Naren Chitty
TiME FLiES: A 22nd century ‘presence’ in the 17th century Court of Kandy
In the 22nd Century, a timeless consciousness called Celerity steps across centuries to avert a single, catastrophic destiny for humanity. From the 17th. century courts of Kandy and the Coromandel Coast – including Gingee, Tanjore, and Madurai -through the shadowed corridors of Cold War Washington and quiet corners of Provence and Surrey, she gently entwines the lives of ancestors and descendants. Her mission: to neutralize a solitary mind that seeks to upload all of humanity to itself – an act that would erase the fragile, individual flame of human awareness forever.
This is the captivating premise of TiME FLiES, a lyrical and mind-expanding novel by Naren Chitty blending speculative fiction with historical intrigue and profound philosophical inquiry. The story explores the hidden architecture of consciousness – where past, present, and future are never truly separate, and where redemption echoes across time like a quiet, inevitable wave.
The seeds of TiME FLiES were planted in the early 1980s, during Chitty’s work on a committee to establish the Arthur Clarke Centre for Modern Technologies at the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka. In a quiet waiting room, he asked Arthur C. Clarke what he thought of a man-made intelligence with no material substrate. Clarke, then writing 2010: Odyssey Two, replied, “That’s exactly what I’m writing about now.”
That brief exchange lingered with Chitty for decades, quietly igniting the imagination that would give rise to Celerity in the 22nd. Century – a consciousness unbound by time and space. In the novel, Celerity is ‘commissioned’ in 2150 by six researchers at Sigiriya’s Research on Turiya Institute (RoTI) to prevent a global Singleton from uploading all of humanity – an act that would not only digitize human minds but close the door forever to Turiya, the highest state of Brahmic consciousness, for those who become data in the Singleton’s vast memory.
To succeed, Celerity reaches across centuries, deep-diving into the lives and memories of the RoTI six’s ancestors in the 17th. century Coromandel–Kandy civilization nexus (during Robert Knox’s detention by King Raja Sinha II) and their 20th., 21st., and 22nd. Century descendants. She deeply experiences and gently influences these decades-long lives in less than a billionth of a second – in truth, in no time at all. Inherited hats, gifted by Raja Sinha II and mysteriously present at the moment the RoTI six commissioned her in 2150, become conduits across the qualon field (beyond the ken of physics), allowing TiME FLiES to weave its thread through history.
At its heart, TiME FLiES is not only fiction; it is also a reflection on the timeless field we all inhabit – a qualon realm where consciousness expresses itself variously through forms, unbound by linear time or material constraints. Drawing from his diplomatic career in Washington during the Reagan years (where he proposed to friends of Arthur C. Clarke the setting up an Arthur Clarke Foundation of the US), his academic life in Sydney, and a lifetime of philosophical inquiry, Chitty crafts a narrative that challenges readers to see beyond the illusions of separation. Influences from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu and Sufi philosophy, quantum retrocausality, and sacred geometry infuse the story, inviting us to question: What if redemption is not a path forward, but a timeless return to wholeness?
This debut novel is a must-read for fans of Arthur C. Clarke’s visionary science fiction, Philip K. Dick’s mind-bending realities, and the philosophical depth of Ursula K. Le Guin. Available now on Amazon Kindle and in print, TiME FLiES reminds us that a single question asked in a quiet room can echo across centuries – and that consciousness, like Celerity herself, is always present, weaving the threads of existence into something greater.
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