The Story Begins Page 7

  “I’ve missed you so much!” she said, unaware of how loud her excitement had made her, especially at 11:00 in the night when her parents were already sleeping.

  Waking anyone up would not have been a concern though, for given the nature of his being, the awesome power that he commanded, in his presence the lightest of sleepers would have fallen into the deepest of slumbers if he so chose.

  “Why did you leave me for so long?” she asked with sadness in her voice.

  “I’ve missed you too. Whenever I leave you, I always return to sleep. I awaken only to be with you. I have no control of my being while asleep, only after I have awakened. I cannot control when I awaken. Each time I awaken, I wonder how long it has been since when last I came to you. There have been times when it has only been days and other times far longer, such as now,” he explained.

  It was only now that she realized that she had never asked him where he came from or where he returned to. She had known him for almost nine years but had never once thought to ask. Having grown up with him around her, she must have simply assumed that he’d always be there, which, perhaps, might have been why she had never thought to ask. The answer he had just given her now piqued her curiosity.

  “Who, exactly, awakens you?” she asked, already assuming it could only be his even more mysterious father.

  “Sometimes it’s my father, and at other times I feel like it’s another part of me that does. I can’t explain it,” he said.

  “You know, I don’t think that I can ever really figure out the mystery that you are,” she said.

  “Yeah! That makes two of us,” he joked. “I know it all must seem quite mind-boggling now that you’re a little more grown up.”

  “I’d have it no other way, though. It makes it all the more fun,” she answered.

  “You know, I really don’t quite get it myself… I mean, I know a lot there is to know about me but not quite everything. I believe that when I am awakened, my knowledge of things is purposely, and purposefully, limited.”

  Despite his curious explanation, she decided that this conversation could wait for another time. She had sorely missed him and just wanted to spend all the time in existence with him. She hugged him tightly and wished that she could hold on to him forever and never let go, not even for the briefest of moments.

  “Please don’t leave! Stay with me! I want to be able to wake up and you be the first thing that I see. And be able to come back from school knowing that you’ll be waiting for me. I want you to be my friend forever and ever,” she pleaded, overflowing with emotions that were stronger than anything she had ever felt before towards anyone.

  “Do not be bothered by such thoughts,” he said to her. “I shall always be your friend, forever and ever,” he assured her. “I wish I could stay with you always but I can’t.”

  “Why can’t you? You have so much power. You can cross the entire universe, even leave it, faster than I can blink. How can’t you be able to stay on this tiny little world with me?” she asked.

  “I do not have complete control or say over where I can be and for how long,” he explained. “Come now, cheer up, young lady. Today we’re going to have fun. We haven’t seen each other in, how long?” he asked, not that he couldn’t have simply willed the knowledge to himself.

  “Over a year!” she said.

  “That’s an awfully long time. Makes me wonder if the next time we see each other after today will be years from now,” he said.

  “Don’t say that!” she chided then admitted that as much as she didn’t like that prospect, it was a real possibility she had to contend with.

  “So, where would you like to go?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to go anywhere. I just want to be with you,” she said.

  “Of course we’ll be together,” he reassured her, taking her by the hand and going right through her bedroom wall. The both of them floated aimlessly through the apartment and through her parents’ bedroom; they giggled when they heard her dad snoring. “Would you rather we remain here or travel to wherever or whatever you may wish that I create?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. As long as I am with you, I’m happy.”

  “I have an idea,” he said as he dissipated into a mist-like substance all around her.

  “What’s that?”

  “Let’s go!” he said, without answering the question or giving her a chance to get more curious. Then they vanished.

  “Where are we?” Lydia asked after finding the both of them within an effulgent spherical force-field of sorts, looking out at dark and empty space all around them. “Is there a reason we are simply out in space?” she asked, assuming that the force-field was for her protection as Shia really didn’t need it.

  “This is its birthplace,” he said to her.

  “What’s birthplace?” she asked, not at all certain of what he was telling her.

  “The first world in created existence outside the realm which has always been,” he said. “Wait for it. It’s coming.”

  They remained silent and before long, they slowly began to levitate just as a bubbling substance appeared right beneath where they had just been hovering. A world began to form out of the substance, racing and stretching in every direction, and the wider it spread the higher they levitated so that they may continue to witness the earth’s creation in whole. As the world was stretching beneath them, a sun was also being created concurrently in the distance. Lydia was awestricken by what she was witnessing, the creation of the awesomeness that is a sun and an entire planet by a hand unseen.

  After all was done, a world in its entirety lay beneath them, suspended in the heavens. Then something else caught their eye. Not too far off in the distance, another mass began to form, creating a moon. Lydia was bewildered and overwhelmed by all that she saw.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Shia. Lydia, however, was at a loss for words. They then began to descend from on high before simply vanishing and reappearing on the earth, without the protective sphere, hovering above the same place it had all begun. There were beautiful, lush, green fields, ponds, mountains, valleys, trees, ravines; the landscape was a wonder to behold. A tear trickled down Lydia’s face for never had she seen such beauty, certainly never had she witnessed creation occurring before her very eyes, or so she believed. Shia smiled, his great love for her evident in his eyes, and held her by the hand.

