Short Story
Salvation
(Originally published in Triune, NEVER STOP NEVER QUIT, 2020)
Essence last spoke to me when I was just six years old. I never shared my
experience, choosing instead to hide my experience. I was an outcast feared
by other children because of my disconnect from their innocence. The older
generation dismissed my quirks. Their selfish extravagance failed to inspire
curiosity or scorn, nor did their idle threats of what would become of my
life cause me any discontent. Overnight, my vocabulary surpassed their
feeble attempts.
Every image, every sound created by Essence was firmly rooted in my mind
when I awoke. We retain certain childhood memories for different reasons.
One may be that after looking at old photographs and videos again and again,
we believe they represent reality. Another is that if there was chaos—we
tend to remember chaos. Essence was neither of these. There were no
memories, no reminders of the words; the images I recalled had never been
created. Nor was there trauma, in any form. The truth I knew as Essence
existed only in my head, as it had for eons, both past and yet to
come.
I carried the words with me—neither fading nor transforming into a new
impression—until I became a man. Always at an arm’s length from the world,
there wasn’t a person with whom I could share Essence. No, there was no one
for whom I could form the words, and had the language passed my lips, there
wasn’t a person who could have grasped its meaning.
Until Rachel…
I met Rachel in my senior year of university. Rather, Rachel met me. With
nary a consideration of my existence before that day, she found the man she
had been searching for her entire life.
“You’re him!” she exclaimed, causing a reflex as I was attempting to eat my
tuna fish sandwich. “You’re that kid who found something…or someone.”
Apparently, my reputation from grade school preceded me. In the next five
minutes, our fates were realized. By the end of our years together, she knew
my vision as well as she knew her own reality. Though I could provide no
more insight into my past, we grew closer night after night and day after
day.
Twenty-three years, four months, and nine hours later, I buried Rachel. In
my youth, I was an aberration. Together, our likeness assured we were made
for each other, forever. An aberration once again made me that oddity, a
tragedy. I disregarded Rachel’s request, for the first time ever, and held a
service for her. Nine people joined me as I scattered her ashes into the
ocean. Then they enabled me as I plied myself with alcohol. Someone brought
me home and tucked me into my bed.
I think I threw up on them.
***
When I awoke last Wednesday morning, I knew exactly what day it was: six
hundred and thirty-four. I turned over so I could watch Rachel sleep and be
there when the first signs of her new day took hold. It has always been my
routine. My body always knows what time she will wake, alerting me three
minutes before. Her pose is the most beautiful sight imaginable. Long
strands of brown and sandy-blonde hair drown her face, half-buried in her
down pillow. The top sheet is pulled partway down her naked body, resting in
the arch of her waist, for it was much too warm during the night to remain
modest. I’ve seen the same image so many times before. I always try to turn
over and savor as much of that vision as possible. Wednesday morning was no
different.
But I never got the chance to enjoy my moment.
When I turned over, her right arm was bent, propping up her head. She
looked at me and smiled. “Good morning, you,” she breathed. “I love to watch
you wake up in the morning.”
As do I.
Before reality takes over, the morning is ours. We frolic, play, plan our
meals together, giggle, hold each other for comfort, and scorch our souls
with a fiery passion—this is our time.
Rachel leaned in and grazed my lips with her teeth before coating my mouth
with her own. Our tongues shocked as if they were touching for the first
time. “I love you…”
“You’re not real anymore, are you?” My question was not a sad one.
“Not in terms of anything you can grasp just now,” Rachel confessed in my
thoughts.
“Hold me.” I felt her arms wrap underneath my shoulders, squeezing tight as
our flesh became one. I emitted neither a whimper nor a heave as a single
tear tracked its familiar path down my cheek. “I miss you so much, my love.”
My wife said nothing as she gently swayed, squeezing her body tighter and
tighter into mine until I could finally breathe again…after six hundred and
thirty-four days.
“It’s okay, love. I’m here. I was always here.”
I gathered the strength to pull back and stare into her face. I saw the
face of the twenty-year-old girl I first found love with. I stared into the
eyes of the twenty-year-old child who lit up when she exclaimed, “I do!” I
saw the lips that pretended to enjoy my first attempt at tomato soup, the
lower lip that curls in when we’re close and her mind starts to stray, the
lips that trembled when she got her diagnosis. I saw every image of Rachel
in one portrait. Her long, sandy-blonde hair was jet black as much as it was
burgundy, a bob cut braided in the back. When I looked, I saw the trails of
gray she so proudly owned. They were all the same woman.
“Would you like to understand why?” There was no need to explain my
curiosity. Rachel knew my thoughts because she was my emotion.
“Not just yet,” I pleaded.
I held my wife tight as we both closed our eyes and drifted once again into
my dreams.
