She hated herself even as she said it.
Chapter 2
His heart had stopped again yesterday, Mom said. Pax had nodded. It was becoming a routine report. Nothing to worry about.
Pax considered his laptop screen.
Some idiot online was mocking Pax’s theories about the astral plane, saying that until seeing solid proof that he could understand, he wasn’t going to buy into some kid’s fantasy world.
Pax had only a few more minutes before he met with Terry again.
Pax’s nostrils flared. His fingers and wrists ached. He cracked his joints absently and then typed furiously.
“Since when has understanding been essential to science? Science is littered with perfectly rational explanations for everything from the aether to phrenology to phlogiston, none of which were true. Whereas we have no real idea how gravity works or why water behaves as it does. This hardly stops us from studying their behavior or from developing new technology using what we observe. But, more importantly, since when has your understanding been essential to anything? I mean, what do you know about anything, except how to leave sarcastic comments on a website?”
His mouse pointer hovered over the Post button, but he didn’t click it.
If things didn’t work out with Terry today, it might be the last thing he ever posted: a flaming response to a troll. He didn’t want his memory to be marred with such pettiness, but it was hard when confronted by idiots like this.
If there were any justice in the world, he’d be able to post the comment and get a round of applause. If there were any justice in the world, he’d be able to say it to the guy’s face at a conference. If there were any justice in the world, he’d live a full life and not only be able to teach people about the astral plane, but learn how to use it to stop all earthly life from burning itself up. He was finding out more every day. Sharks…naked mole rats…sequoias…cypress trees…ancient quahogs…the hydra species Turritopsis dohrnii…
The secrets of immortality—or at least to the lifespan they all should be having, which he estimated to be around five hundred years minimum—were there to be discovered. Give him another fifty years, and he would crack it.
But there wasn’t any justice in the world.
He deleted the comment.
He was going to die. Soon. The rate of calcification on his heart muscles had increased, triggering more and more heart attacks, which drained his energy, burning him up faster than before.
Pax almost always felt tired, but now he felt exhausted, drained of the willpower he would need to convince this idiot to consider Pax’s ideas fairly. It was doubtful, even if he had the energy, that he could. According to his research, most people imprinted on one perspective on life—one paradigm—based on their early life experiences, and locked themselves into those beliefs for the rest of their lives. It took enormous effort to change this, and most people didn’t bother. Even those who did bother could only do it once, perhaps twice, in the best of cases. The universe was vastly mysterious but the human brain couldn’t function with that many unknowns. Something human beings would have to change if they wanted to unlock the secrets of longevity. But that was a problem for another day.
He started to type something else, but his lungs clamped down on him, not even able to pull in enough air to gasp. He closed his eyes and waited for the spasm to pass.
It had to pass. He still had a chance if it passed.
Last night he’d received a message from Terry that he’d had another idea—a risky one, but one that might save Pax’s life. Having hope was hard. Hope exhausted him even more quickly than normal. And when the hope came to nothing—as it so often did—he’d waste the energy he did have on anger and regret.
He was supposed to travel to the astral plane to meet Terry at three o’clock.
It was two fifty-eight now.
Pax’s lungs crushed in tighter. He could feel his body shutting down. Two more minutes was all he needed, if he could just have it.
He’d sent a jumbled message to Scarlett this morning, saying he’d be traveling to meet Terry at four so she wouldn’t distract him when he had to go. Now he regretted the deception. It was irrational to feel he might never step back into this body again, but the emotion still gripped him beyond all rationality. He couldn’t control it.
Now he wanted her there to at least say good-bye.
His heart rate picked up again. He was starting to have another attack. If he was going to go, he had to go now.
He closed his browser tabs, saved the document he’d been working on (a paper theorizing that astral energy was the dark energy holding the universe together; he wasn’t sure of it because he couldn’t do the experiments himself, but he had hopes it would trigger someone else to look into it later—in order to prove him wrong, if nothing else,) and shut down his laptop.
After a few seconds, he closed the screen and pushed the laptop swing table away. He was panting now, despite the work of the O2 machine. No more time. He had to go.
His heart clenched.
I’m not done yet. I know this life, this earth. I’m used to it here; I’m not done!
He closed his eyes, focused on the distant sparks of light that appeared above him like stars—not real stars, but nexuses of energy—and released his awareness toward them. He separated from his body easily, like a balloon with a cut string.
For a moment he glanced back. The heart monitor was going ape shit and the nurses outside his room were getting up, tossing their pens onto their paperwork. Everything looked like it was moving in slow motion.
Just outside his doorway, Scarlett was watching him.
She’d come early.
He smiled and he watched as his body, twitching and shaking on the bed, smiled too. He looked back at Scarlett.
She wasn’t watching his body. She was watching him, the real Pax, floating up toward the ceiling, traveling to the astral plane. How could she do that? Even Terry didn’t know.
She waved a tiny, secret wave at him and ducked out of the doorway as the squad of nurses pounded through.
