All Brave Astrolites

He looks down but sees nothing, only a black expanse.

He waits, training his eyes to the dark, feeling the bottomless pit waiting.

Suddenly it’s there—not an endless chasm, but an infinite cosmos, marvelously speckled with wild flashes of lights and worlds spreading in every direction. Bundles of celestial machinery, the pulsing rotations of galaxies, delicate solar systems, planets, moons, stormy breaths upon the faces of spheres that abound and overflow with life and consciousness.

He releases his grip and screams…

***

They say that all brave astrolites go to heaven. 

Disguised as an adage, the marketing tagline is wrought with a double-meaning. On the one hand, it stokes the flame of heroism by evoking the ancient gods who reward courageous warriors. But if that does not send fire through your bones, the pitch offers a literal promise as well: After phase one of basic training, the brave recruits do ascend up to heaven. However, it is not the divine wings of Valkyries that carry them up but the infernal combustion of rocket fuel.

All BRAVE astrolites go to heaven. 

Mackenzie Sinclair was an astrolite. But while sitting inside the cold DS-16 with his squad-mates, he shook so hard with terror that he worried the others would notice.

What was he doing here? Volunteered… Idiot!

The rash decision had been made on earth. This idea, which now really did seem like a dangerous mistake, had come to him one day after he had grabbed his metro pass and walked out of the cramped below-ground apartment that belonged to his parents. With oppressive efficiency, the train had cut through the thick haze withering the crowded city and quickly transported him to his place of employment. Mackenzie put his time in at the beige-walled building, a sepulcher built for the living, where he displayed his data-entry prowess. Ten frustrating hours later, Mackenzie allowed the sighing metro to vomit him out onto his home street. 

But he did not immediately return to the apartment. He was not ready for the uncomfortable silences or the quick glances from his father and mother that belied all their mid-life desperations and disappointments.

Instead, he chose to walk in a random direction. And that was when he found a way out. 

Mackenzie saw it up in the rust-colored sky among the concrete monoliths. A warrior in a gray space suit (trim against his body unlike one of those clumsy civilian suits) floated through a dark and star-spangled expanse. With a space-age spear in hand, he faced a dragon—a blazing archfiend that leered flames from inside a void. Muscular letters underlined the scene:

All Brave Astrolites Go To Heaven.

Although he had walked on that street many times, Mackenzie had somehow never seen this billboard before…

Oh well, no way was he signing up.

Mackenzie was comfortable right where he was. Technological advances had created a pile of amusements and distractions that towered sky-high, even unto the heavens. Such digital diversions could be wrapped like bandages around the wounds of existential emptiness.

Virtual Reality. The tech had come a long way from its clownish, low-fi beginnings. A long way—you could summon such a dazzling and addictive assault against your senses that, for a moment, you might forget about your pains and problems. Some took it even further… Religious Transcendence? No, it never scratched that itch for Mackenzie. But he liked the escape it offered from the derelict real world, a reality barren of purpose and community for as long as he could remember.

But in his heart, Mackenzie could not completely abnegate his disquietudes with superficial distractions.

He pictured the tiny basement apartment in which his parents allowed him to stay rent-free even though he was old enough to strike out on his own. Mackenzie felt the weight of his thoughts push down on the muscles in his forehead and around his mouth. A dampening heaviness in his chest wrung any remaining drops of vitality out of his body.

The brave warrior on the billboard offered a different way: danger and adventure. Mackenzie’s current existence appeared to him like an immense pit that he might never escape from, unless he did something revolutionary.

He tracked down a recruiting station (probably more out of desperation than bravery). A hard, old veteran greeted him with eyes that looked like iron ball-bearings trapped in pale ice. With a brow that had long ago forgotten how to unfurrow, the man spoke loftily of trusting in one’s instinct for adventure. Mackenzie, listening without saying a word, heard his instincts pleading with him to leave. But the bland and lukewarm flavor of that life was still inside his mouth.

And so it was done. After half an hour, with the power vested in an executive fountain pen, he transferred his destiny to the Astrolite Corps.

Mackenzie made it through basic training at the terrestrial Recruit Depot. Or better said, he crawled out of it still breathing. Then, with his fellow trainees, he undertook a shaky trip on top of a controlled explosion of rocket fuel to the outer reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. Aboard the Joint Military Station, Mackenzie puked every remaining chunk of motion sickness out of his body and completed his training at the Zero-G Combat School.

He was baptized an astrolite, accomplishing a journey into the frontier of space, a claim that few in the course of human history could make. And life was decent for a while. Strict wake-up times, regimented days, drills, space walks, and battle tactics. Occasionally, there was even a peaceful opportunity to sit near a space station window and admire the planet below. The soft, blue glow around earth was still visible when viewed from above its blanket of haze.

Good. It was good. Mackenzie was happy that he had responded to the armed forces’ promise of agency and bravery. Everything had been moving along swimmingly—until now. 

His squad had been out on a standard training exercise. No one had expected anything to happen. But then an emergency order blared into Sergeant’s ear, sending everything sideways and upside down. 

Sergeant told the squad to get ready for the real deal. Sergeant said there was no time to wait for support.

In that apocalyptic instant, Mackenzie froze, skewered by the cold pike of despair. Any minute now, they would be going out on a recon mission—an actual mission not a practice run. There was a chance that they might not make it back.

Suited up against the lack of atmosphere inside the drop ship, the astrolites sat crammed in next to each other, cheek by jowl, visor by helmet. Facing inward, tight and precise like bullets in a rifle magazine, they were mechanically lined up along both sides of the oblong cylinder that was the vessel’s fuselage.

Since the pre-space-faring days, the military had reorganized itself in order to operate above the planet’s surface. But in terms of Feng Shui (the art of mindfully arranging spaces in order to harmonize with the rest of creation) it had made zero progress.

Steel decking, metal hoses, green wires running along the curved walls like unsettling veins—the dim interior strobed ominous red. There were no portholes at which one could sip hot chocolate while admiring the elegant poise of a moon. The atmosphere inside the craft was heavy with utility and duty.

Mackenzie’s radio cracked to life.

“Hey Mack, you scared?” It was Josh’s hyperactive voice.

“No,” he lied.

“Shorts are clean, Mack?”

He didn’t laugh but didn’t retort either. They each had their own approach to stress-management.

“I’ll take your silence to mean maybe. That’s good, that’s good Mack—”

There was another crackle on the radio.

“I hear Josh is gonna try out for psyops,” Vic jumped in with her mellifluous tone. “All we gotta do is send him to the bad guys to run his mouth and they’ll beg us for mercy.”

She delivered with a serious affect but that only fed Josh.

 “Yeah—maybe I will, maybe I will. Got military intelligence written all over me…”

“Military intelligence?” Vic piled all her sarcasm on top of intelligence. “Listen, I haven’t told you the best part—”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, the job I’m thinking of is kind of a one-way, one-time deal. We use all our surplus fuel to shoot you to the enemy and then we head the other way. We let our thrusters burn extra long and extra hot and never look back. It’s brilliant.”

“Thanks Vic,” Josh sounded wounded, “I can tell you’ve really thought about this, spent a lot of time—”

“That’s enough!!” Sergeant Rhame barked at them from the pilot’s seat. They had forgotten to switch channels, subjecting the entire squad to their drivel.

