I recalled it all, not one memory at a time but all at once—everything I’d ever known.
But there was something more. I could now connect the pieces, like solving the puzzles I played with as a child. An infinite universe spread out before me, and infinity suddenly made sense. I envisioned what the keepmasters called our planet as if it were a ship sailing through the heavens. I watched curiously as the glowing blue ball dwindled into the distance.
Now that I could conceive of infinity, what I found most incredible was this: that anyone sitting on such a tiny planet in an ocean of infinite possibilities could have ever believed they understood anything about the nature of existence. The keepmasters and vicars, the earth mother and mentor, were all fools, children making up stories to scare one another in the dark.
I never wanted to be as small and foolish as them again.
Why would we be given a universe so vast and wonderful unless our minds were meant to grow to encompass it all? What was the purpose of consciousness if not what I was doing right now? The vicars had taught me we were meant to join with the light, but now I knew a greater purpose—to be the light, and to enhance it as if the light could only shine if I added my thoughts to it. Understanding infinity was not enough. I needed to become infinite myself, to leave behind all those who were finite. Even Nathaniel.
I recalled Nathaniel and our lives together as I might recall a lesson in arithmetic learned years before in school. He was but a fact from my prior life, a detail, a moment in time. I had no space in my heart for him now. I had no heart at all.
My mind recoiled.
All my memories taken together constituted knowledge—a data bank as the mentor would say—but individually they had special meaning. I lovingly forced the memories apart, as I’d peeled apart the pages of my log after they’d become damp in a storm.
I focused on one lazy afternoon, the first warm day of spring in Little Pond, when Nathaniel, Thomas, and I played together as children. A May breeze bore pink blossoms from the nearby apple orchard, sending them tumbling down like snow, some settling on the water for a lazy float, and one coming to rest in my hair. Thomas squatted on a rock with the flute he’d so recently carved, testing each note though he’d not yet learned to play. Nathaniel stood tall on the banks, skimming flat stones on the surface to find out how many times they would skip. I sat on a log with my bare feet dangling in the pond, watching Nathaniel. After each toss, he’d glance my way for approval, and I’d smile.
I screamed above the infernal clicking, a voice without sound, a thought without words. How can I forsake Nathaniel?
What a fool I’d been to let myself be trapped in the dream! I’d set the timer for too long, an interval too much like forever.
Was this what had happened to Nathaniel? Though I was distinct from my body, was there still some spark resisting the loss? Was there a trace of humanity left behind causing my body to thrash and my feet to kick in a vain attempt to escape from the dream?
As I struggled to make sense of these swirling thoughts, the cacophony in my mind began to calm. The noise grew more distinct and less strident, not a clamor of clicks but a hundred minds speaking at once. Then the thoughts steadied, merging like a dwindling echo until they became a single repeated phrase.
There is a new mind among us.
The clicking stopped, and thoughts flowed not all together now, but one at a time.
“We have been waiting.”
“When the other came....”
“...we failed to respond.”
“Too eager....”
“We overwhelmed him.”
“He fled so quickly.”
“Now, we’ve trained....”
“...to focus our thoughts.”
One by one they had their say, then silence. A pause. How long? A fraction of a second or eternity?
I waited.
At last, a single, unmistakable thought:
“Welcome, Orah of Little Pond. We’ve been expecting you.”
Chapter 31 – The Dreamers
I have no words to describe the dream, for it dwells in a realm without lips to speak or ears to hear, a wordless consciousness from a time before language. Concepts arrived whole, too complex to be limited by words, so I’ll record what I experienced as a conversation between friends, like the way Nathaniel, Thomas, and I discussed the weighty matter of our future lives as we huddled together in the NOT tree.
***
“We knew one day another would join us,” the unidentified speaker said, “and have devised a way to communicate with those unaccustomed to the pure mind. My colleagues are free to participate, but given your limited ability to comprehend so many simultaneous thoughts, they designated me as the spokesman. Do you come from the city?”
“Yes.” I found it hard to limit my thoughts to a single word.
“Yet you are not one of us, neither earth person nor machine master. A cursory scan of your memories shows this. All but the most recent are alien to us, from a place we’ve never been.”
“I come from the far side of the ocean.”
Whenever the dreamers paused to deliberate, their thoughts surged like the buzzing of a beehive aroused by an intruder, a frenzy too intense to follow. These minds had communicated in this way for years, while I’d arrived minutes before, a newborn listening to the discourse of elders. I grasped at their thoughts as if trying to catch a butterfly with one hand.
The spokesman resumed. “Since you are not of our people, and none of them have come to restore us to our physical selves, may we assume they no longer exist?”
I winced as much as one can with no face. The question had been asked as a matter of curiosity rather than caring: Did all those we knew and loved vanish from existence? A simple yes or no will suffice.
