Chapter 21
November 13, 1913 London
Doug awoke in his hotel room, staring up this time not
at Evangeline Warren but Ashavan. It hardly made any difference to him, as the
void remained with him. He was senseless to the world, detached from it in the
way that Evangeline had shown him that it was detached from him. But Ashavan
removed a jewel from his coat pocket. It was the same stone he had always had,
but it seemed to shine slightly brighter. And in the moment he exposed Doug to
it, to a faintly perceptible degree his condition improved. While his conscious
mind was still detached from the world, his senses began to make contact with
the outside again, recording what was detected even if there was no mind to
interpret the information.
Ashavan was attempting to use his senses to bridge the
gap, now, speaking softly in his deep resonant voice in order to tease out some
kind of response from the seemingly comatose man lying on the bed in front of
him.
“You have stared into the darkness, Douglas Slattery,
and it has overwhelmed you. You have, as Freidrich Nietzche said, stared into
the abyss, and the abyss has stared back into you.”
Doug could sense somewhat that Ashavan was cradling
him on his lap as a father might comfort a son who is ill. And like a father,
he knew he was helpless to do anything for him other than give encouragement.
“You have experienced the nothingness. But what would
happen, Doug, if while gazing into the emptiness we did not lose faith? What
if, while traveling in the darkness that it so happened that we were the light we needed? The abyss
exists, there is no denying, but so do we. That also is undisputable. We may be
tiny, but as Tennyson said, ‘what we are, we are.’ It is perhaps the era we are
now living in that has forgotten this. We are the first generation to have left
the land and gone to live in cities of man’s creation, and so we have forgotten
that we are still a part of all creation. Science has caused us to look at our
world as outside observers, we see everything as scientific phenomena, but we
have forgotten ‘self’.
He spoke on, in some way hoping the words might bridge
the gap between himself and Doug. “I met a man aboard the ship we were on, a
wonderfully intelligent physicist, Max Planck. One seldom gets the opportunity
to come across a mind like his, even for one as well travelled as I. He told me
that science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature, and that is because
we are part of the mystery we are trying to solve.”
Ashavan looked down at Doug, hoping for signs of some
kind of recognition. “Don’t you see, Doug, in the final analysis, it is up to
you. And I. The abyss, the nothingness, it’s an empty stage for us to perform
upon, an empty page waiting for you to write your story, a silence awaiting a
song. Nothing doesn’t matter. You do, we all do. And it’s up to you, there is
nothing that nothing can do to you. It is your choice to come back. You can be
part of the nothing if you wish. But it is a choice. It is your story, Doug,
you who write it.”
There was no reply to come from Doug’s lips, no hint
of recognition in his eyes. So Ashavan was absolutely shocked to feel a hand
reach for his, as if it were a blind man’s. Ashavan grabbed it, and felt
fingers working in concert to form around his own.
He had brought Doug back from the abyss.
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