***
When I awoke last Wednesday morning, I knew exactly what day it was: six
hundred and thirty-four. I turned over so I could watch Rachel sleep and be
there when the first signs of her new day took hold. It has always been my
routine. My body always knows what time she will wake, alerting me three
minutes before. Her pose is the most beautiful sight imaginable. Long
strands of brown and sandy-blonde hair drown her face, half-buried in her
down pillow. The top sheet is pulled partway down her naked body, resting in
the arch of her waist, for it was much too warm during the night to remain
modest. I’ve seen the same image so many times before. I always try to turn
over and savor as much of that vision as possible. Wednesday morning was no
different.
Three minutes later, one eye batted open and a smile perched on her lips.
Longing to see the buried half, I lightly brushed her hair away from her
face. Rachel knew my thoughts; she raised her head and rested it on her bent
arm.
“Thank you for that. I love to watch you wake up in the morning.”
“As do I.”
She wasn’t real, not in terms of what I could currently grasp. I asked
Rachel how this was possible.
“I found your vision, my dear; I found Essence.” In that instant, as I
stared into her face and bore witness to her thoughts, I finally understood
what it was she had felt so many years ago. It was faith. When I first told
her of the encounter I had with Essence in my youth, there was no need for
me to defend something I could not prove. Her faith in me and the belief I
discovered through Essence was bound only by the love we shared. I have
never understood why she didn’t feel a need to question my convictions,
until that day I accepted her claim.
I hungered for more. “Why am I seeing you now?” Even as I asked, I knew the
answer. Rachel softly nodded her head. It was time for me to discover
more.
“We want you to understand reality,” she explained. She released my hands
and the room grew dark. Morning sun disappeared into the nautical twilight
that ends the evening. The vibrant hues of my bedroom walls weakened as
lucent trails continued to disappear. Night became dark; dark became black;
black turned into a void. Soon, there was nothing. I waved my hands in front
of me, but still saw nothing. Pinching my flesh, I wondered if this was the
sensation that remains when you lose your sight…vision transforms itself
from brilliance into emptiness.
I could still hear her voice.
“This is your instance of reality.” I wisely remained silent as one point
of light emerged, minuscule and insignificant, yet unmistakable. “Humankind
tries to define reality with words that have to do with dimensions. They
carry feeble names that barely reveal a glimpse of their power.
“Within this instance of reality exists length.” The light stretched in
both directions, far beyond the confines of my bedroom walls.
“Height.” A single pane rose up.
“Depth.” As the window expanded equally in both directions, dark became
white as everything turned to light.
“We are inside your instance of reality,” Rachel explained. “Everything you
see, everything you know, is contained within this boundary.” My confidence
grew as she explained; her soothing voice urged me to contribute.
“And within every point of this instance,” I added, “is every property of
vision, right?” As I named features, each appeared before my eyes. Color.
Shade. Hue. I tried to pull to the front of my mind every definition, every
synonym I could recall. As I did, the painting I was in began to resemble my
bedroom.
Rachel showed me kindness, for my artistic expression was weak, by coyly
interrupting me: “…and I’m sure you would get to every variety, dear!” As
she giggled, the world snapped into focus once again. “And, when we add the
dimension of time”—I looked over and watched her chest slowly rise and
fall—“we have life!” Rachel crawled across the bed and kissed me. Time
allows changes…and those changes created the sound, smell, touch, and taste
I lost six hundred and thirty-four days ago.
“You’re adorable. Time does allow changes,” she confirmed my thoughts, “but
time also does so much more.” The space defined as my instance of reality
once again reduced to a single point, surrounded by nothing. “Every moment
is unique. When the fabric of time passes on, an infinite number of
possibilities occur.” Rachel’s simplification caused the single point of
illumination to reproduce in numbers far beyond my comprehension. She
explained that this is how life began: as a single instance created by
Essence. What followed—infinite variants of the first point, each of which
matures far beyond its predecessor, each uniquely distinct from its
clones—was a miracle of extrapolation. As she described the infinite
variables of infinite variables, my world overflowed with brilliance. The
single point immediately expanded to fill everything, expanding into a
brightness more intense than anything I could have ever imagined. As it
continued blinding, the beauty became clear.
“I see it, Rachel!” With glee, I reached out through the colors. I could
feel the life in each instance. “It’s the most beautiful tree I’ve ever
seen, all starting from that one moment and expanding in every
direction…constantly expanding in every direction.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“I can see the first instance, right here,” I said, pointing to nothing at
all. “Everything is laid out on top of, below, and alongside everything
else. It’s like…”
We both echoed my thought: “one concurrent instance.” Suddenly it all made
so much sense. I was staring at the universe as it was, and as it is.
“Can Essence see life as it will be?”
