Luca (46 page)
Authors: Jacob Whaler
But the voice is withdrawn and silent, hiding behind an impenetrable, hard shell.
Confused, the man opens his mind to the One Voice and asks a question.
“My son from Earth has joined us. At last. Why doesn’t he respond?”
The One Voice answers, as it always does, with an outpouring of warmth and wisdom.
He wishes to be alone.
“Why?”
Floating in a sea of activity, the man luxuriates in a constant state of connection with other minds without number, sharing conversations and thought, discovering new ideas, analyzing, synthesizing, creating, learning, growing. If only he could share it all with his son—
He tries again, but the voice inside the shell ignores him.
It is his choice to be alone.
“There must be a way to wake him, to make him understand, to let him know I’m here. To help him partake of all there is.”
Each receives what they are willing to receive. Not all desire the joy of connection. Some reject it. It is their choice.
The man considers the words. It is a new and novel idea, that one might willingly choose to not partake of the bounty of the
many
. He shares the idea with other voices in tens of thousands of conversations, but full comprehension eludes him.
“What am I to do?”
Wait
, comes the answer.
*******
Mercer awakes as if from a coma, tired from constant strain, the effort of keeping his mind shut tight against the gentle pull of the outside. Still utterly alone.
How long have I been here?
No answer.
In the silence, he wonders who he is addressing the question to. Going into his memories, he recalls the world of sound and music that accosted him shortly before entering this state of nothingness. He shudders at the thought of going back to the chaos. Memories of it die down. Yet one remains.
In the sea of voices, one had been
familiar
.
But it can’t be.
From his childhood, he finds an image of his father, now dead for—how long? Pushing the image away, he searches for rest and emptiness.
This time it doesn’t come.
Curiosity slowly turns to longing. Would it be possible to take a quick look? How could it be done?
He senses the strain that has left him exhausted. It takes effort to shut oneself up, to stay separate and alone. Little by little, Mercer relaxes the hard shell encasing his thoughts. A small hole opens. He reaches for an idea that gives birth to a simple question.
“
Father?”
In the far distance, a point blooms in the dark. Mercer immediately senses the presence.
The light triggers panic. Mercer flinches and pulls back. The point is extinguished, plunging Mercer back into his shell, back into nothing.
But then, without thinking, he tries again.
The dot returns, a deep golden sphere.
This time, bracing himself, Mercer doesn’t pull away, forcing himself to make contact.
“I’m afraid,” he says
I’m here, my son.
“Where are we?”
It’s been so long. A complete revolution. Three and a half billion Earth years. And Earth is close once again. You’ve been alone ever since you came. It’s time, my son. Let me show you all there is.
To his surprise, Mercer doesn’t fear his father’s voice. It no longer carries the usual judgment and criticism as in the past. Only longing and love. Still, Mercer considers jumping back to the safety of the void.
Please. Don’t shut me out. Don’t be afraid. I’ve waited so long for you.
For the first time since he was a child, Mercer takes a leap of faith. He decides to trust his father.
“Here I come.”
As the barrier drops away, Mercer is back, floating in a sea of sound and color, filled with voices. Only this time, he doesn’t flinch or back away. After so much time alone, to his astonishment, he has a swelling hunger for
connection
.
“Where am I?”
Another Voice, separate from his father, finds him. This one is larger and infinitely more complex.
With me
, it says, bringing him closer.
Mercer remembers the gravitational pull of the entity so long ago. The arms reaching out. He pushes away, just a little.
“Who are you?”
I am all.
Fear rises to the surface again. Mercer considers going back to where he was only seconds ago, only a thought away. It would be so easy to just—
Be still. Listen.
He senses movement. Searching the space around him, it’s filled with other minds, some large, some small. Some are familiar, like his father. The more he looks, the more he finds. Old friends from the past. People he barely knew. Friends he has never met.
Wait, friends?
He has no friends, yet all of them are there, accepting and warm. Proud of him. Happy for him. Waiting for him.
