The Many Afterlives of John Robert Thompson

by Valerie Lioudis

  “Johab, my friend. How long has it been?”

  “Two life cycles. This was a short mission for you. The commander will expect a full report as soon as you settle back in. You should probably deal with the excess information now, though. Do you want to erase the experiences, or keep them?”

  “There’s no need to turn the machine back on. These experiences aren’t worth taking the time to erase. They hardly fill a file. I need to sort through to see if there is anything of value to report anyway. I have a feeling the commander is going to be disappointed by my findings on the planet Earth. Have any of the other Exploration Team members returned from there yet?”

  “Delsea is back, but she was ejected immediately. Poor choice in vessel. She blames the geographic research team. She keeps harping about Afghanistan being an impossible place to be a youngling. The commander is fed up with her excuses.”

  “Johab, she may have a point this time.”

  “Really? Well, I wouldn’t go sticking my neck out for her even if she does. She’s one strike away from a demotion. You don’t need to be lumped in with her. Plus, your performance this time wasn’t stellar. Now is not the time to be a hero.”

  “Agreed. I am going to head to my quarters to piece together my report. Can you do my check-in for me? I don’t want to make the commander wait any longer than necessary.”

  “You got it, Resnoir. You know I always have your back.”

  The Exploration Team had their quarters closest to the cafeteria. Resnoir grabbed a snack before heading to his bunk to type up the report for his commander. Earth foods were bland to his experienced palate and he was glad to have a taste of home again. It would take a day or two for John’s memories to fully integrate into his system, leaving him feeling splintered into two parts for the time being. Resnoir was the primary personality, complex and diverse, but John sat off to the side, one dimensional and pathetic.

  Resnoir had decided to absorb John’s being because of his lack of give-a-shits. Resnoir was well known as being high strung, and meticulous to a fault. If he was able to incorporate John’s laid-back personality into his own, he might be able to tone down his abrasiveness and finally move up to Exploration Team Leader. Now he just needed to figure out a way to justify his time in the vessel on Earth.

  Resnoir came from a planet of beings that were forcing their evolution through the collection of experiences of the surrounding planetary creatures. They had streamlined the process from hundreds of thousands of years and countless reproductive cycles down to a few life cycles which were carried out by the Council of Evolution, stationed on the outpost where Resnoir and his team resided. He was on the frontline. It was an honor to be part of the Exploration Team. Only the very best genetic specimens were permitted to apply for placement. Once you passed the nearly impossible physical trials, you were subject to sanity breaking psychological tests. The Council had to be sure that your mind and body could handle the stress of experience collection.

  Resnoir was one of the senior Exploration Team members, but he had been passed over time and time again. It wasn’t due to his quality of work, which was always impeccable. It was a result of his inability to connect to the vessels. He could gather the genetic material, and catalogue the experiences more precisely than his peers, but he was unable to guide his time with them to find real groundbreaking material. The current team leader was sloppy and reckless, but it always led to one amazing epiphany after another.

  John’s personality should be just enough to temper his own obsessive need to follow procedure to the letter. The next mission will be the real test. Resnoir was compelled to lay down and relax for a minute while he was trying to focus on his data entry. His smile stretched from one side of his oblong face to the other. It was working already.

  The commander barely looked up as Resnoir slid his file chip across his desk. “That was quick Mentor Resnoir.”

  “I am sorry for that Commander Fletch. I know I should have been in the vessel for 4 full life cycles before returning to the collective. I am at fault. I should have pushed my will on the vessel more and his expiration would have been preventable. To be honest, I was enjoying the lack of stress that this creature felt. It was a departure from my normal uptight personality.”

  “Hmmmm,” the commander seemed slightly more interested in the report that Renoir was about to give him. “Tell me more about this vessel. I am intrigued that such a primitive being could have such a profound effect on you.”

  “I wouldn’t say profound, commander.”

  “I would, Resnoir. For as long as I’ve known you, you have been unable to connect to your vessels on any level. You remain at status level of a detached observer. Even after absorption. You have always elected to keep only those experiences that are compatible with your core personality. Our mission is not to just collect, but to aid in the constant evolution of our species. You have always done your duty for the collective acting out of an obligation to our survival as a species.”

  “Where you differ from the others is you haven’t ever shown a desire to evolve personally,” he continued. “You are part of the collective, Resnoir. Your evolution is imperative, too. One day, you will settle down back on the home world and pass all of these experiences on to a new generation. As an Exploration Team member, you are going to be matched with one of the High Council members. She will expect you to bring both personality and genetic superiority to the union.”

  “Normally, I would be angry that a vessel was permitted to terminate at half-life, but with your spotless record and unusual interest in this being’s personality, I am not only going to let it slide, I am going to commend you for going out on a limb.”

  Resnoir was speechless. All those years in John and he never saw the real potential of the being he was observing. John was amazing in his lukewarm nature. Resnoir tried with failing words to explain the effect that John’s tepid nature had on him. With each passing moment, the familiarity of John, the uniqueness of him, was fading into Resnoir’s much stronger personality, leaving behind but a trace of who he once was. Instead of being John, he was the calming force that now lived in an anxious alien miles away from Earth on the other side of the universe.

