There was intense pain in his eyes, and Tess could feel it from the other end of the room where she sat watching over him. She remembered when she first met him; Steve Williams, a handsome young physicist whose brilliant and charming smiles always kept hope alive even after countless failures during lab research. Outside the lab, he was still a remarkable personality; always offering to help anyone out, and very knowledgeable in almost any field. She took another good look at him; it’s surprising how someone can change this much within minutes. She remembered that there was always something weird about him… almost supernatural. He promised he was going to tell her if she stayed for the night. She glanced at her watch, it was 11:57pm, and nothing had happened yet.!
Just as she felt herself dozing off, she saw something that immediately awakened all her senses and left her in shock.
She saw Steve’s body lift off the floor and float in the air for a minute like a vessel that had lost all contact with gravity. It then took the form of a skeleton, and was illuminated brightly from the inside. It felt like watching a CT scan of his body in aa darkened room, except this wasn’t a CT scan. Slowly the body started regaining its human form, and soon dropped to the floor. Within few minutes, Steve’s ever-charming physique was back; and when he sat up, it seemed as if nothing ever happened.!
“What the effin’ hell was that?” She threw at him, obviously still shocked. He smiled – revealing a perfect, sparkling thirty-two.
“Tess dear, what you just saw now, is my living hell. I promised I’d explain, and I’ll get on with it right away if you let me”
He said the last part as a statement, but there was a slight imploring quality to it.
“I . . . Okay.”
“Promise you’re not going to breathe a word about tonight to any soul?”
“You know me better than that; just get on with your story”
“Okay. I’ll try as much as possible to make it brief.”
He looked at her, took a deep breath, and continued. “The day was Monday, August 17, 1987; the day of the harmonic convergence. I was trying to fix an overhead cable, when I accidentally stepped on a naked wire. I felt a great shock pass through my body and I found myself in another realm. People were just about their normal businesses, and things seemed normal till I saw my dead parents; that was when I knew everything I was seeing was surreal. When I woke up later, I noticed I was just gone for two minutes that seemed like two hours in the other realm. Nobody noticed what happened to me. Since then, I’ve been reliving that experience every Monday at exactly 12am. It’s been 25 years now,
and i haven’t grown any older since then too.”
She looked at him, trying to make sense of what she heard.
“So you’re saying you died that day, came back to life, and you’ve been like re-dying and resurrecting every week?”
“Exactly”
“So technically, you’re dead but somehow still alive?”
“That’s right”
She lifted up her hands in frustration. “Okay… you lost me there.”
“I noticed.” He rejoined; smiling again. “During one of my ‘travels’ to the other realm, I happened to meet Leonardo da Vinci. The guy was surprisingly quite knowledgeable in modern day science and other fields. He explained to me what happened, and how to put an end to it.”
“… and how exactly are you supposed to do that?” Tess quipped.
“I was getting to that. He told me a story that wasn’t clear at first till he explained it using a little bit of quantum physics. Let’s say vacuum is something tangible, and in the presence of real large energy it can undergo binary fission, to produce matter and antimatter. Leonardo said that was exactly what happened during the creation of man; and the story will give me a clue on how to solve my problem.”
“Okay…”
“He said that during creation, God, who can be likened to a great amount of energy, pulled antimatter out of matter, breathed into the antimatter thereby giving it soul, and united the now antimatter-soul with the matter to create a living being. The process, he said, could be likened to three consecutive reactions. The binary fission of vacuum to give matter and antimatter, the bombardment of the antimatter with antineutrons altering its atomic structure, and then the fusion of the altered antimatter with matter, to give a special kind of ‘nothing’; all in the presence of a large amount of energy.”
“Okay, that makes a little sense. Let me guess; the body is the matter, the spirit is the antimatter, and the soul is the antineutron…?”
He walked right across the almost-empty room, came to where she sat, drew her up and kissed her deeply. “That’s why I love you… you grasp things quickly. I won’t need to do much talking if we get married.”
They both laughed – momentarily easing off the tension that was building up in the room.
She then gave him a puzzled look. “But how does this relate to your case?”
“Well, Leonardo told me to figure it out…” He smiled again, flashing his dazzling white teeth. “… apparently, the harmonic convergence produced enough energy to cause a temporary rift between my body and spirit, but not enough to pull out the soul from the spirit. I guess the electric shock just created a passage way for the energy.”
“So, what now..?”
“Well I guess I’ll have to keep enduring my living hell, till the next harmonic convergence shows up. I just hope you’ll stick around with me till then.” He kissed her – passionately this time.
“You know I’m not getting any younger, time didn’t stop for me like it did for you; and who knows when the next convergence will…” Tess started.
“Sshh… stop talking already” he hushed her, pulling her into a tight embrace; leaving her wondering what the future had in stock for both of them.
Outside the building, the night stood still for the two lovers.
-youthshades.com