the perfect combination in which the eyes would manifest as the bluest of azure blues. He spent weeks to perfectly chisel the facial features, persona and physique. No detail was too small for the grandmaster to overlook: From bone density to the complexity of his bronze skin, he would be the physical incarnation of classical beauty, an Adonis, a Greek demi-god to roam the realms of man.

When David was finally conceived in the sterile environment of a laboratory, he didn’t cry. Perhaps that was due to the fact he wasn’t pushed into the world through the conventional means of childbirth. Perhaps it was due to his understanding that there would be no reason to weep, as fear and confusion are emotions that were meant to be below him.

When he opened his diamond eyes to the world, everything around him was clear and clean. There was an absence of pain, filth and blood – even an umbilical cord was nowhere to be found, making him the third human, next to Adam and Eve, to lack a belly button.

He laid completely still on an illuminated, sterile plateau, which, safe from the equipment, was devoid of any presence; devoid of any sound. There was no mother to hold him in his arms, no nurses to help deliver him. No father to cherish his coming, not even Michelangelo himself was present at the moment he first opened his eyes.

It could also be possible that David was deeply enamoured with the serenity and silence, not wanting to shatter the delicacy of reticence with his own unheard voice.

When his creator finally arrived to meet his masterpiece, David gently tilted his head, squinting his eyes in the same curious fashion of that of his creator.

There was no smile on Michelangelo’s face when he sternly observed the eyes of his creation, instead looking like a jeweller that carefully examines a stone for any flaws.

Of course, none were to be found in the ten-thousand-karat eyes of our young David. After an appreciative nod, the creator lifted the infant into his hands. The subsequent warmth felt by David caused him to curl an innocent smile, but Michelangelo paid no heed to the soft, thin lips that expressed mirth.

The rocking in his creator’s arms was the closest David would ever feel to a mother swinging her child back and forth. It was a brief experience, as shortly after he was laid onto another platform where he was to be examined further by cold machinery and other appliances. With Michelangelo leaving the sterile environment, David stretched out his little hand for the first time, as if he deeply desired the warmth again, hoping to cling on to the pearly white lab coat of the now leaving man.

On that day, September 8th of 2104, the birth of David was announced to the world through a series of images. His gentle smile and pristine eyes would warm the hearts of many in the world. While his coming might’ve been lauded and cheered upon, those warm words and wishes never pierced the thick walls of the underground laboratory.

When David took his first steps at merely five months of age, the structure of his perfectly-designed bones allowed him to immediately walk with royal grace. Whereas a normal infant would control his palate to utter their first “Mama” or “Dada”, David had already been able to structure monosyllabic sentences.

Still living in a sterile room, the only warmth he felt was the optical radiation emitting from a hologram that taught him to speak. While David was never able to completely embrace the visage of his digital nurse, he quickly learned of a way that would allow him to feel the most warmth, mimicking the so-called affectionate hugs that were shown to him through movies.

Only on several occasions was David allowed to spend the night with his surrogate see-through mother. It was a treat to both the boy and artificial intelligence, as during those cherished nights they turned the ceiling into a celestial theatre, admiring the countless stars and constellations, of which Aldebaraan was David’s uncontested favourite.

From one synthetic being to another, their requited love for one another was organic as it could ever be.

 In learning, he found love guided by her evanescent hand, David had mastered dozens of languages and their various dialects at young age of four years old. He knew a plethora of classical masterpieces by heart, ecstatically reciting the words of Puschkin to Kafka in their mother tongue. While his vocal chords elegantly sang the chapters, he realized his words rang hollow, as he himself did not understand the complexity that rested between the lines.

 

Where astrophysics and quantum mechanics adhered to rules he seemed to naturally understand, the enigma which was human nature continued to elude him. Where laid the logic in suffering? What was the reason behind inflicting it? He would often ask his digital didact, but even in her vast database, there was no answer that could satisfy his curious mind.