“Yes, and so much more,” Rachel confirmed. “That vision is shared with me,
but you cannot see it.” For the first time since she arrived, I was
frightened. I questioned why Essence would share so much with me, yet keep
the greatest part, my destiny, from me. “You have no destiny,” she
explained. “All that the future of your instance holds is the infinite
iterations of possibilities. Your future is up to you, and the existence
around you, for as similar as every infinite possibility may appear, those
possibilities are not your string of reality. Other than the reality you
know, none of the others belong to you. Essence knows all the possibilities
but does not know which will be your unique path. That choice is yours
alone.”
I watched the infinite strings of reality continue to multiply and build.
It was a glorious sight to see. I asked Rachel if she could show me my
string of reality as it is, from the beginning of creation until that
moment, gazing with wonderment as the point of creation turned a slightly
different color and meandered through time…through a time that existed
solely for me. “Every person, every life, has a string that exists only for
them. We are in this reality together, just as replicas of us will be
together in others.” I watched my reality continue to grow as new instances
became history.
All at once, one moment of the universe I was gazing into became dark. An
entire string of reality, emanating from the creation of time, had blackened
and disappeared. Nothing filled its void. I suddenly realized there was an
infinite number of empty strings.
“What just happened?” I asked.
“That reality no longer exists,” Rachel explained. I could feel her tears
running down my cheek. “In time, every reality will cease to exist. Every
reality, that is, but one.” I already knew the answer.
“Mine.”
“Yours.”
I needed Rachel to explain why my reality was chosen.
“There is only one singularity of reality. Before the universe was created,
there was nothing…only Essence. Out of nothing came one instance, then an
infinite number of possibilities, and each following moment instantly
created another infinite number of realities of consciousness.
“Essence created out of love. All Essence will do is create—after that,
there is no need to control. For this reason, existence started with only
one moment. What followed was the infinite number of possibilities of the
next moment and each one that follows. Essence understands every instance in
the flow of every stream, for it is from the will of Essence that every
reality is created.
“Infinity does not exist. Infinity is simply a human concept used to
describe a number which is beyond human understanding. An infinite stream of
reality, created from infinite instances, each of which creates its own,
does indeed have a limit. There are a finite series of realities, each
forming a string from the very first moment until the last instance of the
last moment. Every other string of reality will cease to exist at some
point, for there can be only one true matter of existence. When every string
has faded, and all that remains is once again the singularity of reality,
the next moment will create an infinite number of instances, all of which
will also cease to exist at some point.”
“How long will this go on?”
“For infinity.” Rachel brushed my cheek softly, soothing my fears as she
continued. “When you and I came together, we collectively shared this
singularity. The string of reality was inherited fully when I passed. When
you die and join me in the afterlife, the singularity you share with another
will be theirs. This is how it has always happened, and how it will always
be until Salvation.”
The thought of sharing anything so intimate with someone other than Rachel
seemed downright absurd, but she assured me it did not have to be a
connection like we had. “When I was born, I inherited your burden from the
nurse who helped bring me into this world. I never saw her again after my
parents and I left the hospital, nor did I know anything about my future
with you.”
“Then why am I privileged this way?”
“When I died, Essence shared our singularity with me. I saw every point on
our string from the beginning of time, just as you have seen. When two lives
coexist in perfect alignment, singularity is shared. When I was called to
the afterlife, your string of reality became the singularity. You alone
control your future. There is no way for you, me, or even Essence, to know
which instance of which moment will keep you on the singularity of reality
until it is your time to share singularity with another, and then hand it
over completely.”
As my curiosity grew, my confrontation grew impudent and I pushed back on
Rachel’s imagery and challenged the very tenets I already believed to be
true. She smiled and welcomed my examination. We discussed every concept for
hours and hours. I asked how Essence could know there are so many strings of
reality. Her response was simple. She posed the question back to me by
asking if I could see every defined instance, every succeeding moment, and all of time preceding those moments. I could imagine it all,
for every reality was infinitely unique. I saw the moments when realities
ceased to exist: victims of nature, humankind’s wrath, or just the faded
desire of the universe to continue persisting. I saw time wrap back upon
itself—and that is, or will be, a possibility. Looking back on a string,
there is every possible moment, each branching out to the next batch of
infinite possibilities. When life first returned to a previous time, it
merely added another iteration to the defined set of infinite
possibilities.
I could not see some of the realities I was beginning to imagine. Rachel
assured me, “Humans are indeed unique, for they can imagine visions that
will never be a possibility.”
I looked out into my string of reality and traced our past. As my
singularity progressed in real time, I could see the infinite possibilities
of what was to come. I marveled at the fantastic images created, the amazing
achievements realized. My heart warmed as I witnessed the magnificent
realities we could create, just as I wept over the horrors other versions of
my existence realized. I went back to see alternate realities of my life,
such as the one in which Rachel was never told she could never have
children. I watched offspring grow and thrive in a world made better by the
lives we created—but they all eventually disappeared, for they were not the
one singularity of existence.
