This is a piece written years ago for my usual
market (they paid best) Analog Science Fiction and Fact, but while
Stan really liked it, it was not as hard science as he usually buys, and as I
had another appropriate piece started (which he did buy and publish), I put it
aside and actually forgot about it. It is disability-related, so appropriate
here. I wrote it after reading Dr. Raymond Moody’s Life After Life (see http://www.lifeafterlife.com ) about
N.D.E. phenomena (Near Death Experiences).
by
F. Alexander Brejcha
©1998
“My name is Karl. Dr. Nürnheim sounds too
formal.” The old man in the hospital bed paused and studied me with a bitter
smile. “But I see you recognize the name, young lady,” he went on after a
moment. “And I can tell from the curl of your lip that you don’t like it, or
me.”
His once‑rugged body was twisted with
medication‑resistant rheumatoid arthritis and his hair was an unruly
thatch of snowy white that blended seamlessly with his crisply starched pillow,
but his unclouded blue eyes were astonishingly direct and commanding despite
his charted advanced Alzheimer’s. And yet, it wasn’t entirely me he was talking
to. Instead, he seemed to be partly addressing some unseen presence that
existed only in his mind
He did that periodically, the small
Hispanic private duty nurse had whispered to me with her eyes wide in horror
and fascination. Maria had pulled me aside confidentially when I entered Karl’s
room in the Hospice Suite of the hospital. “It’s him, Dr. Greenier. The man who invented the Chambers and
provoked the Outsiders!”
I had to admit that my own feelings were
mixed. It was difficult to remain clinical and detached, but I needed to get to
know and to understand the man was who lay in front of me. I needed to know why
he had done what he did, and how!
And in order to understand what had
happened with my son, I had to know if there might be more waiting out there
beyond the horrible Outsiders who had almost sent the world into a collapse
when we had invaded their realm. So, I sat down in the chair next to the bed
and kept silent, hoping he would tell me his story as he apparently did from
time to time, whether anyone was there to listen or not. I had already
activated the audio recorder in the room.
“No, you don’t like me, young lady,” he
repeated, “and I can’t say I blame you. Even if things are returning to normal.
It may even be that new generations will once again have what their parents and
grandparents lost.” He lapsed briefly into silence, eyes moistening with tears.
“I am so sorry!” He reached up a claw‑like hand to grab at my arm,
twisted and bony fingers digging painfully into my flesh. “You have to believe
me.” But his eyes were now totally oblivious to me and he just stared up at
whatever judge was hearing his plea.
After a moment, his grip eased and he
leaned back with a sigh. “Of course, they’re tearing down my Chambers now,” he
whispered, almost to himself. “All of them. They made them illegal.” He laughed
sarcastically. “As if anyone would use them anymore!”
He seemed unaware that the last of his
reviled creations had been torn to pieces nearly thirty years ago by panicked
governments and angry mobs that had, at first unknowingly, saved the world from
an ‘alien’ menace of our own creation.
“I just wanted to make some money and
to make a name for myself,” he went on softly. “I had no idea what my Chambers
would provoke...”
Slowly the beginning of the story began
unfolding and I found myself drawn into the web of history as his words sent me
back forty years to Philadelphia in the end of 2018, just before I had been
born, to when the name of Karl Nürnheim had first become known to the world...
* * *
“It’s legal now Mitzi!” He threw open
the kitchen door and ran in from the lab to scoop her up in a bear‑hug
that lifted her feet from the floor. But she was rigid in his arms, and as he
put her down, her expression was as unyielding as the tight blond bun of her
hair.
“Warum? Why, Karl?” She pulled
away. “Why do you go experimenting and tampering where we were not meant to
go?”
“Liebchen, I told you, there is no harm. The mind is put at
rest and the subjects all feel better, and are in fact better for the
experience.” He reached for her tentatively, hooking a finger under the corded
belt of her plain grey dress to try to pull her closer. “Why won’t you try to
understand? I don’t do this lightly--”
“You are tampering in God’s world!” she
hissed, backing away to free herself. “It’s not right. You’re killing people.”
“Only temporarily.”
“You are putting their immortal souls at
risk!” Her eyes narrowed. “And you are dragging your baby sister right along
into Damnation!”
“Liebchen,” he tried again, and then paused with a sigh.
Mitzi’s father had been the Germanic equivalent fundamentalist minister, and
even if in the past she had distanced herself from the rigid mind‑set of
her immediate family, some things, it seemed, were never forgotten.
“Darling,” he tried again in English,
“I am only bringing the subjects into clinical death. Before there is any
damage, I revive them. And if they’re lucky, they have an N.D.E., a Near Death
Experience.” He shrugged. “Maybe what they are experiencing is a bridge to
another world and a glimpse of another existence, or maybe the peace they feel
and the presences they sense guiding and greeting them, are only peculiar
endorphin‑related hallucinations. There may be physiological reasons we
don’t understand. But what we do know, is that if they do have an N.D.E., they
come out of it at peace and better balanced.”
“God’s sympathy for having been pulled
from His grace!”
“No, just release of tensions and
guilt.” He refused to admit to any religious implications. “As for Sandra:
she’s a big girl. Besides, I need her help. Her computer work is what finalized
the safe design of the Chamber.”
Mitzi glared at him silently.
“All our volunteers want to try the
Chamber again, you know,” he went on enthusiastically. “The ones who were
successful. Which is great commercially...” he choked off the words realizing
he had pulled out the wrong sales “pitch”, but it was too late. Mitzi walked
away in silent, stern rebuke to leave him standing alone in the kitchen that
had always seemed so cozy before.
Behind him, the door from the
laboratory opened and Sandra came in, looking concerned. “What’s wrong, Karl?”
“It’s Mitzi, I’m afraid. She’s not too
happy with the Chamber.”
“She’ll get over it. But you can’t
blame her. You gotta’ admit it’s a bit creepy, even if it works perfectly.”
Sandra had been living in America even
longer than he had, and it showed every time she opened her mouth. Ever
cheerful, she gave a little mock shiver and then grinned, her bouncing clouds
of blond hair and wide smile reminding him of the free‑spirited woman he
had married in
But Sandra was too excited by her news
to notice his unease. “Guess what?” she asked brightly, changing the subject.
“I just got off the phone with
“I’m sorry. We’re all clear.
Representative Hawthorne pushed through the Life Definition Bill like he promised, so we can’t be
touched when we make the formal press announcement.”
Sandra grinned. “All right! I’ll call
But as the words left her lips, she
finally saw the haunted look on his face and moved forward to touch him
tentatively on the arm. “Karl, don’t. He’s gone.”
“I know.” He blinked and stared past
her through the open door to the lab, his eyes fixed on the barely visible tank
of metal inside. “I want to try it.”
“Now?” Sandra frowned. “It’ll take me
hours to prepare for a full run.”
He nodded reluctantly. “All right.
Later, but today. I have to understand. I’ve put it off too long.” He ignored
an attempted protest and brushed past her to pass through the archway to the
Scandinavian teak‑furnished living and dining areas, stopping by the six
foot‑high wall that split the areas visually. Hanging on the living area
side, at the end of a series of framed nature photographs, was the portrait of
a young boy with tousled hair so blond it seemed white. He reached up to brush
the illusionary curve of a cheek with the tip of a finger. “He was only eight
years old!”
