Cthulhurotica

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 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.

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…

“Something’s different!”

Her face frowns, the cloud disperses.

“Yes,” says her brother. He adds, ”There is not enough energetic material in the human’s body.”

I respond looking at each in turn. “Of course there’s something different. I now know who you are. At first I didn’t believe it, dismissing it as some crazy idea from a lunatic from Arkham, MA. But it’s all there! Your whispering voices, the phonograph, the sound waves, the mining of energy. The lunatic erred only when he imagined things such as monstrous wings.”

Immediately both smile and a monstrous metamorphosis begins. The pale red of their lips and cheeks spreads, flushing their entire bodies and beyond, stretching their flesh into pinkish membranous wings. The vibrations generated by their wings, intensified by those of their buzzing whispers, energize the air. Both beings start floating in the heated atmosphere as if they were still in the water. Now I see two ageless, pale white-gray-pinkish things that remind me of something existing in a spectrum between the insects I keep in the sciences laboratory entomology cabinets and the fungi I keep in the biology refrigerators. Their stretching skin resembles fermenting yeast; their vast pairs of articulated wings mimic the articulated appendages of a giant wasp or some sort of huge albino bat. Whatever growth has obliterated their faces now sprouts multitudes of very short inward antennae and long outward feelers, feelers reaching towards me.

They both ask: “Do you find us more attractive like this?”

I ignore their remark and ask, “Are you some kind of parasite stealing my body energy?”

One of them answers: “Close. We are not organic but composed of a different kind of organic atoms. You are right that in all organic atoms permanent material enters the psychical world from the corporeal. Alas, there’s our problem. We are mostly corporeal, barely psychical, and not intuitive in the way you are. Our psyches are entirely logical and rational. We feed our bodies and psyches with that which we seek: diverse energetic materials not available in our planet.

“We spent so much temporal and spatial energy harvesting your planet’s atomic energy until we realized that what we need is the greatest force in the cosmos, your erotic energy. Like the fungi in your lab, we reproduce by parthenogenesis, our spores detach from our bodies and create an identical copy of ourselves. Not even like insects, but like self-reproducing worms, we have no concept of the Other.

“We attempted to reproduce a human erotic-other as an information set of light waves, sound waves, and touch waves, so that we could bring a sample to our planet. At first it only required carrying a brain and a one of the phonographs your colleague Edison invented for us. Now we do not need the actual brain, any information-processing device will suffice. Edison, Einstein, and you have mastered atomic and electrical energy, yet the energy of an atomic bomb pales in comparison to the energy released in a human orgasm. Einstein’s discovery, gravitational attraction inside an atom’s nucleus, pales in comparison to the electricity of sexual attraction.

“We both have been studying the mathematics of your sexual fantasies; such study has allowed us to experience lust. We both want you. We wanted to kidnap you and bring you home. Unfortunately we need your erotic attraction to you so it has to be willing. We are departing for our home planet, Yuggoth, in a night and a day, when its orbit aligns with our location. We will come back to your dreams, tomorrow night. You then have to give us your answer. If we cannot entice you with our bodies, would millennia of scientific knowledge be enough?”

And suddenly the waterfall turns into a geyser, no, into a whitewater rapid. I’m swept by an orgasmic blinding white ecstasy, pleasuring both my body and my mind. The rapid carries me and throws me into my bed, leaving me covered in sweat, uncomfortably wet and fully awake. Now I have a new question to confront and I have less than twenty-four hours. Only one thing I do not have yet.

An answer.