In the sudden silence, Mackenzie became conscious again of the demonic entity that loomed over him. It was his fear, crippling Mackenzie with the sharp point of a twisted dagger—desiccating him of all vitality. He felt the familiar perspiration, disturbing tightening of the gut, and a frantic drumming from inside his chest… Sure, Mackenzie wasn’t exactly known for his valor among his fellow astrolites, but this was no longer a normal day of drills. 

“OK get ready,” Sergeant Rhame growled his command into the helmets of the thirteen troops.

With a confident briskness, he used his arms to pull himself up out of his seat at the front of the drop ship. He spun around and hung suspended, seasoned enough in zero gravity that he didn’t bother with handholds.

Everyone began unbuckling their seat harnesses and disconnecting their umbilicals all at once. Mackenzie removed his straps and twisted off the tube that had attached him to the cold and militant womb that was their ship. He was no longer receiving oxygen-rich and pressurized air but there should be enough remaining in his suit’s contingency module until he donned the portable life support system. He was completely untethered now and, under different circumstances, Mackenzie might have enjoyed the freedom of hovering, relaxed and weightless. But today, he only felt unmoored and terrorized.

Floating near the sides of the hull, the astrolites flipped upside down to grip support bars embedded inside notches along the floor. Mackenzie watched Vic glide nimbly out toward the middle of the ship in her gray space suit, her gloved hands dancing from notch to notch. Josh was not far behind her in his own lane. Everyone, even Josh, was somber and practical all of a sudden—Mackenzie watched them with that familiar morose sensation radiating from his gut. They were all so efficiently and readily preparing for their fate—

“Sinclair! Are you kidding me?!” Sergeant’s voice cut through the fog of dread. “Move it!”

Mack flew out along the rungs and joined the others. Vic and Josh were already pulling their propulsion and life support packs out from storage compartments in the floor and securing them to their backs. Mack went fast to catch up, his hands trembling and fumbling. In less than two minutes he had his pack on tight. 

A robotic exhale from near his midsection told him that the life support system was connected and pumping his suit with pressurized and heated air. He adjusted the control arm that emerged from the side of the nitrogen propulsion system so that it was at a comfortable angle: low at his side and slightly forward of his left leg. He gripped it and fiddled with the joystick—it seemed fine there and he could adjust it once they were outside the drop ship if necessary.

The soldiers grabbed their energy rifles out of storage, checking the charge. Mackenzie made sure the safety was on and holstered his weapon along his right leg. The position wouldn’t have worked if they were going for a march inside a desolate moon crater but under the current circumstances it was the right arrangement.

They waited and hung in a line extending through the middle of the hold, slowly drifting or rotating from the momentum of their prior, hurried movements. Mackenzie apprehensively stared at the thick door at the back of the craft, viewing it through the translucent sphere that surrounded his face. The glass of his helmet looked even thinner than it usually did.

“Jones ready!” they began to sound off.

“Rice ready!”

“Peters ready!”

And so on: one by one, all thirteen astrolites announced their readiness to die.

The heavy rear door began to swing open, revealing a silent tomb beyond. Mackenzie recoiled at the black sight of an infinite and barren pit gaping wide before them. He couldn’t believe that this was really happening, that they were all about to willfully plunge into the jaws of battle, like good little troops, trained so well to take orders… He was glad to be deep inside a space suit that concealed his trembling.

“Two stick array!” Rhame barked.

Mackenzie’s head hurt, either from the radio noise, the frenzied activity, or the low pressure inside his suit—or all of the above. He became acutely aware of the compressed gasses that surrounded him. 

Space suits didn’t offer the luxury of the air pressure that is enjoyed on earth or is sustained aboard most stations—that wasn’t practical. But they had enough to keep the warriors’ blood from boiling (a disturbing phenomenon caused by the vacuum of space).

Mackenzie was superbly cognizant of the fact that the totally essential mini-atmosphere around his body was held in by the very thin membrane of his space suit.

This was madness.

They began to drift forward.

Mackenzie fumbled at his control arm, gripped it tightly, and applied pressure to the thumbstick. A loud hiss filled his ears, his suit serving as a sound resonator to the propulsion system. It felt like someone gave him a firm shove in the back—he moved after the other soldiers.

The open portal approached them, black space swallowing the ship’s cold and utilitarian—but safe—interior. 

The astrolites floated through, using their propulsion systems to rotate, slow down, and position themselves into two staggered lines. Mackenzie found his spot and countered his rotation and velocity as much as he could.

The fourteen were silent, looking at the sight before them: a monstrous, pale-yellow sphere inside an ocean of ink. It glowed like an aged and spent sun, frail enough that the shaded, concentric lines running along its latitudes were distinguishable; as was the signature hexagon storm at the north pole. Here was Saturn casting wide, beige rings out into the unknown—rings shaded by countless intermittent, dark gaps and the one thick, stark, black loop that everyone remembers from photographs. But to see Saturn in the flesh, hulking and taking up space with majesty and terror, was something else… 

Mackenzie turned and twisted his eyes to the right side of his helmet window. A small point of light glinted from an abysmal depth. It was the sun, but not large and warm—not the way humanity was meant to view it. With a feeble glow, muted over a distance of millions of miles, it illuminated Saturn in a palid tint, leaving a murky crescent that sliced a chunk out of the rings with its harsh umbra.

Mackenzie was failing to calibrate his brain to how large the heavenly body loomed before him, but then he caught sight of something else. A metallic wheel creeped and rotated between the troop and Saturn. The sight of it wrenched Mackenzie out of his celestial awe. 

Haegel Station, five clicks below them—the reason they were lingering in this dismal corner of the solar system. This outpost for science and research was in dire need of military intervention. Marauders, an ever-increasing problem during the space age renaissance, had decided to make it their miserable den. 

Origin of invaders: unknown. 

Number of marauders: unknown. 

Existing crew’s fate: unknown.

A squad of astrolites were then the ideal candidates for a recon job—no one else was trained to move through space, outside a ship, and bring a good deal of firepower to bear (if it should come to that). Besides, there was not anyone around who could relieve them of the duty.

Mackenzie hated that they were out here. He had heard about encounters with marauders—they could get quite nasty. The enemy was known to consume great quantities of illegal stimulants and to frown on taking prisoners. The cold, zero-air-pressure void of space is an unforgiving theater for dangerous combat maneuvers.

“OK, listen up,” Sergeant’s voice cracked into their helmets. “Thrust up to twenty MPS and aim for the hub like we discussed. Find cover when you get there. They don’t know we’re here so let’s not change that. Let’s go!”

The troops, arrayed in two lines with about ten meters between each man and woman, began to sacrifice nitrogen for velocity. Mackenzie expelled his propellant at nearly full throttle. The sensation of being thrown forward twisted his insides. Their speed shot up in the direction of the imperious planet and Mackenzie felt that he was free-falling toward the ghostly sphere. 

He looked away to ease his trepidation, first at Vic to his left, and then at Josh immediately to his right. Vic stared straight ahead, grimly focused on their goal. Josh waved back a gloved hand with great animation, like a slack-jawed tourist out on a space walk. The three of them formed a rifle team, which meant they could switch to their own communication channel should they need to coordinate apart from the rest of the squad. Well, this was a double-edged sword…

“Are you guys hungry?”

Mack and Vic didn’t respond.

“I’ll take your silence to mean yes. What flavor did y’all bring?”

Josh was referring to the nauseating Liquid Extract Sustenance, or LES—standard issue for astrolites who might have to spend a bit of time inside their suits. They could choose from a variety of LES “dishes,” but in reality, it all tasted like the same chalky slurry with different flavors of melted plastic (gently folded in).

