by M. Modak
Joshua thanked the man and said, “Everything is just fine. We’ll be waiting for our host.”
It was not long before the first appetizers came out. Placed before them both were sizzling crab cakes, stuffed mushrooms and hot cheese rolls. Neither of them had eaten since lunch, and they were both starving after the strenuous workout they had given each other. They devoured the crab cakes and stuffed mushrooms, washing them down with wine and a few sips of water. The mushrooms were their favorite.
They slowed down on the cheese rolls, trying to save room for the main course when it came, but before they ate the first roll, another two plates of crab cakes and mushrooms appeared. They both reached for the same mushroom and laughed.
The music had taken on a greater tempo and several couples had entered the dance floor. Joshua took Rana by the hand, prying her away from the stuffed mushrooms, and together they walked to the dance floor and began to dance.
Through the skylights high above, Joshua noticed gathering clouds obscuring the full moon. He didn’t remember any reports about bad weather this evening, and though he was enraptured by the magic of the moment, he vaguely recalled that something of worldwide importance was happening tonight.
The music changed again to an old love song, and Rana held him in a tight embrace as they quietly confessed their love for each other. Then, all too soon, the song ended and they saw that the dance floor had recently filled with many dancers. Joshua took Rana’s hand and they started to return to their booth when they saw Michael and Anna standing nearby watching them.
Michael wore a white suit with a blue tie that matched the sky blue dress Anna wore. Anna seemed transformed into a princess. Her hair was done up with diamonds and lace braided throughout several long strands as the rest of her blond hair fell loosely over her shoulders and down to her waist. Her simple blue dress caressed the lines of her sensual form, and together they looked like a royal couple ready to give audience.
“Good evening Anna, Michael,” Joshua said, “this is my wife Rana.”
Michael bowed slightly, took Rana’s hand and kissed it politely. He said “Rana this is Anna, my wife.”
Anna smiled and said, “You two look so in love. It’s nice to see we’re not the only ones who’ve found true love in this world.”
Rana nodded her understanding and said, “When you find the light of your love shining in another’s eyes, never let them out of your sight.”
The band started a new, more upbeat song, Michael stepped forward, and with a respectful look at Joshua and then Rana, he asked Rana for this dance. Rana looked at Joshua and he smiled as he nodded. Then the two disappeared into the crowd of dancers.
Anna stepped forward drawing Joshua’s attention and he promptly asked, “Would you like to dance?”
She said, “I don’t want to be standing here alone as my husband runs off with your wife.” Joshua laughed, shook his head at that then took her hand and kissed it as Michael had done, and together they moved to the dance floor.
Joshua really didn’t know how to dance he just understood how to let the music move through him the way a good feeling can inspire true words. He felt natural dancing with Anna, who clearly knew how to dance and was careful to avoid his missteps and compensate for what he didn’t know.
He needed nothing else in this life. To him, life was a dance and each moment was the music.
He spent the last several years teaching himself to relax and let life move him rather than trying to force his will on every moment. The rhythm of the music and his love for Rana moved him into a state of complete openness, and as his thoughts ceased, he danced, and he truly felt in the present.
Then as he turned, his vision flashed and everything slowed. Through the crowd, he saw the image of Rana, with her red dress splayed out in motion, frozen in his sight.
And, at the same moment, he saw Aughra as if through John’s eyes.
His nightmare had come true! Her white and black arms were spread out as she turned and spilled black, liquid S-matter down onto him.
Then the vision passed; replaced by a bright shining light that felt like it was searing the inside of his skull. The pain ran down his chest and throughout his whole body. He stopped then jerked uncontrollably as something seemed to be ripping his soul out from every one of his cells! He felt himself connecting with John’s mind, temporarily merging with his body. He saw Anna dressed in a lab coat. Then everything went black as he fell to the Ballroom floor.
“Joshua!” Anna screamed.
With a bang that shook the building, lightning crashed through the skylight, sending glass and rain down on the people below! The crowd of dancers all stopped at once and ran for shelter. The band quit playing as they dove for the covered exit! Rana came running over to Joshua’s side ignoring the screams and falling glass. She picked up his head and laid it in her lap calling to him, “Joshua, are you all right? Joshua, talk to me!”
Michael unscrolled his flexphone, pressed 911 Emergency and held it to his ear. “My friend collapsed on the floor at the Crystal Ball Room. Lightning just struck the building and he may have been hit,” he paused then added, “Yes he looks to be breathing but unconscious. You need to get someone here now!” He let his flexscreen rescroll and he placed it in his jacket pocket. Then he said in a loud voice to anyone that could hear, “Is there a doctor in the house?” He waited a few seconds and then said, “Are there any medical personnel in the building?”
