Ajax’s dad had told him that one of the most important goals of a parent is to teach their child to accept death as an inevitability, whether it will happen to them personally or to everyone they love. There is always a moment where everyone must say goodbye to their loved ones. It is a certainty. Ajax cannot stand to believe that he ignored his father’s words right at the end.
Maybe it shouldn’t matter right now in the moment of his death, but he cannot stand to believe that his dad, the man he admires the most, failed in his duty. As his end nears, he is filled with self-loathing.
Is this how I am as a person? So delusional that I cannot even comprehend the fact that I could die? That I’m about to die? Was I… Was I always so conceited? I’ve heard that people reveal their true selves at the moment of their deaths, but I never thought that I would be like this…
Ajax's head is on the ground, separated from his body. Since he came to this world, he stopped being a "traditional" human. However, this body of his still requires blood within it in order to maintain his brain's higher functions. Even though the liquid flowing through his veins and arteries cannot even be compared to regular human blood, he still needs it to keep flowing.
As a result, his head, which has lost a lot of that blood, too much blood for a normal decapitated head to remain alive even fifteen seconds ago, is in a state of severe restriction.
Normally, humans in a state of death like this experience moments of deep spiritual profundity. Their minds are flooded by chemicals due to oxygen loss. Even though death is so quick, many still experience things that are truly spiritual prior to the annihilation of their minds. Some see religious visions, which they bring back with them if they actually manage to survive.
Most see their memories returned to them as vivid dreams, though heavily distorted by oxygen deprivation. These dreams cannot be compared to their lives flashing before their eyes. It looks to some as if they’ve reached heaven… or hell.
They see their loved ones. They see the important fixtures of their childhood, their everyday lives, perhaps even things they have long since forgotten about. Some interesting people even imagine themselves playing games of chess against death itself. Love, hate, sadness, joy. It all returns to them in these psychedelic moments prior to their end.
Does Ajax experience this?
No.
His severed head is rapidly approaching death but there is no life flashing before his eyes. There is no influx of brain altering chemicals. His mind does not need oxygen to function though it does need blood to keep flowing in order to remain “alive” even technically
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He sees before him reality in relative clarity, though still slowed down severely. He only sees his last moments on Omicron, in this hallway in front of Shaula..
Which is why as Shaula moves to where Ajax is on the ground and reaches out her hand to pick him up, he starts to see her slow down even more than earlier. Her movements towards him, which appeared to him as if in slow motion, only continue to slow down more and more. His mental clock stretches out the moments of his demise from mere seconds into minutes.
Until finally, in the moment when she touches his face, she appears frozen still to his eyes.
He can see her utter shock, sadness, anger, fear, her confusion and despair. He doesn't want to see her like this. But, he has no choice, no control over himself. She is frozen in this state before him.
Don't… Don't look at me like that, Shaula. I'm… I'm still alive, you know? You can see, right? I'm still… I'm…
Ajax's eyes see her frozen in place as if she were nothing more than a still image. He sees her face, some tears frozen on her cheeks, start to get brighter.
No, not just her face. It's everything. Everything is getting brighter. It's getting brighter and… brighter… and…
He tries to blink away the blinding intensity of light. He cannot move his eyelids at all. He cannot turn his eyes away either. Until…
Until his brain… disconnects. The blood flow in his brain has stopped long enough at this point.
His mind no longer remains connected to his physical body. Rather, it no longer remains as a manifestation of the biocomputational engine that is his human brain. His mind becomes distinct, disembodied even. It stops being his physical consciousness and instead becomes his astral one, the mind that exists only as a facet of his soul.
At this moment, Ajax dies. Yet his body doesn’t die. It remains alive. Not only that but his body, his severed head, continues to heal. It exists right now as a tether to his astral mind, though not a home to it, considering that his brain is not capable of computation in its current state.
His astral mind cannot remain in the true world as a result, but it does find solace elsewhere, in the astral plane.
The brightness that was hiding everything in Ajax’s surroundings dissipates. Ajax blinks away the sheer intensity of the light. His view is shifted to a new scene. He is standing in a new plane. It is a region of pure blackness. No, even more than that, it is oblivion. Nothing at all surrounds him in the truest sense.
All is empty except for his own body, and something else. He sees in front of him an object of light about the diameter of a small globe. No, it's not simply an obscured object. Ajax blinks his eyes a couple times and the image manifests clearly. It's… a flower.
The brilliant light receded to allow Ajax to see the crisp image of a flower in his view. The flower isn't made of light either, it is glowing but it has a nearly white color. The flower is not exactly pure white, but almost as if it were eggshell white.
Ajax fixates on this discrepancy for a moment. It feels like… He cannot quite understand his own thoughts when observing the eggshell-white hue, so he discards them and moves closer to the flower in order to examine it.