The Human Condition

She followed him into a cave and they deeper into its darkness until they reached a cavern, lit by its crystal walls. There were many kinds of coloured light all around them as they stood holding each other, staring into each other's eyes. "Tell me what is happening? Please?" she pleaded.

"It is now time. They gave you very little, but it is not my doing."

"Just tell me! What time?"

"I will explain as best I can. They gave you this time for only a short while. It is your transition."

"Transition? What do you mean?"

"Please listen to me. You are going to die. Like many of your kind, there comes a time when life must end and for you it is now complete."

"What? Who are they? What is this all about?"

Tchava could not believe what he was saying. He released her and she stepped away from him. "What is all this? I survived the battle and the crash. I am alive! I'm not going to die! I can't. Why should I?"

"Tchava, you are alive in this world. But out there in space, in the world you once knew, your life ended. This is a transition from life into death. All of your kind are given this gift."

"Stop it! You are playing with me now. What gift?" The confusion grew inside of her. She felt oddly strange now as if nothing really mattered, but her questions remained unanswered.

"This is what happens to all of your kind. When death comes you are given this gift so that you can fulfil your greatest desires. It makes your lives complete."

She felt the crystal wall against her skin as she backed against it, but this time its sharpness did not hurt her, even though its jagged edges and sharp points dug in. "This can't be happening? No I can't die. If I die then I will go to the spirit world."

"Tchava let me hold you. It has started, your life energy, your soul will simply be absorbed into the universe and become part of it as it was before you were born. There will be no more memories and you will never remember that all this happened."

"No! Stop it! It can't be like that." Her legs and arms suddenly grew weak. The calm feeling took over her like an anaesthetic, only this was a kind of draining. A draining of her energy and memories as the past seemed no longer accessible to her. All that remained was what she knew at that moment in time.

"I am here now to help you through this. Let me hold you for the final moments of your life."

She felt herself become weaker as if falling asleep. There was no sense of pain and even her slightest sense of fear became meaningless. The lover took her in his arms and dropped to his knees holding her. Tchava could only see him and her mind was beginning to fade. There was just an advancing calm that took over her body and mind. She wanted to say something, but her voice had gone now and her lips mouthed the words as her vision started to fade. " I love you...."

The lover held her as she fell into an eternal sleep. The last vestiges of life as she knew it depleted, rejoining the forces of nature that can neither be created nor destroyed. It was as if she never existed. And the lover laid her naked body onto the ground and looked down at her beauty in admiration. She was a product of the universe itself and its complex DNA structures - a mass of the particles that were created on that first moment the universe began to exist.

Only procreation could keep her kind alive, unlike his, who were so alien and so advanced in their infinite immortality. His kind had been around since the universe began, and always will be, to serve those mortals like the humans when their time came, to grant them their final wish in the pseudo transitional world they inhabited.

When the phaser hit TX-409, it was destroyed, shattering into a billion pieces that scattered in all directions. But at that very moment, Tchava was taken to the transitional world. There reality was merged with fantasy in order to complete her life.

The lover could now return to his own kind once more and wait for his next corporeal client, continuing the duties bestowed upon him by his Masters.