  He would live on forever in the minds of the species of collectors. As an echo of peace, he would temper the anger, fear, and anxiety. His calmness would settle the storms of emotions allowing those who evolved with a piece of him to think before acting. John may have accomplished very little on Earth, but on Resnoir’s world, he was paramount.

  Trial and Error

  After 45 years, your bones begin to creak and crack by the end of the day. Your muscles ache and throb after a long day on your feet. John, like many others, had a habit of relaxing in a warm bath with a sprinkling of Epsom salts when those aches became too much to bear. There John would sit with his phone on the counter streaming music, hits from the 80’s mostly, laying back and relaxing away the stress of the day. Too bad for John that his music was far too loud, and he was unable to hear the dripping and creaking happening below him.

  Slowly, he slid down and laid back to wet his hair, his weight shifting just enough that the wood below him had finally reached its limit. The floor gave out and sent the tub straight through the garage ceiling. The tub landed with an astounding crash onto the concrete floor below, but that was not where this spectacle ended. The impact from the tub shook the surrounding items, knocking a hammer from its cozy spot on the wall down onto John, who had somehow survived the incident unscathed until that point, as he sat in the tub. Sadly, there he lay, naked and out of place in a tub on the garage floor with a busted noggin, bleeding profusely, yet politely, into the tub instead of onto the surrounding floor. The clean-up crews would comment on how considerate that was of him.

  John got the normal life flashing before your eyes treatment, which honestly did not take that long, though not because he hadn’t lived long enough. It
was over quickly because he lacked the content to fill any significant amount of time. John enjoyed it just the same, never realizing that most other people had a dramatic and exciting highlight reel, while his was bland and lacking. For him, it was the perfect way to end a life lived without the drama that he saw in other people’s lives.

  As the credits rolled, the flashback disappeared along with the garage and bathtub. He rematerialized in a bright green field dressed in a smart but comfortable suit. No one wants to show up in the afterlife wearing what brought them into the world of the living, and John was thankful to have all his bits covered again. He expected to be greeted when moved into this next phase of forever, but he wasn’t. There was just a beautiful field of grass and flowers with a podium jutting out from its center.

  A cool breeze sent the grass into a series of mesmerizing waves. Flower petals were sent airborne in a beautiful dance, twirling and swirling around John in a small tornado. The tiny petals merged into a force that was capable of pushing John closer to the podium one step at a time, then fluttered to the ground once he reached it. The wind died and the air had an electric buzz to it. John was sure it had a life of its own and would intervene again if he was not doing the correct thing.

  A scroll sat on a wooden holder. The ornate carvings looked worn and tribal, something that you would expect to find in an antique store or museum. An oversized and ornate quill rested next to an empty inkwell. John unfurled the scroll. Normally, he would have waited for directions, but with no guide, he was going to have to take a leap and hope he was doing what was expected of him. This all made John quite uncomfortable. “Never mind that,” he pushed through the anxiety.

  All trials can be solved, With one simple word,

  You’ll stay here in limbo, Until each one is heard.

  Words by three, A lesson left unlearned,

  To seek them out, Leave no stone unturned.

  “Seriously? Riddles? I suck at riddles!” He yelled in frustration at no one in particular as he was standing there alone.

  I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that John’s second thought after his initial frustration was to say “screw it” and lay back in the soft grass watching the clouds drift by forever. Boredom would have driven most to tears, but John knew that this would be a familiar way to ride out the rest of eternity. Too bad the wind must have sensed his lack of ambition, as it picked up again ever so slightly as a warning for him to try or else.

  “Fine. Stones. You got it. I will look for stones. They better be literal stones, because I’ve got nothing else.”

  The grass was mostly waist deep, and John hadn’t noticed until the first sharp crack of a stubbed toe, that while he was dressed rather nicely, he was missing a very important piece of attire. His shoes. This meant that his search for the stones would be done solely with his toes. Painful as it was, John had no other choice but to wade through the flowing grass, blindly feeling forward with his digits. Each fresh crack brought him to his knees, not just because the pain was growing more intense with each stone, but he needed to lift the progressively heavier rocks up to look under them, only to be frustrated by their lack of riddles hiding on the underside. When the scroll had said that he would be searching under every rock, he had not been prepared for the enormity of this process.

  John crushed his toes repeatedly, and just as the skin would begin to peel off his fingertips, the pain would subside and he would start again fresh and new. Unlike others, John didn’t have the determination or ambition to push him further in this process. There were countless times that he would stub his toe, fall onto his back and be forced by the wind back to his feet. More than anything, he just wanted to give up. The more time that passed, John’s urge to give up grew. Nothing here was easy, and he hated that.

  Crack!

  There went his pinky toe again.

  “Damn it!”

  This time he was determined to take a real break. He wasn’t going to allow some invisible force to overtake him. So, there he stood, leaning diagonally against the wind, trying to force himself down to the ground. Eventually, he was able to doze off out of exhaustion, but the second he stopped pushing forward, the wind flung him onto his back halfway across the field.