As far as the troops were concerned, LES stood for: Like Eating Shit.

“I brought Plentiful Paella,” Josh volunteered to answer his own question, “but I’m experiencing the violent pangs of what’s known among us space-faring folk as buyer’s remorse. Perhaps the Beefish Stroganoff would have made a more palatable—”

“You’re hurting America,” said Vic, too nervous about their current predicament to evoke the inside joke with enough outrage.

But it was balm for Mackenzie’s nerves. Her words took him back to that first day of leave after the terrestrial phase of basic training had ended. 

In the sunny afternoon, Vic, Josh, and Mack had ventured from the Recruit Depot into the bordering seaside city, elated and exuberant at the sudden freedom and respite from grueling physical training. Josh was hungry—a barbecue place looked good. Mackenzie vividly saw in his memory the scene of them sitting around a blue table, outside and under a sun umbrella. A cool ocean breeze blew past them, pushing the smog off the beach and allowing patches of sunlight to come through. The three grinned at the prospect of civilian food. When the menus came, Josh buried his face in the large, garish placard. His eyes darted madly from meal to meal. They nearly bulged out of his head when he realized just how massive the plates were.

“Grilled firecracker shrimp is… 1400 calories. Mahi mahi is 1900!” He shouted. “Baby Back ribs are… 2600 calories! They’re hurting America!”

“Hey Mack,” Vic interrupted his reminiscing, “How you holding up? You ready for this?”

“Good. Yeah,” he lied, feeling like a speck of dust floating in the black emptiness. “How about you?”

“As much as the next maggot,” her voice wavered. This was the first “hot mission” for all of them.

“We stick close and watch each others’ backs,” said Josh in his rare, or endangered, serious tone. “We’ll get through this alright.” 

And he added: “I’ll split my Paella with you when we get there.”

Mack couldn’t help but laugh. This wasn’t a picnic. And there wasn’t a way to share Like Eating Shit’s in space, since the brackish goo was held in a pouch inside each astrolite’s helmet.

He wanted to say something funny then, something that would make Vic smile and help them all leave their grim predicament behind for a moment longer. But Haegel Station, which had started out small and distant, had grown into a large and convoluted hunk of metal that hushed all into a nervous silence. 

Bristling with antennae and sensors, the dark wheel made determined and monotonous revolutions. It spun like an industrial top on the atmospheric membrane of the yellow world beneath it. The space station seemed so close now, so massive…

Mackenzie began to sweat again. His breath broke free of its reigns, heaving and sputtering against the cold glass of his helmet, taxing his oxygen supply tank. 

He wasn’t ready for this. 

Shoot people? Get shot at? 

No way.

This was not one of the Virtual Reality games that had once hypnotized Mackenzie for so many hours. As advanced and sophisticated as VR had become, it only scratched the surface of experienced life. It lacked the boiling fears born of tangible and serious risks. Mackenzie imagined what it might be like to take an energy beam in the leg or stomach—his awareness flooded with the agony of organ damage or limb dismemberment…

Survival instincts took over: he would stay down and clear of any danger—let someone else earn a handshake or a medal.

Mackenzie was so lost in morbid fantasy that he almost forgot to depress the brake pedal. Aware suddenly of Haegel coming up fast, he fumbled with his controls. The panicked hiss of escaping nitrogen filled his ears as he spun around wildly. He thumbed the joystick with so much force that it was a wonder it didn’t snap off. But his corrections countered the dangerous gyrating until Mackenzie’s rotations ceased and his body was at an angle that looked good: positioned upright, so to speak, with the surface of Haegel approaching the soles of his boots.

Mack opened up the nitrogen, feeling a powerful kick in his backside.

As he began to slow his descent, he caught sight of another astrolite doing the same. He wasn’t sure who it was but they were thirty meters or so away—someone from another rifle team.

In a blink, a burst of white beams ripped through the warrior’s torso and out into the milky way. The dark surface of Haegel came on as a shower of hot energy blasted up and criss-crossed among the landing troops.

“We’re seen!” Sergeant Rhame’s angry voice barked on the squad channel. “Get down to Haegel ASAP!”

There was no time for a graceful landing. Mackenzie eased off his nitrogen, allowing his momentum to carry him, and watched as the surface swung up violently. 

He caught sight of figures below, floating in the shadows of Haegel Station’s hard nooks and pointing rifles up at the newcomers. Light-green space suits—marauders—unleashing heat from their weapons without a second thought. 

A beam nearly hit Mack from behind, it must have come within a meter of his body…

He was breathing harder than after an all-out sprint. 

Mack saw another astrolite get butchered by a flare of beams and hoped it wasn’t Josh or Vic.

With just a couple meters to go, he engaged his thruster fully and braced for impact.

Mack’s boots hit hard and he slipped, crashing sideways into the tough hull. The painful blow ejected the wind out of his lungs. Gasping and fighting for oxygen, he tried to listen and feel for signs of a puncture in his suit—the paranoia of death-by-vacuum overriding all other sensations.

No leaks—the military-grade job held him in.

A disturbing movie ran on rapid repeat past the window in his helmet. The station hull zoomed by, followed by space, then the gray hull again, then pitch-black emptiness. Mackenzie was somersaulting and floating away from the surface of Haegel—into the broad view of all marauders. 

Back in training, their drill sergeant had explained to them, like they were idiots, that wildly careening and tumbling through space is the least strategically-ideal position for a soldier to be in. Avoid it at all costs.

Mack fought with his controls, trying to counter the forces beating on him. Through the grunting and flailing he could see that his overall trajectory was out and away from the protective surface of the station. 

This was it—he was doomed. Pain and death would come for him—soon.

Mackenzie tightened his entire body and clenched his teeth with all his strength. He lost control of himself, yelling at the top of his lungs.

Somehow, in that moment, Mackenzie saw the ridiculous sight that he was. 

How unprofessional. 

What a foolish way to go.

The superlative and pragmatic training of the astrolites came on, overriding Mack’s hysteria. 

His cruel sarcasm notwithstanding, their drill sergeant had instructed Mackenzie on how to escape from such gyrations. Using the inertia bubble in his helmet, for which he was infinitely thankful in the moment, Mack applied the required maneuvers. The movie began to slow down.

After a series of wild, hissing blasts of nitrogen, the rotations came to a halt. The nausea of motion sickness was quickly stuffed down—this was not the time or place.

No longer spinning around, he could see that, by a miracle, he hadn’t been thrown too far away from Haegel. Not wasting any seconds, Mackenzie tapped his controls and nudged himself even closer to the hull, within a meter, next to a radar dish the size of a large tree. It would provide some concealment. 

Twenty meters away stood a second dish of an equal size. Two rectangular conduits or ducts connected them, each about three times as thick as he was. The conduits formed a trench between them—perfect for cover. Mack immediately used his thruster to drop inside it.

He hung suspended there, bumping up against the hull. It felt like an immovable mountain against his shoulder. Mackenzie shook and sweated all over in his suit while his heart repeatedly smashed against his ribcage. He noticed that the life support system was barely working to maintain suit temperature. Spinning and scrambling in terror allowed his body to produce all the heat he needed.

A single energy beam arced by about ten yards away. 

Mackenzie was safe at the moment. Here in this nook, he was hidden away from danger. Out there were death and violence and the diabolical, icy lips of space looking to suck all oxygen and life out of the visitors who had entered its dark realm without an invitation. All it needed was a hole or tear in a suit, and there were men lurking and combing around with weapons that could easily oblige it. Weapons that could pass through Mackenzie’s flesh and send his organs into shock. Energy rifles that could flip his breakers off before he had the chance to come to terms with it.

