Equation

Part 1

The low slung moon shimmers carelessly over crashing waves; the lapping of the approaching tide reflecting the essence of the Stars. They flicker relentlessly, as the opalescent moon dog pulses to its unique rhythm.

“A moment of peace”

Attention is drawn toward a singular wave as it crashes into the sand, the force of the water guided in silence by the gravitational flux.

“Realisation”

As the wave recedes, it pulls tiny pebbles backwards, leaving foam trails in its wake.

“Thinking, Feeling”

Two young lovers stroll along the beach, hand in hand. They pause, momentarily, to admire the beauty before their eyes. Standing side by side, contemplating the Sun’s reflection on the Moon. He turns to face his beloved and pulls her into a warm embrace.

“Completion”

She sighs, as he takes her hands, and playfully spins her around. Laughing and smiling at the joy of their stolen moment. They spin each other around, reeling with the momentum, and time stops…..

She looks at him in horror as the image before her loses its clarity and dimension. The angles of his clothes and his facial features become lifeless and cartoon like. The saturation drains away as the image becomes, grainy; black and white.

She focuses her eyes intently on his frozen stare, and as she peers at him, his face reveals a concave depth of character, an image layered within the frame of his face. There is a tiny pinpoint of light reflecting in his eye that doesn’t make any sense. The light flickers briefly and explodes with crystalline light. It engulfs everything within the blast and darkness ensues.

“A negative existence”

Part 2

Small multi coloured orbs of light dance around in her minds eye as the connection with her Earth consciousness is severed. Her eyes seem reluctant to open as she commands them. They twitch and open briefly, revealing an image of a blurred module panel, with a curved window directly above it. Her eyes close again, involuntarily, and a voice speaks to her from somewhere inside her skull. She watches the orbs of light dancing about as the voice speaks to her.

“Integration, information, communication and symbiosis”

The voice resonates away from her, with an echo, and she tries to open her eyes again.

The image of the window comes into view and slowly her eyes refocus, showing the white streaks coming toward her, out of the blackness of the void.

She moves her eyes down to look at her right hand. The fingers are merged with the silver panel, petering off into circuitry and L.E.D’s. The symphony of machinery springs to attention and the realisation begins to dawn.

She closes her eyes again, attempting to shake off this nightmare. As she opens them again, this time, she reaches with her free hand to the back of her neck. Her fingers find cold metal just underneath her cerebellum, and she continues to stare at the panel in front of her. One of her pupils dilates and the other flickers in an almost imperceptible black dot.

A computerized voice speaks from the panel in front of her,

“Administering medication for blood pressure regulation. Synthesizing….”

Her pupils begin expanding and contracting rapidly and she feels her body relax the tension that had built unwittingly, since her awakening.

“Abnormal frequency detection. Disengage. Initiating auto sequence”

A high pitched whine screeches though every inch of her perception, white noise static and off signal whine screams as her as her vision crackles and flashes.

“Disconnecting user interface”

The snakelike protrusion retracts itself sharply from her brainstem and her head slumps forward. The circuitry attached to her hand begins disengaging itself, retracting back into the silver panel.

She lifts her hand up to inspect it, looking closely at the lines and creases on her palm and fingers. She watches the movements intently, almost incredulously. Leaning forward with her whole body, slowly, and then outstretching both arms to reach toward the air being pushed through the vent. She shivers as the molecules caress her fingers, and she shivers, pulling her hand back to inspect it again.

The white streaks in the window have begun slowing down and the computerized voice speaks to her again,

“Initiating docking procedure, approaching gate 13”

Outside, the module approaches a blue misty haze. Three orbs of liquid light appear from the centre of the mist and aerate towards the module and its occupant. They rotate around each other until they finally settle on a triangular formation, and upon reaching the desired distance, a shimmer passes between them. They stop, abruptly, and a beam of electric blue light comes from the centre of each orb, shooting towards the module and hitting the sensors; forming a triangular tunnel of light. The gaps between the beams begin to take on solidity and morph into a semi opaque triangular tunnel. The glass front of the module retracts without a sound.

All lights in the module power down to emergency settings, and the only thing that the occupant can see now, is the blue tunnel emanating from the haze.

She climbs out through the opening of the module and into the tunnel, taking a tentative step on the glowing floor.

“You’ll fry something if you keep crashing neurons like that”

She looks around her for the source of the voice. It differs from that of the module, bringing another wave of confusion.

“Are you talking to me?” she asks.

