Month: January 2016

An Immortal in Exile

Image licensed by Shutterstock.

I walk across the beach, following the ever-shifting outline of the water. The sun has begun to set; the sky is blossoming with fire. I watch the surf churn and froth as it rolls in and out. I find the waves contemplative. They comfort me, draw me into myself as the water is always, inevitably, drawn back into the sea. I step into the tide on a whim, and cool briny water surrounds my legs, sometimes splashing as high as my knees.

I stub my toe on a rock and a sharp staccato curse escapes my lips. It tears me away from my center, and for a moment, I wonder at the fragile nature of my body. I look down, spot a chunk of granite half buried in the sand and pick it up. I hold it toward the light, examine the structure closely. I was there, I think, when it was formed, when the Earth itself was just a rock hurtling through the cosmos. I toss it back into the ocean and watch it land with a plop.

I try to remember the distant past, and sometimes I can almost glimpse the life beyond. But so much of who and what I am is inaccessible to me. I am an ocean, of which my humanity is only a remnant small enough to be caught in a glass jar. Like Jesus in the New Testament, I have a dual nature. I am both human and divine.

I have assumed many forms, have lived many lives spanning the gamut of time and space. Like light through a prism, I have been split apart, reduced to a broken spectrum of partial selves. I have inhabited countless worlds, existed as many species, loved and lost a thousand times for every star that’s ever burned in the sky.

I drift from one life to the next, a cosmic vagrant, the fullness of my being always just out of reach. I only ever know what I need to fulfill my current life’s purpose. I must regard everything else as a mystery.

I am an Immortal, but before the gas clouds of this universe had even condensed into stars, I was exiled. The scope and nature of my crimes are lost to me, incomprehensible to my present form. I only know that I must atone. I strive in each life to make my brethren proud, because I know they’re watching and await my return. I know that someday I will redeem myself, that there will come a time when I will finally die my last death.

A wave rolls in, this one particularly strong, and I panic as I picture the sea preparing to swallow me whole.

I often imagine ways that I could die. It amazes me that after so many lives on so many different worlds, I could still fear something so banal. But my frail human psyche has bound me hand and foot to the dictatorship of instinct, and I must endure the biological imperative to survive like everyone else.

During the night, I write. It’s the only way I can confront the shadows that haunt me in the small hours, the only way for me to give them form and expression. It’s my way of capturing small remnants of who I was. Yet words are imprecise, and there are so many thoughts that are inexpressible, transcendent, atoms of being that predate my humanity.

I gaze up. The sun is gone now, the sky transparent to the cosmos. I drink it in, eternal mysteries that are no longer mine to understand. I utter a silent prayer, a plea for mercy that I hope my kind will hear, and I accept by faith that they do.

Enter your email address and click "Submit" to subscribe and receive The Sign.

The Machine

Image licensed by Shutterstock.

If you listen carefully you can hear it, the low bass rumble of hulking iron gears winding behind a cosmic curtain, beyond space and time. It sustains the universe, scaffolds reality. Once, when the machine was new, when it was well oiled and regularly maintained, it made little sound at all, just a gentle soothing hum that saturated the universe with newborn energy.

But gradually, almost imperceptibly, the steady nearly-silent rhythm began to change. At first, it was just a tiny ping in the engine. Then the oil began to burn and the gears began to grind. Yet the machine continued to operate to specification, and the universe chugged along for another fourteen billion years.

Then the ball bearings gave out. The machine started to crack and squeak, and the universe began to spoil. Stars began to lose their heat. Gravity began to lose its pull. Time warped and stretched like taffy. All the while that incessant squealing permeated the cosmos, driving men, women and beings of indeterminate gender mad.

Finally, the timing belt snapped and the whole thing unravelled. There was a crash, a thud and the machine simply stopped running. Reality wavered. Faded. Disappeared.

For ages the machine sat in disrepair, silent and still, ruined and forgotten in the darkness outside creation. Then its maker stumbled onto it while seeking parts for another project. He considered leaving it, for he was a busy man. But nostalgia seized him, and he was overtaken by an unexpected sadness.

He toiled in endless dark. He replaced the timing belt and the ball bearings. He lubricated the sensitive inner workings. He filled the reservoir with a fresh carton of oil.

When at last he was finished he flipped the switch. The machine spun to life, and the universe was new once more. And in the background, permeating space and time, was that familiar, ever-present hum.

Enter your email address and click "Submit" to subscribe and receive The Sign.