He was far from being spiritually or psychologically prepared for that. In more than a few dark nights of his young soul, Mackenzie had thought about the inevitable: death. 

What would it feel like? What happens to you when life ends? What about your consciousness?

Mack was horrified at the prospect that he would likely soon have an answer to some of these inquiries. When that terrifying moment came, would the entire solar system, galaxy, the universe—everything—disappear? Would it all cease to exist for the one who can no longer perceive, because he is unequivocally dead? Would he awaken to some afterlife: pearly gates guarded by a saint with a list of names or a Buddhist temple capped by golden spires and filled with floating monks? Or something entirely different?

Mackenzie remembered a card game in the barracks with his friends that had led to an argument on this topic. 

Vic had insisted that only barren, mute, peaceful darkness awaited the deceased—nothing more. She had delivered this good news with a self-sufficient and biggity confidence.

Josh jumped up to preach his fiery version of the story.

“Nay, it is not mere darkness thou shall see beyond the grave!” He roared in a preacher’s accent. 

“Thou shall indeed behold the glory of heaven!” The wise minister was possessed by an ecclesiastic fervor. “There ain’t no doubt about it!

“But know this, my brethren…”, he lowered his voice, “the afterlife that greets ye shall look like the religion under which ye did the most learnin’.”

Memories of his friends eclipsed the fear inside of Mackenzie for a breath. His longing flew out along the surface of Haegel Station—searching for the other soldiers. 

Vic and Josh… Were they OK? Or… Already dead?

“This is Private Sinclair,” he tried the squad channel, “Anyone out there?”

The silence was agony.

Mack remembered spotting the green space suits down along the antennae and protrusions of the hull as the astrolites had hurtled toward them during their kamikaze plunge. 

Even if his friends were still alive out there somewhere, floating along Haegel, what chance did they stand?

How many marauders had he seen? Twenty or thirty—which probably meant there were more that he hadn’t caught sight of in those brief seconds of terror. How many astrolites were left? 

Too many questions in Mackenzie’s head—he felt himself pulled apart into madness—unable to move his body.

“Privates Thompson and Lee here!” Mackenzie’s radio sputtered to life. “Who’s there?”

Mackenzie jumped: “Josh! Vic! Where are you guys?”

“Mack-buddy!” yelled Josh. 

“So glad to hear your voice, Mack!” Vic sounded elated. “We’re moving along a conduit right now. Where are you?”

Mackenzie looked down at the dish beyond his boots and quickly up at the other one.

“I’m between two conduits… Two radio dishes…”

“We see a dish up ahead,” said Vic. “Going around it now.”

Mack’s head swiveled up and down rapidly, from antenna to antenna. His friends could have been close by, or at some other part of the hull. Dishes and conduits were a dime a dozen along the surface of this steel world. Who knew where the others had been scattered to during the earlier madness…

He spotted shadows moving around the base of the dish past his boots.

“Is that you?”

“We see you,” said Vic, waving. 

Josh and Vic floated toward Mackenzie and joined him between the conduits. Ecstatic at the reunion, they exchanged awkward, zero-gravity hand clasps. Josh beat on Mackenzie’s back too enthusiastically for someone whose life depended on his space suit remaining in one piece but Mack was thrilled to see his zealous friend. The three huddled close within the tight space, trying to see each others’ faces past the reflective helmets.

“It’s a good thing we still have comms,” said Josh. “I don’t think Vic and I would have seen you. Nice hidey hole you got here Mack. Meanwhile, I’m out there taking beams for you.”

Josh approved of his own joke with a chuckle but Mackenzie could tell that his friend’s humor was running on fumes.

“Taking beams?” He scanned Josh up and down.

Josh bent at the waist and pointed at his ankle. Where the space suit should have been slightly ballooned around his limb was instead a crude cylinder, tightly conformed to his leg. Immediately above and below this hard, six-inch-long section, the fabric bulged with the suit’s air pressure—the precious, live-enabling environment that needed to stay in there at all cost. Shrinkwrap was what the warriors called this smart-fiber technology that had saved Josh’s life.

“You got shot?” asked Mackenzie, eyes going big inside his helmet.

“Yeah, on the way down—beam went through the suit—but it didn’t even graze my skin. Shrinkwrap took care of the hole.”

Josh had an uncanny ability to milk all potential jokes or brags out of a situation, never shying away from hyperbole. He wasn’t doing that now. His suit had saved him, but only because the hole was small enough.

“Are you alone Mack?” asked Vic in a low voice.

“Yeah…” he sighed, venting the tingling of adrenaline. “I don’t know where anyone else—”

“Josh saw Sergeant get killed,” Vic spoke over him, her voice going high-pitched with anxiety, “and I watched Peters’ rifle team—all of ‘em…” She paused. “Gone…. And we’re not getting anybody on comms.”

An overwhelming realization flooded Mackenzie’s suit: the three of them were probably alone—the others dead, severely injured, or floating helplessly with riddled propulsion systems. Three astrolites surrounded by the enemy. He groaned and shut his eyes—a strange impulse from some primeval instinct trying to wake him up from the nightmare, or maybe to escape his horrible reality by falling into an eternal sleep… Mackenzie drifted before his friends, losing awareness of their presence as his fear lowered him into a grave—the grave that he would inevitably occupy in the near future assuming his body was discovered by a rescue shuttle, floating petrified by sub-zero temperatures, the look of anguish that he now wore pressed up against the glass of his helmet, not a man but a creature embodying terror retrieved from the silence of space…

“What should we do now?” said Josh. 

There was an alacrity in his tone, an optimism that said they were not written off just yet. It pulled Mackenzie back from the black hole in his heart.

Vic gently pushed herself toward one of the conduits. Taking great care to keep her cover, she peered over it and out along the station hull.

“We got marauders headed this way—five,” Vic announced grimly.

Her familiar voice loosened Mack’s fetters. He swung around and floated up to the edge of the other conduit, white-knuckling a pipe to keep himself from overshooting. Mack spotted a scattered line of green space suits, sixty meters away, shooting out puffs of nitrogen as they headed toward him. Their rifles were drawn. Their helmet glass reflected like black pools. 

Did they know the position of the three astrolites or were they searching?

“I got at least seven on this side,” Mackenzie announced, unable to keep hopelessness out of his voice. He slid back down, his vision going dark with defeat. 

With the big dishes book-ending them and the place crawling with marauders on all sides, there was no way to escape without being seen. Even if they could somehow slip out undetected—a big if, given the two groups rapidly converging on them—where would they go? The search would no doubt continue while the astrolites’ oxygen was rapidly used up. Eventually, either the marauders or the CO2 buildup would claim their lives.

“We need to try for the drop ship,” said Vic. “We know how to fly it, we just gotta reach it.”

Mackenzie and Josh were quiet. 

Vic’s plan didn’t carry much hope. No doubt their enemies would see them as soon as the warriors began thrusting up toward their craft. It would be too easy to open fire on the three before they achieved escape velocity. Their chances seemed incredibly slim.

But the clock was ticking—wait longer and you let the enemy draw even closer.

“OK,” Josh sounded convinced. “Let’s do this.”

Vic followed quickly: “Mack, you with us?”

“Yeah…” 

“Great!” Vic was excited—even exuberant. “On the count of three we go!”

