MORTAL ⇴ DYSTOPIAN

Ch. 4

[ CHAPTER 4: THE REST OF YOUR LIFE ]

     Floating.

     For a long time, I was floating.
Just me, myself, and I, and the endless space of time.
For how long, I would never know. Floating in a cool, calm darkness, just my conscious and my thoughts.

     For a while, I thought, is this death?
No, I have concluded. No, this cannot be death. If I were dead, I would no longer be. Now, I still am. I cannot say what. But I am.
I would also not have my thoughts, I have discovered. I would not have my conscious, and I would not be thinking. Alas, I wouldn't be floating at all. Indeed, I would be nothing. But for now, I still simply am.

     It was nice, this nothing that I floated within.
It was calm and undisturbed. It was peaceful, an endless blur that went on forever. Not an intimidating forever — a forever that was contenting.
And then, a gentle spark of realization through my simple peace.
This must be what the citizens of Qento feel every day.

     And then, nothing once more.
A silent, simple, eternal nothing.
Until, there was something.

     My eyes were closed, this time when I registered that I was conscious. I was looking through my eyelids, looking up into something very, very bright. Perhaps white lights. They would burn my eyes, I thought. I do not want my eyes to burn. I will keep my eyes closed.
But then, the curiosity. The gentle tug within my mind speaking the opposite truth — open your eyes, Mortal. Look around. Discover.
Oh, but the lights. The lights would hurt my eyes. I do not want to lift myself from this darkness I am in.
Through darkness, Mortal, what would you discover?

     The lights were bright, as I had predicted. White and blinding and directly in your face all the time, even if they were on the ceiling somewhere up high.
For a bit, I stared at the lights above me. Perhaps if I stared at them long enough, I would return to the nice darkness I was in before. The nice darkness.

     Slowly, one by one, my mind began to register every cell within my body.
First, my chest. Rising and falling peacefully, still in it's sleepy rhythm. Then, spreading through my shoulders and down my arms and to my hands.
My fingers were the first to move. Just in the slightest; a small twitch. Then, another.
They were the first parts of me to register the soft, cool surface I was laying upon.

     First, my hands, my fingers.
Then, it prickled up by arms to my back, to my legs, to my toes.
I was laying upon something comfortably cool, the kind of cool that you wouldn't notice unless you looked for it.
No, it was not necessarily uncomfortable, I decided. But it felt quite strange. Hard, yet not, yet soft. Perhaps it was both.