i - The Barber And The Black Rooster

Smile, you little human, smile, for you're sane.
By the way, what's sanity? They don't care about it.
In fact, they worry about nothing. They can't appreciate the countless sunrises over the countless mountains. And they don't waste their time to decide which is more important to the picture: whether the sun or the mountains.

You look a little sick, don't you? Take a rest for a couple of centuries. Maybe when you wake up, you may find out something that makes you better comprehend … the meaning of life.

Once there was a time when planet Earth was thought to be flat. When people in England believed there was nothing beyond the cliffs of the very southwest part of their island – nothing but the infinite sea. That region was called “Land’s End”. That’s precisely where this story takes place.

Land’s End, summer of 1402, southwest of England.

Nearby, there was the small town of Sennen,
Where a man was about to commit ahn.. insanity.

It's Monday morning,
He opens his window to let the sun in
Ears in the air, and eyes in the sky
There was something he had to do
He walks in the street, bare feet.
Holding their breaths,

All the people around in astonishment
Were trying to guess what the hell he would do

Hidden behind their doors:
Katherine Ward, embroiderer, 27: “Look at him, his eyes don’t blink...”
Cedric Ward, her son, 6: “Funny his pyjamas, mummy!”
Colin Withers, locksmith, 35: “Well, I think he’s just drunk!”

Carrying a whip in one hand
And a huge knife in the other
Leonard, the barber, 66
Crosses the fence of the mayor’s house
Runs through the side corridor
Rushes to the backyard:
“Cock-Cock-a-doodle-doo!!!”

Stepping into the hen house,
He sees a big black rooster inside.

Eugene Brackenbury, the mayor, 61: “The Devil caught his soul!”
Ethel Brackenbury, his wife, 58: “The Anti-Christ is here!”
Reverend Hammett, the vicar, 75: “It’s the Day of The Lord!”
Charles Melton, the acolyte, 20: “God, please save me first!”

The rooster started to run around the yard, trying to flee from Leonard, who was frenetically trying to catch it.
In one of the turns, it found a way out to the street.
So the race continued throughout the town.

So the black bird spreads its wings upon the sea,
Flying over the clouds,
Far beyond the stars,
Through the outer space,
Towards the unknown.

Leonard:
“I can see my bridges burning far behind.
As I turn and look back,
The man I used to be
Gets lost in the past.”

----------

ii - Flying Fauna

Far from Earth, higher and higher above, the rooster continued leading Leonard. Now he finds himself inside something like a translucent capsule, connected to the rooster’s legs by means of some sort of an also translucent wire - an enchanted version of his old whip.

During the flight, he could see other beasts carrying other voyagers, all protected by the same structures. Out of the solar system, he could see a bright vast concentration of stars, in the form of a disk - the center of the Milky Way.

He presumed his capsule was being transported directly into the center of that bright white region. As he approached the center of the galaxy, in a certain moment he could clearly distinguish, right in front of him, a small black point. At the same time, he began to hear the distant sound of a simple pretty melody.

-- Fauna’s Fugue --

Closer and closer, as the black point became larger, so the music sounded louder.

Soon all animals were singing in a massive choir.

In fact, the black region proved to be a vortex, like a big mouth, attracting everything into its center, a black hole. As they approached, the flight speed was tremendously increased by its gravitational effect.

And so they reached the final boundary - the event horizon.

The music continued to play, now in reverse order. The animals dropped the capsules and disappeared, letting them inevitably to be swallowed.

Now the millions of capsules travel through the black hole. Leonard looks around and sees the other capsules vanish before his eyes, as he penetrates into deep darkness.

----------

iii - White Spaceship

The String Theory - travel between parallel universes with wormholes. Could black holes be portals to other universes? Do black holes contain other universes? Equations predict that our universe may sit in another universe's black hole.

Now Leonard and his human fellows, each one inside his capsule, fly across the singularity. He watches his body to be stretched like a spaghetti. But he feels no pain. He recalls no memories. He's just a negligible part of that scenario.

He doesn't know yet, but soon he'll be about to test the String Theory.

After a while, Leonard’s eyes capture a tiny white point ahead.
The black-to-white journey had begun.

The sensors of my eyes
Detect a tiny sign.
It's very real
But I refuse to believe.
Getting closer
Growing and shining more and more.

