“Beyond the boundaries of this place are all the possibilities. It is all the what ifs. It is what could have been and what could be. In our glass world we live in a place between them all. The connection is you.”
“We’ve discussed the various energies. In the end there are two basic forms of energy. There is potential energy. And there is kinetic energy. What potential does a thing have? What force is hidden inside it? What is the potential energy? The possibility? You all have so much potential. Now you will move forward into the Multiverse. You will become action. You turn your potential into force. Today you transition your potential energy to kinetic energy. Your physical form…it will become pure energy. With this energy you can move to different points in the endless Multiverse.”
“You cannot step into the different points in the Multiverse physically. Maybe some of you will be great enough to do so eventually…but not at first…now you will only be energy moving from Verse to Verse. And you…you will step into…another you. You step into a you in another universe.”
“You have the opportunity to move your energies in and out of this place. Your bodies will become energy and change. You become mind. And your mind can follow the different paths of what you could have done and what you could have been.”
Belili was quiet for a few moments. She let the children reflect on this new lesson. Sarah stared before her and was entranced by the movement and the color of all existence.
“Stare into the void children,” Belili said. “There is a theory that we have discussed. It is the small framework of an idea. It is a theory of everything. The theory is that the universe is made of strings. These strings also represent that there are additional dimensions. Here we have moved far beyond that basic theory. Here we know...that these strings…they are actually tunnels. They are tunnels through the Multiverse. They are roads through infinity.”
“The waves of time and space are created by these string filaments. They are the substance of everything…the theory was that the way the string twists or vibrates creates all that is. However, we know that they are connections and each one leads to a different destination. Those tiny ripples make a universe. They make a reality. Those strings…those filaments…those waves vibrate in and out of different Verses. In one wave...in one string we can gleam into varying possibilities.”
“Now focus children. In the chaos of infinity before you identify a point…the point you wish to travel to.”
Sarah stared into infinity and focused. The moving wall was a tapestry of different skies and different places. However, as she stared into infinity she found that she could identify things. For a moment she saw a spinning star. She knew it was a pulsar. She understood it’s density. She also identified something else in the swirling chaos. She heard a tone. She realized it was a note. It was a G flat. She focused and she realized there were different notes following it. She realized they were notes from a symphony by the composer Strakosky. He was not known in her Verse. However, in another Verse he created symphonies that would inspire generations. She understood that her mind was pinpointing different things in this chaos. The speed at which she was deciphering the rush of information before her was almost hard to quantify.
Belili began speaking again. “Now, children…focus…focus…on jumping into a point in the sea of the Multiverse.”
Sarah suddenly felt fear. She knew something was about to occur that would be profound and change her significantly. She turned to look at Patrick. She could not help it. She was surprised to see his eyes were closed. She understood that all the things the she was seeing and identifying, he was able to see and identify with his mind. His eyes did not need to tell him they were there. He just knew.
Suddenly Patrick opened his eyes. It was as if he realized that Sarah was watching him. He turned and looked at Sarah. He saw her uncertainty.
“Close your eyes,” he said. Sarah hesitated.
Patrick gave her a reassuring smile. “Trust me,” he said. “Close your eyes.”
This time Sarah did as Patrick told her.
“Let your mind go,” Sarah heard Patrick’s voice say. “Let it…drift. Then remember…remember in your mind what you saw when you stared into the sea. In your mind trace it all and identify all the details.”
With her eyes closed Sarah thought of the great wave of the Multiverse she had seen moments ago. She saw it in her mind. She realized that she remembered more of it then she anticipated. She could see it all in great detail in her mind.
She heard Patrick speak again.
“Now turn to the sea…and open your eyes,” he said.
Sarah turned her face to the sea of infinity. She opened her eyes.
As she stared into the sea she saw that the colors she had seen in her minds eyes had not disappeared. She could see all the details before her that she had been remembering in her mind. They had changed. But that picture in her mind was like a snap shot. And she was able to move it forward and understand how the position of things had changed from then to now. She understood that she could let that snapshot unfold even more. In doing so she could know how things were going to be in this great ocean of forever from moment to moment.
Now Sarah was ready for what was coming.
She focused. She saw a little string dancing on the edge of her vision. This is what she was looking for. This is the point in all of infinity that she would concentrate on. As she focused on it more she was able to identify it in greater and greater detail. It was always there. It always had been. She had been looking at it this whole time but not known that it was there. Her mind was not able to discern it.
As she focused on the string it grew in thickness and texture.
Beside her Patrick stared back at the Sea of Glass. A moment later he was gone. Her mind half registered this. It half registered an eruption of fabulous color the moment he stepped into infinity. It left waves of reality and what could have been.
However, Sarah was getting too lost in the dance of space and time in front of her. With each flicker of the floating string that she was focused on she understood something. She could not explain it beyond that. She simply gained more awareness.
