Ice Blue

It was like any other late spring day in May. If any other late spring day started out at 75° degrees and dropped to 0° degrees. The official holiday celebrating our service members was yesterday and today was the day to wind down and burn the extra calories I scarfed down with a bike ride and run.

It was still early⎯5 a.m. My plan to be out of the house by six...six-thirty to avoid being cooked liked the shrimp, green peppers, and pineapple on the kebobs I consumed the day before. Before I left the house I could feel the heat rising like any other day that promised to be a scorcher. 

As I was running back up the stairs returning from throwing a load of clothes in the washing machine and cleaning out the pans I soaked the night before I felt a chill so cold I can’t describe flow through my joints and bones that it caused me to stumble and fall at the top of my stairs.

I slid a foot or more and laid in the threshold of the bedroom door a minute, more from shock than any pain. I moved my arms slowly, next, my legs, then my neck, to make sure everything was still functioning. The relief that I would be able to stand up in my own strength far outweighed the fear of the face plant that first enveloped me.

The final remnants of the chill were slowly dissipating as I started to move⎯to rub my elbow, to rub my knee, to test the stability of my ankles. I propped my self on the door, and that’s when I saw it descending from an opening in my ceiling.

The jagged blue ice a foot and a half long descended slowly to eye level. I looked through the opening and noticed there was not a ripped shingle, nor bent or broken nail, not a splintered piece of wood. The extreme temperature drop that occurred in the next few moments didn’t have a negative effect on my body this time around.

I was comfortable with the temperature as if the flash cold on the stairwell prepared me for the moment. What did it want? This jagged blue ice. Why was it here? 

As I pondered the questions, shingles, nails, planks, and sheetrock above me began to separate creating a bigger opening.

It was here I began to break apart. Not a leg at a time or an arm at a time as if I was being sliced with a surgeon’s scalpel, but as if I was being sifted⎯like sand. The blue ice remained still as I dissipated into micro pieces and drifted upward through the opening.

I felt I should yell for help. I never experienced anything like this. I have to shut it down. For what reason, though? I felt no pain. I wasn’t being harmed. Or was I? I went to speak...My mouth no longer existed. I forgot. A thought allowed me to communicate with the iceberg. What’s happening to me? What...are you? 

Before I would receive an answer, the iceberg elevated through my roof. It and I hovered above my house. I could see everything around me all at once. When I saw my house, every particle of sheetrock began to reform, every plank of wood retook its place, every nail reinserted itself. Adhesive reapplied itself to every shingle reforming my roof.

In the next instant, I was transported to the south pole. But the instant in time with ice blue allowed me to experience the hustle of every city we passed through, view the beauty of every mountain range, and the ripple of every ocean. 

I was transferred from the heat of Stone Mountain to the bitter cold of the south pole. I felt the cold but it was of no concern for I was no longer flesh and bone, but energy, I believe.

I truly could not tell you. I simply⎯existed. I did not understand what I had become. But there I was in this wonderland of blue ice; beautiful and teeming with life in a world I could not fathom. The life I could not see I could feel.

I became aware of the presence of millions. I could hear their voices, yet I was unable to decipher what they were saying. I got the sense they were aware of my existence as I was of theirs. But were they talking to me? I asked myself. What were they saying, if they were? 

The sounds were like no known language I had heard before, but similar to the languages I was familiar with; the sounds had a pattern I understood. Yet I remained baffled. Were the sounds in my head greetings? Were the sounds questions? Could it be that the inhabitants of Antarctica were angry at me⎯this outsider’s arrival? And the sounds are protests.

The inhabitants of Antarctica that I could see existed in forms of energy such as I was changed into by the ice blue object. Ice blue continued to communicate with me in the language I understood. It said what I heard were greetings as well as questions by those who were surprised by my arrival.

I was informed that I was brought to Antarctica to continue the transference of ancient knowledge from their civilization to ours so as to continue the preservation of our planet on the surface and beneath the surface. The inhabitants of Antarctica I was notified desired that I live among them and learn their ways. 

“Fret not,” I was informed. “I would learn a century’s worth of knowledge in forty-eight eight hours. And after the teaching was done, I could come and go among them as often as desired.”

I wasn’t sure what I wanted. Every civilization has its evil side. What if I commit to the learning and the inhabitants of Antarctica decide against returning me to my physical form. What if they return me to my physical form and inform me I can return to Stone Mountain if in flesh and bones I can make it through minus 59° Fahrenheit.

 I saw it from this perspective. Ice blue entered my home without me realizing it. Turned me into some form of energy. Whisked me away at a speed faster than I could ever imagine and introduced me to a species centuries more advanced. If the species of Antarctica⎯some that lived below the surface⎯ were being truthful about helping the species above the surface survive, enslaving one or any of those above the surface would not be the smartest route to take. 

So I stayed on Antarctica and traveled between the center of the Earth and the surface of the Earth learning and applying ancient knowledge and wisdom.