  “I showed you!” He shouted triumphantly at the invisible hand that had obviously bested him.

  The powers that be must have felt some level of sympathy, or saw humor in his stubborn personality, because he landed right next to a large rock. This beast of a stone was obviously different than the others. It had flickers of beautiful crystals sparkling throughout its exterior. The rainbow glittered at John in the veins that ran around the stone. It was mesmerizing, which may have been the point, but for once, John felt compelled to act.

  Skin ripped off his fingers faster than it could regrow, but John forced himself to ignore the pain. The rock was too large to lift or even roll over. This meant a task of digging out one side and hope to be able to gain enough leverage to push it up on its side. As he dug, his mind wandered to the blissful thought of relaxation. He wondered if heaven might be one giant fluffy feather pillow, with clouds so soft that you are cradled in their puffiness forever. He was so distracted by the daydreams that he almost missed the small fabric satchel that he had thrown over his shoulder in a clump of dirt.

  Almost missed it. Which was good, because it was a key piece of equipment that he needed to escape. The knots were ridiculously extravagant, but he had begun to expect tediousness at this point. Lifetimes could have passed at this point and he would never have known. The sun never set, and the temperature was always the same, other than that pesky wind. Time was the only unknown in this world of annoying constants.

  The last knot came unbound, and the glass jar fell into John’s eager hand. Black ink sloshed around in the capped glass. It was immensely satisfying to know that he was one step closer to leaving this forsaken place. Unwilling to allow the jar to become a causality of the waist deep grass around him, John held on to that little jar like it held the antidote to a fatal infection about to destroy him. Eagerness may have been a bad idea, and he tumbled over the first rock in his path back to the podium. His midair somersault would have earned him a fortune if posted on the internet, but this was not a place for the living and their amusement.

  His ankles broke on impact, and while the pain was intense, the fear of losing that jar was worse. Shards dug down into his palm as the glass cracked from his pressure and the sudden force of the landing. There was no time to allow his joints to heal, not with the only ink that he knew existed dripping onto the ground. Dragging himself across the dirt even he was impressed with his persistence. Swear words poured out of his mouth as the ankles healed and broke repeatedly from his efforts.

  Just when he had reached his limit, when the pain had his head swimming in that ‘circling the drain’ kind of way, John’s left hand touched the base of the podium. With the type of strength that only desperate men can muster, he was able to pull his broken body up just enough to drop the jar down into the empty inkwell. Darkness overtook him, and he promptly passed out. This time, however, the wind let him be and his body had time to mend before he awoke.

  Startled awake by a dream of reliving the pain, John gasped himself back into consciousness. It took several minutes of building his own bravery up before he dared to poke at his ankles. Tensing himself in anticipation of excruciating pain, John was shocked to feel that they were completely healed. Head shaking, he stood up worried that he had missed his mark with the ink jar. Sometimes, after particularly traumatic events, it is possible to forget that you are in a supernatural realm filled with never-ending time and living winds. That is why John was legitimately surprised when he saw that the ink was not in the broken jar but in the inkwell, and that the jar had disappeared.

  While this should have been a time for celebration, John fell to his knees in defeat. He knew deep down inside that he wasn’t built
for this kind of trial, let alone several of them. Tears welled up and he began to hyperventilate. This was a crippling fear that he had harbored in his soul his whole life. No one had seen it before, because he learned early to suppress it, and play it off as a cool indifference, but he had never truly mastered that. Instead most assumed he was a lazy, slack all with no ambition. Even John had begun to believe his own lie.

  He curled into a defiant ball, and the wind battered his body beckoning him to snap out of it, to stand and get back to work, but John needed to sit in self-pity for a bit. He needed to face his own truth for just a while longer before he would be able to function again. Being torn down to his core, John would have to figure out how to rebuild himself before he could really breath again. All those years lost to fear, not to some controlled resistance to life.

  Time passed and, eventually, even the wind gave up. John was so immersed in his own pain, that he didn’t notice right away. His mind kept reeling over and over. I can’t do it. Not good enough. Not strong enough. Too weak. I’m here because I couldn’t do it there. What makes them think I can do it here? He was broken and beaten, mostly by himself. That pain and hurt began to change. He grew hot, and shook. Anger was bubbling up. Some divine creator had made him, and had made him flawed.

  That would make all of this someone else’s fault! John thought about how many years were wasted because he had never really stood a chance. He was sent down there unprepared for what the world would throw at him, and while others were given the piece of themselves that would allow them to jump off the metaphorical ledge, he was missing that key part. He was forced to watch others move on and find a way to cope with being left behind in every way.

  It was anger that got John to his feet and it was anger that triggered the wind again. The breeze blew softly against John’s skin in an attempt to literally cool the fires that now raged within. He stood there staring at the scroll, angrily contemplating tearing it to a million little shreds. That wouldn’t accomplish his actual wish, though. He needed to cross over to get to the bottom of this mess. Someone needed to explain to him why he was put on Earth unable to fully live. Why did everyone else have the chance to advance in life while he was stuck with his brakes on?