With her mind she followed the string she was focusing on. She followed the tale of this thing that had been unnoticed before. As she followed the string it suddenly stopped. It turned to her. It was as if it was a living thing now aware that it was being watched. For a moment it was like a worm stopping what it was doing to observe her back.
In a shocking moment Sarah realized that it was a Universe suddenly becoming aware of another Universe. Two Verses were about to connect. Verse Zero would connect with a new separate Verse though this ocean of glass. They would be connected by the mind of a child who understood the crossroads between them.
This strange creature that was a Universe began to change. As Sarah continued to focus on it that Universe focused back on her. The space around it changed colors as if it was lost in a sea of light. The world around Sarah seemed to melt a bit. The string grew. Sarah realized that it was becoming a tunnel. A moment later she understood that it was not really growing. She was merely focusing on it more and seeing it in greater and greater detail. The growth was her understanding of what she was looking at.
Suddenly it was before her.
It was a tunnel. It was a doorway.
Sarah then did the thing that she had been brought to this place to do. She stepped into another Universe.
***
Sarah was staring out the window. It was a sunny day outside and the sky was very blue. In the distance she could see white clouds. She could also hear a lawnmower outside.
She knew that her brother Mark was mowing the lawn.
Sarah never had a brother Mark.
But she did. She knew her father paid Mark twenty dollars a week to mow the lawn. Her brother was using this money to save up for the down payment on a car next year. Sarah knew this information as well as she knew her own name. But her name was different she
realized. Her name was not Sarah Julia Guzman. It was Sarah Megan Guzman. Her middle name was the middle name of her father’s sister who had died of leukemia before Sarah was born.
None of this had happened to Sarah, who had been abducted and taken to a world surrounded by a glass sea. However, it was all real. Sarah could feel the reality of the cloth of the recliner that she was sitting in as she stared out the window. It was her father’s favorite chair. Sarah would sit in it when he wasn’t home. The sound of the lawnmower was the most recognizable sound in the world.
It was a nice world, Sarah thought. It was a happy world. It was a world where Sarah had never been kidnapped by a bald man with wild eyes.
What if she stayed here? Sarah wondered. What if she never left this place? Sarah realized that she was hidden in someone’s mind. It was not just anyone’s mind. It was her mind under different circumstances then those she knew.
In that moment Sarah realized that circumstances were important.
Sarah looked at the sky and listened to the sound of her brother Mark doing his chores. She was sad that she would no longer get to be in a world with an older brother who was saving for his first car. He was an older brother who taught her all the rules to football and who was excited when he was selected for the varsity team.
Sarah knew it was her life and it was not her life.
With sadness Sarah let go of this world that was so much like the one she had known but was so different.
With sadness Sarah fell back to her world of glass.
***
Sarah stared at the ocean of infinity before her. She stared at the flickering Multiverse that it contained. She again felt sadness. She thought of the brother she had and who had never existed. She thought of the life that was and was not.
She looked to her side. Patrick was there. His eyes were again closed. She wondered what life he had experience when he stepped into the Multiverse. She could see he was still lost there in his mind’s eye.
Suddenly Patrick opened his eyes. He turned and stared at Sarah. At that moment he was seeing her. However, Sarah knew he was also seeing past her. In that moment she realized Patrick was looking beyond. He was looking to a place beyond what the rest of them could see.
In that instant Sarah knew that Patrick was starting to see it. He was starting to see the path. She understood that he was looking at a new horizon now.
Sarah knew he was starting to see the point that was the Threshold of Degradative Concurrence.
***
The Philosophical Principles of Death. The Scripture of Farinata Uaegli Abertio.
Gospel 000233
To save life is to sin.
A man is disfigured through fire. Those who would strive to save him are wretched. We do not do the disfigured man a kindness by letting him live in this pathetic state.
It is up to the virtuous to send him to the next realm.
Time and life will hunch us over. Time will deprive us of our senses. Our eyes will go blind. Our ears will go deaf. We shrink and break as we move closer to our fate. The weariness of life erodes our bodies and souls.
Pity is weakness. It is the greatest sin in the eyes of God.
God created death to be indiscriminate. Death does not play favorites. It does not care of virtue or morals. It simply kills. It kills coldly and efficiently.
We must strive to be more like death. Death is the final state God created for all things. We cannot be God so let us strive to be part of the death that God has woven into the fabric of our beings.
We are blessed. We are fortunate. God has chosen us of all the Verses to be his servants. We are God’s agents. We are chosen to do that which he so desires.
In my dreams the grounds shook. The skies went black. All went silent and dark.
All went cold.
It was in the truth of darkness that we awoke. In that darkness we found our true salvation.
Blessed be the darkness. Blessed be the blackened skies. Blessed be the silence and cold.
Verse Ten: The Other You
Sarah stood watching Joshua from a distance. He was once again sitting by the pond playing in the dirt. He still frightened Sarah. She was still frightened by the wild look in his eyes. That mad look never went away.