He waved back, suddenly more hopeful, though he wasn’t sure whether she saw him or not—wasn’t even sure what “waving back” meant in this context. Then he left earth behind.
Terkun’shuks’pai felt the boy travel through the empty space between the planes, the mana pacha. Reaching out for the boy’s astral energy, Terkun’shuks’pai pulled it toward him.
He was in his usual place, a pacha he’d created and modified across the eons. It was distant from the White City, the capital of the astral plane, and far removed from the politics and idiocy of that beautiful, but often impractical, place.
Earth was Terkun’shuks’pai’s obsession. It always had been and now…
Now it was much, much more important.
He looked over his pacha as he waited. His pacha was an imitation of something he’d found on Earth three hundred years before, as the boy counted such things. A valley next to a mountain, and in the center of it, a humble house made of thin wood and paper, built solely for the purpose of serving tea. On Earth, the valley was said to be haunted by suicides, but if any ghosts were in the pacha, they were of a different nature.
It was a peaceful spot, inviting reflection and vision: it heightened Terkun’shuks’pai’s awareness of both the impermanence of all things and the nearly infinite stretch of the astral time scale, which was longer than that of universes. It had trees and plants, birds and animals. Streams and hot springs were filled pools of still, steaming water that reflected the clouds, the leaves, almost the wind itself. It was as real as he could make it, which was very real indeed.
It even had biting mosquitoes. Without flaws, perfection could be oppressive.
Considering what he was asking the boy to do, it was fitting they meet
at the place Terkun’shuks’pai valued most, to show they were both going to take risks, although he couldn’t expect the boy to understand the subtleties of the invitation.
Terkun’shuks’pai concentrated and was in the center of his pacha, in his tea house, kneeling on the thick-woven rice mats, dressed in simple, layered silk robes. He clenched his fists briefly. It always unsettled him when he first manifested in a more physical form. He made the form as accurate as could be done, and having a heart was disconcerting, let alone feeling it racing. He took several deep breaths.
Most astral beings avoided physical manifestation altogether. Terkun’shuks’pai found it a useful state of being: both limiting and freeing.
Limiting because his senses were reduced to that of the physical, his body to that of the mortal. Freeing because those senses were so much richer. When he was in a physical form, the peace of his pacha seemed more than an abstraction: like a honeyed fluid, thick and delicious. His thoughts seemed more focused, more authoritative. His hopes were more solid, his visions almost guaranteed.
The solidity of the physical was an illusion, but one he sometimes craved beyond all reason.
Birds sang; the wind blew through the trees. The boy—whose name, Pax, meant peace—slowly solidified in front of Terkun’shuks’pai. He waited. The robes under his loosely held fists felt soft to the touch but were roughly woven from blue and white threads. On a small charcoal brazier set into a hole in the floor, water was heating, hissing in the heavy iron pot.
In front of him were the tools he needed to make the tea: the whisks, the bowls, the cracked clay container filled with white powder. Another idea he had borrowed from the Japanese: kintsukuroi, the art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer sprinkled with powdered gold, making the broken bowl or cup more beautiful than it had been when first made. He remembered the day he had deliberately broken his tea holder and then forced himself to repair it by hand, shard by shard.
In the physical plane of Earth, the boy’s heart had stopped, and his physical body was now surrounded by other humans attempting to bring him “back to life”—as they ignorantly called their mortal state.
“Hello, Terry,” the now-present Pax said, using the shortened version of Terkun’shuks’pai’s name. Terkun’shuks’pai let it pass. It was irritating but didn’t matter in the larger scheme of things. Pax was sitting cross-legged on the rice mats, dressed in informal mortal clothes.
Terkun’shuks’pai had chosen to appear as a broad-shouldered, mixed-race, bald man dressed in Japanese robes. His outfit matched the rest of the pacha, its colors those of the forest and pools and rock gardens and teahouse.
Terkun’shuks’pai cleared his throat. “In this place, you remove your shoes.”
Pax raised his eyebrows but untied the shoes—an affectation, Terkun’shuks’pai knew. In the physical plane the boy was bedridden and never wore anything on his feet.
Pax put the shoes to the side. “You… you said you had an idea. About how to save me.”
“I do.”
Pax waited, and when nothing more was forthcoming, demanded, “What is it?”
“I am afraid there isn’t much time,” Terkun’shuks’pai admitted. “Your body is quite fragile.”
“Yeah,” Pax said. “It’s having a heart attack right now. Glad I’m not in it, to tell the truth.”
Terkun’shuks’pai smiled politely. “Indeed. I understand it is quite painful.”
The boy stared at his hands. Here, in the astral plane, his hands were large and rough, covered with scars and scraped knuckles. The nails were chewed, and the skin on his palms was callused. They were the hands of a boy who worked, played, had experiences, wounds. The rest of his created body was similarly detailed. The boy longed for an active life rather than one so limited to the mind.
“I’m dying now, Terry,” Pax said. “So if you have an idea, tell me!”
