Genesis by Paul Antony Jones Page B

were tucking a child into bed.
    “Rhiannon,” he said, “I want you to stay here with Emily. If you need anything, you can contact me via the emergency channel on the radio. Can you do that?”
    Emily saw Rhiannon nod, her mind already slowing as the pills kicked in, forcing her toward sleep.
    “Make sure she rests, okay?” The doctor smiled once at her and then left, closing the door behind him.
    The last thing Emily saw before a wave of sleep pulled her under was Rhiannon’s worried face watching her from beside the bed.

    Confusion.
    That was the only feeling Emily’s mind could discriminate from the mass of sensory input playing through her head. It felt as though a billion different thoughts were elbowing each other to be heard, an infinite number of synapses firing within her mind at once, pummeling her, clamoring over each other for attention that she simply was not wired to provide. Images flashed across the screen of her mind, faster than she could process them, an impossible blur of superimposed pictures one on top of the other.
    This must be what it feels like to experience time all at once, she thought, not even sure she understood what the thought meant.
    Every sensation possible played through her body at the same time: vertigo, love, indifference, repulsion, desire, death, fear, and some that she simply did not recognize, alien yet familiar in their strangeness. The feelings went on and on and on, burning through her body. Occasionally an image possessed enough power that it lingered long enough for her mind to register it: a strange, alien landscape, twin suns burning red in a purple sky; clouds, yellow and sulfurous floating below her; what could only be cities, but not the work of human hands; a blue world of mostly water seen from space, an archipelago of tiny islands cutting across it like a crescent moon. Millions of images flashed in front of her eyes every second, each one just a glimpse, a memory of some unknown mind, forgotten the instant they had been seen in the constant rush of new information, more information, information flooding through her as though she were at the very center of all existence.
    A thread appeared; it began as a tiny blue dot, glowing within the mass of searing red confusion, then expanded and rose up through the chaos like a snake, elongating and moving, extending outward, a lifeline of coherence within chaos. The line began to expand outward and she focused on it, everything else fading to a blur around it.
    Emily urged herself toward it, pushing through memories that were not hers, through times that could have been before or to come, the only sense of normalcy the steady pulse of the blue line.
    She reached out with a hand, a paw, a claw, a twig, a cloud of light, for the oh, so beautiful blue line, inching over the infinite space that separated her from it . . . and touched it.
    Abruptly, the cascade of metaexperience ceased, replaced by an infinitely loud silence. Pure white stretched outward all around her as a serenity unlike anything she had ever experienced descended over her. A sense of clarity and . . . love, unadulterated and redolent, as though she had somehow tapped into the very source of that purest of emotions. As overwhelming as the flood of experience had been for her, this single pure emotion destroyed her completely, disassembled her atom by atom, before reassembling her into a new form.
    And when her reconstruction was finished she was left with a single thought that filled her mind, woven throughout her essence with that single blue thread : Mommy.

    Emily sat bolt upright in bed, gasping for air.
    Her muscles ached as though they had all been used at once, her skin was covered in a cold sheen of sweat, and she felt a spreading warm wetness between her legs. I wet the bed? She tried to pull back the covers, but her arms ached so badly it took several attempts to actually achieve that simple task, and when she tried to raise her head it felt