by W.R. Edmunds
Everything exploded into noise and colour before fading into absolute darkness. In that darkness, little pieces of light appeared. Shifting and tumbling, first one, then hundreds, then thousands, like a cascade of crystals in the sunlight. One of the pieces showed a glimpse of a white smile on a dusky face as a small hand reached up accompanied by a light bubbling sound. Laughter – yes, that is what it was. Another image spun by of a young girl dressed in a flowing sari looking at herself in a mirror as warm hands clasped her shoulders accompanied by a familiar voice which said, “My princess, Sahi.” The images kept coming faster and faster in bright flashes as they swirled and collapsed into a ball of white light that slowly expanded outward until she felt a snug sense of wholeness and peace.
Sahi became aware of her surroundings like coming out of a dream. Everywhere around her was a rosy light filled with bright pinpricks flitting to and fro. Her wonderment faded behind a dawning sense of horror as she realized that she could not feel or see her body. A seductive tugging sensation latched onto her fear and started pulling. Little shards of her essence drifted away as the luminescent sphere that defined her consciousness started fraying at the edges. She realized that each of those little pieces of light and colour was a memory and she panicked, struggling to pull them back in, only causing her form to fray further.
Suddenly she felt a calming thread of emotion wrap around her. It seemed as if there were words buried in that thread of peace saying, “Yes, that’s it, focus. Remember who you are, remember yourself whole.”
The voice was coming from one of two spots of light that were floating close to her. In her fascination she forgot her panic and reached out to it. A sense of shock and surprise pulsed out of the other consciousness as she touched its edge...
...A three fingered hand covered in a faintly iridescent grey skin reached out to pick a small blue flower with thick furred petals. A high trilling sound rang in her ears. She was unable to explain how, but she knew that those sounds meant someone was calling her. She turned to see a group of bipedal beings with shining skin and dark eyes gathered under an unusual tree with dark purple spikes for leaves. One of the beings was beckoning to her and smiling as she ran toward them in long leaping bounds...
The vision was ripped from her as she was sent flying, repulsed by the other consciousness. What the hell was that?
A jumble of suppressed irritation held in tightly by cords of patience carried more words to her. “That was one of my memories. One of the first things you must learn is that it is impolite to forcibly share in another’s memories.”
Share a memory? What was this place? The same greedy pulling that had gripped her before returned as her panic resurfaced.
“Hold on to yourself,” the voice soothed her again. “You must focus on who you are or else you will be lost.”
Sahi directed her attention inward to her memories. She remembered being on the Rimor, the alien beings, hiding terrified in a storage locker, and then she was here. Her curiosity again overwhelmed her fear as she started to observe her surroundings more closely. Somehow she must have gotten pulled out of the ship. Was this travel space? Where was the Rimor?
“Your ship has exited this dimension. As to where this is, ‘travel space’ seems as good of a description as any.”
She started; could that thing read her thoughts?
“Only if you choose to broadcast them as you are now. Control will come as you learn to focus your consciousness and you will be able to send only what you wish.”
Sahi noticed that the other two entities were outwardly placid and, by comparison, she was rippling as little pieces of her kept trying to fly away. Sahi suppressed her millions of questions and willed herself calm. Slowly the agitating surface of her consciousness stopped and she became as outwardly still as the other two.
“Good. Now tell me who you are,” the voice encouraged.
She prepared her answer by forming a solid mental image of who she was. “My name is Sahi.” She then decided to try a question. “Who are you?”
The tone of his response brought to mind a genuine and welcoming smile. “My name is Marvin.” The name came with an image of a long and sharp, grey humanoid face with monochrome eyes shining a deep, dark blue, overlaid with the picture of a human cartoon. Sahi recognized the alien face as similar to those of the beings she had seen in Marvin’s memory and had to take a moment to gain control of all the questions that erupted from his response.
The other entity sent a thread of amusement that sounded like a chuckle as it said, “And my name is Michael.” His name came along with the image of a young man in his mid-twenties with brown eyes and an unruly mop of brown hair. “To answer the easiest of your questions, the reason for the cartoon is that proper names don’t translate well here. As you have figured out, Marvin is not exactly from around the neighbourhood. I called him that after the cartoon character Marvin the Martian as a joke and it stuck.”
Sahi had no idea who Marvin the Martian was and was still struggling to come to grips with speaking to an alien, so she focused on her next question. “And where exactly is here?”
A pulse of anger flowed from Marvin to Michael before Michael replied hesitantly, “Well, the best way that I can describe it is the afterlife.” His response was coated in embarrassment and sorrow. “I’m sorry Sahi, but you’re dead and I think I accidentally killed you.”
“What do you mean I’m dead?” she asked incredulously.
Michael coughed nervously before he answered her. “I came to watch Marvin send his warning to see if I could figure how to do it since he refuses tell us. After he sent the warning, I tried to see if I could reach out and touch your consciousness. Just a little bit, I –” He cut himself off as he began to churn with unsent emotion.
Sahi directed her attention to Marvin with a stinging accusation. “Warning? It was you who possessed Dmitriy! Did you kill the rest of my crew too?”
An obvious sense of guilt came along with Marvin’s reply. “Yes, I am sorry. I thought it would be possible for me to just briefly inhabit one of your minds so that I might deliver the warning. It was harder than I thought and my attempts breached the containment field created by the dimensional shift drive, causing your friends to be destroyed when I contacted them.”
The precise way that he referred to the drive caused Sahi to gasp in realization, “Your race created the drive!”
“Yes, and it was our undoing.” His words were full of a bitter sense of regret and came along with images of a ravaged world and great space battles. “Given our experiences with it, I determined it was vital that I get a warning to your people as soon as I saw the drive being used. Unfortunately I have failed and may have only accelerated your race’s downfall.”
“Our downfall? How would the drive destroy us?”
The depth of loss in his answer sent shivers through Sahi’s being. “The same way it destroyed mine; by providing the dead with a bridge to return to the realm of the living.”
Stay up to date at www.occurrencenovel.com and watch for Episode Two, coming April 1, 2013!
Writer
W.R. Edmunds
Publisher
W.R. Edmunds
Cover Art and Design
El Fedora Design
Lead Editor
Julia
Editors
Arielle
Bailey
Dave
Jonathan
Kim
Lorelei
Marc
Tracy
Localization
Val
Supportive Parents
Lil
Ross
Special Thanks
Tuesday Night Terrors (Dan, Dave, Jon, Kyle)
filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share