The Enlightened (Mind Dimensions #3)(65)

“I can tell you my personal theory. But I’ll have to simplify it so a lesser mind like yours has the chance to understand it.”

“Did you get your sense of humor from me?” I think irritably. “It sure sounds like something I’d say if I were in your position.”

“A tiny portion of my sense of humor came from you, sure. In any case, here’s what I think. When you’re in what you call the Quiet, your mind is in fact only partially there. That part clings to the comforts of your common, everyday reality and, using something like the mechanisms responsible for dreams, makes up that familiar ‘time-stopped’ world for you.”

“If the Quiet is a dream, then what is the reality?”

“That I am less sure about, but whatever it is, it’s a lot closer to what you’re experiencing now. I think here, on Level 2, some of the false veneer the mind clings to is gone.”

“But this place doesn’t make sense,” I think. “All I see are lights.”

“Those lights are neural networks, but you already knew that. It was on the tip of your brain.”

He’s right. In hindsight, the ‘galaxies’ with interconnected lights are reminiscent of the pictures I’ve seen in textbooks and online of the electrical activity of the brain.

“You got it,” he thinks. “And more specifically, that bright constellation closest to you is you. The one closest to that version of you is Thomas, and the slightly farther one is Kyle.”

“So if I could see myself right now, I’d see one of those neural-network-looking things?”

“Only yours wouldn’t be slowed in time the way theirs are,” he thinks. “It would be a kaleidoscope of firings between the neurons via the synapses. At least, that’s what I imagine you’d see, if you could see it.”

“You make it sound as if that’s not your experience. And what do you mean time would be slowed? It’s stopped, isn’t it?”

“What you see is not the same as what I experience, but mine would be impossible for you to comprehend. And I am not teasing in this case. My point of view would be as foreign to you as yours would be to, say, a guinea pig.”

“Are you saying that time isn’t stopped?” I think insistently, refusing to feel insulted.

“What you’ve always perceived as time stopping, both in the Quiet and here, is an illusion. The truth is that time passes much faster from the reference point on the inside of the Quiet.”

“You mean to say that if I watched the world from inside the Quiet long enough, people would actually move?”

“You’d get bored waiting for it, and it would take a monumental amount of time, but yes, in theory, that’s the case. The ‘time-stopped’ people are actually super-slow-moving people.”

“Wait,” I think. “You phased out a day ago. Doesn’t that mean you’ve spent a lot of time in here?”

“In a way, yes. But the way I experience the passage of time is different from the way you do. And speaking of time, we don’t have a lot, remember?”

“So you keep reminding me whenever I ask you something about yourself. Let me guess, we don’t have time for you to show me what you look like either?”

“On the contrary. I would love to know what you would ‘see.’ So if you insist, why don’t you try to become cognizant of me? A lot of things work by a matter of will around here.”

I try to see him, to become aware of him, and as soon as I do, a cacophony of light appears.

Lights surround me from every angle. Then the lights move into the distance, and I see the whole entity. If the other networks—the ones that turned out to be Thomas, Kyle, and me—look like galaxies, then Mimir’s looks like the image of the early universe, but a dozen times brighter and with dozens more interconnected clusters.

Then the lights surround me again and he thinks, “You flatter me when you compare me to the universe.” The ‘stars’ comprising him fade. “We really ought to get you started. There’s something you must do.”

“And what would that be exactly?”

“Use your powers to your advantage and then figure out how to get out of here. That sort of thing. Unless you have a better idea?”

“Why should I learn how to get out of here when you keep saying that I’ll exit on my own when I run out of Depth?”

“Because you don’t want to become Inert, do you?”

“Of course I don’t. But won’t I be Inert regardless? The knife Kyle threw at me in the Quiet is going to enter my body when I return.”

“Phasing out of here might take you straight back to reality,” he thinks. “In one of my theories, anyhow. So that’s an incentive to try.”

“Fine. I guess I’m a lab rat.”

“Guinea pig,” he thinks, and as much as it’s possible to think with a smile, he manages it.

“How can I use my powers then? And for that matter, how do I exit? I have no body and no senses. I don’t know where to even start.”

“Start with Reading,” he thinks. “And do it the way everything else is done here. Will it. Desire to absorb Thomas’s pattern. This is what I’ve been doing with yours and what works for me, so it should work for you.”