The Age of New Era: Discovering the Power to Shape the Future

By Rafal Zygula

Born in the small and seemingly insignificant city of 1984, our nameless protagonist's childhood is tough and filled with surgeries, bullying, and a strong desire to find their true self. But everything changes when he has a mystical experience that shows him a device and the future of our civilization.

Feeling

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rafal Zygula
• Release date: Aug 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9789198699418

Rafal Zygula

Rafal Zygula is a Master of Science in Managerial Economics, Bachelor of Public Relations, and Certified Sustainability and Digitalization Business Developer. Beyond his academic achievements, Rafal is a dedicated writer and visionary who seeks to unite the world through his work. With a lifelong passion for storytelling, he has honed his writing craft across various genres, from songs and poems to short stories and screenplays. 'The Age of New Era' is the culmination of almost two decades of refining his magnum opus, a genre-bending debut that delves into the themes of humanity's advancement and the future of technology. By blending memoir, fiction, and science fiction, Rafal invites readers to embark on a thought-provoking journey that explores our shared destiny.When he's not immersed in the world of writing, Rafal can be found in his studio, meticulously painting underlayers for the canvases he builds himself. His passion for exploring new technologies and multimedia production brings an innovative spark to his creative process. Whether he's experimenting with music or multimedia projects, Rafal's artistic endeavors transcend traditional boundaries. In his quest to deepen his understanding of human civilization and emerging technologies, he dedicates time to researching fascinating subjects that shape the world we live in.Rafal cherishes the time spent with his family, finding inspiration and support in their presence. Together, they embrace the joys of life and nurture a love for exploration and discovery. Join Rafal on this literary adventure, where the power of imagination meets the wonders of human achievement, and discover a new era of storytelling and possibility.

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The Age of

New Era

Rafal Zygula

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2021 Rafal Zygula

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address:

[e-mail]

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-91-986994-1-8

Table of Contents

Part I. The Origin

Straight Street Ground

Deep Loopia

Tigers and Cages

Sunday Shade

Impact Choice

Conscientious Consequence

Enlightening Storm

Journey

Rerouted Trip

Dragon Dance

Simpler Times

The Enlivening Happening

The Seal

Change

The Spirit Drive

Initial Intention

Big Escape

Part II. The Scrutiny

Questioning Knowledge

Contemplation Blizzard

Baby Steps

Veracity

Information Dumping

Conscious Insights

Misleading Myths

Streams of Consciousness

Humanity Composition

Universal Wisdom

Part III. The TEMPUS

The Reverse Day

Vision Layers

Test Flight

The G

Whale’s Awakening

Core Issues

Early Preparations

Responsibility Whip

Red Destination

Modification Exploration

The Message

Kind Rebellion

Enigmatic Feedback

Arduous Task

The TUP

New Systems

Camping Time

Thoughtful Advancement

Balanced Progress

The Expedition

Edgy Middle

Dashing Tempus

Part I

The Origin

Straight Street Ground

Have you ever heard of the Holy Cross Mountains? They may not be the tallest, but they are certainly some of the oldest natural formations in Europe. There, at the top, you can find a church where lies the relic of the Holy Cross that Jesus died on. To look after the cross remnants, Benedictines arrived in these lands over a thousand years ago. Lands where pagans loved to live freely. Where the long lustful nights full of barbaric drinks and rituals around the bonfire gave birth to the legends of Baba Yaga.

The region of the Holy Cross Mountains was famous for its mysterious history. Home to the masters of metal and iron melting techniques that still remain unfathomable. Rumors had it that the swords forged by their hands equipped the best soldiers of the Roman Empire for their conquests.

The coat of arms for the region’s main city was a golden crown with matching golden lettering written in Latin. The city was built in the middle of the fifteenth century around the sumptuous clerical mansion. Due to being located halfway between two of the most significant cities in the country, it was a place to stay for important people in the middle of their official travels. The city of lost hope, owned by corrupt politicians who tried to transform it into a world-class fashion center, but their vision was completely out of touch with reality. A city known for gossip and many robberies. Infamous for stories of strangers who could not visit it without trouble.

