Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Science Fiction
Publisher: Balanced Mind Press
ISBN-10: 1081890983
Type: Fiction
Pages: 260
Copyright: 09/06/2019
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
Once connected in a mind garden, conflicting brains always reach an agreement.
Sorry and his self-made family escape from the storms on earth in a Mutmut spaceship. They arrive at the ancient moon colony, Rumi, not heard from in over a hundred years. What they discover there confounds them. Is it an alternative to death? Is it possible to know the thoughts and feelings of another completely? They marvel at what they see but are afraid to join in. Take a seat in the mind gardens, if you dare.
Excerpt
I choose “Tub A” because I had established no firm friendships there, no one I might offend with my thoughts. I opened the door to the visitor portal and cautiously stepped down into the seat. I slide my head into the opening of a yellow cushioned platform and situate myself comfortably. A mechanical voice confirms: “You are in position: Level nine, seat twelve. Please state your name.”
“Mock.” I hear a skirmish of voices throughout the tub exhibiting excitement at having their first internal visitor.
“Place the helmet to your right on your head,” the voice says.
I stare at the black helmet. I had thought about this for years. I wasn’t sure why, at this moment, I overcame my fear of sharing . . . even my darkest thoughts, my misconceptions and downright stupidity. I place the helmet on my head.
“If, at any time, you wish to leave, simply remove the helmet and exit. Please enjoy your visit.” The voice terminates. I am connected. I shiver with anticipation.
There is a slight electrical charge in my skull. I can feel my own ideas being reduced to patterns, my emotions like soft waves. I can sense that, in this world, my Fullbody holds no purpose. This world is not temporal. Everything is based in eternity here. I no longer feel obligated to the rules of time and space. They don’t exist. There is only the present. There is only here. Only now. This is a world made entirely of thought and feeling, a world that always existed within my brain that I was never aware of.
For the first time, I sense the silence beneath the real world. It is completely still and changeless, far away from the noisy chaos to which I had become accustomed, and I sense it holds truth within it. The monsters I had created in my own mind due to my own lack of knowledge stand out with vivid clarity. I am somewhere between the mystical and the surreal. I am acutely aware that something else is happening here beyond the superficial life I had led before.
Something stirs inside me. Someone enters my field and is speaking to me, not with words but vibrations. Not what you expected? It is Gryphon.
Not at all, I say without speaking. I tingle from the vibration of talking in waves.
Welcome to the silence, Temper conveys.
Thank you. It’s quite beautiful here. It is fascinating. I can enter any colonist in the tank and commune completely. I control the flow of ideas and emotions entering and exiting my mind. It is exhilarating. I can enter one, a group of them or all of them at once.
It’s better here than in the confused world, don’t you think? It is the Zebra-head. And please don’t call me Zebra-head anymore. My name is Zak. Oops, he hears my thought. Not so bad. In fact, once it is out in the open, it feels good, like a release of pressure.
Can you see the things that clog a Fullbody’s mind? the blue thread named I conveys.
I see it now. But not when you tried to explain it to me outside the tub.
I feel her smile. It is soft and warm. I like feeling smiles. I like knowing she is female simply by her impression.
Strangest of all, I can feel them inside me, softening my feelings and reconfiguring my thoughts, and I love their effect on me. I try to fight it once due to my instincts, but quickly realize there is no reason to fend off the ideas they are harmonizing so perfectly in my brain. It feels good to have others help with the thoughts I could never figure out. I feel so unconflicted. And my feelings are so much more empowering and real when combined with those of a hundred and twenty others.
I conclude that my thoughts and feelings had been limited by the physical world. The constraints of individual bodies never allowed the possibility of knowing another creature so completely. I realize there are many walls to tear down before acceptance occurs in my world.
To be able to see where I had lied to myself feels liberating. I realize that all life share the same concerns . . . we’re all wrong at times, we’re all broken, we’re all handicapped, we’re all incomplete, we all want to belong, we’re all searching, we all want to be understood, we all want validation and meaning. I suddenly feel a connection to others I had never previously experienced.
The colonists fill in all my missing pieces. They replace my construct of physical law from the outer world with spiritual law that exists within us. Now I can see physical law is mostly for our bodies, not our evolution.
They put me in alignment with all the creatures around me. I have never felt myself to be such a valid and important part of any group before. My body tingles for their complete acceptance of me. I realize there were blockages in my former thought and feeling patterns that had prevented me from growing.
I can clearly see that the faults I had observed in others all my life also exist in me. It was so much easier to blame others when I was separate, and now nearly impossible. Having so many brains within one skull made it easy to come to agreement. I cringe when I think of how delusional I’d been.
No individual runs the show here. I feel Zak’s thought. It is run by all of us acting as one.
We Fullbodies have a lot that clogs our minds, I admit to them. None of you have egos to block me out. You have many minds acting as one. We don’t get to experience anything this close to the truth on the outside. I have never known feelings this pure. I admire all of you.
I look blissfully about the tank, a profound smile covering my face. I lift the helmet off my head and put it down. I suddenly need to be somewhere else. I get up to leave, not stopping to say good-bye.
“No, don’t go yet. We’ve so enjoyed your visit,” Gryphon says out loud.
Her physical voice disturbs me. It seems so unnecessary to inflict the world with such a loud piercing sound.
“I have to go,” I say, the sound of my own voice offending me. It occurs to me that I have just reentered a world made of time and space. I have left the world of the present. It feels odd choosing to reenter a world I now see as defective.
“There is so much I didn’t know. So many unknowns in this world,” I tell them and head for the Hall of All.
|