  Then something even more amazing began to happen; whirling mists, some large while others small, began to dot the land as far as the eye could see and, out of them all, walked or crawled forth all manner of creatures in pairs. Instinctively, some took to the air and others moved upon the land, while others that stepped forth from the whirling mists upon the edges of bodies of water took to the streams, lakes, ponds and rivers.

  After all had come about, a great and radiant cloud-like substance appeared in the sky above Shia and Lydia and slowly began to descend upon the pair. Shia slowly dematerialized with his companion before vanishing then reappearing a field’s length away as the cloud’s descent came to a standstill just above the earth’s surface. From within the cloud stepped forth a being who appeared to be pulsating energy of some kind; what looked very much like electric charges and pulses were carousing through his transparent, featureless, humanoid-appearing form. Upon touching the earth, he began a transfiguration, taking on the form of a human being. Following his transfiguration he stood at almost 10 feet tall with a well-defined and sculpted, but not overly muscular, form draped in a lustrous gray robe.

  His skin was the color of bronze. His ebony hair flowed freely down to his shoulders, and his eyes were a dark turquoise. Unbridled power and might emanated from his being; yet still, in his eyes, kindness also abounded. He looked upon the land that lay before him and all its creatures and was pleased with what he saw; pleased as though everything stirring was his own creation. He raised his arm up to the cloud and another being, which bore a semblance to him preceding his transfiguration, rea
ched out for his hand. No sooner had it touched him than it too began to assume a form similar to his. However, before completing the transformation, the second entity looked down upon a plant which had a flower colored somewhere between a dark shade of pink and a light shade of copper, and had almost radiant green leaves. Seeing this, like a chameleon, the being then began to change its complexion and when all was done, beside the man stood a beautifully tanned woman with an olive oil-like glow to her skin, ebony black hair falling freely to her lower back, beautiful, almond-shaped, brown eyes, and her slender form was wrapped in a blazing white regal robe. She stood perhaps an inch or two less in stature than he. She looked upon everything around her and, being pleased, smiled before turning to face her companion, who was gazing at her lovingly.

  “This is the very beginning!” Shia announced.

  “Can they not see us?” asked Lydia, very much bewildered.

  “I do not know.”

  Lydia asked another question while her senses were still struggling to grapple with all that had occurred. “Is that Adam and Eve?”

  “Adam? Eve?” Shia repeated, looking at her, rather intrigued by the question. “Why would you think that is Adam and Eve?” he asked smiling, quite aware of the forthcoming answer.

  “I don’t know...I guess because of what we are taught about the beginning.

  “Not quite.” He smiled.

  She was confused. “How can it not be?” she asked him.

  He smiled but didn’t answer the question; instead he simply said, “Come when you are told of the Big Bang Theory, do remember that it is but a theory.” Transforming into a grayish mist, they vanished only to reappear high above the earth’s atmosphere.

  “If this is earth, there are planets missing,” Lydia observed. “Where are Mercury, and Venus, and the others?”

  “The earth, its creatures, and the universe you know are far different from that which you now see. Humanity is yet to be seeded upon this world. But when it is, the human form will change; however, not for the reason your elders believe and impart to succeeding generations. When humanity is seeded, they will bear the form of the two who now observe their creation; and though humanity will change in likeness as time progresses, they will again return to the form they will be given upon their creation. Liken that which you now see unto a house. When a house is laid upon its foundation, it may not necessarily remain the same always, even though its construct might have been predicated upon an idea believed final,” Shia explained.

  Lydia wasn’t quite sure what “predicated” meant but did comprehend the overall message. “I guess you’re right,” she agreed.

  “By the time the earth and universe you know come about, countless worlds would have come and gone; some destroyed never to be again while others recreated, or terra-formed, as humans might say, by races that will come to be, or terra-formed by their makers,” revealed Shia.

  “Gods? How can that be? There is only one God,” declared Lydia.

  “In essence, yes,” said Shia.

  “What does that mean?” asked Lydia, starting to wonder if everything she’d ever been taught to believe about God were true. “Everybody knows that there’s only one God...I think… I mean, that’s what we are taught to believe.”

  Shia turned to her, smiling. He understood why she thought as she did; it’s what she had been taught. He seemed hesitant; perhaps unsure as to whether he should say what he wanted to. Making up his mind, he then nonchalantly said, “The world may believe as it wills.” After pausing for a moment, he continued solemnly, “Yet in the freedom granted this incorrigible child, conflict has found a home.”

  Lydia expressed her confusion sheepishly. “Shia, I know we kind of grew up together and I know you kind of, sort of, look almost human at times but you’re like a baby god who, though you don’t know everything, still knows a lot more than I do. I think that sometimes maybe you forget that I’m just a little human girl and don’t understand everything,” she complained.

  Affectionately, he took her by the hand then said, “In time you will understand. You will understand everything.” Quite suddenly they vanished.