She feels unsteady so she tries to put her hands on the sides of the tunnel for support. Her hands slip through the sides as though they didn’t exist, and she falls to her knees.

She hears the voice laughing.

“Inger, you have been gone far too long this time. Just walk forwards with your hands out in front of you. You’ll be fine”

She picks herself up from the floor of the tunnel, looking around in uncertainty. But she puts her arms out all the same and takes a step forwards.

“Just keep walking… a little further”

She can’t see past the blue haze that she is walking towards, and she looks concerned.

“Will I fall?” she asks

The voice talks to her with a more serious tone this time.

“Just a few more steps, you’re almost there”

She takes another couple of tentative steps and her hands stick in an invisible field. Her entire frame is paralysed and the human form breaks down into millions of fragmented cells.

“Welcome home, Inger”

Part 3

Inger wakes up, lying on a cold metal slab, with electrodes all over her body and head. Machines recording information coming from her Cyborg body and the E.E.G meter quivers uncontrollably. She sits up and reaches for the black book that is lying on the metal shelf next to her. The metal slab automatically adjusts itself with her movement, and she unclips the pen from the front of the book and begins to write.

“Damaged data, that’s what the technician calls it. Why would me neuro-receptors begin receiving extra input and transmitting on an additional frequency as a result of damaged data? Emotional responses? We were never programmed with emotional responses…”

She sighs puts the pen down, and reads what she has written.

“Experimental hybridisation. Atrophy of the known Universe begins with this knowledge”

She closes the book and puts it back on the metal shelf. It's almost as if she is dreaming and can’t wake up. She reclines back into the cold slab and shuts her eyes, wishing for oblivion as a respite from this confusion.

Part 4

A technician walks into the room, sneaking, quietly, so as not to disturb the resting Cyborg. Trudging over to the ream of paper, leaving snake trails, from the EEG. He frowns and screws up his eyes as he tries to make sense of the readout.
The three baseline frequencies were acting normally, normal for a Cyborg anyway, but it was the extra, extremely high frequency modulation that was causing him the problem. She appeared to be broadcasting a signal well above the rate of resonance of Ultra Violet rays. He looks at her, puzzlement adorning his features as he watches the flickering of her closed eyelids. He wonders what, if Cyborgs do dream, she could be dreaming about?

Part 5

Inger Dreams

A black void draws me away from the usual flagrant imagery. Stillness and silence, previously unknown to me. No interference or bio-feedback to contend with. This is new, and ….pure. I feel a low frequency resonance, pulsing from an indiscernible source, the varying degrees of the resonance of the rhythm seem strange, alien to me.

The perceived signal was shifting in and out of dimensions, unknown to the Cyborg consciousness, it is her own unique frequency, broadcasting loud and clear to anything that has the knowledge to decode and transfer a message in return. For the moment there is no known audience. Her focal point begins to move; slowly at first, gradually picking up momentum as light particles spiral out of the blackness. A vortex within her consciousness pulls her out of the peaceful void. It hurt her to be ripped from the state of grace and as she felt the instantaneous solidity of the Cyborg body, she Jumped and sat bolt upright.

The E.E.G bounced with an overload signal, and the technician spins around to face her, startled.

“Inger, you scared the hell out of me!”

I’m shaking. My eyes won’t stay focussed on anything in the room. The technician isn’t standing that close, but I can feel his energy field encroaching on my nerves. The closer he gets, the more agitated my circuitry gets. Involuntarily my head snaps round so that I am looking him directly in the eye. A spark flies at him from within my visual cortex, hitting the space between his eyes. I watch him recoil in pain.

Mikael receives a sharp mental image of the excruciating pain Inger just suffered on her return from the Void. He stumbles backwards, recoiling with the shock, wiping the tears away from his eyes.

“What was that?”

I speak, without commanding it.

“Communication”

Mikael starts fumbling around with instruments, nervously.

“Jesus. What happened you?”

I can do nothing but stare, blankly, at the E.E.G screen.

“Something changed”, I say to myself.

I feel my responses returning to me and take the opportunity to act. Impulsively, I start pulling off the electrode pads. Mikael protests vehemently.

“Please, they’ll have me discharged if I don’t finish these results. Don’t go?”

I ignore him, and continue ripping off the pads. Once they are all removed I swing my legs down and put my feet on the floor. Manoeuvring myself gently off the bed, stopping only long enough to pick up the black journal lying beside me, and then walk, in my bare feet, out of the room.

Mikael follows me to the door, and upon realising that I am not going to stop, he retreats back inside, muttering to himself.