He turned to Sandra, eyes focused
somewhere in an unseen distance. “It’s been years since they cut him out of
that school bus after the train hit it, but I can still hear his last words.”
His voice twisted with an agonized quaver as he repeated words he would never
forget:
“‘It’s a nice place, daddy, like the
pipes under the expressway, but warm and safe. They’re real nice, and they want
me to come with them to the end where there’s a bright light; and someone’s
waiting for me.’“.
His eyes were burning and he could
barely see Sandra’s concerned face. “It was like he was reading out loud from
Raymond Moody’s Life after Life! His description was almost word for
word like that and other books I’ve read. It didn’t seem real. Not when it was
my boy.”
But he also remembered the brutal
reality of being chased out of the emergency examination room when Max had
coughed convulsively, spitting up bright red blood over his chest and the
sheets. Karl had been forced out into the waiting room to sit in anguished
silence with Mitzi crying in his arms until, after an endless wait, the E.R.
attending had come back out to speak to them. Dr. Papadakis’ face had been
carefully neutral as she had destroyed their lives by telling them that this
time they had not been able to bring Max back.
Sandra’s concerned touch snapped him back
to the present and he squeezed her hand gratefully. “I’m sorry. It may have
been a long time ago, but sometimes it feels like it just happened yesterday.”
“You want to tell me about it?” She
perched herself on the arm of the couch. “You’ve never explained what happened
afterwards. I was still in school, and you just dropped out of sight until you
invited me to work on your Chamber.”
He looked at her, slightly confused for
a moment. “You’re right. I guess I never thought to explain.” He turned away with
a last lingering look at the picture, and then dropped into one of the burgundy
leather easy‑chairs that faced the matching sofa and the teak coffee
table. Kicking off his loafers, he took a deep breath and clenched his hands
around his ankles to draw his legs up onto the cushion under him. Then he sat
silently for a moment, resting his chin on his knees, until he began softly
describing the accident and the reluctant call he had received from the
emergency room when they realized whose son had just been brought in by
ambulance. By coincidence, Max had come into the very hospital where he worked.
“And after Max died,” he went on, “I
guess we both went to pieces a bit. Mitzi rediscovered her family roots and
sought refuge in the Bible, while I began researching...” He saw Sandra’s
expression and smiled ruefully as he pedantically admitted: “Okay, I embarked
on an obsessive‑compulsive research binge, trying to get a greater
understanding of the near death experience.” He glanced back at the picture
briefly. “But the memories and images reported by a number of people snatched
back from clinical death were so incredibly consistent and intriguing that I
couldn’t help myself. For months I read everything about it that I could get my
hands on. And then I went to all kinds of crackpot meetings.”
He laughed. “I met people who had been
kidnapped by aliens in flying saucers, had dinner with the Loch Ness monster,
or been its dinner in a previous life, and all sorts of other strange people. I
was afraid one of my colleagues from the hospital would spot me! But here and
there, I ran across people who had experienced an N.D.E., and in each case I
found a person suddenly at peace and with an almost unearthly serenity about
the whole thing. People who before their experience had been driven and
frantic, but who now had a whole different perspective on life.”
He shook his head. “It was not just their
proximity to death. Of all the people I talked to, most of the people who had
just been close to death were changed, sure. But they were still pretty much
the same. But the ones who’d had an N.D.E. were different than before; better,
and more at peace.”
His eyes focused on the wall separating
the living room from the laboratory he had built onto the house. “I guess
that’s when I started thinking about building the Chamber. Mitzi was in a world
of her own and we just weren’t connecting like we used to. We had both been
denying what we felt for a long time, and when we finally did go for some
counseling, I guess it was too late to really do much good. Mitzi had already
pretty much retreated from me and concentrated on her family and church.”
“And you retreated into making the
Chamber to try to understand what Max had been talking about!”
He nodded. “I guess I felt, no, feel,
that if I can understand the N.D.E. better, then I can get a better grasp on my
feelings about Max’s death.”
“You don’t agree with Mitzi that ‑‑“
“That Max is in heaven? Or that by
using my Chamber, we snatch people back after teasing them with forbidden sights
of their after‑life?”
He smiled again as he inadvertently
repeated Mitzi’s protests from just minutes earlier. “No. I might buy the idea
of a collective subconscious. But I have serious doubts about a sentient,
Supreme Being that controls all our individual lives.”
“So you don’t believe in God?” Sandra
pressed.
“Not the one in the Bible. I just can’t
believe in an anthropomorphic God who is compassionate one instant, but then
wipes out all sorts of people the next. If you looked only at the way God is
presented in the Bible and used that to do a clinical diagnosis, you’d have to
commit him.”
He shrugged. “What I might believe, is
that there is a cosmic data‑base of sorts, a collective subconscious like
I said; an immaterial gathering of all knowledge, awareness, memories and
experiences. Past, present, and future mingling as we evolve as a species. I
can see psychics tapping into it, not entirely able to sort things out. Sort of
like searching a database without having the right key words to search by.
After all, time doesn’t have to be linear. Maybe there are such things as
souls, and that’s where they’re drawn from, and return when the body dies. And
when they return to life in a new body, maybe fragmented scraps of data
sometimes return with them... I don’t know.”
He saw the worried look on her face. “I
know Max is gone, I’m not going to try to find his new body or some such
foolishness.”
She looked relieved as she slid down
the arm of the couch onto a cushion with a creak. “So why are you so upset?”
He sighed. “Because I designed the
Chamber to try to understand Max’s experience, but then after we actually built
the thing and tested it with volunteers ‑‑“
“That reminds me,” Sandra interrupted.
“Is the D.A. still trying to prosecute for the death of that volunteer?”
“No,
“Until you just remembered.” Sandra
nodded, understanding.
“Yeah. I feel like I’ve been betraying
Max. Especially since I’ve been afraid to try it for myself. And that’s why I
built it in the first place!”
“All right. I guess it’s time to kill
you!” The attempted joke fell flat and she winced. “But not tonight. Tomorrow,
after you have a complete physical first from another doctor!”
* * *
My focus on Karl Nürnheim’s narrative was
broken by an apologetic tug on my sleeve as Maria pointed to the clock on the
wall over the door. I realized that it was late afternoon, and that several
hours had passed while his nurse and I had sat listening to him. Aware on some
level that my attention was off him, Karl wound down and his eyes drifted
around the room, unseeing.
“He needs his rest, doctor,” Maria
pleaded. “Why don’t you come back tomorrow and continue then. If he starts up
again, the room monitors will record it, but he doesn’t seem likely to when
you’re not around.” She looked at Nürnheim and shook her head in amazement.
“I’m surprised he could talk so long, and so coherently. He’s been delirious
most of the time.” She glanced up at me. “Do you think it’s accurate?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Long term
memory is often intact even after short term memory and cognitive functions are
impaired.”
She looked fascinated. “You definitely
ought to come back and continue. If you can prompt him to go on where he left
off, it would leave the world with a valuable record of how the Chamber Riots
started...” She blushed faintly. “My father is a history professor, and he did
his thesis on the correlation between the Nightmare Epidemic and the Chamber
Nightmares.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Don’t apologize.
