I. Part 1: The beginnings
THE WAIT
Géb slowly circled the mouse in his hand, watching the white arrow on the monitor as it circled in circles, his eyes glazed over. The silence from the outside world was broken only by the chirping of crickets and a few delayed warbles of thrushes welcoming the sunset. The temperature in the room had dropped pleasantly after the sultry summer day. The soft rhythm of the Indian mantra Om Namah Shivaya filled the room from the bluetooth speaker. Géb had never listened to mantras before, preferring rock and jazz, but since downloading a few songs from Ameya's Facebook page, he had become quite captivated by this mystical sound. The faint shadows cast by the wicker rattan lamp in the corner of the room, combined with the oriental melodies, gave the room an even more mystical feel. He glanced at his watch. Only 12 minutes to midnight.
He stood up. The light from the windows overlooking the street drew the faint outline of a twenty-four-year-old boy, 183 centimetres tall, broad-shouldered, on the terrace of the neighbouring house. Leaning forward against the table, he pushed aside the yucca palm and calendula from the rainforests of South America that crawled up to the ceiling beside the table, then looked out onto the street, lit by yellow lanterns and the full moon. He listened silently, but was not aware of any sounds or movement.
With a slow, measured movement, he sat back down. On the opposite side of the table to the flowers was a hand-carved incense burner from Bali and a glass of mineral water. In the incense burner was burning sandalwood incense from the pristine Himalayas, a cleansing incense for body and soul. Slowly, the smoke snaked upwards to the top of a panelled dome four metres above the ground. Sparrow watched the smoke, as he did so many nights. He wondered what the seemingly predictable modern world, with its technological advances and knowledge of science, mathematics and physics theory, could do to model a system with so few initial variables and predict what would happen. In a short time, the behaviour of the system becomes irredeemably chaotic. The smoke just rises upwards, unpredictably, obeying known physical laws, but still in a way that chaos theory expects, i.e. cannot predict. The slow zigzagging of the smoke seems to bow its head to the exuberant power of the music, inviting us to dance, and follows the rhythm of the mantra that can be translated as "His grace, the manifest". The mantra, repeated 108 times in 33 minutes, was coming to an end. At the time, Géb had no idea of the forces behind the chaos, the music, or indeed the mystical world of the songs.
Having founded a rock band with his friends in high school, as an amateur musician and drummer he knew the basics of both serious and sophisticated light music, but he didn't know what lent Indian music such a mystical historical perspective. He sat down at his computer and did a search. "In India, they don't use the pentatonic key system," he read. Their sound system is based on a series of notes called the midur, which consists of the sa re ga ma pa da ni notes. It differs from the in that it uses quarter, third and sixth intervals.
This is what gives the European ear the difficult-to-intone, finely woven soundscape. As Géb listened to the strange melody of the quarter tones, he could almost see Ameya's enchanting sitar playing. 'I hope she brings her sitar with her,' he mused to himself, 'I must hear it live,' as he imagined the beautiful black-eyed girl with the caste mark on her forehead, her face radiant with the joy of playing her two and a half thousand year old instrument.
Next to the table was a bookcase full of books and, in a small space surrounded by a Pearl drum kit, a crystal bowl on a stand, half full of white sand and containing various semi-precious stones. Beside it lay a book, "The Vitality of Crystals," which his parents had given him, and which, out of love for them, he had not left to gather dust on the bookshelf, but had placed on the prominent glass-plate stand, as a sign of his acceptance that crystals were indeed the keepers of mystical things of old, as his father believed, though he considered it rather unscientific.
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Then he heard a strange noise. Holding his breath, he tried to pinpoint the source of the sound. It was coming from somewhere in the house. He turned off the music and listened. As he had once done when he was studying meditation, he closed his eyes so that his ears could focus more sharply on the sounds. The noise stopped. It must have been my imagination, he thought, and then opened his dark brown eyes, which radiated strength and kindness. He turned in his swivel chair. The light from the pinhole rattan lamp, as it illuminated the boy, drew regular hexagonal patterns of shadows on his tanned, muscular, yet almost boyishly silky-skinned, naked torso. Sparrow stood up, stepped out of his room, to make sure once more that it was only his paranoia, triggered by recent events, that had made him hear those voices. The door to his sister's room was less than a metre from his own. The boy fell in. The light of the full moon, streaming in through the lowered blinds, fell on his sister's peacefully breathing face. Sin, though not yet fourteen, had already told many stories, written many travelogues and a short novel. He loved to write into the night on the netbook he had received for his 13th birthday, but now the computer rested as peacefully on the desk as its little master did in his bed.
Her sister was not named after the English word Sin, as so many people assumed. Sin and punishment is not exactly the concept that would reflect the views of her parents. 'It's the other way round,' her little sister would usually spit out in response to inquisitive questioning, but as she was usually met with quizzical looks in such cases, she didn't elaborate. Her name was given to her by her father, in connection with a vision he had before his birth, in which he saw his little daughter as one who would one day achieve a sublime purpose in the service of others, and as the lord of the moon and darkness lead men out into the light. Hence the name Sin, borrowed from the moon goddess of Mesopotamian Akkadian mythology.
Sin was a girl of 160 cm tall, with long blond-brown hair, sparkling brown eyes and a strikingly beautiful face and athletic build. Despite her young age, she was drawn to answering life's big questions. But her philosophical, thoughtful nature did not overwhelm the happy, carefree, laughing nature of teenage girls. Both sisters loved to read. Géb also gave the impression of a deep-thinking young man, much more mature than his age. It was mainly through his occasional revelations to his university teachers that his insatiable curiosity behind his reflections, which contained mature thinking and a wealth of lexical knowledge, became apparent. Géb was a graduate student at the Faculty of Architecture at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He was most attracted by the naturalistic use of materials and forms in the creation of self-sufficient settlements. He was keen to apply both ancient knowledge and the latest technical achievements. His favourite material was clay, and he made special use of it to design and build fireproof, earthquake-proof, cheaply constructed houses.
Sin combined intuitive femininity with truths drawn from the stories of ancient cultures, although she did not reject science - as far as that term is appropriate in primary school.
Géb spent a few minutes outside the rooms listening to the noise and thinking about Igor. The night light in the hallway, which provided a half-light, cast a warm yellow glow over the objects in the hall. Everything was peaceful and still. There was no noise from the master bedroom. Maybe the dogs are out there, she thought, and went back to her room. He sat down in his chair, glanced at the monitor and refreshed his Gmail. Again, he was disappointed to find that the email he had been waiting for had still.