Authors: Alexander Hammond
“There,” he said. “I told you it would be OK.” He pointed to his left and said, “What can you see?” She looked into the blackness and could just make out a smudge of white light. “What do you think that is?” he asked.
“I have no idea.” she replied honestly.
“It’s the universe.” he said, “And it’s coming. Or should I say…expanding…our way.”
“So where are we?” she responded as quick as a flash.
The man made a slight motion of his hand and two easy chairs appeared. He motioned to one. “Please sit.” So she sat. She sat on an easy chair suspended apparently in thin air and contemplated the vastness of her ship, the stranger and the pale smudge of light that was supposedly the universe. She thought. She thought like she’d never thought before; she thought until her head hurt and finally came to a conclusion then spoke, slowly and carefully. “If what you and the computer say is true, we’ve reached the edge of the universe and passed through it. Physics dictates that where nothing happens or no events occur there is nothingness. My ship has passed beyond the event that is the universe and by doing that has created an ‘event’ outside the universe hence me and my ship being here has called this place into existence.”
“Bang on!” said the man with some enthusiasm. “Very good…very good indeed.” She was childishly pleased with the man’s patronising ebullience but she tried to shake off the feeling and keep her thought processes logical.
“And you say you created the universe?” she said, trying not to sound sarcastic.
“I most certainly did but despite what you said earlier I’m not suggesting I’m God, or at least not in the way you would think about that entity.” He replied.
“So who are you?” she pressed.
The man took a deep breath “It’s not easy to explain.” he confessed.
“I did create the universe so the best description of me from your point of view, is ‘The Creator’. A mite egotistical I must admit but it’s an accurate statement.”
“So what are you?” She pressed.
The man put his fingertips together and thought for a moment. “This is going to sound patronising, but there’s no way that I can explain that to you from your frame of reference.”
“How can I believe that you are the creator then?” she continued. “If you were, you’d know everything about the universe and everything that’s in it…actually you’d know everything about me.”
“Correct,” he replied and before she had a chance to speak he pressed on. “I do know everything about you. You love cats but don’t like ginger ones but you don’t know why, you adore the smell of newly mown grass, the best sex you ever had was with a mining engineer on Phobos, you have a freckle behind your left ear and when you first saw the earth from orbit it was less impressive than you expected. You prefer to sleep on your left side and you still feel guilty about stamping on a spider that you found in your cupboard when your family moved to New York. You feel that your nose is the least attractive thing about your body and you had the hots for your father’s best friend when you were a teenager…how am I doing? Do you want more?”
The astronaut reacted as if she had been struck physically “That’s enough,” she said quietly.
The old man chuckled. “Sorry about that but I had to give you stuff that would bring you up to speed quickly…and don’t worry…I most certainly don’t judge you, in fact I can’t judge you as that defeats the exercise and would also be self destructive. You’re part of me you see. I looked inside myself and you were what I found…you and a whole universe. I don’t judge you…I experience you...in fact I experience everything….that’s what this is all about.”
The woman just stared. She had rarely ever been speechless, but she had so many questions and didn’t know which to ask first. Sensing this the old man continued. “Yes, I know, it’s a lot to take on board isn’t it? Only a few have ever made it this far and they’ve had the same problems.
“Which few?” She said; glad to have something apparently rational to talk about.
“Oh you weren’t the only species to have figured out faster than light travel; actually you’re the fourth, shall we say, ‘being,’ to make the trip.”
“So why.” she said. “Why the universe? What do you mean, ‘you experience me?”
The old man leaned back on his chair. “You asked me early on what I was and I told you you wouldn’t understand the answer. The truth is I don’t fully know myself. I know that I am and that I exist but that’s all I really know. I know I am powerful and I feel….God do I
feel
….err sorry…probably the wrong phrase to use….but I exist without a universe…I exist in timeless harmony. I need to experience what I am…to know what I am…I know I am what you call ‘good’ but if I don’t experience it how can I fully understand that about myself? I need to know, you see…I need to know all of it…so I created the universe from my very being. It’s all part of me and I’m part of it. I created an environment with linear time and countless races and ‘possibilities,’ which I could experience through those entities that inhabit it.”
She thought for a moment and asked the obvious question. “Why did you have to create the pain and suffering…death, disease, conflict, cruelty…the universe can be a really shitty place. Why didn’t you create somewhere…well…nice?”
