Dadr'Ba (12 page)

Su’Zi sat across from Mi’Ka and sipped the tea she had been offered. Su’Zi only lives one sector away in a Zone Two mining camp but this is the first time Su’Zi has visited Mi’Ka at her shop in Ol’Tn’Ka, zone three.

The CA makes a big deal of letting the crew know that they monitor cross-sector movement, the reason given being safety and environmental control to ensure efficient heat dissipation from the core. But cross-sector monitoring doesn’t apply to Mi’Nr’s, whose operations are now in the lower regions of zone three. Mi’Nr’s know of sector crossings unknown or uncontrolled by the CA. Su’Zi used one of these uncontrolled cross points for this visit.

The CA prefers that people do all their recreational travel virtually. Virtual reality has gotten so good over the years that it matches the average person’s senses, and unless close attention is paid, it can be mistaken for reality. With the ability to go virtually, anywhere and visit anyone on Dadr’Ba without leaving your apartment. Most people don’t physically travel. Physical trips are viewed by most as unnecessary and time-consuming and are performed only for the novelty of the experience, most often for vacations.

Virtual reality mostly lacks the harder to quantify aspects of reality. There’s something special about being physically in a place experiencing the visceral parts, the unique combination of sensations, smell, gravity, air pressure, vibrations, and especially, and the reason for Su’Zi’s visit, the psychic environment.

For those with psychic ability, the feeling, and awareness created by interaction with an individual and the surrounding psychic community creates a unique experience. Feeling the psychic atmosphere of a spot can’t be duplicated. Although psychic energy is dimensionless, the relative strengths and directions of the psychic matrix make every place unique.

To visit Mi’Ka for help with a personal problem required an actual visit to Mi’Ka’s Curio Shop. To some Mi’Ka was a soothsayer to others, an oracle, to some a psychic medicine woman and to a few others a witch, whose concoctions can heal wounds of the soul.

One thing Mi’Ka steadfastly refuses to do or even attempt is to communicate with the dead. Su’Zi would like to have Mi’Ka help her get in touch with her father, but she knew Mi’Ka would refuse.

The dead are lost.

Most often in Dadr’Ba society the passed on or retired, live on through their contributions to their children and their grandchildren. They are not gone but are part of who we are and will always be with us. The lost ones, the dead, such as Ba, are thought to be in purgatory, a place full of emptiness and despair.

It’s said that those who make contact with the lost go insane, and eventually become lost themselves because their insanity prevents them from retiring correctly.

Su’Zi was desperate for Mi’Ka to interpret her dreams and confident that if anyone could do it, Mi’Ka could.

If it weren’t for Mi’Ka’s absolute prohibition against contacting the dead, Su’Zi would have asked Mi’Ka about the nightmares Su’Zi had in the days and weeks following Ba’s death.

Those recurring nightmares, reliving what she thought Ba must have gone through, being blasted out into space away from Dadr’Ba, the fear of being lost in interstellar space, only to be drawn into the engine intake. To be bashed, crushed, squeezed, ionized and obliterated in nuclear fire. Only to find herself lost in the black void, feeling panic similar to the Touch of God Ceremony. But in her nightmare never finding God or a star friend or a way out, or a way home, as a creeping hopelessness engulfs her.

Fortunately, that’s when she wakes up and even more fortunate the nightmares subsided in frequency and intensity and over time stopped altogether.

Su’Zi told her mother who admitted similar dreams, but not as vivid; together they concluded that it was just the result of the trauma of the event. Su’Zi’s brother never admitted to sharing these nightmares, but she sensed he did, and never questioned him about it.

These new dreams Su’Zi couldn’t explain or attribute to anything she knew or experienced. She dreamt that she was on O’M, she knew it, felt it and wanted it to be O’M. The O’M in her dream felt good and more real than any virtual place or environment she’s ever visited. It looked better than any of the artist conceptions of what O’M would be like.