Sometimes Sarah saw Joshua just staring off into space and grinning. It was unsettling. She could not forget the horror of waking up in her room in her normal life and seeing Joshua’s insane smile as he crouched next to her bed. In this strange land seeing that smile and those wild eyes always brought back the terror of that night. The years that had passed since that night lessened the terror but did not make it go away.
“He’s a good boy,” a voice said from beside Sarah.
Sarah was caught by surprise. She had thought she was standing alone and unnoticed. She did not realize that Belili had walked up beside her. As she looked to Belili, Sarah saw that she too was staring at Joshua.
“He’s a good boy,” Belili repeated. She turned to look at Sarah and a sad look spread across Belili’s face as she did so. Sarah realized that Belili was seeing the disgust on Sarah’s face as she watched Joshua.
Belili looked back to the strange one. “He was beautiful. He was brilliant,” Belili said as she continued staring at this man child as he played in the dirt.
“He was one of the greatest of us,” Belili said. “But we needed more. We teach you children to cross as energy into different places in the Multiverse. But for our quest to succeed…we need more. We need those who can physically cross from Verse to Verse. We need those who can fold the tunnels between two Verses and physically step through them. They are rare. We needed a Prekoraciti to help us gather new prodigies from the Multiverse and build our next generation. This generation was passing and we had not yet found a Prekoraciti.”
Sarah knew she had heard the word Prekoraciti before. She realized she had heard that term when Belili had first brought the children to the shores of the Sea of Glass. At the time Sarah had understood Belili to use the phrase “one who can transcend” when talking about Joshua. However, that had been a trick of the mind. Belili used the term Prekoraciti. This was a word from the Bosnian language. It meant to go beyond. It meant to exceed. When Sarah heard the word for the first time all those years ago on the beaches of Verse Zero her mind translated it to the term “transcend.”
Belili continued speaking as she stared at Joshua in the distance.
“All could have been lost without a Prekoraciti. We could not miss a generation of gathering.”
Belili continued starting at Joshua. “He was one of our most gifted. We thought he would be able to fold the tunnels and step physically into different Verses. But he could not the way we hoped and our cause was in great peril. A society cannot succeed without new generations.”
Belili sighed.
“His mind was special. It was close to perfect. But close to perfect is not perfect. It falls so short.”
Belili continued to speak. The whole time her eyes never left Joshua.
“He could step into other Verses for only seconds. He could not sustain himself. We tried to discover how to keep him there longer. We tried but we could not figure out how to keep him in those other Verses long enough to bring us what we needed. But…he eventually figured it out. Of course he would be the one. His gift after all was brilliance above the brilliant. He figured it out with that brilliant, beautiful mind of his.”
Sarah saw a tear trickling down Belili’s cheek.
“He figured a way that he could thrive in other Verses. However, in order to do it he knew he could not do it as he was. His mind lacked some connection. He studied. And he came up with a solution. The solution was a procedure in his mind. In one Universe he was a great surgeon. He worked on the mind. In our place he did the same but he did the greatest procedure imaginable. He saw the missing pieces of himself and how his mind needed to be rearranged to allow one such as him to not just see…but to physically step into all the could have been’s.�
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“I remember when he first came to me with his discovery. When he first told me what needed to be done. He came to me and he told me that…we had to snip certain pieces of his mind away and re-wire his brain. He had with him several notes and diagrams of his research. He showed it to me and he made his case.”
“I was shocked. I was horrified. I loved him. He was like a son to me. No, I told him. No Joshua you cannot do this.”
“That day he looked at me with a sad smile and he said...I must. I must Belili. It must be done. It is the only way.”
“I refused. I made him look for another solution. I made him work with others who were the most brilliant. We looked for another way. For any other way. We searched desperately…but we could not find one. We knew our time was growing short. Each day took us past different Verses with prodigies in them that we could not gather. We needed to form a new generation.”
“In order for Joshua to do the things we needed…we were going to take many parts of his mind away.” The tears flowed freely down Belili’s cheeks now. She wiped them away as she continued speaking.
“I remember the day before the procedure. He wanted to go for a walk one last time. He wanted to be alone. To be alone with his thoughts. While he still had those thoughts. He took a book with him. It was a book he loved. It had his favorite poems in it. He went to that lake and he sat and he read. I watched him from the distance as you watch him now. He stared at the sky for a very long time.”
“The next day…he had parts of his mind snipped away and replaced.”
Tears were pouring from Belili eyes.
“Somewhere in there…in that fragmented mind…in that fragmented brain…is his heart. Somewhere in there is his soul. He was a good boy. We thought at one time that he may be the one. In a way he was. He was the one who realized what needed to be done to gather this generation. He realized the way his mind needed to be changed to fold the tunnels.”
Prisons of Stolen Dreams Page 16