Chapter 16: What My Soul Does When I Am Asleep by Stephen Simpson

Under the window, I see a head of dark auburn hair buried in a pair of pulled up legs.

I rush forward. “Barclay?”

He looks up. “Gaby?” He questions in a low voice, a tone of surprise in his voice. “You came for me?”

I stare at him, speechless.

“No. You should not be here,” he says as a look of panic etches his face. His eyes dart around the room.

I have an urgent need to get him out of here. I will sacrifice myself to save him. I stumble deeper into the room and become aware of a wall of figures lining the walls of the room. Not just one layer of outlined shadows, but layers and layers as far as my eyes can see, on all sides of me.

The wall and window behind Barclay melt away and changes into a field with green grass, and in the distance is a hill. Beyond the hill stands the lighthouse. Its light is bright.

I run to Barclay as he stands up from the floor. I plead, “We need to get out of here. I think I remember the way back.”

“We cannot go back that way.”

I look at him with terror in my eyes. That light. I cannot go to the light. I do not want to die.

He insists, “Sometimes we just have to believe.”

I turn to go back the way I know. I can see an open door, followed by another, and then another in a long continuous corridor. It seems even narrower than before. Between me and the corridor is a wall of defined shadows. They are moving closer. They want to trap both me and Barclay in this empty room. A room without a speck of hope.

Barclay pulls on my hand. “We need to go.”

I turn to Barclay and follow him away from the grey room into the green field, straight to the bright, blinding light.

I tug back on his hand, and this time he pulls me closer to him. He forces me to follow him, urging me along.

The grass under my feet yields under my weight. I can feel the dampness of the mud seeping through the grass and sticking to the soles of my bare feet.

I grip my fingers around Barclay's hand, making sure I do not lose contact with him.

Unexpectedly, we start falling... falling... falling. I always thought if I had to fall off something high, I would tumble and twist in the air, but now my body stays upright. Fear builds up in me from the pit of my stomach and then it pushes up past my lungs until it lodges itself in my throat. I am not sure if it is fear really, or the pressure of gravity pushing up through me from my feet to my throat.

I open my mouth to scream, and I know the sound is only in my head.

This is it. I am now going to die.

Did I ever figure out where my soul goes after I go to sleep? Did I answer the question, I asked myself? Now I will never know. I will die before I realise where it goes or if there is really something wrong with me.

My grandmother said we are computers, all linked together like a giant network on the internet. Not exactly her words, but then again, I am not as educated as she is, not because I am not clever enough, but because I am only still at school. Simplifying everything will help me understand what she was on about.

So, basically, she said our brains are like computers that can process a lot of things, all at once. Our souls are inserted and have a sort of Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection that links us to everything and everyone around us, but when we are awake, we do not know about this connection.

All our memories are encrypted in our souls, and this process makes the data unreadable by other humans or even by ourselves. Our conscious mind cannot access this information, but when we are asleep, when our brains go into stand-by mode, the information we usually regard as garbage is decrypted and we can access the information freely.

We can meet people we knew before, even though we have not met them yet. We can go to faraway places because we are then able to stop believing we are restricted by gravity. We can communicate with people in our dreams, even though neither might remember the details when they wake up.

There is a type of system designed to prevent unauthorized access. All our thoughts and ideas pass through this firewall, which examines each message and blocks those which do not meet the specified security criteria, and basis of our beliefs which we have learned from the day we are born.

Who programmed us? Who wrote the code, and why do they not want us to really know what is going on?

There must be something more than being born, then living, and then dying, and then being forgotten as time moves on without us. Maybe we are so fascinated with the idea of vampires because we want to believe we are immortal. We want to believe we do live forever somewhere, perhaps in a place called Heaven.

Maybe Heaven is not even as far away as we think it is. We always imagine Heaven to be billions and billions of light years away, but what if it is close by? What if Heaven is within us, and what if we are already connected to Heaven through a network of souls?

If reincarnation is true, and our old brain or CPU stops functioning, is our soul or data chip then inserted into a new body, like a USB?

When we are asleep, we know the truth. We know it completely, intimately, thoroughly, inside, and out, with nothing hidden, and everything seen as it really is.

I am yanked out of the falling sensation and am walking beside Barclay.

We are walking into the field again, with the lemon tree in the centre. Dark clouds have gathered across the hills, but on a faraway hill I see the lighthouse I noticed earlier.

It feels as if the light is beckoning me as it lights my way, making sure I do not crash into rocks or leave the safe route as I navigate myself through life, similar to the real purpose of a lighthouse as it directs ships away from dangerous rocks hidden away from view.

I turn to Barclay.

Deep inside, I know I should not know any of these things. If my soul did go drifting, I am not supposed to know about it when I wake up. Not only will people think I am crazy, but what if the programmer realises there is a glitz or a virus in my code?

Will they format me, and then reset me with a blank, clear memory? I will lose Barclay, my mum, my dad, Isaac, my grandma, and everybody I know.

Barclay stops and turns to look at me. “Thank you for coming to find me.”

“Why were you there? In that room? What did those things want with you? Why did you stay here, Barclay? Why did you not want to wake up?”

He looks at me for a long moment. “I actually cannot remember.”

“Do you remember your parents and your sister?”

He nods his head a little. “I do.”

I hesitate before I ask, “You remember what happened?”

“We were in the car, and then there was a deer crossing the road.” He looks down, as if he is trying to think back. “I cannot remember what happened after that.”

“Do you remember they... died?” I say the last word softly.

His eyes get a faraway look, and then he looks back at me. His blue eyes sadden as realisation dawns on him. “I do. I came back here to be with them. I wanted to stay, I really did, but my body held on and it would not let me die.”

I pull hard on his hand, to make him realise I am serious when I say, “That is because you have a purpose, a destiny, just like you said before. Why would you just give up?”

He looks at me, his eyes connecting with mine. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. When I was at the house with them, I felt happy, but then suddenly I got trapped in that room and it was as if I could feel myself slowly dying. That room was dark and depressing, and all those ghosts or things guarding me were slowly sucking pieces of my soul out of me. If you did not come to get me, I might have died, but there would have been nothing left of me.”

I reach up to him. “Maybe this is why my soul drifts, and why I feel as if I am going crazy most of the time. I had to find you, Barclay. For you, I will do anything.”

He rests his lips on mine for a moment before he says, “You and I, Gaby, are meant to be together. Our purpose in life, our very design is invisible in a span of only one lifetime, which is too short for us to see the meaning of the whole of human existence. One day, we will know everything. When we are ready, we will understand it clearly, but until then we just have to do our best to be happy.”

“I'll only be truly happy with you.”

“And I with you.”

“Let's go back.”

We turn back to the lighthouse, and as the bright beam of light shines on my face, I squint. The light is so luminous; it hurts my eyes.

Someone says from behind me, “Time to wake up now, Gaby.”

I force my eyelids open and stare up at a box of bright fluorescent lights on the ceiling above me.

Continue reading Chapter 17/19

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