People who were born there were called Scyzoryki—the Penknives. It came from a rumor that they always carried one. In fact, the nickname comes from an old pocket knife factory that made them in the suburbs.

Later, the men of the region carried Swiss penknives. They were seen as know-it-alls, jacks of all trades who could fix anything, particularly proficient in mechanics and engineering.

When a Swiss-knife was fed up with the mediocrity of his habitat, he would leave his home to search for a better place to live, resolving to come back one day and show others what he had become.

The city evolved into a place of thousands of reunions. It was like a busy airport. Everyone had his favorite bar to go to. In the city center, people knew each other and never had to make a phone call to meet up. Most likely, they would encounter each other at some stage of the night.

In the year 1984, in a hospital on Straight Street, I came to life. Only from the stories did I know what happened when I opened my eyes for the first time. The scream of my mother frightened the nurse in the corridor. She dropped a set of dirty plates on the floor. Allegedly, it made me cry for the first time. I was born with a condition that left my eyes crossed at a thirty-seven-degree angle.

When I reach for my oldest memories, I remember playing with little toy cars on the floor of an airplane. I am sure it was a night flight. The feeling of my left elbow burning after I pulled down a tablecloth with a glass of hot boiling water from the top of the kitchen cabinet. Falling asleep on the operation table while watching a green dot going up and down on the screen.

I’ve also heard stories of some stomach problems that I had. Apparently, that made me very picky with food. I ate only special things like bread without the crispy crust. I would go for a couple of months, requesting the exact same jam on it, followed by a few months of yellow cheese. My dad told me that I had to be on a gluten-free diet. I also didn’t like to eat meat at all.

My mother taught me reading and counting before I even went to kindergarten. The biggest fruit of this knowledge was my laziness and lack of understanding the reason for going to school at all. The first four years of primary school I flew through, as I already knew everything they wanted to teach me. I remember it very well. The home assignments I did while still in class or on the break just before the lesson. These experiences only taught me how to avoid studying. Later, of course, it became a source of many problems when biology, chemistry, and other subjects appeared. I didn’t have any idea about them. With time, I had no choice but to learn how to learn. At first, I was studying only while I was at school—during lesson breaks and just before tests. Later, I also studied at home—but only before the big exams. Never systematically.

I spent my childhood in the south neighborhood. Barwinek was its name. A word made up from two others, meaning literally a bar and little wines. Basically, I was raised in the Little Wine Bar. There was lots of greenery around and even two hills covered with a huge, dense forest. On one of the summits was a towering telegram antenna and on the other a cabin. This woodland enclosed the South side of the city, and it was the furthest thing I could see from the balcony of my apartment. A whole eight hundred meters away. On the other side, North reached out to the next block sixty meters farther. This was the scope of my horizon I admired every day. Happily, the sky was as far as anyone else had.

Barwinek consisted of fifteen communist-like four-story blocks of flats and another three ten-story towers. There was a shopping district in the north and a primary school in the south. Everything was very close. It was easy to go home on a five-minute break and get back right on time, which happened occasionally.

Sometime in 1988, my parents decided to have my crossed eyes operated on. I guess they thought reducing the angle would make me more socially accepted. At the beginning of the 1990s, I remember we got the cable TV hooked up. English cartoons occupied its screen all day long.

I used to play a lot with my younger brother. We always found ways to entertain ourselves. We shared one room through all of childhood. We ate, slept, and got up at the same time. Actually, it was rather difficult to go to sleep. We used to go totally crazy until our mother wouldn’t come for the third time to tell us to go to sleep right now.

Before bed, we played games that we invented on the spot. Guess which cartoon theme I hum. Kick the pillow from bed to bed. Sneak over to each other when the light was out. Fight with the huge and really heavy pillows until one of us would drop without energy. Usually, we both would quit together. When we grew, we reinvented the games. The fighting and wrestling were on a daily basis, not only before bed. The only rules were no biting and —no punches in the crotch. As long as you still had some strength, you still had a chance to win. That was that.

