The maglev smoothly pulled to a stop, and we stepped out at the bottom of a kind of Victorian-style stone stair way. The floor was like a black and white chess board. The entry at the top of the stairs led into a massive, domed cathedral-like space. Our footsteps echoed eerily, layer on layer as we stepped out, but muted and quiet, as though we were entering the sacred grounds of a cathedral.
I looked up at the expanse above, and I could see silent corridors like windows into other worlds, winding and twisting across a multiverse of places. I saw vast, ancient libraries, glimpses of Egyptian tombs, Escher-esque staircases twisting into monoliths that warped reality right in front of my eyes. It made me feel dizzy. I looked back down.
“This,” Simon said, “is the Chamber of the Seven Minds. It will be your first lesson in mastering mind palaces.”
“Nice. Chamber of the Seven Minds. That’s a bad-ass name” Ross said.
“The seven chambers will introduce you to some of the skills that you’re going to need. In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be building on the basics of what you’re about to learn.”
He turned around and led us further across the vaulted chamber to a broad, curving stone stair case. As I stepped onto the stairs, I watched with fascination as tiny, sapphiric pulses of energy leapt out from my feet at each step, running across the stonework.
“The first chamber represents the basic skill that you’re going to need: conceptual visualisation” Simon began, as we ascended. I looked out across the hall as we gained elevation, and I was struck with a new sense of its expanse. The staircase kept going up around the chamber walls, and I could see intermittent portals at various points.
“Converting information into images is one of the foundational skills of mnemonics. The first chamber, the river of forms, will introduce you to this skill. For every concept you hear, you need to cast a visual representation that sticks.”
We approached a wide, stone archway. There was nothing really visible through it, just an indistinct portal of liquid looking stuff. Kind of like a stargate, or the gently rippling surface of a pond. A silvery pond made out of liquid metal.
I noticed an inscription on the stonework above: “Mendacium dulce cito maturat… sed citius tamen putrescit.” I ran a quick translation on it. “A sweet lie ripens quickly… but it rots faster still.” Kind of creepy. What was this?
“It will be easier to experience than to explain. Follow me.”
Everyone started filing through the portal, and I noticed a faint but sweet aroma. It reminded me of something. My turn. I stepped forward... and fell sideways into a dream.
I was standing alone.
There was warm sand beneath my bare feet.
Sun on my skin.
I closed my eyes and breathed deep, and the sweet aroma of the jungle flowers filled my lungs. I opened my eyes again, there was a river in front of me, dappled shadows beneath a jungle canopy teeming with impossible colours. Towering trees rose from the banks of the river, their roots tangled with glowing vines and luminous neon fungi.
I looked down at the river itself and noticed it looked alive! Orbs of light drifted with the current, lazily rotating, and casting patterns like constellations that reflected on the leaves.
“This,” Simon said, “is the River of Forms.” His voice quietly filled my mind, I noticed that there was nobody actually with me in person. I guess all the others were having something like the same experience.
“Imagination is not something you can usually see, but here, it is. This river is thought. You will need to shape these orbs in various ways to pass the first test.”
A narrow canoe came gliding silently around the bend and stopped by the river’s edge. As I climbed in, I noticed that its hull was carved from something pale and bone-like, inlaid with blue opal runes. There were no paddles, and once I sat down, the canoe began gliding downstream.
Simon’s voice echoed from somewhere above the canopy. “The orbs in the river represent raw imagination. Fluid, formless, and ready to be shaped.”
The river curved, and the current quickened. The shadows grew deeper. Glowing branches hung low, brushing my shoulders. I reached into the water without thinking and summoned one of the glowing orbs. It hovered just above my palm, weightless and warm, almost humming. I could feel its readiness to respond to my focus and become whatever I could imagine.
The hanging willows parted, and I saw a grove of massive fruit trees looming from the riverbank. Their trunks spiraled like braided muscle, their leaves were wide and red-veined. I stepped up onto the bank and plucked one of the luminsencent yellow and orange fruit that was hunging down. It smelled like... citrus, except… not. A little sweeter, and heavier. It was almost sickly. I chose not to bite.
As I took in my surroundings, I noticed an obsidian pillar a few feet away. Just beyond, in a second clearing, there was another pillar, and I counted ahead to see that there was a line of six all together.
“This is the grove of false memory” Simon said, his voice again tinkling around me. “Each pillar has a guardian, and you will need to pass his test.” His voice fell silent.
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I took a step toward the first pillar, and watched as patterns and forms began to etch across it’s surface. At first, I couldn’t make it out, but as the scales emerged, and the stone started to move, I took a step back. A serpentine head lifted itself up, poised above the flat surface on top of the pillar.
“Give me a door” it said with a voice like wet glass sliding on stone.
Was I supposed to grab one of those glowing blue thingies from the river? I summoned one, and it flew to hover directly in front of me. The serpent simply looked on.
A door. Right. I focused on the blue, glowing, orb. It expanded and settled on the ground, a translucent blue glowing dungeon door.
The serpent regarded my cast, tilting it’s head slightly.
“Your mind will not retain what your heart cannot feel.” The door reverted in an instant to it’s glowing, hovering blue form.
Ok. Need something a little more… memorable. Maybe something a bit more personal.
I closed my eyes and recalled what I wanted to picture. The orb began to take shape, not translucent this time, but solid. Glowing blue gave way to soft, chalky yellow. There was a chip near the bottom of the door from years of vacuum cleaning. And my favourite sticker, a faded cartoon bumble bee. Mum stuck it there when I was a kid, to keep watch in the dark.
