What Becomes of Us

The woman lived alone. Nobody was there to help her when her vision blurred, the left side of her face went slack, and her legs gave out. She collapsed in an unnatural heap, like a ball-jointed doll, her neck crooked and head semi-propped up against the edge of a boxy table. Miraculously, she’d only just missed the edge, and anyway, her body was going numb and tingly in alternative waves. 

There was no pain, but her vision swirled together, making a kaleidoscope of the eclectic decor she’d spent the last ten years collecting. Teals, turquoises, deep forest greens, mustard yellow accents, and magenta explosions floated and melded together in her unblinking vision, reality on a gimbal. Meanwhile, her cheek slid down the flat, laminate side of the table in squeaky starts and stops, finding lubrication in the form of tears she could no longer control and which flowed freely from her right eye. The left eye felt dry and itchy, but she could not move it. Nor could she move her arms, though she could feel how oddly they were positioned. She felt bouncy and taught, but wrong, like her tendons could snap at any moment. What is happening to me, she thought. Is this a dream?

An answer invaded her inner monologue: Not a dream. An inevitability.

Who’s there, she tried to ask, but only succeeded in tipping out the drool being held back by her limp lips. Her head followed the slippery wet path straight to the floor. The drool pooled in the rug that had otherwise softened her initial fall. She loved this rug. It was soft and easy to clean and she’d gotten a great deal on it. 

The things humans think of when your time is up. It’s very interesting. 

The voice was flat but not without emotion. There seemed to be a tinge of exasperation in it, like it was already tired. 

Who are you, she asked again, this time reaching out with what was left of her mind. It was getting harder to pool her thoughts into an idea. They mixed like paint—tendrils of ideas still visible and identifiable, but forever part of a murky, ever more homogenous soup. 

I’m here for you, my friend. A little early, but it’s almost time. Relax. You can only take so much with you.

What does that mean, she asked the voice again. What is happening to me?

I believe your brain is dying. A blood vessel or maybe a lot of them, have ceased to function. Your brain is starving. I’ve heard it can be quite the beautiful experience. 

And it was. It took ten minutes for her heart to stop and her brain to fully asphyxiate. Whether it was just the nature of dying grey matter, a flush of neurotransmitters, or just the panic that came with knowing you’re about to go through something unknowable, her last moments were spent in full colour, full sense, taking it all in. When it was all said and done, she let out her final breath and her body settled. She looked no different than a crumpled cellar spider, swatted by a broom, a delicate tangle of limbs.

Her eyes did not close. She’d never seen anyone die before, but weren’t they supposed to close? Instead, they completed the doll effect. they were glassy and her pupils obscured the honey brown irises she’d never again glimpse in the mirror. She stood over the broken body that had once housed her soul and tsked. The life it had lived was already fading from her memory. She felt so close to it, yet completely removed. It was wardrobe, a beloved pair of jeans that fit great but somehow always fell out of rotation and found their way to the bottom of the laundry basket, only to be rediscovered and cherished again. Ad infinitum. 

Hello, said the voice from earlier, though now it was more defined, but still ambiguous. It didn’t speak, so much as emanate and sort of pulse through her understanding. And they weren’t words so much as concepts, though razor sharp and developed. She tried to greet it, but found she was still reliant on a mouth that was no longer part of her being.

Don’t try to speak. It won’t work. Radiate to me how you’re feeling, what you want me to feel. As a thought. As you did before. 

She tried. At first there was nothing. She could tell she was just silent existence, her being wholly self-contained. She had a flash of memory then. It might have been her first brush with consciousness as a toddler. She remembered the smell of sugar and wax—a birthday party. But the memory was in vignette, darkened at the edges and blurry in the middle. But she knew this was her second birthday. She could see her fingers, fat and wet and probably sticky because toddlers always are. She was reaching for the fire of the candle on the cake. It was in the shape of a blocky two, outlined in bright orange though the candle itself was mainly white. She saw herself grab at the flame then felt the burn. It was intense. She shrivelled into herself, whatever that was now. It was like becoming the memory, but she didn’t want to be in this one. This one hurt. There was shouting and somebody wrenching her out of her seat, hitting her pudgy little knee, which hurt, but not as much as the burn on her tiny fingers. She snapped back into the current moment. 