Limits of my sight
Obliterate my reason
Entangled in its essence
Exposed to the unknown
I can only trust
This white spaceship
Knows exactly where to land

I sense my body changing fast
I’m feeling so stretched
Pain is an old story
I’m about to forget

Can recall no memories from my past
No matter how hard I try
Time moves so slowly
Nothing here makes sense

The white point grows ahead
Approaching more and more
But I feel safe inside my capsule
With peace and confidence

The moment seems crucial
Have no thoughts in mind
The symbiosis is completed
I'm at the speed of light

In a certain moment, Leonard sees a tiny black vortex being formed at the centre. Spinning in the opposite direction of the white vortex, rapidly growing its size, the new black hole was attracting all capsules back to the dark space from where they entered.

The String Theory was right.
At the end of the white-to-black journey, Leonard was thrown again into the dark space. And guess what was waiting for him?

----------

iv - The Puzzle and The Last Supper

Once more the Black Rooster takes the control of the capsule and leads Leonard back to… guess what? Old Mother Earth. As he entered the atmosphere, the white capsule slowly began to melt as it began falling.

Touching the ground in a smooth landing, the capsule completely dissolved. And now he found himself alone on a vast green plain,
dressed in… pyjamas…

… a very different Earth received him in Her arms.

Back down to Earth
So tired, he fell asleep
On a plain of grass
And then he dreamed
He was inside a castle
Trapped in a cage
Hanged in the air
When he woke up
He was down at the bottom of a well
Whose walls were made of red clay

Looking above,
By climbing he realized
He could not scape
Looking around
He found a passage
Dug down in the wall
It was so tight, so narrow
The only way
There was no choice
Except going through that hole

Inside in a wider hall
He found a rope down on the ground
It seemed to indicate some path
So he took it in his hands

The hall was the anteroom of what seemed to be a cave. In front of him, there was a long dark corridor, carefully built by someone who probably wanted to show the way out, leaving the rope as a guide. Like Perseus in the Labyrinth, Leonard entered the cave, following his Ariadne’s thread.
Walking inside, the walls began to melt around him turning its red clay. Red drops of the red liquid turn into a red mud, then into a red stream and then into a red river, that dragged him down making him to submerge. Strange, but he could breathe.
Then he started to feel pressure and some pain, as he was forced to pass through the tunnel, which was becoming narrower and narrower.
Now he hears the distant screams of a woman.
The pain became unbearable.
When finally, he was expelled from the tunnel into an empty room. This room had a door that led to another room with another door to the next room, and so on. Twelve rooms connected by twelve doors, making a circle, so the twelfth door led to the first room - a mandala.

In the first room, he learned to speak
In the second, he wanted to eat
In the third, he learned to read
In the fourth, he wanted to breed
In the fifth, he was a king, sitting on a throne
In the sixth, he was a humble servant

In the seventh, he saw love
In the eight, he saw justice
In the ninth, he was a priest
In the tenth, he was wise
In the eleventh, he saw people marching with their flags
In the twelfth, he saw their spirits

Outside the well
He fluctuated
Freely in the air
And from above
He saw his naked body
Tied to a wooden table
Scared, nothing could be done
He was lost in that nightmare
Maybe somewhere
Between life and death

Animals of all species
Suddenly appeared from every side
Around the table
They just wait…
Knives fall from the sky!

The Builder:
“Come to my arms
Take my hand
I'm full of grace
Lay your troubles over me
Feel the beat of my heart
This is the end for mankind
There will never be
Another chance
To start again”

Genesis, 1:1-31
(as told by Leonard)
1 In the beginning Leonard created the hen and the farm.
2 And the farm was without form, and void. And darkness was upon the fence of the farm. And the Spirit of Leonard moved upon the fence of the farm.
3 And Leonard said, 'Let there be the light'. And there was the lamp.
4 And Leonard saw the lamp, that was good. And Leonard divided the light from the darkness.
5 And Leonard called the light Rooster, and the darkness he called Owl. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
.....
31 After six days, Leonard had created many things. And at the end, he saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was the best thing he could do.
Finally, after sleeping the whole weekend, Leonard is waked up by his old friend - “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

Cedric Ward, Katherine Ward’s son, 6:
“Mummy, who came first - 'twas the hen ? 'twas the egg ? or both ?”