William is Dead

The Lead Shepherd turned and stretched out its arm. At the very tips of its fingers, the air blurred and within a few seconds there was a solid rectangle, taller than the Shepherds and wide enough to accommodate ten of them at once. The surface rippled and a view appeared of one of the cities.

Will and the other humans stared, full of awe as they finally saw glimpses of how large the buildings were. They could also see some of the populace; dozens of them either walking or softly levitating, all of their heads turned towards the human crowd. What little they could see of the buildings revealed them to have intricate patterning all over their surfaces. The colours were primarily white and gold, with effusive displays of light rippling here and there. They did not seem to be entirely solid from what Will could see; it seemed as though some of the lines would waver or bend. He could not, however, think upon it too long.

The Lead Shepherd walked through, followed by Luc and the other two. As they passed the threshold of the rectangular portal, several deep ripples spread out, causing the view to distort until the entire surface was a mess of light and shadow. Only a moment after the last of the aliens had gone through, the portal vanished.

The crowd breathed out loud in unison, and a discussion immediately struck up. Will could hear the excitement. He felt small. The glimpse of the city had the same effect on him the night sky had had when he was alive; a burgeoning feeling of insignificance that grew and grew until he was forced to think of something else to avoid the oncoming shuddering, breathless anxiety attack.

The city was burned bright into his eyes now, and he tried not to think of it.

"Will?"

He looked at her.

She was frowning slightly. "Let's go for a walk."

Will followed her, only turning back once to look at the crowd. Their excited faces made his body tense. He shuddered and kept walking.

"Are you feeling okay, Will?"

"What do you think about what just happened there?" Will asked. His voice was neutral and calm; the last thing he wanted to do was stand out for not being excited.

"I don't know," said Emily, bluntly. "I wish I was excited but I wasn't. I don't understand why they wouldn't let us see."

"That's one of the things that bothers me, too."

"But... you know, the things he was saying."

"It sounded a little too strange to me."

Emily went quiet. She moved her head in a manner Will took to mean she was agreeing but not completely. "Will, do you think maybe you're just not taking to this place the same way we are?"

"What do you mean?"

"I just... I've noticed, and please don't take this the wrong way, but I've noticed that you seem a bit more resistant to everything here."

Will said nothing.

Fearing she had upset him, she carried on a little quicker. "I don't mean that in a bad way. Maybe it's just more difficult for you to kind of accept this is all happening."

"I know it's happening, Em. I'm here. I don't have a choice about that."

"It's not always the same, Will," said Emily. "I remember when we found out my grandchild had a severe disability. It took months for it to sink in properly. All the changes we would have to go through. All the things we'd have to do to make life easier for him. All the things we'd miss out on, the things he'd never be capable of. It was traumatic. And you know, I didn't think of it like this before, but let's face it, so is the fact we've died. We've... we've left our entire world behind."

He barely looked at her. He was distracted by his own thoughts.

"Will?"

"Sorry. Go on, what were you saying?"

"We died, Will. That's traumatic. Maybe it's just taking a longer time for you to process that. Trauma isn't easy."

"If that's the case, why were we so calm and accepting to begin with?"

Emily paused. She shrugged. "Maybe the shock?"

"No. I think that calmness was the place we were in. I think now that we've left it, the effects it had on us have worn off. Now that we're here, and we're being forced to look over our own lives, it's causing some of us to feel the weight of what's happened to us."

"That's not that different to what I'm saying. It doesn't negate it, does it?"

Will sighed. "No. It doesn't. But it does mean there are influences on us right now that I don't think we're aware of or understand. And if that's the case, how do we know any of it is good for us?"

"Maybe this is where you and I differ then. We don't have a choice. We're dead. What else is there to do but to go through this? And what you say about influence... I mean, Will, wasn't that just life anyway?"

"What do you mean?"

"We lived on a planet with billions of people all vying for life in their own way. Clusters of people who exerted influence on one another in this stupidly wide sprawling net that got so complicated that no one could possibly ever follow any of it," said Emily, stopping in place. Her hands spread out wide in the end, emphasising her words.