I was very creative in finding my own ways to play when nobody was around. I built forts. I played with toy soldiers, although this was rather more fashionable than my favorite. The best of the best, except technical blocks, were the action figures. I survived tons of amazing battles and missions with the whole team. I even built a huge tower building made of an old VHS system box. I remember using letter stickers to spell out the name of one of the oldest world film studios on the top. I imagined myself as the producer of the movies with those figures. The best action was sliding the three-clawed cyborg down the building’s wall. Of course, it had to be interrupted numerous times by secret agents or knights. There were movies within each movie.

My eyes’ condition didn’t discourage me from drawing with crayons or shading with a pencil. I also wrote comics inspired by superhero films. One of them was a comic about the super Tyrannosaurus Rex, in which the T. Rex, dressed up like a caped hero, saved a certain Triceratops from danger. I loved to copy the drawings from the comic books and to sketch the same landscape over and over again. It had a few trees, one road, the sun, three clouds, and sometimes a house. Rarely a car and people symbolizing a family.

My neighborhood was full of children. We used to play right in front of our block of flats. The globe games, fireball, dodgeball, football and baseball without a bat. We played them all. We created a couple of games too, depending on how many kids were there to play.

Pele was a football practice game. A minimum of three players was required: one for the goalkeeper and two to shoot. The rules were simple. Whoever let the goals in was the keeper until he defended one. The one who missed would take over the role. Besides that, the first, fifth, and tenth shots had to be taken from the head shot and the rest from the volley.

We played football, hide-and-seek, and our penknife games. Everyone had a knife. It was unusual not to have one. My father used to be a member of the best high school scout’s group in the city: the Blue Tribe of the Mountain Children. So, I had the scout’s knife. Sometimes, we visited the forest just to throw it at trees.

The mushroom game was all about throwing: start by drawing a mushroom with your knife in the dirt. Two parts, the cap and the leg. To begin, you had to throw the knife from its tip inside the cap area three times. It had to stay in the ground at least two fingers above the ground. Then, you would try to hit the leg of the mushroom five times, holding the top of the knife. Finally, you could make your way to the finish. Throw the knife and then draw a circle around the hit. If the knife didn’t land correctly, it was another player’s turn. This is how we played it under our block of flats. The rules could have varied if you were brought up in another neighborhood or even another block of flats in Barwinek.

We also played a special version of hide-and-seek. It took place in a dark basement of one of the stairways, in the corner of the building. It almost felt like a labyrinth in there. The tag on the roofs of the garages with all the boys always made the parking lot security guard very angry.

Sometimes, behind the garages, a small circus or a guy with a horse that you could ride would show up. It was very expensive, but I enjoyed it so much that I would just go there to look at the horses for a moment. Another time, a carousel was set up. It was much cheaper but not as interesting for a kid like me.

Then, there were the garages, which grew briar roses. Their rosebuds had a very particular effect, especially interesting for a small boy. We used to take some of them and then chase the girls from our block. We put the rosebuds under their t-shirts and spread them all over their backs. It was very itchy for them. They would scream and run away but always come back for more in an hour or two... or on the next day.

During the long summer nights, we used to catch as many June beetles as possible. Again, we would put them under the girls’ t-shirts. They would scream and run away but always come back for more in an hour or two... or on the next day.

We had quite a community under our block back then. There were all the children from our block and sometimes even kids from the other blocks as well. We played volleyball and football on a dirt pitch, and in time, we even got ourselves a small basketball court. It was made of paving slabs. We rode bicycles, skateboards, and those small cars you had to propel with your legs. Almost like in the cartoons.

In the winter, there was lots of fun with the sled and steering sledge on the little hill behind the block. It was in the middle of the neighborhood, and everyone used it. It was high enough to see the whole area from the top. All the blocks. It was also a perfect place for many events, as just in the foot there was a big basketball field and a tennis-volleyball court, too. Yes, the life of a child was full of fun, in and out.

During the winter, the best activity was going to the hill and racing to the top with other boys. We could do it for hours. It was cold and slippery but soft—because of the snow—at the same time. We had fun making the climb more difficult by pulling each other down. Sometimes, the way up could take two whole hours.

At school, I used to hang out with a group of classmates. The coolest thing we did was play football in the winter, using the ice made for ice skating on the football field. There, we executed the longest sliding tackles in the world.

