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▌ | _______________________________________________________________________________
”What did you see?”
Davon was staring silently at the blank white wall on the other side of the room, unmoving and quiet as he sorted through his thoughts, chaotic as they were. Of the myriad of voices competing for space in his head, two remained the loudest. The first contemplated his rather short experience with death and the curiosity of it. He had died, he was sure. He’d been told as much by those present when he returned. And although he could not remember or recall the time of his passing or what it was like, he knew full well what he had been made to witness afterward was no normal vision. An experience he could best describe as a dream in which he was fully aware but could not exert any influence on. A lucid dream, he tried to tell himself, even as it had at the time felt much more like a prison. The line between reality and fiction, past and present, had been so thoroughly blurred, it was as if it had never existed at all. He could not tell in the moment when the real world came to an end and the dream began or if there was ever a difference between the two. And at the end of it all, he was left with little more than what he could only assume was supposed to be a message. A message awash in impossible colors and tangled in a web of time he could not unravel, hiding a truth he was meant to understand.
The second voice described a simple wall opposite him. A solid white near perfect square bereft of any blemish. Standing sterile and immovable and bathed in the fluorescent light of the room. It was grounding, and for all the comfort that was to be had in the land of the living, he found himself an appreciation for the simplicity of a solid shape and a solid color. It was a quiet anchor, tethering him to the real world and he found himself clinging to it. For just under his eyes danced unending the chaotic noise gifted to him.
”Davon. What did you see?”
He chewed his tongue, closed his eyes and tried to concentrate, carefully allowing some of that dream to return to him. He coaxed forward a sliver of the vision through a parted sea of noise and color and time and focused on one of the few constants. Maybe the only constant: Of all the things he’d seen, there was ever only one of her.
”There was a… a woman.”
”Mother?”
”No…”He shook his head but furrowed his brow as if he were unsure, because although he knew the woman was not their mother, there was a strange feeling of familiarity to her that confused him. ”...Uh. Not her but… I feel like I know her or… I have known her. For forever.” Again he shook his head knowing full well whatever he said, no matter how he spun it, it wouldn’t make any sense. He continued nonetheless. ”I can’t quite make out her face but-”
Davon paused suddenly as he felt his still feeble grip on his mind begin to slip ever so slightly. The sliver he’d created in his mind’s eye through which he was carefully peering had cracked, and the information that poured through, all of which he still could not understand, created a wall of noise. It obfuscated the truth and made more difficult his attempt at seeing clearly the woman on the other side. He flinched but continued.
”I can see… pale skin and… bright, golden hair. There are slivers of silver light that... dance across her hair, the way light does when passing a candle… and behind her is the night sky but it’s different. It’s alive. The stars moving. Crashing into each other and flinging themselves into the dark. I can see twisting galaxies, spirals spinning endlessly and an infinity of colors mixing together to create new colors, ones I’ve never seen before… and all of this… through her eyes… I see it. Through her eyes.”
Davon’s chin tilted up and his eyes slowly opened to reveal pupils rolled into the back of his head.
”A dance. We dance. Across time. Across Space.”
”Davon?”
“Across a thousand deaths and a thousand lives. A thousand stars sparked between our touch. Between our fingers.”
“Woven. Intricate. Sheathed in the wrath of a supernova.”
”Davon!”
“I. Never. Stopped. Searching.”
Dina grabbed his hand, interrupting his dream and pulling him violently back to reality. His eyes rolled forward as his head snapped upright, and all the color and noise violating his senses fell away, replaced with the white wall across from him.
”Davon. What the fuck. What the fuck was that?,” she asked, watching him blink, take a steady breath and shake his head. When he finally turned away from the wall to look at her, she knew he’d see her horrified expression, but she could also see the exhaustion in his. Although he’d been out for a few days and was no doubt expected to be well rested, it was as if the small episode had taken its toll on him.
”I don’t know. I want to say it’s a message and I want to say that every test pilot before me probably got the same message, but for whatever reason, I’m the only one that message didn’t immediately kill. I don’t know why. All I can tell you for sure is that since then, I’m aware of this weight in my chest. It feels like it’s been there for a long time and it feels like a want… or a need. I’m not sure. And I’m not sure whether or not it’s my want or need.”
“I do know it feels more possessive. That whatever belonged to it… whatever belongs to me. I want it back.”
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▌ | ______________________________..........
> ⟒⨀ init.transfer (protocol//mirrorline.secure)
...establishing stream...
...sync:complete.
> failsafe_activation.
> current_position: 17°03′26.44″S 28°55′38.21″E
eritus::shodea::talour::05:43
> recording_location → worldnet.node23.alpha
command.relay_app/e. |
|
.........
...
last name, first name
135
xxxx
...
...
...
_____________