  BACK IN HER ROOM: “If that was the beginning, where would we be if we went further back?” asked a curious Lydia.

  “We’d go back to where there’d only be darkness,” Shia answered.

  “And what came before that?” asked an increasingly curious young girl.

  “This universe wasn’t. Nor was the place that came to be home to the universes.”

  “Can we go there?” she asked.

  “That would be…” he thought for a moment, “oblivion is a close enough word. And you cannot exist in nonexistence.” He then answered the question before it came. “And there, the place from which it all started, the being and the place, which have simply always been, to that place we cannot go, at least not as we are. And even I do not have the power to take us to that realm.” There was a brief silence before Shia mused aloud, “I seem to know so much, yet I know so little.”

  Lydia then thought of something. “Shia,” she said, obviously perplexed, “if our sun is the beginning, how can there be older suns in our universe?”

  “Simple,” he said. “Mankind establishes beliefs based on different criteria of how it believes things work. And while assumptions can be a beginning to discovering truth, some of the ideas some of these beliefs are founded upon have no basis in reality, regardless of how much like truth they may look. Yet still, it is a way of learning. Not to speak of the countless races in the universe that have perfected their sciences to the extent of manipulating heavenly bodies and subjecting them to their own needs. Mankind may have been first but the freedom given him has been his downfall time and time again.”

  Lydia, deciding that Shia was perhaps again forgetting that she was just a human child, and also remembering the awesome things she had seen, chose to simply enjoy it all rather than try to rationalize existence. “How beautiful it all was. Amazing beyond words!” she exclaimed. “The flowers, the animals, everything was so beautiful and it was amazing seeing them grow and start to exist right before our eyes. Are you going to tell me more about the people we saw someday soon?” she asked.

  “You’ll know more about them in time. We both will,” he said.

  She looked at him and thought how beautiful a being he was. How happy she was to be around him. From him she felt a love she hadn’t felt from anyone else, not even her parents, and she was sure it was not for lack of love from her parents; she understood that, in their humanity, they were truly limited beings.

  “It’s late and you should be getting to bed,” advised Shia.

  “I know but I just don’t want to let you go,” she pined.

  “Sleep that you may be well rested come daylight.”

  Before she could register any further protests, she found herself being tucked in while he floated by the window. She was being lowered onto her bed while the covers were being pulled back, and just before touching the bed, her pillow was fluffed up and made soft, as was her nightly ritual. The covers were then rolled over her. Shia came closer; hovering horizontally over her, he kissed her on her forehead and then he was gone.

  Even though she had gotten used to his sudden manifestation and vanishing acts, she couldn’t help but feel his departure even more this time. He was gone and there was no telling when next she’d see him. It could be a mere few seconds later or several years. She had no way of knowing. Her eye caught sight of the journal on her desk, the journal in which she recorded his visitations and had tried to discern a pattern but had long since given up for as hard as she had tried, he was simply too erratic to predict.

  She fell asleep.

  6

  Melanie

  Jaden was a prankster; however, this time the not-very-well-thought-out prank had gone too far, which is why he found himself at 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning on his lonesome outside the George Sherman Union building, the sole coerced participant, he suspected,
of a group of students who had volunteered for community service activities outside the city of Boston.

  “Playing dead! What the hell possessed me to carry out such a stupid prank?” he asked himself as he wondered where everyone else was.

  It wasn’t lost on him that he had gotten off lightly, a mere slap on the hand. And for that he was grateful. His punishment could certainly have been far worse. Now that all was done, his ill-conceived prank was not the brilliant idea he had initially thought it would be.

  *

  THE PRANK: Though his home was only fifteen minutes away from school Jaden had opted to live on campus and although he visited home often, he always spent the weekends on campus. One particular weekend, however, he felt like staying home; and it was while there, and out of presumably infinite boredom, his most imbecilic idea was conceived. He had asked Cindy, a high school friend of his who also attended Boston University, to call one of his friends and convey that Jaden had gone into surgery and had passed during the procedure. By the time he had realized the depths of his foolishness, it was already far too late; word of his supposed demise had spread across campus very quickly, almost as though the whole student body had been assembled and the collective had been addressed at once. Mass that Sunday, which all his friends had attended, had been dedicated to him.

  After finding out what Jaden had done, most of his friends, including Alex, who had felt most deceived above all others, decided to punish him by refusing to associate with him.

  *

  While standing there contemplating his stupidity, he began to wonder more earnestly why no one else was there yet. Had he arrived a little too early? Then his thoughts again shifted over to his friends, ex-friends rather. Because he didn’t much care for people as it was, if his former friends hadn’t initially pursued his friendship, he would have been perfectly content to be friendless. As far as he was concerned, not having any friends didn’t deprive him of anything. Besides, he reasoned, if he had a need for friends, America had over three hundred million people from which he could choose, or replace individuals as friends at will; believing that society had become almost impossibly superficial, he couldn’t have been any more certain that such wouldn’t be problematic at all. And it was because of such a dismal attitude that he never felt contrite, or ever sincerely meant an apology–if he offered one at all–for anything hurtful he might have done.