Mackenzie knew that the sudden and desperate mania in Vic’s voice was her way of dealing with the insurmountable situation. He’d seen it before in basic training and the Zero G Combat School. Vic was one of those quiet, phlegmatic people who are usually written off by others presumptively. Mackenzie remembered meeting her at the start of basic training and thinking she wasn’t going to make it to the end. She then proceeded to surprise him and everyone else by displaying an unbreakable toughness. 

And now, Vic took command of their escape plan. Mack smiled at the sound of her upbeat voice.

He looked at Josh floating near the hull, coiled like a spring and ready to shove himself away from the space station. In many ways the opposite of Vic, the gregarious and brash Josh had gone quiet and serious. Mack knew that he could always count on his friend to be sober and grounded when it was absolutely necessary (but only then). 

He felt a sudden jag of anguish. What was going to happen to them?

He knew what his buddies knew: they were probably not going to get very far before being pierced by beams. In the time it took them to accelerate and break free of Haegel, they would float and rise above the hull long enough to present themselves as easy targets to the marauders… It seemed so likely that they would die.

“One!” Vic began to count.

The optimism and strength in her voice transmitted into Mack’s helmet like a high-voltage shock, snapping him out of his dread. His despair was suddenly eclipsed by remorse and disgust—at his own cowardice. 

That horrible devil that he had carried around on his back his whole life. That wretched worm with his what-ifs: what if something bad happens, what if we suffer, what if… Mackenzie had enlisted in the astrolites hoping to overcome his weaknesses. It was clear as sunlight that he had never truly dealt with them. They had only scuttled away into the darkness of his mind, but not so deep that their keening murmurings of doubt and impotence couldn’t float back to his ears (especially in those precarious moments when one needs them least of all). Wretched imps of the subconscious… Ugly creations feeding on anything hopeful and good and pure…

“Two!” Vic continued.

Mack looked at his friends. He couldn’t imagine them being killed. Something deep inside of him revolted at the notion—couldn’t bear it. The three had become very close after knowing each other for only a few years in the Astrolite Corps. Shared hardships and ordeals are an accelerated crash-course in camaraderie. A thundering, galvanizing storm brooded in Mack’s mind—he couldn’t let Vic and Josh die.

“Three!”

Mack pushed himself away from Haegel Station, but not straight up as Vic and Josh did. He flew in an oblique dash to one of the conduits, grabbing a hand-hold and securing himself in place. With an unfired rifle—fully loaded and freed from the shackles of its safety—he painted a horizontal arc of determined beams at the line of advancing marauders.

Confused and caught off guard, they slammed down on their controls, spewing white clouds of nitrogen, darting for cover. It was a satisfying sight but not one to stand and admire. Mack took one hand off his gun and lithely grabbed onto the hull. He spun around, steadied himself, and gripped his rifle with both hands again.

From the other line of marauders, which he now faced, Mack saw a burst of white light shoot up and over his head.

Josh screamed over the radio. 

Mack pointed his rifle and waved it from side to side while jamming down on the trigger. The other line of green space suits scattered—a gratifying display of chaos. Unable to see who they were dealing with or how many, they scrambled for concealment.

“I’m alright,” Josh’s grudging voice announced into Mack’s helmet. “Got hit in the arm! Hurt like hell but shrinkwrap is on it.”

Mack pitched his body back, looked up, and spotted two small, gray smudges. His friends were well on their way and pulling out of beam range. It would be foolish for the marauders to pursue them, not knowing yet if there were other ships or soldiers up there.

“Mack, what the hell are you doing?” Vic was furious.

He was already back down between the conduits, ready to make his own jump.

“I’m right behind you guys—just had to make sure you got clear—don’t turn around now.”

Mack crouched and pushed himself up with all the spring left in his worn body. He quickly followed up with a full throttle-worth of nitrogen to favor his course.

Mack sailed free, gazing up into the vast ocean that teemed with suns, planets, hydrogen, life, light, shadow, beauty… He had done his best, in spite of himself. And he had found the answer to the questions, to all of his why’s: this moment. The reason for Mackenzie’s life was this moment. His days had crawled along painfully and slowly and built up to this final act, more superlative and exquisite than anything else he had ever experienced. And now there was only one thing left to do: await destiny’s verdict.

It came quickly with a sharp pain in his chest. Mack’s vision collapsed into a fold of darkness, definitive and final.

***

They say that all brave astrolites go to heaven.

But all is black and empty… 

Silent. 

Void.

Then something… in the distance: a faint light, but bright enough to send a soft glow down the length of a long and round space. A dark tunnel. 

A light at the end of a tunnel.

It’s a cliche for sure, but nothing about the experience feels prosaic. Mackenzie is aware of himself as a small point—without a body that he can see or feel—hovering in the middle of a vast, symmetrical shaft. The space around him is so immense and imposing—a passageway crafted by giants. His presence inside the expanse is microscopic and insignificant.

And the illumination at one end—very subtle but vibrating and radiating out waves of warmth—

In total silence, the light explodes. A star rips apart and casts out hydrogen in all directions. A wave of white flies down the tunnel, consuming everything in its path. The spectacle is instantaneous, so fast that Mackenzie has no time to gasp or fear. Without a struggle, he falls into the brilliant heat.

But it does not destroy Mackenzie. 

He floats inside it bodiless, unsure how much time passes.

Then—from deep inside this formless, toneless, mute dimension—a vibration. 

It flutters and trembles at first then gathers and shakes with potency. It strikes notes, frequency upon frequency, resonance out of dissonance, and cleaves into shadow and light. Out from the milky monotone the chord draws a myriad of colors, hues, and tints.

And Mackenzie can see. Not very well—everything is trapped inside a blur—but he can see that he is facing a wall. A grainy texture plays across the white surface… In a few spots, it glows with an orange warmth. In his periphery are greens, blues, some red…

He suddenly becomes aware of his body—he has a body again. Mackenzie is surprised as he lets his awareness fly along limbs and extremities. His head swims but he does not detect any wounds or injuries in his flesh. In the unclear space around him, Mackenzie becomes aware of his orientation—he is lying down. The wall in front of him must be a ceiling.

He tenses and raises himself to a sitting position. His eyes sweep around slowly as the heavy grogginess continues to weigh on him. The surrounding dimension fails to crystallize into anything discernible. 

He can see that his body appears to be covered in a light-gray material. He is sitting on something blue. A gray surface is down below.

Mackenzie stands up, abandoning any attempts to rationalize the chaos. He walks toward the brightest source of light. Something about it is moving his limbs, drawing him closer one tentative step at a time.

Mackenzie ambles forward until the bright shimmer fills his vision. He stops because he feels that he cannot continue and because something has started to happen. His eyes are no longer looking through thick glass. The return of sharpness and detail are a delight, but the sight that strikes Mackenzie’s eyes in that instant cannot be real.

A spectacle is there before him… A vast domain with—blurry mists linger and obscure it but Mackenzie concentrates and eagerly looks and sees… 

Silent with astonishment, he beholds, arrayed beneath an azure sky: alien marvels. 

Mackenzie’s mind wrestles with the scene… A vast sea of sterling and gold… Round towers of immaculate silver thrust their lofty, golden spires into the sky. Voluminous—it is impossible to count the structures that bristle the ground, reaching and exalting upward. A myriad of causeways and bridges bind them together into a singular, shining city. 

And between and around each edifice… in the air float, with purpose and grace, the chariots of mighty gods.

