Incarnation

by Kevin Hardman

  Looking at Rune, she then gestured toward me. “So, this is the one?” she asked.

  Rune merely nodded in return.

  “Well, let’s assess,” Endow said.

  Now it was apparently the woman’s turn to look me over, because she suddenly gave me a piercing stare. However, what she did was a lot more than simply gazing. Her eyes began to sparkle, and I felt them boring into me, seeing things that weren’t just on the surface, but embedded deep within — things that were an intricate part of me.

  After about thirty seconds (although it felt much longer), the sparkle in her eyes diminished. A moment later, she looked away with a pensive expression on her face.

  “Hmmm,” she droned, then turned to Rune. “He’s not one of mine.”

  “I didn’t say he was,” Rune shot back.

  “Wait a minute,” I interjected. “One of your what?”

  No one immediately answered. Instead, while Ursula stood off to the side, Rune and Endow exchanged a knowing look.

  “Shall we show him?” Endow asked a moment later.

  Rune gave an indifferent shrug.

  Taking that as an affirmative, Endow began glancing around the room excitedly, as if she was looking for something. All of a sudden, her gaze seem to settle on one area. She pointed a finger, and that part of the room seemed to rush toward us. Or rather, one of the stars situated there came racing in our direction, expanding as it got closer. It stopped about a dozen paces from us, at which point the star had ballooned to the size of a basketball and sat there floating at about the height of my chest.

  As I watched it, I quickly realized that it wasn’t just a star that was floating before us; it was an entire solar system. I spent a few moments staring in awe as I watched various worlds spinning on their axes while following their orbits around this particular sun.

  I leaned toward Ursula and whispered, “Is this real?”

  “You better believe it,” she whispered back while softly snickering (presumably at my ignorance).

  Endow pointed at one of the planets circling the star — a blue-green bauble that looked fairly familiar; it immediately expanded while the rest of its solar system receded in size. Endow made a circular motion with her hand, and it was as if a camera lens began zooming in on the planet, passing first through the upper atmosphere, and then a cloud layer before homing in on one of the land masses.

  The “camera” kept diving down, ultimately focusing on a mountainous region that ran parallel to an eye-catching shoreline. Winding its way through the mountains was a narrow, twisting road, and as I looked, I noticed a small red dot zipping along the thoroughfare in question. It didn’t take much imagination to understand what I was seeing, and my suspicions were proven correct moments later when the image magnified, revealing a red convertible sportscar with some thirty-something guy behind the wheel. He was wearing sunglasses and had the top down (of course), and was obviously driving well in excess of the posted speed limit.

  It wasn’t clear what happened, but all of a sudden, the driver lost control of the vehicle. One second, he was cruising along, trying to set a new land speed record; the next, he was fighting to keep the car on the road as the vehicle fishtailed all over the place. And then the car smashed through the guardrail and went sailing over the side of the mountain.

  The view then froze on an image of the driver, mouth open and looking completely terrified. More to the point, I could actually feel his dread empathically.

  “Ursula,” Endow said, without taking her eyes off the driver.

  By this time, I had already discerned that Ursula was Endow’s laamuffal, and this became fully evident when — upon hearing her name — Ursula immediately went into motion. She walked swiftly to one side of the room and seemed to bend down and grab what I initially took to be a bundle of stars. A moment later, I realized that it was some type of square-shaped receptacle, camouflaged in such a way as to appear almost indistinguishable from the actual stars around us.

  With the container in hand, Ursula hustled back to Endow, who gently took it from her. She then lifted the top part of the receptacle (which turned out to be a hinged lid), revealing several rows of what looked like glowing, colored gems inside. Endow spent a moment staring at the gems, each of which was about the size of my thumbnail, and then — after selecting a blue one — she closed the lid and handed the container back to Ursula.

  While her laamuffal went to put the receptacle back, Endow turned to the still-frozen image of the sportscar driver and placed the blue gemstone on his forehead. The stone flashed for a moment and then seemed to vanish. A moment later, the scene came to life again, with the driver wailing like a banshee as his car plunged toward the ground.

  Like some car-chase movie, the vehicle didn’t simply nosedive and smash into the ground at the bottom of the mountain. Instead, it bounced along, turning cartwheels and going into barrel rolls and such as it struck peaks, crags, and outcroppings of rock on its way down. Eventually, however, it did reach the foot of the mountain where, battered, mangled, and leaking fuel, it finally came to a halt upside down.

  Based on what had been observed visually, one would have thought that the driver had to be dead. However, my empathic senses were telling me something different. A few seconds later, as I anticipated, the driver came crawling out from under the wreck that had been his car, looking like an absolute mess and exuding shock at the fact that he was not only alive, but completely uninjured.

  At that juncture, Endow made the circular motion with her hand again and the entire scene vanished. She then turned to me, smiling.

  “You saved him,” I said, succinctly summing up what we’d just seen.

  “Actually, I did a little more than that,” she asserted. “He has a destiny to fulfill which requires certain unique talents, so I made him invulnerable.”

  My eyes went up in surprise. “Excuse me?”

  “She made him a super,” Rune explained.

