by Rena Mason
“What are you doing?” I say.
“I have to wait for the people to come back with my money.”
“How long does that take?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask one of the workers?”
I look away to find someone. Bright swirling colors and shapes move around the outer edges of my visual periphery. I blink a few times, close my eyes, and try to focus on something else, but nothing works. It’s as if I’m looking into two different kaleidoscopes at once.
An attendant arrives with another woman wearing a polyester business suit. She has a little clipboard with a form on it for my mom to sign. I give it a quick look. Even through kaleidoscope eyes I can see that it’s a tax form.
“That’s not fair,” my mom says, as she hurriedly pens her signature.
“Anything over eleven hundred and ninety-nine dollars, ma’am,” the attendant says. She hands my mom a copy of the form then counts out the money into the palm of her hand. When they’re done my mom slips some money to the attendant. “Thanks,” she says, “and good luck. Hit another one.”
It all seems so unreal.
“See. I told you,” my mom says. “Here’s a hundred dollars. Go find a different machine to play.”
“No, Mom. You don’t have to—”
“Just go. I’m luckier when you’re not standing here.”
“Thanks.” I walk toward another slot machine in the same circular bank.
“Not that one,” I hear her yell.
I take several more steps, careful not to stumble. Then I walk around to the exact same machine I was sitting at before. The swirling shapes and vivid colors spread into the center of my sight and blurs everything in front of me.
I hear my mom from across the way. “Did you go back to that same machine?”
“No, Mom, the one next to it.”
Now she’s being completely absurd, but I’ve got to play along until a waitress comes by. My mouth is dry, and I’d really like some water. I put the hundred dollar bill she gave me into my wallet and pull out a twenty. I put that into the machine then press the button. I can barely see the symbols spinning in front of me. Then I feel a sharp pain as if I’ve been struck in the head by a bullet. An earsplitting, high-pitched tone pierces my ears and nearly knocks me off the stool.
I press my forehead against the slot machine as hard as I can to make it stop. I reach up and squeeze my head. The pain! I can’t shout for help, I can hardly breathe. I close my eyes and wait. Why is this happening to me again?
When I open my eyes, I see red. I move my head back, blink, and look again. The entire front of the slot machine is covered and dripping with bright red blood. Copious amounts spout profusely from my nose, spraying over everything in front of me. I pinch off my nostrils. Then blood starts pouring out of my mouth. It splashes onto my lap, streams down my legs then onto the floor. People stop, stare and point. Some of their mouths are open. I think they’re screaming, but I hear nothing. Only the blaring tone. Men in suits gather around me as I begin to fade.
A halo of darkness replaces the wild dancing colors. It spreads in from the periphery and grows so large—my eyes are open—but I am nearly blind. Gurgling to breathe, I focus on the pinpoint of light in the very center where I can still barely see. Then it disappears, and I feel my body hit the floor. The deathly tone ceases and the more familiar tones begin to play.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
This must be Heaven. I wonder why it is so unbelievably cold. Surely, I must be dead.
My eyes open to an aurora borealis. Motionless, my naked body hovers within it. Illuminated ribbons furl around me in iridescent waves. The colors fluctuate with the music of the tones. It is the others. All twenty-six are with me. Suddenly, the cold begins to burn. My body melts away, and I become liquid light—the color red. Together we are twenty-seven. In a flash beam of luminescence, we travel through the empty darkness of space. A space in which there is no light, no stars, nothing, except for us. We come to a slow halt, surrounded by our colors which fade into a pale rainbow within a dusky background.
The volume of the tones rises, bringing with them hues of streaming brilliant light. “Be calm,” they say, to allay my fear. My red is much brighter than any of their colors. “This is a sleeping dream.” They speak in music and color I fully understand now. No longer embodied, I am an abstract moving fluid of light—like them.
I sense Dr. Light by my side, but he is no longer Dr. Light, just the aura of him in indigo blue. He’s not actually a him anymore either, he is more of an it. We all are. A flash of memory comes back to me…genderless alien life forms, unable to reproduce.
“Yes,” they say in unison.
I’m not sure where that thought came from. Remembering such a thing doesn’t make any sense. Unless…unless, there’s something more to the tones and the alien dreams. Dr. Light seemed to think so—even encouraged it—and he’s here with me now. Hopefully, he will be able to give me the answers. I don’t want to be responsible for some kind of catastrophe. I’m not sure what to think or believe. I’ve either completely gone off the deep end and am lost somewhere in my own mind, or there is truth to my madness.
What appeared to be a gray and dusky cloud surrounding us has become clear and opalescent. It is changing into a solid thing—sort of. I’m in front of the others moving through this place as it forms around us. Dr. Light’s indigo is right behind me. Tunnels take shape about the diameter of a human with outstretched arms and legs. But I no longer have any limbs. I’m not human.
Knowingly, I lead the others through long corridors of thick membranous tissue lined with protective layers of mucous. I’m not sure if this is what the gray turned into or if we have always been in this biological environment, and it has been invisible until now.