“I’m a nurse.” An older looking woman responded as she carefully made her way down to the wet dance floor. When she got there, she checked his breathing and pulse then said, “This man feels like he’s on fire! He may have heat exhaustion. Get me a towel and some ice water!”
A server quickly responded with both items, handing them to her. She poured the ice water into the towel and started dabbing Joshua’s head, neck, and chest.
“Was he struck by lightning?” Michael asked.
“No,” Anna said, “We were just dancing when he started shaking then fell.”
After a few minutes passed, Joshua opened his eyes. He looked stunned as he took in all the people staring down at him, but his focus centered on Anna and then on Rana.
“Elizabeth?” he said, “what are you doing in Atlanta? Did you bring the kids with you?” He tried to move but he still could not feel his legs. Michael gave Rana a questioning look.
Rana returned the look to Michael and asked Joshua, “Who is Elizabeth?”
“Where are we?” he said as he tried to get up again.
“Were at the Crystal Ball Room with Michael and Anna,” Rana said.
Michael moved where John could see him, “Joshua you fell and you may have hit your head.”
Anna knelt and took his hand, “Looks like you need some dancing lessons sweetie,” she said with a small smile.
“Kayla, what happened to Aughra?” he asked as he looked at Rana again and then at Anna. “Wait!” he said as his eyes shot open, “Rana?”
“Who is Aughra?” Rana asked.
John felt the numbness starting to wear off. He could feel the cool rain falling on him and his legs began to tingle. His head hurt as if his brain had just doubled in sized.
His body felt leaner, stronger. He tried unsuccessfully to stand on his feet. Michael put an arm under his shoulder and together with Rana; they walked him to the nearest booth. They wiped away some broken glass off the seat before letting him sit down.
“I don’t think he needs to be moving anymore until the EMT gets a chance to look at him,” the nurse said.
John forgot about the world around him as he sat down. He began to feel something deep inside him, which had once gone dark, start to ignite. The feeling began from the top of his head, spread down across his chest, and out through his arms and legs. He glanced down, in a fog of memory, at his unbuttoned shirt looking for the black sludge that had spilled on him. He was not wearing his white lab coat. His skin and clothes were cool and wet, but there was no black S-matte
r there.
He felt another wave of dizziness pass over him as suddenly he became aware of all the memories from Joshua’s life. These memories were on the tip of his tongue a moment ago, they were a fleeting dream seconds ago and now they were a flooding recollection. He felt drunk from the in pouring. He felt himself leaning over as every detail of Joshua’s past thoughts and emotions were instantly available and paired in sequential order to his own life.
He thought his own life was a shadow next to Joshua’s life. Joshua’s life wasn’t better, just lighter in its nature and filled with great meaning, down to the simplest of gestures.
Their lives had been mostly identical until their early teens. They were twins from different worlds, literally, yet each had something unique about him. After the age of 12, they slowly began to live out extremely different views of themselves, and of life in general.
At that time, Joshua began to pay attention to the inner mysteries of his feelings and wonder at the causes of his conflicting thoughts about life.
While John totally wrote his feelings off as unreliable and made his mind into a purely useful machine. To John, life is a struggle and a series of problems needing a solution.
Joshua accepted that life was an opportunity to live in the moment, and as he became more aware of the motivations behind his feelings, he began to understand himself fully.
John understood science, facts and observation. He viewed love as a distraction to his single goal, the answers to the secret laws of the universe.
It took Joshua many years and several terrible mistakes, but he had come to know what he desired most in life. It was simple, he just wanted to love and be loved. God and Rana had filled that need in him. Over the last few years, he had grown to a point where he wanted to be a source of love to others. Joshua was not looking for someone to love; he had God and Rana for that. He was working on becoming a compassionate person. Rana was his greatest example of a truly compassionate person. Together, they were learning to balance reason with their hearts desires. In this, she was both his student and teacher.
John looked at Rana and remembered Elizabeth being exactly the same way. The only differences between the two women were their names and that Rana looked younger, as if the years had been kinder to her. To him, Elizabeth knew everything worth knowing concerning life, but he had thrown her away, and for what? He realized that everything he needed to have this experience, to know what Joshua knew, had always been within him. It had always been a matter of choice. Hindsight is always 20/20, he thought.
John noticed Rana again, seeing her now as if for the first time. A crowd of curious people stood around the booth he sat in. He did not see them. In his moment of comprehension, he looked at Rana and then Anna. He said, “I’m not Joshua.”
Now that all the knowledge and experience gained through Joshua’s life was complete in him, he began to weep openly, “I’m not Joshua.” This was a way of life he had not dared to live. He felt a deep release of all the emotions he had held locked inside his heart, for so long.
Anna moved over closer to the booth and handed him a towel. Michael stood behind her and put a reassuring hand on her back.