It’s fascinating stuff.”
But as I left, I stumbled because my
eyes were blurred with tears. I had not imagined that there would be such
similarities between his story and my own.
* * *
The next day I found myself drawn back
to Karl’s room, and after a confused start and prompting by Maria, he seemed to
remember where he had left off, only repeating himself a little as he continued
in a stronger voice:
“The Chambers took off like crazy once
we held our press conference. The world had become such a jaded and sensation‑seeking
place that our Chamber was tailor‑made for it. It only helped that
religious groups made an almost unilateral protest against us.” He smiled
sadly, and ‑‑ not for the first time ‑‑ I began
doubting his Alzeimer’s diagnosis as he went on.
“It was both funny and a little
reassuring to see Fundamentalist Christians, Catholics, Jews, and Moslems, all
standing side by side screaming charges of various forms of sacrilege. But all
it did was give us publicity ‑‑ and tear Mitzi completely away from
me.” His eyes closed briefly in pained recollection. “She left me and moved
back to
He took a deep, rasping breath before
going on. “The Life Definition Bill was naturally challenged the first time we
had an unrecoverable death in a Chamber with a paying customer, but we proved
that the man had falsified his medical records and shouldn’t have used the
Chamber in the first place. Besides, he had signed all the release forms. So
after that, we just tightened the screening procedure and raised the cost to
cover an on‑site physical prior to Chamber use.”
He chuckled ruefully. “All it did was
add another element of excitement to the experience.” His voice took on a
commercial tone as he chanted loudly. “We have danger, we have excitement! Do
you have what it takes to cheat the Grim Reaper himself and get a glimpse of
the beyond? Do you have what it takes to come back from the dead and bring with
you the prize of the ages, the serenity and peace of the beyond.” Nürnheim
broke out in a spasm of hacking coughs that shook his frail body.
But he waved Maria away impatiently
when she tried to help him and just went on hoarsely. “Where was I?”
Maria looked doubtful but I overrode
her. I had the feeling he needed to talk about this.
“You were talking about the success of the
Chambers,” I reminded him, “but you never told me what happened to you when you
tried it yourself.”
He looked away for a moment, and then
shook his head as he wistfully admitted that he had never had a N.D.E., even
though he tried the Chamber over and over...
* * *
“...and nothing!” He looked up at
Sandra, tears running down his face. He had lost track of the number of times
he had tried the Chamber in the past year, but once again he had failed. “Maybe
Mitzi was right and I am being punished ‑‑“
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“But I must have tried a couple of
dozen times, and not one N.D.E.! Statistically over twenty percent of our
‘deaths’ yield some sort of an experience, so why haven’t I had even one?”
She was silent as she un-strapped him from
the table, refusing to meet his eyes as she leaned over him to release the
adhesive EKG leads on his chest.
“Dammit Sandra, what’s wrong?”
She sighed. “You tell me, Karl. You’re
the doctor. I’m just the technician.”
He slumped on the table, mechanically
raising his head to let her remove the EEG leads and then lifting his right arm
to let her un-strap the automatic pressure cuff from his arm. “Maybe I’m not
waiting long enough? It’s only been eight months since we got approval.” She
shrugged and made a noncommittal noise. “That must be it!” He sat up suddenly,
startling her. “I have to be more patient and not try so often.” He swung his
legs over and down, getting shakily to his feet.
“Karl!” Sandra grabbed his arm. “You should
wait, rest a bit. You’ve been dead for G...” Her mouth snapped shut.
“For God’s sake!” Karl finished. “It’s okay.
You can say it. Except for whose sake it’s been, I don’t know.” Grabbing onto
her for support, he made his way shakily over to the washroom where he’d left
his clothes when changing into the Chamber Suit. He tried not to let his latest
failure depress him, but he was getting angry. It seemed that almost
invariably, he managed to come away from his Chamber experience with nothing
more than headaches, chest pain and deepening depression.
He knew Sandra was getting concerned
about him. Mitzi’s leaving had hurt, but he had been so wrapped up in all the
money that had been rolling in as the Chamber took off all over the world, that
it had kept him from realizing how burned out he was getting. But it was a
heady experience to have all the fame and fortune he was getting. Their Web
site was getting hundreds of thousands of hits every day, and even universities
were leasing Chambers and forming research programs.
And since
But he was also finding himself
increasingly guilt‑ridden as he realized how he had strayed from his
original intent.
* * *
Karl broke off his recital and stared
up at me with tears in his eyes. “They all thought it was great. Sandra,
Norman, and everybody who worked for me. The Outsiders didn’t strike back at us
for years, and in the meantime, the money kept rolling in; barrels of it, and I
forgot all about my son and the reason I built the Chamber in the first place.”
Then he was suddenly focused and alert
as his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “But just why are you so interested in this?
What are you really after?”
Fortunately the beeping of my Contact‑Link
spared me from answering, and I excused myself to go out into the hall to
answer. When I opened the Link, I saw that it was my office manager calling and
I pressed the answer key hopefully. Her expression was promising.
“We found one, Vanessa,” Betty said as
soon as she saw my face. “In
“Yes!” I clenched my fists and nodded.
“Great. How much?”
“‘Nessa?” Betty was frowning as she
chewed on a nail. “You’re not actually thinking of using it, are you? Never
mind that the Chamber Bill outlawed their use, but what if you provoke the
Outsiders again? It was our use of the Chambers that angered them in the first
place.”
“But I won’t! Don’t you see? Jeremy’s
N.D.E. proves that the Outsiders aren’t on guard any more! They won’t notice
just one more.” Carefully controlled memories of my son threatened to spill out
all at once and I clutched my free hand so tightly that my nails bit into my
palm. Not now! I told
myself.
I almost missed Betty’s dubious reply.
“Well; maybe it will be safe to use the Chamber. But even if you get it, how
are you going to use it safely? All Chamber instructions and operating supplies
were destroyed in the riots or by the government. The university even destroyed
the material for this Chamber.”
“I’ve got that covered.” I didn’t
bother to explain.
“Have you talked to Mark about this?”
She froze as soon as the words left her mouth. “I’m sorry ‑‑“
“Don’t mention his name again! Ever!” I
hissed, aiming the lens of my Link away so she wouldn’t see my face. She had
worked with me for over ten years and the slip was natural, but it cut like a
knife. And from the way my eyes were burning, I knew that even if I wasn’t
crying already, it wouldn’t be long.
“I’ll call you back,” I managed to get
out as I lost control and hung up to head for the bathroom next to the nurses’
station, keeping my face turned away from the lone puzzled clerk who was
updating the patient charts on the computer.
Locking the door behind me, I leaned
against it, crying uncontrollably for several minutes until I finally got hold
of myself again. Feeling better, I dabbed my eyes carefully and then inspected
myself in the bathroom mirror, thanking the makers of water‑proof and
smear‑proof makeup. At least I didn’t look like a raccoon, even if my
eyes were pretty red. But then the reflecting surface of the mirror seemed to
shimmer and change as I stared at myself but saw only the confused and pain‑twisted
face of my six year‑old son Jeremy from a year earlier as he looked up at
me from the bed in the trauma room of the emergency department.
