When I entered the room, the girl leaned back, looked fixedly at me for some seconds and continued looking out of the window.

“I am glad that you came back” – she said. “Everything is still dark, with no distinction between day and night.”

Silence.

“Look” – she said. “I’ve been watching a man. He is able to talk with clouds and is disguised as a tree. Can you see him standing?!”

I looked out of the window. It was dark.

From the outside, a cold, diffused light illuminated her face.

“Here’s my theory”- the girl said. “Things are not as we see. The crater is changing everything.”

“The crater?” – I replied.

“Yes. Didn’t you see the movie?”

“Which movie?”

“The movie about the monolith” – the girl said. “The monolith, as the crater, has its own energy; its own mind. It is producing a great electromagnetic field that is able to change images. It is changing everything that we see.”

The girl turned to face me again.

“Do you know that images produce changes in consciousness?” – she said, smiling, as if trying to comfort me.

“We are changing through them” – she continued.

“First, we lose their light. All gets similar, alike. Then, we lose the sense of time.” – She nodded in silence while moving away to a darker corner.

“No cycles, no forms. We slowly lose the knowledge about things. Do you get this?” –  she insisted. “Animal, tree, rock, hand, table… what is there behind the names?”

We stayed silent for a while.

At the dark corner, it was almost impossible to see her. But I knew that she was there, looking at me.  I remained near the window, quiet, hearing her breath and her subtle body movements.

 “We must learn to remind their spirits.” – she finally said.

Although unclear what was going on with her, she was right.

The crater, as a metafiction, was the trigger to some sort of radical transition in the history of human evolution. It represented the upcoming of a New World.

 

 

Marta Alvim

February 2023