Rana held him close to her chest, fearing the worst. She had never seen Joshua like this. He was one of the most emotional men she had ever known, but he was not a person to lose control of those feelings like this. He was always in harmony with himself. Seeing him like this was more frightening to her than moments ago when he was unconscious on the floor.
John cried uncontrollably, no one could console him. He had ruined his life, Elizabeth’s life, and now the kids would grow up without a father! He was angry at all the years he could have been living, instead of them being spent 18 inches from a flexscreen. He felt all alone in his grief. Elizabeth was not even around to shove it in his face that she was right.
He thought about that; she would never do that, she would simply hold him as Rana was doing now.
Then he felt something draw near him. It was a subtle perception he had gained through Joshua’s years of self-study. He felt a powerful presence. Someone else with great compassion for him was close. Through tears, he looked around, but he could not see anyone here who understood all the complexities of his life. He did not see anyone here who could understand him. Then, as if a hand had rested on his shoulder, he heard, not with his ears but within his heart.
“Don’t fear, this story isn’t over yet.”
He stopped crying and he inhaled deeply. He felt better now that he had pushed all those negative emotions out. It was as if a weight had been lifted off his heart. He whispered, “It’s not over yet.” A small-unexpected smile came to his lips. Hope returned. He wasn’t dead, and that meant he could still change. He could do something about this, what, he did not know yet, but he was alive!
He had to think. He had Joshua’s memories and experiences inside him and he was sure how Joshua would have reacted, bravely. Questions filled his mind. Was Joshua lying on the lab floor, right now, wondering the same things he did. Moreover, did Joshua have all his knowledge too or was the transfer one way. He began analyzing all the data, but stopped himself. He still had his old ways of thinking ingrained in his habits, but he knew with practice he would change. It would only take time and patients. He let go of the data and silently he asked himself the questions. What just happened to me? How did I get here? How do I stop Aughra and get home? Then he let the need for the answers go and, as Joshua had done in the past, he waited silently. In the space of a heartbeat, his intuition gave him the sudden understanding he sought. “I leapt into a parallel universe!” he said.
“Oh dear,” Anna said, as her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she began to fall unconsciously next to the booth and onto the ground. Michael caught her head at the last second before it crashed against the floor. The nurse moved next to her and checked her breathing and pulse.
“She’s on fire too!” she yelled.
Michael took the glass of ice water that was sitting on the table as someone pushed a towel into his hands. He soaked the towel and wet Anna’s forehead, neck and chest. Minutes later, she opened her eyes. Michael knew she was not herself. Something was missing in the way she looked at him. It wasn’t a total loss of recognition but on some level, he felt, she loved him less. Reflexively he stepped away from her as if she was possessed. He was simply confused. Rana noticed his reaction but couldn’t see anything wrong with her except the way she was looking at Joshua.
“John!” Anna said with a temper.
“Kayla!” John replied; he knew that tone of voice.
Michael took another step back watching the too familiar interactions between two people he was sure had met only hours before. Rana moved closer to John and said, “What’s going on Joshua?”
“Yea, what- the- hell- is going on John?” Kayla demanded!
8 World without End
September/7/2035
8:00pm
At that exact moment John flipped the Phase Two Switch, Joshua’s worldview did not matter to him; he knew only a complete absence of need. His heart and mind were wide open and filled with love and joy. He held no expectations about himself, or of life, and he truly believed anything was possible. He was in a moment of transcendence. It was the same state of mind monks, shamans and dancers have experienced in prayer and meditation. It is a state of being almost everyone has known briefly in his or her life.
This experience was not new to him. He had known it in his martial arts training. It was a heightened physical sense, a warrior at peak awareness where time seemed to slow. However, this time, those same senses were ignored completely, as another view of life was revealed.
Under normal circumstances, this feeling would have lasted for only seconds, an eternal moment. However, Aughra was now rapidly spinning. His brief openness released his mind to see all possible worlds.
Then the Crystal Ball Room disappeared around him. For a second he was at John’s lab. Later he realized that he
had been staring up at Kayla before being sucked back into the void, and he had no idea what was about to happen, but his eyes were open and he had no fear.
He found within his heart a sudden deep desire to know. He felt a powerful force drawing the childlike curiosity out from his soul. He could not feel or see anything as he drifted calmly in the realm between universes, and he did not know where he was or how he had gotten there.
He was surprised to find that he could not breathe and his heart did not beat because, as his awareness began to brighten, he realized he had no physical body. There was no cold, or heat, no sense of weight or sound, but there was something out there and he simply wanted to know.
He felt another set of senses trying to send him information about his surroundings, but he was unfamiliar with them. Unexpectedly, as if his mind had to catch up with the present, the multi-universe appeared below him, spiraling out into the distance. He had never seen anything like this. He looked up, and found that up was just the same as down, left or right. It was the same everywhere he looked.