  I frowned, focusing on previous comments that were now starting to make sense.

  “Wait a minute,” I intoned. “She gave him powers?”

  “Yes,” Rune confirmed with a nod. “It’s one of the things she does. She gifts people with certain abilities.”

  I looked at Endow. “So when you said earlier that I wasn’t one of yours…”

  “I was saying that you didn’t get your powers from me,” she clarified.

  “Okay, I get that,” I stressed. “But the statement implies that someone gave me my powers. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, not at all,” Endow assured me. “When Rune first told me about you, I was surprised. You possess an exceptionally rare combination of powers and abilities, but to have them all manifest naturally is rarer still. I thought that perhaps you had been gifted with some while others developed on their own, but from what I can see that isn’t the case. All of your talents are undoubtedly innate.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. For some reason, it bothered me immensely that my powers might have come by virtue of someone like Endow. Not that she seemed like a bad person; it was simply the fact that my powers were an essential part of who I was, and the notion that I might be beholden to someone for them bothered me.

  “So where are you from, Jim?” said a feminine voice, interrupting my thoughts.

  It was Ursula. Glancing around, I suddenly realized that while I had been reflecting on my powers, Rune and Endow had moved on to another subject. Apparently thinking that I hadn’t heard her, Ursula repeated her question.

  “Um…Earth,” I replied.

  “I know that, dingbat,” she uttered playfully. “I meant where on Earth.”

  “Oh,” I muttered, my head still not quite in the conversation. “Uh…”

  “Never mind,” she said, shaking her head dismissively. Then she perked up slightly and said, “You wanna see something really cool?”

  Chapter 11

  I had to admit to being impressed. It appeared that Ursula, like Endow, also
had the ability to manipulate items in the room, and — after dragging me to a far side of the room away from the two Incarnates — she brought to the fore a number of items that were completely fascinating to observe: black holes, quasars, supernovas…

  “So,” I said after Ursula just finished showing me a pulsar, “how far can you reach from here?”

  She considered the question for a moment. “You mean how far into space or into time?”

  “Uh…” I muttered, not really having thought about the question in those terms. “Both, I guess.”

  “Everywhere. Everywhen. All space, all time. The entire universe.”

  “So you can reach out to any time and place, and observe what’s happening,” I summed up.

  She nodded. “Generally, yes.”

  A canorous laugh rang out unexpectedly, and I glanced over to where Endow, giggling merrily, was still speaking to Rune.

  “Hmmm,” I muttered, reflecting on Ursula’s answer as I turned back to her. “Why do you say ‘generally’?”

  “Well, the Cosmos Corridor is the only place in Permovren where it’s possible. Of course, you can’t see other places like this that are outside of space and time — and you can’t observe or affect Incarnates — but otherwise the sky’s the limit.”

  “And if you decide you want to give someone an ability — say, super speed — you can just do it?”

  “Well, I can’t,” she admitted, laughing. “That falls under the province of Endow.”

  “Impressive,” I noted, and found myself glancing once again in Endow’s direction as I reflected on the power — the sivrrut — she wielded.

  “Hey!” Ursula snapped, getting my attention. “You’re not going to last long as my new beau if you keep ogling other women. You don’t want to end up like my last boyfriend.”

  Grinning, I raised an eyebrow. “What happened to him?”

  “I dropped him into a black hole over there,” she said, pointing to a far section of the room. Then she spun and pointed to a different area, muttering, “Or did I strand him on a desert planet over there? Or…”

  Biting her lip, she trailed off as she appeared to ponder on something. A moment later, she flung up her hands in capitulation, saying, “I don’t know. I can’t keep up with all these dudes.”

  At this point, I was laughing heartily, having decided that I liked Ursula and her sense of humor. A moment later, she joined me, snickering.

  It took a few moments for our laughter to subside, at which point, still chuckling, I said, “Well, I appreciate the heads-up, but I don’t think you’d find me good boyfriend material. I’m a little on the young side.”

  “Hold up,” she said, sobering instantly. “How old do you think I am?”

  I shrugged. “Twenty-four, twenty-five?”

  “I’m seventeen,” she declared defensively, putting her hands on her hips and glowering at me.

  I stared at her, plainly surprised. “Seventeen hundred?”

  She looked at me incredulously, then firmly stated, “No! Just seventeen, as in one-seven.”

  “Uh, sorry,” I mumbled. “You look very mature for your age. I apologize if I offended you.”

  She continued glaring at me, then winked and smiled.

  “Just kidding,” she said. “About being mad, that is — not about being seventeen.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah. Despite being laamuffal to an Incarnate, I just felt like I wasn’t taken as seriously when I looked like a teenager, so I had Endow age me a few years.”

  “She can do that?” I queried in surprise.

  “Of course. All the Incarnates can. Traditionally, the laamuffal gets to select their own appearance, which makes sense when you consider that you might be on the job for a long time.”

  I nodded, reflecting back on my conversation with Rune about Sayo. At the time, it hadn’t even occurred to me to ask about her youthful appearance, but now I understood.

  “Anyway,” Ursula said, interrupting my thoughts, “I’ve been showing you all the stuff I find interesting. What’s something you’d like to see?”