Deep Loopia

My mother would always take me to the doctor for eye check-ups. She had never really liked the results of the first correction. In 1994, she decided it was time to straighten my eyes up completely. She got a consultation with the best eye doctor in the country, and in no time I was in the same hospital again. I remember more clearly what happened that time.

When I first woke up, I felt strange. Tired. I sensed my left eye in its place. A good sign. For the next couple of days, I had bandages wrapped around it, so I couldn’t really see how it had gone. I never really minded the small-angle difference between my eyes. No child from the block cared about that either.

Once, I accidentally dropped something on the ground. When I reached over for it, my head was slanted for just a second, but it felt like my left eyeball was literally falling out of my skull. I checked with my hand, but the dressing was there, so it was not possible.

I stayed in the room with other children who had been operated on the same day. There were eight of us. For the next few days, we stayed together. Then, they transferred us to the postoperative ward.

My mother was staying in the hospital’s hotel. She wanted to always be there for me. Free moments I spent reading. Comic books mostly, but also one book. Pan Kleks. A story of the old wizard who ran a magical school for boys. The boys’ names had to begin with the letter A. I would not qualify.

Every day at six in the morning, a nurse woke us up to measure our temperature. Around 8 a.m., the doctor, along with a whole lot of nurses, students, and other medics, would come for the routine check-up. I thought of it as a chance to get the home pass, which was the only thing important to me at the time. The doctor had the power to say if it was alright to go. Every day, I waited until he would state that I was fine and could go back home. Time spent in this hospital room seemed like an eternity.

One day the doctor decided to take off my bandage.

They sat me down on a chair close to the window. All the doctor’s apprentices surrounded me tightly. He asked me how I felt and informed me that he would be taking the plaster off. He pulled it, and within a second, it was gone. The light blinded me at first, but eventually, I looked up to the ceiling. That particular moment I remember very, very well. It was bizarre. Unnatural. I checked again. I looked at the chandelier. There was no doubt. I saw two ceilings. Two lamps. Two doctors. Two everything. I was in shock. I only cared to go back home as fast as possible, so I kept it to myself. I knew they wouldn’t let me go if I complained.

The doctor proceeded to check my eye, asking me to look left, right, up, and down. He nodded, stood up, and declared that everything was correct. The audience applauded, and then they moved on to the next patient.

I didn’t pay attention to this detail. I thought this was a kind of temporary side effect, and within two days it would just magically go away. It didn’t.

One day, my mother took me out on a walk in the local meadows. The sky was blue and the sun was shining brightly. It was blinding me, but I didn’t give up. I kept both of my eyes wide open. Since there were now two roads, I decided to try and go the other way. I wanted to see if it was real.

It wasn’t, and I fell into the drainage ditch. My mother came to me and asked what happened, so I told her, explaining that I saw two suns, two roads, two right hands, and two moms. I said that I had two noses and, additionally, that I saw the left side of the nose on the right side and the right on the left side. This always made me feel pretty strange.

We went back to the hospital and consulted the doctors. They didn’t believe me but decided that I should stay a week more for observation and additional tests. Mother couldn’t stay; she had to go back to my brothers. I was left alone. They moved me to the top floor of the hospital and after a week prolonged my stay another week. There were many tests, including exercises on the synoptophore and trying out extremely thick, even six-centimeter glass lenses. None of them showed the doctors what was happening to me. None of them could tell what the problem was.

During these two weeks, I just wanted to go back home and to school. To my friends and normal life. I started praying to God every day. In the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening. I kept asking him to just let me go back home already. It was not happening. In the end, they stated the diagnosis of what they called some kind of quick alternation. Fast-changing sight between the eyes. Then, finally, they let me go back home. They advised me to cover one eye at beginning. I had to go to school with a patch on. That is how the problems there started.

Other children were very curious about what had happened. Why I had not been at school for so long, and most of all, what this dressing was. My classmates were fine, but other children laughed at me in the corridor.

After that, I visited the hospital for a check-up once every month. Every time, they had a new idea. Take off glasses, put the glasses back on, cover the eye, uncover the eye. All possible variations, and none of them worked.