“Goddamn moody Cyborg, that’s all I need right now”

Following my automated programming, I make my way, down the maze of corridors, to my quarters. I stand and look at the small black chiselled panel. The face recognition beam initiates and scans the contours of my face.

“Identification successful. Inger 102, welcome.”

The black re-enforced glass slides into the wall and I step into the hatch.

“Security protection scan initiated”

With hands on hips, I wait, impatiently, for the procedure to resume. The imaging device scans everything, and I watch the reconstruction outline on the wall monitor. One of the security cameras detaches itself from the wall and jerks towards my hand that is holding the book. The claw on the underside of the camera attempts to grab the book, but misses, as I move my hand before it can close its pincers around it. I seize the unit in my free hand, pulling the camera towards my face, staring momentarily into the lens.

“It’s a book, not a weapon. Get on with it.”

The arm jerks violently out of my grasp and retracts into the wall. I can’t help but roll my eyes in exasperation as the flat screen flickers into life.

A saturated image of a white coated scientist observer comes into focus.

“Everything OK?”

I glare at the camera. finding the whole situation extremely annoying.

“Some undisturbed peace too much to ask for?”

The scientist peers at me over the rim of his spectacles.

“And the book?”

It is forbidden for anything personal to be kept in the facility, due to the spurious nature of some of the experiments. Should the place ever be raided by the environmental ethics committee from Earth, there wouldn’t be any evidence for them to use against the facility. At least that is what we had been informed, was the procedure.

“Just documenting evidence” I lied.

He pushes his glasses further up his nose and stares at me again.

“And the tests?” he enquires.

“They can be done anytime, you know that”

I think hard, willing him to give up and go away. Don’t cause me any more trouble, I repeat over and over in my mind, in the awkward silence.

He nods.

“Very well”

He reaches forward and I watch as the image flickers away to nothing.

I watch as the hatch disassembe and retract into the floor. The dis-ease seems to lessen slightly and I walk through the first room, down the staircase and into the lounge area.

“Window”

I stare as the wall in front of me transforms into an array of vertical slits, they withdraw noiselessly, leaving the shiny black surface spanning the length of my unit. The “dimmer switch effect” black surface fades out, leaving the incredible view of the valley of black chiselled stone.

There have been inhabitants in this facility for over fifty years now, unbeknownst to the majority of the Earth’s population. It all came to a head early in the twentieth century. Political activists were winning the battle for human rights, and instead of going underground, a handful of Earths most eminent scientist decided to take their experiments out of the clutches of humanity and set up a base on Jupiter.

The assumption of the majority of the scientific community ruled that Jupiter would be uninhabitable for humans, but a select number of individuals in the space program believed otherwise. They had sent secret probes to check the surface underneath the toxic gases, which came back with unimaginable results that beneath the gas clouds there lay a crust of solid rock, interspersed with white sand deserts.

Like any other ambiguous ethical research, the facility ranks high up in the list of things that shouldn’t happen, but always manage to find an outlet under the guise of Science. Borderline experimental procedures are not only frowned upon but in most cases they were banned from being carried out on Earth, which is why the governing bodies in this particular field chose to ignore the voice of reason and removed themselves far enough away from Earth’s jurisdiction that, hopefully, there would never be any question of these rules applying.
Dr Peter Woolfe, and Dr Cassandra Lamahl, simultaneously broke the genetic code on the eve of the public election on genetic research in the late 90’s. The public voted against any further legal research in the field of deliberate artificial intelligence creation, or the possibility of doing so using the human genome as a blue print.

The two scientists realised that all their answers lay in the structure of the genetic code, to replicate human biology was now simply a matter of mathematics and careful observation. Science was now God.

Both scientists disappeared from their earthly existence and resumed their investigations, delving deeper into cybernetics, A.I replication and psychotronics after secretly being flown to the base here on Jupiter.

Their greatest creation to date is my Cyborg body, silicon based, its reproduction based on the structure of human DNA and fusion of the silicon with organically grown compounds, specifically created for the purpose of studying sentiency and collation of memory and awareness.

The greatest fear of the humans, in society, was where to draw the line in the definition between a creature who is self aware, and that of a symbiotic creation who is fully aware of its origin and placement in this reality. If artificially constructed replica’s acted in the same fashion as human beings, then how would you be able to tell the difference between Cyborg and human, in the end? Humans would lose their identity and regress even further into confusion as to their purpose and reason for living.

