“Now Tim, we need revisit the Spirit Trap! Let’s get you out of that!”
She happily turns to the computer and enters a search for a new Trap Ship.
I have a terrible feeling of dread.
CHAPTER 15
I’m hiding. I’m like a rat hunkered down in a hole. The hole is a state of unknowingness and complete withdrawal from everything and I am the rat. I don’t care what I am. I don’t care who I am. I just want it to end, but it won’t end, because it is endless―I am endless, I am immortal and I am in hell.
I have never been so certain of anything in all my life―lives rather. I am in hell and I can’t get out. ANYTHING I do hurts. ANYTHING I do to results in being done to.
Now I understand hell.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; that’s a law of hell.
I’m sick of the laws. I’m sick playing this game. I’m just over it.
But I can’t get out. And it will never end.
I could accept defeat, but in defeat there is an end. In this nightmare there is no end. And I know there is no end. That is the worst part of it.
I can’t even give up.
It’s like being beaten to death with a baseball bat, but the only problem is your body just keeps going. You lie there in complete submission trying to be dead but you can’t die, so the beating continues and will continue forever and each blow from the bat hurts more than the previous. I know the future will be worse and the present is unbearable.
I think I can say I’m officially depressed.
I can’t hear Espree and I don’t want to open my eyes. I don’t care if she’s there. She probably left―I wouldn’t blame her. She probably said “screw it” and left. What’s the sense beating your head against this universe. After however many billions of years she’s finally rid of the problem. Because the problem will not solve and her solution―me―has retreated into a rat hole and will not come out.
“Tim. Tim!”
A familiar voice.
I think of reaching toward it and immediately pull back into my little rat hole. I’m not going to fall for that! I know what will happen if I try to reach out. I know damn well what will happen! I’ll get zapped. I’m through getting zapped. I’m staying right here in this hole. I’m too tired.
“Tim! Please!”
There is panic in her voice. I don’t care.
I pull deeper and deeper inside myself. I find the deepest part of the rat hole in the darkest corner of my being. I’m not budging. I can’t hear you. I can’t hear anything.
I know it is Espree. She’s probably standing over me trying to get me to “confront it”. I’m so sick of her trying to get me to freakin’ face it. Where has it gotten me! Firmly implanted in hell, that’s where! I’m never going to confront anything ever again. EVER!
“Tim; I am here. I will never leave you.”
“Then you will be trapped in hell forever. Get the hell out of here. Go away. Leave me in alone.”
I fully expect to get zapped again for saying that, but it doesn’t come.
I know it will. It has to, otherwise there will be a sliver of hope and if there’s a sliver of hope that means I have to come out of my rat hole and get zapped again. I’m not going to do that again. I have “learned”
It will ruin the game.
“Tim. We’re almost there. Please Tim, tell me what you’re seeing. What is it you see in your mind?”
“Ho no, you’re not going to make me do that again. YOU CONFRONT IT!”
Damn, I’m getting angry! I know what happens when you get angry, you get smashed….
“WHERE ARE YOU TIM!”
“I’m in the damn trap!”
“The Spirit Trap?”
I know that I have moved to an earlier memory; to the beginning; to the Spirit Trap. She took me back to the Trap Ship and showed me the light display again and it just suddenly moved over me—the Energy Mirror, the fight, the continuous pummeling as I tried to push through it, the surrender, the fear, the apathy. Now I know I’ll never get out. You can’t escape; you can only try to hide. You can only put up something solid in your place and become it and find some deep dark corner of that solid thing and hid.
“Shut up! Leave me alone. The whole freakin’ universe is a trap and there’s no way out. Now let me be!”
“Look at it Tim!”
“Screw you.”
“Look at it.”
“Go to hell!”
For some reason that last statement strikes me as silly—even in my depths of depression. “Go to hell”. That’s so ironic. We are in hell! That’s so absurd. I can’t help it; I’ve got to laugh.
And I can’t believe it I’m laughing! But it struck me as so hilarious! This is totally ruining my game! It’s making me wrong. There’s no laughing in hell!
I’m hopeless and I’m in hell. What the hell is funny about that? But I just can’t help it; I’m laughing uncontrollably. I can’t stop my body from the heaving convulsive bursts of laughter and the tears that stream out of my eyes. This is absolutely ridiculous.
“Damn you Espree I say through the laugher. I was trying so hard to die and you ruined it all!”
I open my eyes and see her. She’s been crying too. Oh god, I love her. If I can’t get out of the trap for myself, I must do it for her. I will endure it if it means not making her cry. I don’t want to be a rat in a hole; I want to be with her.
No, I’m not going to let this universe take that away. Love is greater than pain. Love is greater than this regulated, mechanical world of thoughtless control and order. Love is not order, love is free. Love is not a mechanical thing. Love is an indefinable quality, unconstrained and limitless.
I look at Espree.
“What the hell was that Espree? What kind of crazy insanity came over me?”