Terkun’shuks’pai bowed his head. “As you wish. But first, I need to serve you some tea.”
“Tea?” The boy’s forehead wrinkled. “Now? I don’t have time for tea. I don’t even like tea!”
“I think you will feel differently about this kind.”
Pax looked ready to argue, but he looked around helplessly and shrugged. “Fine. Whatever.”
The boy’s form flickered: his physical body had been severed from his astral energy. His mortal body was dead, though Pax wouldn’t know it for a while yet. The boy would start fading soon, but not so soon that there wasn’t time for the ceremony, and a chance at change.
Terkun’shuks’pai folded his hands in his lap for a moment out of respect, and then began making the tea, pouring the hot water, scooping a small ladle full of white powder into the water, and mixing it into the tea bowl. The kintsukuroi container of white powder was real—at least, in the context of this pacha—but the powder inside was not; it was merely a symbol.
But it was a potent symbol, one that would give him permission to do what was necessary to the boy’s physical body, back on Earth. It was more important for the boy to drink the tea than to understand, or even agree, to what Terkun’shuks’pai had to do to save the boy.
Terkun’shuks’pai replaced the clay lid on the container of powder and took up the bamboo whisk, carefully stirring the tea until the white powder dissolved. He scraped the whisk along the edges of the tea bowl, making sure none of the powder remained, and tapped the whisk against the bowl three times. Setting the whisk on the floor, he balanced it on its flat handle.
He handed the bowl to the boy, bowing to him.
Pax took the bowl and bowed back, not as deeply as he would have if he had been familiar with the customs related to the ceremony, and then straightened up and sipped from it.
“What is this?”
“Is it to your liking?”
The boy sipped again and then tipped the bowl up and drank it greedily, draining it to the last drop. A thin line of viscous white tea rolled down the side of his mouth; he caught it on a finger and licked the finger.
“It’s delicious.” He put the bowl down in front of him and stretched, putting his hands on his knees. The bones in his back popped. He opened his jaw and stretched it, wiggling it from side to side, then closed it, and breathed in deeply, until his lungs were full to bursting. “That was part of it, wasn’t it?”
Terkun’shuks’pai smiled again, this time with genuine pleasure. “You have always had great intelligence, Pax. You are correct; that was part of what I must do to save you. Your mortal body is too weak to endure. And I am unable to repair the extent of damage it has suffered. So we must replace it.”
“Replace it?”
“With astral material.”
Pax looked down into the empty bowl. “That white stuff in the tea.”
Terkun’shuks’pai nodded.
“When I go back… I’ll have a new body. An… astral body?”
“We will build one together, yes.”
“My mortal body will be dead.”
Terkun’shuks’pai nodded again.
“I’ll be dead.”
Terkun’shuks’pai waited.
The boy shook his head. “Only my body will be dead. I’ll be alive.” The boy’s blue-gray eyes seemed to spark with understanding. “I’ll be able to live. Let’s do it!”
Terkun’shuks’pai raised a hand. “There are a few issues we must discuss.”
“What’s to discuss? I’ll be alive!”
Terry smiled. “I will need to come with you at first, Pax, to ensure your astral body and your physical form will bond with each other. It may be an extensive process, lasting for more than an earthly year.”
“I wouldn’t mind that. Spend a year with you? Think of what I could learn. What you could teach me.” The boy was grinning. He picked up the bowl and rubbed a fin
ger around the inside, sweeping up the last few drops of liquid. He sucked on the finger.
“I did not expect that condition to be… something that would require you to consider for long.” Terkun’shuks’pai paused. “However, there is a condition you will not accept as easily. Political issues in the White City have kept me from traveling to your plane previously. We have discussed a few of them.”
The boy nodded.
“Our leaders have agreed to allow me to help you, but only on one condition.”
“What?”
The heart monitor in Pax’s room went silent.
Everything went silent.
Scarlett sat on a molded plastic chair outside Pax’s room with her head in her hands, trying to stop crying. She didn’t want to let him go.
A long time ago, he’d said that when it was clear he was actually dead, he’d just let his spirit float up to the astral plane. His consciousness wouldn’t be lost. It wouldn’t just end. He wouldn’t really be dead, just somewhere else.
It didn’t help.
Pax was hers, damn it. He belonged with her. Not in some weird astral plane.
With her.
So when the sound of the heart monitor cut out from Pax’s room, she was pissed.
“Pax! You asshole!” she shrieked. She was up and out of the chair, skidding around the corner without even a pair of latex gloves on.
The nurses and doctors around him were strangely unmoving. She pushed past them to stand next to Pax. He wasn’t breathing.
She screamed at him. “You can’t die. I won’t let you die!”
And then she hit him in the chest. Slammed him with both fists together.
His chest didn’t move. It was like hitting a brick.
“Pax!”
His chest was white; they’d slit open his hospital gown again. The edges of his hoodie were hanging open. The lights over the bed were turned all the way up. She blinked. She could see every colorless hair on his skin. She could see his nipples.