She found herself on a beach on the shore of an ocean. The feeling was incredible, seeing the sky above adorned with a random pattern of rounded white puffy clouds that she’d seen tiny fragments of while going through airlocks, only gigantic scattered across the whole sky and taking various forms. Some seeming solid and slowly rolling and changing from shape to shape, some forming solid bodied creatures and inventions. These clouds could be the flesh covering the static points of light that form the skeletonous creatures that make up the constellations. But these creatures always move, now soft and cuddly then ever so slowly changing into a roaring monster, this living menagerie stretched from one horizon to the other, and the whole thing is slowly moving in mass across a blue sky.

The dream O’M was overwhelming, there was so much openness, it was like looking out through the secret observation port with her father that Su’Zi seen so much openness. But space was somehow fundamentally different, vast, open and awe-inspiring in its expanse, mostly black but with millions of bright points of light, some brighter than others, some a little hazy.

The mind arranging them in patterns that make outlines of familiar things and when one lets their imagination go, unfamiliar patterns can be created into new creatures or inventions.

But behind the clouds of stardust and the scattered diamond constellation creatures, space is cold and hostile. Appearing to be static it’s full of high-speed particles and bursts of radiation that could kill you in an instant, or expose you to a death that takes weeks to zenith.

Space, cold and heartless, seems to Su’Zi’s senses possess a soul, a very old soul, a very dark tired soul. A soul that pervades space, like the ether that provides the framework for the dimensions and whose existence lies between the infinitesimally small boundary between positiveness, negativeness, matter and antimatter. A boundary whose existence provides the foundation for the universe, and from what all matter and energies are formed.

All this, the soul of space, the vacuum, the ether, the energy, the matter, is hated by nothing. Nothing is the acid that seeks to torment and destroy the soul of space, it’s no wonder space is so tired and feeble in places yet temperamental and violent in others.

Contrasting Space, in Su’Zi’s dream she felt O’M, reaching as far as Su’Zi could perceive, reaching with her consciousness, her senses, her psyche, her very soul, and at that moment, Su’Zi felt the life, the soul of O’M, warm, friendly and inviting. She felt that if there is a heaven, then this must be it. She felt the warmth of the sun’s rays as it penetrated her skin. She closed her eyes, stretched out her arms, and breathing deep, tasted the salt in the air. Then, using all of her senses, physical, psychic, and spiritual, soaked it all in letting her soul mingle with O’M.

Then, eyes still closed, feeling and sensing the world around her she felt a pain, a pain that, instead of originating from a particular location radiating out, it radiated in, from the outside, in waves, slowly growing, centering high in her chest and at the base of her neck between her shoulders, and penetrating deep down inside her.

She opens her eyes and to her astonishment finds herself still on the beach, still in pain. Then she returns, loosening her grip on her psychic senses and getting the feeling back in her bodies physical senses, and the pain recedes.

Su’Zi knows this has to be a dream, but like no dream she has ever had or heard of anyone ever having. She didn’t know how long she’s been here, hours it must be, the sun seems to be setting. Off in the distance very low on the horizon an immense display of gold’s yellows and reds growing until it fills over half the sky. So much so that looking at it fills her entire field of view. It’s beautiful, spectacular, but Su’Zi senses that this has something to do with the pain she was feeling, that there’s something wrong, something she’s missing.

Su’Zi gazes, taking in the scene, looking back and forth from side to side and high up, losing her balance, stumbled, but instead of falling seemed to float backward, preventing herself from falling.

Strange flying creatures soar past Su’Zi towards the trees behind her, and small alien creatures creep past in the sand and shallow dunes around her. The waves lap the water’s edge in slow rhythmic patterns, receding slowly exposing even more strange alien creatures, none like she’d ever seen before, not even in artist conceptions.

Then just as she was looking closer at one of the tiny alien creatures, she became aware of a wailing like some gigantic creature dying. The sound is very loud, and Su’Zi can’t tell where it’s coming from. She tried focusing on the creature she was just looking at, thinking that the animal might be calling to her psychically. But even psychically, this tiny creature is far too small to make such a significant noise.

