Minds Eyes Part 2: Visions
"I was consumed by this presence, like the presence of a God. That's not an experience you can forget."
Josephine Keller was in the habit of questioning everything. That was her father's influence. She didn't like anything she could not explain. Instead of turning away from the unknown, however, she was driven by a need to run toward it and shine a torch into the darkness. Her colleagues and friends often thought her a bit flighty for this. What they didn't realise is that Josephine didn't let go of something until she had mastered its every detail; but as soon as she had, she was immediately moving on to her next thing. She could spend years obsessed with the migration patterns of a particular species of bird, and then one day seemingly out of the blue, she would be completely absorbed by molecular biology, studying tiny pathogens, and that would consume the next n-years or so.
Eventually settling in to a research career studying viruses, she was always amazed at being able to observe the force of natural selection and evolution operating on virus populations, watching them change in response to anything that challenges or resists their replication.
Today she was at the Institute for Neurology and Cognitive Sciences, although for reasons unrelated to her research. She ended up here because of a strange pressure and sensation under her skull that had been bothering her more and more over the past 12 months.
It had begun several months before the big vision event that happened, so she didn't believe they were related, but when she also mentioned that she had been part of that vision, that she was one of the "seers", she was called straight in to see the surgeons and neurologists on the very same day, and admitted into her own special ward with all these dedicated nurses and doctors and everything. She felt like the class pet; or perhaps a lab rat.
This time, she was the research subject, and the odd-looking, short, but equally obsessive fellow sitting across from her tinkering with the strangest looking device she had ever seen - a device that was supposed to sit on her head, for 10 hours straight - was asking questions of her. She was the subject of study now.
Definitely lab rat, then.
"Miss Keller, would you mind taking me through from the beginning again? So you said it came out of nowhere, and began as a voice?"
She squinted to see the name written on his lanyard. Doctor... Martin Stutzeine. Sounds German. That probably explains a lot.
He didn't take his eyes away from the device he was so delicately tinkering with as he spoke. She felt like this question could have easily been followed by a "Are the voices in the room with us right now, Miss Keller?" but she soldiered on.
"It wasn't just a voice" she began, "in fact, it was nothing like a human voice, like my voice right now. It was more like an explosion with meaning, and it felt like... well I thought at first it was an explosion, the loudest sound I've ever heard."
"Could you describe the sound?" asked the good Doctor.
Josephine struggled to find the right analogy.
She was about to undergo the most advanced and intense study of brain electrical activity in the world. Using various types of Encephalography, with scans taken at various points during a 10 hour period, with some overlapping, and some very powerful computational hardware, one could supposedly obtain a fairly accurate picture of a persons mental state, essentially a picture of just what your conscious mind was like.
She had been reassured that it could not read her thoughts, but the way she understood it, it probably didn't need to; they could be reconstructed if the result of data integration gave a detailed enough brain state. She wondered about the forms she had signed when she first came in, trying to remember what was in the fine print.
Finally, she thought of a metaphor: "Like a nuclear bomb, I suppose."
The eyebrows of her inquisitor lifted in response to the words "nuclear bomb", and the good doctor started taking notes, scribbling as he went.
"Oh, uh, please continue, Miss Keller. Could you work out what it was saying, or trying to say?"
Deep breaths.
"Well," she paused to try and figure out the order of events.
"Everything just went white, bright white, way brighter than the sun. The voice, or whatever it was, it was commanding me to kneel, to obey, to serve. It repeated that sequence many times: kneel, obey, serve. It kept referring to itself as either 'God' or 'The Entity', or occasionally 'us', like the royal 'we'. You know, like, 'kneel before your god, obey the entity, serve us', that sort of thing."
Dr Stutzeine face began to express itself more vividly now, and the scribbling continued furiously. Was this really news to him? She thought they must surely know the whole story by now? It was pretty much the same for everyone, wasn't it? She couldn't be the first one they've talked to?
"The bright white light faded to black" she continued, "but a silhouette of bright light stayed there, and formed into this... thing, I don't know, I honestly don't think there are words that can describe what I saw. A sensation rushed over me like I know who this is, and yeah, it was a 'who'. Now, I'm an Atheist and always have been, I don't think I've ever been to a church or mosque or really read into any religious text or anything like that, but you know..."
She paused, and realised that no - indeed he wouldn't know, which is why she was here.
"I had almost the complete conviction, for those few moments. I was consumed by this presence, like the presence of a God. That's not an experience you can forget. Every detail is burned into my brain, even if I can't find words to explain most of it. That's not all: I felt like I had an obligation, a commitment, a duty to serve it and obey its will."
She seemed to be looking far into the distance now, staring into and through the wall opposite. Hanging there was a reprint of Michelangelo's 'The Creation of Adam'. She gazed into it.
"When God appears before your very eyes and then speaks to you, what else can you do?"
The Dr's eyes finally came up for air, bringing the eyebrows along with them, and looked at her quizzically.
"At some point it was all over, and I was on the pavement, there were others, almost randomly scattered, people were attending to all of us. An ambulance came, and then another, but there were a lot of people overall. I think it would have been difficult processing all of us..."
She paused mid-thought and looked around the room "I'm not the first one you've seen, am I? The first seer, I mean?"
Dr Stutzeine's reply was non-chalant, but revealing: "Yes, you are indeed the first."
Martin rose from his seat, having placed the pad and stylus down before picking up the helmet-like device. "Ok, we're ready to set up for recording. I'll have to make sure its in the right position on your head, so just keep as still as you can."
The device was put in place and she could feel the cold metal of the spoke-like electrodes touching her scalp as they were moved into position. The Dr tried to keep her mind off the discomfort. "What sort of obligation or duty was it expecting of you? Were you given a mission, or a task?"
Indeed she had, one she could recall perfectly, in every detail. She and every other seer had been assigned a task of the most enormous scale, and they were expected to work together, bringing whatever knowledge and expertise and skill-sets they had to work towards its fulfilment.
She hesitated. She tried to think of a way to make it sound less... ludicrous? Absurd? Fantastic?
Martin had finished adjusting the head cap and was testing that the recording systems were working correctly.
"Hmm; w- well; it wants us to build a city. Out in the middle of a desert. For 100 million people." she said.
"What for?" enquired Dr Stutzeine, seemingly unfazed by the idea.
Josephine looked up slightly, an expression of faint awe sweeping across her face, speaking as though the answer were obvious:
"Ascension."
To be continued!
Thank you so much for reading. I'm sorry it took so long for the next part to arrive! I hope you liked this enough to stick around and watch the story unfold! Each of these is written individually, one at a time, myself just typing away at it I'm just as much on this journey too; although I have some ideas about how the story might play out, nothing is certain, and I find the story reveals itself to me as I go along, and I try to follow its lead rather than make it follow mine. Hopefully it ends up coherent.
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