As anger fumed, I lashed out at Rachel. “How can God do this? How can he
destroy what is beautiful, keep me from a reality that does indeed exist
somewhere, and leave me here in a world filled with pain and suffering?”
Even as I screamed, I felt remorse for invoking the human definition of that
which was created by Essence. Rachel held my hand as I raged. She held my
trembling body as I watched our children live, love, flourish, suffer, and
die an infinite number of times. She kissed my cheek as I wept for the shame
I felt.
“In time, my love,” Rachel promised, “you will feel what you already know
to be true. Suffering and hardship are simply part of the anticipation of
what may come next. Good, bad, tragic…there is no difference in what was
created by Essence; there is merely existence.”
“What will happen when I die? You said we will be together. Do you know
what will happen to me?”
“I know every iteration of every infinite possibility of your life after
this moment. Many are wonderful. You will enjoy life again. You will find
love once more.” I smiled at the thought, though I could not imagine how I’d
ever find what I had lost. But Rachel’s words didn’t soothe me. There was
something missing. She spoke only of the many iterations, not all of them.
Rachel nodded her head in agreement as I entered my own curiosity. “My
action alone is the catalyst that drives the next moment, isn’t it?”
“It is,” she confirmed. “The singularity of reality is the driving force
behind the infinite directions of subsequent moments. Every other reality
from every infinite possibility remains driven by uniqueness, just as yours
is, but those strings are damned.
“Every person on this journey with you is there by their own free will. You
do not direct or control them.” They are not under my control, but their
lives are tied to my reality.
“What, then, is the purpose of their lives?” I found the logic of Rachel’s
explanation to be circular, though I was not sure if that was because of her
explanation or my understanding. “Why does all of this exist?”
“You know the answer, my love,” Rachel assured me. “Feel the answer
here”—she pressed her hand against the side of my temple—“not in your
heart.”
Feel the answer in my head, not in my heart. I sank down in my bed, pulling
the sheet around me and hiding in the security I hoped would be there. My
mind contained the words I had heard, the message of Essence, and the
reality of my experiences. My heart contained emotion, the bliss I felt when
I saw her face again, and the lament I felt every time I faced losing her
once more. My mind owned the answer.
Essence created out of love. Everything given to us was love, for that was
the only existence. Death, suffering, pain…these are merely aspects of
existence, of reality. Nothing after creation was formed by the will of
Essence, but rather by the possibilities of what was provided. Humans
created personal burden and agony because of their anticipation of what
might come next; they alone created heaven and hell. Essence shows existence
based on what its creations have created. For those who fail to live with
love, hell awaits; an eternity of not knowing what becomes of your stream of
reality. The afterlife is anticipation. The afterlife is suffering. Heaven
is only for those who live life with the love Essence created. Heaven is
eternal knowledge and understanding of all that happened before your life,
before your death, and the life of your child, and their children, and their
children…for eternity.
I saw satisfaction in Rachel’s eyes. I saw her loving appreciation and
approval of my thoughts. “Humans alone determine their relationship with
Essence, an eternity of either heaven or hell. You, my dear, will continue
this path toward Salvation.” It was a concept I still could not grasp.
Rachel took my hand and guided me through the infinite realities. “Every
reality but yours will eventually cease to exist, including every infinite
possibility they engender. Our singularity of reality is a course only you
can define. It is one of the infinite possibilities, but it is indeed only
one singular possibility. Should you fail to live within that singularity,
it will no longer be a possibility.”
“Does Essence know what my singularity of reality is?” I asked.
“Essence knows every string of reality.”
“Does Essence know what reality I will traverse? Will I remain on our
singularity?”
“Only you control your one reality from every moment of infinite
possibilities.”
“And what happens if I stray from my singularity of reality?”
Rachel sighed. “Then, it is no longer a possibility. Like every other
reality, yours will cease to exist. Without the continuation of that
singularity, the love Essence created will cease to exist for all eternity.
Damnation.”
Suddenly, everything became so clear. I looked at Rachel and saw only one
person; I realized she was no longer maturing with me throughout my reality.
She was in heaven. She was Essence. I asked her, “When eternity comes to an
end, and every other reality but the singularity vanishes, what will we
have?”
“Salvation!” her voice boomed. “We will exist in singularity with the love
Essence created.”
“And what happens the moment after that?”
“An infinite number of realities will occur, my love.”
“Then, whose salvation is this?”
As I asked my question, my vision of Rachel faded; the blinding brilliance
of an infinite possibility of realities faded until I opened my eyes last
Wednesday morning and I knew exactly what day it was.
Day six hundred and thirty-four.
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