He could not argue with that. It reminded him of the lack of control he had often felt throughout his life. The same lack of control that had led him to the drugs and to lashing out at his friends and family.

What if Emily was right? What if everything he felt was just the result of the natural resistance he had to change? Ultimately, what could he do where he was? He was powerless again, in the face of forces utterly beyond his control or imagining.

"You saw Luc," said Emily, gently. "He looked happy. He looked... what's the word? Content. He looked content," she said earnestly. "Don't you want that, Will?"

He did.

That elusive, utterly powerful state of being he'd been aware for all his life and never felt, except for those few times he had been with one of his lovers. He looked at Emily, suddenly struck by how she reminded him of that lover; her demeanour more than looks. Perhaps that was where some of the ease he had with her came from; a yearning for an earlier time where he was ensconced in a feeling of safety and comfort.

"Will, I don't know what's going on here. I don't. But he wasn't wrong, was he? I'm having to face truths, too. Sometimes they ask the simplest questions, like they're just recording a bunch of facts about our lives. It's when they ask the other questions, the ones where we're forced to confront ourselves, and makes us realise that we didn't have the truth of it when we thought we did... that, I struggle with. And it is difficult. But you saw him, didn't you? He looked content."

"Yeah, he did," admitted Will.

"I've been a bit lost since the last time I had a Questioning," said Emily.

"Why?"

"Been thinking about everyone who died before me. I outlived a lot of people, Will. I thought I let some of them go, but I'm only now realising I'm doing that now. I don't even know if I'll ever see them again but I'm starting to find peace with that idea. And I like that."

"People like who?"

"Oh, my husband, for one. He was a lovely man. A little out of step with the world but I liked that about him sometimes," she said. Her voice and eyes had become wistful and distant. She blinked and focused on him, and smiled. "Did you have anyone like that in your life?"

Will shook his head. "No. Not for a long time."

"Oh, Will. You had a hard life, didn't you?"

Will cleared his throat, more for something to do than anything else. "Maybe. But a lot of that was my fault."

Emily reached out and softly brushed one of his locks of hair to the side. Her hand settled on his cheek. The moment it stilled, he closed his eyes and turned to it. It was entirely involuntary, and he was calm in that moment, wrapped up in all the warmth that spread from her fingers. It was enough to make her smile and make him incredibly self-conscious. His eyes snapped open and he was about to move away from her palm, when she pressed it against his cheek a little more, shaking her head.

"That was an honest movement, Will. Don't run away from it."

"... It's been a very long time since someone touched me like this," he admitted in a quiet voice meant for secrets.

"I know," said Emily. He could see it in her gentle eyes, and he couldn't fathom how, but she understood him more than he'd realised. "It's all gone, Will. We left it behind. We're here now."

He nodded. She lowered her hand, and he felt the absence keenly but said nothing about it.

"I'll try," he said.

He meant it.

The fifth Questioning began in an unusual way.

The first question Y asked was, "What did you think of what you witnessed, William Dormin?"

"What do you mean?"

"The readiness for Ascension."

"Luc? I found it a little disturbing," said Will. "But... I could see he looked happy. He looked carefree and unbound. He looked like he'd left life behind."

"It is the process. It is the goal," said Y. "Did it appeal?"

"Only after I spoke to my friend about it."

"Then, perhaps the Questionings shall pass easier."

Will's jaw tightened as he thought about that statement. It certainly wasn't going to pass easier if he had to think about his own life to that degree. However, Luc's calm, poised face passed through his mind again and he suppressed the negativity the best he could.

"Maybe they will," said Will. "What would you like to know this time?"

"You mentioned previously that you had troubles with substances, with passion., and with love. Why?"

"I don't know," said Will. "It'd be easy to say it was because of my parents and the way I was brought up and how difficult it was but ultimately, there's a point... a point where you go beyond that and you start being responsible for yourself. As best as you can. Some people manage it, and some don't."

"You felt you didn't?"

"I did. Up to a point. I was clean for five years before I died. But I never found peace. I never let myself really understand myself, understand my anger."

