I woke in total darkness.
Yes, I woke up again.
I wished someone would turn on a light. Then, there was light - a total white brightness, but I didn’t feel pain in my eyes. I tried to lift my hand, but nothing happened.
Carol, a masculine-seeming voice echoed in my head.
No, you don’t have a head, so my voice is not echoing in it. You can speak, just think the words.
God? I asked.
No, there is no one here called God.
Where the fuck am I now? I thought angrily.
You’re here with us, a feminine voice lilted, in The Realm of Conscience.
Yes, she lilted, damn it, in my head.
Two sighs.
No head, said the male again.
You mind explaining? I’m afraid I shrieked a little.
Okay…
Okay is American slang, I know that much at least, I thought TO MYSELF.
Yes, we are speaking American, said the female. Rather, you’re interpreting American from our projections into your conscience.
They weren’t visible to me, but I sure felt like they’d glanced at each other.
No head, no brain, no eyes, said the male.
I took a deep breath. No, I imagined taking a deep breath.
Better. You’re starting to understand, the female said.
Understand what? And while you’re explaining, why don’t you introduce yourselves?
An excellent idea. I am Derek, and this is my sister, Paige.
You are in The Realm of Conscience, Carol, which is where we reside.[13] We are the ones who’ve been fucking with your life, admitted Paige.
You’re gods, I stated.
No.
There’s no one here called ‘God’? I asked.
No. There are no gods here.
It’s possible a personality existed here before us, perhaps many, throughout the past, but they must all have allowed themselves to dissolve into the Communal Conscience at one time or another. There’s no one called God here now. There’s no way for us to know if any gods existed here at another point in time, but we are the only ones here now.
What are you, then?
Once, like yourself, we lived on a planet, but our planet had two suns, and their orbits were decaying, said a new voice. Female. I am Kwyan.
And? I prompted.
I was a ruler of the planet, along with three others, during my adult life. We ruled long, and when I died, by some fluke, my conscience didn’t disperse in to the Communal Conscience like all others. My conscience remained intact here.
Kwyan continued. I struggled with what to do with myself, and while I struggled, I realized that this is where the dead come. Not their bodies, but whatever animates them. You call it ‘conscience, personality, soul, essence, spirit’. We had similar ideas about this phenomenon.
The Communal Conscience is all around us. Where we are, we call The Realm of Conscience.
Where are you? I thought at her.
We can be anywhere in the Communal Conscience, and wherever we are, that is The Realm.
The one named Paige spoke again. I don’t know how I was able to tell the difference between them, but now I was starting to. We witness the souls as they enter the Communal Conscience and… you might say ‘go into solution’ here. Think of conscience as a sugar cube. Think of Communal Conscience as water, and the personalities dissolve into it when they get here.
When a creature is born, the necessary amount of personality separates from the Communal Conscience and enters the newborn. Each type of creature requires a different volume of conscience. You’d be surprised how much conscience a single cat has.
Oh yeah, I thought, the Mek understand that cats have soul, alright.
Yes, they do. This was definitely Paige. With each personality I sensed a different… flavor… in my mind.
We held you together every time you died, and found you suitable fresh corpses to inhabit.[14] We’re holding you together now. Derek, this time.
To what end? I wondered.
To affect change, of course, Kwyan said.
Are you sure you know what you’re doing? I was feeling a bit peeved, and not at all corporeal. I couldn’t move or feel anything.
Certainly. This was Derek again. He sounded a little miffed in reaction. We see the past, present, and future. We affect changes in each.
I’m not sure that’s Kosher. What gives you the right?
We have a strict and rational morality, developed among a people whose planet became increasingly unstable. To be immoral meant death to yourself or someone else. There were, therefore, no choices in this matter, especially near the end. This was a new voice.
Who are you? I asked petulantly.
Vagn.
Okay… folks, say I take your words for all this. Why me?
We tested many species, including humans. We chose humans because your morality was similar to ours, though primordial at best, and most of you choose to ignore correctness when this suits. Your planet was stable, so the consequences of your ignorance weren’t so severe, unlike with us. You developed a penal code and ethical values. Most of you understood a gross interpretation of right and wrong, though most of you did not define, illuminate, and champion the subtleties.
Why are you speaking in the past tense?
We experience no sense of time here, Carol. Do not be alarmed, Earth lasts a long time. Paige again.
Because the Nams cleaned up your stinking world, Derek sniffed.
Oh shit. I remembered. Jack.
I went into a sudden rage. I rampaged, and I don’t know how long the fit lasted, but when I finished, I was spent.
When I began paying attention again, I felt like I was floating, and space was all around me. Dim light bounced off dust particles. All around stars twinkled and galaxies twirled. Behind me was a huge, dense cloud. Well, there was no behind except the opposite of where my attention was focused. The cloud seemed to pulse and spasm in various parts of itself. Shockwaves disturbed the dust.
