Delirium cosmicum ajvaris

Nothing scientifically exciting has happened in my work for decades, which says a lot given that I work on top-secret projects. That changed today, for today I came across something truly wondrous, a potential scientific discovery that could fundamentally change the world, change the nature of human experience. As unlikely as it sounds, it has everything to do with Ajvar.

I, Dr. Mirsada Brajlović, have started keeping this personal log for the historical record as the events unfold. I’m the Chief Science Officer Grade-11-X of the Circle, which is the top-secret Research and Development division of Zmaj Co., a company that produces a popular version of Ajvar. I report directly, and only, to the company President.

I have a combined PhD in biochemistry-exoplanet biophysics. I’ve previously worked for Yugoslav intelligence with a broad remit. Because of my combined scientific training and intelligence work the company recruited me to work in its secret branch. This was many, many years ago.

Since these notes are classified by default, and will surely be redacted prior to any public release, I can say this: I don’t work with assassinations, foreign corporate espionage, blackmailing, nothing of that sort. I can also say this: I do utilize results from these operations, and I direct some of the covert scientific studies, but I don’t do the “dirty work.” I do the scientific work.

The only copy of these notes will be deposited in the Archive, under the Ajvar-X Files.

*
How did it all start?

Well, my lab does all kinds of Ajvar-related secret tests and studies. Has for many decades. Our ethnological and psycho-somatic studies from the 1970s, still classified, had already demonstrated the physic-psychic potency of Ajvar in the life of Homo Balkanicus. These are, in layman’s terms: consistent erectile function (specific to males), bursts of artistic creativity (in particular expressions of folk music, and to a lesser extent in literature and poetry), gateways to prolific socialization, deep human-human bonding, political prowess, cultural cohesion. All these are, to the trained scientific eye with access to proper empirical data, well-established effects from the ingestion of the golden read spread, the “caviar of ordinary people.”

The utility of these results kept research funding going in the 1980s and early 1990s, but those labors were largely fruitless (and profitless).

They did, however, create a research and espionage infrastructure which allowed us, today, to identify the case of Sead Somun. No research effort is ever wasted in the long-term: I suppose that’s the lesson here.

*

Perhaps I should add the following. The war threw a wrench in our research machinery. Focus was redirected toward supporting the war effort and feeding the besieged population.

For a while, if the brewery was the only place where people could get clean water, our factory was the only place where they could get food that would satisfy their calorie and carbohydrate intake.

My responsibilities during the war were twofold: To create bio-weapons for special units and to ensure that sanitary and hygienic requirements were met for general Ajvar production.

I lost my husband in the war. My sister and her family fled to Germany. My brother wound up in the United States. I couldn’t leave, I didn’t want to leave. I intend to die where I was born: Sarajevo. But all this is beside the point.

We resumed our research efforts not long after the war, but it took a while to rebuild the infrastructure. Large investments from black foreign accounts, with interests of their own, helped.

It’s only very recently that we’ve been able to probe the power residing in the molecular and sub-molecular depths of Ajvar and observe its effects under all kinds of conditions in various populations and sub-populations.

Again, today, we came across the case of Somun, which I think history will show to be a historical scientific breakthrough.

We already know he’s 46. Born and raised in Foča. Fled to Sweden in 1993. He has resided in the town of Simrishamn with his wife since 1994.

We were able to identify this case through a combination of spy channels and local news media analysis of key words and events.

*

I’m assigning my most trusted investigator, Tanja Kosovac (alias Zmija), to fly to Simrishamn to interview Somun and retrieve evidence gathered by our spy there.

*

It’s close to midnight now. When I called Tanja into my office earlier this evening to brief her on the assignment, she seemed less than enthusiastic.

“What? I’m going to a little shithole in Sweden, in December? Fuck me, boss! Is it really that important? Can’t you send a junior? How about that, what’s his name, Alković, or how about Stanković?”

I’ve known Tanja for years. She’s a close friend. So she, unlike most of those who work under me, can speak to me with that frank tone.

“Not this time, old friend. This calls for the best. And you’re the best. It’s the Ajvar-X, I can feel it,” I said to her in my office. We were both smoking.

Her eyes grew big, a smile drew itself over her face. “No, no way? Ajvar-X? Hell, why didn’t you say so!”

“Maybe I should have started with that. But there would have been no fun from seeing your face, hah! By the way, did you know that the word Ajvar derives from the Turkish hayvar. The Ottomans I guess Ottomanized the Persian word for caviar.”

“Uhm, okay.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I said, and proceeded to give her the instructions for her mission.

“How did you find him?” Tanja asked me.

It was eight in the evening. I must confess I was tired (at this point, at midnight, I’m delirious), and didn’t much feel like answering questions anymore. I needed a drink and food. I said: “Hey, let’s go to that bar on the Children of Sarajevo Square. I need a drink, and maybe some ćevapi. Tell you about it there?”