I could still hear him ask: “Why can’t
I feel my legs, mommy? Why am I so cold?”
“Baby, I’m right here,” had been all I
had been able to answer. “Hold on to mommy’s hand.” How could I tell him that
his spinal column had been nearly severed ‑‑ it was severely
fractured in at least three places ‑‑ and that the paramedics had
been forced to amputate one leg just to get him out of the mangled remains of
his daddy’s car. His father! My ex‑husband! Ex, after he had decided that
there was no harm in having a drink for the road, even though he was going to
pick up Jeremy from a friend’s house! And an ex who had been thrown clear
without a scratch from an accident that had destroyed my life and killed my
son!
I had stayed awake for over twenty‑four
hours out in the lounge outside the operating room while Jeremy underwent
several desperate operations to try to keep him alive. They did not even dare
talk about what he would have to deal with if he survived. That was just too
big an ‘if’.
All I could clearly remember after the
accident were his few lucid moments in the trauma room while they were
assembling an O.R. team. He had been clinically dead when they had extracted
him from the wreckage and amputated his leg, but they had successfully revived
him and sedated him for the Hover‑Jet ride to the trauma room, where he
had rambled for a while about tunnels and a pretty light, and someone “waiting”
for him. Then he had been ‑‑ all too briefly ‑‑ lucid
as he had reached out to me to ask me why he felt so cold. The puzzling thing
had been that there had been no fear. Only a sort of calm, clinical curiosity
before he had lost consciousness again.
And he had never regained consciousness
after those few minutes. He died on the operating room table during the last attempt
to repair the mangled remains of his spine, and for several months afterwards,
I had been little more than a walking corpse myself. Only fury had revived me,
briefly, to file for an uncontested divorce. Other than a single, throat‑scarring
meeting where I had lashed out both physically and verbally, I had never seen
Mark since the accident. I had refused to let him come to the hospital, and I
had immediately moved out from our house and into the small apartment adjoining
my office.
A knock on the door startled me as I
cleaned up after a second burst of tears and I spun.
“Yes?”
“He’s asking for you,” I heard Maria
offer hesitantly as I opened the door after a last hurried check of my face.
“He’s anxious about something,” she
added as we headed back to his room. “I’ve never seen him so lucid. He even
called me by name ‑‑ as he told me to get out.” She looked annoyed.
“Said to get you, and to stay out.”
“I’ll fill you in,” I promised with a
mental qualification of ‘mostly’. In a way I was relieved. I didn’t really want
anyone else to know what I was contemplating. Like Karl, I had immersed myself
in reading up on N.D.E.’s, and like him, I felt compelled to try to have one
myself so that I could understand what my son had experienced ‑‑
and in the back of my mind there was a faint hope that I might see him again.
Some people had reported seeing lost loved ones in their own near death
experiences. I had been considering various ways to talk to Karl alone, and now
he was giving me the perfect opportunity.
As I closed the door behind me, I felt
a thrill come over me when I saw that a different Karl was waiting for me: an
alert and focused figure totally unlike the absently reciting old man who had
been speaking before.
I reached up and turned off the recorder,
surreptitiously switching on the micro‑recorder in my purse. Karl just
nodded approvingly.
“Good. This is not for everyone.” He
reached down and used the bed control to raise the head of the mattress further
until our faces were level as I sat down next to him.
“What are you really after?” he asked
again.
“I found a Chamber,” I answered simply.
He was silent for a long time, a range
of emotions swirling across his features while I kept quiet.
“Who was it?” he asked finally.
“My son.”
“How old was he?”
“Six.”
“Max was eight.” For a moment his eyes
grew absent again, but then he seemed to shake himself. “And why do you think
this is going to help? Haven’t you heard? All you’ll find are the Outsiders!”
The term seemed to taste bad as his mouth spit it out. “And last I heard,
they’re not in a good mood!”
“No, Jeremy saw more!”
“More?” Karl leaned forward hungrily,
his eyes wide open.
I nodded. “The tunnel, the beckoning
light, everything the old reports described. It’s the first time in thirty years
‑‑“
“Thirty...?” Suddenly Karl looked like
a withered old man again, confusion draining his energy from him as he was
reminded of how much time had passed. “That’s right... and Sandra...” He closed
his eyes. “She was killed you know. In the Chamber Riots. God’s vengeance,
according to Mitzi. But I don’t believe that.”
For a moment I thought I had lost him
again, but then his eyes re‑focused.
“You said he saw... That he had a
classic N.D.E.?”
I nodded, and I explained how Jeremy
had been totally relaxed and unafraid in spite of everything.
Karl looked confused. “I don’t
understand. Ever since the Outsider Offensive, all N.D.E. experiences reported
were the stuff of nightmares. Never mind the Nightmare Epidemic that swept the
world.”
I shuddered. I had read the reports,
and I had almost been afraid to trust my own memory of Jeremy’s words. But the
nurse who had been in the trauma room with me had verified what I had heard,
and he had been just as astonished. But he had also been more than happy to
promise to keep silent, especially after I offered him a bit of negotiable
encouragement transferred to his account card.
Still, even with the certainty of
Jeremy’s N.D.E., it had taken me over a year to work up the nerve to actually
start looking for a Chamber and to seriously contemplate using it. Even after
the destruction of the last Chamber, it had taken years for the world to get
over the Outsider Offensive, and even the thought of potentially triggering
another one was terrifying. No one wanted to get the attention of the Outsiders
again. Ever.
The Outsiders.
“Sentient, immaterial beings of
coherent energy patterns,” had been how Dr. Namia on the World News Network had
confidently described the Outsiders in an interview a few years after the
Offensive hysteria had died down. I still remembered the historical recording I
had downloaded off the Web, and it had been almost funny to see the amiable
elderly Jamaican psychologist (who could have been a Black twin of Sigmund
Freud’s) espouse his theories in the delightful lilting tones of the
“From what we have been able to
speculate after interviewing hundreds of Chamber survivors,” he had continued,
“the Outsiders have been around for millenia. Beings of pure energy born and
living mostly in the magnificent atmospheric energy currents of the Aurora
Borealis and the Aurora Australis, the Outsiders never interacted with us
before the Chambers. In fact, I seriously doubt they were even really aware of
us.”
“So what changed that?” the WNN anchor
had asked.
“Nürnheim’s blasted Chamber!” For a
moment, Namia had actually glowered. “The survivor accounts point to an
increasing amount of Outsider/User interaction as Chamber use spread and
increased. The occasional classical N.D.E., as it used to be reported,
apparently was always of interest to the Outsiders as the released spirit,” he
had frowned at the term, no doubt hoping for something a little more secular,
“is apparently formed of some type of energy we can not precisely quantify yet,
but which is perceptible to the Outsiders.” From the irritated expression on
his face, it was very clear that he was bound and determined to find some
tangible, measurable force that could be measured and studied.
Then he had gone on to add: “Apparently
the Outsiders found something of interest in the N.D.E. because under deep
hypnosis and guided recall, there is a definite Outsider presence detectible in
a large number of people who reported N.D.E.’s. We determined that, because we
were able to compare the impressions of pre‑ and post‑Offensive
N.D.E.’s. In the latter, the Outsiders were actually making an effort to be
recognized and feared, and we were able to document certain specific mental
‘traces’ that point to Outsider presence.”