A thunder splits the sky and utters in a sonorous timbre: 

Mackenzie Sinclair, are you well?

He cannot move his agape jaw to respond, only stare on at the spectacle.

The visage before him shifts once more. The dream—or hallucination—or vision—stirs inside cosmic paint and blends away.

The castle towers have changed.

Disturbed and awestruck, he blinks. He pulls his eyes wide open to take in the new sight.

Glimmering with majesty are tier upon tier of gravity-defying buildings, constructed from crystal glass. Causeways made of a paper-thin material that belies its strength connect them together. On the ground, in verdurous gardens and squares, stand the elegant monuments to sagacious elders and heroes… The sunny air, swarming with flying chariots moments ago, is filled with hovering vehicles made from a muted red material… The bright sun in the clear sky strikes the crystalline, glass faces of the sky-scraper tops, adorning and coronating them with beams of viscous gold. It’s poetry—the most sublime balance of imagination and organization. Silent, towering, clean, colorful. A finely-tuned, flowing, shifting, pulsing system… Perfect. 

“Mackenzie Sinclair, are you awake?” the disembodied, deep voice asks again, “May I come in?”

With straining effort, Mackenzie tears his eyes away from the shining city. He turns around and, with a clear vision, observes that he is inside a space resembling an apartment. At least, that is his best guess, because while the layout and feel fit the description of a living area, everything inside it is exotic in design and material. In front of him is an electric-blue object on four legs.

A couch? It is flat and has no back, so maybe a bed. 

Mackenzie realizes that he had moments ago been lying on it… finding himself there right after a flight through a tunnel. And that was immediately after being killed… 

What does it all mean? Was it real or… Or what?

He forces himself back from the edge of an abyss—now is not the time to wonder about the past. Mackenzie needs to understand his present and that feels arduous enough.

Behind the couch-bed, on the wall, hangs a canvas completely drenched in a textured, red paint. He looks closer and notices that it is not a solid painting but a thin banner that ripples softly. The decoration appears to hover a few inches from the wall but Mackenzie cannot see how it is being supported. He finds the effect pleasant: the billowing, hovering fabric seems to bring the open air and wind of the natural world indoors.

Mackenzie looks to his left at a section that feels like an attachment to the room in which he is standing. This other space ends at a wall tinged with green that reminds him of frosted glass, beneath which is a counter with a beveled edge. It looks like… a kitchen. He takes a step closer to investigate. 

But Mackenzie stops, remembering the voice. 

Where had it come from? 

He looks around but there is no one there besides him.

The man had asked if he could come in—

He should say something to the disembodied voice…

“Yes,” he finally replies hoarsely.

Nothing happens.

“Yes,” he tries louder after clearing his throat.

There is a soft click but he can’t see its source. Mackenzie realizes that a hallway separates the room he is standing in and the adjoining kitchen and continues to run past both spaces and out of sight.

He hears the sound of footsteps. Mackenzie’s heart begins to drum with excitement and anxiety. He leans sideways to peer down the hallway. 

A dark-gray shape materializes, startling Mackenzie who pulls back with a violent jerk.

“Hello Mackenzie Sinclair. My name is Orichronus.”

Mackenzie opens his mouth but fails to drive enough air through it to sound any kind of intelligible response. 

A dark-haired man of a muscular build stands in front of him. He is wearing an outfit that is reminiscent of an astronaut’s jumpsuit, except it is nearly black in color and not exactly military-grade. There is something civilian about the cut—comfortable and well-fitting. Mackenzie realizes that it is nearly identical to his clothes, but his own clothes are tinted light-gray.

The stranger frowns suddenly.

“There was an error and I could not be present during your passage. Had I been here on time, I could have guided you out before you had a chance to slip into the disorientation that you are now experiencing.”

Mackenzie can only stare back.

“Would you like to sit down?”

Mackenzie shakes his head. He is unsettled and jumpy on his feet but anxiety feels safer than sitting.

“Well, I will sit down,” says Orichronus.

He walks over to the electric-blue bed. As he casually sits on the long side closest to Mackenzie, the back and ends of the couch suddenly fold up as though the whole thing is made out of soft clay.

How did he do that?

If Orichronus notices the surprise on Mackenzie’s face, he ignores it.

“For those who choose an in-person awakening over shade-guided,” he says, “I always make sure I’m present for the procedure. But it seems there was a miscalculation and you exited earlier than we anticipated.”

“Shade…” Mackenzie manages the one feeble word.

“Right,” Orichronus nods to himself and takes a moment to think. “Hologram-guided might be a more coherent term for you.”

He does not pause to let Mackenzie wrestle with the peculiar words.

“You have no idea what I’m talking about. That’s to be expected. But please understand this: the longer we converse, the more you will comprehend. The reason for that is because this place is your home.”

Wh… where?

“This apartment and the city that surrounds it. You don’t remember any of it because your memory was temporarily taken from you. You chose to have it removed.”

“What are you talking about?” Mackenzie snaps, his confusion suddenly giving way to irritability. “Why? Why would I do that?”

His anger bounces off the solid figure in front of him. Orichronus does not move, sitting straight-backed with both hands resting palms-down on his thighs, fingers spread apart slightly in a relaxed manner.

“I am a Shift Guide for Paradigm Reality. That means nothing to you, but you are familiar with a technology called Virtual Reality—it existed in the era that you experienced during your Paradigm Shift.

“Think of Paradigm Reality as a science that is many orders of magnitude greater than Virtual Reality.”

Simulation?

Orichronus winces.

“I’m afraid this term, simulation, is utterly crude and inadequate… But, if by simulation you mean a universe that contains stars, suns, planets, laws, lifeforms, entropy, chemistry, electricity, family, friendship, love, hate, atoms, particles, dreams, and imagination; if by simulation you mean consciousness, energy, and matter and all of the creations that rise out of them, then yes, I accept your nomenclature.”

“I died and… was… I flew through a tunnel before I was here…”

“Of course, you passed through a terrific change of consciousness. And so, your mind translated your experience in a way that made sense to you.”

Orichronus pauses and furrows his brow at Mackenzie.

“The place that you now find yourself in is not the same as what you experienced inside your Shift. Nor are the people of this world the same savage creatures that you were a member of there. We possess secrets and knowledge that such myopic beings cannot imagine. We live surrounded by miracles that they could never understand, not even after studying for millenia within our sundry libraries. But our greatest discovery, our worthiest creation, the most profound boon of our civilization, is Paradigm Reality.”

Mackenzie is silent. He wants to protest, to dam for a moment the river of absurdities that keeps flowing over him: Paradigm Reality, Shifts, human-assisted awakening…

“I… remember… a battle…” With measured words he steadies himself. “Then I died. And I woke up here. Was it a dream—”

“Dying is the only way that one can depart from a Paradigm Shift. Pain and death are the only way to return here.”

With harried eyes, Mackenzie scans the room around him—the exotic, sophisticated dwelling that looks so foreign. None of the objects offer him any comfort.

Orichronus points at Mackenzie’s head while tapping his own temple. Mackenzie reaches up and touches a hard object. His fingers trace the contour of something slim and metallic on the crown of his head. He pries slightly, lifts, and the item comes away as though it had been held by a gentle force. Lowering his hands, Mackenzie sees a circle of gold as big as his palm. It had been fixed against the crown of his head so that his movements did not dislodge it.

“What is this?”

“I know that to you this object does not appear like much. I think you’ll comprehend if I tell you that this is only the interface. But it is connected to the Paradigm Reality Conduit that we are enveloped by. With this unassuming device, which you are now holding in your hands, you are able to project yourself into that vast stream.”