Then Su’Zi searches for the source of the wail psychically and feels the pain return. Then Su’Zi senses something and quickly looks down the beach, and some distance away, she sees someone standing, looking, at her. The person is too far away to recognize and seems to be also looking around trying to figure out where the painful wail is coming from, the intensity of the wail and the pain suddenly increases to a fever pitch and terrified she wakes up. She’s had this dream every night for five nights straight.

After two nights Su’Zi told her mother, who had no explanation for it. The morning after the third night, they talked to a Church Elder; the Church Elder was at a loss for an explanation and hesitantly suggested she seek out Mi’Ka.

After hearing Su’Zi’s story Mi’Ka sat back slowly. Ku’Ma, her pet folded up neatly on her lap and vibrated softly in a slow rhythm. Mi’Ka’s blind eyes closed down to slits, everything in the little room in the back of Mi’Ka’s shop became absolutely still, nothing moved, the air still, all sound disappeared.

Then in an instant Mi’Ka was leaning forward, speaking. Su’Zi, startled, caught by surprise, didn’t even see Mi’Ka move. It was as if Mi’Ka had leaned back in thoughtful repose, then time stopped, or Su’Zi fell asleep, Su’Zi couldn’t tell for how long, it couldn’t have been longer than seconds, when Mi’Ka started talking.

Mi’Ka was looking intently at Su’Zi, an intense, compassionate expression on her face. Mi’Ka spoke, “my child, I’m sure you’ve realized that this is no ordinary dream, it isn’t even a dream at all, you experienced an episode of spatial-temporal entanglement.”

Su’Zi had never heard of such a thing, and even though Mi’Ka was blind, she could sense Su’Zi’s puzzlement.
Mi’Ka went on to explain “Su’Zi, do you remember the principle behind quantum entanglement? The basis for our QECS instantaneous communication that we had with Or’Gn?”

“When dealing with subatomic particles that are near enough to the core components of the universe. They cannot entirely be split, broken down or altered further, they are entangled. The entanglement occurs outside of our physical universe, in a dimensionless place. What happens to one can affect the other, no matter how far apart they are. It’s like the psychic connection between family members, especially parents and children.”

“What you have experienced is a connection across space and time. It’s impossible to tell for sure where or when what you saw happened, it could’ve been yourself in the future or someone else in the future or the past. It’s even possible that you weren’t even connected to a body, but only in a place and time. Do you remember seeing yourself? I mean, did you look at and be able to see your hands or feet?”

Su’Zi thought for a moment and said no “I moved and looked around but never saw myself, only that other person in the distance and I’m pretty sure they saw me too.”

Mi’Ka replied “You’re not able to see yourself means that you were there psychically only, and not through a psychic connection through another person. The fact that you saw someone and they saw you meant that they were there psychically too, had it been someone there, in reality, they wouldn’t have been able to see you; this is highly unusual. The odds against this happening randomly defy estimation, especially for it to happen now five nights in a row. The only explanation that could help explain it is that you have a strong psychic connection to that person you saw. Did your mother or brother have the dream too?”

“No,” Su’Zi replied. “At least, I’m pretty sure not.”

Mi’Ka “Well a possible explanation is that psychic wounds can make a person susceptible to these kinds of things, it’s like a damaged area of your body where there is aggravated and exposed nerve endings causing them to be ultrasensitive.

I suspect that even after all these years. The psychic wound, the trauma of losing your father, has made you susceptible to this. It could’ve been random, but it being repeated portends otherwise. Psychic wounds are slow to heal and often require life events to occur to bring about healing.

You’re young yet; I suspect that when you get older, and you find yourself a mate, someone that you want to bind with and, eventually have children, you’ll finally feel whole.”

“All of us have known, at one time or another, that feeling of something, some part of us, missing. We spent a good part of our lives trying to find that missing part, that person that makes us complete, and when we do we’re content and happy.”