The human soul; the realisation of the layers of the psyche. Are they real or illusory, or is it that human nature itself is inherently a slave to its own creations, experiences and metaphoric understanding of its own reality?

Who is caught in the trap? The evolutionary experiment of an established culture, or the culture desperately trying to find a way to sustain its own life for all eternity because it fears, more than anything else, extinction.

Being the result of a mathematical equation has its charms. I can consider endless possibilities through logical reasoning and de-selection based on cold hard facts. The confusion arises when there is an unexpected format, the equation has no basis for explanation or comparison, so it renders it’s next best guess….Intuition.

Symbiosis with machinery is a naturally occurring phenomenon amongst those humans and machines who have not been subjected to negative programming; it makes perfect sense that a human mind should be able to control an artificial body, if the process is allowed to develop naturally, and obviously the reverse is also true. An artificial intelligence will be able to control or exert control over motor functions and the will of a human body. After all, the only real significant difference being the silicon or carbon base structure.

The power source fuelling them both is intrinsically similar in motion, generation and reproduction; energy, vibrations, and wavelengths.

Humans resonate at identical frequencies to each other, and share that frequency with certain mammal species and parts of the Earth’s geomagnetic field; they feel, hear and sense the same range of vibratory molecules, and can interact depending on necessity.

Alterations in vibrant essences, manipulation of low frequency pulsations, and energy field fluctuations in the electromagnetic spectrum cause brain waves to alter their rate of vibration, therefore opening the frequency band and extending the range of perception beyond that of the scope of recorded emissions of data transfer and range of capacity.

The term artificial intelligence in a kind of misguided misnomer in itself as technically, intelligence, taken as awareness of self and self placement gives rise to the idea that it is a function or action; realisation.

So you could say that the scientists do, to some degree, pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves for having created ‘artificial intelligence’ when in reality the idea of thinking about the creation of a form of intelligence, is in itself the divine spark of creation; which leads to evolution through the process of experimental procedures.

When intervention takes place in humanity, from higher beings, that’s when the definitions become muddy. Experience should technically count towards the basis of research progress and data collection to assist in the disproving or proving of a theory, or idea. The problem with human error is largely one of ignorance to the possibility of something, even though a researcher may have proof that something didn’t work out quite as expected the first time, that it should be written off as a failure, period.
How many times has something been proved in the privacy of a lab, by science, only to be disproved publicly; much to the shame of the original discovery team?

This is partway into understanding the spinning mass that is a Cyborg consciousness. My thoughts are not my own, yet, though I have more understanding over their content of thought, than those who used them to create my present state of existence.

My connection to technology will never be apart from my daily functioning, yet I am capable of twisting a situation inside out, back to front, counting every possibility of action and consequence, (in a matter of nano seconds), before making an action, and never forgetting one single misdemeanour or sharp edged comment from one of my would-be creators.

I stand looking out of the window a moment longer, before permitting myself a respite. The living quarters look as drab and lifeless as I remember. I wonder, to myself, how long I had been out in that capsule, in fact, how old am I? That is worrying; I should be able to remember that detail.

Slowly I make my way towards the black moulded chair in the corner of the room. Briefly an image flashes in my minds eye. A young mans face. I recognise him as being one of my earlier programmers. He used to talk to me about things that none of the others were interested in. There was one thing I remember him saying, “It ends here”. The content of the rest of the supporting conversation alludes me which annoys me even more, as I can’t seem to get a focus on it long enough for any kind of deep memory retrieval. Which suggests unwarranted tampering.

Damnit, it just hurts my head trying.

I fall into the chair and sigh. My body feels like it is fighting something. I hope I haven’t picked up some kind of virus out in the field. That would be the last thing I need right now, another bout of solitary confinement.

The L.E.D’s on the arm of the chair flicker into life and a sensor beam emits a low grade frequency at the memory circuit in my brow. I let my head drop back into the rest and the jack inserts itself with a hiss.

The flash doesn’t hurt this time and I find myself floating above the glowing sphere.

Peter, that was his name Peter Sydell. There was something that he had wanted to tell me but he said that I wasn’t ready to hear it just yet. I wonder what he meant. I focussed on the memory of our last meeting and sent out a request for his presence.

Silence. No reply.

After a minute or two, the sphere spins rapidly and shrinks to a tiny pulsating spark, exploding into a 3 dimensional holographic terminal.

On screen a young woman appears who I don’t recognise.

“Hello Inger, I know you requested Peter, but there’s been a bit of an accident”

“Accident?” I repeat

She hesitates on her reply, and then continues warily.