For a while, Mackenzie says nothing, only gawking at the gold loop. One more time, his mind wildly races along the events that have led him here. He was floating in space, in the clutches of a raw and desperate instinct for survival. Mackenzie overcame the paralysis of terror and threw himself into battle, and fought for the survival of his friends. That was his final brash and selfless act before the sudden, ephemeral agony of death. Then a tunnel… White light—in all directions—erasing everything: him, his surroundings, the galaxy, the universe. And finally, he can see again. He is here. Lying down in a strange room.

The only explanation offered to him so far, that the whole thing was some kind of simulated vision, is unbelievable at best.

“Why can’t I remember this place?”

“To enter a Paradigm Shift, as we call it, is to take on a new life, starting with birth. That can only be done if you first lose your existing life here. And so your memories were taken; stowed away. Do not worry—they are safe—but it takes time to regain them. If such an assimilation were to occur immediately, it would not be psychically sustained.”

Mackenzie, too overwhelmed to speak, stares at the other man. Not psychically sustained? Too many questions…

“I was nineteen years old when I died. Have I been lying here for nineteen years plugged into this Paradigm Shift?”

“Ah, the miracles and benefits of time conversion. Every minute, hour, and year that you remember truly did take place. But the world of Paradigm Reality runs on a different clock. Years go by there while here it is mere minutes.”

Mackenzie feels these words like a slap. He cannot accept them. That an entire lifetime could go by in just an hour… Mackenzie tries but fails to remember the beginning of his life. Only the long and painful decade of his youth stands out—days in a small apartment within a city stifled by smog—days of anxiety, dullness, depression, and nihilism.

“It doesn’t make any sense!” He retorts. “Why would I go through all that and lose my memories just to live a sad and boring life?”

“A bitter and ordinary life is the dank loam that teems with worms, required for growing a plant. We gave this life to you for one purpose: inner growth. Everything that you experienced was for nothing but this singular aim.”

“No!” Mackenzie transmutes confusion into anger, “I don’t—”

“At Paradigm Reality, we build worlds!” Orichronus thunders, his voice shaking the room. “The people enter the lives that we craft for them and forget who they were. In a Paradigm Shift, they do not know where they came from or where they are going. At night, they look up at the multitude of stars (the lights suspended in the firmament by our hands!) and wonder about the meaning of it all. Many times they feel lost and alone. Often they question the sense and purpose of their existence. 

“This is all by design! And it is necessary! As days and years pass by inside their Shift, we send them woes and trials that serve as opportunities… opportunities to overcome their limited, fearful, and selfish selves. If they rise to these adversities, they will die to their egotisms, cast off their decrepit and self-centered chrysalis, and transform into a new creation. When they meet their fated destiny at the end of it all—the inescapable grave—the sojourners come back to their true lives, here in this world, reborn. Instead of returning empty-handed, they come bearing treasure: the inner gold that can only be won through love and heroism.”

The force and electricity running through his words crash into Mackenzie like a clap of thunder. Mackenzie says nothing in reply, but the muddling feelings inside of him continue to shift and twist. His mind struggles and protests in silence, scrambling madly from rational explanation to rational explanation: a dream, or hallucination, or coma…

Orichronus smiles, the wim and fury gone from his voice and countenance.

“Trust me, it will all come back to you in due time. Folding out of a Shift is always jarring—it only adds to the confusion if we try to rush the process. The life that you left behind in your Paradigm Shift was all that you knew for many years.”

Mackenzie takes a deep breath… And exhales to collect himself.

“Why?” He whispers. “It’s too much. All that for… you said a transformation—”

“I will gladly explain. This world that currently surrounds us is nothing like the one that you recently departed. Imagine a place with all the comfort and abundance that an individual could ever need. Envision an existence where peace reigns and pain is virtually extinct. What is lacking in such a world?”

Mackenzie shakes his head.

“Limitation is lacking. Confusion is lacking. Fears, ordeals, agony, despair—all of these are absent here. 

“Long ago, we came to learn that while we may have all the light we need, it is the darkness that presents us with the most glorious gift: inner growth. Nothing in our utopic world can match its refined flavor.”

Mackenzie feels the weight of these words. Could his life, in the so-called Paradigm Shift, have been a deliberate orchestration? At the culmination and end of it, he had been violently dragged to the very bottom of the pit of fear. There, gripped by the anxieties of injury and death, he had suffered tremendously.

But then came the moment when everything changed suddenly, when Mackenzie overcame the horrible weaknesses that had polluted the depths of his heart and mind for so long.

“Yes!” says Orichronus, as if aware of Mack’s inner sentiments, “the demons that you killed were your own creations. Inside the Paradigm Shift, you spent your formative years in a dark world, unlike this perfect one. To survive there, you gave life to diabolical elements: fear, anger, mistrust, self-sufficiency… Said creations were forged by the fires of a place where suffering and confusion reign, stoked by the rough hands of your fellow humans: all-too-often cruel, cynical, selfish…

“Those same pressures can also bring out a person’s virtues: courage, resilience, love, and self-sacrifice. Out here—you will never find a path that leads to such a transformation. But inside a Shift, it exists. And upon your return, since you succeeded, you have brought back inner treasures, won in difficult battles.”

Mackenzie forgets about himself suddenly.

“The people inside the… Paradigm Shift—are they real?”

“Ah, finally,” says Orichronus with a nod. “The question. Certainly every human being that you encounter in a Shift is a visitor from another realm, just like you. And similar to you, they are there to experience the darkness and the light, to be lost at first and then found.”

He does a quick calculation in his head.

“So with the time conversion—my friends will be out soon?”

Orichronus smiles weakly.

“The rules are a bit more complicated than that. A return only takes place after a life that is deemed fruitful. Otherwise, a person must try again, and again—many times… Hundreds, thousands, maybe more…”

“Thousands?” Mackenzie whispers.

He tries to bend himself to the concept: hundreds of lifetimes, many centuries lived, births and deaths, and life after life—all happen in a matter of a few days or a week or a month out here.

“Your last Shift,” Orichronus measures his words for clarity, “was a fruitful one. But your friends have more to experience. They must therefore continue to their subsequent opportunities.”

“But eventually, they’ll be back? Can I see them then?”

“Such arrangements are usually not facilitated. Not everyone that you encounter inside Paradigm Reality handles themselves amicably—many have harmed others, physically or psychologically, including you. For that reason, we maintain in our culture a strong separation between our lives here and inside a Shift.”

Mackenzie thinks about the marauders and the possibility of seeing them outside of Paradigm Reality… Or the other people whom he had known, some who had treated him kindly and some not… Were there really millions, or billions, of individuals inside…? How was that possible?

He feels his mind take a sudden, sharp turn. 

What if it wasn’t how he… Maybe these exotic surroundings were really… Maybe Josh had been right about what happens… 

Mackenzie fails to hold onto the thought. He shuts his eyes, rubbing at his temples.

“Can I have some water?” asks Orichronus.

In spite of feeling so lost, Mackenzie rises with perfunctory movements. He crosses his living room and enters the kitchen. Mackenzie approaches the third cabinet to the right of the sink and reaches toward the green, frosted glass. The material vanishes as his hand draws near and Mackenzie pulls out a crystal tumbler. He holds it over the sink with a motion he has made thousands of times before. The water again pours out of the invisible faucet as it has on each of those occasions.