“So why did they launch the Offensive?”
the WNN anchor had pressed ‑‑ as if eighty percent of the world
didn’t already know!
“Because the occasional N.D.E. may have
been a pleasant intrusion into their world, but when hundreds, and then
thousands, of individual human ‘spirits’ began intruding into their lives, it
apparently became distressing.” Dr. Namia had paused a moment. “Sort of the way
that tickling might be sort of amusing and diverting in small doses, but if you
tickle people too much, you can literally hurt, or even kill them. And the more
we intruded into their world, the more aware of us they became, and the better
they understood us ‑‑ and how to hurt us!”
“So you’re saying it was self‑defense?”
“Exactly! That is why the Chamber Bill
was passed, to make absolutely sure that there were no Chambers left anywhere.
It didn’t take long to realize that the horrible images from the Offensive‑era
N.D.E.’s and the worldwide Nightmare Plague that followed were the same ones,
and that the Outsiders were reaching out beyond the Chambers to attack us as
long as we kept using them. And it was equally clear that the more Chambers
that were torn down, the less nightmares were reported. Now we have been free
of the nightmares for some time, and only reported N.D.E. sufferers still
experience the nightmare images.”
* * *
A concerned hand on my arm snapped me
back to the present, and I felt my face redden as Karl patted me, his
expression making it clear that he knew what I had been thinking about.
“It is scary to consider what ‘might’ be
again,” he agreed.
“But I have to know,” I insisted. “I
found an intact Chamber, and since Jeremy had a real N.D.E.--”
“You think you will be safe trying it,”
he finished. “Do you really want to take that risk?” He was frowning as he
shifted in the bed with a nervous glance at the door. “It’s not just yourself
you’re putting in danger, you know. What if you stir up the Outsiders again?”
That was the one fear that had kept me
from embarking on my search for a chamber for almost a year. But Jeremy wasn’t
alone. Even if everyone was terrified of talking about near death experiences,
I had read about a number of others on the Internet. There were still a few
discussion groups that surreptitiously speculated about the Outsiders, Karl
Nürnheim’s Chamber, and the N.D.E., and I had come across postings about a
classic N.D.E. in Paris, one in Jerusalem, and several in China, Russia and the
American Union. And all within the last month.
I explained to Karl, but it was clear
that his doubts remained.
“How can you be so sure?” His hands
were gripping his sheet tensely and his eyes were flicking between me and the
door. “And Maria... She’s a devout Catholic, does she --”
“No. She doesn’t know. Only my office
manager does, and she’s been with me since I opened my practice. And she’ll be
handling the Chamber.”
“And you want me to provide you with
operating instructions,” he assumed.
I nodded. “And a listing of any operational
material I will need.”
He leaned back in bed silently and chewed
on his lower lip hesitantly for a long time. I didn’t dare say anything, but
just squirmed in my seat until I had a sudden memory of Jeremy waiting for me
to get ready one day when I had promised to take him for ice cream. Relaxing, I
waited.
Finally Karl turned to me. “Do you have a
recorder?”
“Better.” I pulled out my pocket
computer and he nodded. “Excellent.” Then he began...
II
It had taken three weeks, and over a
hundred thousand dollars divided between bribes and trucking expenses ‑‑
mostly the former ‑‑ but the Chamber was finally ready to go. I had
been back to see Karl regularly to repeat his instructions and advice because I
wanted to be sure that he had not left anything out. But ironically my plans
for the Chamber had revitalized him, and according to Maria he had never been
as alert and coherent.
Despite my efforts to keep her in the dark,
I was sure that she knew what we were up to, but while she had been acting
increasingly nervous around me, she had not made any mention of it, so neither
had I.
And now as I waited for Betty, perched
on a straight‑backed chair in front of the Chamber, I felt my mouth dry
up and my heart begin to race. I was scared. Not about any nightmare images or
even of world reaction should it come out what I was planning to do, but my
fear was on a purely personal level. I was about to take my own life, even if
only briefly, and all of a sudden it terrified me. What if the Chamber failed
and Betty couldn’t revive me? Or what if my own body didn’t respond? Or, worse,
what if I didn’t experience anything? Not everyone who had used the Chamber
before the Outsider Offensive had reported having an N.D.E.
“What?” I mumbled to the empty room...
no, to the waiting Chamber that lay there like a gaping and expectant oversized
coffin. For a moment I could have sworn I heard Jeremy’s voice calling to me.
But that was ridiculous.
The gleaming ebony vault of the
meticulously preserved aluminum and plastic Chamber lay gaping, the blood‑red
fabric of the lining an intentionally morbid contrast. Twice as high and wide
as a coffin, the Chamber was still a marvel of miniaturization considering it
was decades‑old technology.
Surrounding the platform one lay down on,
were sensors for pulse, respiration, blood pressure, brainwaves, and body
temperature ‑‑ all of which were displayed on external monitors.
And on the right side were medication dispensers that delivered either the
‘death trigger’, a saline flush, or the ‘revival’ solution into a single
intravenous catheter. The former was a carefully designed drug that shocked and
stopped a number of body systems cold, and it was dispensed according to a
combination of factors including body weight, metabolism values and blood
chemistry. There were other ways of inducing ‘death’, but this had been proven
the safest one with the easiest revival, using a powerful, but safe,
counteractant/stimulant. As an extra precaution, cardiac stimulator probes and
a forced oxygenation mask were also positioned in the lid to be deployed if
necessary. And every brightly colored part of the chamber was shaped and
positioned ominously to be noticeable and unnerving.
This was obviously one of the more
recent Chambers originally destined for the amusement park market, and no
effort had been spared to try to make it as frightening as possible. All part
of the “Cheat the Grim Reaper” pitch Karl had described. But now it was making
things more difficult for me. Had it been a nice, antiseptic, device like a
medical scanner, it would have been much easier. I was a doctor, and I was
debating attempting an unsettling, but statistically very safe, clinical
procedure. I had been through that before. But the gruesome device in front of
me was different and it scared me.
Then I gasped as the sound of the door
startled me and I turned to see Betty come into my lab with a hunted expression
on her face.
“I’m sorry, ‘Nessa. He made me bring
him.”
‘Him’ was Karl, his wheelchair pushed
by a frightened‑looking Maria. Sitting in a chair like this, his
rheumatoid arthritis was even more apparent as it twisted his body.
“You didn’t think I was going to let
you try this without me, did you?” he asked dryly.
“He said he would call the F.B.I. and
report us if I didn’t bring him,” Betty explained.
“It’s all right,” I reassured her. “I
had actually been trying to think of some way of getting him to help me without
calling attention ‑‑“
“It’s simple.” Karl wheeled himself
laboriously closer. “If you would have checked my chart a little further, you
would have seen that I am in the hospital of my own choice, at my own ‑‑
considerable ‑‑ expense, and no one can stop me from coming or
going as I please...” He frowned. “It’s just that the way the world hates me, I
have had precious little reason to leave the hospital.”
He managed to stand up, shoving away
Maria’s solicitous attempts at supporting him as he staggered over to the
Chamber and grabbed onto the rim with a tight grip and sighed.