The old man pursed his lips and sucked regretfully thorough his teeth. “I know,” he said gently. “It can be hard, even unbearable, but I had to…don’t you see? This is what it’s all about. To know myself as good I had to create what you call ‘bad’ to experience the opposite of what I am to know what I am.”
She came back quicker than he expected. “Isn’t that just bloody selfish? We have to suffer so that you can go on your little voyage of self-discovery? Countless trillions suffer just so you can ‘find yourself’?”
“Hmmmmm,” the old man said. “I see that I’m going to have to try a little harder to convince you that my quest is beneficial to all. You see, I’ve told you that you’re part of me, therefore you don’t die nor does anyone; you just come back to me. But you’re asking yourself, what does coming ‘back to me’ really mean? I think it’s time for some of the real stuff. Some things are only understood by experience...they cannot be explained. He made to move his hand when she snapped, “Wait a minute, whatever you’re going to do or show me, I need to know something first. If you’re not God, despite the fact that you seem to know everything and evidently created everything, then that means that you’re telling me that there is no God.”
He laughed again his eyes twinkling as he enjoyed his reverie “Oh no, Commodore, there most certainly is a God...I created all this to
know
God.” And with that their environment exploded. A mass of incredible white brightness engulfed them both. In that instant the astronaut had no body; she was existence only. She felt the old man, she felt herself….she felt the universe…she felt
everything
. For an instant of time she knew and experienced that she was ‘all that is,’ the power of the experience beyond her ability to describe it. Her psyche opened, really opened, allowing her to understand for the first time the power of everything. She saw the unique dynamics of emotion and understood why they were real and the physical world was not. She called out as if experiencing a thousand orgasms simultaneously. She
felt
…for the first time she truly
felt.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, “I had no idea…I had no idea…this is what I am…I remember….I remember….oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” And it that instant it was gone. She was a sat on her chair again opposite the man, sobbing uncontrollably. As her body racked with tears she blurted out “You love me…you know everything about me but you love me anyway…I remember.” The man pulled her out of the chair and embraced her gently as she continued sobbing into his shoulder.
She stayed there for what seemed like a very long time. Eventually he released his hold on her and fixed her with a look that made her feel transparent. A feeling that she found totally pleasurable. She had no secrets…he
knew
her. He whispered in her ear, “How could I not love you? We are one and the same. You are part of me as I am part of you. I am also part of something bigger, which means you are part of it too which means it is part of you as well. In existence there is infinite bigness and infinite smallness; it goes all the way up and all the way down...for infinity. We’re all the same thing. To know what we are we must experience ourselves. This is what we are doing…this is what we’re all doing…we all seek to know ourselves.”
Exhausted, she flopped back onto the chair “There’s so much I want to ask…so much I need to know,” she said quietly.
The old man smiled. “When you have taught a child to add two and two the next lesson is not advanced equations...remembering is best done stage by stage...a gradual process.”
She let a silence hang in the air for a moment. “So what happens now?”
The doctors had assured her she wouldn’t dream, but they were so wrong. These were the first thoughts that occurred to the astronaut as she began her slow wake from hibernation.
- The End -
A GLIMPSE
Things hadn’t been the same since the operation. Not that they’d been bad, far from it, but, certainly, they were different.
The good news was that the tumour had been removed successfully. It had apparently been touch and go on the operating table, but she’d pulled through. He had suffered the agonies of the damned as he worried about her. By the time she had the operation she hardly noticed. She was actually suffering the agonies of the damned physically. The headaches nearly driving her insane with their intensity. ‘Knives cleaving at her brain’ was the way she’d described it. It had made him sick just to think about it.
Mercifully, that was now all behind her and them. He had his wife back. She was well, she was vibrant and she was delighted to be alive. And she was different. Not in a bad way, but certainly it made things difficult for him. At first he hadn’t cared so pleased was he that she was healthy. It had taken a while to notice but things had definitely changed.
Her withering sarcasm that he found so attractive had gone. She also didn’t seem to find his own creatively scathing criticisms of others amusing as she once had. She also laughed a lot more now. Not the occasional sly sniggers she affected prior to the operation, but big, wholesome belly laughs. Long gone also were her amusing tirades about her workmate’s shortcomings. He sincerely missed those. She used to have such an acerbic wit about her. She saw the humour in cruel teasing. It was one of the things that had attracted him to her. She had shared his bleak cynicism of the world and others. He wasn’t a bad or insensitive man, but he was a realist and so she used to be.
