Cthulhurotica (8 page)

Juan Miguel Marin
RIEMANNIAN DREAMS

Nighttime. Recurring dream. Water cascades into the pool. I walk towards the waterfall, my bare feet noiselessly stepping over the dream sand, my bare skin exposed to the cool air, barely covered only by a loincloth. The rushing sound of the water cascading will soon become the seductive voice saying only one word, almost a whisper: “Come.”

There. I hear it.

The voice appeals to my body’s instincts, sending to slumber the scientist in me, lulling to sleep my rational mind. I fight it. I keep my mind alert by keeping in mind the facts.

Fact one: the dream’s origin lies in something mundane: the voice recorded as publicity for my recently acquired Edison phonograph prototype.

Fact two: I helped the American inventor, Herr Thomas Alva Edison, with the physics behind the acoustics and received a phonograph as gift.

Fact three: I listened to the phonograph’s voice so now, whoever the actor with the androgynous voice is, has now become embodied in my fantasy. But I have to admit something erotic about the test voice emerges when combined with the rushing waterfall, its rushing white noise serving as stage for the voice revealing itself:

I am the Edison phonograph, created by the great wizard of the New World to delight those who would have melody or be amused. I can sing you tender songs of love. I can give you merry tales and joyous laughter. I can transport you to the realms of music. I can cause you to join in the rhythmic dance. I can lull the babe to sweet repose, or waken in the aged heart soft memories of youthful days.

No matter what may be your mood, I am always ready to entertain you. When your day’s work is done, when your wife is worried after the cares of the day, when the children are boisterous, I can rest both of you and quiet the other. I never get tired and you will never tire of me, for I will always have something new to offer.

I give pleasure to all, young and old. My voice is the clearest, smoothest and most natural of any talking machine. The name of my famous master is on my body, and tells you that I am a genuine Edison phonograph. The more you become acquainted with me, the better you will like me. Ask the dealer.

I did. Edison introduced me to the beautiful whispering voice of his machine, the voice now embodying itself in a beautiful blond youth emerging out of the waterfall’s pool depths…

In the first lucid dream I could glimpse only a young, pale, androgynous face, which the water ripples sometimes hid, sometimes revealed. I could not tell whether the attractive stranger was a boy or a girl. I could only notice the blond-auburn hair, pale skin of a healthy pinkish color, rose-colored cheeks, rosy red lips, and the eyes…ah, the eyes of the deepest turquoise, as deep and watery as the light but darkening blue of pool’s bottom. Now in this lucid dream, she or he, turns around and stands. I see now a beautiful backside. Like mine, also covered with nothing but a loincloth. My scientific curiosity tries to find out more about those lovely hips but the mist prevents me. As in the previous dream, the youth asks “So, what do you want me to do?”

He then says (and I realize that this time, it is a he, though he still doesn’t look at me): “I know it’s cold. Just dip in slowly.”

I step closer and say, “Untie the knot of your loincloth. Let it go.” He does, revealing his beautiful bottom. I go on, “Now come and untie mine.” He turns around and his face approaches mine. Still looking at me, he slips my loincloth off, never ceasing to smile. When we are both naked, I put my arms around him and press my lips against his neck. I inhale the smell of his wet hair. He laughs and turns around. I try to reach his nipples, still trying to know for certain the gender of my fantasy. But he laughs again, and stops my hands with his. He caresses the soft hairs of my arms and then I notice he is not any more a boy. He becomes the girl of a previous dream, the dreamy girl with blond auburn hair and small breasts, her boyish chest almost as flat as my own.

She kneels and kisses my stomach. She does it so slowly than when her lips go further down, the intensity of the heat energy makes me explode, vaporizing stranger, pool, waterfall and the rest of the dream realm.

****

Sunlight comes through the window’s glass. Morning, but, what day? Sunday? Monday? I’ll just call the physics department and say I’m sick. I have lots of mail to read. Picking up a stack on unopened envelopes I see a letter from America, from Haverhill, Massachusetts. A message from Mr. Walter Gilman.

Herr Gilman, a student planning to attend Miskatonic University in the fall, recently “discovered the scientific discovery of the century.” He found out about some “unusual circumstances that had more or less suddenly given a mediocre old woman from the Seventeenth Century an insight into mathematical depths perhaps beyond the utmost modern delvings of Planck, Heisenberg, Einstein, and De Sitter.” He moved to the Arkham, MA house where the unusual circumstances occurred. He now sleeps in the same room the woman once occupied until arrested. The charge? Witchcraft!

Gilman’s change of address gave him the witch’s intuitive knack to solve Riemannian equations. And right here on the back he scribbled some equations. Yes, those are mine. He copied them, and their solutions, from my
On The Foundations of Geometry
.

Why do cranks keep sending me their theories? Another letter tossed into the wastebasket, with the other raving lunatics.

****

Moonlight comes through the window’s glass. Night, but can’t sleep. I feel guilty for having dismissed the young American student so quickly. What if he is the next Einstein? I myself have often entertained wild speculations about the ultimate reality of the cosmos. True, I lack the courage to publish my meta-mathematical writings, at least not until I get tenure. The few close friends who have read them pat me on the back, and at the most congratulate me on my originality. They then suggest I submit them to the American pulp magazine,
Weird Tales
. Why do those who accept my mathematics as a potential work of genius, nevertheless dismiss my natural philosophy? I have no idea.

Falling asleep.

