Depth of Soul

Nicole's vacation had been long overdue.

How many years had it been since graduation? Ten? Twelve? In that time she'd worked hard, but the rewards rarely exceeded the workload. Hard work resulted in more work too often, and many times she questioned the value of long nights alone at the office. Was she accomplishing anything of value? Was any of it worth it? Maybe she had slowly become a hamster in a wheel, killing time until she died. As they closed in, she could finally see the walls of her prison, but such insight arrived long after she'd been trapped.

Or was she? As Summer gave way to Fall, friends asked if she'd be interested in housesitting for them for a week while they vacationed overseas. A relatively new construct in the woods of Long Island's Montauk point, it would be the ideal escape for her. Tourist season had quieted down and many of the residents didn't stay year round. The beaches were vast and quiet, offering many long, contemplative walks.

After the first few days, cherished solitude wore away into crushing boredom, and finally abject loneliness. Nicole realized that beneath the surface, she always felt this way. Surrounded by people, and buried under paperwork, plentiful distractions shielded her from her emotions. Distractions proved difficult to manufacture in this place, and at the end of the day the various shells, beach glass, and other souvenirs she'd picked up on the beach to make her latest stroll feel productive, now looked like boxes of junk to her. She collapsed in a chair with a glass of champagne, resorting at last to the universal painkiller of alcohol, and looked at her treasures, her garbage. She picked up one item, possibly the shell of a horseshoe crab, and turned it over a few times. White and purple, it resembled no shell she'd ever seen. Had some kids spray painted the poor creature's remains? Perhaps here at the end of this island, essentially the end of her world, life she couldn't fathom crashed ashore, at the end of THEIR world. Sleep embraced her as she pondered these things.

* * *

Qlt'qv's sabbatical had been delayed long enough.

Quantum physics defy all conventional knowledge about how the world functions. At the subatomic level, the laws of basic physics don't apply. At best, scientists can make educated guesses as to the behavior of electrons, and hope to accurately predict the actions of unseen forces. It is a science dependent upon probability, with room for error. Worlds could exist within worlds, entire microcosms thriving and functioning, sub-realms equally unaware of the existence of supra-realms.

Naming is a foreign concept on one such planet. It simply exists, as does its people. They live and thrive and feel, cherishing existence itself. Only at the end of their life cycle do they receive a designation, and more often than not that designation is “Qlt'qv”. Parts of a greater whole, there is no need for individual differentiation, and rarely has there been more than one Qlt'qv. Like those before him, this Qlt'qv faced the inevitable task, the final contribution to his society. He would expand, tired of decades of joy and companionship, becoming solitary in the void beyond and gathering knowledge before expiring. Only with knowledge would his society improve and grow, moving beyond their endless lack of any responsibility or stress whatsoever. Qlt'qv was ambitious, and by the time he had extended further than any of his predecessors, he could not go back. Electrons gave way to atoms to grains of sand until he was alone and immobile, in a strange place where outside forces were necessary to act upon an immobile object and induce a change.

Qlt'qv was adapting, and as he understood the foreign physics of his enlarged existence, he knew what was necessary to reach out. Atoms beneath and around him were subject to his very will, and gaseous matter liquified and solidified as he pulled himself up a pulsating, foreign landscape. When he reached the summit of this landscape, this outside force that had acted upon him and transported him farther and faster than any of his kind, he reached between atoms and fused with biological matter alive with electrical impulses. One such impulse shouted out a name: “Nicole”. Soon, Qlt'qv would be bombarded with the improbable.

* * *

Nicole was having the strangest dream. She walked on the beach, on orange sand beneath a purple sky. The stars burst over her head, colliding and continuing through each other. The air was thick with depression, companionship, and eternity, with concepts that neither should have gone together, nor been tangible. In the darkness shapes blinked at her, spoke in emotions not sounds. They were desperate to do something, anything, yet found nothing. Things became muddy. Nicole was exultant in her obligations, dreading the day when she would have to give them up. The shapes rejoiced in a sea of inactivity, prolonging the inevitable tasks at the end of existence. The purple sky shattered, shards of blue and yellow raining down upon her. She laughed as she too splintered into a million pieces. Each piece laughed as it split, and the cycle continued until....

Nicole woke with a start, nearly kicking over a nearby candelabra. The morning sun was oppressively bright, and as she set down her glass and rubbed her eyes, something moist and cold greeted her hands. Shaking, she ran to the bathroom, hesitated, then looked in the mirror. A pulpy purple residue bubbled on her skin, receding before her startled eyes. Small red spots adorned her temples, but as she raised a cautious hand once more to a now dry face, there was no pain or tenderness. In time she would dismiss the entire incident as a product of the previous evening's consumption, a reminder that drowning sorrows can sometimes bring strange things to the surface.

For the rest of her life, she would hold to the realization of the perils inherent in ANY extreme.

* * *

The preceding tale has been a contribution to Lorna's Mystery Blog Party.