In the bedroom things had changed too. Their love making, whilst physically satisfying was now, so, well, what was the word? Wholesome. Yes, that was it, wholesome. Not a bad thing he supposed. They’d always been creative, and still were but now she seemed to relish every new permutation as a natural progression and not a daring adventure, which somehow took the frission of excitement away.
And then there were the silences. Now she would often be quiet when in the past she’d chattered continually. Car journeys were a case in point. They’d rarely played music as their banter would provide all the entertainment they required. Now, all too often, he’d turn the radio on to cover up the lack of conversation.
Of course they’d discussed it. Nothing was actually wrong per se but she agreed she felt different. The trouble was that he didn’t. And, she confessed, she felt that the change was accelerating. Not only that, she was enjoying the changes. She said she felt alive as if never before. She said she could see things differently. She said she needed to see where these changes were taking her. This worried him. The woman he loved was becoming a different person. He didn’t want to think of where this would lead. Surely he should love her no matter what? He wrestled with this dilemma. His wife had lost her cynicism. She’d developed a sense of humour that seemed to him to border on the childish. Her delightful scowls and dark biting tongue were a thing of the past. He missed them, and missed them badly.
She was genuinely distressed at the effect she was having on her husband. She seemed delighted at the changes within her and yet her love for her partner demanded she addressed his concerns. She was as curious as he to identify the cause of these changes.
Various professionals had relieved them of large sums of money whilst providing no answers. Undeterred, he continued to seek answers. She uncomplainingly went along with his research while developing a lust for life that he found almost unbearable in its enthusiasm. The nadir came at the hypnotist’s office.
She’d approached the session with such a boundless rapture he’d almost considered cancelling it. Prior to the operation, at even the suggestion of such an encounter, she would have heaped a withering diatribe on him for even suggesting it. God, he missed that. He loved that about her.
In a darkened room, the bearded Freudian swung his watch as his wife succumbed to the calming, suggestive voice.
“I want you to go back,” he whispered, “back to the moment of change.”
There was silence for a full minute. Suddenly his wife’s face lit up. “The operation,” she almost shouted.
“Tell us about it,” the hypnotist urged.
Though her eyes were closed he could see anticipation on his wife’s face.
“The anaesthetist asked me to count back from ten to one. I knew I’d never reach one but I thought it would be fun to try. I reached six and then suddenly I was just floating. Floating in space. I felt like Superman. I could fly. It was just wonderful.” She lapsed into silence with a calm smile on her face.
“Please continue,” the therapist prompted.
She took a very deep breath. “I travelled, faster and faster, past stars and galaxies. I travelled so fast they all became a blur. I just knew that I had to keep going. I wasn’t afraid; I was enthralled. I don’t know how I knew I had to keep going but something inside told me that I had somewhere to go. I knew that something was waiting for me at my destination. Something important.” She paused for a moment as if steeling herself, then pressed on.
“I suddenly came to a stop. Incredibly, there was a wall in front of me. I knew immediately what it was. I just had to get over it, to see what was inside. It was so annoying. No matter which direction I flew the wall was there. It seemed to stretch forever upwards and downwards.” She paused again.
“Why did you have to get over the wall?” The husband immediately felt ashamed at his outburst.
“To see what was on the other side. You see, I knew,” she said.
Ignoring the hypnotist’s dark stare, he pressed on, “What did you know? What was on the other side?”
His wife laughed. “Why, Heaven of course, you silly thing. It was so frustrating. No matter how far I flew in any direction there was no door, no way in. Then I noticed out of the corner of my eye, just below me, a bright point of light. I was sure that it wasn’t there before. I swooped down to it for a closer look. It was a small hole, no bigger than my little finger. A hole in Heaven.” Her breathing accelerated. “I realised at once I could look in. I pressed my eye over the hole and…I saw Heaven…I saw inside Heaven...I saw…” Her voice seemed to peter out as she relaxed back into her chair, her face serenely calm.
Agitated, her husband addressed her urgently, “What did you see? What did you see?”
She opened her eyes and fixed him with a look of such wonder he would never ever find the words to describe it.
“Everything,”
she said.
- The End -