*

Tanja and I left the office shortly after eight o’clock. We took the elevator up and exited through the unassuming apartment building on a small hilly street in the Koševo neighborhood that acts as one of our fronts.

Our secret offices and labs are located 200 meters underground. It’s a pretty much a little city: A vast complex of testing facilities, laboratories, offices, generators, storage facilities, shops, restaurants, even dwellings, all connected through a maze of tunnels, shafts, and elevators, designed at strange angles and dimensions to fool enemies in the event of breach.

Even though we’re trained to navigate them, we get confused by them too. I get lost all the time. And, oddly, every time I go back up to the surface, to the city, I feel disoriented. You just get used to being perennially disoriented as you shift through different geometries.

*

At the bar, which was surprisingly empty and quiet for a Friday night, two Sarajevsko Premium beers and ten ćevapi in front of us on the table, I told Tanja about how we discovered Somun: “Well, as you know, Ajvar had already found its way among the northerners on the backs of guest workers, refugees, immigrants. It’s become such a staple in Sweden that the Swedish Academy has an entry for it, calling it a spicy sauce with a pepper base, or something like that.

“Anyway, from our other studies, I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, we know that some Bosnians in the diaspora have adopted features such as therebetweeness, social trans-mind, supra-sub-language, insider-outsider socio-cultural-psychical status, you know. Of course, these are added, indeed superimposed on, the already liminal political-ontological status of Homo Balkanicus as neither Eastern nor Western, as shown in Todorova’s Imagining the Balkans. I’ve always had a hunch that these openings, among members of our diaspora, meant something, so I’ve closely had the travails of Ajvar in this region monitored since the war ended.”

Tanja yawned. Apologized. “Sorry boss, didn’t realize I was that tired.”

“Well fuck, you asked me to tell you!” I got annoyed.

“I know, sorry boss. Please go on.”

“Listen. So, we’d been keeping an eye on Ajvar in the Swedish diaspora for a a while. So when, today, the words Sead Somun, Ajvar, transcendental experiences, levitation, inexplicable, food poisoning, enhanced, and so forth, spiked in local and national news media articles in Sweden, we picked up on it in real-time. Our embedded spy in Simrishamn, who’ll be your contact, has managed to retrieve the Ajvar ingested by Somun and place it in stasis. It was thrown in the garbage.”

“Damn,” Tanja said, “could this really be it, the X?”

“I think so, I really think so,” I said. “You leave first thing tomorrow morning. You’re taking the covert plane.”

“Got it. Hey boss, you ever think about getting married again?” Tanja asked.

“No. Do you?”

“No, not really.” Tanja had lost her husband in the war too. And to be honest, the men around us left much to be desired. Just couldn’t handle women stronger and smarter than them, at least not in relationships.

*

I sent Tanja under the guise of a Slovenian science journalist assigned to do a story on the recently opened Marine Biology Center in Simrishamn and its initiative to reverse the collapsing marine and plant life ecosystem in the Baltic Sea.

Alfred Persson, our embedded spy, had worked his way up as Director of the Center. He picked Tanja up at the airport in Kristianstad.

*

Tanja called me just now on the secure line. She’s arrived to Simrishamn and has already been briefed by Persson.

“It’s so damn flat this place, so eery and quiet. The people on the street are kind of weird. I can’t wait to come back home. But good news, Persson said the public spillover of Somun’s behavior during his episode has yielded a wealth of material. Handover of evidence went smoothly. Information suppression mechanisms have been activated… You know, it’s crazy, there’s no trace whatsoever of Persson’s original identity, poor guy, I don’t how these trans-spies do it, honestly.”

“Stop with the bitching. Just focus on your assignment, just get it done. And as for Persson, it was his choice, his aptitude.”

“Damn boss. Understood. You sound stressed.” Tanja yawned over the receiver. It’s hard to tell that she could break your arm or snap your neck in less than a second by the way she normally talks.

*

Just now, the evening of the second day of her visit, Tanja informed me that it wasn’t difficult for her to convince Somun and his family, the hospital, and the authorities, that she’d accidentally come across the Somun story and wanted to cover it. She’s set up interviews with witnesses and, of course, Somun himself. With Persson’s help, she’s been able to gain access to all medical, tax, employment, and other records related to Somun.

Somun’s wife, Dženana Somun, reported that around three hours after eating Ajvar, Sead’s eyes turned “star-like,” (Kristianstadsbladet, wording confirmed by Tanja). His body seemed ethereal, somewhere else, “so I felt like he was both here and back in the hometown, in this moment and in the past, and the future,” Dženana said.