“I don’t know Tim.” She says wiping the tears from her eyes. “But I thought I lost you. You went to such a dark place! I could not find you!”
“I was in it Espree. I was surrounded, and everything I did, every motion impulse I had came back at me. So I went deeper and deeper inside myself to escape. But there is no escape. That is not the way out.”
Espree is giving me that look again. She’s looking in my direction, but not at me and there is again as sadness in her eyes.
“It’s still there,” she says.
“I know. I got out, but it is still there Espree. I know it is. I think it has moved back into my subconscious and my subconscious is a buffer against the pain. It is where we store those things we cannot confront and where they remain a constant unknowing threat. It is what controls us and keeps us trapped.”
“Then we should try again.”
Espree can sense my reaction to that statement and she knows I will not be able to face it. The same or worse will happen if I attempt to enter the incident of the Spirit Trap again. The pain and the agony is too engrained in my psyche.
I shake my head. “It overwhelmed me then when I was much stronger as a being. What made me think I would not be overwhelmed now?”
I feel that we have reached an impasse on the verge of victory.
Espree is thoughtful.
“Tim you must not forget that you did conquer the incident of the Containment Area. Are you not free of its effects? Is the incident not effectively discharged of all its power over you?” She looks “around” me again. “Yes the energy is gone.”
I don’t understand. “But how? What was different about that? Why did it…”
“You’re not ready Tim.”
“No shit it wasn’t ready!”
“You were right Tim. You were exactly right. You are not strong enough now, but I think I know what to do…”
She turns to the viewer. “Let’s find something you can face Tim.
The statement strikes terror into my very being. Whenever she turns to that damn viewer I know something bad is going to happen!
“Espree! I don’t want to do this again!”
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She smiles, that irritating smile that puts me at ease and dissolves all my best objections. She certainly has some power over me.
“Relax Tim, I will not make you confront anything you can’t face. I understand now. Baby steps.
She types a location in the viewer and I hold my breath.
CHAPTER 16
“Let’s find something you can confront,” says Espree, “let’s see if we can chip away at it.”
I have to admit it was touch and go for a while as I teetered on the verge of descending into a permanent state of oblivion and I suspect there is many a soul in that state now. I sense her apprehension with what we are about to face. We both know there are more dire scenes ahead in the Universal Viewer. This is no longer a game; this is a grim fight for my freedom.
She types “EHF Injection Factory”.
“Restricted Area” shows on the screen. Espree takes out her code book and goes down the list.
She switches character and types a long series of strange symbols.
“No Access” shows on the screen.
“Damn. They changed the code. I’ve got to get another code.”
She selects the search option again and types “Putonia orbit”.
I see a new view of a smooth planet from an orbit above. The planet is brown and featureless.
“Here Tim,” she says, motioning me to sit. “You can familiarize yourself with what is called a primary breeding planet. I’ll be right back.”
She sits down in a chair next to me.
I take hold of the joystick, “OK, so show me again how I…”
I look back at her. She is gone! I’m looking at her body. The eyes are closed and she’s not home. There is a definite “absence” to her.
I nudge her, “Espree? Espree?” but there is no response. I note that she is breathing―that’s good. But her body has lost all of its “life”. I realize that is exactly what has happened; her body has lost all of its life. It is now simply a biological organism—a living biological organism operating according to the definition of organic―but something is definitely absent.
I’m feeling uncomfortable here all alone.
She did say she’d be right back didn’t she? What does that mean, ‘right back’? Where did she go?
The planet Putonia is there in the viewer. I suppose I’ll take a look at it while I’m waiting.
As I inspect the planet in the viewer there appear to be big black rectangular areas on the surface…no, they are not on the surface. When I shift the view I see they are far above the surface of the planet. They look like square plates positioned all around the planet with their flat surfaces facing one direction. I wonder what they are. And I suddenly know…
“I have been here….” I say to myself softly. “I was here.”
I can’t explain how I know this, but I do. The plates are solar collectors facing the nearest sun. They supply the planet with power through a “route wire”– a laser beam that transmits power.
How do I know this? I just do. I have been to a planet such as this in some distant past. I have lived before. I am immortal…and I have amnesia. We have erased some of the fog and the past is beginning to reveal itself through this viewer.
I roll the ball and zoom closer to get a better look. Now I can see features on the surface―regular shapes similar to the checkerboard-like areas you see when you’re flying in an airplane.
Let’s see how do you do this…
I hit the red button and the holographic view sub-divides into the Rubik’s cube with 27 divisions. I roll the ball and see the indicator light and its arrow turn on its axis.
I laugh. This is fun! I move the indicator light as close to the surface as I can get and hit the red select button.
“Whoa!”
The view changes to a view I would estimate to be 1 mile above the surface. I see the features that appear to be a city over there to the right. I hit select again and move the pointer to a position just above the city.
At first I’m confused. All I see is a featureless dark blue, then I roll the ball and the planet rotates into view as the arrow is now pointing toward the planet.
