by M. Modak
He was at the center of a great wheel or spherical wheel with infinitely long, spiraling strings of universes that looked like spokes and all of it was slowly turning. Parallel to each of those strings were more rows of universes that looked like long pearl necklaces, interrupted by spaces of total darkness followed by a flash of light. Each pearl was stuck in a moment of time and divided by eternity. A brighter flash filled the next place along the necklace, and each space after that went on in sequence as the universes grew in brightness and size.
He was at a loss for words as a shiver of excitement moved thru him. His thoughts had to stay still just to conceive of what was right before him.
He moved by will alone, flying toward the nearest spiraling string of universes, and he watched a galaxy forming for the first time; and then further down the line he watched it explode feeding its matter into the expanding dark reaches of its universe. He flew further down the string of universes, until he saw them began to shrink again and the last one went dark. Then the process repeated itself again and again, on and on, forever and ever.
From time to time, he saw what looked like reflections of himself moving thru space, intersecting the path he was choosing. He tried to stop several of these different versions of himself and ask them, “How did you get here?” or “Do you know what’s going on?” but he was like a ghost to them as they passed thru the void half conscience, as if this was all just another dream.
As he looked into the web of starlit patterns, there seemed to be no actual boundary from one universe to the next, just a gradual fading of their light into blackness before another universe began to shine.
Every time he looked away, it changed, slightly. What was before him was a living thing both fixed in its overall structure yet always shifting, a little, with the passing of each moment. As a whole, it never stayed the same.
He wondered about this, so he looked deeper. From his present location, the closer the strings of universes were to him the more they looked like the surrounding universes. A Paradox?
All the strings of universes seemed to be the same. He searched for a long time down the closest string but could not find a single difference between them.
Then he searched perpendicular, across several rows of string universes and it was there that he saw the most changes. Where a galaxy expanded here, the same one collided with another there. He understood, the further or deeper the row was away from the original string of universes, the more differences there were.
Some universes were stretched wide, with all their material spread out across such enormous distances that the whole of its space seemed like a void.
As he flew thru the spaces between universes, he sensed where one universe ended and another began. There was a great invisible tension, a feeling vibrating with the frequency of each new realm. The whole universe rang in tune with its life. The patterns became a song… and it was the same song everywhere. However, the music was coming through other voices and they were using diverse instruments. The differences, it had…slight variances, and other meanings, and there were fresh perspectives emerging within the music.
As he looked into the expanse, he sensed there were even greater changes out there.
Out there, beyond eternity, the patterns of universes ranged from spheres and saddlebags, to spirals and horseshoes. Beyond that, their shapes began to distort into blotches and smears.
A desired to see further, past the uniformity overwhelmed him. Flying faster, his vision of the multi-universe quickly expanded. In a sense, he wasn’t flying, but increasing in size and perspective though it felt like flying. He passed the light speed barrier, several thousand times over, and continued accelerating; shooting toward the edges of what he had seen.
Out there, the graceful arching arms of the pearl string pattern started to bulge at some points and bend wildly at others. He moved outside what seemed an infinite distance and the strings of universes began to blend into each other, and then, dissolve until the sight became… unimaginable; and even his thoughts ceased.
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He stopped…. There was nowhere else to go... He was where all-things converged... The beginning and end...
All around was the image of an ideal, and, suspended reflections of the 1 truth, amplified by infinity…held completely still at its white-hot center….frozen… It was the original space/no-space, where all things had evolved...a seed… It was the simultaneous experience of everything…waiting to be experienced by life.
And, there was something in motion just outside his awareness. The pure white light, which he was in, was itself enveloped by a living blue and white flame.
Suddenly he was outside looking in. He saw darkness surrounding a glowing blue liquid crystal that held shards of solid white, all dancing with itself. There was no end to one or beginning of the other as the shards of light and liquid crystal melted into each other’s state of being.
He was both, inside the light and perfectly still while looking out, and outside in the blue and white flame, in total motion, looking in. His mind kept switching perspectives randomly, beautifully, ●-inside ᴗ=outside ᴖ-inside ●=outside ʘ until both became a single reality.
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Abruptly he was aware of John’s memories and life experiences.
