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.