“The Nürnheim DeathCo Chamber of Death,
Model III...” he peered into it looking up at the convertible roof‑like
hood that was poised over the body of the chamber, waiting to seal it shut into
darkness. “Sorry, Model IV,” he corrected as he spied the tiny model number
emblazoned in the hood. He gave me a satisfied nod. “This was the latest model.
Virtually idiot‑proof. You couldn’t have done better if you had been
shopping for one at a trade show. These were leased for over a thousand dollars
a month, I’ll have you know.” He looked wistful. “A large chunk of which came
to Sandra and myself.”
Then he turned back to the chamber with
a grunt and began a detailed examination of the drug dispensers, sensor leads
and monitors, after which he finally faced me. “It seems to be in perfect
operating condition. Now what about the ‘death’ trigger and the revival
solution?”
I smiled to myself as I reached for the
‘operations notes’ I had printed out. Suddenly I felt like I was interning
again, turning in a treatment plan to my resident for review.
“I followed your formulas precisely,
and tailored the dosage and composition to myself as you described. Both
injectors are loaded, and I just had a physical exam.” I handed him the report
from a new partner in the clinic that had opened in the same building as mine,
and who had given me a complete physical after I explained I needed an
independent one for a moonlighting job I was applying for.
Karl settled back into the chair,
accepting Maria’s help more graciously this time, and sat there looking over my
chart myopically ‑‑ or maybe it was just Mukesh’s fractured use of
English that was giving him a hard time? Karl wouldn’t have been the first to
get a head‑ache trying to read it.
Finally he finished and nodded
reluctantly. “You’re a perfect candidate. Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
I glanced at the ominous chamber
nervously and nodded with determination. “Yes.
Maria had been looking more and more uncomfortable
as Karl and I had been talking, and at my answer she hissed quietly and crossed
herself. “Dios mio! You
are really going through with it?”
I nodded. “I have to understand!” I
explained what Jeremy had gone through and why I had to do this.
“It is wrong! This is not God’s will.”
Her normally accentless English was suddenly flavored with her native Spanish
as she backed towards the door. Karl moved towards her nervously but she shook
her head. “No, I will not call anyone. Your punishment is not in my hands. But
I resign as your nurse.” She fled for the exit, pausing in the doorway. “I’m
sorry, Karl. But I can’t...”
For the first time since I had met him,
Karl looked totally crushed as she disappeared, and he started to wheel after
her in uncoordinated jerky motions. “Maria! Wait!” But the sound of the outside
door closing down the hall was unmistakable, and he slumped, turning to me with
tear‑damp eyes. “She’s gone.”
I dropped to one knee in front of him
and laid a hand on his. “Look, Betty can take you back to the hospital and then
come back here to operate ‑‑“
“No.” He was adamant again. “We have to
try the Chamber. But I want to go first!”
“It would kill you, for real!” I
protested, Betty’s voice joining mine in a shocked chorus.
“So, this is life?” He held out his
twisted hands and indicated the wheelchair. “I’ve been dead for years!” he
growled. “The doctors just haven’t caught on.”
“Well, I’m a doctor, damn it, and I am
not going to ‑‑“
“Yes you will!” He held up a small Link
I had not seen and dialed a phone number, pausing with his finger over the send
button. “I just dialed the F.B.I. They are responsible for American Union
enforcement of the Chamber Bill.” His finger was poised tremulously to complete
the call and I could see sweat forming on his brow and his arm start to shake
from the effort. “I go first, or I make this call.”
“Then make it!” I turned my back on him
and dropped back into the chair, a deep despair settling over me. To have been
so close!
But I was a doctor.
After a long and strained silence, I
heard an electronic beep from behind me along with Betty’s gasp, but I didn’t
care.
Then I heard the effort‑filled
sounds of Karl wheeling closer, followed by a gnarled hand dropping onto my
shoulder clumsily.
“I’m sorry. I cleared the phone. Go,
get ready!” he ordered in a resigned voice. “I wouldn’t have seen anything
anyway. I never did.”
I turned and reached out awkwardly to
hug him. “Thanks!”
Betty handed me my Chamber suit,
complete with access cut‑aways for the catheter needle, pressure cuff and
sensor leads, and I went into the bathroom self‑consciously to change
into the revealing pajama‑like suit.
Karl and Betty were both waiting for me
anxiously when I came out and climbed into the Chamber and held out my arm. A
quick twist of the tourniquet, a light tapping on inner fore‑arm to bring
up a good vein, and then the medication needle was slipped in and the cap taped
in place. Betty was a proficient registered nurse as well as my office manager,
and I hardly felt the deft insertion. But I could hear my racing heart as I lay
back and tried to relax as she released the tourniquet and attached the various
monitor leads and the automatic pressure cuff.
Finally she was finished and stepped
back to survey her work.
“You look like shit,” she declared
solemnly. “But you’re technically ready. But are you ready?” She leaned forward to take my hand with a twinkle in
her eye. “And I am not saying this as an employee worried about future job
security. You’ll be fine, though personally I think it should be Mark lying
here and getting a taste of mortality.”
I thought about my ex‑husband
going though this, and suddenly I felt better. “No. It’s my job. Mark just
wouldn’t ‘get it’.” I had thought he had what it took to be a good father and
husband, but I had been wrong. “Besides, I need to do this, for me.”
Betty sighed, while Karl rolled up and
reached up and in to take my other hand.
“You’ll be fine, Vanessa. I truly hope
you find some answers.” His eyes were moist. “And if you happen to see Max,
tell him I love him!”
He had showed me a picture of his son
taken the morning of the accident, before Max’s class had left for what was
supposed to have been a field trip to the zoo, and his son’s features were
almost as clear in my mind as Jeremy’s.
I squeezed his hand. “I will.”
Then there wasn’t anything else to say,
and the hood descended over me to seal me into vinyl‑scented darkness.
“Relax, ‘Nessa,” Betty’s voice reassured
me through a speaker above me. “You’ve got to slow your heart down a bit or the
drug won’t act right.”
I had to smile as I thought about that:
‘Relax, or we can’t kill you right’, and after a moment a satisfied, “Much
better,” came from above from Betty as apparently I was relaxing.
Suddenly as I lay there in an almost
palpable dark, I felt a cold rush of liquid into my arm and then a blinding
pain that spread from my chest into my head...
* * *
...utter darkness still enveloped me,
but different than in the Chamber... I had the feeling of floating unencumbered
in an open space without really being aware of my body... The smell of vinyl,
the sensation of the table under me, the tacky, hair-pulling feel of the tape
holding the needle in my arm, and even the feeling of the needle itself, all of
these were gone... I also had a feeling of movement, as if I was being pulled
along at high speed, but without any of the normal sensory cues of wind‑resistance
or motion.
After a moment I realized I was seeing
light, and that I was rushing towards it! Memories of all the N.D.E.
experiences I had read about flooded up and I realized I was experiencing just
what those people had.
Then I exploded into the light and
found myself standing... floating... existing, near the Chamber. In an eerie
way it was transparent, and I could see myself lying motionlessly within, and
at the same time, I could see its solid walls and the monitors that displayed
flat‑line traces where my heart beat, respiration, and brain waves should
have been displayed.