As we move along, any contact with the walls sends streams of neon colored lights shooting past. The moist partitions bulge and pulse around us. They fold over and collapse after we move on. We are inside a living thing, and we are also a part of it. As if traveling and living within a bioluminescent organism at the bottom of a deep, dark ocean. A subdued atmosphere settles in amongst us. My fear and anxiety begin to subside—I know this place.
“Yes,” they say in colored waves of light and notes. The tonal sounds of their divergent voices echo hauntingly around me. The word itself I hear in my mind or what I think is my mind. It is also theirs. They hear my thoughts. We are telepathically linked. Then I wonder again if I have died.
“No. The human you, sleeps. It is only a part of your dark energy that is here.”
Dark energy, like dark matter is something unknown to them on Earth, I think.
“Yes. We are these.”
Everything I see is clearer. The fog that always clung to the rainbow lights has lifted, but I don’t think I can see—with eyes—the way I used to, because I can see everything and from every angle.
Together, we continue moving forward through living halls. Everywhere, there is the sweet scent I often smelled on Dr. Light. We glide through labyrinths that wind around in circular narrow corridors. The pathways are long and cavernous. Everything is made of a thick gelatinous substance. For the most part, it is clear, but denser in certain areas. Just below the slick surface of the gelatin, long dark branches run endlessly throughout. They resemble arteries and veins. Some of the vessels are deeper than the ones above them, giving them a layered appearance much like the marble floors in Dr. Light’s office.
Yes. It is alive, pulsating on its own—as we pulsate within it. We are individual, and we are one. Everything works together as a living entity—we are a biosphere. We come from dark matter. I remember…we were created from it, feeding on dark energy.
Tones and colorful lights sound and flash all around. “Dark energy is our source of life.”
My thoughts and theirs, move throughout in various hues and amplified tones.
An alien sucrose, a type of sugar, is what we excrete—a byproduct of the dark energy—s
weet waste. It is the slime that covers everything here, the ooze that is our composition, and the smell of Dr. Light. And the excess…we have to get rid of it, or it becomes toxic.
“Yes.”
But my mind, our mind is clouded. I can’t see the rest of it. Then I think of Dr. Light…
Before I can finish the thought, the indigo next to me changes form. The light dims, and the liquid morphs into the human Dr. Light, clothes and all. The others change, too and me. Then the environment around us becomes his building. I look like me again, next to Dr. Light. We are standing in his office, but I can see everything in my mind from the viewpoint of everyone—I mean everything else. The others have taken forms like the desk out front, the chairs and the lounger, even the bookshelves.
“Here in dark space we can keep these configurations so long as we have the dark energy as a direct resource. Our negative dark matter breaks down in the positive presence of electromagnetic radiation without the protection of our lifesource. If we were not in dark space, and back on Earth, depending on the variable intensity of the emission from that planet’s star, the forms we took would begin to decompose within one planetary hour.”
I see…yes. That would explain the strange occurrences I noticed, like the disappearance and odd placement of things—the times when I would see Dr. Light melting. I’m beginning to understand and remember, but…
All of a sudden, there is a loud thump, followed by a bright white light. It beams directly at me from the end of the office hall. It intensifies and with it comes a flash of pain. Then a powerful, electric shockwave blasts through me.
“No! Come back to us.” Their words, tones, and colors quickly fade.
I reach out to Dr. Light, but my body falls away. I’m being pulled faster than light through empty space. The darkness is acute and so horrifying I have to close my eyes.
It stops and I hear the faint voices of people shouting—no longer the tones. My chest hurts and my head. Then I hear my name and open my eyes. Everything in front of me is blurry. I blink several times to clear my vision.
“Stacy! Stay with us.”
“Not done,” I gurgle. My throat is sore, full of liquid. I cough out and my head lifts up then crashes down against a hard surface. A spray of blood flies through the air across a dingy moving blue wall.
Jon’s voice rings out. “Come on, Stacy, fight it!”
The wall moves in. My sight clears. People in blue scrubs stand over me.
“Must see.” I reach up to the light. My hand and arm are streaked with blood. Someone grabs my wrist. A sudden chill jolts down my spine, bucking me upward. Then my body violently begins to spasm and jerk around. I sense the others with me again. They have come for me and I need answers. If there’s going to be some kind of apocalypse, maybe they’ll know when it will happen and tell me how to prevent it. So I succumb to their cold, and then the lights fade out.
“No,” Jon screams. His voice gradually disappears.
In absolute darkness, I slip and slide through soft silky folds of cool, lubricated gelatinous tissue. This must be what it’s like to be born and remember it. The layers of plica move away with little effort as I pass, writhing slowly to an opening. I pour out onto an area like a landing that is alive. I am fluid light again—red. The twenty-six are all positioned around me, staring. I can see in my head the image each one of them perceives.
