Featured, Writer's Showcase
What if ‘The Light’ is not Real
Apr
Put this story on your ‘must read today’ list. Diane Cresswell has sent in her contribution to the latest Non-Competition and she has outdone herself with this story of science vs. faith.
I’m not really sure how to introduce this so that my bias does not color your thoughts before you read the story. So, I’m going to leave the commenting to you. You’ll have a lot to say when you’ve finished reading. I sure did, but at first I just kinda sat here and scratched my head and wondered, “How the heck and I going to introduce that?”
So, friends and readers and fellow writers, read, think, put your thoughts together and write ’em down in the comments section down at the bottom of the page. You’ll have plenty to say.
Dust to Dust?
By Diane Cresswell
Interesting how your mind separates itself when in the state of hysteria. A part of me is observing what is happening and yet I can also hear the other part of me screaming for help. I’m dying and there is no way to stop the horrific event of my demise.
It is said that in the final moments of life – there is a remembrance of all that we have done in our life. I never believed that statement. I’m a scientist. There is no collaborative research that confirms this idiotic statement. Until now! It’s happening to me. I remember everything I’ve done while watching my body as it disintegrates.
I was a lonely child, didn’t play well with others. It seemed stupid to me to play with silly things like toys and other dumb children. Books were the source of reality for me. I could disappear within the written words, enticing me to places that sparked my logic, asking questions that spurred me on to research the questions asked until I could answer them. My whole life was spent focused on a singular theme – to find answers to questions that were posed by intelligent human beings. Becoming a scientist was the only thing that was logical – a scientist who delved into creation, to find answers to the age old questions of where humans came from and are we the only ones in this Universe. I succeeded in the greatest thing I could ever hope to accomplish – the discovery of the reality of dimensional time or parallel universes. In my diligent and focused search for answers, I forgot about consequences. I had opened the proverbial Pandora’s Box and I wanted to know what was in it! The conundrum that evolved from my equation and scientifically able to bring it into reality was the thing that lay people would call science fiction – the discovery that we are not alone and that there is more to reality than what has been theorized. I discovered we exist as humanity in this dimension, but that’s only one level. The reality of my experiments was that not only do we exist alongside other parallel levels of universes/ dimensions, the exiting scientific element of outcome was that we’re able to jump into dimensions that overlap, twist and turn into other dimensions, slip into ones that go forward while others go backwards, traverse alternate universes with replicas of our selves reversed, coming into contact with beings who time traveled inter-dimensionally, finding that other dimensional worlds are inhabited by distortions of life that cannot be called human, a myriad of dimensions all co-existing at the same time of mind altering proportions. If there is a god – it definitely is one sick bastard for there is no logic to it. Everything that is imaginable or can be imagined is thrown into the dimensional pot. I’ve seen them! Things beyond comprehension that the logical human mind is ill equipped to handle!
I recognized I was losing my sense of reality of this world. This experiment was going to be my last. What I didn’t figure into the equation was the kick ass consequences of that plan! To go to one of the dimensions that I had briefly slipped into that possibly contained answers to questions that science and technology hadn’t gotten around to solving – because they weren’t formulated into a theory in this world – yet! I could be ahead of the scientists in this world instead of being looked down upon by my findings.
I put myself into not only running the new experiment but to also be the test subject. No one was going to corrupt this experiment or my name. I would run the whole thing with me being the guinea pig and the observer all in one. I told everyone that I would be just fine, but still devised systems of fail-safes to be in place. Who was I kidding! There are NO fail-safes for this procedure. I’m the only one to blame. Now I’m paying for being the quintessential servant of arrogance.
What happens when we die? Is there a possibility of an afterlife that I can fall into to make up for the stupidity that I have caused myself? Will I meet the chief engineer of this reality and get into a fist fight with it over the scale and scope of these illogical dimensions? Or will I just be nothing more than the dust that I see my body dissolving into. I watch my assistance looking on in horror at the continuation of death’s movement in B flat.