How can I think without a brain, she finally managed to discharge from what felt like her mind, frustrated and confused.

Just like that, the void entity before her responded. It’s time to go. Before you get lost in another memory.

How did you know?

It’s hard to explain now. Come.

The being led her forward. She was getting the hang of sort of thinking or deeply feeling her way through formerly familiar actions, though she found herself lost in memory as they journeyed. Bits and bobs triggered memories and tugged on her being as she passed them. They felt like ghosts of her old life, wispy fingers dragging right through her, looking for bits of her to keep like souvenirs. But the entity beckoned and helped keep her on track.

You may grieve your life as we go, but don’t get lost in the memories. They have more power here, like tethers. We need to break them.

She could feel the truth in that. Even the happy ones had an immensity to them and a feeling of containment, repetition. Like purgatory or limbo. It hurt to let them go, but she could feel that they would trap her.

I won’t. But where are we going?

The edge of existence. No way to know the destination beyond that. It will seem long. You’re still vaguely bound to time. I apologise for that.

I guess it’s not your fault. Unless you’re a god. She kept the second bit to herself, though she was not entirely sure her thoughts were private.

They were still moving through her apartment and though things passed them by at a fair clip, the layout seemed wrong. Rooms were extended and doubled, but she did notice that each iteration seemed emptier. Each doorway led to a room with less stuff but more space.

The edge of existence. Have you been there before?

The being seemed to be pondering then projected some kind of a shrug to her. But she was already distracted. They’d passed through her front door into the hallway of her apartment. The striped wallpaper had always felt so quaint and out of time. It was more at home than ever now as the hallways stretched into an endless corridor, seeming to grow as they moved. Every now and then they passed an intersection, the adjoining corridor equally stretched to infinity and ending in a darkness that, much like the entity leading her, seemed to be completely void of light.

Stay on the path, the entity said right as she felt impelled to her left, down one of those endless tunnels. She snapped back, keeping pace and ignoring the compulsion as she did with her memories. There were fewer here anyway, so it was a bit easier. And already it was difficult to catalogue the things she’d owned. Trivial anyway, she supposed. 

It’s strange. It felt like it was sucking me in. But my building didn’t have hallways like this. They aren’t my memories.

It’s easy to lose your way here. Stay close to me. Focus on me.

What’s down there anyway? 

I don’t know. 

You don’t know? Isn’t this kind of your domain?

No. This is your domain. Whatever is down there is part of you, your former life. 

But I told you. I didn’t ever see anything like this.

They’re not memories. They’re, the entity paused for a moment, seeming to seek the right concept and so did she. For the first time, she noticed that they had a tandem momentum. She was caught in its wake which helped to dull the pull of the endless hallways and blank doors around her.

I think they’re questions. The pull was almost unbearable, but easier to understand now that she could truly feel it. Alternate paths, I think. 

 Yes! It seemed to glimmer excitedly. She could feel a sense of satisfaction and pride, like when a child learns something new. Like I said. It’s easy to get lost. We can’t follow you and retrieve you and it may take eons for you to find your way back.

If they’re not my actual memories though, are there other versions of me? How could I explore alternate paths?

Something like that. It’s hard to explain while your mind is still tethered to your human existence. You experience time one way, as a constant while you live. In this form, it’s just a direction. As we journey, you’ll understand better. You’ll feel the change and you’ll start to forget your constraints. But that’s true whether I’m here or not and the lost ones tend to forget that they are lost at all. They forget they’re dead. So, they wander and wander and wander. Infinitely. 

Well, that sounds like an existential nightmare. 

Precisely. That’s why we have shepherds. So you don’t get lost. But you will still forget. You’ll forget your body, your life, your death. You will fear me and the journey. I’ll do my best to make it easy. 

Forget? How could I possibly forget? This is amazing. Unbelievable. I’m taking every single second in. And I can only do that because I’m dead. It makes no sense that I’d forget.

But you will. You already are.