My liquid self thickens a little. The others’ forms have coagulated somewhat, too. I straighten up and take on the same shape as them. Their figures are still mostly blobs but slightly more humanoid. Their heads, or highest part of the gelatin masses, are shaped like oversized footballs. On either side, there are two large black ovals. They remind me of Dr. Light’s eyes—creepy open portals. They look out of place, like they were put there merely for ornamental purposes. Soon after my thought, their eyes slide down and disappear into their bodies, which are simply in the shapes of tree trunks. At the very bottom of each being, there are two nubs. They look like blunt ankles—no feet. Maybe that’s why Dr. Light always appeared to move awkwardly…he wasn’t used to having feet or walking.
I’m opalescent now, too, with my red light encased within branchy veins. All over, my form also illuminates a crimson glow that pulses with the rest of the biosphere.
Curious, I think of human fingers. Then there they are but made from the jelly substance. There is no outer layer or skin, just the slime. We are sleek and moist—transparent. Inside us, there are flecks of glimmering rainbows. The suspended particles do not reflect light, they emit it. We would be in total darkness if it weren’t for our own light.
The others watch me examine myself. “See.”
Yes, I See. I See everything. It is beautiful. What happened when I went away?
“Your human body tried to die.”
So, I’m not dead?
“No. You must live…live to remember.”
Remember? I am remembering, and if I’m not dead, then what am I?
“It is what they call a coma. It is the only way your dark energy life force can be here and there simultaneously.”
If I did die though, would I be stuck here?
“No. Your dark energy force would have to return and enter a new host.”
I don’t understand.
“Let us show you.”
Memories come and go here. Nothing is straightforward. I can’t figure out why I can remember some things and not others.
“You have been gone a while. It is a part of what we are.”
What…memory loss? That’s absurd. Then it comes to me—they’re right. They don’t know how we came into existence. They don’t remember. All they recall is traveling. It has only ever been the twenty-seven, bound on an endless journey in search of life like ours. An infinite voyage to discover how we came to be…that’s it! We, ours, we…I talk like I’m one of them. How is it that I know all of this? Maybe I am…
“Yes.”
But how did I…forget…and so much? This could simply be an alien abduction. They’re trying to brainwash me into believing I was one of them. They need me for something…
We have found no other life in the darkness in which we exist. It is infinite. And the light—the positive matter—places like Earth. Life is abundant there. So that is where we go. We travel there to study and learn. We…
Oh God, how is this possible? The things I’m remembering. They can’t be.
“Yes, but there is more.” “Show the rest.” “No. Let it try to remember.” “Perhaps it can tell us what we do not know.”
This is the first time I’ve heard you as separate entities.
“We are twenty-seven—we are one.”
It all has something to do with the sweet waste. There’s something significant about it. I just can’t put my finger on it.
“You do not have fingers.”
Sure I do. See. I raise a blobby limb then simply will the fingers to take shape again. Then I lower them and they all turn back to amorphous jelly. Now let me think…the sugar…it could be what makes us forget. The build-up becomes poison in our system, the same way aluminum on Earth is thought to cause Alzheimer’s or the sugar issues with diabetes.
“Yes, it knows.” “See.” “Remember.”
Stop talking like that. It’s making me nuts. I’m still partly human—I guess—or at least I think I am, so let me try and analyze like one.
“No.” “Show it.”
Stop!
A tidal wave of red light rolls through the soft walls around us. There is a collective feeling of fear and awe.
The sweet waste again…we throw it away. Dump the excess.
“Yes.”
The others circle in to hear my epiphany. Their nubby appendages that are together legs and feet sink part way into the opalescent ooze—the sucrose gel. But the thought, it doesn’t come. I can’t remember. Dammit! The words rumble like thunder through the biosphere.
“Let us help.” “We will show you.”
How
exactly, will you do that?
“In the chambers.” “No. We do not know the effects it will have.”
The last thought came from the entity that was Dr. Light—the indigo. He seems to be the more sensible one. Whatever the chamber is, it doesn’t sound like someplace I want to go.
“It is the only way.” “We must go.” “No. Not yet.” “The chambers.” “Come with us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Some of the others begin to change their positions around me. Several move to the front and take the lead. The indigo Dr. Light stays with me in the middle. The rest fall in behind us. I’m thinking I do not want to move, but my nubs are gliding along the slick surface anyway. Apparently, the lifesource wants me to go. It is a living thing, a separate entity with its own mind, able to communicate with the others and with me. It’s an organic spaceship, a transport vessel that can change shape and cloak itself with darkness. The sweet waste coats everything and protects it from the electromagnetic radiation we are sensitive to. Everything here works in harmony to survive. A simple, yet complicated organism. I wonder what drives them, us. What is our purpose, if any, for existing?
“We will show you.” “To the chambers.” “Yes.” “No. This could be a mistake.”
The indigo next to me reaches out and places some of his slime on my blob of a body. A wave of blue enters me. It feels cool and is somewhat calming. The glowing red within me begins to lessen. It’s the same thing he did when he was my psychiatrist. I see the images clearly now, like I can see what he sees—what he saw. Either that or he is showing them to me. I’m lying on the lounger in his office with my eyes closed. He places his fingertips onto my temples, but then his fingers change. They turn into dripping, wet digits of indigo. He inserts them into my head. Neon blue flows into me. I understand now that was the cold I felt—the slime.