I was dead!
The thought should have terrified me,
but for some reason, it didn’t. I felt instead only a sense of utter peace, and
a patient puzzlement that didn’t seem to be entirely my own.
Why had I gone to these lengths to try
to see and understand something so totally beyond my comprehension? The
question wasn’t my own, I realized, but came from... I couldn’t focus on the
source beyond the strange feeling that the light around me had taken on an
animate presence and substance of sorts which was trying to understand me... or
was it trying to make me understand myself?
I wasn’t sure.
Suddenly the room around me faded and I
was standing over an accident scene where a Wreck‑Wrobot was raucously
tearing open the crumpled aluminum body of a brand new fire‑engine red
Desert Wind ‑‑ Mark’s car! Several state police cars, a MediVac
Hover‑Jet and two fire‑rescue vans were parked at jagged angles
across the road above the ditch that held what was left of the car. Three
E.M.T.’s were clustered around the motionless and bleeding body of Jeremy, who
was bent at an unnatural angle inside the twisted wreckage. I found myself
unable to move or speak, a trapped spectator in a grim drama who wanted to
scream out in anguish, but who at the same time was still surrounded by an
almost tangible aura of peace and calm that embraced me.
Suddenly I saw Mark standing by the
ambulance. His forehead was bleeding from a substantial cut over his right
eyebrow and his clothes were disheveled and torn ‑‑ apparently he
had not been as unhurt as I remembered. But the expression on his face was
frightening as he pushed away an E.M.T. who was trying to clean his head wound.
Total shock and anguish were virtually pushing him to his knees as he tried to
approach the car.
“Sir, there is nothing you can do,” a
state trooper restrained him politely. “I’m sorry, but you have to let the
medics do what they ‑‑“
“That’s my son in there, damn it!”
“I realize that, but there’s nothing
you can do.”
“Shit!” Mark spun away after another
fruitless attempt to approach the wreck and staggered back to the open back
doors of the ambulance to drop heavily onto the floor, cradling his head in his
hands as he sat there. “Jeremy,” was all he could sob as he briefly looked up
and over.
I followed his eyes and suddenly saw
the mangled body of a large buck, proud antlers propping his head up so that
sightless eyes seemed to stare back at me to ask: “Why?”
“I’m sorry Jeremy,” Mark moaned softly
as if our son could hear him. “He came out of nowhere! Down the embankment at
full speed and suddenly he was just there, right in front of the car!
There was just no time to stop... I tried to swerve...” He buried his head
again.
“There was nothing you could have done,
sir,” the state trooper had heard him as he approached. “The highway fence up
there had a break in it ‑‑“
“But it’s still my fault, you know,”
Mark interrupted, looking up blankly at the officer. “I was driving in the
manual lanes ‑‑ I hate Auto‑Drive. Why did I have that damn
drink!” His fists clenched angrily.
“Sir, your blood alcohol level was
virtually zero,” the trooper countered. “You didn’t have nearly enough in your
system to impair your reactions. How much did you have?”
“A swallow of Whiskey Sour. My wife had
to work late and she called me to ask me to pick Jeremy up at his friend’s
before I could finish it. But after drinking anything, I shouldn’t have agreed
to ‑‑“
“Sir, it wasn’t your fault,” the
trooper gamely tried again. “No one could have stopped in time or avoided the
impact.”
But Mark was no longer listening, and
the trooper gave up to go help the E.M.T.’s clear loose metal away so they
could lift Jeremy’s body clear to try to revive him.
And, just for a brief moment, I could
have sworn I saw Jeremy open his eyes and smile at me. But then his bruise‑covered
face was blocked by the clustered emergency personnel.
I looked back at Mark who stared at
their efforts with a frighteningly haunted look. “It’s my fault,” he kept
whispering. “My God! What’s this going to do to ‘Nessa? I am sorry,
sweetheart,” he repeated to no one. “I am so sorry...”
Then the accident faded, and I found
myself back at our house as I was packing my things and preparing to move out.
I was looking down at myself confronting Mark with my face streaming with tears
and twisted with grief and anger ‑‑ an ugly sight that made me
uncomfortable.
“How could you go out drinking before
picking up Jeremy?” I was screaming. “How could...” On and on, while Mark just
sat there, looking strangely relieved, as if my rage was somehow helping him.
An occasional “I’m sorry” was all he
offered in defense, and it almost seemed as if he was doing it to perpetuate my
tirade, saying it when it seemed as if I was finally calming down. And
naturally, the limp and half‑hearted apologies only triggered more anger
from me.
Then I was back in my lab, looking down
on the chamber at a concerned Betty.
“Shouldn’t the chamber be reviving her
by now?”
“Soon,” Karl reassured her. The
downtime is based on her physical parameters, metabolism and such. And it’s
carefully calculated to keep her dead as long as fully safe. Thousands upon
thousands of people used this design without a single failure. She’ll be fine.”
He reached up to squeeze her hand. “Really.” His face was full of longing as he
looked at the chamber. “What I wouldn’t give to know what she was seeing right
now...”
The animate light around me grew
blinding and washed away everything, but it didn’t hurt. It just kept soothing
me as I realized what I had just seen.
It had not been Mark’s fault!
I had never questioned his emotionless
call to my Link when he had confessed to having an accident after drinking, and
that Jeremy was en route to the trauma center. But now I realized that he had
never allowed himself to accept the truth of what the state trooper had tried
to tell him, but that he had conveniently taken the blame and let me be the
punishing force for Jeremy’s death.
I wanted to cry for him and reach out
to him to tell him how sorry I was, but I couldn’t. All at once I wanted away
from this cloyingly serene environment. I wanted to feel the hair‑ripping
sound of tape being torn from my arm, gasp in a choking fight for air, and feel
the sickening tightness in my chest that I knew would be with me when I woke
up. I had read all the accounts of Chamber after‑shock. I wanted to live!
I needed to call Mark and apologize... and to tell him what I had just
experienced ‑‑ and to ask him to forgive himself ‑‑ and
me.
But it wasn’t to be. Instead, the light
around me was suddenly extinguished to plunge me into a deeper darkness than I
had ever experienced. And for the first time in my life I felt a deep visceral
fear at a level I had never experienced. I had thought that my pain over losing
Jeremy had been the worst I could possibly feel, but I had been wrong!
I was still an incorporeal being, but
now it terrified me because I knew what was happening. The Outsiders had found
me!
They were all around me, I sensed, but
I could see nothing... feel nothing... affect nothing! I couldn’t speak and I
didn’t have a body to move. I had never felt so utterly helpless in my life.
Slowly I felt a presence around me
strengthen and focus on communicating with me. Who are you, I tried to ‘ask’, mentally replaying Dr.
Namia’s hypothesis and hoping the Outsiders could understand it.
