The Enlightened (Mind Dimensions #3)(63)

And then, as the pain of the stab wound slowly registers, my world goes completely black.





Chapter 22





The world isn’t just black. The world isn’t here.

I can’t hear anything. I can’t smell anything. I don’t have any awareness of my body, not even things like my face or the top of my head. Because of this lack of body sensation, I also can’t tell where I am in relation to anything else, nor if I’m lying down or standing up. Nothing. I can best describe this feeling as a sort of floating sensation, though that’s a crude approximation, since when you float, you know exactly where you are. You just feel weightless. Whereas the best way to describe my current state would be as nonexistent.

Did the knife kill me? What I feel is how a disembodied ghost might feel, if such a being existed. But that’s silly. I couldn’t have died from the knife wound. That’s not how getting killed in the Quiet works. After getting killed, I’m supposed to return to my body in the real world, albeit regrettably Inert.

This is not that. The knife didn’t even get far enough into my body to kill me before whatever this is happened. This must have something to do with the world slowing down around me, and the near-panic attack I was having at the threat of becoming Inert again.

Getting progressively more anxious, I try to feel something physical again. I picture having eyes, ears, a nose, and the rest of it. Hell, I’ll even settle for feeling my left big toe.

Suddenly, though I still don’t possess any of my senses, I’m aware of lights.

Awareness is the best word for it, because I’m not really seeing those lights. The word ‘seeing’ is the only term I have for it. It’s like if I could suddenly experience echolocation like a bat and wanted to explain it to, say, Bert, who doesn’t have echolocation, I’d tell him, “Dude, it’s as though I can see in the pitch dark.” And this is similar. I’m aware of the lights, though definitely not via my vision.

I’m distracted from worrying about how to define my experience when the lights grow brighter. Or to be a stickler, when my awareness of the lights gets stronger.

Are these stars?

No, stars are always above you, and though I don’t have any idea where up or down is, I have a contradictory certainty that these lights are not above me, but rather near me. I can’t explain this nearness, though. It’s mere intuition that if I needed to, I could reach the lights. And I can’t reach the stars.

I exercise this ‘seeing’ sense by squinting my metaphysical eyes. The lights are actually broken into three largish clouds, like three galaxies, only as I said, I’m sure these aren’t stars.

The lights are connected by spindly pathways comprised of fainter light. If I had to prove that these aren’t stars, these connections would cinch the deal, since stars aren’t connected by strings of fainter light. Or are they? One thing I’m not is an expert in astronomy.

These spherical clouds remind me of something. The thing they remind me of is almost there in my mind, as if it’s on the tip of my tongue.

A sense of anxiety threatens to overwhelm me as a simple explanation about what’s happening surfaces in my consciousness.

For the first time since I met Mira in Atlantic City, I wonder whether I’m crazy after all. Insanity would explain pretty much everything.

Worse than insanity are the other plausible explanations. What if I’m having some sort of medical episode? Something like an epileptic seizure or a brain aneurysm? What if I’m just a naked brain floating in a vat of chemicals, and the lights are electrodes they’re about to hook up to my neurons?

“Nothing like that is happening to you,” a foreign thought states. I don’t know how, but I know with absolute certainty that this voice isn’t mine.

The imaginary voice in my head garners support for the ‘I’m crazy’ theory.

“No, you’re not,” the foreign thought states. “You’re not imagining this. You’re not schizophrenic. And I am real.”

These thoughts aren’t spoken by a voice in my head at all. Strictly speaking, no words are being spoken. The meaning of these words is simply appearing to me in my consciousness.

“Right you are,” the voice thinks into my mind. “These thoughts are mine, and I’m projecting them onto you.” A slight sense of warmth and camaraderie arrives along with the thoughts, like an extra texture layered on top of the meaning of the words.

“Who are you?” I try to explicitly think back. To myself, I think, Wouldn’t an imaginary friend always say they’re real?

“I am Mimir,” the thought comes. “We met yesterday. At that time, you thought I was imaginary also, but I assure you I am as real now as I was then.”

“Oh,” I think. “You’re the manifestation of the mind merge between me and the Enlightened? The very good-looking guy who was floating in the air?”

To myself, I think, He wasn’t all that real when I ‘saw’ him last. Yet, despite my skepticism, I still feel a sense of relief at having someone—or something—familiar in this strange place.

“That’s how you perceived me, yes,” the thought appears. “And you’re also correct in how you describe the way I came to exist. It was as a result of the Joining. And I did state that I am as real as when we last met, not more. Your definition of my realness at that time is another matter.”