I select “Next RV to zoom” and now I am viewing the surface from a much closer perspective.
“Oh man!”
I’m amazed! As I rotate the ball I begin to see the surface in perspective.
Is that a city? I push “Zoom to Next RV” and push the button. I roll the ball and now I am looking at what appears to be a colossal city extending as far as I can see with hundreds, no thousands of huge, nearly identical skyscrapers stacked in neat rows extending off into the horizon, their shimmering, blue-glass facades reflecting the light of a nearby sun.
I move in closer.
Oh man! Oh man this is amazing! I’m surfing the universal internet. This is way beyond any imagination I have ever had!
I can distinguish the height of the buildings. Most of the buildings must be over a hundred stories high! I look down at the streets below. I can see lines of what look like monorails—thousands of them on dozens of levels of elevated tracks. Beneath the monorails are the streets. The streets appear to be completely crowded with thousands—no millions of pedestrians. I zoom in again. Now I can see the inhabitants of this place.
They appear to be human in form. The scene looks like a crowded New York street. I see thousands of people moving along the street as a unit—right side one direct, left side the opposite with bridges allowing the inhabitants to move to the other side.
The people are a golden brown in color with large yellow eyes and long eyelashes. Their small hairless heads have four ridges that run along them from forehead to neck. They are comparable to the single dorsal ridge of the Citizonians, but smaller. Judging by some of the colors, they also manifest the emotions of the person. I notice that some heads have as many as ten ridges running parallel, front to back. I deduce that is a male/female trait. Males have larger and fewer ridges, females have more. Their facial features are similar to ours, but more petite, their clothing is form fitting and either light blue or green and adorned with gold and silver jewelry. The rest of their bodies are actually quite humanlike—only thinner and more delicate. I can tell the ‘females’ now. The women obviously have breasts and a more hourglass figure. The men are taller and straighter.
I have to admit they are a rather attractive race—or species or whatever. The women are slightly taller and skinnier than a typical runway model—similar to the drawings you see in fashion magazines. As Espree says, everything here on earth is just a microcosm of the bigger picture.
I have to chuckle. Add a little hair, sunglasses and put some normal clothes on them and you’d think it was downtown Manhattan. Other than their physical appearance they have the same urban-looking New York countenance on their faces.
“OK, I’m back.” Says Espree suddenly. I jump at the sound and turn to see that she is indeed back―her body once again animated, imbued by the ingredient of life that had been missing before. She sits up and looks at the viewer.
“Oh, I see you have become acquainted with the standard 031A bodies of a breeding planet. What do you think?”
“Not bad looking. Rather attractive in fact.
“So where did you go?”
“I had to get a new access code so I went to the closest UEIF station over there in the Gambit System and retrieved it.”
She switches seats with me, takes out her code sheet and adds it to her list.
I’m still stuck on something. How the hell did she just ‘leave’? How did she go to a location that is probably millions of light years away, get some ‘code’ and come back, in about a 10 minutes!
“Oh, how did I do that?” She responds predictably.
“You are a spirit, Tim. A spirit is not composed of ‘matter’ and ‘energy’ and, in this case, ‘space’—it’s only the material universe that contains those components. You ARE NOT a product of this universe, this particular universe is a product of y
ou—actually mostly me. You are independent of it, you are senior to it. You are as big as you decide. You are located wherever you decide you are located. You move as fast as you consider yourself to move. Your location is where you decide it is. How many times must I explain this?
“What I just did Tim is the most natural thing a spirit does! What you’re thinking right now—which is ‘that is impossible’—is the most un-natural thing a spirit does!!!”
She smiles weakly. “I know. It doesn’t help much to have it explained. It doesn’t make you any freer.”
“I would like to have that ability!”
Espree looks at me expressionlessly. “You do beneath the disabilities installed by your Mechanical Mind. If you would just stop listening to it…”
She smiles. “Sorry, that does not help.”
Let’s continue.
“UEIF stands for ‘Universal EHF Injector Factory’. All EHF Factories are under continuous surveillance by the Universal Government—which incidentally, I have never been able to actually locate and why nobody seems to be able to do anything about it.
“Of course they say it’s all about a business’s right to maintain security on their proprietary technology. It is standard practice for a business to register their name on a website, pay a fee and the government protects their security.
“But that’s a lie in this case. In truth, the government does not want anyone to know about the practice of injecting so-called EHF into bodies—at least that’s what I think.”
“Why not? From what you’ve told me it is a known fact that bodies need to be animated by EHF.”
“No, it is not. In fact—like the people on planet earth―none of the citizens on a Breeding Planet are unaware of the bigger picture. They think as you do according to a common program in the Mechanical Mind. They have their religions that teach the people that they have a nebulous ‘soul’. They generally believe they go to heaven or hell when they die. They live their lives just as you do—or used to do—here on Earth, doing their jobs, raising their families.
Total Amnesia: Forgotten Lives Page 14