Outskirts Press, INC.

What has happened to reality?

30 years into his own future, having not aged, with new found, superhuman ability, and seeming immortality, Navy Seal Commander Jordan Wade must adjust to living a life in a future forced upon him after the events of The Storm. He now lives in a world occupied by a populace of those called Tells, who exhibit near psychic abilities, while compelled to give voice to the random thoughts they perceive along with the precognitive waves of insight that occasionally cross their minds; a world now on the cusp of perfecting artificial intelligence and the proliferation of android workers; a world now without his beloved, long passed, wife who died giving birth to their now estranged adult son; but it is also a world which wondrously provides him an unexpected new love.

Many years of service on his new commission with the US military, and as an epochal agent of a covert unit run by NATO, provide a kind of stability to a career soldier like Jordan, but after nearly a century of living his new life, questions from The Storm still haunt him, periodically interfering in his endeavor to remain having at least a semblance of a what used to be a normal life; questions about the true nature of the experiment that birthed the cosmic storm which compel Jordan to explore what he really encountered during the operation to end it.

Decades of probing, and experimentation by NATO controlled SPU, find no definitive cause for Jordan’s new abilities, as his long life edges him closer toward a mental, and spiritual crisis, in the re-examination of his efforts back on that fateful mission. Jordan’s discipline threatens to crumble, as new visions of the mad engineer responsible for “The Storm” bring with them sinister forces working against Jordan, but a profound encounter has him questioning everything he thought he ever knew, and a growing conviction driving him toward some unexplained purpose; a compelling dynamic to existence discovered in the wake of a tempestuously changed world… a verse previously unexplored and unsung.

Jordan decided he needed to look into near-death experiences. The repair job at the jump gate was complete, and he had returned command of the BJG back over to Knier after revising the incident reports and downplaying the part about his death and resurrection. Scott, Ryan, Parker, and Knier all agreed to be discreet about what they had witnessed with Jordan, and he would have to trust they remain so, at least long enough for him to make it to ES2 and acclimate himself to his duties there. In the meantime, during the downtime of his shuttle ride to the Navy cruiser Magellan, bound for ES2, Jordan would attempt to make sense of what happened back at the gate.

His shuttle underway, Jordan looked out through the viewport and noticed they were being passed in the opposite direction by the civilian vessel from Turkish Aerospace Enterprises, as it entered the gate and disappeared into the hyperspace wormhole generated by the mile-round construct. Jordan smiled slightly, satisfied by the completion of the project he had been brought in to oversee. Of course that project had not gone completely as planned, and once again, after a little over a lifetime of relative normalcy, Jordan found himself confronted by an experience that stretched the limits of his imagination.

When he had returned from that place, the tear in the fabric of space and time Michael Ian had described as a convergence of all realities, something had happened to him between his return from there and his arrival back in Ian’s lab, decades into his own future. Something that had remained ultimately closed off to him in any detail other than how he felt. Now this recent dream he’d had before he miraculously came back to life felt … connected in some way. Jordan didn’t know how, but as with his experience with Ian, he had nothing to go on other than feeling.

The localized explosion from the emitter had taken him out— that was for certain—and he did not experience even a moment of pain that surely should have come from such a violent end. Instead he experienced …

… What was it? It wasn’t like the Convergence.

His time with Michael Ian in that other realm felt unreal even while he experienced it firsthand. This dream he had after he had apparently died felt ... very real ... but that place, the grassy fields, the city, and the horror he witnessed on the horizon—all of it had to be some ... odd amalgam of images constructed from the final electrical impulses fired between the neurons of his brain, as it had been described to him once when he floated the idea of memories after death to an android examiner. Yes. That was the only explanation that seemed plausible.

Why did the dream feel so real?

Dream was the word that came to mind even if it did not seem like one, and if he were being honest with himself, being in the Convergence with Ian felt more like a dream than this last experience in death had. Of course the Convergence was nearly a century ago, so the long passage of time might have something to do with that kind of disconnection one has with a dream.

Sometimes his marriage to Karen before the Storm also felt like a dream at this point in his long life.

At any rate, before today, Jordan had ample reason to ignore if not outright dismiss a fantastical event like this recent occurrence. For decades He had chosen to cling to an ordinary life and enjoy his time with his son, disregarding the question of his bizarre existence, leaving it mostly up to SPU to find answers. Now death and resurrection may have personally occurred twice in his lifetime where it fails to happen even once for most people; so for the first time in the nearly seventy years since his return from the events of the Storm he was going to truly explore this. He had been studied and monitored by some of the best minds at SPU over the last couple of decades and still no one had a definitive answer as to how Jordan was so extraordinary besides the obvious; his change being tied to his having travelled through the Quantum Sphere Michael Ian’s machine had created. Subsequent experiments for that kind of travel were not renewed until jump gates were constructed. No one went through a jump gate having found themselves at the Convergence, nor did they come out with Jordan’s results. Of course by then the wormholes jump gates produce did not yield a cataclysm as Jordan’s had and no one dared to try and reproduce that effect.

Jordan’s mind mulled over the time he found himself back in Ian’s lab on Earth after killing the man at the Convergence, the dispair and woe he felt in thinking he might have also died; but instead finding he had travelled thirty years forward from his present during the Storm into the future post cataclysm; leaving him with a hollowness from complete joy that had been apparently washed from his being. Now having re-experienced the impossible almost seventy years later, pretending nothing was amiss was no longer an option. He would start by dipping his toe in his own pool of research just to see what he could come up with.