My field of vision consisted of all directions at the same time. The view was beautiful, but a little disturbing. The spasms and pulses seemed like contractions.
Kwyan spoke again. I began to explore my power…
Vagn interrupted her. Abilities, Mother, don’t scare the Earthling.
I swear Kwyan threw Vagn a look, but the picture in my head (conscience? mind?) was dust, reflected light, and the darkness of space, so how did I know this?
Every once in a while a pinpoint of light would appear. Some winked out while others remained steady. I stared hard at a few of them; I could “see” many at once, if I chose to.
… and I realized I could affect creatures - their thoughts. I put thoughts into their minds; I put thoughts into my son’s mind…
Carol, you’re not the only one.
Hush, son, I want to finish the narrative so we can get to the more important things. I moved Vagn to learn what he needed to know so that when he died, he would also be able to hold his conscience together here, in The Realm, with me.
More shock waves affected the dusty surroundings, pushing some of the fine seeming mist together into many clumps all around me. The clumps were reeling a little. They wobbled and awkwardly, slowly they began to spin.
Which worked, Paige was saying, and then they began to work on us.
Us? I wondered.
Kwyan said, Paige and Derek, and others whom you will not meet now, are my and my contemporaries’ descendants.[15] Our species would have died out if not for our intervention in their time.
I wondered why I had achieved the ability to hold my conscience intact after my death, when no one else seemed to have been able to. It must have been a fluke, because I was alone here then. Perhaps other flukes have occurred throughout eternity, others like us may have existed here before, we don’t know. They are not here now.
I manipulated Vagn, and when he died, he came here. I’d tried with others, but had no success
. Vagn had had the benefit of my mothering, my teaching, my guidance. None of the others had.
Vagn said, We had to find a way to create the mental evolution in others of our kind which mother and I had experienced…
Kwyan interrupted her son this time. We explored the possibilities…
Vagn said, …to enable them to remain intact here…
Kwyan said, …of causing them to learn what they needed to learn. We implemented the necessary circumstances, and then they began to improve on their own.
Vagn said, …in order to populate The Realm of Conscience with members of our own species.
We are able to perceive possible timelines, imagine alterations, and witness the effects. We wait as our chosen and altered timelines unfold in our minds, and follow them into the future. We compare these to the current, ongoing timeline, and choose what to effect in order to achieve our goals. We are privy to all possibilities, from any tiny point in time.
We imagined many events which might cause disruption in our own society. We explored all circumstances which might result in some of our people embracing our Way of morality more tightly. In this way we sought to save some of them in order to bring them here after they’d died, before the broken solar system we’d lived in collapsed.
We found one event which would create the circumstances we wanted, and we caused the event to happen.
The event was the crash landing of the Harald Sundaramoorthy on our planet, Carol.
We sent the ship to our system and it crash landed on our planet, before our times.
Three survivors brought their alien perceptions into our society, disrupted the inhabitants’ adherence to the Way, and caused a breach in our culture.
I sent Vagn back to Enistan, our planet. He resurrected a youthful corpse and spent that lifetime becoming revered as a follower of the Nartan Way. By the time the Royal Families were threatened, he had positioned himself so the youngest children would be brought to him. He raised them, and taught them the Nartan Way, as I had taught him.[16]
While events unfolded, happily, the children began to surpass us in their abilities.
Eventually, as we all do, they died. They were able to hold their consciences together here.
Paige added, We were able to recruit a few more before our planet succumbed to the forces which destroyed our world, our race, and our culture.
Okay. Good for you. I applaud your success. Now, what about me? I demanded. I was still floating and watching the swirling clumps of dust condense further, drawing the surrounding dust into themselves.
Vagn was the one to reply. We had several tasks for you, and you performed them as we expected. You affected several creatures, and the eventual evolution of higher consciousness in several species; the bugs slightly, and the blobs, eventually, and significantly. Your interaction with one of those strengthened his unorthodox - for his society - views, and he taught these differences to his offspring, and they to theirs. He spoke to anyone else who would listen and not condemn him for his strange thoughts. You affected Klon and the Mek and many of the aliens on that wretched ship, and later, those individuals affected several more and their civilizations. You affected Doc, Suri…
Enough, son. We will not reveal all to you, Carol.
I’ve been of significant help, I realized.
Yes. You were easy to influence.
I didn’t like that. I don’t like what you just said, I stated rather sternly. What gave you the right?
Would you rather have dissolved into the Communal Conscience? Derek asked.
I thought of Jack. The thought ached like the wound from a poisonous spear. If I had died as Carol, on Earth - my first death - I wouldn’t have experienced any of the rest.
Yes! I cried out. A spasm of pain seemed to rock me.
