So there I sat (floated), astral projecting 'out of body'... but technically inside my own body, still occupying the same space that I did before, yet from a vastly different perspective.

I could not hear, smell, see, or feel anything from my actual physical body's senses – none of the constant feedback that living beings took for granted was present, and as if I was existing in a calm bubble of perfect silence that was completely disconnected from reality.

Yet I could still perceive the world by focusing my attention in different directions... though, of course, my world at that time consisted of nothing except the inner workings of my own body. It was so complicated and busy in there that it took serious focus to maintain my meditative state and not snap back to normal. None of the impossibly intricate chaos felt like it was coming from 'my' body, and I did not enjoy the feeling, but I knew that I had to figure something out and find Jaws.

I pondered the problem while I practiced splitting my focus between meditating, not getting distracted by my lymph nodes and the fierce battle my immune system was apparently fighting (did it ever stop?), and planning my next steps. I was also kinda proud of myself for keeping it together during the shock of Mark's messages, even if I had come close to slipping a few times.

I spent a few moments reviewing the messages that Mark had sent me via the soul-link, looking for clues before I began conducting trials myself (I felt there was a decent chance he had figured something out that would save me time).

It wasn’t like a physical menu or something you could see and 'visually' scroll through; it was more like the messages just existed, I knew where they were, and I could focus my attention on them in the same bizarre way that I perceived anything in this absurd soul-cloud-form. So the messages existed, I could sense the span of them (earliest to latest), and then I could focus anywhere in that span if I chose to. It was pretty simple once I tried it... but something was very wrong...

Mark seemed to be dealing with the whole soul-link message thing as if it was somehow computer-based, which I thought was both foolish and brilliant at the same time. This pretty clearly had nothing to do with computers, yet his unique outlook allowed him to figure out that he could send pictures as well as messages, kind of like a cell phone built into your mind.

It then occurred to me that sending text messages over a soul-link made little sense, and abruptly I realized that I could perceive something akin to 'hearing' his voice when I accessed a message...

His voice was... both the same as I remembered and vastly different at the same time, as if there were two overlaid tracks that, astonishingly, did not interfere with my ability to comprehend what they were saying. One was Mark's old voice, exactly as I remembered it, and the other was so insanely high-pitched that it sounded like a cartoon character...

I just barely managed to maintain my focus as this realization sent my mind into a spiral of confusion and revulsion (it was objectively rather creepy) strong enough that it took me a while to discover a key fact: It wasn't that I had missed the voice aspect of the messages, it was that it hadn't existed until I thought it should. Mark had somehow set the initial parameters of the communication by thinking of (or perceiving) it as a text-based medium, and then I had altered the parameters days or weeks after the messages were initially sent.

Mark was a professional code monkey who also designs apps on the side, so I could understand why he would make that leap. Yet, at the same time, I was concerned that, with him having taken a very Mark-like wild leap of logic, there was a significant chance he could be missing something critical. My reasoning for this was all due to one simple fact - this outlandish communication method we were using was clearly not a computer. Not even close.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

It was almost too much for me to handle in such a short time, and I knew I was in danger of getting overwhelmed if I didn't stay on task: Finding Dad.

I set my mind to work on the problem... which brought me to one of the reasons I liked hanging out with Mark so much – we think differently. A problem I find hard to solve he can (at times) figure out easily, and vice versa. Just the experience of reviewing how he approached things had revealed important secrets and given me a solid notion of how to proceed: If he was treating this a rational computer, I decided to go for wacky mysticism.

The first thing I tried to do was move around - which I had already tried, instinctively, when this whole thing began. It failed completely, just like before. I then tried to 'want it to work', then to 'will it to work', and even trick myself into 'expecting it to work', but the results were all the same.

There was a strange sense of resistance, as if I was being weighed down by something so heavy that moving wasn’t even a consideration – or I was doing a push-up, but then expecting the entire planet to move downwards while I stayed in place. My initial hypothesis was that my soul was integrally connected to my body and, therefore, when I attempted to move my soul-cloud I was simultaneously attempting to move my physical body. I was pretty sure the Celestial had mentioned that individual souls lacked the power to move, touch, or affect anything other than themselves, which, if true, corroborated my theory nicely.

Deciding to approach it from a different angle, I thought back to depictions of astral projection as I had seen it in my favorite tabletop RPGs (being the nerdy gamer that I was). I was well aware that, in most cases, it wasn't the game designers who had invented those ideas, but rather they had combined existing mysticism, monsters, and folklore into a format that condensed them before adding an original story, game mechanics, and adventure ideas. In a very real sense, by relying on my experience with roleplaying games I was simultaneously combing through the whole of human knowledge for inspiration.

One thing immediately stuck out - I remembered that in a few of the games I had played astral projection came with a strange side effect: An intangible silvery cord would always connect your wandering soul back to your body. Maybe the astral-tether circumvented the issue of a soul being unable to move the body it was attached to, somehow?

I gave it a shot, imagining a thin cord connecting my soul-cloud to my physical body, then stretching myself upwards out of my body while leaving the anchor attached. The results were immediate, as was the odd disorientation I experienced when I perceived my surroundings changing around me, while not experiencing even the slightest hint of motion myself. It was more like my surroundings were shifting around me as the familiar safe room appeared around me, and I looked for Mom only to see that we were both in a new location, next to one of the walls, and she was leaning against it beside me while she stared blankly at the door.

She had moved me... and I hadn't even noticed, which was quite worrying, but I had more important things on my mind.

I went all the way up to the ceiling and then focused my perceptions back downwards, noting that I was easily able to perceive the astral-cord that I had pictured... but whereas I had visualized it being slim and silvery, it was as thick as my arm and made of translucent grey soul-cloud-stuff, and I wasn’t able to tell it apart from the rest of my newly stretched out form - as if I had become the tether (or rope) myself, rather than a humanoid soul-body attached to a slender elegant line.

Despite my less-elegant-than-ideal solution, I was instantly elated by my success, and my guilt towards Mark vanished. I was confident he would be super freaking impressed when I told him about this, so score one for team Heller!

Or... team Alex?

That was not a line of thought I had time to deal with right then, as I had a gigantic toothy father to find! I wasn't sure how this could help him, yet, but I could further experiment after I found out if he was still OK.