  “Huh?” I muttered, not sure I understood the question.

  She made a gesture that encompassed the room. “We’ve got the entire universe here. Surely there’s something you’re interested in taking a peek at?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Obviously, I haven’t really thought about it.”

  “Well, give me something to work with,” Ursula insisted. “Maybe there’s a distant planet you’re interested in, or a far-off galaxy. Or maybe just see what people are saying when you aren’t in the room.”

  “I’m a telepath,” I blurted out, although my powers were actually limited in that regard. “I’ve occasionally picked up on thoughts that people have about me that I’m sure they believed were private, and it’s not always pretty. Hearing what they say about me when I’m not around is something I am definitely not interested in.”

  As I spoke, I found my conviction on the subject solidifying. Watching people talk about me when I wasn’t around was completely off the table.

  “Are you sure?” Ursula asked. “Maybe see if your grandparents brag about you to their friends? See how your mom really felt about that bowl you made her in kindergarten? Check in on your ex and see if she’s missing you?”

  Despite my sentiments on the subject, Ursula’s last question actually piqued my interest. (My girlfriend had just broken up with me, but it was something I was trying not to dwell on.) More to the point, I must have telegraphed that fact in some way because it didn’t go unnoticed.

  “A-ha!” Ursula crowed. “The ex. It’s always the ex.”

  “Not this time,” I countered. “I’m not interested. There’s nothing I want to see.”

  “Are you sure?” she implored.

  “Nothing comes to mind.”

  She seemed to reflect on that for a moment.

  “Okay, maybe consciously you don’t want to see anything,” she conceded, “but perhaps subconsciously?”

  I stared at her, nonplussed. “What do you mean?”

  Rather than respond, Ursula lifted her hands in front of her. Her eyes narrowed, and she began swiftly running her thumbs across the fingers on each respective hand, similar to someone making a gesture for cash. Almost immediately, a soft amber glow formed around her fingertips.

  “Close your eyes,” she said.

  I was a little unsure of what was happening, but based on what I could sense of her emotions, I felt I could trust Ursula. That being the case, I complied, and a moment later I felt her fingers on my temples.

  “Clear your mind,” she said. “Try not to think of anything. Just focus on my voice. Now think about Christmas.”

  I frowned, wondering where this was going.

  “Focus,” Ursula practically commanded, letting me know my facial expression hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  Somewhat chagrinned, I redoubled my efforts at cooperating.

  “Christmas,” she said again. “Think about Christmas.”

  I let my mind flit through things about the holiday in question: the lights. Decorations. Nativity. Christmas cheer. Presents.

  “Good,” Ursula muttered in an encouraging tone. “Now think about the best Christmas you ever had. Everything that was on your list to Santa, all the wonderful gifts you got. Excellent… Now think about your birthday — your best birthday. The birthday that you remember more fondly than all the others. Think of the best gift you got that day. Great — you’re doing great. Now focus on what you got to observe in here today. Think about the wonders of the universe that you laid eyes on. Black holes. Quasars. A gorgeous laamuffal who should be gracing magazine covers.”

  I fought to keep from cracking up after her last comment, and I picked up on Ursula’s mirth as well.

  “Okay,” she said as she took her hands from my temple. “You can open your eyes now.”

  I did as she asked, and then stared at what was in front of me.


  Chapter 12

  Before us was an image that primarily consisted of a long beam of bluish-white light about three inches in width. It appeared to stretch between two worlds that looked amazingly similar. (In fact, with the beam of light connecting them, the two planets looked remarkably similar to a set of vintage globe barbells.)

  However, it wasn’t so much the imagery that stunned me, but more so the fact that I was sensing things on an empathic level. Leaning in closely, I saw what appeared to be two man-shaped figures within the beam of light. They were the source of the emotions I was picking up on. Their features were obscured by the beam’s light, but I didn’t need to see them in further detail. Empathically, I was familiar with the pair. I knew who they were.

  Caught completely by surprise, I started laughing.

  Ursula smiled at me. “I take it this is familiar to you.”

  “Yes,” I confirmed with a nod. “I knew a couple of guys who went through some kind of dimensional vortex.” I pointed at the two man-shaped figures in the beam of light. “Apparently, this is them.”

  Ursula stared at the scene for a moment, then turned to me. “Friends of yours?”

  “Something like that.”

  She didn’t say anything, choosing instead to simply nod, her brow now crinkled.

  “How’d you do this?” I asked.

  My question seemed to bring Ursula back to herself, as her usual smile quickly moved back into place.

  “It wasn’t that hard,” she insisted. “Ask people to think about Christmas, and their thoughts invariably turn to presents. They’ll think about what they received as gifts — and subconsciously they’ll reflect on what they wanted but didn’t get. Same with birthdays: they’ll consciously ruminate on what they got, and subconsciously focus on the item they wish they’d been given. So when I asked you about the things you saw in here, you consciously mulled over what you were shown–”

  “But subconsciously I mused on something I wanted to see,” I interjected.

  “Is it what you expected?” she asked.

  “Honestly, I’ve never thought too much about it,” I asserted, which was true. “At least not consciously.”