Simultaneously moving in many directions, he gains momentum, effortlessly connecting with hundreds, thousands, and then voices without number. They all share thoughts, feelings, ideas, hiding nothing. Some were born on Earth. Most are from other planets strung out across the dark emptiness.
But all are there with him. Like a family.
A three-dimensional map jumps into his mind. Infinite worlds in infinite space.
“There are so many,” Mercer says.
The One Voice draws near and smiles.
More than you can number.
“Why is it so?”
Explore and learn.
He relaxes into the symphony of voices, all together, all individual, and all part of the One.
Moving through the thoughts of others, allowing others to move through his, he discovers intense satisfaction and completeness. For the first time, nothing is hidden. All is open. All is clarity. Questions answered. New questions asked and open for exploration. It is exhilarating in a way beyond anything in his experience.
No need to destroy. No need to compete. No need for control.
It hits him. For a vast length of time, he has floated in the midst of incredible abundance, sealed off from it by his own choice, shut out from the music and the voices, all the
ecstasy,
that now fills his mind. For eons, he withdrew inside a shell filled with
nothing
and has missed
everything
. There are some things he will never know. Some things he will never understand.
It triggers an instant of profound loss.
He cries out to the One Voice. “Can I go back and start over?”
There is no going back. What is lost is lost. But there is still much to learn if you stay. The choice is yours.
“Where are we going?”
On a long journey
.
Excitement surges through the voices in Mercer’s mind. He senses his father close and is content to move forward.
And then he sees an image in his mind of the last person he saw so long ago before coming to this wondrous place.
The girl.
Luca.
“What happened to her?” he asks.
After a pause, the One Voice speaks.
Come. See.
THE END
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NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON:
THE STONES SERIES
On the eve of a trip to Japan, Matt Newmark finds a dark rock in the shape of a claw. With the help of a Shinto priest, he discovers it’s a Stone, a piece of ancient alien technology that gives him a sweeping view of history and control over time, matter and energy.
But Matt is not alone.
Mikal Ryzaard has a Stone of his own and a burning vision to bring back Paradise. With all the resources of a multinational corporation behind him, he tracks down Matt and makes him an offer.
Join me or die.
ENJOY THE EPIC JOURNEY:
STONES: HYPOTHESIS (STONES #2)
STONES: EXPERIMENT (STONES #3)
Copyright © 2015 by Jacob Whaler
Edited by Nancy F. Browning
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
For more information about the author and his novels, please visit http://jacobwhaler.com.
ISBN-10: 0-9897044-8-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-9897044-8-9
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LUCA
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PHOTO CREDIT
Credit:
NASA
/ ESA / D. Jewitt (UCLA) / STScI
ABOUT THE COVER IMAGE:
This is a NASA Hubble Space Telescope picture of a comet-like object called P/2010 A2, which was first discovered by the LINEAR (Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program) sky survey on January 6. The object appears so unusual in ground-based telescopic images that discretionary time on Hubble was used to take a close-up look. This picture, from the January 29 observation, shows a bizarre X-pattern of filamentary structures near the point-like nucleus of the object and trailing streamers of dust.
The inset picture shows a complex structure that suggests the object is not a comet but instead the product of a head-on collision between two asteroids traveling five times faster than a rifle bullet (5 kilometers per second). Astronomers have long thought that the asteroid belt is being ground down through collisions, but such a smashup has never before been seen.
The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably recently thrown out of the 460-foot-diameter nucleus. Some of the filaments are swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originate from tiny unseen parent bodies. An impact origin would also be consistent with the absence of gas in spectra recorded using ground-based telescopes.
At the time of the Hubble observations, the object was approximately 180 million miles (300 million km) from the Sun and 90 million miles (140 million km) from Earth. The Hubble images were recorded with the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The image was taken in visible light. The color in the image is not what the human eye would see. A blue color map was added to bring out subtle details.
Object Name:
Comet-like Asteroid P/2010 A2
Image Type:
Astronomical/Annotated
Credit:
NASA
/ ESA / D. Jewitt (UCLA) / STScI