Under a Starless Sky

Another round of sleep took him. He was still annoyed to wake. He was not able to remain laying. His body ached. His head ached. Head ache was either due to prolonged sleep on a hard floor, or because the air was finally thinning. He got up. He touched the wall and from here, he knew his cave and could navigate it in the dark, even without second sight. A single click brought the room to life, like a camera flash going off. The ‘after image’ lingered a bit. The ‘lingering’ duration was increasing, as likely his ability remember was improving with practice. The pile of rocks blocking the egress seemed more substantial than he remembered it being. The jars containing critters were lined up on a shelf he had cut into the stone. He couldn’t see the critters with sound, just their jars. His mind filled in the ‘blank’ making the contents scarier than they were in real life. Scarier but contained.

Shen rubbed his head and walked. He was hungry. There was dried fish and some nuts but he passed them up. There was a jar of honey. He knew it was honey because of its location. There was also a jar of snake venom. He paused, hand coming to this jar. Throw this in the fire pit, ignite it, and his air supply would be gone in minutes, if that.

“The darkness one sees is never darkness,” a voice said. Shen froze. “We don’t see with the eyes. We see with the brain. The camera may not be sending signals, but the television is still on. It is not true black. It is a light, and it is always on.”

Shen was quiet. The voice sounded elderly. Grandfatherly. “Carl?” Shen asked.

“There is no darkness. It’s all light, only light.”

A resounding noise, like thunder drew his attention. A beam of light penetrated his tomb. His hands shook. The light didn’t make sense. It was there. The whole room was softly illuminated, and there was this solid, hauntingly sustained, pillar of light. It extended down from the ceiling of the cave to the floor. Sparkles spun in the light. Some of it was likely dust particles, sparking as if in a sunbeam. Some of it was just pure energy. Glitter in a glow tube. A being descended from above, coming through the ceiling, and how ever many of feet of mountain that was above his cave. Her descent stopped on the cave floor. Two other being walked straight through the wall, so that there were three strangely illuminated beings inside the cave. The two secondary beings were also accompanied by a light beam coming at an oblige angle through the cave wall in a direction that suggest source was outside the cave.

The first, the female was hauntingly familiar, but he was at loss for placing her. Something flashed and he saw the being in multiple ways, human, not human, and conjoined beings- human not human.

The bodies were human. The heads were octopi. It was as if humans were wearing living octopus masks. The octopuses’ heads disappeared, taking on the orange swirling pattern of his cave, and so the people appeared headless. The octopus’ heads returned, mostly gray, but they generated colors, textures. Again the octopi heads went away and the human heads were there; again Shen had a pang of a belief that he knew the female. Her name was just on the tip of his tongue and he thought if he could only stare longer it would come to him. The head went away again. The human bodies became transparent, so only the octopus remained, floating in air. Interestingly, he could discern the outline of the humans they hugged. He could see a central branch that went down into the human, into the stomach, and rooting further all the way into the intestines. He could see a branch into the lungs defining lungs. Then both human and octopi were invisible, and there was storm of energy- a vision of the electromagnetic body, the hearts synchronized between host and symbiont- and the brains communicating through electrical means. It was if this was graphic showing the brain storm, human brain storm, octopi brain storm, which for the octopi equaled its hole body, as brain matter was distributed evenly throughout the creature, and then communicating through tissue and bone so the whole of them was a bigger brain.

quite right. He was not sure if this was for his sake, communication with each other- that made less sense- or attempts to communicate with him; a part of him suspected they were just showing off. The octopi bodies became transparent again,

than what he was gleaning from insight. This was a new species. They were compatible with humans in a very unique way. It reminded him of alien face huggers and his first impulse was to run. There was nowhere to run to, but he wanted to run, and yet, he found himself frozen in place. Standing still was a compelling. This was

the two individual minds became one. A new personality emerged that was neither human no octopus. This was normal. Removing the corpus collasum of the human brain to alleviate epilepsy had resulted in the discovery that the right hemisphere had a distinct and

were painted on, because it had texture and depth, even color, but it didn’t look free to blow in the wind or have individual strands.

same material as her dress. The other two were male. Precisely, the human bodies were male. He didn’t know how he knew- the octopi also had gender- perhaps they were transmitting

“Holograms?” Shen asked.

the first

“There’s no way…”

had a flashback to his ideas of Christ, ‘come,

two inch hole in your hand? He thought it bizarre he was even having the debate.

said. “So can imagination. Touching you wouldn’t

“You’re speaking to me,” she said.

“But you are

speak to the real you, and am doing so even as we communicate. We