“So how do I get to make that decision?” I said, struggling to hide my fear. “How can I make choices which represent the wishes and aspirations of all people who inhabit this world?”
It was almost euphoric to be the ascendant me, with a smile of infinite compassion and total comprehension on my lips. “Brianne, you already know the answer, do you? You have always known the answer. It’s hidden beneath you, you have to talk to your inner being, the one that merged with you. Lucy ” There is a way to listen.
“Listen to what?”
“To the echoes. To the voices of all those whose souls you were before… and all those who are to come after… There is something that is beating in unison with existence itself. ”
When we flowed with her, something in the surrounding air seemed to come to life and glow. Every wave was followed by voices billions upon billions of voices human, and alien, and something more and beyond. They washed over me, through me, and each one brought trailing a piece of insight of sorts.
To be precise, I was able to listen to the primitively created human beings when they wanted to reach the stars. The spirit of the people behind the advancement brought by expanding the science and technology fields. Feelings of insecurity by such people who have no idea of what the future holds for them. The dream of the true freedom that people who believed in the possibilities of the human race expected to have. I was able to listen to myself. A part I thought had been buried for a while.
These logics add another layer of meaning below it, a faster beat and the obvious one below it. The heartbeat of the Universe, a sweet melody composed of an eternal symphony.
“Do you hear it?” the ascended me asked The god from the machine of my loneliness A lonely god who spoke in echo. “Do you understand?”
And at that moment, I did what any person who wants to influence a group of people would do I started researching! Not fully how can any mortal mind possibly fathom the concept of infinity? but enough. This is all that one was required to know: what had to be done.
My mind began to process what was going on, and I heard myself say, “I have to go back”. “I need to locate Zoe and Chase, so we could decide as one- all the people on the planet. And even though I had avoided it all this while, I need to address Lucy”
The ascended me smiled and nodded my head, a look of pride gleaming in her beautiful eyes. “In my case, yes. But you have to realize that it’s not all about ascending and not ascending Brianne “How do I get back?” I asked, and could instantly feel its draw towards… somewhere else.
She could already see her vision starting to dissolve, “Just let go,” she whispered. “Go with the flow of reality. Let me warn you though the homecoming isn’t going to be fun. Let life flow. Call it a river because the barrier between yours and ours is dissipating before our very eyes. You may lose yourself. See things Experience things that will make your world turn upside down.
I simply agreed and tensed, waiting for whatever that was going to be done to me. As the world around me began to dissolve, I heard the ascended me’s final words
“Just remember, Brianne it is not the journey that matters. It is the decision. And each decision we make goes on in perpetuity. ”
And then I was falling with my body twisting as if in a jerky step-through of existing realities and dimensions. From these little realms, I got a view of things I never could have conceived in any other way of things where the laws of physics were only optional; where existence flew into being and out of being in the blink of an eye; where time ran forward, backward, sideways, or in any plane, or did not run at all.
Through it all, I held onto one thought: I had to get back. Needed to take my friends’ back. I need to make that choice which would determine the future of the human race.
Last but not the least, after such a long time and, simultaneously, such a short period I felt, I am standing on my own. The whirl of realities dissolved, and the screen showed the place that looked familiar – Central Park where we first met a tear. The Terrace where I was killed.
But something was wrong. The tear was no longer a shimmering curtain, of course. It expanded and took over half of the park to the chaos of multiple dimensions. And at its edge, still in a position that seemed to be something of a fight, were two men I knew immediately.
Zoe and Chase. But they were not struggling against some extraterrestrial presence or any sort of horror. They were killing… one another.
And being paralyzed with fear, I observed how Zoe’s hands trembled, discharging some electricity that cannot exist in our world. Chase’s body moved and morphed, adopting characteristics of the alien world that we had been to.
They were changing. Evolving. Becoming something beyond human.
But, in a single dizzying moment, I knew that, perhaps, I had already been too late. The decision was being made not by all people, equally one humanity but people possessing power they could not control.
As I moved towards them shouting their names, both of them turned to look at me. The look in their eyes was that of a burden carrying the universe.
“Brianne,” Zoe repeated, taking some time to say my name and her vocals were haunting to the ears. “Oh, you are just in time. We have finally cracked it out, you do not have to decide whether to ascend or to remain human. ”
“We can be both,” Chase said, and he kept on changing his body like what he had done before. There it is; : ‘We can have it all, become gods without losing our humanity’.
They extended their hand to me to give me whatever they say they have found in the realm of power. But just as I stood there, with the entire universe in the balance, I had to decide about infinity.
To embrace a power beyond imagining on the condition of accepting their offer? To fight to keep our humanity denied when we accept its options to maintain it? Or to search for something else, for some middle, for what is left between the crumbling of all existence? I wouldn’t fall for this because it all seemed like a trap from the Architect.
Fixing my gaze at the super-imposing stars, the universe itself appeared to wait for my verdict.