The Viluverse - Chapter Eight

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Jensen’s heart wasn’t beating. He felt his chest: no pulse, no life as he stood, hovering in the void. It was a curious feeling; when he was “awake,” he was used to the steady thump of the beat, the knowledge that, at this moment, in a dream, he was still “alive,” a biological organism having a shared experience with millions if not billions of over souls making their dreams come true.

It was comforting, a notion that he was still human after all. A familiar rhythm that, while invisible most of the time, was a reassuring thought he could feel. A reminder of the rhythms ticking along that kept him going.

Now, however, that wasn’t the case. Jensen checked for a pulse: nothing, as his body stood before floating slightly above the ground. He felt like a ghost, a nomad in a ghost world full of potential. The sensation was electrifying, a feeling of panic that had initially rippled through him like one on death’s door. That soon passed, however, and he now found himself, after much concentration, looking at the room around him, the sensation of no heartbeat leaving him like a corpse in a corpse world.

He was in blackness, steady rivulets of light ahead of him like a roadway leading to who knows where. He was floating, yet could not move, suspended in the aimless sea as voices surrounded him. Some were encouraging, others not, and all sounded familiar, like ghosts from a friendly past now come to offer advice to their living yet non-living counterparts.

He blinked; he could still do that, still checking to see if his body was working. He had the sensation of being dead, yet he wasn’t. A curious conundrum. A sense of the infinite, a world ahead yet crystalized in angel tones that whispered sweet nothings at midnight.

He felt neither warm nor cold as his body floated in this curious abyss, a sense of the shapelessness of things as he wondered if his heart would start beating again. He did this occasionally, forcibly stopping it, a trick he’d learned from a dream architect many moons ago in an old salon on the Planet Western. After a few rounds, they’d got talking shop, and, with a simple tap of the chest, the dream architect somehow transferred the “stoppage”, as he called it, to Jensen, who now savored this ability in a strangely sadomasochistic way.

How he met this dream architect is a tale for another time, but Jensen had fondly recalled it; he came across as a friendly old cowboy just moseying on his way as life went on around him, everyone oblivious to the god in their midst.

Jensen felt like that now. A god over his own body who could, with a tap of his chest, undo this suspension and float back to the land of the living again. Quite why he did it, he did not know; Jensen suspected he was a thrill seeker and loved the idea of tempting fate somehow. A grin spread over his face, and he leaned up into the blackness, his back arched as he surrendered to whatever desired him the most. He floated now without thinking and hit the ground with a gentle touch as he found his heart was starting to beat again.

Curious, he thought; he had not consciously done this, but feeling his chest, he felt a curious yearning and began to run his finger down the middle of his chest. It opened up gradually like a compartment, and soon, Jensen found himself staring at his chest, now laid bare in the mirror in front of him, spread-eagle for all to see, including himself.

He could see his heart beating, his lungs pumping, and his blood pumping around this curious contraption. He felt a strange sense of aww and a curious…arousal, something he hadn’t expected, and touched his heart and lungs, fondling them slightly as he grinned almost flirtatiously.

The beating heart, so surreal to behold, felt soft, slimy, yet oddly beautiful, beating steadily as its thumping caressed his hand as he held it over the beating pump. Thump. Thump. Thump. It tickled him, this thing that kept him alive. Like a baby, stroking his child and mother as the thumping gave him comfort and love he had never felt before.

The lungs felt much the same. Each touch, each caress across their slimy surface felt somehow inside as one became one, and breath became breath. Love and oneness in a bizarre world of dreams making love come true. He was in love with himself and savored the bizarre sensation of being alive in an art gallery where he was the star attraction and love, the endless spectator.

He blew a kiss at himself before being shocked into reality by what he was doing. Melgu seemed to be words away, and he quickly shut down, despite a genuine sensation of…sensuality he couldn’t explain. He awoke with a jolt as Antonia screamed in his face.

“Jensen WAKE UP!” She was tugging at him as they felt further down a giant hole with revolving rings of light surrounding them.

“We missed our turn, you idiot!” He looked wide-eyed as they were falling, and she looked angry.

“What the hell happened?!” She asked as he felt over his body.

“I’m not sure…I was walking with you then….”

“Then what?”

Her eyes were wide as the rate of descent seemed to be increasing.

“I’m not sure…I was dreaming....”

“Well wake up, we need to BOTH make the next turn or we fall further into the training simulation and can’t get back up, understood?”

He nodded and followed her lead as she reached out with her hand to touch a rivulet of light now extending from the wall.

“Just do as I say, and we’ll be fine”, she said, and she engaged with the light as Jensen found his own. The light seemed to reach into both of them, flowing like a river as they soon found themselves torn in opposite directions into the walls, which were now revolving more rapidly.

Jensen found himself in a wall of light as figures surrounded him. He was longer conscious of being in the tunnel and instead found rooms ahead, which seemed to face in and out of view.

“Jensen, can you hear me?” Antonia called out, now faint and distant. “Yeah, I can hear you, where are you?”