And that was true. They’d started moving again and the further they went, the less she felt that pull of memory and life. She couldn’t remember her mother’s face. She couldn’t remember her first kiss. I don’t want to forget. I liked my life.

Like I said, you’re already forgetting. There’s nothing to be done. 

I’m not. I won’t. I don’t want to. 

This journey will be long. It has been long. And you are right that you’re taking it all in. You only have so much space for memory. 

Like a computer?

I guess. I don’t know. I’m not sure what that is. 

A computer has… She could not remember. A computer. A box? A box that thinks? But there were other kinds of computers. She could vaguely recall a small chocolate bar in her hand that let her speak to somebody. Her mother? But that made no sense. It was obscured and confused, like trying to remember a dream.

It can be upsetting. I told you. You’ll be frightened. 

And she was. They’d moved on from the corridor, almost imperceptibly. Now they raced through streets and cities, forests, deserts, alien landscapes. There were beings all around them but in blurred shadows, superimposed on themselves. It was dizzying. They did frighten her. It all frightened her and made her profoundly sad. She felt as though she was leaving something important behind but she could no longer remember what. So she focused on the entity instead.

What’s your name? she asked.

We don’t have names. 

Who’s we?

You and me and everyone. 

Me? I have a name!

What is your name?

She stopped dead. Deader than the curled up corpse on her apartment floor. What is my name? I had a name. What is my name?

You left your name behind.

I would never!

It’s how it works. You shed your body and everything that goes with it. That includes its name. We don’t need names. We aren’t who we were.

How could that be possible? I used my name every day and I am me! My name. Me. I am. 

Yes. You are. But you are not your name. 

Could you cut the wise, godly being bit and speak plainly? What is this? Where are you bringing me?  More fear rose in her. What is happening? Who are you?

The entity shimmered menacingly. It faced her, though it did not turn to do it. It seemed to suck into itself and re-emerge facing her, though it was still more a void of light than anything tangible. Even so, she felt its anger and shrinked back.

I am your shepherd. I am not a god. I am not any wiser than you could be if you listen to me. You are dead and you are on the journey all souls go on when they die. The journey will give you the time to grieve, to forget, to understand, to get over your fear, and to come back to our origin. 

I don’t understand any of that. I died? When did I die? What is dead? Had she a body, she’d have been shaking. But more and more, she felt like an entity herself. She could feel herself shrinking into a more compact haze of emotion, thought, chaos. 

I understand. It’s frightening. It will be okay.

Well I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this. 

You left your body behind. You left your name behind. You left yourself behind. That part is done. 

It felt like she was melting and indeed, her eminence was yielding to whatever passed for gravity in this place. She was becoming part of the scene, which had changed again to a starlit path through mountainous nebulae. Though she and the entity were moving forward, their momentum and inertia were part of this system. She could feel the motion of the start stuff, the dust and gas and something else, all spinning at awesome speeds around a point just as dark as the one she followed. She could feel the space around her moving, living, breathing. Supernovas going off like fireworks in her periphery and stars being birthed in their wake only to expand and explode and shed their energy again. It was beautiful and soothing. There was a regularity in it, like a clock marking time in the inky blackness of space. 

How long had they been on this journey? It felt like waking up to gentle sunshine, whatever that meant.

We’re here aren’t we?

The entity seemed to sigh and the universe sighed with it. But it was a sigh of relief and empathy. And she could feel it clearly now, clearer than ever. 

We’re almost there. 

I feel like we’ve been on this path for a very long time.

Millenia, eons, eternity, if you remember such things. 

Like a dream. I remember the word and what it meant. But, she, no, it, felt expanded and different, free of bounds and edgeless. Time doesn’t work that way. 

There was no need for exchange anymore. The being was not following, it was falling. They both were, as one. And the she that she had been sighed out a feeling of gratitude and peace, and the thing that led her accepted it. The journey was over and just beginning. Every now and then, a seed of life and consciousness embraced chaos and collapsed. It left the void of nothing to be, shooting out into the universe as a pure spark of energy, just waiting to become. 

Marceline had died alone. But all that was her would be forever part of all that is, though she’d never know it.