On one occasion, a farmer from the village of Gröstorp reported to Sydsvenskan that he saw Somun in the middle of his field “turn into a werewolf, but with star-like eyes.” There was “no fear” in the farmer, but there was “terror,” and “awe.” He called the police. They came with an ambulance. By then Somun had reverted to human form. He was taken to the hospital.

Tanja interviewed Somun in his apartment, where he was still recovering, exhausted. He’d clearly exited the state induced by the Ajvar. About the werewolf experience, he said: “When I looked down on my fur it was like the full moon’s silver light had spun a living web. And I was pure hunger, pure instinct, without a hint of malice or evil. I didn’t who or where I was.”

He levitated on two separate occasions. Once before his wife in the apartment, and once before two nurses and one doctor in Simrishamn’s hospital. On both occasions, observing his body levitate induced terror in observers, “as if he slept an unnatural sleep,” said one of the nurses, Anna Jansdotter (quoted in Ystads Allehanda).

The doctor told Ystads Allehanda how he saw “the energy of someone lost everywhere and nowhere. The nature of this man washed away. I could look straight through it.” The doctor was so distraught he had to be admitted to a psychiatric clinic.

*

Strangest of all are perhaps Somun’s own words. It would seem as if the experience had deposited itself in his words.

“I merged with the ocean as a drop. The ocean merged with the earth. The earth merged with the sky. The sky merged with the stars. The stars merged into the universe. As this unification was unfolding, the universe was tearing itself apart, forming the question, the only question, for spirit to answer.”

“Apropos the stars. I could count them all, and it was utterly pointless. I could also gaze into the core of a single star. I heard sound enveloped in darkness pressing on me from all sides, compressing me into more sound, more darkness. There was pain. There was pleasure. And there was something that was beyond both pain and pleasure.”

“The movement of historical time is like a dolphin’s propulsion trail through the water. The thrust propelling it forward, as a processual cause, appears to be following in its wake, as an effect of the movement.”

“Levitation is a pure symbol, a seal in its purest form, namely concreteness entirely diluted into abstraction.”

“Classification is a dead-end. System is a dead-end. Meaning is a dead-end. Substance devoid of substance is the nightmare of form. Form devoid of form is nothingness. Nothingness devoid of nothingness turns the dream into the dreamer.”

“Picture a mirror. Its surface encompasses the totality of existence. Thus, its extensions coincide perfectly with every single reality and every single reality as a whole. Does it coincide in empty reflection or substance? What I mean to say is: how could you possibly know the difference? Unless you were somehow able to set yourself apart from this mirror existence, that is. Then you would see that the absolute mirror is at once the reflection, the reflected, the substance, the subject, and the truth. I dwelled in the revelation dissolving itself.”

“For now, I am in the prison house of classes, on the island of systems, beneath the sky of meaning, in the universe of systems.”

Mind you: Somun finished only high school, and that only barely. He’s never read a book of philosophy, religion, science, mysticism, whatever. He’s never read a novel or a book of poetry.

…

It’s been ten years since the first confirmed case of the state I’ve named cosmic Ajvar delirium (delirium cosmicum ajvaris).

Much has happened since the Somun case. We’re now, finally, in a position to give a somewhat detailed account.

We’re certain of this: On December 21, 2002, at around 9 a.m. Sead Somun ate Ajvar. He’d spread it on a slice of white bread using a spoon made of oak. 14 hours later, the first effects manifested. The episode lasted 48 hours. It was the opened bottle of this Ajvar, and the half-eaten slice of bread, that Persson was able to retrieve, and place in stasis, 56 hours after ingestion. This gave us a baseline of sorts to work with.

*

We’ve established that Ajvar in a specific state, which I postulated as theoretical substance Ajvar-X years prior to the Somun case (though nobody, except Tanja, took me seriously), triggers cosmic Ajvar delirium only in a specific sub-population, which I’ve named Homo Balkanicus (d-Swe)—the diaspora variant in Sweden.

The war, as awful as it was, led to the creation of the only sub-population in which, so far, we’ve observed the occurrence of cosmic Ajvar delirium.

*

The science behind cosmic Ajvar delirium, in the simplest terms possible:

Deep in the ontological structure of Ajvar-X, in its Language so the speak, there’s a bio-active compound I’ve named Brajlović-Capsanthropine. It’s an oval alkaloid formed through a rare Maillard reaction occurring under these specific conditions: the red peppers are roasted at precisely 232°C; the specific amino acids from eggplant interact with capsanthin under oxidative stress; the pH value drops to 4.2 during the cooking process; trace minerals from oak utensils act as catalysts.

The statistical probability for these conditions combined to obtain in Ajvar are ridiculously low, practically impossible from a statistical perspective.

The molecular structure bears some family resemblance to Piperine, Anandamide, and L-theanine, in particular the enhancement of neurotransmitters. But really, Ajvar-X is to Ajvar what Mozart is to a group of amateur composers.