 

Both David’s curiosity and the inability of his caretaker to sate it were carefully observed. Without any of their say, or even knowledge for that matter, she was deemed to be obsolete and was to be terminated.

 

It struck the young boy with monumental grief. Even if it was for a second, he would at least to have been able to say goodbye, vowing that he’d bring her back so that he could.

 There were a myriad of tools left to his disposal, and with their help, he brought about countless iterations to the world, attempting to bring her back.  David, however, found naught but an echo every single time. He tried adamantly, passionately, searing with vigour and determination, but both heart and hearth dimmed when his labour continually proved to be fruitless.

Beyond a perfect replica of her visage, her soul always remained absent. Their interaction, even her presence in general never felt as it once did. His memory was not to blame for his failure, as David was blessed with a perfect eidetic mind. He was capable of memorizing anything by just laying eyes upon it briefly, which was exactly the reason why he could trust his own judgment.

 He tore her lacking copies down so that he could build her back up, again and again, his waning hopes crashing alongside the lines of code he scrapped.

No matter how many times the child attempted in recreating her, he was always left with an empty shell. Now, more than ever did David feel the emptiness of a holograph. Even the lukewarm radiation emitted, while identical in every measurement, didn’t warm his skin as much as hers.

One fateful day, he ceased his hopeful endeavours, only to endlessly stare at the projected cosmos on his ceiling. Looking up at its candour, David found respite in those bright stars above him. She wasn’t gone forever; she had only departed on a journey to Aldebaraan – A journey he was still too young to make.

The following day it was announced to him that he would go into the outside world for the first time in his life; taking his place amongst the dozen children of an elementary school. Even though no one was aware that he was indeed perfect, the first time David stepped into the classroom was as if all others were dazed by his magnificence. One would think that everyone would flock to him, like moths to a flame, yet all turned away their heads and faces in order to not get blinded.

David’s initial excitement soon faded due to the perfunctory attitude displayed towards him. Whenever a question was asked by the teacher, his hand was the first to rise.

At first, the teacher’s admired young David for his erudition. He always knew the answer to whatever she asked, and that frustrated her to no ends. Initially it all started as basic questions that the normal human being would know, only to spiral out of control when she started asking the class question to which a sophomore would show the same reaction as David’s peers did now.

He answered and answered, and as such her envy grew with proportion. She hated the child at this moment, a hatred shared by the rest of the class. When David’s hand went up now, it would remain in the air, forgotten and to be ignored, just like his other classmates would ignore him.

Yet it is hard to ignore such spectacular radiance; when his hand rose up, the blood of all others would still boil. It boiled and boiled for weeks on end, until one day David was to be confronted by the most raucous child in the class. The name of that child is irrelevant, as his actions and impact on the world would also be. It is terrifying to have that realization at such a young age, so he demanded repercussion. They demanded retribution.

When the approached David, surrounding his table with his jackals and lackeys, the perfect child looked at his teacher in confusion, wondering why she ignored the tumult as she turned an ethereal page of her digital journal. David knew she was aware, and that was why he was confused.

As the king of nobodies pushed David out of his chair, the child got back up on his feet, not even asking why he was acting like he did. You see, David never held any contempt towards his peers. He knew from the moment he entered that classroom that none were remotely close to the capabilities that he was gifted with. He never chose to flaunt his talents towards them in particular, as there was not an ounce of arrogance within the boy.

Human nature had always eluded David, and continued to do so. He didn’t know that his display of knowledge would warrant such hatred. Such immense hatred, as the boy’s fist now connected with the face of David, it was as if he was left with an imprint of ire. Yet David answered the violence by turning the other cheek. Next to envy and wrath, now arose greed; the slum king couldn’t take enough with just one cheek, so he struck the other too. This was when the fire soared through the otherwise calm heart of the perfect human. He had no more cheeks to give, yet they still wanted to take more. So he gave it to them.

 

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