"Why?"

"I didn't know how," said Will.

"Did you not seek help?"

"I didn't want to."

"Why?"

Will felt a surge of irritation. Always the 'why'. "Because I was too scared," said Will.

"Of what?"

"Of... I don't know. Of myself, maybe." It was a struggle to say the words. "Of finding things about myself I didn't want to know. Things that were easily avoided."

"Is this often a process your kind avoid?"

"Is that a process your kind even understands?"

Y stayed silent.

"I guess that's a no," said Will. "It's very easy to hide from yourself when you're a person. There's so many ways to do it."

"Why is hiding necessary?"

Will's mouth opened. And shut when he realised he had no answer to that. He frowned as he thought about it. Tentatively, he said, "Because it's painful to know yourself sometimes."

"Painful why?"

"It's a disconnect between the person you think you should be and the person you really are. Or the person you really are and the person you show yourself to be to others."

"So, it is the difference between a truth and a lie."

More lights were absorbed by the orb. Will stared at it, trying to figure out if he felt lighter in some way, but he couldn't tell. "Yes. But we don't always know if we're lying or not. It's hard to be truthful because there's just so much around us which makes it difficult."

"So, then how do you know, ultimately?" Y asked.

"I don't know." Will paused. The simple admission hit him harder than he expected. "That's the most honest I can be. Maybe it depends on how you feel about yourself. Or how, whenever you move through the world, you feel within yourself. Whether there's guilt... whether there's a difficulty in knowing yourself. Or a difficulty in feeling comfortable with who you are. I really don't know." He felt like he'd just spoken a mess of words that made no sense.

"We see."

Will looked at Y's face, noting how the different shapes were softly pulsing. He had not witnessed that before and he wondered what the change meant. The curiosity wasn't strong enough for him to ask. He only wanted to leave and go back to Emily.

"Tell me something, Y... when do you decide when one of us gets to move on?"

"It is decided dependent upon the individual. For some, the process takes very little and for others, it takes longer."

"What are the factors involved?"

Y tilted its head. "The severity of your energies, and how much of your darkness is shed."

"Energies? I want to know more."

"What would you like to know?"

"Everything you can tell me. I want to know what you mean and why it matters," said Will.

"Every being in this world produces various energies. The severity depends on what they express, and what they do."

"Like what? What kind of actions? Expressions?"

"Everything" said Y.

Will frowned. He tried to figure out if he had just heard what he thought he had; a subtle shift in the tone of Y's voice. An emotion where before there was neutrality. Try as he might, he could not define that shift. His best guess was the tone was something along the lines of; 'It's obvious, very obviously everything.'

He thought of what Emily had said about moving around in her memories. The thought lingered. It grew more prominent, until it was too big to ignore and then... something clicked.

Luc had spoken of shedding darkness and pain. The orbs in front of them literally took pieces of the humans into themselves. Emily had specifically stated the emotions in her memories were outside of her, that she could walk in and out of them. She meant it literally, he realised.

Y meant it literally.

Their emotions had energies that literally bled out of them. Every movement they made, everything they felt hooked onto the fabric of this reality and ran down like watery paint. Not just as a thing of the past, but as a series of energies that hung ghost-like in space itself.

Will looked at his hand and felt as though he was seeing it for the first time. All those tiny lights. All those pulses radiating out from his spinal cord and his brain. All those auras that the aliens had around them; merging, breaking apart, flaring, allowing them to fly and teleport. All the streams of light emanating from the ships they flew. The way the buildings seemed to fade into and out of existence when he looked at them from afar. All of it; energy.

There was nothing corporeal about this world; anything living had lost its form. In death, any essence of what was once living was now free to cascade wildly into the world around it.

"I'm dead," whispered Will. The weight of it was oppressive and yet, there was a change. A recognition that had been waiting for him to grasp it. "I don't have a body anymore. Neither do you."

Y tilted its head. "You are nothing but light."

"But lesser," Will thought, not realising he had whispered it.

"But lesser," agreed Y.