The mitochondrial biogenesis activated by Brajlović-Casantrophine is off the charts, particularly in muscle tissue and neural networks. Neural and other cell energy production increases 90-95%, but at its peak it explodes off the scale.

This results in incredible, scientifically incomprehensible, neurotransmitter modulation (not least through the dramatic increase of acetylcholine in the hippocampus and BDNF-promotion) and brainwave optimization (a state between alpha (8-12 Hz, which oozes into some strange hyper-frequency) and theta (4-8 Hz, which oozes into some strange sub-frequency) waves. It’s as if the brainwaves build up, and up, and down, and down, all at once, so that a few waves all of a sudden turn into a whole ocean, breaking all kinds of laws of physics.

Under these conditions, Ajvar becomes Ajvar-X, triggering a trans-psycho-somatic reaction, holding the promise of a gateway into an entirely new kind of experience of existence.

Ajvar-X triggers a reaction emanating from the gut flora, which then spreads globally through the lymphatic system, the immune system, the skeletal-muscular system, the nervous system, the neural system, in a manner which is the opposite of what the pseudo-scientists deludingly call homeostasis. What happens is process, oscillation, dance like action-reaction.

As far as we can tell, there are no negative side-effects.

It’s taken additional observations across ten years to arrive at these conclusions. Though, admittedly, they still harbor more mysteries than they do answers.

*

We’re still figuring out how to accurately describe what it means to be in the state of cosmic Ajvar delirium, and the tremendous inner transformation that takes place in people who’ve experienced it.

*

We’ve documented only 25 cases of this reaction since the Somun case. And, to repeat, it’s only among the Homo Balkanicus (d-Swe) variant that Ajvar-X has been observed to induce this state.

We now have a permanent, secret, presence in Sweden, so as to be able to closely monitor the cases and collect the data.

Tanja, much to her disappointment, was recently made Director of this operation. She’ll have to live in Sweden for a while.

Because of our vast network of influence, we’ve been able to hide these cases from the general public.

*

From a comparative study of the 25 cases, we’ve established conclusively that the more lowlife, outcast, wretched, an individual from the (d-Swe) variant is, the easier the boundaries between existential states break down in the state of cosmic Ajvar delirium (perhaps this is why the great prophets and mystics insisted on outcastness as one essential quality for the attainment of higher truths?).

Some categories: poorly integrated immigrants, alcoholic guest workers, morally questionable immigrants who routinely lie and cheat and deceive, and so on.

Interestingly, none of the 25 lowlifes ever crossed certain ethical boundaries, only hovered over them. Threatened to kill someone yes, killed them no; lied and cheated yes, ruined others’ lives because of it no; useless yes, but degrading the earth no.

Some illustrative examples from the Somun case: To make friends with the Swedes Somun brought over a couple he and his wife had befriended at a cafe. He got really drunk. He put on the song Macarena and started to dance inappropriately with the wife in front of her husband and his own wife. He actually thought he was being a good host and stopped as soon as the woman said she was uncomfortable. He apologized to the woman, her husband, and his wife, and brought out more food, which the Swedish couple ate greedily. He acted like a lowlife but broke no major ethical or other boundaries. This was his way through life, pretty much.

*

All these complex states of affairs make for scientific calculations, tabulations, equilibria, models, and so on, that verge on the fantastical.

*

The implication of the results and conclusions thus far is that only a certain kind of fool of the (d-Swe) variant can attain a higher level of consciousness and spiritual connection to cosmic forces. It’s as if Ajvar-X chose these people.

This finding of course prompts the true research question, one we’re obsessing over currently: can non-diasporic non-lowlife individuals attain cosmic Ajvar delirium, and if so under which conditions?

*

We can already produce Ajvar-X. I recently proposed a massive project to discover if there are states and conditions of Ajvar-X that can produce cosmic Ajvar delirium in the general population.

I hypothesize that we initially need to manipulate Ajvar-X to fit different sub-groups. My hope is to eventually arrive at a modulation that’ll operate on the individual level, which I theorize as Ajvar-I, triggered in Homo Sapiens.

…

A year since I submitted the application, the project’s been finally approved by the Board of Executives and the President. I’m incredibly excited!

The company has invested $5 billion on this top-secret project through hush-hush national and international public-private partnerships.

Although led by our company, which is registered in Bosnia, funders include the US, Chinese, Qatari, Saudi, Turkish, and EU governments, and a few large international companies. Reporting is going to be a nightmare, and the politics.

It’s all worth it, because if we’re successful, we’ll be able to manufacture Ajvar-I, which would literally change the the nature of experience and lead to a lot of good in the world.

My personal hope is that it’ll bring about the full realization of every person and a global reign of peace.

I fear this may not happen in my lifetime. I fear I’ll never experience cosmic Ajvar delirium. The thing is: I fucking hate the taste of Ajvar.