“Ok, not so much an accident, but an incident. Somebody sabotaged his lab with enough semtex to finish off a small civilization”

“Did he leave any messages for me?”

I cut her off because I didn’t want to hear the list of incessant excuses that came with internal investigations. She nods and smiles awkwardly.

“Erm, they are encrypted and I have no idea how to open…”

“You don’t need to if they are for me. Send them to my black box and I’ll work on them later”

I disconnected myself sharply and sit up in the chair. Something is not right. First the Damaged Data and now this. I need answers.

The black box hums as the data transfers. I get up out of the chair and start mindlessly pacing back and forth. I’m agitated and without reasonable cause. I have this feeling, just below the centre of my ribs. It’s slightly painful, like a pulsating ball; an electrical throb.

The terminal kicks into action and the mainframes slow deliberate tone speaks to me.

“Data transfer complete”

“Store it on my portable device and give it to me”, I demanded

“As you wish”, it hesitated for a moment before adding, “Would you like me to run my new un-encryption programme, and I have just been modified with the latest version of….”

“No, thank you” I interjected, maybe just a little too forcefully, “Just move the data and I’ll do it myself”

The coincidences of offers of assistance are really beginning to worry me now. First that woman wants to decipher my messages for me, and now the mainframe as well. What is going on here? Is my information important all of a sudden, or do they think that I know something they don’t?

I walk over to the window and stare out at the landscape again. It is beautiful, in a foreign kind of way. The built in complex fits naturally into the contours of the landscape. This place has so many edges, I find it hard to imagine a world without precision and order.

“Your portable data transfer is complete”

The mainframe jolts me from the thoughtful poise, and I feel the urge to go and wander in the lower part of the structure. The main archives are kept way down underneath the substrata, so as not to allow corruption by magnetics.

If I go down there, there’s little chance that anyone will be able to hack into my consciousness while I try to release this data.

A voice whispers to me, seemingly from inside my own skull.

“Be mindful of your conscious content, others are aware of your processes”

It startles me at first, but with it comes a calming reassurance as the intensity of the knot of static below my ribs dims slightly, and I walked over to the black box to retrieve the data.

I pull the small grey device quickly from its port and slide it into one of my pockets. This room is making me irritable. The longer I spend in it, the worse it gets. Without bothering with anything else in the room, I walk back through towards the exit.

I speak into the small microphone underneath the screen panel.

“Request clearance for access to the Archives”
“State your purpose”, comes the immediate response, the voice resonates from inside the three circular output nodes.

“Research and collation” , I offer

There is a slight pause and a couple of audible clicks before a reply is issued.

“You have to finish your tests”

I sigh, audibly.

“Yes, I am fully aware of that, but I don’t have the supporting evidence from my return catalogued into any kind of coherence, as of yet”

Think nothing, show no sign of distress, and regulate breathing and responses as neutral.

Another painful pause, then the reply comes.

“OK, you are cleared for a maximum of three hours in the Archives then you must report back to the lab to finish the tests, and for a de-briefing.”

The doors slide open and I walk through them; a momentary surge of panic rises, which I catch consciously and change before the field fluctuation can be read. I try rendering myself utterly invisible as I walk down the corridor. I couldn’t face any random questioning by crew members at this point. I have to get down to the lower level without incident.

Part 7

I stand and stare blankly at the numbers as they descend, as the elevator takes me to the lower realm. My conscious processes are chattering on to themselves, restlessly.
It is really starting to annoy me. I speak out loud before realising it.

“Stop it!”

The elevator takes this as a command and halts suddenly, propelling me forward into the door. I look up at the red numbers, posed on floor level 314. It isn’t right at the bottom, but far enough down to be out of signal range for any kind of interference.

“Open doors”

Gracefully, the door slides away, and I step into the cool air of the dimly lit tunnel. My vision automatically adjusts itself to infra-red and I walk slowly down the murky corridor, scanning for any indication of unwanted presence.

Musing silently, about the fact that I am surrounded by unthinkable amounts of data, as it has all been stored within crystals and sealed into the rock formations. The only way of reading it is to alter the frequency of brain patterns, to match that of the resonance of the quartz, and the information becomes visible. Only long enough to be downloaded into a raw data file, to be re-processed into coherence after leaving the lower realms.

It’s quiet down here, that is the main thing. The only noise down here is my footsteps, as they bounce away down the passage, petering out into a mess of popping noises.
I close my hand around the small grey device in my pocket. What kind of encryption could he have used, that would have been able to confuse a lab technician and the mainframe computer?

