There is, Hinduism teaches, a sound. It is the sound of divinity and formed from the three things which are all things: Akara; Ukara; Makara.
Cajera eased the lateral-gain dial through a quarter turn and lined up the crosshairs. The targeting computer could do this in moments, but cutting it out allowed an illusion of control. The asteroid hung in the holo-sphere, a quarter-mile lump filled with ore worth more money than she could comprehend.
She released the field drones, and small red blips in the screen moved to surround the asteroid. She scrolled its image round in the holo-sphere, ensuring all the drones were in place, and then launched the warhead. It split into multiple missiles, which burrowed deep below the surface.
On a rare trip to Earth Cajera had watched one of Dubai’s ruined skyscrapers be demolished. The ripples of light and clouds of dust and debris were familiar but she hadn’t been prepared for the sound. First there were the crack-cracker-crack-cracker like a million fireworks. Then rumble and thunder as the tower collapsed into the desert; a billion tons of concrete, steel, and glass. The noise had been the surprise. It was all-encompassing. It tolled across the desert, vibrated in her ribcage, rattled her teeth, pawed at her like her partner's Great Dane had when trying to get attention at meal time.
Where Cajera worked there was no such sound. She always supplied it herself, falling back on a scrap of tradition handed down from her grandfather. "It is the sound of life, and existence; of divinity, and nature," he’d intoned. And he chanted ‘AUM’ with a mellifluousness her young throat and chest could not match. But she joined him anyway, her voice thin and tremulous, and he smiled at her.
Cajera did a final check to ensure that the field drones were active and the missiles primed. She sent the detonate command.
Akara: The form or shape of all things.
The asteroid appeared to swell, then exploded outwards into the containment field created by the interlinked drones. The drones launched micro-missiles to break bigger pieces of material apart. Pinpricks of light flashed as detonations pummelled the rock into smaller and smaller fragments. The previously irregular form now rippled and roiled inside the force-field shell, and it created the appearance of a regularly shaped planetoid. Distant sunlight reflected from silica in the rubble, and its high albedo enhanced the illusion of a solid shape, creating a small moon lit from one side.
With distance all things looked better. Here, deep in the asteroid belt, petty squabbles with her parents vanished, and she was left with only the memory of joyful youth. Almost. She allowed her grandfather’s chant to calm her: ‘AUM’. It resonated in her throat, filled her head and her heart, as the asteroid went through the turmoil of oblivion.
Ukara: That which is formless and shapeless.
Sensors in the field drones showed no fragments too large for the collection unit. Cajera keyed the requisite command and, deep within the stadium-sized craft, an enormous hose unspooled and snaked towards the ball of broken rock. Drones at the hose's tip married up with the force-field and, when the connection was secure, opened a channel. The asteroid’s remains were sucked through the hose. Powerful motors maintained movement as the rock was scanned. The ores, silicas, and remnants were moved into different barges, presorted before arriving at the giant processing center in Mars orbit.
Small flashes on monitors showed Cajera which ores were being collected, which barges were nearly full. Normally she paid scant attention to the blinks and winks from the screens. But something rumbled in the depths of the ship, a harmonic that did not belong.
She scrutinized the screens that showed flow rates and ore types. It wasn’t unknown for materials to level out and flow like a fluid, causing the systems to jam and fail. The automated systems usually prevented such a problem but, occasionally, all the technical wizardry missed something that the human eye caught. For these times, Cajera was on hand, ready to switch the speed of collection up or down, or to stop it altogether.
Nothing unusual showed up.
Yet still there was a steady tremble, which indicated something awry. Not fully a sound, yet not only a feeling. There was a definite vibration in the air. It was like the tremor, the charge, which built when a storm collected itself on the far side of Olympus Mons, preparing to scream towards her home; like the undercurrent of suppressed anger, frustration, and disappointment that marked every visit to her parents for the past twelve years. The second of these half-felt sensations was to be endured as best as possible, the first was something to take action on, swift action.
But which was this?
All the monitoring systems showed optimal yet still Cajera was wary, unsure what to do. She powered her arm holograph and headed to the viewing gallery. Why such a place existed on the ship she’d never fathomed. This was the only time there was anything to see, and watching rocks on a conveyor belt was low on any list of fun.
She glanced at her arm. Still nothing showed in any of the systems. The rogue harmonic that palpated her chest now thundered in her ears, and the noise was changing. It almost sounded like there were words in the noise, unintelligible, but definitely words. It reminded her of the hubbub a large crowd makes in the moments before being called to order; the random overlaying of conversations, none of them audible to the point of comprehension.
As she neared the viewing deck, the noise increased. Then an alarm sounded. She looked at the projection from her arm, now red across every indicator. Light pulsed in the viewing gallery. The explosion blew out the windows. It blasted along the corridor and threw her against the bulkhead like the Dubai tower had been thrown into the desert.
Makara, which is neither formed nor formless, shaped nor shapeless, but is contained in and combines with all.
There was light. It was white, all-encompassing, and it pulsed with the colors of the rainbow, glittering, glistening, shining, sparkling, coruscating. Behind and beyond the white was black, pervasive and velvety, suffused with purples, greens, oranges, and blues which rippled and shimmered.
Between the black and white, hiding in the space where no color and all colors nearly meet, a myriad of shades manifested. Cajera experienced them in an unceasing kaleidoscope, each one a cynosure seeking acknowledgement of its uniqueness.
And each was unique, combining with tastes and flavors that Cajera knew intimately, though the majority of them she'd never experienced, never seen, or heard of.
Now they existed with a panoply of things previously unknown, and she could feel each of them where they touched the fabric of space and time: How the scale of a marlin felt cutting through the water; the slide of silk stocking on a cellulite rich thigh; edelweiss thrusting through alpine soil, and nestling against a rocky outcrop.
Beyond the color, and texture, and smell, and taste, there was sound. It was a single, encompassing, sound that wound in and around everything. When Cajera tried to isolate it there was nothing solid to hold, but when she ignored it she heard it everywhere, in everything. It built shapes, it was color, flavor, and smell. The sound was ‘AUM’.
AUM
Cajera floated in a universe of sound. Alone in a void fourteen billion years wide, filled with everything that has been, and is, and will be.
“I am alone,” she thought.
“We are never alone.” The voice came from within, and was her grandfather.
“Grandfather?”
“Who is your grandfather? Who is you? There is only we.”
There was more to the voice. Not her grandfather, not herself. She searched with eyes, and ears, and skin, and tongue, and nostrils, seeking the other who existed out there. Pulsars blasted their knowledge across the heavens. Black holes wept their information into the void between the stars, discrete packets of quanta which revealed nothing Cajera did not already know.
"We are never alone." The words blazed brightly, like the hot birth of a new reality. "We are never alone." The words vibrated to a single harmonious sound that bound everything together, building anew that which had existed for so long, which had been before, and will be again. ‘AUM’
AUM
Finally Cajera knew that the AUM was her. That she was we. Memory of the ship, of the asteroid, of grandfathers, and parents, and lovers, and pets, and everything that was and had been Cajera were no more her than a blade of grass is a meadow, a leaf is a tree, a star is a galaxy.
The universe dissolved.
AUM
There was light.