I started getting used to it. I familiarized myself with it so much that it didn’t bother me anymore. I knew which way was the good way. I knew how to choose doors correctly.

That is how it was until one particular check-up. A private one this time. In the office of the best eye doctor in the country. They had the greatest possible idea ever: re-operation. Fantastic. Just fabulous. This would have to be the end of my suffering. The end of constant doctor visits and going round and round all the time. A happy end I thought.

We had to wait at least one year since the last operation as a precaution and for anesthetic safety measures. I figured that maybe, at last, it would bring me some calm days until this whole re-operation.

So, I took my time. I noticed that the sun blinded me pretty much every time it was out. I had to close one of my eyes to be able to have one open. This was how I could see anything. At some point, it has become fully automatic. Then, my family members started to notice. I stopped wearing any kind of correction glasses and started wearing sunglasses instead. I must have seemed like the coolest ten-year-old in the neighborhood, and additionally, nobody could see my crossed eyes anymore. It was the perfect solution for the pain of the world. It worked well until the summer of 1995.

Tigers and Cages

The time for the re-operation finally came. Back to the same hospital. It took place exactly one year after the double vision began. I woke up in the room where it all had started. Every morning, the doctors performed their check-up parade, and finally the day to take the plaster off came. I was so excited to see singly once more.

Unfortunately, nothing had changed. The diplopia was still there. When I told the doctors, they didn’t know what to do. After a couple of days, they released me to go back home. The prayers to God must have worked. Although I wasn’t cured, I could now go home—and much sooner than the last time.

My beloved mother didn’t want to give up, though. She searched for other ways to correct my condition. She started digging for the best specialists. She called eye doctors all around the country and finally found a clinic that agreed to take the responsibility. The same check-ups and exercises ensued. Eye following the pen movements, left, right, up, down, and again, and again. They must have had a blast, so they always called for the other doctor—the one completely uninvolved in the case. They just wanted him to see the show.

Look at it. Look. Isn’t it amazing? Look here, he would say, pointing with the top of the pen. Again, he would move it left and up again. Look at it, he would say to the other doctor, covering one of my eyes, then the other. We all had so much fun together. Although I was barely eleven years old, I knew they didn’t know a single thing about what was happening to me.

One doctor recommended buying a synoptophore for home and exercising with it for around thirty minutes per day. This device came with a variety of slides at which you looked with your eyes separately. They were just like the binoculars, but you could see pictures at the end. Instead of forests or islands, there were tigers, cages, elephants, circus tents, and so on. As the binoculars were separated, you could adjust the view and move it left or right. They wanted me to put the tiger in the cage. Put this tractor into the garage and so on. I could change the slides however I pleased.

My mother was very hopeful that this would work. She actually found a synoptophore and brought it home, but just as before, it proved ineffective. No matter how many months I tried, I never was able to do it. I didn’t like it at all. I had diplopia, and no kind of quick alternation was going to help. The machine didn’t work for me. But no. They had to torture me with their opinions and guesses. They assured me that even if it was not working out right now, it would—if I put effort into practice and gave it some time. So, I tried to put this tiger in the cage. Every day.

The synoptophore was heavy machinery. Its lenses were situated right in front of my eyes. It showed slides with different drawings on each eye. The cage on the left side almost always appeared on the right side. The tiger on the right side almost always appeared on the left side.

Trust me, that was a lot of fun. I was supposed to turn the knobs to bring this tiger and its cage closer to each other, but then at the ideal point, it would jump to the other side. Healthy people could do the trick in no time—but not me. It didn’t work for me. It made little sense to continue either, so after a couple of months, I just quit.

However, the training wasn’t entirely futile. It helped me to learn how to switch my eyes. It helped me learn to choose my primary eye. That was a discovery. I could change the eye I was looking with whenever I wanted. By default, I used the right one for looking at things that were far, and the left one for the close range.

