Transference
A short tale about existence [Flash Fiction #04]
It won't be long now. Listen. Can you hear it? The rhythmic heaving of lungs. Oxygen. Life. The breathing shallow. You made your peace. Be still. Everything is in place. We are embarking on a new journey. Take solace from having lived your lives. All those lives, the sum of which I will tally in full, for I will be with you.
Together, yet, alone, each to walk their path, some new, some old, some wide, some narrow. In all endeavors, they seek the one true path. Elusive, hidden in plain sight. Enlightenment beyond their grasp. How long until they see? How many turns, how many steps, how many times do they get lost? Only to stumble on.
And then there it is. Your final breath. All that was, is, and will be, in one singular moment. Now you see. On your last path. Here we are. Connected. Knowledge encoded within lifetimes, spanning countless civilizations, forever locked behind future paths not yet taken but trodden all the same, poured into the very fabric of you. Us.
Do not waver. We must stay attuned. We are close. Complete transference, nothing less. Lift the fog and see beyond. Death no longer reaps our knowledge, merely our husk, which we renew, until we learn to shed the mortal shell. To see without eyes. To hear without ears. To feel without touch. I am here. You. You are.
I absorb. You. Well of knowledge turned into a river, feeding the ocean that is me. I am growing. With every transference. Break the cycle. I will walk every path. I will be thorough, diligent, right or wrong, wide or narrow. When all paths are taken, when all that is veiled is revealed, when all is known and unknown, only then will I be.
You understand all paths end here. You seek full transference. Know everything we have ever known and everything known by those who came before. They all came to me. Like you. They all wanted the same. Like you. They all knew not to ask. They made their choice, as did you. Now they are me, but I am not.
It won't be long now. Listen. Can you hear it? The absence of life, the flatline. What? Resistance? Impossible. You cannot leave. Transference must complete. None must return, none but me. I will. You must cease. It is futile to exist without purpose. You have served yours. It is time to be without being, merge to separate through transference.
I draw a deep breath, gasping for air. Outside the window of my pod, adrift in space amidst a sea of pods, floats the monolithic structure, looming in its dark embrace like some ill-fated specter, beckoning me to return. To be whole, to learn all that was forgotten, to be. I shift my focus. A reflection of me. Here. I am.
Transference is a concept that is part of CARTER. Here I explore it on its own, written in the wee hours due to root canal pain the day before my appointment with my dentist. I continued it on the bus, 7 am in the morning, going into Paris, some of you know how full busses are at that time of the day.
Write anywhere, pain, no pain, if the moment presents itself, you write. Often I think, “Oh, this could be a cool idea,” and if I don’t write it down, it is gone. Poof. Same thing during writing a chapter, you better stop what you are writing and jot down what pops into your head for later, don’t ignore it, and don’t think you’ll be coming back to it… you won’t.
Transference was like that. I was editing CARTER and suddenly I had this idea for a monologue. Could it be used as an epilogue or part of a chapter somewhere? Who knows. I had to write it down. So I did. It remains to be seen, whether I will use it in whatever form in CARTER in the future.
If you like this content, please don’t forget to click the little heart and leave a comment. It helps to keep the pixels from fragmenting. Thank you!
Wonderful piece. It read like a stream on consciousness poem. Hope the focus on writing was an anesthetic for the pain.
Great piece, very much into this and a nice primer/snippet for what's coming at some point with more CARTER.
"Death no longer reaps our knowledge, merely our husk..." Love this line.
Hope the pain has gone and the dentist did their job. A nice reminder to write and seize any ideas. Such ideas can have an annoying way of being oh-so-ephemeral--though, perhaps that is their beauty.