Hanu 4: A Dream
Welcome to the Dharmaverse, a near-future scifi world where the Earth has frozen due to a dying Sun, but Humanity survives with the help of powerful AI Metagods. Sacred technology provides everything people need, but to access it one must play the Dharmagames. It is a dark and terrifying world, but therein also lies infinite hope, compassion, and faith.
In my dream I am falling with my mother. The blue, blue sky grows wider as the Golden Canopy shrinks.
My mother saves me from dying by shielding my fall with her body.
It is my last day with my family, the humans who saved my life and took me in to raise as their own. The people who painstakingly taught me how to speak, and now, have even given me what I though I would never be able to do, the ability to move on my own.
It is also the six year anniversary of the day they found me.
“Six years ago, Hanu, you were still a baby,
, and six years since Luque had been doing at the witnessed my mother’s fall. We enjoy a cake in the shape of a blue lotus flower that Laura, my human , to commemorate my mother’s.
. It is delicious. Luque and Laura congratulate me on my incredible progress, and comment on how graceful I can move amongst the trees now. Nobody knows that I plan to leave that very night.
Nobody except Nadia.
I climb up to her window that night to say goodbye. She opens it as moonlight pours into the room. “I’m so proud of you, Han Han,” she says to me. “You’re really going to do it?”
“I’m ready, Naddy. I’m so happy. I can hardly wait.”
“Are you sure you have to go tonight though?” Nadia’s voice wavers. She takes a deep breath, her eyes reflecting the Moon. “Maybe you should wait until the day. Maybe you…” She trails off. “Why don’t you sleep here tonight with me?”
“Naddy…” I begin, reaching out to wipe a glistening tear from her cheek. “Weren’t you the one who told me to be brave? Didn’t you say, I need to do this for my mom?” My eyes search hers for understanding as I point out the window at the bristling jungle, alive with night sounds.
“You’re right,” she purses her lips with renewed determination, and smiles radiantly. “Just… be careful, alright? Don’t forget about us.”
“Never. You and your dad saved my life, and taught me everything I know. I’ll be back to see you, I promise.”
“Pinky swear.” She extends her pinky, our eyes meet for what feels like forever as I link my pinky with hers.
“Good bye, for now.”
“Hold on,” she slips a book into my bag.
“It’s a present,” she whispers before giving me a kiss.
And I enter the jungle again, on my own, to seek out my family.
It’s been three days since I left the Research Center at the Rootspring, and now the familiar sights and sounds of the Rootwell loom ahead — the place of my birth. The place where I hope to find my family again.
As I near my destination, I recall the sheer joy of the past days, reveling in my new found mobility. I swung from vine to vine, and my Symbionetic Core, Luque’s greatest gift to me, beat in rhythm with the pulse of the Jungle. With every leap and swing I felt the bonds of my past limitations shattering, replaced by a surge of PRANA.
I even spent a day spent a whole day at the base of the World Tree, simply to revel at it’s beauty, and size.
Familiar sounds ring at my hearts delight, I’ve finally found my way back, all on my own.
“Hey guys, I’m back!” I cry out with a triumphant yelp, panting and sweating from my exertion but filled with joy to see my kind again. But as I draw near, to my surprise, instead of warm greetings, everyone seems to dart away, their faces shadowed with confusion or perhaps fear.
“Hey guys…” My voice falters, a pang of uncertainty squeezing my chest. “It’s me. Remember?” I plead, my eyes scanning the crowd for a single familiar, welcoming gaze.
“He has come back as a demon! Stay away from him!” A harsh command comes from an uncle, his eyes enlarged and menacing. His voice carries a bite that stings, a mix of anger and caution.
“Such horrible smells,” an aunt chimes in, her nose wrinkling in distaste, her posture defensive. “He smells of… Humans!”
“It’s… It’s me…” I stammer with a forced smile. “The humans are our friends. They saved me and helped me heal. My mother’s dream came true. Look, I’m healed!” I say as I show them my brand new legs.
“His legs…” An elder, whose face stirs faint memories of kinder days, points at me, voice dripping with disgust. “He’s a monster!”
“It’s me…” I choke out, my voice barely above a whisper. Tears blur my vision. “I’m healed. I came back for all of you…”
But the cries relentless.
“Go away!”
“Her mother committed grave sacrilege by climbing the Sky Tree, that’s why he came back as a demon.”
— -
I can see Naddy’s window from where I am. I’ve been here for three days
I found solace at the waterfall. I made my home there, and continued with my Qi Gong training on my own. Despite my loneliness, my Prana got stronger every day.
Dharma teaches us to be happy, whatever may happen… There is only the path, nothing else.”
That was the first time I went to my mother’s grave, and beneath that tree giant tree, on the white rock, I read the Diamond Sutra out loud.
Over the years, I would go back to my tribe, at first every month, and then a couple months, and then every year. I brought gifts, I always hoped they had changed their minds.
First they avoided me. Then, they three rocks at me.
“You’re not one of us,” they’d say. “We don’t want to be around human pets…”
“But I’m not a pet. My mother fell and died… and… and the humans they helped heal me.”
“You are not one of us anymore. You have their smell. Go away.”
“Please!” I had been crying.
“Go away. Go back to your humans”
Then, the children would make fun of my legs. And when I went back again, they started hitting, pinching, and biting me.
I studed the sutras beneath the tree every day, reciting the scripture out loud. It was a place of quiet tranquility. On the other side of the water fall. It was a place Nadia never disturbed, because she knew it was where I went to find myself. The tree beside the big white Rock, beneath which my mother is buried. .
I would always look up at the tree, at the frost dome, at the sky. At night I’d see the moon and stars. During the day I’d look at the sun. Everything was so bright inside the Dome, just as Luque had said to Nadia, everytime she complained about wanting to leave the dome.
“Why would you go out there? Where the Sun, Moon, and Stars, are barely visible? Where there is no life, than the white expanse?”
“I want to see the world, dad!” She would scream back before storming off.
And I recalled the day when I woke up, and had a vision of the tree speaking to me.
That was the day I witnessed the tree become a rainbow… We all saw it. And when I went back, with Nadia, we saw that indeed, the tree, which had been wrapped in vine, simply disappeared. We dug inside, and found that it was empty.
“If a tree can escape by turning into a rainbow, ” Nadia said, “then I will find a way out of here. Hanu, I have a plan.”
And the rest is history. How I ended up here, in this bed.
“The Dharma works in mysterious ways, indeed…” I whisper to myself.
Suddenly someone knocks at the door.
I jump up and open it to find that it’s Lakme.
“Hey, pal, it’s time to report to the deck. We’re here.”
“Where are we?”
“We’re in New New York. It’s just a quick resupply, but I thought you might want to check out the city.”
“Of course!” I jump up with joy. “Let’s go.”
“Hold on. We’re not in New Plymouth anymore, buddy. There’re laws here that forbid, mutants,” Lakme says.
“I’m not a mutant…”
“I know, I know, but to them it doesn’t make a difference… We need to find you a disguise.”