“No, they’re all alive, though not well, as trouble brews among them.”
“Do you know what happened... why we have not been restored?”
“Yes.”
More buzzing as the spokesman consulted with his colleagues. When his attention returned, his response unsettled me.
“We’ve established a protocol for a community of minds. All our thoughts can be shared, but we refrain from delving too deeply without permission, a way of respecting each other’s privacy. May we visit your memories?”
A mental shudder. My innermost thoughts exposed, but for the chance to commune with the dreamers... I wordlessly agreed.
At once, many minds mingled with mine, a surprisingly pleasant sensation, like the inside of my brain being brushed by the wings of a hummingbird. The buzzing increased and then came back under control.
“The volcano, as we suspected....”
“One of our several hypotheses.”
“With a high probability.”
“But what of the trouble brewing?”
One word, many minds: “Caleb!”
“Our old colleague....”
“Not surprising.”
“A bitter man....”
“Unable to forgive.”
My mind flooded with images, too many to comprehend: a younger Caleb, a woman, a cocoon more primitive than the one I’d entered.
“Caleb’s wife,” I said.
“Yes, Rachel.”
“A fine scientist....”
“And brave.”
“A true pioneer.”
“Gave her life for her research.”
“Like those who first ventured to the stars.”
A dark image filtered into my mind, a glass box no bigger than a teaching cell, but free-standing and upright. “What...?”
A single phrase echoed back: “Disintegration chamber.”
Unlike the dreamers, I needed time to absorb what I’d learned, but before I could respond, the buzzing increased, like bees flitting from flower to flower, as they touched the furthest reaches of my mind.
“You have many other disturbing memories.”
A second speaker. “Your vicars seem a pretentious and arrogant
lot, but not especially competent.”
Followed by a third. “How did you allow them to rule so long?”
I struggled to focus, amazed at how many competing concepts swirled at the same time.
“They lied to us,” I said, “and used their knowledge of the past to control us, presenting it as....”
“Ah, we understand,” the spokesman said. “As magic.”
Another mind. “But still....”
My long suppressed memory surfaced, an unuttered cry of pain. “The teaching!”
A collective frown, the mental equivalent of a crumpled brow.
“Controlled thought,” the spokesman said.
“Ideas enforced by fear.”
“In our realm, the greatest sin.”
“We often worried the same danger might befall our world.”
More buzzing. A new discovery from my memory’s vault. A single phrase repeated: “The keep.”
Then thoughts directed at me.
“A repository of knowledge.”
“A way to help others grow.”
“A role we’d envisioned for ourselves.”
“A chance to do some good.”
“As if we were alive....”
The buzzing silenced as they waited for my response.
Had I been in my body, I would have taken three breaths in and out. Finally, I cast the thought into the void. “Are you alive?”
“A question we’ve pondered,” the spokesman said.
Others followed in rapid succession—a dispassionate debate they’d apparently carried on before.
“What does it mean to be alive?”
“Is a body required?”
“Or is it enough to have purpose?”
“You who were recently connected to your body....”
“What does it mean to you?”
These elders, the wisest who’d ever lived, were asking me the ultimate question.
I concentrated my thoughts, thankful I’d left the living only seconds before. How sad to dwell in the dream so long that you forget how to feel.
“To have a purpose, yes, and to hope for the future. And....” Memories of Nathaniel surged in my mind. “To have someone to love.”
The buzzing rose to a crescendo and settled.
I waited, for the first time wishing the ticking timer would slow down.
Finally, the buzz returned, but more tentative now.
“We have so many memories....”
“The older ones have moved to archive for efficiency.”
“A slower form of storage.”
“We’ll retrieve them shortly.”
Everything I described so far had been the thoughts of purely rational minds, but now I sensed a change. If the dreamers had eyes, they’d be glistening.
“Love. We remember.”
“I sense in your most recent memory,” the spokesman said, “someone still living... an image that almost matches one in my data bank... a girl but taller than the one I knew... so intense... and sad. What is her name?”
I channeled all my energy into a single word: “Kara.”
The longest pause yet.
If I had a body, I’d be holding my breath.
“My daughter,” the spokesman finally said. “How old is she?”
“Tomorrow, she’ll be sixteen, a lovely and talented young woman. A leader.”
Sixteen. The thought echoed among them.
“Time for you is a way of gauging the decline of your body, or measuring the journey to intersect others in physical space. It means nothing to us, but we understand mathematics. If Kara is sixteen now, then three of what you call years have elapsed, a significant percentage of your lives.”
Suddenly, a deluge. Thoughts flew at me from many minds, names and images, as if I were meeting in heaven with those who had long since passed, desperate for news about their loved ones still on Earth.
I answered the best I could.
“Yes, Timmy. I know him. A fine child. Oh, the two redheads that greeted us to the city. What were their names?” I focused on their appearance, and their names echoed back: “Marissa, and Maisha.”