After a moment I felt a sense of
confirmation come over me, as if the Outsiders understood and agreed. Gradually
I became aware of light, movement, and of shapes. Luminescent, etherial figures
which did not seem to be entirely real surrounded me, passing through each
other... and through ‘me’, whatever I was. I wasn’t seeing with my eyes, either
because I could see all around me, not that I could understand how. I was
afloat in a sea of colors, half of which I couldn’t name, and I was becoming
aware of other sensations as well. As I tried to focus, the vaguely psychedelic
world around me began to take on a semblance of order. I was looking ‘down’ on
the Earth. But instead of a distinct blue‑green globe with swirling
clouds swimming in a sea of blackness, I was looking at a hazy shape of
swirling multi‑colored fire surrounded by energy haloes that seemed more
solid than the planet itself. The dual rings of the Van Allen radiation belt,
whose shape I remembered from some forgotten school lesson, were especially
distinct and held an ominous aura for some reason ‑‑ except for
where they touched down at the poles to spawn beautiful fountains and energetic
‘water’falls that seemed to draw me towards them.
Through wordless impressions I was
slowly made to understand that this was the birthplace of the others. And
reaching up from the poles I saw the warm and welcoming hues extend up into the
layer in between the outer and inner layers of the Van Allen Belt. I realized
that the Outsiders lived in the charged magnetosphere environment in between
the layers, spawned and maintained somehow by the energy flux, but safe only in
the calmer regions between the strongest radiation layers and in the
fluctuating environment of the polar lights.
No wonder humanity had hardly mattered
to them before.
But our presence was easy to detect.
The surface of the world developed more and more flickering energy sources as I
watched, and eventually I saw numerous vivid columns of energy pouring down
from orbit to link up with a delicate filigree of multi‑hued energy
strands that snaked their way across the surface of the planet to coalesce into
numerous discrete points of varying sizes. I had never seen the Earth and its
cities look so beautiful.
I wondered if the Outsiders had thought
that the microwave power satellite transmissions and the world‑wide web
of power lines were a natural evolution of the planet? Or had they known of our
existence but been monumentally indifferent of it, until we began invading
their world in our search for new thrills?
‘This is our world’, a wordless message
with no perceptible source told me, and I had the impression of utter serenity.
Then the colors around me turned more threatening. They were letting me know
that I was seeing more recent images from the past... memories?
I started becoming aware of a new
presence: a series of directionless and unbounded lights linked to the surface
below somehow. They had actually been there for some time, but I had been too
distracted by the more vivid energies of the radiation belts and the more
recent artificial energy sources. The softer lights I was finally noticing were
both beckoning and repulsing at once.
But as quickly as they appeared, they
vanished. Thousands of these pulses came and went, almost too quickly to
notice. Once in a while though, the energy was stronger and lingered, growing
more compelling with every second. But just as it became uncomfortably intense,
a new presence appeared ‑‑ the same animate light I had encountered
in my near death experience.
Ever‑calming and soothing, it
quenched the searching intensity of the unfulfilled soul ‑‑ I
couldn’t help viewing it as such ‑‑ and in a brief moment of
rapture, absorbed it and transformed it.
In some cases the link to the surface
was severed and in others, there was an impression of... not rejection, but of
a return. But that brief moment of union of forces was a precious one.
At first.
Then we moved closer in time to the
present. Still, there was no direct communication as such from the Outsiders,
only a distant association that left strong impressions I felt were accurate.
Now the occasional over‑powering
energy surges of deaths and briefly disembodied souls became the rule rather
than the exception. More and more of them. Powerful, unsettling invasions of
energy in search of resolution that amplified almost to the point of pain
before finally collapsing back to Earth. Some were greeted by the calming force
I knew accompanied a N.D.E., but most were not and the invading and unresolved
surges outnumbered and overwhelmed the sought‑after second‑hand
sensation of the N.D.E.
Dr. Namia would never know how
right he had been... or perhaps he did?
It was confusing.
And then, just as the constant barrage
of unfulfilled souls grew almost too excruciating to tolerate, I was subjected
to a new assault and submerged in a series of nightmarish images and sensations
that seemed to have been drawn from a composite mind formed of the dreams and
wishes of the world’s worst madmen and psychopaths.
It was a brief exposure, but felt
eternal, and irrevocably corrosive. When it faded, I was left in utter
blackness; unseeing, unfeeling, and almost insensible as I contemplated what I
had been shown. First Earth as mankind developed, transforming into a history
of natural N.D.E.’s, but then I had been shown the effect of the age of the
Chambers and why the Offensive had been necessary ‑‑ as an act of
self‑preservation.
As I understood that, the colorful
energy‑world around me reappeared and I wanted to cry with relief. Once
more, it was a calm multihued sea of ordered and subtle energies, only brief
and occasional pulses of deaths intruding into the background.
Again I felt imperceptible minds focus
on me, and I realized that I was being warned. I had been allowed to experience
what I had because of my need. Somehow the Outsiders had been able to sense my
reasons for trying to experience an N.D.E. and that I was using the Chamber
instead of being an accident victim. But, on a subconscious level, I could feel
that I was being very clearly warned that if I used the Chamber again, the
nightmares would again be mine, and not just briefly!
And not just mine!
Then everything went black again...
* * *
I woke up gagging and clutching at my
chest, gasping for air in the darkness as I felt fire surge though my body.
Then blinding fluorescent lights suddenly flooded me as the top of the Chamber
was opened and I looked up to see Betty leaning over me in concern, while next
to her Karl peered over the side of the chamber from his wheelchair with his
face full of a million barely restrained questions.
Coughing and trying to catch my breath,
I managed to gasp: “I’m fine.”
The immediate concern of both
satisfied, they relaxed a bit and Betty handed me a glass of water as I forced
myself up into a sitting position.
“Thanks, Betty!” I downed the water
gratefully and then sat there shakily while my heart tried to regain its normal
rhythm.
From the expectant looks on their faces
as Betty removed the I.V. needle and various leads to free me, I could see that
she and Karl were both fighting a monumental battle with their desire to find
out what I had experienced, but at the same time, they knew I wasn’t ready to
talk about it.
All I could think of was the sight of
Mark’s tortured face as he sat watching the paramedics and fire rescue
personnel trying to free Jeremy. And I remembered the warm and welcoming light
that had shown me what I needed to see. But just who had been my guide? God,
Christ, Allah, or a conscious ‑‑ there had been a conscious
awareness to that light! ‑‑ manifestation of our collective
subconscious? Or had it all been my own subconscious mind at work to make me re‑evaluate
my distraught reaction to Jeremy’s death? My scientific training leaned towards
he latter... but I wondered.
Whatever I had seen, there had been a
sense of patient compassion to the light, and obviously a wish to set me straight
on a major life error. I didn’t quite know what to think of it, yet ‑‑
because I had something much more important to take care of first.
I sat up straight. “Betty. Get me my Link.
I have to call Mark.” Her eyes opened wide in astonishment and I cut her off
before she could say anything.
“I’ll explain everything, to both of
you.” I glanced at Karl anxiously. “In a little while,” I pleaded. “I have to
call him.” I couldn’t explain further without unleashing a flood of built‑up
tears I had been unable to release before.
My eyes were shut tight as I took the
phone blindly from Betty and dialed our house, praying he was there.
It only rang twice before I heard his
voice and opened my eyes to see him looking up at me in concern. “‘Nessa, are
you all right? Betty told me what you were planning, though she said you’d
sworn her to secrecy.”
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out as Betty and
Karl closed the door behind them to give me privacy. “Bear with me. I have a
lot to say.” I took a deep breath and began…
-
end –