Post by yewtree on Oct 15, 2005 15:58:43 GMT
I came home from work and noticed a blue glow in the living room. My first thought was that I must have left the TV on, so I went in to check. There was an egg-shaped light in the middle of the room. It was pale blue, and hovering a couple of inches above the carpet. I stopped in the doorway, staring at it in amazement. I could see the fireplace through it, slightly distorted by its presence.
I was worried − it looked like an Aboule, an ancestor spirit, and that meant I was going to die, and it was coming to escort my soul to the forest. I don’t know how long I stood there staring at it, but it didn’t go away. I thought about calling my dad, but it was between me and the phone.
“Dierra… Dierra…”
It called me by my African name. It must be an Aboule.
“I am not an ancestor; I come from another planet,” it said. “My name is Kamagadhlela.”
I looked at it more closely, and noticed that the dust motes dancing in the sunlight were behaving very strangely around it − when they got too close, they flared up and sizzled, like the end of a hair when you put it in a candle flame.
“I don’t believe in aliens,” I said.
It made a peculiar whistling noise, and a tiny three-dimensional projection of a small grey Zetan appeared on the coffee table.
“Like this?”
“Yes,” I said.
“They don’t exist,” said Kamagadhlela dismissively. “It’s a marketing ploy of the Zahnhaar Corporation, to sell their anti-probe suits. Their sales representatives should be turning up any day now.”
“So where are you from?” I enquired.
“I believe you call it the Lalande system.”
“Oh, right,” I said vaguely. “So what brings you to Earth?”
“We need to learn the art of the kunfao.”
“Looks to me like you’re already pretty good,” I said.
“This? Oh, it’s just an electronic transmission.” It abruptly changed shape. Now it was a miniature Erzulie, resplendent in luminescent voodoo colours.
“Anyway,” I said, “you’ve come to the wrong place. My granddad is the guy you want.”
“We couldn’t get near him,” said the entity. “This message is being relayed to you via several long distance transmitters across several light years, with a final boost from your satellite communications system. He is so powerful he shorts out all the communications systems for miles around.”
“Yeah, he likes it that way,” I admitted. “So, you want me to contact him, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“It’ll take a while.”
“OK.”
“So why do you want to learn shamanism?”
“Our planet has rejected us because of what we did to it. We built too many cities, mined too deep, destroyed the ancient sacred places. We need to learn how to become attuned to it again.”
“But why did you choose my granddad?”
“Our last remaining wateh − wise one − was in contact with him. To our eternal shame, he died disregarded and impoverished. Then nine volcanoes erupted simultaneously, causing massive atmospheric disturbance, and that was when we realised.”
All this was a bit of a shock − I had always regarded my granddad as a bit of an eccentric, an irrelevance in the modern world − and now he was being hired by extraterrestrials. Weird.
I sat down to write a letter to Granddad. The entity hovered at my elbow, reading what I had written, and volunteering extra information. It was very off-putting.
According to my dad, his father was a powerful shaman − the African word is kunfao − he was a leaf master, a water diviner, and a gifted kunfun, or spirit musician. He could guide lost ghosts to their ancestral shrines, find water deep beneath the desert, and kill an eagle with a word. Dad, however, had no shamanic powers whatsoever, and so had taken a degree in medicine and become a doctor. I had been sceptical until I reached puberty, and suddenly found I was getting prescient dreams, seeing dead people, and the like. I was always very uncomfortable with it, though, and tried to suppress it.
Once it was satisfied that I would post the letter, Kamagadhlela disappeared. It diminished to a tiny point of light, then vanished with a slight pop.
Two weeks later, I got a reply from Granddad, on the back of a postcard with the quote “When the last tree has been cut down, when the last fish has been caught, when the last river has been poisoned, only then will you realise that you cannot eat money,” and a picture of a Cree chief.
His message was “You go − I’m busy. This is your destiny. Love, Mbala.”
Mbala was not his true name, it was a nickname he had acquired when he travelled in Zambia, meaning “wildcat”.
This message caused me a great deal of confusion. It undermined my idea of myself. I am a web designer, not a kunfao. I respect my heritage, but I don’t know what to do with it. I’m scared of the power lurking inside me; I wasn’t brought up knowing how to deal with it.
It was another week before Kamagadhlela returned, and I showed it Granddad’s message.
“Are you able to help us?” it asked, sounding doubtful.
“I could try,” I said. “How do I get to your planet?”
“You have to fold space-time.”
“What?”
“Oh dear, I can see this might take a while,” said the alien. It flickered and disappeared, and was replaced by a complicated diagram.
“Could you download that onto my computer?” I asked.
There was a delay; evidently Kamagadhlela was checking with technical support.
“Yes, but you’ll need to turn it on,” came the eventual reply.
“Typical bloody sysadmin,” I thought.
I switched on the computer, and opened a browser. Then the mouse pointer starting moving, apparently of its own accord, and I realised that the alien had remote control of my computer. Then a weird-looking web address appeared in my location bar. It consisted of those weird characters you get when you try opening a Japanese webpage without Japanese font support. Then a graphic started downloading, line by line, across the screen from right to left, instead of the usual top to bottom. Luckily the aliens had helpfully translated their writing into English on the diagram.