Once all the questions had settled, a single plaintive thought remained: “In your memories of the city, I don’t see my little boy.”
An image flashed that I recognized at once—a boy, three years too young, but with the familiar locks of shaggy hair and eyes too big for his head.
“Zachariah. He’s gone to live with the people of the earth.”
“But... he was a child of machine masters, a brilliant boy.”
“After that day....” I struggled to form the thought. “He ceased to speak and hasn’t spoken since.”
A subdued buzz. The dreamers’ way of consoling a friend?
The same mind addressed me. “He spoke to me so clearly before I left for the mountain, a memory I marked as a priority in my archive—a farewell poem he’d composed, not knowing I would never return.”
No living mother who’d lost her child could recite these lines without her voice cracking, but now the rhyme streamed complete and unimpeded into my mind. The others waited in silence as I received the farewell words of a six-year-old boy.
Sweet mother with eyes that shine
To the mountain, take my rhyme
Keep this poem so you will know
My mother, I love you so
Silence. An interval of respect.
If I were back in my body and had eyes, I’d be shedding a tear.
Rational as always, the dreamers turned from their loved ones to the task at hand. I did my best to answer their queries about all that had transpired since they vanished into the mountain. To them, news of the physical world was like nectar to bees.
Then, they in turn offered to answer my questions.
Images blossomed in my mind—the bonfire at festival, the balsam-draped NOT tree gleaming green in the snow, my mother’s cottage, my father’s grave. I wavered, worried they’d answer no, but if I failed to ask, we had no hope of returning.
“Can you design a boat,” I said.
Invisible fingers probed my mind. Sympathetic thoughts echoed back: “Little Pond, her home.”
Their response was calm, a matter of logic and science. “A simple engineering problem. You provide the eyes to measure and the hands to build. We will design a faster and better equipped vessel than the primitive one you crashed on our shores. But when you return, how will you solve your problems with the vicars and the keep?”
The time had come. Fearing the red numbers were ticking down to zero, I posed the question I’d saved, our reason for crossing the sea.
“I hoped you could help us learn and progress. If only we could bring back your knowledge, but I know it’s too much to ask. Now that I’ve made contact, others will follow. How can I expect you to abandon your people?”
A high pitched buzz, the dreamers’ attempt at laughter.
“We are electrical impulses in a machine, not so different from your helpers in the keep.”
“...except we respond in real time....”
“...and are far more advanced.”
“We can replicate these impulses to another storage device.”
“...though we have neither hands nor eyes.”
“We can teach you how to build such a machine.”
Like the helpers in the keep, they’d answered my specific question, but I needed more than their presence; I needed a way to communicate with them.
“How will I speak with you?”
A pause, the mental equivalent of a hem and a haw.
“Hmmm... a more difficult challenge.”
“The life support pods must be large enough to contain your body....”
“And require a great deal of energy.”
“The power pack alone would be cumbersome.”
“And portable life support would be risky....”
I envisioned the mentor’s hat and Kara’s bonnet, and they instantly grasped the thought.
“For you to be our sensors....”
“And for us to respond....”
“A more manageable problem.”
They explained how they could design a device matched to an individual’s brain waves, which would allow them to communicate, though the person themselves would not be in the dream.
“How sad to miss the wonders of an expanded consciousness....”
“Speaking to such a limited mind would be tedious....”
“The solution far from elegant.”
“But will it work?” I said.
A brief pause, a cascade of thoughts so intense and intertwined that I followed none at all—the greatest minds of their age designing the answer to my request.
Finally, their thoughts quieted.
The speaker spoke. “The next time you visit, we will have plans for a new boat and a proposal for a portable repository for our minds, with an accompanying communication device.”
“It will be a new purpose for us....”
“A way to touch the lives of the living....”
“A new purpose indeed.”
The buzzing grew to its highest pitch yet, but this time the thoughts flowed in such unison that every word rang clear.
“Perhaps, in helping you,” they said, “we might almost be alive.”
***
A cough, a gasp for air.
I awoke to the cocoon cover creaking open—the most wondrous sound I’d ever heard. I drew in that first breath so eagerly my lungs nearly burst. Once my eyes adjusted to the light, I raised one hand high overhead and marveled at the way my fingers twirled. I pressed the pad of my thumb to each fingertip, relishing the touch of flesh on flesh.
As my vision cleared, I spotted a spider crawling across the window of the lid and followed its progress, recalling how I’d thought of myself as an insect, and Nathaniel too. I shivered, but not from the cold.
I inhaled through my nose and savored the familiar odor, sharp and metallic like air freshly cleansed by lightning in a storm. My lips parted, and I tasted it on my tongue.
The Stuff of Stars (The Seekers Book 2) Page 21