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He cleared his mind of everything− letting it all go − until he matched the light again, and he was filled with emptiness and everything, and Silence…
He saw no one, and nothing. If he could breathe, he would be doing so calmly. He began to feel a steady flow of pure energy, love and love and love, like warm water moving down thru the top of his being and out all his extremities. All things were contained in this love. He was love and beloved. He was the energy and the body it moved through, he was part of everything and nothing. Time had no meaning…
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Everything he saw was the same though his eyes were closed. For the first time in forever, he felt warmth in the light. He did not sense anyone close, but he did not feel alone. He did not move, but a larger part of him began expanding back thru the way he had come; and thru all the ways, one could get here.
He became aware of countless beings watching him, silently, but he thought nothing of it. As his expanding-self passed through the space of incalculable universes, he realized he was also passing thru time as well. There was not only the life he knew about on countless parallel Earths, but there were numerous other worlds with different kinds of life on them, each with parallel twins. He sensed parts of himself there too. Some of those lives, in a few of the universes, were aware of him and marked his passing with ritual and ceremony.
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Finally, without leaving his place in the light, he journeyed back thru all that is, and back to the very moment of the creation of the multi-universe. He was a-part of creation, observing its beginning, and therefor affecting the very act itself.
When God had called, he had answered.
He had now come full circle though everything had changed, slightly. He was back at the place where he waited quietly, and in that single moment, he remained… silent.
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After time had ceased to have meaning, he began to feel something new. It was a building question. Something all around and deep inside him wanted to know what he wanted now?
Did he wish to stay here or go deeper beyond the multi-universe?... Did he wish to be and know more of this…Or did he want to live again, like a man, and finish his life?...What did he desire?...Who did he wish to be now?...
He thought he wanted nothing, but felt his heart whisper, Rana.
Instantly, his attention focused on John, lying on the floor at the Crystal Ball Room where he was last dancing! His essence had flown from the warm center of light, thru the multi-universe, past the sea of galaxies and into his solar system within the
space of a thought!
As he had approached his Earth from space, he thought it was so beautiful. It looked like a shining blue pearl of immeasurable value and potential, floating at the bottom of a black ocean.
He saw spacemen in sleek, multi colored spacesuits representing the hundred or so nations that were building the Advanced Space Platform that was now orbiting Earth. As the people of Earth started seriously looking to the stars for the answers to Earth’s compounding problems, they had created millions of jobs. Soon the ASP would be used as a halfway point to the moon; and from there mars, and the moons of Jupiter. Robots were already preparing the habitats and planting the seeds, literally, for the future colonist and explorers.
His ethereal body had begun to slow as he descended into the night side of Earth and into the atmosphere. He reduced speed even more as he advanced into Atlanta Georgia.
Slowly he sank down into the brightly lit city. There was a general calmness and hope coming from the people all around. However, panic was coming from the building he had left eons ago. His will had motivated the act to see Rana but something deeper than his will directed his actions. Who that director was, he chose not to question. He knew where he was going, but even that didn’t matter, where he ended up God would always be there with him.
He passed thru the roof of the Crystal Ball Room and saw a crowd of people standing around his material body that John was just now waking up in.
To John, this had all happened only moments ago. Within his awareness, he held all Johns thoughts and remembered all his experiences, from the earliest memories of child hood to the moment he had jumped down off the podium to avoid Aughra’s whirling arms.
Then he saw Rana. At the sight of her, for the first time since his long journey began through the dimensions of the multi-universe, he felt his ethereal heart began to beat. It hurt to see that she was crying, and he could not comfort her. John was in his body now. He had no way to tell her that he was ok. He could not hold her or kiss her. Dread and fear threatened to take over his mind, so calmly, he let his need go. He would find another way.
All he had to do was take his body back. He could easily push the energy of John out of his own body and regain his life. Still, he decided he would not interfere with John’s life, at least not in a direct way. The desired to return to his old life, his body, if just to hold Rana again, flamed inside him. Nevertheless, he would not take from John this journey.
Deep inside, he knew this was important, but he was going to do something about it if he could. He wanted to feel her skin again, smell her hair and see that look in her eyes one more time, nonetheless he could not end John’s life just to gain his back again.
He let everything he knew about the moment come to mind. He was not dead. He knew he was here, now. He had an ethereal body, a body made of energy. He felt his body extending into the infinite, but he was not sure where one part of himself ended and where another part began.
On his way here, thru the multi-universe he had seen that John was from the closest row of parallel universes to his own. He guessed that was why they looked the same, though his life’s energy moved through him differently. That difference was most evident in his eyes and the way he held his body.
He could see John’s future in those eyes. He saw, like looking into a shattered mirror, the thousands of most likely choices his other self could make. He saw them as additional universes, held in a ghostly state of real and not real, ready to be created if the conscious mind chose their path.