I was worried − it looked like an Aboule, an ancestor spirit, and that meant I was going to die, and it was coming to escort my soul to the forest. I don’t know how long I stood there staring at it, but it didn’t go away. I thought about calling my dad, but it was between me and the phone.
“Dierra… Dierra…”
It called me by my African name. It must be an Aboule.
“I am not an ancestor; I come from another planet,” it said. “My name is Kamagadhlela.”
I looked at it more closely, and noticed that the dust motes dancing in the sunlight were behaving very strangely around it − when they got too close, they flared up and sizzled, like the end of a hair when you put it in a candle flame.
“I don’t believe in aliens,” I said.
It made a peculiar whistling noise, and a tiny three-dimensional projection of a small grey Zetan appeared on the coffee table.
“Like this?”
“Yes,” I said.
“They don’t exist,” said Kamagadhlela dismissively. “It’s a marketing ploy of the Zahnhaar Corporation, to sell their anti-probe suits. Their sales representatives should be turning up any day now.”
“So where are you from?” I enquired.
“I believe you call it the Lalande system.”
“Oh, right,” I said vaguely. “So what brings you to Earth?”
“We need to learn the art of the kunfao.”
“Looks to me like you’re already pretty good,” I said.
“This? Oh, it’s just an electronic transmission.” It abruptly changed shape. Now it was a miniature Erzulie, resplendent in luminescent voodoo colours.
“Anyway,” I said, “you’ve come to the wrong place. My granddad is the guy you want.”
“We couldn’t get near him,” said the entity. “This message is being relayed to you via several long distance transmitters across several light years, with a final boost from your satellite communications system. He is so powerful he shorts out all the communications systems for miles around.”
“Yeah, he likes it that way,” I admitted. “So, you want me to contact him, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“It’ll take a while.”
“OK.”
“So why do you want to learn shamanism?”
“Our planet has rejected us because of what we did to it. We built too many cities, mined too deep, destroyed the ancient sacred places. We need to learn how to become attuned to it again.”
“But why did you choose my granddad?”
“Our last remaining wateh − wise one − was in contact with him. To our eternal shame, he died disregarded and impoverished. Then nine volcanoes erupted simultaneously, causing massive atmospheric disturbance, and that was when we realised.”
All this was a bit of a shock − I had always regarded my granddad as a bit of an eccentric, an irrelevance in the modern world − and now he was being hired by extraterrestrials. Weird.
I sat down to write a letter to Granddad. The entity hovered at my elbow, reading what I had written, and volunteering extra information. It was very off-putting.
According to my dad, his father was a powerful shaman − the African word is kunfao − he was a leaf master, a water diviner, and a gifted kunfun, or spirit musician. He could guide lost ghosts to their ancestral shrines, find water deep beneath the desert, and kill an eagle with a word. Dad, however, had no shamanic powers whatsoever, and so had taken a degree in medicine and become a doctor. I had been sceptical until I reached puberty, and suddenly found I was getting prescient dreams, seeing dead people, and the like. I was always very uncomfortable with it, though, and tried to suppress it.
Once it was satisfied that I would post the letter, Kamagadhlela disappeared. It diminished to a tiny point of light, then vanished with a slight pop.
Two weeks later, I got a reply from Granddad, on the back of a postcard with the quote “When the last tree has been cut down, when the last fish has been caught, when the last river has been poisoned, only then will you realise that you cannot eat money,” and a picture of a Cree chief.
His message was “You go − I’m busy. This is your destiny. Love, Mbala.”
Mbala was not his true name, it was a nickname he had acquired when he travelled in Zambia, meaning “wildcat”.
This message caused me a great deal of confusion. It undermined my idea of myself. I am a web designer, not a kunfao. I respect my heritage, but I don’t know what to do with it. I’m scared of the power lurking inside me; I wasn’t brought up knowing how to deal with it.
It was another week before Kamagadhlela returned, and I showed it Granddad’s message.
“Are you able to help us?” it asked, sounding doubtful.
“I could try,” I said. “How do I get to your planet?”
“You have to fold space-time.”
“What?”
“Oh dear, I can see this might take a while,” said the alien. It flickered and disappeared, and was replaced by a complicated diagram.
“Could you download that onto my computer?” I asked.
There was a delay; evidently Kamagadhlela was checking with technical support.
“Yes, but you’ll need to turn it on,” came the eventual reply.
“Typical bloody sysadmin,” I thought.
I switched on the computer, and opened a browser. Then the mouse pointer starting moving, apparently of its own accord, and I realised that the alien had remote control of my computer. Then a weird-looking web address appeared in my location bar. It consisted of those weird characters you get when you try opening a Japanese webpage without Japanese font support. Then a graphic started downloading, line by line, across the screen from right to left, instead of the usual top to bottom. Luckily the aliens had helpfully translated their writing into English on the diagram.