And the Rat Laughed - By Nava Semel Page 0,40
the past, but it soon turned out that all of the mythical heroes are male spiritual shepherds known as rabbis, and that most of the mythological material I found centered on their graves. They’re the ones who are assumed to bestow immediate remedy to every distress. One of the elders was convinced that the true reason for my query was my desire to use one of these graves to be blessed with a mate and with offspring, and he insisted on referring me to the grave of a famous rabbi, Nachman, from the village of Uman in a place once called the Ukraine. When he discovered that I am not family-programmed, he referred me to a grave in North Africa, and promised that if I visited there I would be blessed with longevity.
Just to give you an idea of the type of ritual practiced in Ju-Ideah, I’m sending you an object for your simulatorium. Think of it as my farewell gift. It’s a lucky charm they’ve been nailing to the doorposts of their homes for thousands of years. It contains a tiny piece of parchment with an ancient secret inscription that they would not show me because I admitted that I didn’t believe in any particular religion. Some say that the technique used for inscribing the parchment, an ancient craft known as handwriting, is also used to spell out a mysterious ancient name.
For a moment I thought...
The little girl...
She doesn’t have a name in any other version either.
When I recounted the Girl & Rat legend, the idea of some link between a Polish-born Jewish girl and the Christian faith was categorically rejected, and the JuIdeah elders’ initial politeness suddenly disappeared. The beaming was interrupted, and my access to the public sources of information was blocked. My apologies were rejected. When I tried to break into the blocked data stores, I discovered that, despite its longstanding separatism, or perhaps precisely because of it, their data security technology is state-of-the-art. It may even be more advanced than ours. I would never have succeeded in breaking into their REMaker – if they even use REMakers there...
The exile of memory...
What submemoryfolder did they banish the little girl to?
Trapped somewhere...
The implachip is working at full capacity now.
Unbearable...
Have to break loose...
No. You don’t have to. I hear your voice clearly, Stash. Let go. Y-mee Prana. Your thought is crashing against my implachip. You’re hurting me.
Resign yourself to it, K-0005275-149: human memory doesn’t have the capacity to contain ... And yet...
Like the tailbone...
Who has a tail?...
Stash, you’ve been through every genetic repair, and you’re disappointed that the bone is still lodged in the lower part of the spine. According to your plan, man was destined to be rid of this reminder. A reminder of what?
Once upon a time we were...
The Stefan.
Perhaps the body remembers what the soul refuses.
As a final resort, I beamed a “Who Remembers?” message all over the mindnet. The answers pointed to children who had been stashed away in closed places, and identified so many perpetrators by name that I thought I may really have found a lead. But the fact that there was no rat mentioned ruled out a connection.
My brain box picked up a message from someone who identified himself as Stash. For a moment I thought...
Then I heard a kind of thundering voice, rolling...
Was this laughter?
I must confess, Stash, last night I decided, for the first time in my life, to disconnect from my REMaker. I know that a spontaneous dream is the kind of childish prank you’d expect of rebellious adolescents, and few of those who have been through the experience would consider repeating it. Instead of selecting a cool item from my dreamertory, I turned off my implachip and let my brain take over.
In the dark...
Tell someone
That the little girl...
I ... never had...
A mother...
Or a...
Suddenly my eyes opened wide. This was not the soft and fuzzy awakening that we all experience. I couldn’t control my tremors without tranquillizers. Only then did I understand why I’d felt such a strong urge to break away from the REMaker. As soon as I set out on my voyage, after all, I’ll have nothing but spontaneous dreams. I was paralyzed with fear. I cannot bear the thought that every time I will shut my eyes I’ll be forsaking myself to the unbridled tyranny of my brain. It will wreak havoc with the strata of consciousness, like a child in need of genetic repair. My implachip signaled concern about my sanity, and instructed me