Again the serpent regarded my door. It tilted it’s head, looked into my eyes, and then melded back down into the obsidian pedestal. One down, five to go. I let the orb revert back to its original form, somehow I now felt attached to it. It melded unbidden into a smiling, hovering bumble bee. I couldn’t help but smile.
As I approached the second pillar, I noticed that the jungle noises began to fade, like all the animals needed to get away. A second serpent identical to the first emerged.
“Give me silence.”
Silence? What does that mean? How do you put a form to silence?
I already knew the answer, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself just yet. Dang. The serpent’s demand wrapped around me until I could think of nothing else. Give me silence. Give me silence. Give me silence. There was only one silence I knew. I’d already walked through the door, now I had to take out what was inside.
I’m tempted to skip this bit. Or lie. Or make something else up. But it has to be true, I’d rather someone knew. It may as well be you. My blue glowing bumble bee began to flow and meld into something else, again a pastel yellow ran across it’s surface, but not paint this time. The threads of the scarf knit together, and then I was holding it. Just like I’d picked it up yesterday for the first time. A tear slid down my cheek.
“Good” the serpent said, before melding like the first back into his obsidian prism.
I wasn’t enjoying this anymore. Time to keep walking.
The third serpent emerged much as the others.
“Give me a mind.”
As he said this, all the leaves around me changed. They began to reflect, and the soft gleams of mirrored light filled the clearing. As I looked at them, I caught glimpses of moments – from my past! I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help it. Faces. Places. Shouting. Laughing. I wrenched my eyes away and set them back on that serpentine face.
I didn’t want to give this thing anymore. The orb formed into a pulsing blue brain, and I cast a ludicrous clown mask covering the frontal lobes and facing the snake. It tilted its head. Was it smirking? The snake chuckled with a hiss and slid back into the black obsidian.
I walked forward again.
The fourth sentinel emerged, and this time the leaves around me began to give a soft, golden light. The creature spoke.
“Give me your joy.”
Hmmmm. Memories pierced me, but I shut them back in. I needed something else.
My glowing blue bumble bee began to glow with golden light in place of blue. It flattened into a disk, and ornate etchings began to write themselves on it’s metallic surface. The serpent’s eyes began to gleam as well, almost hungrily. As the plate finished taking form, something else began to rise from it’s surface. Unfurling gracefully, it’s arches began to form, and fold, and fall. For a moment it was dignified, like a flower about to bloom, or a dancer in motion, and then my banana peel flopped onto the plate in all of its glory.
“Ha.” “Ha ha ha ha ha ha” the serpent started laughing, a slow but growing thing, and more than a little villainous. “Very good”, it growled, before sinking back into its dark pillar.
I stepped forward, and the golden glow faded. The fifth serpent rose, as my induction into the inner sanctum of mind palaces continued.
“Give me a soul.”
“Simon. Are you kidding me? This is seriously messed up” I spoke to the open air.
The serpent grinned at me in a manner both comical and hideous. It began speaking, not with it’s previous voice, but with the much more normal voice of Simon himself. “You’re doing great, Peterson. Having memorable casts is the key to making memories stick. You’re passing with flying colours. Just give it a go, only two left.”
I sighed.
The serpent reverted back to its normal emotionless expression.
I brought my orb up to eye level, directly in the line of sight between me and the snake. It stretched and darkened in shape. Longer and longer, down onto the ground, it’s black obsidian surface now unmistakably mimicking the pillar from which the serpent itself had emerged. It looked down at my copy.
Tinkatinkatinkatinkatinka…. Rrrrr… POP!!
My snake in a jester’s outfit sprung out of the top of my jack-in-the-box disguise.
“That good enough for ya?”
The serpent grinned again, taking on Simon’s expressions for a moment.
“Nice one.”
It slunk down into the obilisk once again. One more to go.
As I approached the sixth pillar, my surroundings began to fade. It got darker and darker, the light was being sapped out of the atmosphere. The colours began to fade, and at last I was standing in darkness, with only a purple luminescence emitting from the last obilisk.
“It’s more than a bit creepy, Simon.”
He didn’t say anything this time.
I kept walking forward.
Once again, the serpentine head rose up to meet me. As he rose, five more obelisks rose up in front of him as well.
“Give me the five.”
I guess the point of the darkness was to make me recall the previous five casts purely from memory. That was the point, right?
I couldn’t forget my five images, and I recalled them ease, each one rising from it’s pillar. The door materialised in miniature, the woolen scarf, the clown faced brain, the gold-plattered banana peel and… I paused. Where was my jack-in-the-box?
There was a picture on the fifth obelisk, a normal looking picture frame. But it was chained to the pillar. What the…? I moved closer to get a better look, and I saw my face in the picture with my parents. My heartbeat quickened, how did my cast go wrong?
I was panicking a little, this wasn’t supposed to be there. I bent my will on the picture, and it immediately liquified at my suggestion, becoming the obelisk that I’d originally cast.
“Simon… are you messing with me?”
Sophie the pschologist appeared next to me.
“As Simon mentioned, you’ve done well Peterson. I think that what’s happened here is that your subconscious played a hand in that mis-cast.”
“Wait… that can happen?”
“Well, until now, it was only really theory. But I felt pretty sure that this kind of thing could happen. When we experience deeply emotional moments, or perhaps painful memories, the faculty of the will is not necessarily the only force at play in thought-casting.”
I looked over at her, her blue eyes were kind of distracting.
“Sooo… my emotions can shape my casts without me realising it?”
“Possibly. But as you can see, you only need to turn your mind to it to regain control.”
Hmm. Accidental thought-casting. That could be dangerous.
Is Simon a dude?