Then he saw it, the end to this universe. It looked just like his dream. If Aughra continued to spin, a destructive chain reaction would stretch and pull on the entangled link that connected the two universes. It was the same in nearly all possible futures. There was a short time remaining before the twin universes erupted!
However, the future was not in a fixed location. The future was made by the collected decisions of countless thoughts, words and deeds, and therefore it had unlimited possibilities. Still, out of all the possible realities, the greatest common outcomes for these two worlds were destruction. He could not let it end like this, and he had to save Rana!
Then, in slow motion, Joshua saw John’s thoughts popping out from his head like swirling sparks of light, each one beginning to effect time and space around him at the highest level of energy. They looked like tiny pebbles skipping across the smooth surface of a pond causing more ripples as it encountered other thoughts. John’s thoughts affected everyone in the Ball Room. And in the same way, their thoughts spread out from their minds and affected him and the rest of the world around them too, even as like energy returned to them. In a dance of light and energy, those creative thoughts interacted with all the other thoughts.
For John, this had started only an instant ago. However, from Joshua’s perspective, time had just begun to have meaning again. His longing for Rana became the measurement of time. Rana was all he desired in life. He had to find a way to be with her again.
John cried out!
Joshua watched in painful detail as the exchange of their lives started to shake John to his core. Lightning had just struck the ceiling even as another bolt of light from Aughra appeared from nowhere and linked them together. Joshua felt dizzy from the experience as all his memories poured into John, resealing their fates together. Then the bolt of light disappeared.
Joshua could feel John’s regret for wasting his life solely for increasing his mind, rather than freeing it. John also felt the loss of the family he truly loved and the painful failure to achieve his other dreams. He had given up everything his heart desired to make Aughra. His life’s work was a colossal mistake, one that might be the destruction of everything.
Because of his choices, over the years, to ignore his feelings, he had become a shell of a man. Now, a new perspective (Joshua’s life) filled that shell with the experiences of another possible lifetime. This lifetime had made altered choices, at nearly the same key moments, for an entirely different experience. He understood Joshua’s life was full of love and heartache. It was a life lived where his heart beat free and his mind was opening.
Joshua felt compassion for his other-self. He moved close to John and together they wept over the loss of his broken life. When Joshua’s tears stopped flowing, he laid a hand on John’s shoulder and whispered into his ear, believing that what he said could not be heard.
“Don’t fear; this story isn’t over yet,” he said.
To his surprise, John relaxed a little and a small smile appeared on his face.
9 Escape
Fael’s Universe
Yrrep awoke slowly. His eyes opened wide as an awful smell made him dry heave.
Has something been burned to death and left to rot, he thought?
The air was hot, and the smell made it hard to get a full breath. Complete darkness was all around him. The darkness reminded him of sleeping in the dry caves under the ocean. However, something was wrong; he could not move, and the smell! He blacked out again.
In his dream, memories drew his mind back into the past. He was remembering the seconds before he left home. This was his last moments on TOL.
The air condensed into a thick cloud around himself as sweat broke out across his skin. Lightning came down from the sky electrifying the air, giving it an odd smell he could barely detect under the stress. His eyes bulged as the living energy within the light embraced then entered his skin. He could feel his confused heart shutter as his blood began to boil. The observational parts of his mind abruptly broke away from its lower functions and he felt numb. He watched as his memories disentangled from the heavy matter that held them to every living cell and he blissfully went into a trance.
Moments ago, he was a husband, a father and an engineer for Grace, the greatest survey ship in his world, a ship he had designed. He was famous around the world, considered by all to be a powerful warrior; a term drudged up from prehistoric times. His unusually long arms and legs gave him speed and a long reach resulting in th
e deepest dives, fastest swims, longest jumps, and no one had ever bested him in a game of Batons. A thousand years ago, he had to convert those advantages into a form of fighting that even the Red Dragons could not defeat.
He was use to other advantages his world naturally gave, which most other worlds could not. His world was much larger than the one he was going to, so his body would be denser and stronger than the native’s bodies. Most importantly, he ate from TOL. In the elder records, it states that in the beginning, TOL lived on a version of the world he was going to, but Elohim had taken it away after the first dragons tricked the humans into doing evil.
With all TOL’s possible uses, two stood out the most: Any beings that ate from it, regularly, would be immortal, even as he was; and they would become tremendously powerful. If lesser hearts and minds possessed its fruit then no one, anywhere, would be safe.