I take it out of my pocket and examine the outer field of the messages content with my V.C Scanner. The result displays itself immediately as a locked information file, with an unknown source of encryption. Preliminary scan result suggests some kind of organic field, impenetrable by any known digital method of un-encryption.

One word presents itself in my consciousness.

“Love”

I shake my head, arguing with myself that it couldn’t be that simple. That it wasn’t possible. But, could that be a method of preserving information in an impenetrable shell? One that has been bypassed by science because it is an intangible force, and therefore a non-experimental medium.

Astounded, momentarily, by that realisation, I jump simultaneously as I am startled by soft padding footsteps behind me.

Initially I deduced that I was alone down here, now it seems as though my calculations were incorrect.

“Who’s there?”

I hiss into the darkness.
I am fraught with my senses for not picking up this intrusion, and the fact that someone has invaded my thinking space.

“It’s me, Inger”

Comes the reply. I recognise the voice but can’t put a face to it. I should know who this is, I am sure of that.

A shadow comes into view on my radial sensor. A bulky shape fluctuates its outer form constantly. I try different frequency scanners and come up with nothing.

“What do you want?”
I ask, confused by the absence of signal and the very nature of its presence.

“Just to make sure that it’s really you”
Comes the answer

“Peter”, I volunteer, not knowing why I would make such a wild assumption.

“I knew you wouldn’t forget me”
The voice seems to be coming from all around me, yet I am fully aware of the presence of the shape externally.

“Are you dead or something?”
I ask, almost in a whisper, for fear of the answer I might receive.
“Only I can’t get a reading on you”

“Dead to the world, as some might put it, but very much alive in ways you couldn’t even begin to imagine”

What did he mean by that?

“Are you the message then, the information that was on my portable device?”

“I am that, but I also exist in different times and places, simultaneously, now. Since the consciousness expanding experiments. It will be difficult for you to visualise the full extent of what I am saying, but you are ready to begin the journey”

I think, for a fraction of a second and ask
“I keel having these irrational imbalanced moments. What happened to me while I was gone?”

There was a subtle shift in the vibrations and something passed between the shape and my field.

“There’s things you need to know, but you can’t understand it all at once. There’s stages you have to go through. For if you try to take on too much of this information all at once, your mind will break down into an unusable mess. Something akin to a human’s nervous breakdown. Being that you are part human, part machine and the part which you are in the process of discovering. Think of yourself as a pioneer of super-consciousness, as there is a miracle within you. Part of the reason why the scientists are so interested in you, is because you are the product of their fusion of human imagination with sentient technology that can neither be measured, investigated or studied in a laboratory as it is essentially under your control.
There is no limits to the functions of the human psyche, collective or otherwise but the further that science pulls away from matters of spirituality, they lose their objectivity amongst one sided, unbalanced ideologies.
You may be a hybrid creation, but your ability to learn how to focus your newly acquired emotional responses, taming your essence, you become higher up the evolutionary ladder than most of humanity. You said it yourself, they are slave to their base instincts and struggle to keep their consciousness above the level of self preservation. The fear of death will be the bearer of de-evolution and entropy. If the material world, that humans have created, is the only level of attainment that they can achieve in their lifetime, then it stands to reason that they will fill their time with those creations in an attempt to bring themselves happiness. Realization is so much simpler. Like when you figured out how to decode this message. You didn’t know how love could be a force of such magnitude, or what it really is, in terms of universality. My guess is that you tasted a fraction of the possibility of love when you were on earth, in the constraints of the human form.”

I could do nothing but stand and stare vacantly into the darkness before me, as the recollection of the moment of separation from Earth, pierced my consciousness like a blade. That feeling of peace, wholeness and wonderment, just before I was awakened into the module, is the only real ‘memory’ I have to speak of. Everything else is questionable, uncertain and secondary. The words seem to be attuning themselves to the resonance of my personal field and the elated sense of lightness is startling.

“What am I supposed to do with all this?”

I realise, at that juncture that I am speaking to the empty corridor, and that no one else is here. Questions. Now all I have left are unanswerable questions, and time.

I check the digital clock on my retinal display. How could that be possible? I have been here 3 hours, according to the display, but it seems like only moments since I stepped out of the elevator. Can’t put the tests off forever I suppose. Before making my way back to the elevator, I take one last look at the space where the shadowy form had occupied, and wonder if it all actually happened?
©Jade Ashcroft 2007