Beneath the Layers.

 Death of the mind,  body, and spirit, how much will cease to be? Forever? The Egyptian God, Ra, ruled death with Horus and the sky, the earth, and the underworld.

I watch the sunrise beam through the fog of sulfuric clouds on the horizon. Bowing silhouettes ascend into the orb. I don’t think the mushrooms have worn off. My roommate has crashed on the couch with her boyfriend and I can’t sleep.

Reading my palm once again, I push past the financial reports, the hyper-content I’m not interested in and search for a message from Outer-Spector.

Their messages hide in the code. My roommate Clara and I both ate the mushrooms, but I’m the one who’s awake. Suppose if I had warm arms to wrap in, I’d be asleep too. But it’s better this way.  Up and at ‘em.

Stimulating the gray mushroom-glyph that appears on my palm, and the resonance shield surrounds me; the hum growing louder until the shield becomes an opaque semi-circle.

“What is your report?” the Vector-bot commands.

The mushrooms I ate, enabled Spector Vision, which allows the initiate to see where the death riders cling to the earth. Creating havoc as they work to complete unfinished business before disappearing for good.

It wasn’t like this before. People used to pass on. Not many do anymore and I witnessed a handful this morning returning to the sun.

The food has been laced with radioactivity and chemicals from fertilizers far too long and part of the reason for the disconnect.

My job is redirection.

But first, I have to convince the specters their work on earth is finished. Many are too angry to reason with. They’re lost and confused. I use alternate scene-boards to manipulate what the specters witness, it shows their work is finished and it’s time to move on.

If I can send them into the Matrika, they will not return to Earth, for their continuous cycle of destruction.

“What’s your response?” the VB insists.

“I need another round.” I glance at Clara, asleep on the couch. “Alone.”

                                                        *

The laser beams over my eyes. This activates the molecules of the mushroom serum still in my pineal gland or third eye, and I become smaller and smaller until I’m walking hidden passages that line the planet.

My mind travels alongside the specters wispy translations I’ve created to define what I’m seeing or sensing, really.

The specters swirl around me, many  appear to walk, two by two, others with children, or entire families, complete with grandparents, and dogs leading the packs. Disguised, they pretend to be human apparitions. As if, we didn’t know.

I am concealed as a Vector-bot encased in a light that distorts my cosmic outline. Not one of them makes a noise, they’re no conversations, the dogs aren’t barking.

Steaming in one direction, I follow their trek toward the Matrika layer. The layer beneath the passages.

A green and blue aurora borealis form; I’ve arrived. While I'm an apparition, I’m safe from Matrika, the serum percolates within my cells. If we can’t clear the specters, humans will stop being born on Earth. Sure, other planets in the system have clearer channels, but this is Earth, land of green and blue, ha, we do keep the fantasy alive. Those in need of children believe they can and pay the highest price for those hopes. —If you wonder who pays the tab for this little journey.

When Matrika takes the souls, none return. It’s a distorted magnet and a trap. Not exactly, the depths of hell the mainliners joke about. Most believe Matrika is the underworld. That’s where I’ll send them.

After death, humans pass through the Sun so we can return. Once our designated tasks on Earth are finished, we move on to the next phase of matter. But this Matrika hole disregards all that seeking out all bioplasmic entities that have electromagnetic fields.

Aligning my motivations, I coalesce into a one-thought form, the specters will understand.

The Vector-bots are controlled by the human majority, there’re no hierarchies, my work helps everyone. Just the way I like it. But there’s always the risk of being sucked into Matrika for eternity, and no one has the answers to that; we can’t see anything after zero-point.

Waving my right arm into a circle, blue energy swirls up like a current, a torrent of pressure. It’ll knock the specters to attention and hopefully, they’ll understand my directions to the Matrika. The Blue Wave is a code, the original Vector-bots gave the human race. But they warned us what would happen if we continued using radioactive ingredients in our daily lives. Crimson tides of woe.

Fissures like Matrika opened up in the ethereal layers. I’m just glad the scientists won. Now we can do something.

My left arm sends another coded beam; it pierces the pressure around the vicinity. The Matrika advances, deep magenta, edged in crimson; she’s alive, and it’s beautiful, so much I’m falling into its endless pit. I pull back.

At its center is the black hole.

Vector Command reels me back, but the pulse of alternative frequencies skip past and misses me. I’m the anchor that shows the VB’s where the Matrika is.

I can’t lose contact and refocus. The light I’ve brought with me bends toward the circling scarlet pool.

I might be able to close the well, but then we’ll no longer be able to send the specters this way. And so far, it’s the only way to corner them and stop their destructive reign over the material world.

When the droves wind up here, my beam will send the scepters into the swirling the endless night at the center of Matrika. It’s the only way. At least that’s what the animation proved.

Something’s wrong, a spattering of crinkling noise and a distorted static I’ve never heard before. It scrambles my directive. The crimson spreads wider and wider, becoming darker. I signal to VB, no answer. 

The Matrika has me. The specters are gone. I’m being pulled apart, but it’s not my body, because my body is still in my living room behind the shield.

No, this is real, but I’m safe. Vector Bots have a back-up in place if anything goes wrong.

I can’t be safe. I’ve lost contact.

Hello!

Pulled and stretched, an arc of light moves farther in the opposite direction, I appear to be traveling, trying to catch up to the light, and I enter the black hole known as Matrika.

.

.

.

How long has it been?

Hello?

I had an assignment. I’m sure I’m still alive, but I’m not really that sure? What if I’m stuck in this warped plane of existence forever?

.

.

.

What am I’m looking at, the world around me solidifies into pictures, then into cubes and triangles? Triangle trees and pyramid shaped rocks. Hexagon clouds?

A sharp stab rips through me. An alert system shrieks, and an orb of light lands nearby. Two cubed-footed fluffy beings pick me up and throw me into a shoot, from what I understand it’s for refuse or waste—or recycling.

And I land in a fluid. Is it water? I can’t taste or smell anything to be sure.

Only my mind has traveled here, the Vector-Bots will find me. I have to finish my assignment.

I’m flowing in a current.

There’s pressure, and a hell of a lot of pain, and it’s so very dark. But then suddenly there’s light.

It’s soft and warm here.

I had a mission once, but I can’t remember. I’m comfortably wrapped into a warm blanket, and open my eyes. Familiar eyes stare back, smiling.

 “Congratulations, Clara, the doctor says, "Yours is the first rebirth we’ve had in almost a century.”  

                                          ~  The End ~