This moment, this very ordinary and unassuming instant, clicks inside of Mackenzie like a key. An old door, obscured by shadow and layers of dirt and patina, opens with a deafening snap. The cold hall beyond is dark at first. But then the portal explodes with a flash, a light so bright and heavy, burning with the voluminous beams of an entire life. 

Mackenzie braces against the frightening torrent. All memories, all instances, from the mundane to the thrilling to the touching, from birth to adolescence and adulthood, and every year, month, and day of his existence—his true existence outside of Paradigm Reality—filled with the faces of friends, strangers, family, and acquaintances… All his plans, projects, loves… They all crash over him as a massive, breaking wave, swollen and rolling dark-blue from distant, howling ocean storms. 

Mackenzie feels a revolt within his gut against the deluge. 

But… It is all him. 

It enters Mackenzie and absorbs into his bones and burns into his mind. It is his familiar and precious life. That which he had lost for so long—gone for an entire lifetime—a hundred lifetimes—becomes his again. He can float within its buoyancy and feel whole. He can reach out, extend his arm, and stroke out across the waters, gazing down into their pellucid depth to witness his past, to see the faces, the events—the stories that shaped him.

Mackenzie looks around at his home in shock, at the surroundings that he knows so well. His initial impression of them—bewilderment—still lingers in his mind, but is dissolving quickly. 

This is his dwelling. Everything is familiar and in its place… Everything, except for the other figure.

Orichronus is now standing. He smiles at Mackenzie.

“The secret to that trick is timing. You ask them to perform an everyday task and nine times out of ten, the muscle memory triggers a full re-assimilation.”

“But not too soon,” says Mackenzie, “you have to wait a bit after the Shift.”

He laughs with relief and moves the tumbler of water toward Orichronus. The other man shakes his head.

“I must go quickly to the next traveler.”

“Thank you,” Mackenzie nods.

He watches the man leave.

Mackenzie’s other self, his last Shift, and the hundred Shifts before it, glitter in his memory like stars. Each one: a different life, a different identity, a different world. Each ending with the terror and death of a mortal. Mackenzie remembers them, feels their substance in his heart: the pangs, the love, the inquietudes, the searching. He recalls friends and lovers. He sees his children and hears their voices ring like crystals.

The wisdom of all these sundry experiences is forever etched into his heart. The times when Mackenzie was petty, ignoble, and even evil burn in his awareness. As do his deeds of heroism, compassion, and altruism. Within this library, Mackenzie can behold the full depth and potential of his soul. 

But he feels a separation from the myriad existences. Arrayed inside a display case, their tragic and comedic fires flash behind protective glass. Here, in his home, in this world that holds his existence, Mackenzie feels the distance from the hundreds of sojourns that he undertook within Paradigm Reality. Once—each spec, each life, each being—was all that he knew.

Mackenzie looks around his small but comfortable dwelling, his personal and humble paradise, masterfully crafted.

Nearby live his family and his friends. Mackenzie pictures their faces. He recalls the adventures and trips they frequently took together. As often as he could, Mackenzie would fly to far-off mountain-tops, skimming their somber crags and peaks, or land on the warm sands of remote paradises.

Many times, he took a craft across the solar system. What a sublime gift it is to experience the vibrant atmospheres and exotic surfaces of infinite worlds. Or to drift in the silent darkness and study the myriad of sparks and flares in the depth of the milky way. Together, with neighbors and kin and all of his people, he worshiped the unbelievable majesty of the universe.

Mackenzie smiles and feels a warmth spread through his body. Now that he is back—now that he is free of his voluntary prison—Mackenzie can see his loved ones again. 

And while he spends his days enjoying the fruits of utopia, that other universe—Paradigm Reality—will go on. Time will fly by and billions of lives will pass. Mortals will be born and die, live in happiness and suffer horribly. And they will go on for years, lifetimes, centuries. His friends inside the Shifts… His family—a different family each time—all whom he loved… Shift after Shift… Noble denizens of a brilliant civilization choosing to cast themselves down into ignorance and into time; to labor in fear or illness; to be jealous, violent, vengeful… And, in terror, flee from death…

As Mackenzie stands in his home, he feels the years flying by for those whose bodies are resting in his world, in their respective homes, while their minds plumb the depths of another dimension. Each minute here is a year gone there. A mere hour of casual conversation: a full lifetime. A person is born, grows old and dies. Billions of them.

Billions of souls—unaware of their true nature. 

But they have each other, choices, and free will.

Mackenzie looks in the direction of his door. In mere minutes, he can walk out and see the faces that he left behind. He now remembers that many who make this choice do not return to the realms of Paradigm Reality. Life out here takes over and becomes their gravity.

Mackenzie takes in the peace and quiet of his home. He glances out the window one more time, studying the flying traffic that burns soundlessly in a setting sun. He feels the wealth and beauty of the world.

He feels the beauty, the different kind of artistry, of the other too.

Mackenzie makes a decision then that does not shock him.

How many times has he made this choice? Mackenzie lost count long ago.

He walks to the couch. He grabs the ring of gold and lies down. Mackenzie places the device on the crown of his head.

As before, he closes his eyes. 

Nothing happens, but in another minute, he knows that…

Mackenzie feels himself moving then: turning, shifting into something else.

A familiar terror is there.

He is hanging above a dark abyss, gripping onto… Underneath his fingers is a disturbingly narrow piece of the world, of his home. Mackenzie looks down but sees nothing, only a black expanse.

He waits, training his eyes to the dark, feeling the bottomless pit waiting.

Suddenly it’s there—not an endless chasm, but an infinite cosmos, marvelously speckled with wild flashes of lights and worlds spreading in every direction. Bundles of celestial machinery, the pulsing rotations of galaxies, delicate solar systems, planets, moons, stormy breaths upon the faces of spheres that abound and overflow with life and consciousness.

Mackenzie releases his grip and screams.

Plunging down, or out, or hurtling up violently… 

Flying through the black until the distant specs of emanation, thousands of light years in breadth, each containing billions of unique stars, pass by in the span of seconds. 

Mackenzie knows that his destination is ahead, and it appears with the delightful glint of an opal in a deep cavern. He flies toward it.

The approaching lantern grows, flattening out into a vast disk of blazing flame. The galaxy lies frozen in a spiral act, a centrifugal and centripetal interplay. It holds together inside a celestial cavern. It stretches out with terrific zeal to deposit existence inside the void.

He draws closer to the radiant condensations of fiery hydrogen. The distant hissing and rumbling of their furnaces reach him. He moves among them, shaking with their roar and rumble, bathing in their outpouring of white fire and golden light.

He searches for his goal—a new world. And a new destiny. 

But all the same: to drink from the chalice of mortality. Each sweet draft followed by a bitter one.

A planet appears, the fourth around a massive star. A bright green cloud perpetually hovers along its surface, protecting it from a sun that is too close and too big. His fortune lies there. 

He tumbles down—down—inside the atmosphere—caught, raked by cold wind.

A sudden jolt, an electric rush through that gate that brings one from the spirit to the physical, from the omniscient to the blind.

Conception and birth, they have named it.

He will live in a bounded, conditioned, at times painful, and yet sublime existence. 

He will have pleasure and suffering.

He will curse at the heavens and revel in swift glimpses of transcendence. 

It is in this place that he may discover his powers. It is here that he may find inside of himself, strength, wisdom, and love.

In the beginning, Mackenzie will rest in darkness for some time…

And then emerge into light, crying.