Cloud to Cloud

Episode 8: Fred's Near Death Experience

Fred's lungs opened to allow air into his body, but the sensation was unlike anything he had experienced before. He could no longer feel the rush of air filling his lungs─rather, he felt as though he had become one with the air itself. He opened his eyes, yet he felt it was as if his eyes had not been closed. Sensations, more than visions, filled the space he occupied, shifting as he moved within the energy. He felt lighter than usual as well. As he worked to wrap his mind around the experience, he could only relate it to floating in the waters of the Great Salt Lake, or the feeling of open air in the middle of a skydive. Even those experiences had other sensations that could be heard as well as felt against the skin. No. This was none of those things, yet it felt more familiar than any act he had recalled in his life.

Fred floated, for lack of a better term, seemingly in the direction of a bright light. His only sense of movement, though, was the endless streams of information coursing around him. These were not images he saw, and Fred couldn't make out tangible numbers, letters, or symbols from the bright greenish glow rippling and encircling him.

Fred allowed his body to be drawn through streaming data and fields of imagery that had become his entire world.

As he moved through space it moved through him. Fred sought means to locate any part of his body. He willed and envisioned his hands moving in front of his eyes, but he neither saw through his eyes nor experienced the sensation of moving his hands or any other part of his body.

He was nearly to the point of maddening confusion when he finally felt a solid shape filter around him again. The glory of the great bright white light he had been tumbling, or flying toward, opened around him, swallowing the entirety of his being in the powerful warmth of its glow.

"Fred." He turned at the sound.

It was not so much the sound of his name drawing him, but the action of sound at all. Light had been the only experience until this point. Fred opened his senses to the settling vision that shifted around him like a curtain settling in the breeze.

Streams of neon blue-green data continued to ribbon through the air around him, as if the air itself was information. As he took in strange, pressureless breaths, Fred felt the data ribbons fill him. As he breathed out, the ribbons created twists and ripples in cords of his exhalations. Fred coughed, yet it caused no pain.

"Fred." The voice became a beacon of sound rippling the data like a rock tossed into a pool.

Fred rotated in space and gradually made out a vision of pillars; pale white, as if made of cream, and near as liquid in the way they wavered within the ripples of the data streams. He took in the settlement of new sights--arches, tables, all as alabaster as the columns. All as solid as a soap bubble.

Then new movement was born into view.

Silhouettes of entities shifted and floated through Fred's field of vision. One, then two, then as if stepping from a fog, dozens filled the space, then hundreds, and then Fred's mind twisted at the idea of keeping a count. More shadows than stars, and many nearly as bright. A shifting menagerie of ghostly figures both hollow and luminous.

As thoughts surfaced in Fred's mind, realization began to dawn on him. Ghostly figures indeed, and he among them. This revelation could mean only one thing.

"Fred." He spun this time to greet the voice so close it could have come from within his skull.

He felt as if the tone had suddenly become mocking in its insistence. "What?"

The word escaped into space, though he had not felt the pull of it passing his lips. The purse and pull of his lips was equally absent as the draw of breath and shift of tongue.

"Fred, you are not supposed to be here now." Fred's field of vision suddenly filled with the crystal clear face of a man.

His white hair and beard shimmered in the same way as the creamy pillars. It framed the soft, tea-stained glow of his face. His eyes glinted, bright as a child's.

"Fred. What are you doing here?" The melody of the man's voice summoned a feeling of joy within Fred he could not recall experiencing in his life. Still, a familiarity to the meeting of this man resonated in the depths of Fred's memory.

"Do I know you?" The sound of his own voice startled Fred.

It was not the harsh tone indicative of years of poor diet, lack of exercise, and the more than occasional cigarette in his youth. The lilt to his voice should have belonged to the child Fred once was rather than the embittered older oaf he had become.

"Where am I?" Fred did not wait for the man to answer his first inquiry before barreling into the next question and rolling his vision to either side of the man to see the milky surroundings again.

"Fred. You do not know me in this form, but you and I have met many times before, and over many lifetimes." The melodic voice drew Fred back to the pale, glinting eyes.

"What?" Confusion filled his senses even as the understanding of the man's words dawned on Fred's mind. "Many lifetimes?"

"You will understand in due time, but for now you need to return to your life as Fred Newman. Continue the task assigned to this current life experience." The eyes of the ethereal figure softened as he spoke, but a firmness permeated the words. Fred sensed little room to argue.

"I don't even know how I got here." Fred's mind whirled to wrap around the moments before the streams of data.

"Return to the train, Fred. Before you are missed." The being's voice and eyes enveloped the entirety of Fred's universe.

"Yes." Fred allowed streams of data to embrace him in their tendrils.

"I will see you after the meeting, Fred. Until then, we have much work to do. The activation has begun." Fred felt the urge to wave farewell to the fading figure.

The pillars melted into the mists of shadowed figures and the man along with them. The data stream took full hold and Fred plunged into darkness once again.