Then, I discovered that when I looked at myself in the mirror—straight into my eyes—I could see two of myself. There was a slight difference in what I would see too. With the right eye, I saw myself as a normal person. How I imagined, at least, a normal person would see oneself—an image looking straight back. But with the left eye, I always saw myself looking somewhere up and right. It appeared that I was looking into the void... or space. Definitely not straight into my eyes.

I was thinking that maybe because I saw myself like that, others also saw me that way, but I was wrong. It didn’t work that way. Most people couldn’t really tell the difference. When I tried and looked at others with the left eye, there was no reaction.

My mother wouldn’t give up. She was still searching for ways to correct this malady. She found some doctors that were very keen to make another re-operation. I was an adolescent and didn’t agree. I could not let this happen to me again. I tried to convince my mother that I was fine, but my efforts here were to no avail.

At one point, I started praying to God again: God, please, it would be really cool if I could become a healthy normal boy again. It would help me have a normal life, and I could finally stop being such a disappointment. I remember praying every day. Even a couple of times a day. For months. It turned out that God didn’t really work like that.

During the 1996 winter break, my mother and father decided that I should pay a visit to certain physician in the land of the bears. My father had worked in the red capitol on a delegation for a few years already. It was a perfect occasion to go to the world’s most famous eye doctor.

We went there by aircraft. It reminded me of my first trip by air. The one to visit my father when I was four years old, before all this mess with my eyes. I remember that we once went to a far-eastern restaurant where I found it joyful to eat with chopsticks, although at the time I didn’t understand how to do that.

I found something magical about traveling by air. I remember that during the first flight, I was playing with toys on the ground of the first row. I also recall feeling slow of breath, as is common when sleepy and tired at the same time. Regarding the second air travel, I remembered nothing at all.

We arrived and went to see the doctor. He said exactly the same thing as all the others. I was doomed, prescribed more synoptophore eye training, but this time I had to do it in this special synoptophore facility. There were more people doing it at the same time. My dad was super happy about driving every day to the other side of the city to bring me to another thirty-minute synoptophore session. Every day.

On the other hand, I was genuinely happy as I was literally stuck with my dad going around for the rest of the day. As I didn’t speak this foreign language, I was useless. Sometimes, I was offered a choice to stay at home alone, where I could play games and watch movies. When I went out with him, I’d usually end up waiting for him in the passenger seat. Sometimes for hours. I could go for a walk if I wanted to but never really felt the need. I don’t like to walk around for no particular reason. I also enjoyed staying in the car alone. I could ponder anything or explore my problematic condition.

Besides, I could finally spend some time with my dad. This thrilled me. Since he had to travel far for work, we couldn’t really spend much time together. My mom couldn’t stay long and had to go back after a week. I had to stay for another couple of weeks of synoptophoring.

However long the sessions took, they didn’t work at all. I never managed to put the tractor into the garage. In the end, they again tried to fit some prisms and five-centimeter-wide glass lenses for me. They didn’t work, and I really didn’t like them.

The best moments were when I could talk with my dad when we were stuck in really long traffic jams. Once his old car broke, so we walked in the snow for a long time to get something to repair it. I was the one holding the light and couldn’t really see anything. I enjoyed having this opportunity and getting to know my father better as a child.

Sunday Shade

After they sent me back, having accomplished nothing to cure (or improve) the double vision, my mother was already developing another fantastic idea. It only made me angry inside. I prayed to God so much, and it was all for nothing. Asking him, as I had been instructed, for the health of my eyes, so that my mom could leave me alone and take care of all the other things instead of repairing me. I was still seeing double and had had enough of talking with God. He must not have existed or just ignored me so much that I couldn’t handle it anymore. I decided to stop praying once and for all. In a moment of anger, I may have added that God is a jerk and I hate him with all of my heart.

After a couple of weeks, it came out that my mom couldn’t figure out anything new to do with her problem. I could finally go on with my life. I went back to school with or without the glasses. It didn’t matter anymore what the doctors recommended. I could see well enough. There was no point in wearing them, so I got rid of the correction lenses.

Every Sunday, we used to go together to church. My mom would make us put on the finest clothes. Usually jeans and jumpers. She combed my hair and parted it on one side. That was it. The Sunday style. A fifteen-minute walk to church. One hour inside and