"What makes me lesser?"

Y's facial shapes pulsed wildly and stopped. There was a silence hanging in the air that made Will incredibly nervous. It grew heavier until Y raised its arm to the side and spread its fingers wide.

Will watched as a window appeared above them both, one that looked through every conceivable layer of the building, all the way to the monstrous thing that inhabited the sky. It whirled around that infinite darkness in the middle. Before, the darkness had looked mostly circular to Will's eyes, but now it had a solid spherical form that he should not have been able to discern given just how utterly black it was.

"Do you know what you look upon?" Y asked.

Will felt that familiar terror run through him. He had no heart and yet he felt it pounding. He had no pulse and yet he felt it hammering in his neck. He had no lungs and yet his breath was caught in his throat and would not release. He had no muscles and yet he sat, his fibres about to burst with tension. He had no brain nor hormones nor blood, and yet the fear he felt flooded him, an inky creature dominating his entire being, its tendrils and claws wrapped around and suffused through every inch of him.

"That's what I came out of," said Will slowly.

"It is The Source. It is our life-breath. It is our provider. What you see is darkness, yes?"

"Yes."

"It is not dark to our eyes. It is beautiful," said Y, and Will could hear the reverence in its voice. "It is a brightness that outshines all brightness within us and our world. You cannot see The Source. You can only see its effects on its surroundings. We see The Source; we are higher. You do not see The Source; you are lesser."

Y lowered his arm and the window closed.

For a long time, Will sat there willing the terror to fade, but it would not. Y did not ask any questions, but rather seemed content to observe him, frozen in place and silent.

"I'd like to go now," said Will, his voice trembling.

Y nodded the once, and Will left.

---xxx---

An Echo Of Death

The Source seemed to follow him as he walked back. No longer just an ineffectual feature of the sky when it was out of sight, he could now feel its presence with every step. It felt like an eye now, ever-present and omniscient. It could see not just him but all the other dead humans too, and it was watching closely.

Will sat on his bed, staring into space.

As if the revelation had changed him physically, he could see them now; little pieces of light hanging in the air with nowhere to go. They had always been there but he'd been blind. Everywhere he looked, he could see faint frozen ripples of his actions as he had moved through this world. He could see the feelings he had felt, in all their glorious patterns and chaotic beauty, ranging from concentric circles of happiness to chaotic strokes of anger and spirals of worry. When he looked down at his skin, he could see it had lost some of its opacity, and the lights that flowed through the layers were more prominent.

Was this what Luc had seen? That couldn't be true because Luc had looked as though he was in a constant state of calm and contentment. Will seemed to veer wildly between that Source-induced terror and numbness. And even as he thought of that, he looked at the space around him, and could see the terror hanging out there, spiked, thick and dark. The numbness was just soft faint lines.

God, it would have been beautiful had he not been dead, or if he didn't feel like he was unravelling slowly. Was this what it was like back home where he had been alive? Had he simply been too blind to see? Was humanity just walking around unseeing all this time?

These were fruitless questions, he knew. It no longer mattered. He was dead and now he knew he was dead.

Were his sisters mourning? Had they already mourned? Were they dead now? Was the Earth still spinning where he had left it?

He was determined to examine himself in the way the others had done; determined to feel the emotions of his past. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the sights and sounds of his life. Nothing came to mind and he growled with frustration. He tried again, trying to relax his body, and imagined that he was unfettered. For a long time, he sat still and felt his body sink into a strange kind of stupor.

When he opened his eyes, he was no longer on the bed, but the darkness. It was raining and the air smelled like petrichor. His feet were bare. He realised he was walking through wet grass. There were lights in the distance, and a night sky sprinkled with stars.

It was a bracing sort of cold that kept him alert. He wore his normal clothes, a pair of jeans and a shirt, but they were dirty, stained with mud.

He knew this place. He knew this night. It wasn't until he saw a road in the distance and began to approach it that he knew where he was. It was the night he had died.

The area was rural and he recognised that he was just outside of the village near one of his sisters. He could not figure out why he was here, but there must've been a reason.