The dust spheres were spinning rapidly now. They’d become quite dense. At different times, they each stopped acquiring the dust around them but continued spinning, creating space around their rotating bodies. Several of the spinning balls still had dust surrounding close to them, and this began to settle into discs. I watched this for some time, until the last rotating body accomplished its feat.
No, I whispered.
Then I noticed movement beside me; a thing struggled there. I seemed to be back in the bright whiteness, but I was still aware of the dust balls rotating, dust discs revolving around some of them, their revolutions around pinpoints of bright light, and the darkness beyond. The dust balls seemed to be shrinking into themselves, condensing.
What is that? I asked, focusing on the struggling thing.
Deena, Paige replied. We chose the two of you, polar opposite human personalities, to determine who would be the stronger, the more successful.
You tested us.[17]
Yes. We observed that Deena would never be selfless, while you were rarely totally selfish. You tended to think of ways to benefit others, and accomplishing this made you happy. She wanted only to benefit herself, exclusive of others, and at their expense, and accomplishing that made her happy. You both behaved in predictable ways in every given situation.
You caused the whole nightmare.
Yes.
I asked you to let me stay with Jack. I begged you.
We tried everything, explored every possibility, reviewed every timeline and imagined all consequences. We couldn’t do it. Ghee had to die, to influence future events and effect further change.
Your imagination is weak, I thought angrily.
We are limited to the timelines that present themselves to us. We cannot create them.
Carol, we can give you more bodies, and you can initiate more changes for us, and benefit many creatures and many races. We are able to manipulate matter somewhat, enough to fix the broken parts that would continue to allow life to seep out, so that when we put you into these bodies, you will have an excellent chance to heal them.
You are so good at this, so predictably good.
We are offering you immortality and the ultimate adventure.
All I conceived of was loss. I ached from grief. They somehow perceived this.
You can affect so much more than loss, Carol. Lives can be saved. Cultures and even species can be enlightened. The enrichment of experience for so many, such leaps in understanding, in science, in morality, and…
You had no right! I screamed. Jack, I whispered. I had another galactic fit. My anger would not be sated. They gave up trying to console me.
I floated, gazing about me. Attraction, coalescence, spin, gravity, density, chemistry, atmosphere. The dense, spinning spots became planets right before my eyes, and I recognized the blazing bright spots had been suns. The solar systems were all repellant of each other and began to incrementally move away from each other.
I’d become calm again.
You’ve been in this star-forming region for hundreds of billions of years, Paige said quietly. We experience no time here.
We’re in the spiral arm of an eventual galaxy which has no biological life yet, Derek said. Soon, though.
We thought you’d like the view, Paige murmured.
I felt humbled now, and exhausted.
I do. Thank you for everything. For all the experiences I wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t interfered. I’m tired and I need to rest, and I’m hurt and I need to heal.
They seemed to be conferring. I rested. I cleared my… mind.
Carol Eugenia Shapley is dead, Kwyan said. She must remain dead. Even her death had ramifications; she won’t be coming back. But we can put you in a different human body, whose life was… inert, if you will, back in your time if you like, or any other. You can have a full, human life. Your inhabitation of any body we choose for you will have positive ramifications for humanity, more so than if the body had simply died. The tradeoff will be acceptable, but we will not allow you to make any changes to the differences we’ve caused you to make in your… travels. We will not send you back to the species in the times you’ve already experienced, except for your own.
We perceive no destructive changes you can make there. Alternatively, you can chose to dissolve into the Communal Conscience and be no more.
What about Deena?
She won’t plague you again. She will be allowed to dissolve into the Communal Conscience. Throughout the rest of time, the various, shall we say, atoms, of her conscience will be gathered with the… particles of others to create a variety of different personalities for a multitude of new beings.
But she will never be Deena again.
However, others live, have existed, and will be born who are also brutally insane.
There are many like her in every place and at every time. We don’t have control over the making of souls. They seem random to us.
Kwyan spoke. You are so utterly predictable. Even at this stage, you worry about the fate of your nemesis.
Predictably, I suppose, I said, I’ll take it - the human body in my time, but I don’t want to hear from you again. I did a lot for you, apparently, and you didn’t ask for my consent. I’m very angry with you, and I won’t have you manipulating me any more. I want a life that is my own.
Your will is our command, rang out all their voices at once, and then I swear I heard those assholes laughing.
The End.
End Notes
[1] Alien Purgatory
[2] Alien Purgatory
[3] Alien Purgatory
[4] Alien Purgatory
[5] Alien Purgatory
[6] Alien Purgatory
[7] Alien Purgatory
[8] Alien Purgatory
[9] Alien Purgatory
[10] Alien Purgatory
[11] Alien Purgatory
[12] Alien Purgatory
[13] Alien Faith
[14] Alien Purgatory
[15] Alien Faith
[16] Alien Faith
[17] Alien Purgatory
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