Isaac’s world was silent and black. He remembered the jolt, the shattering glass tinkling, the weightlessness, the world turning beneath him and then the crash to blackness.
He couldn’t move his body. He was only faintly aware of it. His left hand held by another. A tube in his throat. He wanted to see, he wanted to know. His mind pulled against something, something that held it strongly at first then feebly as if weak. It’s grip on him slipped and slid and his mind leapt free.
He saw his face, as if sleeping. Still. The woman holding his hand looked up, at flashing screens and beeping lights. She cried, as Isaac moved back to see others run in dressed in white. They checked the beeping, their faces creased and their jaws set.
He moved back further to see where he was, a place with many people. A place with others in beds, a place of pain and suffering. Isaac did not want to remain here, and so he rose up through ceiling to find only more pain and sorrow. He rose faster, the floors blurring as he pushed harder to get away from it. They stopped, and he was free in the light.
The sun cast a red glow on the clouds, and Isaac flew to them up into their heights. The sky grew dimmer and the world darkened and the lights of the city twinkled on. It looked like stars. Isaac looked up and saw them. He pulled himself higher still, it grew cold but then he forgot what that meant. There were no clouds now, no air only blackness again but more in the distance. Lights.
He looked down and there the world lay, a small and fragile blue gem. Silent and peaceful. He looked to the pinpricks of lights and raced to them, faster and faster. The planets blurred, the asteroids flashed and comets streaked past. The lights jumped toward him. He looked over his shoulder and the sun was a lonely ball of fire, surrounded by others.
Isaac filled with joy, the thrill of seeing, of learning and knowing. He let his mind drift outward and it touched the floating spinning rocks, the glowing gases and then the fiery stars. He raced forward again, flying as if a bullet, a beam, a ray of light away from the familiar to the new. He flew faster still.
The tiny lights grew huge, and warm then passed and were forgotten. He marvelled a moment before he flew on to nebula, red, green, blue. So many colours. The joy filled him. More and more wonders came to him as he spun out of the galaxy shooting up and out until his mind marvelled at its arms spinning. Dancing a dance with all the others, slowly to a forgotten song. A celestial waltz.
The mind of Isaac looked at a faint glow and willed himself there. In an instant he was. He looked at the lights of billions, a moving mass before him and he felt joy unparallelled. His mind thought more and he saw more each become a point until he saw thousands that were billions themselves.
He thought about life. He thought about sentient life, and he was on a planet with red seas and crystalline trees. Life blossomed on this planet, it grew from the infinitesimally small to a great civilisation right before him. Isaac watched it grow, watched it reach for the stars, and watched as it failed and collapsing in on itself. He mourned its passing. He looked for another, and found beings as they left their home. He revelled in their bravery. He followed them, a small huddle of lights swimming in an endless blackness. They strove and they succeeded. Their worlds multiplied, and they spread and Isaac rejoiced.
Isaac watch the rise and fall of countless civilisations, and after a timelessness that seemed eternal to his mind sought something else. He cast his thought inwardly. He thought about meaning and beginnings. His mind leapt to The Beginning and there was nothing, a pin point of something and then it exploded forth in heat and light, substance and time. Isaac was blown back and set a drift floating. Thinking.
The mind that was Isaac sought one more thing. He sought to meet one being. He flew out until galaxies seemed as stars, till they too bunched together huddling in the darkness and still he searched. He searched for the edge of space, the end of infinity. He propelled himself forward, flashing through ages, millennia, and aeons, until time lost its meaning. It grew dark, it grew emptier, it grew still.
The entity that was Isaac sought on, riding the wave that was the ancient birth of the universe as it expanded. Seeking. He folded space and time and tried another universe, and another, and another and still he sought. Still he fought to find The Source. The true beginning. In between, on the edge of one and the other he felt something, a warmth and he raced toward it as it pulsed. It called to him, louder and louder. Welcoming.
The entity that was Isaac once, felt a tug, but he ignored it. He strove forward and pulled against it. But it pulled harder still. It pulled him back away from the true warmth and the light. It yanked him back into his own universe. It pulled him inward as the space around him grew bright and full and it pulled harder still as a pin prick of light grew to consume his view. He could see nothing else, his view shrank to one galaxy cluster within billions.
His mind reduced and reformed and remembered cold. It raced toward a thing once called home. An arm of a spiral galaxy looked familiar, it flooded toward him, a yellow ball of fire called to him. The tug became a snap and he flashed closer, he shrunk more and he cried out at the loss of infinity.
He fought against the disconnection, the denial of knowing. He saw the blue orb and his mind wailed as it flew through icy clouds, back to city lights that winked out, and growing red hues on sunset clouds. He was tired now, weary with loss and remembered limits. He sought refuge from the loss. He sought comfort, he sought love. He sought life. He fled the loss.
Concrete grew in resistance until he forced himself through the last floor into a room with frantic people and a woman outside watching in. Her hands to her mouth, her silent words a drum beat on his soul. He felt a jolt, a flash of white fire within. He’s being tore to see her so, and he dived in, he embraced his prison and he breathed in.
“Clear!”
Isaac gasped. His heart beat.
He squeezed her hand, she cried with joy. And he felt love and warmth and light. He let the loss drift into the darkness of his mind as he opened his eyes to her smile. Her loving embrace.