Another lucid dream. This time two beautiful creatures, so alike they could be twins, brother and sister. Giggling, the girl stands in front of me. The boy stands behind me. Although, something’s different. Have they matured since last dream? The girl who looked like barely into her teenage years now has matured into a voluptuous woman. No longer with flat chest but beautiful large breasts covered in droplets of cold water that make her pink nipples erect. I quickly turn towards the beautiful boy, or rather, handsome man, who now towers over me. His air of innocence gone, his delicate features, once mimicking a girl’s, have now become the chiseled features of a stunning man.

As I stare at his muscled arms, he presses forcefully his hands against my hips and turns me around, pushing my shoulders so that I fall on my knees. I would have complained had I not being too distracted by the bouncing breasts that were now staring me in the face, begging to be kissed. While I lick the woman’s nipples, her brother kneels behind me. He slides one arm around my chest, and softly presses his lips against my neck. His kiss electrifies me. I imagine I would have felt the same had I been bitten by an electric eel! I lose myself in the midst of so much erotic pleasure, falling into such stupor that I lose my balance. The boy’s arms grab me. While he holds me, his sister starts kissing my neck, next my nipples and then my stomach, further moving down without stopping. Her brother moves in to join in again. I fought against having an orgasm and waking up before I could feel both of their lips on me. No luck. As I erupt into an orgasm, the waterfall erupts into a geyser, leaving me covered in salty sweat, uncomfortably wet, and, unfortunately, awake.

****

Sun rises, though the moon refuses to go sleep. I should finish reading my mail before walking back to the sciences laboratory. Oddly enough, I got another letter from an Arkham inhabitant.

Dear Professor Riemann:

I have read with great interest your articles on what Professor Albert Einstein calls Riemannian geometry. I am impressed with how you have overthrown traditional concepts of Newtonian space. I dread getting to the point; but I have certain evidence that out of Riemannian space monstrous things have come into Arkham, MA and now live in its woods. They engage in some sort of mining activity. I have seen footprints, and of late have seen them nearer my own home. I also have overheard buzzing voices in the woods.

At one place I heard them so much that I took a phonograph there with a Dictaphone attachment and wax blank – and I shall try to arrange to have you hear the record I got. The things come from another planet, being able to live in interstellar space and fly through it on clumsy, powerful wings which have a way of resisting the ether but which are too poor at steering to be of much use in helping them about on earth.

Sir, I think that with our respective studies we can be very useful to each other. I should warn you that they like to take away men of learning once in a while, to keep informed on the state of things in the human world. THEY MAY WANT TO KIDNAP YOU. Nevertheless, I think you will find any risks worth running for the sake of knowledge. Hoping that I am not bothering you unduly, and that you will decide to get in touch with me rather than throw this letter into the waste basket as a madman’s raving, I am

Yrs. very truly,

Henry W. Akeley

Well. Mr. Akeley, Herr Einstein just got rid of the ether; his theory of relativity proved the ether exists only in Fairyland. So unfortunately I must throw your letter into the waste-basket with your fellow Arkhamite. Time to go to the laboratory.

Wait.

There may be a hidden connection between the ridges of a phonograph, and sound waves in space. Just as we etch ridges in a record, we etch vibrations in air and we etch numbers in time and space, that is, when we count one, two, and three and so on. We etch patterns towards infinity.

Say we approach geometrically the spatially extended spectrum of sound and light waves. We would have a multidimensional representation of Newton’s rainbow, the one he created by filtering light through his prism. Could I filter sound? Newton’s arch nemesis and co-inventor of the calculus, Gottfried Leibniz, once wrote that music can be mathematically described as the pleasure elicited in the mind by simple counting. Number, our translation of Greek arythmos, is nothing but rhythm.

Therefore…

Where are my lab notes? Oh, here.

Whenever we see, or hear, something pleasurable, new complexes of representations are constantly appearing and vanishing from our consciousness. We observe a constant activity of our psyche. Every activity depends upon something permanent, which is noticed as such on particular occasions (through memory) without exerting an enduring influence on phenomena. Pleasure fades.

Thus, something permanent enters our psyche continually (with every act of thought) which however exerts no influence on the world of phenomena. Every act of our psyche thus depends on something permanent, which enters with this act, but which in the same moment vanishes completely from the world of phenomena. Guided by this fact, I make the hypothesis that the universe is filled with a material, which constantly flows through the organic atoms and from there vanishes from the phenomenal world (the corporeal world). Both hypotheses can be replaced with one: in all organic atoms permanent material enters the psychical world from the corporeal.

I am falling asleep.

What if my seductive dream beings have a connection with sound wave energy as much as Mr. Akeley’s imaginary creatures have with his “mining” and “buzzing sounds?” I should remain lucid and investigate. We know testosterone levels are higher at night; that is why I succumb so easily to these creatures’ powers. I’ll masturbate before going to sleep in order to regain my strength. Still, I should remain naked so as to remain slightly aroused. Only when I am aroused do these creatures appear. Perhaps medieval monks were right, retention of semen attracts “demonic spirits,” not because they detect a virtuous monk but because, because why? Certainly my dreams’ fantastic beings are not demons from hell attracted to my celibate life. But what are they?

Falling asleep.

Lucid. In the midst of the foamy mist generated by the cascading water I glimpse both of beautiful beings. Just then, the steam turns cloudy and obscures them from my view. I see nothing but white! Ah… I may be blind but I can feel their pale fingers touching my face, my lips. I try to do the same but almost stumble upon them. My hands find their soft cheeks, their lips. Still blind, my own lips find theirs, three faces kissing each other until one of them, the woman’s, says…