My mind is quiet now…my head is the only thing that is left. Soon I will be nothing more than a pile of carbon – no limbs, no organs, no feet, no voice, no eyes, no structure of what was me – nothing but dust.
I’m dead. I have passed beyond the physical and yet strangely I still feel alive. Why? Where am I? Who am I? My consciousness screams!
Death’s movement in B flat gets an A+ for one of the most intriguing, creative plots that moves forward in just the right moments. The story breathes in places that I’m not sure I really wanted to go, but I couldn’t stop my thoughts from tumbling with the plight of the scientist and his curiosity or arrogance for finding the questions,putting himself at risk to experience the answers. It was unsettling, but I had to read it twice. Brilliant work! At a conference I asked a group of scientists once if they believed in God. One stepped forward and said, “God is revealed in– between the cracks when sciene fails…and that is often.”
Wow that’s quite an answer from a scientist. And how true. Thank you my dear for the great comments. I went with this one without putting it out for someone else to read. Kept my fingers crossed that I didn’t leave holes where one would scratch their head going “huh?” Tell Judge that he and I were working on the same wave length – death comes a knocking and questions are asked.
I thought yours was a continuation of Judge’s story. The scientist and i spoke at length afterwards. He explained further that science reaches conclusions by what information they have at that particular time. Research, development and discovery is constant, so called concrete conclusions change. He believed the creative part of science was spiritual, that you push the realms of possibilities. I thought the protagonist in your short spoke volumes in his mind, discovery what the next realm might be.
The things he saw opened his mind to other possibilities even though he still hung onto logic. Will have to show this to Alan…wonder how he will react to the info. Like shaking that man up!
I thought of the same thing, when I read your entry. Please don’t let him read your other entry. You don’t want his brain to explode!K
Hi Kyle:
You made a comment on my FB page about your son’s/daughter’s writing. Where is that?
My, my, my. . .Not only is this an intriguing story, but the comments are, too! Love that comment by the scientist stepping forward, Kyle.
I thought at first that the scientist in this story was using a portal, stepping through into an alternate dimension. Then, I thought maybe there’s something else afoot here. Or maybe that’s what happened after all. The assistant, apparently, wasn’t aware of the protocols of bringing said scientist back, if it’s a portal. . .or a Trekkian transporter beam. . .And yet, the questions weren’t answered. There’s an old saying about how we’re only able to understand when we’re ready to understand. . .or meant to understand. . .I’m wondering where this scientist wil go from here now that he/she is sans flesh.
Thanks Terri. I have to admit I had fun with this one – wasn’t always sure where it was going to go. However at the end…well that’s for your imagination. And I know you have an amazing one! Transporter beam – didn’t think of that but then it wasn’t in this scientist’s realm.
Hi Diane:
“‘And fun is good,'” said the Cat in the Hat!”
I can tell you had fun with this. . .Thank you for creating the space for me to imagine!
I love the new Cresswell writing. Little or no explanation to an out of controll situation. No time to give us the easy answers. Figure it out for yourself, pal, I am up to my ears in death. Bravo, Diane. Your hypothesis stem from your own research into the mystic, this I know, and that adds so much to the details, but you have fictionalized yourself as the “quintessential servant of arrogance; the doors of oblivion, once opened, must have its way. There is a book in here if you would care to flesh it out. You have created a premise (the end) too fascinating to ignore. Gather your dust, woman, the winds will come, and then you will be gone.
I figured you would know where I came from on this one. Science to me is one step away from finding answers that are staring them straight in the face. It is the logical arm of our reality or when science explains the nuts and bolts of what is considered real. Yet there is a missing component that usually is pushed aside because it doesn’t fit into the material reality. Until now! Research is proving this non-reality does exist. And that is only validating what the ancients have told us from the beginning. So this story developed from that premise – and what waits for this person as he/she travels to the realm after death of one physical body…well I know, but I think it makes more fun if you will to allow the reader’s imagination to take over. After all – birth and death are both a personal and unique experience. And done over and over and over again. Now that’s logic at its best! Thank you my dear – for your spirit and being here again with me.