He opened a Web channel, and through the holographic interface of his ICON he began by studying all the compelling psychological explanation models described for near death experiences. The vast majority of them correlated with Jordan’s own personal explanation for what he had felt—that basically this was all somehow in his head. In his case, however, there were some inconsistencies he could not quite ignore. What was not in his head was the fact he had entered Ian’s Quantum Sphere, he had actually arrived and interacted at a real place, and he had returned from that place thirty years later not feeling like he had been gone for anywhere close to that amount of time. There was however missing time indeed somewhere between his leaving the Convergence and his arrival back in Ian’s lab—missed time that marked him with sorrow at having lost a profound sense of ... bliss.

That kind of loss was consistent with a number of NDE accounts, but occurred unlike every case Jordan had read thus far. NDEs typically lasted hours, not decades. They tended also more toward those who showed a proclivity for imagination, or those of strong religious belief, neither of which Jordan felt he qualified, though he was open to being convinced, and his recent encounter with death was as provocative a statement toward that case as any.

As for this recent incident of accidental explosion, death, dream, and ressurection its only resemblance to what he had experienced at the Convergence was solely in the seeming disconnect of actions in between departure and arrival so to speak. There had not been the decades jump into his future with this recent experience, thank God, but there was no denying he had been hovering outside the jump gate one moment, and the next he was sitting up from a bench in the med bay of the gate station. In between those two moments of death and resurrection … a dream that felt more real than his encounter through the Quantum Sphere, or if Jordan was being honest, more real than his current state of being.

That was the crux of it all. Since “waking up” in the medical bay, he couldn’t escape the nagging suspicion that something was really off about how things were now. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it almost felt like the reality he was living in was slightly … askew … like a crease on a sheet that was otherwise stretched smooth across the surface of a bed. Jordan felt compelled to tug on that sheet to straighten out the crease, but had no clue as to how.

An entry below the psychological models he had been reading about drew Jordan’s attention. It was labeled “Lazarus Phenomenon.” Jordan scrolled down and tapped that entry to read its contents. Here, there were virtually no scientific explanations offered for seemingly rising from the dead. Just a list of individual accounts, where someone had been pronounced dead, then later came back to life. The list was not exactly helpful toward Jordan’s cause despite their being more specific to his own case.

Jordan closed the Web channel and leaned his head back in his seat.

“Pilot, how long before we reach the Magellan?” he asked.

“Thirty-four mikes, sir,” the pilot replied.

Jordan felt physically tired—a feeling he had forgotten about in the last century. He suddenly thought of Amàre and the talk they’d had about his mother.

“I suppose she would pull out her Bible and quote me a scripture.”

“And would you listen?”

Jordan was not one for prayer other than colloquially, which was strange considering the number of people close to him who took religion seriously. His wife had been raised steeped in religious belief and prayed often for Jordan, who was appreciative but did not put much stock in it. Maybe he should have been paying more attention. Maybe he should have leant more credence toward spiritual enlightenment. He had tried everything else to help him understand his situation. Why not this?

“Well … God … if you’re really out there … I’m sorry I haven’t really believed in you. It’s just … I mean it’s silly, right … some old man sitting on a throne in the clouds? Makes for a nice story and all … and I guess it’s more comforting to believe that someone is actually in charge of all the craziness than to think there is no meaning to it all.”

This was an inauspicious start to Jordan’s first genuine prayer. The pilot, who had been silently inputting coordinates on his instrument panel, slightly turned his head, glancing back over his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, sir. Are you speaking to me?” the pilot chimed in.

“Hell no, son,” Jordan stated. “Just pay me no mind.”

The pilot nodded and slid the door shut between his cockpit and the passenger cabin. Jordan slowly shook his head. He was the only passenger aboard the shuttle so, fortunately, no one else was around to think he was crazy. Jordan began aloud and anew.

“Sorry, God … I’m not good at this … but if you are out there … somewhere … and you’re listening … I think you have a lot of explaining to do, but … I’ll settle for you simply telling … what’s going on with me … “Why won’t you let me die?”

Silence reigned for the next several heartbeats.

“Nothing … really?” Jordan spat, frustrated. “Look, my wife believed in you. My biological father used to read me your book. You had answers for them. Why not me? I remember my wife telling me how you make the sun rise, and the rain fall, on the just, and unjust. I may not have been … what’s the word … faithful … to you? But I need answers. Smarter people than me can’t explain what’s going on beyond theory and conjecture, so if you have answers, would you care to share them with me … please?”

Jordan absentmindedly searched the lines built into the cabin walls of the shuttle, destracting himself while no response seemed forthcoming.

“Okay, fine. Good talk,” Jordan stated, sarcasm dripping from his words. “I don’t know exactly what I expected.”

Jordan, annoyed, turned his head toward the viewport and stared out into the void of interstellar space, which was peculiar because a void was not quite what was in view moments earlier. What happened to the stars? Jordan thought to himself. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously and leaned closer to the window, noticing the shuttle dip slowly, bringing just one very distant star into view. The twinkling of the light from the celestial body arrested Jordan’s attention. He cocked his head slightly in confusion as his focus suddenly appeared to … grow.

Jordan began to panic.

“Pilot. What’s happening?” Jordan demanded.

There was no response from the pilot. With some concern, Jordan noticed the tiny movement he had seen before on the jump gate emitter begin to surround the viewport he was currently looking through. A growing state of fear followed, as the movement spread all throughout the cabin. Before he could even register what was happening, the shuttle terrifyingly dissipated, and Jordan found himself suddenly floating in the cold of outer space. Panic grew to full-bore alarm, his senses heightened, and his perspective seemed to shift while the sudden shock of cold gradually diminished. Though he felt he still had a body, it too appeared to dissipate and he was no longer aware of what he should be feeling.