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On a Thursday, many years from now, Chad lays down in his bed.
As he lays, he sleeps, but if he dreams he cannot say.
It feels more genuine a scene than any he’s yet beheld.
Reality’s true nature laid bare before him.
Less a dream and more a memory of things to come. Of things that aren’t, but are. Occurrences that haven’t happened, but have. Of possibilities that won’t, but will.
In the dream he is legion.
In the dream he finds the Center.
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He is in the hallway. Mother has gone.
Although it is just him, he no longer feels fear.
Shadows of things unnamed encroach in his wake, but he merely laughs to himself.
He could turn to face them, to see those pitiful things that once held such power over him
But he already knows them. Without seeing, he knows.
Like a child, grown, knowing that there is no reason to check under the bed for monsters once feared.
A parting glance? The terrors in the shadows warrant not even that much.
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He has no dragons to slay, he never did.
The great quest was merely discovering such.
So he laughs. And he laughs again.
He has arrived at the door. He has arrived at the end.
He touches his hand to the ornate knob, savoring the feeling of the gem studded thing.
He tightens his grip and turns his hand.
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He hangs in a thick haze, weightless. He drifts idly to one quivering wall.
He presses his hands into the slimy, puckered flesh as he has countless times before, drawing back pulsating musculature, opening the orifice wider and wider, exposing a wriggling curtain of mucous and gore.
Watched by strange barnacle-like patches of malformed eyes, he presses his fingers into the slick membrane. Clawing at the tough, sinuous barrier, he digs his nails behind a dense weave of capillaries and fatty viscera until he has enough purchase to tear the gelatinous rind free, crimson beads spilling out, floating in silent spirals through the chamber.
He flinches in surprise and shields his eyes at the sudden unexpected brightness that spills through the gash.
He gasps. This is it.
After a journey stretching endless eternities, he has arrived at the Center.
When again he can see, he has already crossed the threshold into the chamber, it is like no other. Gone is the passage through which he just came. There are no doors in this place. Gone, too, are the disfigured walls of those dim, rank enclosures, only 4 mirrors of pure, almost-blinding light face him as he floats weightlessly within.
He can no longer see the center, he is the center.
The center is him.
From his new vantage he becomes aware of a final layer. Not a muck covered placental thing like the trillions upon trillions he’s gnashed and torn and crossed through before, rather, an infintismally fine thing.
A veil before him. All around him. Almost too ethereal to see, except when he relaxes his gaze just so.
He reaches out his hand to draw it aside.
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There is only sound. It envelopes him.
There is no light, no color. No absence of color. Such variables are undefined in this domain.
No white light, no inky blackness, only sound.
His friends are returned.
After so, so long, they speak to him!
Frequencies rise and fall unbounded until they meet, overtake, and meld into each other.
An infinitesimally fine gradient of notes dissolve into one glorious refrain.
He has wished for so long to understand this melody, but understanding always eluded him.
Now, it sets upon him.
All of the pieces slot into place—and even if he wished it so now, elude the understanding he could not.
To understand the melody is to apprehend the Meaning.
And now, in this moment, he understands.
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He understands,
the door opens,
the veil parts,
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From someplace far beyond, a golden light spills over, it fills the All.
A warmth overflows within him.
And suddenly—he is One, at peace, returned.
In every moment heretofore and hence, he is anchored to the source of all things.
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